Walking Naked

Book 65: Virago Modern Classics

by Nina Bawden

Genres: General Fiction; Classics; Coming of Age; Family Life; Marriage & Divorce; Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Laura is happily married, a mother and a successful novelist. Although she is prey to night terrors, she is adept at smoothing the disorder of reality into controlled prose. Walking Naked telescopes the whole of Laura's life- childhood, marriages, triumphs and disappointments- into a day in which the past and present converge. It begins with a game of tennis played for duty rather than amusement and progresses, via an afternoon party of old friends and jaded emotions, to a bewildering visit to Laura's son, imprisoned on a drugs' charge. At its close, the possibility of death within the family hauls unresolved conflicts centre stage and Laura strips herself of the posturing and self-deceit with which she has cloaked her vulnerability.

Release date: November 3, 2011

Publisher: Virago

Print pages: 221

Sample

‘I really don’t know what to wear,’ Andrew said, just before eight o’clock on that Saturday morning.


Or I assume that he said it. Since I was asleep at the time I can’t know for certain. I can only say that when I heard him
make this remark a few minutes later (five past eight by my watch, the gold watch that he gave me for my fortieth birthday)
it sounded like a repeat performance.


Novelists have to make some assumptions. We can’t be awake all the time, nor present at every event. You have to take some
things on trust, as Bishop Berkeley might have answered himself when he enquired about the continuing existence of a particular
tree when he was not there to see it.


So you must believe what I tell you. (If you don’t, we have no future together and you might as well abandon this narrative
and go and play golf or croquet.) At about eight o’clock on a Saturday morning in March, Andrew, my husband, stood naked in
front of his open clothes closet, scratching the mole on his left buttock, frowning at the rack of his suits, at the polished
shoes placed beneath, at the neat piles of ironed shirts in the good hardwood shelves that had been custom built to receive
them, and debated aloud what he should put on.


If he was irritated because I did not respond, he would have realised at once that I was still heavily sleeping, the deep,
drowned sleep that comes on me just before dawn when I have had a bad night. Andrew knows about my bad nights and worries
about them more than I do.


Another assumption. But I have been married to Andrew for sixteen years now and am entitled to make it. He knows his own pain
and can bear it. He suffers more as an observer. I have seen the look on his face when one of his children is hurt or unhappy
and I know that my night fears trouble him in the depth of his soul even though (or perhaps because) he does not understand
them.


Andrew is the boy on the burning deck, the brave lad with his hand in the gap in the dyke, the soldier who holds the pass.
He wants to keep us all safe. That is quite a burden to carry.


When I wake at four in the morning, I am afraid the house will fall down. The bulge in the ceiling will swell like a boil
and burst open, showering down plaster; the staircase will come away from the wall. I worry about the cost of the repairs
and the difficulty of getting a builder we can rely on. I fear for Andrew and the children, for the au pair girl, for our
dog and two cats, crushed and broken, smothered with cement dust, poisoned with fumes from the boiler. I lie awake in the
dark and listen to creaks, small shifting and settling sounds, as our poor house struggles to keep us warm and dry under its
rooftop. It is, of course, always worse when there is a storm.


Once, in the middle of the night, in a storm, something did happen. I could hear the big trees round the house cracking and
groaning like sails. And then another sound; harder and drier. Explosive. Metallic. I got out of bed to look out of the window
and saw that a corrugated iron structure that had been erected over the roof of a house on the opposite side of the street
had come adrift in the gale. Huge sheets of corrugated iron were breaking loose from the scaffolding and being tossed in the
air like dead leaves, floating up and down the street as if they weighed nothing, crashing down on parked cars. They could
slice a man’s head off like a guillotine, those sharp sheets of iron, but while I watched I saw people, my neighbours, foolish
friends and acquaintances, running out of their houses in their night clothes to move their cars out of danger.


But that is something that happened quite recently, after the events about which I am writing and, curiously, while it was
happening, I was not particularly frightened. My house fears go much further back. Perhaps to the time I heard my father weeping
because my mother, while he was away at sea, had arranged to buy (at twenty-eight shillings a week) the house they were renting. This was in the thirties, in the Depression. I stood on the other side of a closed door and heard him say,
‘Suppose the roof leaks, or a chimney blows off, who will pay for it?’ Or the war. A London child, hearing the flying bombs
cut out over my head and counting the seconds before the explosion. More likely, since I am more affected by fiction than
I am by Bishop Berkeley’s ‘reality’, it was a film I remember, towards the end or just after the war (or maybe later than
that, an old black and white film on television) in which a staircase came away from the wall and the people who were standing
upon it (queuing outside a theatrical agent’s office, I think) fell to their deaths, screaming.


Or perhaps, as Andrew says, what I suffer from is a vague and indiscriminate dread (only he calls it anxiety) fastened on
something real, to make it more bearable.


Perhaps Andrew is right. But explaining things doesn’t cure them.

The house fear is not too bad, really. Or so I tell myself in the daylight. It is familiar now, and the familiar cannot be
frightening. Although the house that I inhabit at four in the morning is not like any house I have ever lived in, I know it
intimately, as if I had been born there. It has a large entrance hall with black and white tiles on the floor and a staircase
that is sometimes plain wood, sometimes carpeted, that rises to a broad upper landing where there is a round window. A door
on the left of the hall leads into a long room that is usually full of people sitting at a table and laughing and talking.
There is wine on the table, and food, and the walls are either lined with books or have dark, gold-framed pictures upon them.
That room is sound and all that is alarming about it is that I know (as the laughing people do not) that the rest of the house
is crumbling about it. In the attic, for example, the floor boards are rotten and the water tank has an evil smell because
a corpse, a bird with draggled feathers or a small animal, is floating on top of it. Sometimes – but not always – I can see
the sky through the rafters. Apart from the occupied room, the happy room, there is no furniture in the house, only a bath
tub, stained yellow and blue under a dripping tap, and an old, broken oven in the derelict kitchen. But the worst room of all is the room on the right of the hall that is always kept locked. Sometimes I have a key to the door,
sometimes not. Even when I do have a key, I don’t always use it – it seems I can choose, most of the time, whether I do so
or not. (Andrew would make something of this, I dare say, if I told him.) When I do use the key, unlock the door and look
in, this room is always the same. The ceiling is hanging down in one corner, the walls bulge and the boards squeak and splinter
under my feet. And where the ceiling is sagging, in the far corner, beyond the cracked, greasy window, a slow ooze of dark
slime creeps down as I watch.


It is usually worse when I have been drinking. That is, when I have had something to drink; sherry before dinner and a couple
of glasses of wine – half a bottle, perhaps – with the meal. I don’t drink all that much any longer.


And I know how to deal with it now. It is a matter of conscious effort. I will not be trapped; taken over and terrified! It would be easier if I could put the light on and read but when I wake to these horrors
I know that Andrew has probably only just gone to sleep and the light will disturb him. I welcome sleep, snuggling down with
anticipatory pleasure almost as soon as I get into bed, but he lies awake for hours, reading or listening to the radio. (Perhaps
the fact that our sleeping patterns do not fit has a psychological cause, perhaps not.) I try to tell myself that when I wake
in the night it can be a creative time. I can think of the day ahead, of the weeks; the meals we will eat, the parties we
will go to and give, the arrangements to be made for the children, the book I am working on. If none of these things divert
me from the rotting timbers of my nightmare house, I force myself to relax physically, to breathe deeply and slowly, at the
same pace as my sleeping husband beside me, and, in springtime and summer, wait for the first birds to start singing. Lately,
I have found that the persistent hum of the traffic on the new motorway at the foot of the hill, half a mile or so from our
house, is remarkably soothing. This long, straight, beautiful and friendly road, arched with slender and elegant bridges and
planted on its banks with poplars and birches, speeds between London and the south west of England, Land’s End. It comforts me to think of it as life rushing past, childhood at one end, old age at the other, and myself lying here
in the middle, looking forward and backward, seeing my end in my beginning, facing both ways. And sometimes, when I get to
this point, sleep will come; the sweet, safe, consoling sleep before dawn.


When I woke this particular morning, Andrew was standing in front of his open clothes closet, naked except for a pair of dark
purple socks. Seen from the back he is quite elegantly shaped; slender, tapered legs and a flat, neat bottom from which his
almost waistless torso rises to sloping, well-padded shoulders. He has a head of thick, dark, fine hair that grows in a Vee
down the back of his neck (he washes his hair every day and has it cut, at an expensive, Unisex hairdresser, every six weeks)
and a triangular wedge of dark hair between his shoulder blades. He was scratching the mole on his left buttock and whistling
under his breath very softly, not to wake me, perhaps, although it was time I woke up.


I looked at my watch and said, ‘Andy.’ He stopped whistling and looked over his shoulder.

‘Oh, you’ve decided to face the world at last, have you?’

‘It’s not too late, is it?’

‘No. Not really. You had a good sleep, though.’

This was said with lightly measured reproof. He was glad I had slept. On the other hand, he had been awake for hours. Honour satisfied, he padded to the bed, sat on the edge, jangling the springs (he has got thinner
recently but at that time, which is four years ago now, he weighed more than he should) and touched my cheek with his hand.
The tips of his fingers were cold. ‘Help me, Laura,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to wear.’


I could see by the sly glint in his eyes that he had worked on this line. A joke to ease us into a difficult day.

I yawned and stretched, bracing my feet against his firm thigh. ‘What’s it like out?’

‘Sunny and cold at the moment. Clouding up later and getting colder. That’s the forecast, though of course you can’t trust it. And it’s not the point, anyway. I mean – what suit? Shirt and tie? There won’t be any chance to change, will there?’


My husband worries about his appearance. Well, most people do, but some men affect not to care. I feel tender towards Andrew
because he admits it, though sometimes I am annoyed when he insists I choose his clothes for him, seeing it as laziness on
his part, an unimportant decision to be left to a wife. Now he smiled, looking anxious. ‘You must admit, it is a dilemma! How should one appear for all these different occasions? Sombre or sporty? Formal or casual? Not easy, is it?’


I said, dodging the issue, ‘I don’t know what to wear either.’

‘That shouldn’t be difficult. You can put a plain coat over a pretty dress. A scarf and some yellow beads in your handbag.
It’s easier for a woman than it is for a man.’ He picked up my hand and pretended to examine the lines on my palm. Then he
looked at me. His eyes shone as he went on with the little speech he had been rehearsing while I was sleeping. ‘I mean – honestly, Laura – what does a respectable Englishman wear to play in a tennis match, go to a Boat Race party, visit his son in prison
and his father-in-law on his death bed?’


‘We don’t know that he really is dying,’ I said, addressing myself to what seemed the easiest problem. ‘If he is, he won’t
care what we’re wearing. And what made you think of yellow beads? I haven’t got any.’


‘My mother had some yellow beads, I think. I don’t know …’ Andrew pulled down his upper lip and pressed it against his teeth
with his forefinger. A nervous habit. ‘I was only trying to make you laugh. An ordinary day in the life of an ordinary family.’
He smiled, and sighed. ‘Lord above, Laura! How did we get into this mess?’

‘By living,’ I said. ‘By not being born dead.’

I was pleased with this answer. It had a tough, gallant ring to it. A note of cheerful stoicism, which is what I aspire to.
The more honest reply to the question, that we are both obsessional about obligations, would have been in a lower and less
inspirational key.


I can always make myself brave with words, drawing them on like a comforting garment against the cold weather. I tell myself that this facility makes me tougher than Andrew, as my foolish
night fears (at least, they seem foolish in daylight) give me more strength for disaster. Since nothing could be so dreadful
as my imaginings, I am prepared for anything.


So I tell myself, knowing I lie. The truth is, life frightens me; I am always afraid. Perhaps everyone is afraid; the trick
is to learn how to deal with it. I write because I am afraid of life, I think sometimes.


But I am such a coward, really! Travelling to lecture or read from my novels as I am often invited to do (the appetite people have for sitting in cold halls
and listening to writers when they could be at home by the fire and reading in comfort is a constant amazement to me), I am
beset with neurotic terrors. When I was younger I used to be afraid of losing my way, being unable to speak the language,
having no money. Now it is the state of my bowels that worries me, and the crowns on my teeth. Humiliation of some kind, or
failure. Suppose I should lose my notes, or both pairs of reading glasses? I see myself standing helpless and silent in front
of all those expectant strangers. Desperately smiling. A rictus of fear.


I said, ‘You can take a change of clothes in the car. Not that clothes matter. Honestly, darling, we’ll get through somehow.
We don’t have to go to the party if you’re too tired after the match. Or if you don’t want to. There won’t be time to come
home before we go to the prison, but we could have lunch in a pub. Beer and sandwiches. Take it all calmly, that’s the main thing. It’s not such a mess, really.’


Lying again. Most of life is a mess and a muddle; all chance and luck. Perhaps you can look back years later and say, well,
this happened, or that, and then it will all fall into place, cause and effect, straightforward and logical. That is the business of fiction, to
put things in order.


Andrew said, ‘The party would cheer you up, wouldn’t it? That’s what I thought, anyway. A bit of a boost for you, after the
boredom of watching me play. I’m sorry about it, but as I told you, we’ve got this man from Boston, on a sort of state visit,
and the Chairman has been laying things on for him. He’s a keen young chap, so Old Pussy says, and he thought it would be a good thing if I could show him Hampton Court and give him
a game. I couldn’t really say no …’


‘Did you want to?’ I said.

The Game (called Real Tennis in England, Court Tennis in America, and Royal Tennis in Australia) is important to Andrew. The
competition, the intellectual excitement, and keeping fit. There are also (though this is not why Andrew is fond of it) professional
advantages for him. There are only about sixteen courts where you can play this unusual game in this country, three in Australia,
seven in America, and two in regular use in France. The fact that Andrew is able to offer this select form of entertainment
to visiting bankers is unlikely to secure him a partnership in the bank that he works for because it is a family business
and he is not one of the Family, but it has given him a marginal advantage over the other managing directors. It means that
his name will be favourably mentioned in the Partner’s Room at the monthly lunches of smoked salmon, steak and kidney pudding,
followed by Cabinet Pudding or Angels on Horseback. This menu never changes – certainly it has never changed in the twenty
years Andrew has been there and there is no reason, short of political or financial catastrophe, to suppose that it ever will.
It is said that a distant cousin, new to the bank, once suggested that soup should be served instead of smoked salmon at one
of these lunches. He was reprimanded, and a few weeks later (a civilised interval) asked to resign. This may be an apocryphal
story. Andrew is inclined to think it is true. When he first heard it, he laughed. He still laughs, though more cautiously,
and he does not like me to repeat it at parties. It is the way the game is played and business conducted and Andrew, growing
older, with a wife and children, a stepson in prison, does not wish, cannot afford now, to question it.


I am not mocking him. I understand the importance of games and the ritual that goes with them; it is just that the ones that
I know are so different. From the moment that Andrew was born he was destined (or to be more exact, forced by his terrible parents) to play the right games, the games that fitted the system. He went to his pre-preparatory school at four years old,
equipped with running shoes, rugger shorts, gymnastic gear, boxing gloves. From that moment the games that he played were
organised and competitive and applauded by adults.


The games that you play in the street are not like that. No adult is watching, and though there are rules, no one teaches
them to you except other children.


Where I lived, in the East End of London, I knew my street like I knew my own hand; the front doors, the door knockers, every
crack in the paving stones. There were ‘Safe Games’ like Hopscotch, and Touch, and Farmer, Farmer, May We Cross Your Golden
River, and ‘Almost Safe Games’ like Last Across (played on the busy main road) and What’s The Time, Mr Wolf? This was not
really a Danger Game, but when I was small, around eight, it was the game that frightened me most, following another child,
dancing behind, trembling with fear for the moment when a transformed and horrible face, slavering fangs and glittering eyes,
would turn on me and shout, ‘Dinner Time!’ My two youngest children, Henry and Isobel, were seven and five when I played this
game with them, twisting round with a savage growl halfway down our long garden and laughing as they ran screaming. Coming
home early one afternoon, and catching me at it, Andrew was shocked. It would give them bad dreams, he said.


Andrew has never played in the street. When we have children’s parties he organises races and team games and quizzes. Losers
and winners and prizes.


When I was thirteen, we played a War Game. This was in 1942. My school, evacuated from London in 1939, had returned now the
worst of the bombing seemed to be over, and the big bomb site, several streets away from my house, had become a good, secret
playground. A row of small houses had fallen; the mounds of tumbled brick and timber and broken baths and lavatory pans were
overgrown in the summer with willow herb and brambles. The site was boarded up but we found a way in and were private there,
playing Jews and Germans, or Nazis and Resistance Fighters, which were really elaborate Hide and Seek games, childish in origin but elevated in our eyes to an
adult seriousness by their topical nature. If we were Resistance or Jews and were caught, we were ‘tortured’, until we revealed
where our friends were hiding. The physical torture was ritual, self-inflicted, and fairly harmless. We burned our own finger
tips with matches while our captors counted the seconds, rubbed our legs and arms with stinging nettles or thistles for as
long as we could bear to, climbed as high as we dared in what was left of the shattered houses, creeping up broken stairways,
walking the fragile boards of such upper floors as remained. The rules were that while a hostage was occupied in this way,
burning or stinging himself, or climbing the ruins (once he stopped moving he was deemed to have ‘lost his nerve’ and ‘given
in’) the other Resistance Fighters or Jews were free to ‘escape’ to the one house at the end of the row that was still moderately
intact; home and safety.


After a while, how long I can’t now remember, we grew bored with these naive exploits and worked out a more ingenious method
of extracting ‘confessions’. The game began in the same way; the victims were-allowed five minutes to conceal themselves at
one end of the site before they started to make their dodging, crouching journey through the carefully deployed lines of the
enemy to the safe house at the other. The first to be intercepted was blindfolded and verbally threatened. Teeth were to be
pulled out with pincers, sharp sticks thrust up fingernails, ears twisted off, nettles pushed up our bottoms. (One rude boy
said ‘arse-holes’ but that was ruled out of order.) These trials were, for the timid and imaginative, harsh tests of courage,
and those who gave way the quickest were (for the same reason presumably) the most inventive tormentors. A Jewish girl, a
refugee whom my school had ‘sponsored’ when she left Germany in 1938, Hilde, my ‘best friend’, a black-eyed, sharp-featured
beauty, was the child I feared most – and could frighten most easily. I suppose this was why we chose to be o. . .