CONTENTS
About the Author
Beryl Bainbridge is the author of seventeen novels, two travel books and five plays for stage and television. The Dressmaker, The Bottle Factory Outing, An Awfully Big Adventure, Every Man for Himself and Master Georgie (which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize) were all shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Every Man for Himself was awarded the Whitbread Novel of the Year Prize. She won the Guardian Fiction Prize with The Dressmaker and the Whitbread Prize with Injury Time. The Bottle Factory Outing, Sweet William and The Dressmaker have been adapted for film, as was An Awfully Big Adventure, which starred Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. Beryl Bainbridge died in July 2010.
You find yourself holding your breath, racing over the words, physically gripping the book... She has never written better, with such passion, ease and skill, such control. When I had finished the book, I read it again immediately... The last few pages are beautiful, without a word too many or ill-chosen, and unbearably moving. Goodness, it is good!
Susan Hill, Literary Review
Bainbridge hits a tremendous pace as her story reaches its climax. In a remarkably concise book, shot through with laconic wit, she establishes complex characters who engage first the readers curiosity, then affection
New Statesman
Excellent... the prose is always clean and immaculate, but rises with great moving effect to an account of the sinking
Mail on Sunday
The outstanding novel of 1996, elegiac, sharp and exquisitely written
Elspeth Barker, Books of the Year, Independent on Sunday
Also by Beryl Bainbridge
Fiction
An Awfully Big Adventure
Another Part of the Wood
The Birthday Boys
The Bottle Factory Outing
Collected Stories
The Dressmaker
Filthy Lucre
Harriet Said
Injury Time
Mum and Mr Armitage
Northern Stories (ed., with David Pownall)
A Quiet Life
Sweet William
Watsons Apology
A Weekend with Claude
Winter Garden
Young Adolf
Non-fiction
English Journey, or, the road to Milton Keynes
Forever England; North and South
Something Happened Yesterday
EVERY MAN
FOR
HIMSELF
Beryl Bainbridge
Hachette Digital
www.hodder.co.uk
Published by Hachette Digital 2010
First published in Great Britain by
Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd 1996
Published by Abacus 1997
Copyright Beryl Bainbridge 1996
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
eBook ISBN 978 0 748 12521 0
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For August, Esme and Inigo
PROLOGUE
15th April 1912
He said, Save yourself if you can, and I said firmly enough, though I was trembling and clutching at straws, I intend to. Will you stand at my side? To which he replied, Remember, Morgan, not the height, only the drop, is terrible. Then he walked away, gait unsteady, the cord of his robe trailing the deck.
I saw him once more, in those seconds which dragged by between my leap for the roof of the officers house and the onrush of water that bore me aloft. He was standing against the rail, one arm hooked through to steady himself, and at first I didnt know him for he had taken off his spectacles; it was the velvet dressing gown I recognised.
He looked directly at me, all the time buffing his glasses on the hem of that plum-coloured robe, and I admit his occupation struck me as sensual. His hand, you see, was all but hidden beneath the material and I thought he was caressing himself. Death is such a lovers pinch that a man can be excused for prising himself free. Behind him on the horizon glimmered something I mistakenly took to be starlight.
I fancy he was smiling, but I cant be sure. Possibly I need to believe it ended that way, so that I can expel from my ears the ululation of grief which later pierced the glittering heavens.
The night was so still, the sea so calm, the moment so out of step with the catastrophe in progress that I made to join him, fluttered the fingers of my raised hand as though we were both guests at a social function and it was the most natural thing in the world to acknowledge the presence of a friend. My mouth even opened to shout some sort of greeting, though no words came.
I remember looking down at my right shoe, still inexplicably shiny with polish, as I prepared to take a stride towards that figure braced against the rail.
Then the water, first slithering, then tumbling, gushed us apart...
ONE
At half-past four on the afternoon of 8th April 1912 the weather was mild and hyacinths bloomed in window boxes a stranger chose to die in my arms.
He was hung upon the railings of one of those grand houses in Manchester Square, arms spread like a scarecrow, the cloth of his city coat taking the strain. With his very first words he made it plain he wasnt overwhelmed by circumstances. I know who I am, is what he clearly said. In the open window behind him a maid in a white cap stabbed flowers into a vase.
Its as well to know oneself, I replied, and walked on. I had reached the end of the street when I heard a shout; looking back I saw the unfortunate had shrugged himself out of his coat and was stumbling in my direction. His colourless face had eyebrows arched like a clown and lips that were turning blue.
Please, I said, as he pitched forward and clutched me round the waist. We both fell to our knees. Over the road a crocodile of Girl Guides sashayed sing-song through the ornamental gates of the public gardens.
I tried to free myself, but the man was drowning. His face was so close that his two eyes merged into one. I had thought he was drunk, yet his breath smelled sweet.
Lay me down, he whispered, and a tear rolled out of that one terrible eye and broke on the swell of his lip.
A nursemaid came down the sidewalk wheeling a perambulator. The infant was shrieking. I called out for assistance as the woman pushed past; there was a scrap of brown paper caught on the sole of her boot.
I laid him down as best I could, his head on the sidewalk. I would have taken off my jacket to serve as a cushion if he hadnt clung to my hands. His grip was fierce, as though someone unseen was dragging him in another direction. Then, arching a middle finger and foraging beneath the cuff of my shirt, he feather-dusted my beating pulse.
