Miss Crawford

Looking about Fred's front room, it would appear  I had done precisely that, the mere fact of having absolutely nothing,  never concerned me, the lack of money never bothered me ...        I managed and I slept at night ... day as well, come to that.

But cracks had appeared in Fred's life, his occasional beaming ebullience hardly fooled anyone, Hackney BC had come up with a possession order on his home, they,  coldly unconcerned at the fact of him having been born in the house that it had been decorated and furnished without any restraint, right down to a Bechstein piano. I didn't look too hard at that,  recalled selling one of those when Virginia had been in England, the only thing being,  it had belonged to her.

Finally, Fred inveigled me into moving in with him, not quite, I used to sleep on the floor of the front room. Didn't consider myself  being particularly used - he was quite generous.  Would drive him here, there and anywhere, most of it to the TV centre… hanging about waiting endless hours for him. At weekends,  went and helped out with Glicksten. But Fred's conflict with H.B.C. was not doing anything to help. At night, after the spot appeared on the box - instead of settling down to work he would sit and stare at the typewriter, fall asleep.. not surface till four in the afternoon. Vie would puff on her sixty a day - working herself up to the time to wake Fred in a possibly more conducive mood for working - but this became progressively harder.    The eggs too hard, or too soft - the toast too cold - he moaned at simply anything . He became extremely fat,  braces straining over his huge stomach,  passed the point of being able to bend down to tie his shoes.

Problems of my own  crept up on me.

In defiance of all the vows I had made to keep clear of involvement with anything or anyone, Miss Crawford wanted to be involved…the marriage bit firmly between her teeth. According to her I 'owed it'. "Hadn't she been patient?" "Hadn't she given me her all?" "Was it that she wasn't good enough for me?" Gradually beginning to realise I had no more intention of marrying her than the day we had met.

One wintery weekend,  insisting I accompany her to Wales to see her father who had been a miner all his life, still living in one of the typical mining cottages scattered over the hillsides. Such a tiny house… a table and a piano in the front room, no space to move. The wind, relentless in its headlong rush from the Atlantic, accelerated down through the valleys as if determined to break the very rocks that erupted towards the slate grey skies. Miss Crawford, still adamant, firmly held my hand, pulling me along the cold, cobbled streets. At almost every house we would stop and go in. Quite a bit of subdued laughter breaking through the practically foreign dialect. I, looked at quite carefully.

Things started to be given to us, a towel, teaspoons, a couple of pairs of sheets ... firmly on the spot. My poverty ,nothing. Theirs, grinding, remorseless. Looked up at the unrelenting hills, clouds stretched tight across them. Felt, what did I feel? A mixture of emotions, very upset allowing myself to be placed in such a position, at the same time trying to smile into the open faces I was surrounded with. Felt like a visitor from another planet. All I could see was a poverty endured, a life of hardship, desperately trying to be overcome by a combination of supplication to God and a determination to smile whatever the odds.

The wind, dissatisfied with simply biting straight into the body, brought along heavy snow flakes that flew horizontally into the face. So far as I was concerned, the whole situation, out of hand, being attacked from without and within.  Didn't like it. We arrived back at her cottage in pitch darkness… four o'clock in the afternoon. Miss Crawford started to prepare the tea, putting an old iron kettle on the open fire and lighting the gas lamp that hissed and spluttered on the wall. Her father, who had been down the pit since five in the morning, asleep,  deep in the armchair. We had the tea,  she pulled out the piano stool and after shuffling the sheets of music,  started playing some psalms, throwing her voice in for good measure.

Singing wasn't bad. Her piano work better... more than ironic  I should find another bird stuck on music.

With Virginia, music  ……to the exclusion of everything and everyone else….

My instinct at that moment,  to get up and run. Didn't like the size of the net.

Imagined however, that if the wooden slated door was opened we would all collapse with exposure. Running, in this instance, was out. Would have to go along with her ideas. Waiting for the father to creep up to bed about seven, listening to him shuffle across the ceiling. She would put the gas out and sit on my lap. I slowly undress her,  bare skin caught in the soft glow of the fire.

The snow climbed slowly up the window panes. Miss Crawford wrapped  herself about me, long hair falling to her breasts. We were the only two people on this earth. No sound, save that of the wind rushing round the house. It would have been so very easy to have succumbed to her at that moment, she had played all her cards. Sadly, only a pair of jacks. Time and again having maneuvered me to this moment. The teaspoons, sheets and towels didn't do anything , only made me feel bad. Lifted her gently, as if a child. Just enough room  to carry her up the short flight of curved stairs and lay her on the bed.

Found myself marooned in the little house on the hillside. Miss Crawford's father,  undeterred by the weather, up at 4 a.m.  set out to walk to the pit head in pitch darkness, as he had doubtlessly done since a boy. The wind had dropped away leaving the snow piled in deep drifts. The car lay buried somewhere in the waste ground opposite the house.

Miss Crawford remained very calm, when over the breakfast, I told her that I considered it best in both our interests that we parted once we returned to civilization. Tried to put it very gently, "the difference in our ages"….I,  thirty two, she, ten years younger. She dismissed this as of no consequence. Glared realising that all her carefully laid plans had not materialised, mildly surprised to see that look, thought it something pertaining only to Virginia, evidently all females have this ability to lash the opposite sex with their eyes, so too, do they apparently have the ability to weep. Could hear her crying up the narrow twisting stairs, in her soft, pink room, narrow window unimpeded in its view of the jagged mountains.

The small green A30 really behaved, taking the snow drifts and Miss Crawford ‘s gear snatch quite well. She had insisted on driving, as if to take out her pent up anger and frustration on the car. Hardly saw anything original in that, a billion people do it each day. Still, surprised at this complete other side of her personality. Would never, ever, have considered her a candidate for calculation.. always been so mild, so unassuming, so soft. Thought back to that first time at High Beach. Had been very happy then, however, must admit, had not forgotten her momentary flash of displeasure at her realisation  of my pushing, straight into her hot, wet, thighs without, as she put it, " wearing anything."

Simply sat tight in the rocking car, holding onto the door pull, hoping that she had no intention of throwing, with one twist of the wheel, the two alienated personalities and the old heap of a car, deep into a Welsh valley. No doubt nothing like that entered her head…. the romance… all mine. She had that fixed, uncompromising expression, seen elsewhere on other female faces, had known this all before, somehow Hackney, not such a bad place, if I could just get there in one piece, get clear of Miss Crawford, this wilderness, this poverty, bareness, isolation and of course, the cold.

No snow in town, when we finally arrived, a profound sense of relief in extricating myself from the stifling atmosphere of the car. In her temper she hit the curb outside Lea View, thought she had broken a stub axle, we stopped with such a crash. Used this diversion to leap out and look at the wheel, as if I really cared. She,  unimpressed, doing the classic 'three point turn' ... at about thirty miles an hour,  tore back up Springfield trailing heavy blue smoke.

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