“We don’t usually have this,” she said. She took it from him, tipped back her head, and swallowed a little. “I’ll be warm in a minute. It’s a good idea. We couldn’t do what we used to do. It’s too cold to uncover an inch of flesh.”
“Sylvia’s pregnant,” he told her. Faintly, the headlights of cars crept along the main road, like lost souls. She passed him back the bottle without comment. “So you see,” he said, “you must understand, I can’t leave her now.”
“I expect you’re glad,” she said.
“Glad? Glad? Why should I be glad?”
“Off the hook, Colin. You’ve felt it, these past few weeks. Or at least, back on the old familiar hook. Don’t people get used to the pain?”
“I expect you mean there’s no chance of us carrying on.”
“Carrying on?” she laughed. “That’s what people used to say, they’ve been carrying on together. Weekend bags and seaside hotels and tipsy hilarity. Well, now they’re not carrying on. Let’s go, Colin, just save the explanations and preserve some dignity and let it go.”
“You sound bitter,” he said dully.
“Do I? Give me a chance. Time hasn’t had a chance yet to do its legendary healing work, but the sooner time gets on with it, the better it will be. How long does it take?” She spoke rapidly, the syllables tripping after each other into a dim future. “One year? Two? Three?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know, if it comes to that.”
Triteness was in his mouth like a foul taste long incubated; but what can you expect from the tired old situations, except the tired old phrases? “I can’t imagine the future without you.”
“You can’t imagine it with me, though.”
“You know I had very little to offer you.”
“And what you had, you weren’t prepared to give.”
“Isabel—”
“Memory will make you a cosy selection. In time you’ll forget the motorway and the field and the humiliating telephone calls. You can give yourself better lines, make yourself more potent.”
“That’s cheap. Isn’t it, cheap?”
“Yes. Ah, what’s the point? We knew at the beginning it would end up like this. We knew but we did it—I did anyway—because there are some mistakes you have to make.”
They sat in the damp darkness of the car, no sound but their steady breathing, almost hoarse, like people who had exerted themselves and were not used to it. He was conscious of their last moments trickling away.
“Give me a cigarette,” she said. He lit it for her. “I want to tell you something. A little story.”
“Bearing on us?”
“No, it has nothing to do with us at all. I tell it to anyone I think might be able to tell me what it means.” She took the cigarette from her lips and smoke curled out of them, out of her body. For a minute he thought he was seeing torments, the damned in hell, smouldering viscera and dripping flesh. He blinked. “It’s a true story,” she said. “I read it in a book when I was a student.” He tried to ease himself back in the driver’s seat, but he did not feel at ease. He took out a cigarette and then pushed it back into the packet.
“Are you running out?” she asked.
“No. I think I might give up.”
“Well, it will save expense. You are making changes in your life. Isn’t it going to be too much for you, all at once?”
“Tell me the story.”
“All right. It was in the war, the last war. There were two people, Jews, in Poland. The man was a weaver. He saw this woman whom he wanted to marry. But she—she wouldn’t have him. Everybody thought it was ridiculous, quite unsuitable. They had nothing in common, they were from different backgrounds, different classes. But he was very persistent.”
“This was before the War?”
“Yes, this was before the War. But when the invasion came the man knew what was going to happen. He had a friend who was a farmer; he wasn’t Jewish but he was prepared to help him. Under the floor of his friend’s farmhouse he made a hole in the ground. He got a handloom, and a lot of wool, as much as he could lay his hands on. Then when the Germans started rounding up the Jews he went to this sort of dug-out and shut himself in and began to weave the wool.”
“Yes?”
“And he asked the woman again, would she live with him? She refused. At first she said she would rather be dead. But soon most of her family had been killed or taken away on the cattle-wagons. She was on her own and there was nowhere to hide. He couldn’t come out of the hole now, but he kept sending messages to her, and in the end she was so frightened, with everyone else gone, that she agreed. She went to join him under the farmhouse floor. But she said she would never marry him, she wouldn’t have sex with him.”
“But that’s asking the impossible,” Colin said. “In that confined space.”
“Look, will you just shut up, Colin?” He turned, startled. Her cheeks were hollow, her eyes alight. She snapped another cigarette into her mouth and her anger blazed and flickered in the lighter flame. It began to rain, harder and harder, thundering on the metal roof. “Will you just keep quiet and let me tell you the story?”
“I’m sorry.” He thought, how long will this take, will it turn to mud, is the car going to start sinking? What will
