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DAVID CRAIG 41 I want to be alone If he came for her, where would he look? After bursting in and tearing every piece of clothing from the drawers and hangers, upending every bottle in the drinks cupboard, turning on the radio and leaving it blaring . . . He would go straight through into the Square, and if he didn‘t find her there he would look in the Ship and the Cross Keys and the Lamb and Flag, and :if he didn‘t find her there he would try the Arcade and the Essoldo, and if he didn‘t find her there and didn’t meet any old acquaintance good for the price of a drink, he would get on the Nailsworth bus and go and torment his mother. So she made her preparations carefully, remembering the old man who had told her once, ’If we wanted to play Crown and Anchor, you know where we went? We went in the middle of the field, and if the bobby saw us, he thought to himself, There’s one thing sure, whatever they‘re doing they can’t be throwing the old dice, not in broad daylight, in the middle of the field . . .’ First she painted her nails, bright scarlet, using the little outfit she had bought three years before and never used after he had come home and taken a look at it and laughed, a single harsh barking laugh. When each finger-end shone fresh-blood-coloured, she held them up as she had seen her friends do and lightly fluttered them in mid-air, and this movement, caressing and provoking the air, transformed her, sent her out of herself and somewhere else, a dangerous feel- ing started between her shoulder-.blades and she felt slightly reckless and glanced sideways beneath lowered lids with her lips just parted. And saw herself in the mirror above the mantelpiece, her brown hair short and lacltlustre, her nose broad and white (like uncooked dough, he’d said), so she went to the cupboard under the stairs and lifted out from below the catalogues and the old clothes the square white box containing the Ginchy wig she had sent for long ago and never even dared to try on. There it was - poised coolly in the half light, as though a frozen woman’s corpse was surfacing upright from the depths, the curved symmetrical features moulded in duck-egg blue polystyrene, seeming to preen themselves, the ash-blond tresses parting from the crown in delicious little tails and ends. She lifted it out. She clapped the wig on to her head like some silly hat, loathing it suddenly, then recovered her purpose and went through again to the living-room mirror and adjusted the wi,g with the intent critical care of. an actress’s dresser, easing it forward to cover lher own hairline, patting the tails and ends into a perfect honey-coloured cap that shadowed her eyes, making them seem larger, their brown greener. For a moment she posed her lurid fingers beside her cheekbone, lifting her shoulder and lowering her chin - a thirties film star - regarded the image coolly as though she was

I want to be alone

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Page 1: I want to be alone

DAVID CRAIG 41

I want to be alone

If he came for her, where would he look? After bursting in and tearing every piece of clothing from the drawers and hangers, upending every bottle in the drinks cupboard, turning on the radio and leaving it blaring . . . He would go straight through into the Square, and if he didn‘t find her there he would look in the Ship and the Cross Keys and the Lamb and Flag, and :if he didn‘t find her there he would try the Arcade and the Essoldo, and if he didn‘t find her there and didn’t meet any old acquaintance good for the price of a drink, he would get on the Nailsworth bus and go and torment his mother. So she made her preparations carefully, remembering the old man who had told her once, ’If we wanted to play Crown and Anchor, you know where we went? We went in the middle of the field, and if the bobby saw us, he thought to himself, There’s one thing sure, whatever they‘re doing they can’t be throwing the old dice, not in broad daylight, in the middle of the field . . .’

First she painted her nails, bright scarlet, using the little outfit she had bought three years before and never used after he had come home and taken a look at it and laughed, a single harsh barking laugh. When each finger-end shone fresh-blood-coloured, she held them up as she had seen her friends do and lightly fluttered them in mid-air, and this movement, caressing and provoking the air, transformed her, sent her out of herself and somewhere else, a dangerous feel- ing started between her shoulder-.blades and she felt slightly reckless and glanced sideways beneath lowered lids with her lips just parted. And saw herself in the mirror above the mantelpiece, her brown hair short and lacltlustre, her nose broad and white (like uncooked dough, he’d said), so she went to the cupboard under the stairs and lifted out from below the catalogues and the old clothes the square white box containing the Ginchy wig she had sent for long ago and never even dared to try on. There it was - poised coolly in the half light, as though a frozen woman’s corpse was surfacing upright from the depths, the curved symmetrical features moulded in duck-egg blue polystyrene, seeming to preen themselves, the ash-blond tresses parting from the crown in delicious little tails and ends. She lifted it out. She clapped the wig on to her head like some silly hat, loathing it suddenly, then recovered her purpose and went through again to the living-room mirror and adjusted the wi,g with the intent critical care of. an actress’s dresser, easing it forward to cover lher own hairline, patting the tails and ends into a perfect honey-coloured cap that shadowed her eyes, making them seem larger, their brown greener. For a moment she posed her lurid fingers beside her cheekbone, lifting her shoulder and lowering her chin - a thirties film star - regarded the image coolly as though she was

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42 Critical Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 3

appraising somebody else - then went through again to the stair cupboard and took from its innermost dark recess a mock-leopardskin coat on a wire hanger, A relic of Mrs Jessop, the Wicked Widow. Sad remnant of an abortive jumble sale in the last, doomed days of the tennis club. Backing out of the cupboard, she stood in front of the mirror and clothed herself in the stupid, spotty fabric, gaudily orange, cut with a deep collar and long slanting pockets. No use, only her top half showed, so she went through to the bedroom and eyed herself in the dressing-table mirror. Three wicked widows stared from its glass leaves, hands in pockets, legs astride, leaning a little backwards and looking scornfully over one shoulder, ready to fly off to Madeira or Corfu for the winter holiday in the unending sunshine.

Her own eyes were still visible, sulky-looking, beaten but not defeated. So she took a pair of dark glasses with large lenses from an old chocolate box beneath a heap of knickers - Le Specs, how silly, and how silly to think of keeping her face unlined when he had only abused her for 'looking like a little schoolgirl'. Now she needed just two other jumble remnants, the broad-brimmed black velour hat and the lemon imitation-leather shoulder bag with the El A1 logo stamped on its side, She let herself out furtively, on tiptoe, holding the lock with the key from outside so that it scarcely clicked (knowing this to be daft and unnecessary).

The cul de sac, drowsy with dusty sunshine, part shaded by chestnut trees whose branches sagged over old sandstone walls, was empty except for a gas- meter reader at the far end, tapping his book with his pencil as he waited for an answer. She went quickly along the pavement, out at the far end into the main road beside the Methodist Hall - across the Square 'where old age pensioners stared at the roses - through by a narrow pedestrian passage that opened out on the precinct lined with chain-shops, one boutique (Teentime), a record shop which sent out loud strains of Adam and the Ants to create a fevered hubbub in the air around the shoppers' heads, a licensed cafe, the St Tropez, which tried for a French atmosphere and in this weather half succeeded, umbrellas in broad stripes of blue and yellow and green shading small metal tables, white plastic chairs in simulated wickerwork standing round in sociable circles waiting for customers to sip pink-and-orange drinks from tall glasses topped with chunks of ice and read the morning papers.

One of the six tables was occupied, by a sunburnt family, pink and peeling, the children draining melted ice cream through straws, the parents drinking pints and halves of lager from glasses streaming with moisture. She sat herself down at the table next but one and crossed her legs, adjusting the skirt of the leopard- skin coat to hide the skirt of her short crimplene dress, and ordered a Pimm's No. 1 from an ill-looking, thin-faced young waiter in black trousers and a white shirt. I am this enigmatic, lonely visitor in the seafront bar at the Clarendon,

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I want to be alone 43

she thought, or the Devanha or the Cragfield, I nurse my cock.tai1 in the corner seat, I call for another, then another, the single men are attracted, but they avoid me, frightened by my insatiable demands. I am mad, she thought, m y head is a bird-house full of cackling voices, crazy rubbish. I don’t know who I am. I know very well who I am, depressed, sterile Patricia Pagdin with no job, an alcoholic husband, my parents three years dead. She paid for the Pimm’s, drew in a long cool swallow, it tasted resinous and tropical, and watched the parade of humanity that trailed past her in slow motion. A man with a violent tremor moved sideways like a crab towards the covered market, his face as grey as old fish (or uncooked dough?). A man carried a monstrous paunch in front of him like a tense, rounded bale, a load not part of himself at all. His wife was thin, coffee-coloured, her arms hung straight down helplessly from her shoulders, the left one was blotched with yellow vaccination marks. Two youths with skimpy Mohicans sticking up in short, greased spikes hovered in the door of the record shop, one of them pulling on a roll-up, trying to make it smoke. A wino from the Ship, a tall, ruined man in a buttoned-up Burberry, his face the wintry colour of anaemic beef, leaned back against the wall, beneath the glittering gold and scarlet and azure mosaic of the city coat-of-arms, and tilted a cider flagon slowly, slowly, his Adam’s apple bobbling in his stringy throat. A dream, she thought, it’s all like dreaming, they are not people with flesh and children and homes to go to, a flock of dreams is all they are, bad patches in my head, I am abnormal, I see sick people because I am sick, where is a happy person, where are they going, they are simply going home, filling the day, buying junk, and going back to their funny little homes. Small rounded pieces of ice slopped in the bottom of her glass. She ordered a second Pimm’s from the lad as he cleared up after the sunburnt family and tilted her face to let the sunshine ease and heal her thoughts. The blue of the sky looked old, an unreal painting, tinged by the darkness of her glasses. When the Pimm’s came, she drank with her eyes shut, secure behind the mask of the tinted lenses. Her left hand lay as though casually on the table, five crimson insects on the Nile- green enamel. She drank till her head swam slightly, opened her eyes and saw the wino looking stricken and caved in, as though a bullet had hit him in the midriff, and as she watched his eyes turned right upwards like two peeled eggs and his back slid down the wall and the base of his spine hit the pavement with a thump. The flagon in his right hand clunked down beside him and there he stayed, propped up, mouth open, Guy Fawkes ready for the bonfire. She looked round, appalled. Would nobody help? do something? do what? She gathered herself to get up, but no - no no no - one move and she blew her cover, her disguise was still complete so long as she stayed wrapped in leopard-skin, masked in the black hat and the shades.

At one o’clock she saw him, his best suit slightly crumpled, his face red and

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44 Critical Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 3

shiny, his hair wet and newly combed. He drove straight through the crowd, once shoving an old woman sharply out of the way. He looked keenly round the precinct and disappeared into the Ship. She sat transfixed, her hand round her glass, feeling the cold dew on its sides. A long level ache like a period pain spread through her lower stomach. The precinct was one crushing, hot arena, like a fiercely-lit stage, a stage were she had dried, lost even the knowledge of how to move, but here she was, exposed and committed, her assumed self cloaking her yet baring her. She must run. Before she could stir, he came out of the Ship and stood, looking round. He would go along the alley to the Cross Keys now. But he did not. He began to stroll around the precinct, wavering a little but with a fine air of leisured wellbeing, hands in his pockets, smiling a little at toddlers in pushchairs and babies in their prams. He paused at the covered-market door, he turned and bought a paper at the kiosk, he drifted down the shopfronts between the kiosk and the St Tropez, looked into its shady interior, put his hand in his hip pocket, and then by an unexpected sidestep finished up beside her table. He loomed between her and the sun, he was just a silhouette, towering. ‘Mind if I - ’ he said, then his weight seemed to carry him down abruptly onto the chair before her dry throat could utter. He looked full at her, with brazen appreciation, then said, ‘Drink?‘ She could not speak. She could do nothing. ’C’mon, love - whassyours?‘ She lifted her scarlet-ended fingers, she pushed her tall glass over the table top, he took it all in, the studied gesture, the glamorous hand, the glass with the slice of orange and the sprig of mint, and he said with the cheeky grin she had once found so attractive, ‘Know how t‘enjoy ourself, eh? Waiter!’ he called, much too loudly, and when the lad appeared, ’Pimm’s, and draught Guinness - pint.’ His head swung back to her and he smiled suggestively, as though expecting recognition, for his acumen, his effrontery, his openhandedness? Oh yes, he was definitely in the mood, he was leaning forward now, his mouth loose with fun, he was saying ‘What d’they call you, then?’ He was reaching out for her glasses, poised to pluck them off, she jerked backwards, his fingers missed the glasses but her hat tilted, she could feel the wig move, she saw revulsion in his face, then bullying scorn, then a stark pang of recognition. Pain tore her ear as he dragged the glasses off and then her brain bounced in her head as he clobbered her on the temple with his stone-heavy boxer‘s hand. ’You - crafty ~ bitch!’ she heard the words whispered, thick and intense, through a maze of concussion. Then he had her by the waist. ’Tipsy again! Can’t take her anywhere!’ She heard these words in his cheeriest tone as she was gathered up and hustled between bodies, her toes scraping pavement, cobbles, tarmac, he was bearing her down down down into the bottom of the well with the steep smooth sandstone sides, beneath the dark night of the chestnut branches.