He lay in an apathetic state and, sitting up to move his pillow, stared without recognition at the pink wall of the bedroom. Then he fell back, to sleep his troubles away. On waking up he ate voraciously the meals his mother set on the bed-side chair, becoming surly when she asked what was the matter and why he lay there for days on end like a dead dog.
‘I’m badly,’ he answered.
‘Well let me get you a doctor.’
‘I’m not that badly.’
He didn’t much care whether he lived or died. The wheels of change that were grinding their impressive tracks through his mind did not yet show themselves off in him to advantage. He stared at the pink-washed bedroom wall above the fireplace, plagued by crowding and inexpressible thought, thinking that he was going mad. He heard the rattle of plates and cups from downstairs, the dull thumping of factory turbines at the end of the terrace, people walking the street, children playing under lamp-posts, wireless sets piercing the air from neighbouring houses, an aeroplane flying low overhead like an asthmatic man playing a comb-and-paper — but they had no meaning and he only vaguely noticed the combined pandemonium rolling over the black cloud of his melancholy. He told himself that he would be able to go back to work soon, to the pub again in the evening, to the pictures; would be able to take a bus to town and walk around Woolworth’s to see what was on the counters for Christmas — but nothing could drag him out of the half-sleep in which he lay buried for three days.
They seemed like a hundred years, wheeling their brilliant Goose Fairs and Bonfire Nights and Christmases around him like branding irons in a torture chamber. When he stopped looking at the wall he lay back to sleep, and awoke after violent yet unrememberable dreams to see the grinning frantic face of the cheap mantelpiece clock telling him that only two minutes had gone by. He knew it was no use fighting against the cold weight of his nameless malady, or asking how it came about. He did not ask, believing it to be related to his defeat by the swaddies, a fact that did not call for much speculation. He did not ask whether he was in such a knocked-about state because he had lost the rights of love over two women, or because the two swaddies represented the raw edge of fang-and-claw on which all laws were based, law and order against which he had been fighting all his life in such a thoughtless and unorganized way that he could not but lose. Such questions came later. The plain fact was that the two swaddies had got him at last — as he had known they would and had bested him on the common battleground of the jungle.
He ate, but did not smoke, did not fight the tumultuous lake and whirlpool in his mind. He never thought to do so, but waited unknowingly for the full flood to diminish and cast him unharmed on to dry banks, cured of brain-colic and free to carry life on where he had left it. Every bone in his body seemed to have its separate and private pain, and he knew that his despair had acted as an anaesthetic when he came out of it and felt the actual sharp pains that forced him to stay in bed for another week.
On Saturday morning he had not replied to his father’s gruff call that he should get up for breakfast. He heard the voice each time, distinct and peremptory, rolling up the stairs and through the closed door, but he stared at the wall wondering how many times his father would call before giving him up as a bad job.
Fred came in later and asked if he was all right.
‘Why?’ Arthur demanded, as best he could.
‘I just wondered,’ Fred said. ‘I thought you might want a doctor if you’re feeling badly. You don’t look good.’
‘No,’ he said.
‘Did the swaddies get you?’
‘Yes. Leave me alone. I’m not getting up for wok on Monday. I’m all right. Shut the door when you go.’
‘Who was that girl as brought you ‘ome las’ night?’ his brother wanted to know.
‘What girl? Leave me be.’
‘Do you want a doctor?’
‘No. Bogger off.’
Fred left, and closed the door. Arthur fell back into a half-sleep. What girl? It must have been Doreen that gave me the brandy when I conked out in the White Hoss, and walked me back later, propping me up along Eddison Road, one step at a time. He remembered trying to talk to her, and wondered what he had told her when she asked him how he came to be looking so black-and-blue. He didn’t doubt it was something that sounded true, for even when you were dozy-daft it was easy to make up lies and excuses, he thought.
When he could think more clearly he asked himself a question and, because he couldn’t answer it, he was angered. It was this: How had the swaddies known he would be drinking at the White Horse that night? Neither of them had looked in at the door, and it was impossible to see through the windows because the curtains were well drawn. They had known he would be there and had waited outside, so who had told them? Had anybody told them? Perhaps not. Perhaps it was a coincidence that they had been standing outside when he turned the corner on to Eddison Road. But he didn’t think so. They had lounged around in the darkness, waiting for him to come out.
On the fourth day sun shone through the bedroom window and made a javelin-point of light across his rumpled bed. He sat up and read the Daily Mirror, and at eleven o’clock shouted for a cup of tea. His mother came up with a plate of cream biscuits and set them down on a chair. Watching him dip one in his tea, she said: ‘You’re in a fine mess, I must say. What did you do to get like that?’
His grey inflamed eyes looked at her. He spoke with swollen lips, with graze marks scarring the side of his face. ‘I fell down. You know how I am when I’m drunk. Do you want a biscuit?’
‘I’ve had some. Fell down! You don’t get all that wi’ fallin’ down.’
‘I fell off a gasometer for a bet,’ he said.
‘More likely some woman’s husband had it in for yer. If he did, let it be a lesson to yer. You can’t play wi’ fire wi’out gettin’ yer fingers burnt.’
He grimaced, and set his empty cup down. ‘I suppose Fred’s bin opening his big mouth. You can’t even trust yer own brother now.’
‘Nobody needs ter tell me owt about yer,’ she said, standing well away from his bed as if to see him clearer. ‘I can tell what’s wrong wi’ yer. Ye’r my own son, aren’t yer?’
He couldn’t deny it. ‘I’ll stay in bed for a day or two more. I don’t feel well. I’ve got a bad back again, and my guts are rotten.’
She folded her arms, pride and tenderness in her eyes. ‘Shall yer ‘ave another cup o’ tea?’
‘In fact I wain’t go back to wok till nex’ Monday,’ he decided.
She took his cup. ‘Don’t be mardy. You can go to wok tomorrow.’
All she wants is to get me back to wok, he thought. ‘I’m not mardy. I’ve got pains in my stomach.’
‘I’ll get you some Indian brandy, and some oil to rub your back. Shall you have some more biscuits? I got half a pound from the shop.’
So he changed his mind: it ain’t true that she’s pushin’ me back to wok, and he wanted to kiss her and put his arms around her. ‘Good owd mam,’ he said, doing so. ‘Yes, I’ll ‘ave some more biscuits.’ And she went downstairs to get them.
He lay back, pains burning his swollen eyes, his head aching as if his brain lay open to the sky. Thinking increased the pain, but he couldn’t stop thinking now. He sensed that though he had merely been beaten up by two swaddies — not a very terrible thing, and not the first time he had been in a losing fight — he felt like a ship that had never left its slipway suddenly floundering in mid-ocean. He did not move his arms to swim, but gave himself up to rolling buffeting waves and the stabbing sharp corners of jetsam that assailed him. The actual blows of the swaddies were not responsible for this, because by the fifth day their effect had gone.
He felt a lack of security. No place existed in all the world that could be called safe, and he knew for the first time in his life that there had never been any such thing as safety, and never would be, the difference being that now he knew it as a fact, whereas before it was a natural unconscious state. If you lived in a cave in the middle of a dark wood you weren’t safe, not by a long way, he thought, and you had to sleep always with one eye open and a pile of sharp stones by your side, within easy reach of your fist. Well, he realized, I’ve allus done that, so it wain’t bother me much. He had often dreamed of falling from the top of a cliff, but could never remember smashing himself as he landed. Life was like that, he thought, you floated down on a parachute, like the blokes in that Arnhem picture, pulling strings this way and that so that you could put out your hand to reach something you wanted, until one day you hit the bottom without knowing it, like a bubble bursting when it touches something solid, and you were dead, out like a light in a Derbyshire gale.
Well, that’s not for me. Me, I’ll have a good life: plenty of work and plenty of booze and a piece of skin every month till I’m ninety. Brenda and Winnie were out of his reach, penned in by Jack and Bill, but there was always more than one pebble on the beach, and more than one field in which clover grew. He went back to sleep, taking to it as though he hadn’t had any for years. And it was true now that he thought of it, that he had never in his life stayed in bed for more than three days, ever.
Margaret came on Friday night and ascended the narrow stairs with a child on each arm. William trailed behind, dressed in woollen leggings, and a cap that Arthur snatched from his head and held up for him to reach. But William was surprised and shocked at seeing Uncle Arthur in bed at such a strange time of the day, and did not leap up for it. Margaret sat down and told Arthur that she’d had a television set installed. ‘It’s marvellous, our Arthur. I never thought I’d be able to afford one, but Albert don’t drink so much any more, and he said he’d pay the thirty-bob a week. So whenever he gets on to me, I can just switch on the pictures and forget him.’ She even forgot to ask why Arthur was in bed.
Television, he thought scornfully when she’d gone, they’d go barmy if they had them taken away. I’d love it if big Black Marias came down all the streets and men got out with hatchets and go in every house and smash the tellies. Everybody’d go crackers. They wouldn’t know what to do. There’d be a revolution, I’m sure there would, they’d blow-up the Council House and set fire to the Castle. It wouldn’t bother me if there weren’t any television sets, though, not one bit.
‘Arthur,’ his mother shouted. ‘There’s a young lady to see you. Can she come up? she wants to know.’
He supposed it was Fred playing a joke on him. ‘Send her up,’ he called out with a laugh. ‘But tell her to watch out!’
He knew the particular tread of everybody’s feet in the family as they ascended the stairs, but the footsteps coming closer to his door were those of a stranger, the light hesitant footsteps of a woman. What sort of a joke was this? Were they passing one of his aunts off as a young woman? Or was it Winnie? Or Brenda? No, they wouldn’t have the cheek to come and see him. His heart stopped beating at the thought. He switched on the light as his visitor fumbled with the latch.
‘That’s it, duck, that room there,’ his mother called up from behind. He heard laughter downstairs, and silently swore at them.
The door opened, and it was Doreen.
‘I’ve come to see how you’re getting on,’ she said, apparently wondering whether she was doing the right thing.
He was shocked, not having thought about her for days, but lifted himself up on the pillows, saying: ‘Come in, duck, and sit down. I didn’t expect you to come and see me.’
‘I can see that,’ she remarked wryly. ‘You look as though a ghost just walked into your room.’
‘No, I’m sure I didn’t.’ He leaned back on his elbows and looked at her distrustfully.
‘I like your room,’ she said, her eyes on the open curtain of his wardrobe. ‘Are all them clo’es yourn?’
‘Just a few rags,’ he said.
She sat up straight, hands in her lap. ‘They look better than rags to me. They must have cost you a pretty penny.’ She wore lipstick, and some perfume whose pleasant smell gave more life to the room.
‘I get good wages,’ he said, looking at the coloured headscarf on her knees, ‘and spend ‘em on clo’es. It’s good to be well dressed.’ He felt uneasy, ashamed at having been caught in bed. Them bastards downstairs really played one on me this time. ‘Did you see a good picture this week?’ he asked, grudging even this small chip to the conversation. When wounded he liked to be alone in his lair, and he felt intimidated by her visit, as if he would have to pay for it with his life.
‘Oh yes,’ she said eagerly, pleased to see him less truculent. ‘It was ever so good. “Drums in the Jungle”. You should have been there, Arthur.’
‘I would have, only I couldn’t get out. My crutches were at the cobblers being soled and heeled. They promised ‘em for Monday morning so’s I could ‘obble to my lathe, but they worn’t ready.’
She laughed. ‘Perhaps you’ll be able to come next week,’ she said, too unsure of herself to make it a definite hint. He looked morosely towards the window. ‘It’s a cold night out,’ she ventured, little else to say.
‘Not in bed,’ he said. ‘It’s warm in here with all these blankets.’ Then with inspiration that he could not reject: ‘You should come in and try it.’
‘No fear,’ she smiled. ‘What do you take me for?’
‘I bet it wouldn’t be the first time,’ he said with a grin.
‘Don’t be cheeky.’ But he knew from the look on her face that it wouldn’t have been the first time. Other words came to her lips, less revealing of herself, but galling for him:
‘Tell me how you feel,’ she asked. ‘You really were in a state when I brought you home from the White Horse last Friday.’
‘I feel better,’ he said, non-committally.
‘You look better, I must say.’ The conversation lapsed for a few minutes, then: ‘What happened to you?’
‘I towd yer,’ he answered gruffly, having forgotten what he had told her. ‘I got run over by a horse and cart. I didn’t see it till it was almost on top of me. I thought I was a goner.’
‘You’re very secretive,’ she said, unsmiling. ‘You won’t tell anybody anything.’
‘Why should I? It pays to keep your trap shut.’
‘No, it don’t,’ she said. ‘You talk to me as if I was the dog’s dinner.’
‘I towd yer how it was,’ he said, resisting her wiles.
‘Ye’re fibbin’,’ she retorted. ‘You know you are.’
I am a bit of a bastard, he said to himself, after she’s been so nice to me. ‘You wain’t like it if I tell you,’ he said aloud.
She laid her hand on his wrist. ‘I won’t mind.’
It don’t much matter whether she minds or not, and he said: ‘I got beat-up wi’ two sowjers. I’d bin knocking-on with two married women for a long time. So they bested me. Two on to one. I’d have flattened them if they’d been one at a time.’
She took her hand from his wrist. ‘Were you going with these women while you were taking me out?’
‘Sure,’ he said, glad to hurt her for asking this. Can’t she put two and two together? he thought.
She turned her betrayed expression away from him. ‘I think you might have said something sooner.’
He hated her for this, and hated himself more for having told her. It might not have been a very nice trick he had played, but there were no promises between them, he told himself. ‘Never mind,’ he said soothingly, ‘it’s all over now.’
‘Maybe,’ she said, turning to him, wanting him to say something else, to say he was sorry. But he thought he had said enough already, too much. Though perhaps it’s better to have it out now, and be done with it.
‘That’s how it was,’ he said. ‘But I wain’t see either of the women again. It ain’t much of a paying game.’ He lifted a hand to one of his bruises.
‘So them two women on Goose Fair with you weren’t your cousins?’
‘Yes,’ he said roughly, ‘they were my cousins. I’m not that much of a liar.’ He had given her an inch and she wanted a yard.
‘They weren’t,’ she said, ‘but you don’t need to tell me. It upsets me when you tell such big lies.’
He was angry. ‘Well, I’ve been through the mill as well. And we worn’t engaged or owt like that, don’t forget.’
She saw the wicked logic of his remark. ‘Even so,’ she began.
‘But I’m glad you came to see me,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I think I’d ‘ave stayed down in the dumps for good if you hadn’t.’
‘I wondered how you were getting on. You were half dead last week.’
He came closer to her, so that he was lying near the edge of the bed. Her coat was open, showing a green blouse, and he put his hand inside, but she drew back. ‘It’d tek more than two swaddies to kill me,’ he said with bravado.
‘I suppose so,’ she went on, evading his ubiquitous hand again, ‘but I wanted to see what was happening to you because I was worried. I like you Arthur and I kept on hoping you were all right and that you weren’t dead or something. When I brought you home last week your mother looked at me gone-out, as if I’d made you like that. She was so sharp I felt I was in the way, so I left straight away. This week though, she was nice.’
He held her wrist, and they talked for another hour.
‘We’ll go to the pictures on Monday,’ he said, as she buttoned her coat to leave. ‘I’ll meet you at seven, earlier if you like.’
‘No, at seven, because I want to get my tea. I’m allus hungry when I’ve finished work.’ She bent down to kiss him, and he held her firmly around the neck and waist, both hands out of bed.
‘Come in, duck,’ he whispered, feeling the passion she put into the kiss.
‘Later, Arthur, later.’
Monday was not far off, and perhaps time would pass quickly.
His finger jumped back from the drill and a mound of blood grew from his sud-white crinkled skin, broke, and ran down his hand. He wiped it away with a bundle of cotton-waste: a small cut, but the blood poured out, over his palm and down to his wrist. He drew a dry finger across and diverted it to the floor, away from his bare sinewy forearm. He cursed the lost time, and set out for the first-aid department, to have his finger hockled and bandaged. It meant going from one end of the factory to the other, so he walked quickly across the main lane-way, his finger held down, blood dripping freely on to the grease-soaked floor of the corridor. At the turning of a corner, he met Jack.
Arthur stopped, and watched him lighting a cigarette. He struck the match slowly, and lit-up with care, so that the cigarette, now that Jack had set his mind to lighting it, didn’t stand a chance. It was a slow and efficient operation, like all his other jobs. He threw the match down and looked up before continuing his journey, then saw Arthur standing before him. For some reason he was shocked and turned pale.
Without knowing why it was, Arthur did not feel friendly towards him. He didn’t greet him, but only said: ‘What’s up wi’ yo’?’ when he noticed the heightened pallor of his face. ‘Do yer want some smellin’ salts?’ In the split second before the reason for it fully came to him, he had made the first words of a sarcastic demand: ‘Or did you think they’d killed me?’
Jack could not speak, looking as if a rope were about to be fixed around his neck. Who else but Jack could have told the two swaddies where he would be at a certain time on a Friday night two weeks ago?
‘Killed you?’ Jack said. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I didn’t think you would,’ Arthur said. ‘That’s the sort of bloke you are. Until you get bashed in the face, then you’d squeal like a stuck pig.’ The corridor was empty, and both realized it at the same time. Arthur clenched his hand, now covered in blood from the cut. He didn’t think it was worth it: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but he had had more than his fair share of both. He said; ‘Why don’t you have the guts to admit it, you sly spineless bastard?’
Jack drew back at the outright statement and mumbled some answer that Arthur didn’t bother to understand. They stood against the wall to let a trolley-load of chromed handlebars go by. They looked at each other in silence, Jack unable to unclamp his eyes from Arthur’s finger, at the jewels and diamonds of blood dripping copiously on to the floor, his eyes blinking as each drop fell.
‘Well, what if I did tell them where you were?’ Jack said at last, with some show of truculence. ‘You shouldn’t have gone out with Brenda like that. It worn’t right.’
Arthur had an impulse to hit him, to smash him again and again, from one end of the factory to the other. Jack felt this, and looked away, at the back-end of the trolley now rounding a corner. Not here, Arthur thought. I can get him the same way as the swaddies got me, in a dark street at night. ‘You don’t need to tell me what’s right and what ain’t right. Whatever I do is right, and what people do to me is right. And what I do to you is right, as well. Get that into your big ‘ead.’
Jack had let his cigarette fall, and now lit another, his eyes turned from Arthur’s close, granite-set face. ‘I might as well tell you,’ he said, ‘that Winnie’s husband is still after you. He’s on leave over Christmas, so watch your step.’
Arthur fumbled with one hand for a cigarette, but could not reach the packet. ‘Thanks for telling me. But if he’s on his own, he’ll regret it. I’m warnin’ ‘im now: if I get him, I’ll break him, so don’t forget. And I mean it.’
Jack saw that he did. ‘You’re too much of a trouble-maker,Arthur,’ he said mildly. ‘You’re too violent. One day you’ll really cop it. And you’ll ask for it as well.’
‘And you’re too narrow-gutted ever to get into trouble,’ Arthur responded, feeling no kind words for him.
‘That’s as it may be,’ Jack said. Seeing Arthur struggle with his one hand: ‘Have one of my fags,’ and he thrust the packet forward.
Arthur reached his own at that moment. ‘Don’t bother,’ he said, covering the match-box with blood before getting a light.
Jack wanted to go on his way, but for some reason, he couldn’t. ‘Are you still working in the turnery?’ he asked, unable to stand the silence between them.
‘Where do you think I got this cut? I’ll be in it till Doomsday. Unless I go barmy first.’
‘No fear of that,’ Jack said. ‘You’ll get a big bonus this Christmas from the firm. How many years have you been working here now?’
‘Eight. It’s a life sentence. If they make it twenty-one I could have done a murder.’
Jack laughed hollowly. ‘That’s right.’
‘Not that there’s anybody I’d like to murder. I don’t think anybody in the world’s worth murdering, unless it’s for fun. Not yet, anyway.’
‘Don’t think like that,’ Jack said in a friendly forbearing voice, giving him an intimate piece of advice. ‘You won’t knuckle under, Arthur. If you would, you’d enjoy life.’
‘I do enjoy it, mate,’ he said loudly. ‘Just because I’m not like you, don’t think I don’t. Yo’ve got your life an’ I’ve got mine. Yo’ stick ter your managin’ and the races, an’ I’ll stick to the White Hoss, fishin’ an’ screwin’.’
‘I’ve got my way, and you’ve got yourn,’ Jack acknowledged.
‘That’s right. And they’re different.’
Jack stood in silence.
Arthur said: ‘I’ll get crackin’ to’t first-aid before I bleed to death.’
‘And I’ve got to go to the stores for some spares,’ Jack said with relief. ‘I’ll see you again sometime.’
‘Maybe,’ Arthur said, walking away.
On Friday night he went home with thirty pound notes in his pocket: bonus and wages. On Saturday he bought toys for Margaret’s children, and presents for the rest of the family, returning from downtown with full arms and a cigar between his teeth. A bet on Fairy Glory in the two-thirty won him twelve pounds. He hid twenty in his room and stuffed his wallet with what was left to see him through Christmas.
As he walked across the market square on his way to Aunt Ada’s a blanket of dark cloud lay low over the city as if, were God to pull a lever, it would release a six-foot blanket of snow.
He pushed his way in through the defective back door and Aunt Ada launched into him because he had missed the midday meal, saying that now it was stone-cold in the scullery and fit only for the cats to eat. Arthur dipped his hand into his overcoat pocket and threw sixpenny bits to the children and gave cigars to Bert, Dave, and Ralph, so that the four of them filled the already warm room with clouds of smoke. All that day, Ada told Arthur, they had been expecting a coloured soldier from the Gold Coast. Sam was his name, a friend of Johnny’s who was with the REs in West Africa. Johnny had told Sam to visit them while on his mechanics course in England. A telegram came the day before saying: ‘Arrive twenty-fourth Sam’ — and Ada pictured him wandering about the cold city like a lost soul, unable to find his way to the house.
‘He thinks all telegrams are sent by tom-tom,’ Bert said, his face bursting into a laugh at his own joke. ‘You wain’t be able to miss him though. All you have to do is look for a black head wrapped up in a khaki coat.’
Arthur went with him to search the railway and bus stations, and an hour later they stood at a tea-stall near the market without having seen him. It was late, and cold, and they wanted to hear the football results at home on a full belly and a fag by the roaring fire. ‘It’s gone five,’ Arthur said, pushing his cup aside. ‘If he gets lost it’s too bad. I’m not going to freeze to death running around after a Zulu.’
They went back to the house. Sam was already there, a stocky negro with a calm intelligent face, who explained that he had come in on a morning train and spent the day exploring the city. Dressed in well-pressed khaki, with three large stripes prominent on his battledress arm, he sat stiffly in a cane-bottomed chair by the fire looking as if about to stifle in the hot crowded kitchen. His blancoed webbing belt, neatly folded, rested on the sofa beneath the window. He was the centre of attention, and stood up to shake hands with Bert and Arthur when they came in, Arthur noticing the tight warm grip of his black hand as he said: ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’ Two ginger-haired daughters were trying not to laugh at the ordeal of numberless introductions that Sam was undergoing, for Dave came in five minutes later from the football match and pretended to jump with surprise on seeing for the first time in his life a Negro sitting in the living-room. The two girls shouted that the second battalion would be in any minute now, and Ada threatened them and told them to be quiet. Ralph, hudged-up by the fire, ignoring the noise, locked in his own warm world, turned only to ask Dave what team had won.
‘County lost four none,’ Dave said. ‘Everybody’s talking about it. They’ve never had such a run of rotten luck.’ He threw his cap at the girls who were now laughing at him, then lifted a neatly folded football Mirror from his pocket and tossed it across to Ralph, saying: ‘You’ll get the half-time results from there.’ The paper unfolded in mid-flight and Ralph caught it near the range as it was about to land in the fire.
Arthur sat at the table with a cup of tea, enjoying the banter, and the questions showered on simple and unselfconscious Sam. Could he read and write? Who taught him, then? Did he believe in God? How was Johnny going on in Africa? Did Johnny look well in such a hot place? Was he enjoying himself? Did Sam miss West Africa? (Of course, Bert said in a loud whisper, he misses the tom-toms. Ada gave him a stern look.) How long had Sam been in the army? Seven years! Did it seem a lifetime? And wasn’t he glad he had only another three to do? How old are you, Sam? Only thirty-two! And do you like England? Well, I expect you’ll get used to it soon. And do you have a girl-friend on the Gold Coast? Is she nice? (Is she as black as the ace of spades, Bert whispered in Arthur’s ear.) Will you get married at church? Arthur dug his fork into a piece of meat-pie, glad to be in Ada’s house for Christmas and showered under by jokes that fell like sparks on the relaxed powder-barrel of each brain. He went with Dave and Bert to lounge in armchairs by the parlour fire, smoking, listening to people walking by outside whose feet punctuated the empty weekend hours between football matches and opening time. The door-knob rattled, and Jane came in, a thin-faced ginger-haired woman of thirty who balanced herself on the arm of Dave’s chair. ‘I want half a crown from everybody towards a crate of ale, for when we come back from the pub tonight.’
Uncomplaining, they dug their hands into their pockets. ‘What about Sam?’ Dave asked.
‘He ain’t giving owt,’ she said. ‘He’s a guest.’
‘It’s just as well,’ Bert remarked. ‘He’d on’y pay in beads.’
She turned on him fiercely. ‘You shut up. He’s going out wi’ yo’ lot ternight, and you’d better be nice to ‘im, or Johnny’ll gi’ yer a good thump when ‘e comes ‘ome from Africa.’
Later the house functioned like the neck of an egg-timer: visitors came in through the back yard, and were disgorged with gangs of the family by the front door. Ada, Ralph, Jim and Jane went out with the first batch. The under-sixteens were despatched to the last house at the pictures.
Arthur left with Bert, Dave, Colin, and Sam. All wore overcoats, though Sam shivered. They walked up the bridgeslope in twos and a boy coming in the opposite direction carrying a parcel of fish and chips was swept off the pavement. The marshalling yards below were covered in mist; ascending sounds of jangling trucks were enveloped and dulled by its dampness before floating up to the lighted road. Over the opposite parapet orange lights glowed around the great station clock, and black outlines of grain warehouses stood up around it.
The Lambley Green was almost empty. Dave ordered pints and they played darts, Arthur siding with Sam against Colin and Bert, Dave keeping scores. Sam possessed an uncanny eye and hit whatever he aimed at — Bert accounting for this as a legacy left over from throwing assegais. In the next pub, more crowded because it was nearer the town centre, Sam offered to buy a round of drinks but was shouted down. Arthur caught hold of the brass rails and called for five pints. While passing them back one by one over his shoulder some beer trickled on to a woman’s coat, and she turned on him menacingly: ‘Can’t yer look what ye’r doin’?’
‘Sorry, missis,’ he said gaily.
Her husband stood nearby, a tall man with thick lips, black moustache, and hair swept back from a low forehead until it touched the white scarf tucked into his black overcoat collar. ‘Butterfingers,’ he exclaimed. Arthur ignored him and continued passing the beer. ‘Are yer deaf?’ the man demanded. Arthur clenched his fists, ready to smash him.
‘He must be,’ the woman put in, showing bitter lips and haggard vindictive eyes. Arthur said nothing. Dave pushed his way to the man’s side: ‘Looking for trouble, mate?’ Sam and Colin looked on from the wall. ‘Drop him one, Arthur,’ Ben called out.
‘I’m not looking for trouble,’ the man said, turning away from Arthur’s cold stare, backing out with maximum belligerence. ‘He just wants to look what he’s doing, that’s all.’
‘It was an accident, worn’t it?’ Dave said loudly, standing over him, his face red and tight with anger.
‘Bash ‘im, Jack. Why don’t yer bash ‘im?’ the woman said, sipping her port.
‘It’s yo’ as wants bashin’, missis,’ Dave said. ‘It’s your sort as causes all the trouble.’ The publican moved up from the other end of the bar. ‘Now then, I don’t want any fights in here.’
‘What’s the matter?’ Sam asked Arthur.
‘I don’t like people spilling ale all over my wife’s coat,’ the man said truculently.
Arthur relaxed his fists.
‘If it’d a bin whisky she’d a lapped it up,’ Bert said. ‘This place’s like a graveyard. It’s full o’ dead-pans.’
They crossed Slab Square and, fresh from a pint in the Plumtree rolled to the Red Dragon and from there pushed into the Skittling Alley and the Coach Tavern and finally elbowed through the squash of people packing the Trip to Jerusalem, a limpet of lights and noise fastened on to the carcass of the Castle Rock.
Sam tried to count those jammed into the parlour, but gave up at twenty, when he thought he was counting people already counted. Jane poured beer into cups and glasses. ‘Come on, Arthur, grab hold of this. Having a good time, Sam?’ — she swung around as he came into the room. ‘This is good beer, Sam,’ she told him in her bright intoxicated voice. ‘Jim and me got it from the pub next door. A couple of years ago,’ she told Sam, ‘Bert and Dave went down into our cellar with a hammer and chisel and knocked a few bricks out of the wall and got two crates of beer out of the pub cellar next door. Then they cemented it up again so that nobody found out. We had a good booze-up from that.’
Arthur’s great laugh ran out with the others at the memory of this because he had been in on it, remembering the bricks that he had numbered with a piece of chalk as they were passed to him.
Ada came in with a large white meat dish heaped over with leg-of-mutton sandwiches. ‘Come on, Tribe, get summat to eat. We want you to ‘ave a good time, Sam,’ she said to him. She turned abruptly to Colin: ‘Where’s Beatty? I thought she’d be up tonight, being as it’s Christmas Eve.’
‘You shouldn’t fill her up so often, Colin,’ Dave said to him.
‘You’ve only got to look at Beatty and she drops a kid,’ Bert said, filling his glass and helping himself to a sandwich. Ada wore a gaily coloured dress. ‘How do you like my parlour, Sam?’ He looked around at the walls and up at the ceiling, at the Christmas cards on the marble mantleshelf that hid the clock but for a walnut dome. ‘Arthur and Bert papered it for me a couple of years ago. It’d ‘ave cost me five quid with a decorator, and they did it just as good.’
‘Except for them big creases,’ Arthur said, coming out of a long mistletoe kiss with one of his ginger-haired cousins. Ralph, wearing a coloured paper hat, and Jim in his pilot-officer’s uniform also wearing a paper hat, did a song-and-dance movement into the room, with the second ginger-haired cousin behind flaunting her brother-in-law’s airforce cap. ‘Don’t be leary,’ Ada said to her.
‘I want some ale,’ she cried.
Ada said she would bat her tab if she touched a drop. Sam sat on the settee and someone pulled a pink paper hat down over his black grizzled hair. Tubercular Eunice came in with Harry, her young man with a broad sallow face and brown curly hair combed back flat over his head, who worked as a welder in one of the Meadows factories. Eunice wore a maroon coat padded at the shoulders to hide her thin body, betrayed though by hollow cheeks and stick-like wrists. Mutton sandwiches and drinks were thrust into their hands, and Arthur, by now well-soaked, started the whole room singing, while Bert, Colin, and Dave played desultory rounds of Solo at the table. Ada told Sam to sing louder, but he said he didn’t know these songs. ‘Do you know “Everybody Likes Saturday Night” Sam?’ Bert shouted from the table, and Sam beamed with happiness at the universal sympathy around him. One by one they went into the kitchen, until Harry and Eunice were left alone. They switched off the light and sat in the bay of the window watching traffic pass along the road.
When the fire died out in the kitchen everyone went to bed, and doors could be heard slamming all over the house. Arthur, feeling his way up the unlit stairs behind Sam, was to sleep in the big bed with his two cousins, while a special camp bed had been made-up for Sam by the window. The others went immediately to sleep, but Arthur was kept awake by noises in the house. He heard a door bang, the laugh of a female voice, an animal cry of protest, the snore of his cousins. A dull heavy jangle of trucks, like the manacled advance of some giant Marley over Trent valley, came from the nearby railway line. Window-panes rattled as a car went by. A man’s footsteps passed the door, and from the city centre a few melancholy clocks struck the half-hour.
Sam was awakened by curses from Bert and Dave as they fought to pull the bed clothes from each other. Children were running barefoot about the corridors, and sun shone through the windows. Sam was left to dress in privacy, and the smell of fried bacon became stronger as Arthur, Bert, and Dave descended to the kitchen. Jane and Jim were talking in their bedroom, and Ralph turned over with a snore behind his closed door. They washed one by one at the scullery sink. Sitting down to breakfast Bert joked about Sam: ‘Hey, mam, there’s a Zulu in my room.’ Ada told him not to be daft and to leave Sam in peace. When Sam came down he was served with three eggs, and the girls grumbled and said this wasn’t fair. But Ada showed them her fist and told them to shut-up. They sat in the parlour after breakfast, roasting themselves before the fire. A wire from the kitchen wireless was run through to a speaker, and the whole house was shaken by the chosen blasts of Family Favourites, part of a Bach concerto roaring like the tumult of a sea into every room.
They walked into town. A bitterly cold wind came from the east, and Dave prophesied snow, teasing Sam who had seen it on postcards but never in the streets. The pub noises were subdued and reflective, as if people were spending two hours of silence in memory of the previous night. One moment the sun was in their eyes, the next they were almost blown over by the wind. They had a pint in the Horse and Groom, and Arthur took five minutes explaining to Sam what an ‘awker was: ‘A man who sells fruit from a barrer on the street.’ Back at the house a special table was set in the parlour, and the fire had been kept blazing for them. They were served by the girls with baked potatoes, roast pork, and cauliflower, and no one spoke during the eating of it. Plates of Christmas pudding followed, rivers of custard flowing down the escarpments of each dark wedge. A noise like a dark seatide came from the kitchen, where the family was feeding under the stern dictatorship of Ada. Everyone gathered in the parlour to play Ha’penny Newmarket, the kitty of a glass fruit-dish set in the middle of the table, soon filled with money as the games went on. A dozen played, including Sam and Ada whose big arms rested on the table. Orders were snapped out when cards didn’t fall fast enough, coins slid across the polished table-top to start a new round, and some gleeful hand scraped the kitty-dish clean when the round was over. A ten-year-old girl scooped up the three-and-nine-pence. ‘Dirty little twister,’ ‘Rogue,’ ‘Dead lucky.’ She refused to chance the money back into play, said she was going to see a pal now, and the air was filled with threats. ‘I don’t have to play if I don’t want to,’ she shouted. And the door slammed. Ada turned to one of Beatty’s children and asked when her mother would come. Dave fanned out his cards and threw down a two of hearts: ‘She’s got too many kids to look after,’ he said sympathetically. ‘It’s impossible to feed ‘em all at one time. I don’t know where they all sleep in that house. Colin must ‘ave rigged bunks up in the cellar.’ ‘I’ve never seen such a tribe,’ Bert chipped in. ‘Whenever you go in by the back door you squash a couple of kids against the wall.’ Sam was puzzled at their private jokes, though laughed with them. Tea was served in three relays, with Ada the dominant organizer, lording it over her two unmarried sisters. Annie was small and pinched after too many years in a lace factory, a woman of forty with fading and braided hair, wearing a dusk-green frock and a coal-black cardigan. Bertha was taller and older, with a full bosom, a booming voice, and more becoming clothes. Ada came in from the scullery with a dish of salad followed by Bertha with a bowl of trifle and Annie with a Christmas cake whose pink band made a crown for Ada. Bert reached out for a slice of bread and butter, shouting to Annie for the ham. ‘Tek yer sweat, our Bert. You can see I’m busy mashing the tea.’ Arthur heaped salad on to a plate, balancing slices of tomato on his fork across the white cloth. Bertha was stationed at the table-end with teapot poised, ready to bear down on anyone whose cup was empty. Her eyes rested on Sam: ‘Sam knows how to eat. He’s filling his belly all right.’ Sam looked up and smiled. ‘Do you get snap like this in the army?’ Bert asked. ‘I’m sure he don’t,’ Ada said before he could answer. ‘Do you Sam?’ ‘No, but sometimes the food is good in the army,’ he replied with an instinctive sense of diplomacy.
‘When I was wi’ the army, in Belgium and Germany,’ Bert called out, reaching for the mince-pie plate that Annie laid down, ‘we ate pig-swill.’ Dave laughed: ‘When I was in the army I got bread and water, when I was lucky.’ ‘Do you know what regiment he was in?’ Bert said to Sam, who answered: ‘No.’ ‘He was in the RCDs,’ Bert went on. ‘Do you know what the RCDs are, Sam?’ Sam asked what regiment the RCDs were. The Royal Corps of Deserters,’ Bert boomed across the table. ‘We’re all going back into that regiment as soon as a war starts, ain’t we, Arthur?’ Dave called out for another cup of tea, and Ada shouted that they should make haste because another two sittings were still to come. So they filed back to the parlour, and while Sam went across to the lavatory, Jane entered and held out her hand for more half-crowns. ‘It’s for beer,’ she said. When they paid she demanded: ‘Where’s Sam?’ Arthur told her, and Bert added: ‘Wi’ a blanket round ‘im.’ ‘He’s got to give half a crown as well.’ ‘I thought he was a guest?’ Dave said, throwing two lumps of coal on the fire. ‘Well, he’s got to pay up, just the same,’ she said indignantly. ‘He’s got enough money.’ ‘What about Annie and Bertha then?’ Dave said. ‘Have them two spongers paid?’ ‘Yes,’ Bert cried, ‘what about them Bible-backs? They’re allus there wi’ their ha’penny. They put enough money in the church kitty every Sunday.’ ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘they’ll pay.’ She waylaid Sam in the corridor and collected half a crown.
After a round of pubs in the evening they ended at the Railway Club drinking with Ada and Ralph. It was a long low hall with rows of tables like a soldiers’ mess, with a bar and stage at one end. Housey-housey was in progress. Arthur, Sam, Bert, and Dave bought cards and watched their counters. Near the climax of the game a man wearing a cap suddenly jumped up and screamed with all his might as if he had been stabbed: ‘HOUSEY!’ Sam shuddered with fright; the others groaned at their bad luck. ‘Christ!’ Ada exclaimed, ‘I only wanted two to win.’ ‘I only wanted one,’ Arthur said. ‘What a shame,’ she said. ‘You’d ‘ave won a bottle of whisky.’ At ten-thirty the Tribe streamed out, over the railway bridge, and home. Overcoats were piled in heaps on the kitchen table, and the hall racks were so overloaded that they collapsed. Beer for grown-ups, orangeade for children, with sixteen the dividing age, and Jane discriminating at the parlour bar. Beatty, tall and noisy, sat with Colin on the settee; Eileen, Frances, June, and Alma took chairs by the window and were trying to start an opposition song to annoy the others; Arthur, Sam, Bert, and Dave dominated the space around the fire; Ralph, Jim, and Ada stood by the door; Annie and Bertha were giving out meat sandwiches; Frank, Beatty’s twenty-two-year-old son by her first husband, was persuading his fiancee to be sick outside and get it over with; Harry and Eunice, and a girl in khaki, occupied the settee; and various children were hanging on to table-legs for safety. Alma, a girl of fifteen with chestnut hair, wearing a low-necked cotton dress that showed the white skin of plump round breasts, was fair game for Bert who forced her into a kiss beneath the mistletoe. She ran out of the house when he tried to make her kiss Sam. Balloons exploded; coloured streamers floated from the ceiling, Bert pushing his way around the room with an uplifted cigarette. Above the uproar Jane’s voice was heard saying to Jim: ‘I don’t believe it. It ain’t true. You want to mind what you’re saying you dirty bleeder’ — in a voice of hard belligerence. Bert succeeded in getting Annie and Bertha kissed by Sam under the mistletoe, and Bertha asked Sam afterwards if he would write to her from Africa. ‘And give my love to your girl, won’t you?’ she said, the slight cast in her left eye glazed by too much drink. ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘I will.’ Ada asked if he had enjoyed his Christmas. ‘Very much,’ he answered solemnly. ‘And will you tell Johnny all about us when you get back?’ she wanted to know. Sam said he would. ‘I wish Johnny was here. He’s a good lad to me,’ Ada said. ‘I’ve never known him to say a bad word to me. I remember one day a man in Waterway Street said sommat to me that worn’t nice and Johnny chased him all the way down the street. The man ran into his house and locked it but that didn’t stop our Johnny. He ran agen it wi’ his shoulder until the man had to open it for fear it’d be broke down, and then Johnny chased him round and round the table till he caught him and thumped him against the wall. The man was allus as nice as pie to me after that.’ She passed Sam a glass of beer, and kissed him beneath the mistletoe, so that Beatty cried out: ‘Well, that’s not the first time she’s bin kissed by a black man, I’ll bet.’ Someone suggested that Ralph would be jealous. ‘Jealous be boggered,’ she said. ‘Sam’s like my own son.’ The girls squealed when more balloons exploded. ‘Do you like England then?’ Jane asked Sam. She had been out of the room for a few minutes. ‘I like it very much,’ Sam stammered. She threw her arms around him and kissed him, turning her back on the rabid face of her husband near the door. Two girls went home, several children were taken to bed by Frances and Eileen. Frank at last took his fiancee out to be sick. Eunice left with Harry. Annie and Bertha put on their coats and went home. Jane and Jim sat on the sofa with empty glasses, Jane sullen, Jim subdued. Sam announced that he would go to bed. ‘Because I want to be up early in the morning to catch my train.’ He stood up and took his webbing belt from the chair. The room went suddenly quiet. Jane was standing up, staring at Jim with tight, angry lips. ‘You aren’t going to say that about me,’ she cried loudly. Arthur saw a beer-glass in her hand. ‘What did he say, then?’ Ada asked of everybody. Jane did not reply, but struck her husband on his forehead with the glass, leaving a deep half-inch split in his skin. Blood oozed and fell down his face, gathering speed until it dropped on to the rug. He stood like a statue and made no sound. The glass fell from her hand. ‘You aren’t going to accuse me of that,’ she said again, her lips trembling. ‘Why did you hit me?’ Jim asked at last, with a dazed cry of shock and regret in his voice. ‘Because you want to be careful what you say,’ she cried, drawing back at the sight of so much blood. ‘What did I say?’ he pleaded. ‘Tell me, somebody, what did I say?’ ‘It serves you right,’ she said. Dave led him to a chair. Arthur went into the scullery and held a clean handkerchief under the running tap. Sam still stood, but seemed about to faint. The cold water ran over Arthur’s hand and woke him up. He pressed the cold wet handkerchief to Jim’s head, feeling strangely and joyfully alive, as if he had been living in a soulless vacuum since his fight with the swaddies. He told himself that he had been without life since then, that now he was awake once more, ready to tackle all obstacles, to break any man, or woman, that came for him, to turn on the whole world if it bothered him too much, and blow it to pieces. The crack of the glass on Jim’s forehead echoed and re-echoed through his mind.
Once a rebel, always a rebel. You can’t help being one. You can’t deny that. And it’s best to be a rebel so as to show ‘em it don’t pay to try to do you down. Factories and labour exchanges and insurance offices keep us alive and kicking — so they say — but they’re booby-traps and will suck you under like sinking-sands if you aren’t careful. Factories sweat you to death, labour exchanges talk you to death, insurance and income tax offices milk money from your wage packets and rob you to death. And if you’re still left with a tiny bit of life in your guts after all this boggering about, the army calls you up and you get shot to death. And if you’re clever enough to stay out of the army you get bombed to death. Ay, by God, it’s a hard life if you don’t weaken, if you don’t stop that bastard government from grinding your face in the muck, though there ain’t much you can do about it unless you start making dynamite to blow their four-eyed clocks to bits.
They shout at you from soapboxes: ‘Vote for me, and this and that,’ but it amounts to the same in the end whatever you vote for because it means a government that puts stamps all over your phizzog until you can’t see a hand before you, and what’s more makes you buy ‘em so’s they can keep on doing it. They’ve got you by the guts, by backbone and skull, until they think you’ll come whenever they whistle.
But listen, this lathe is my everlasting pal because it gets me thinking, and that’s their big mistake because I know I’m not the only one. One day they’ll bark and we won’t run into a pen like sheep. One day they’ll flash their lamps and clap their hands and say: ‘Come on, lads. Line-up and get your money. We won’t let you starve.’ But maybe some of us will want to starve, and that’ll be where the trouble’ll start. Perhaps some’ll want to play football, or go fishing up Grantham Cut. That big fat-bellied union ponce’ll ask us not to muck things up. Sir Harold Bladdertab’ll promise us a bigger bonus when things get put right. Chief Inspector Popcorn will say: ‘Let’s have no trouble, no hanging around the gates there.’ Blokes with suits and bowler hats will say: ‘These chaps have got their television sets, enough to live on, council houses, beer and pools — some have even got cars. We’ve made them happy. What’s wrong? Is that a machine-gun I hear starting up or a car backfiring?’
Der-der-der-der-der-der-der-der-der-der-der-der-der. I hope I’m not here to see it, but I know I will be. I’m a bloody billy-goat trying to screw the world, and no wonder I am, because it’s trying to do the same to me.
Arthur became Doreen’s young man. There was something of sweetness in it, and if he was not pursuing his rebellion against the rules of love, or distilling them with rules of war, there was still the vast crushing power of government against which to lean his white-skinned bony shoulder, a thousand of its laws to be ignored and therefore broken. Every man was his own enemy, and only on these conditions of fighting could you come to terms with yourself, and the only tolerable rule that would serve as a weapon was cunning, not a quiet snivelling cunning — which was worse than being dead — but the broad-fisted exuberant cunning of a man who worked all day in a factory and was left with fourteen quid a week to squander as best he could at the weekend, caught up in his isolation and these half-conscious clamped-in policies for living that cried for exit.
Violent dialogues flayed themselves to death in his mind as he went on serving a life’s penance at the lathe. The scarlet gash in Jim’s forehead and the tight-lipped frightened face of Jane at Christmas had showed him, as it were, through an open chink of light, that a man could rarely play for safety if he was to win in the end (at the same time thinking that if any woman had bashed him as Jane had bashed Jim he would have thumped her back). To win meant to survive; to survive with some life left in you meant to win. And to live with his feet on the ground did not demand, he realized fully for the first time, that he go against his own strong grain of recklessness — such as striving to kick down his enemies crawling like ants over the capital letter G of Government — but also accepting some of the sweet and agreeable things of life — as he had done in the past but in a harder way — before Government destroyed him, or the good things turned sour on him.
On a fine Sunday at the beginning of March, with sun shining on ground that had recently felt the cold touch of snow, the air smelling cool and fresh, he met Doreen on the outskirts of the housing estate. Few people were about because it was still too soon after dinner. Arthur wore a suit, collar, and tie, black shoes, and Doreen, who was waiting for him and keeping an eye on the bus stop from which he would walk, wore a light-brown coat with the Sunday additions of stockings, elegant shoes and a green jersey within.
He walked across the road, tall and thin, with short fair hair combed neatly back, one hand in his trouser pocket. They agreed to go for a walk, Doreen wanting to go into the city, Arthur into the country. ‘I’m cooped up in a factory all week,’ he argued, ‘and Sunday is the only time I’ve got to get out a bit. I hate the town, anyway.’
She saw a vague plot in this, to get her among isolated fields, but gave in to him. As they walked Arthur reflected on the uniqueness of his goings-out with Doreen, on the absence of danger that had tangibly surrounded him when he formerly met Brenda or Winnie. Each outing now was no longer an expedition on which every corner had to be turned with care, every pub considered for the ease of tactical retreat in case of ambush, every step along dark streets with his arm around Brenda taken with trepidation. He missed these things with Doreen, so much so that when out with her he felt a tug of excitement at the heart on approaching a corner, and conversation would lapse for a few minutes until they had turned it and he saw with a strange feeling of frustration mixed with relief that an avenue of safety lay before him.
The day seemed timeless, was handsome with its rare high clouds. Lime trees were coming to life by the laneside, tiny erectile buds emerging to enjoy the spring and shining like emeralds, fresh enough to quench one’s thirst. Looking back from the lane, the last houses of the estate appeared drab and haphazard, as if sprinkled over the earth from a madman’s lap.
She held his arm, and they walked to where the bridle path divided by Strelley church, one way forking through fields to Ilkeston, the other for pit-shafts of Kimberly and Eastwood. Arthur was happy in the country. He remembered his grandfather who had been a blacksmith, and had a house and forge at Wollaton village. Fred had often taken him there, and its memory was a fixed picture in Arthur’s mind. The building — you had drawn your own water from a well, dug your own potatoes out of the garden, taken eggs from the chicken run to fry with bacon off your own side of pig hanging salted from a hook in the pantry — had long ago been destroyed to make room for advancing armies of new pink houses, flowing over the fields like red ink on green blotting paper.
They walked slowly towards Ilkeston along a narrow stony path with a low fence on one side and a privet hedge on the other, talking little, taking the fork toward Trowel when the track widened. Arthur, after a lifetime of wandering on summer nights after school and work, knew every path and field in the country. They came to a house, a window of which showed chocolate and lemonade for sale. He had called there before, had tackled the stony path on his bicycle, enjoyed the jolts and skids on his way to do some fishing in the Erewash Canal, had often screeched-on his brakes and drawn in at the same window to buy something to eat.
Doreen chewed a bar of chocolate and drank a bottle of lemonade. The woman of the house remembered Arthur, and asked slyly: ‘You aren’t going fishing today?’ — searching in the window for his particular brand of chocolate.
‘That bar with the nuts and raisins in, duck,’ he stipulated. ‘You’ll like this sort,’ he said, turning to Doreen. ‘Not today,’ he answered the woman. ‘I’m courtin’ now, can’t you see?’ He hugged Doreen around the waist to prove it.
‘Courtin’?’ the woman exclaimed. ‘Oh well, the fishes can rest in peace from now on.’
He paid her, and she shut the window. ‘There’ll still be time for fishin’, I expect,’ he said.
They came to a swing-bridge over a stream, and stood against the rail. ‘I know a short cut back to the estate from here,’ he said. ‘We needn’t bother wi’ a bus.’ His arm was around her, and they looked down at the dark-green rushes only a few feet away. It was hardly a stream, but an aborted branch-line of the nearby canal. The water was very still and shallow, and reflected the clouds. They stood in silence, no one else in sight. His arm moved over her back, and rested on the warm nape of her neck. He tried to kiss her. She pulled her face away.
‘Nobody’s lookin’.’ He held her fast round the waist, and was cast into sad reflection by staring at the water below, a rippleless surface where minnows swam gracefully in calm transparent silence. White and blue sky made islands on it, so that the descent into its hollows seemed deep and fathomless, and fishes swam over enormous gulfs and chasms of cobalt blue. Arthur’s eyes were fixed into the beautiful earth-bowl of the depthless water, trying to explore each pool and shallow until, as well as an external silence there was a silence within himself that no particle of his mind or body wanted to break. Their faces could not be seen in the water, but were united with the shadows of the fish that flitted among upright reeds and spreading lilies, drawn to water as if they belonged there, as if the fang-like claws of the world would come unstuck from their flesh if they descended into its imaginary depths, as if they had known it before as a refuge and wanted to return to it, their ghosts already there, treading the calm unfurrowed depths and beckoning them to follow.
But there was no question of following. You were dragged down sooner or later whether you liked it or not. A ripple appeared in the middle of the water, expanded in concentric rings, and burst by a timeless force of power. Each line vanished into the reed-grass near the bank.
‘I feel tired,’ she said, breaking the silence.
‘Come on, Doreen.’ He took her arm and led her on to a footpath. They followed his short cut towards home, and came to the loneliest place of the afternoon where, drawn by a deathly and irresistible passion, they lay down together in the bottom of a hedge.
After a bout of Saturday-night pictures he said he wanted a pint before going back to her house. It was raining, he said, and so reason enough for them to get a bit of shelter in a pub. She suggested they take a bus, which would keep them dry, but he replied that he could not stand queues of any sort. ‘I’ve never queued in my life,’ he said, ‘and I’m not going to start now.’
‘You on’y queue for five minutes,’ she said, piqued.
‘It’s too long. Besides, I said I wanted a pint, didn’t I?’
‘What do you want a pint for?’ she asked, pulling up her collar to avoid the cold needles of rain. ‘Let’s go back to my house where it’s warm. Mam’ll have some supper for us.’
He felt a hard stubborn force of resistance against her. ‘I want a pint,’ he maintained, ‘and I see nowt wrong wi’ that.’
‘Well I do,’ she said. ‘You drink too much.’
‘No I don’t. I don’t drink half enough since I met you. So don’t try and stop me having a pint when I want one.’
The smoke and noise of the pub assailed them. ‘Only one, then,’ she said as they went in.
‘You have something as well,’ he offered.
She agreed to a shandy, but refused to sit at a table, saying that he would stay till closing time if she did. ‘Are you trying to keep me in check?’ he laughed. ‘We aren’t married yet, you know.’
‘No, nor even engaged,’ she said ironically.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’ve on’y known each other for a few months.’
‘And do you call that courting?’ she said, pulling a face. ‘Some people might, but I don’t.’
‘Not like the last fortnight?’ he suggested.
‘Pig,’ she cried, ‘always throwing it in my face.’
He laughed softly and grinned, looking at her: ‘Well, you know I like to see you arguing and telling me off.’
‘You should take it as it’s meant,’ she said, ‘like other people.’
‘I would,’ he said, ‘if I didn’t love you.’
‘Love,’ she exclaimed. ‘You don’t know what love is.’
‘Not much, our Doreen. I know a bit more than yo’, I’m sure.’
‘You’re a crack-pot,’ she said, ‘that’s what yo’ are.’
‘Ah!’ he called. ‘All this fuss because I wanted a pint and you didn’t get your own way. And just look at yourself supping that shandy down. Anybody’d think you were born in a public house. I’d be ashamed to own you if I didn’t love you, watching you drink like that.’
She bit her lips and glared at him. ‘Anybody’d think we were already married,’ she threw out, ‘the things you say, and the way you carry on. You get your own way all the time.’
‘And aren’t you glad when I do?’ he demanded in the same light-hearted infuriating manner. ‘Don’t you love it? And it’s only right that I should always get my own way, you know that.’
‘My God,’ she said, ‘if we weren’t in a pub I’d crack you one, a good one as well.’
‘I bet you would, Doreen Greatton. I’d like that too. But I’d crack you one back. You know that, don’t you?’
‘A lot of good it would do you,’ she said, but in a milder tone. Then remembering his previous remark: ‘Besides, who says I love it? It’s not you that makes me love it, I can tell you.’
‘Yes it is, and stop telling lies. Have you forgotten all them nice things you towd me, about how you liked it? I don’t know, you allus say one thing and then tell me you meant another.’
She fell silent, and watched him ask for more beer. He offered her a cigarette and, when she refused it, lit his own with an exaggerated striking of the match. ‘You think you’re the cock o’ the walk,’ she said, implying: ‘But I’ll tame you, you see if I don’t.’ Turning to drop his match he noticed that the man nearby was wearing army uniform. He was tall and well-built, good-looking in a soldierish way, though his face was too flushed below dark hair and would soon become florid, and the moustache was clipped too short above livid red lips. His cap lay on the counter, beside an empty beer-mug. He looked at Arthur long enough for mutual recognition, then turned away.
‘Ain’t your mate wi’ yer tonight?’ Arthur demanded.
‘Who’s that?’ Doreen asked, pulling at his elbow.
The handsomeness fell from the swaddie’s face when he said with a wrathful sneer: ‘What’s it got to do wi’ yo’ whether my mate’s wi’ me or not?’
‘If yer still want trouble yer can come outside,’ Arthur said. ‘Keep quiet,’ he said to Doreen. ‘He’s an owd pal o’ mine.’
The swaddie did not move, leaned against the counter, with brows wrinkled and eyes half closed, as if he had drunk too much. ‘I’m not looking for trouble,’ he said, beaten by Arthur’s iron stare.
‘What do you mean?’ Doreen cried in a sudden high-pitched frightened voice. ‘Saying he’s a pal o’ yourn?’
‘Well I’m warnin’ yer,’ Arthur said to the swaddie, ‘if ever yer want trouble, yer can ‘ave it.’ He’ll never say he’s sorry, and I’ll never say I’m sorry. If he worn’t a sowjer he’d be on my side, grabbin’ ‘is guts out at a machine like mine, thinking about making dynamite to blow up the Council House. But no, he’s a brainless bastard. I can’t see what Winnie sees in him, the poor sod. I’ll bet a bob he’s having more trouble with her. I’ll ask him to have a pint on me: ‘Have a pint, mate,’ he said.
‘No thanks,’ the swaddie answered.
‘Come on,’ Arthur said in a friendly way, ‘have one.’ He ordered it, and another for himself, and the jars were placed side by side on the counter. The swaddie looked at it suspiciously, as if it were a mug of poison.
Arthur lifted his glass: ‘Cheers. Drink-up, mate. I’m getting married next week.’
The swaddie came out of his bitter trance, saying; ‘Good luck to you then,’ and finished off the beer in one swallow.
They took a bus out to the estate, sitting silently during the ride like two people in an aeroplane for the first time and too frightened of its motion to say much. When they were walking along the crescent she asked: ‘Who was that soldier?’
‘An old pal of mine,’ he answered. ‘I knew him in the army.’ And he would say no more.
They walked down the garden to the back door, entering the narrow porch between the coal-house and lavatory. Arthur followed her into a kitchen smelling of stale gas and washed clothes. The living-room was untidy. It’d get cleaned up if I lived here, Arthur thought. A line of dry washing hung diagonally across the room, and both dresser and shelf were crowded with old recumbent Christmas cards, snapshots standing against hairbrushes, clocks with no hands, and cigarette packets. A twenty-year-old wireless crackling from the dresser was switched off by Doreen’s mother as soon as they came in. The table was set for supper: teapot and cups, sugar, a tin of milk, bread, cheese, and some knives and forks.
Mrs Greatton sat by the fire reading a newspaper, and a Bombay Indian crouched opposite by the coal-box, smoking a cigarette through his clenched hand. Doreen’s mother was deaf and wore glasses, and Arthur guessed her age to be about fifty. He wondered what her Indian friend saw in such a big loosely built woman with no beauty, whose hair had gone thin and grey near the forehead. The Indian had not spoken a word to Arthur on his previous visits to the house, merely nodding to him because he apparently knew not a word of English. Doreen’s mother said he worked at an engineering factory in town, and that after three years he could go back to Bombay with a thousand pounds saved, where, she said, you could be a millionaire with a thousand pounds. The Indian wore overalls and a jacket, and a cloth-cap that Arthur had seen him take off only once — when he followed Mrs Greatton upstairs to bed, showing himself to be completely bald. He was a man of about forty, good-looking in an Indian way, though Arthur did not like him. He always sat silently gazing at the pictures in some magazine, smoking cigarette after cigarette very slowly and meditatively through his hand, his lips never touching the tip of the cigarette. Mrs Greatton would occasionally look up from her newspaper and make some affectionate remark to him that he did not understand but that he acknowledged by a grunt and a nod or a word of his own language that she did not understand.
Mrs Greatton folded her newspaper and served them supper, doing every action with a cigarette in her mouth, looking down over her glasses, moving in slow cumbrous movements so that Arthur was surprised when food was finally set out neatly before them in the short time of ten minutes. Neither was hungry. They sat facing each other, munching slowly at bread and cheese and tinned meat, Arthur winking at Doreen when Mrs Greatton’s head was turned, and putting outstretched fingers to his nose at the Indian when he was looking down.
‘Your mother teks all night to read that newspaper,’ he remarked quite loudly because Mrs Greatton was deaf. ‘Does she read slow, or is she looking at the adverts?’
‘She reads every word of it,’ Doreen replied. ‘She loves the newspaper, more than a book.’
Mrs Greatton looked up. Her sharp eyes told her that they were talking. ‘What are you saying?’ she asked with interest.
‘I was telling Arthur you read all the adverts in the paper,’ Doreen shouted.
‘They’re interesting,’ she said briefly. The Indian — Arthur had never heard them use his name, as if they hadn’t troubled to ask him what it was — looked up and smiled at hearing them speak.
‘He’s a lost soul,’ he said to Doreen as she smiled back at him.
‘What?’ Mrs Greatton wanted to know.
‘He’s a lost soul,’ Arthur bellowed.
‘Not so lost,’ Mrs Greatton said. ‘He’s all right. He’s a good bloke.’
‘Ain’t he got a name?’ he asked Doreen.
‘I don’t think so,’ she answered, ‘but we call him “Chumley” because that’s what it sounded like when we asked him what it was. Didn’t it, Chumley?’ she shouted across to him. He turned and stared at her, as if she were trying to get some secret from him, then turned back to the fire.
‘He ain’t mad,’ she explained, pouring Arthur another cup of tea. ‘He likes us to talk about him.’
‘He looks lonely,’ Arthur said, as if obsessed by this fact.
‘He’s not really,’ she said, ‘mam and him get on well together. He don’t have too bad a life.’
‘Well, he looks lonely to me,’ he said. ‘He should go back to India. I can tell when a bloke’s lonely. He don’t say owt, see? And that means he misses his pals.’
‘He’s got mam,’ Doreen said.
‘It’s not the same,’ he answered, ‘not by a long way.’
They finished eating, but stayed at the table talking. Arthur was waiting for Chumley and Mrs Greatton to go to bed, out of the way, so that he could be alone with Doreen, who spoke less and less, as if impatience was gnawing at her also.
Chumley stood up and, cap in hand, bald head shining beneath the strong electric light, walked towards the door. Mrs Greatton’s shield of newspaper rustled and lowered when she sensed his movement. ‘I’ll be up soon, sweetheart,’ she said.
‘Let’s hope so,’ Arthur muttered.
They heard Chumley treading slowly up the stairs, and Mrs Greatton went on reading, as if she would stay at it doggedly all night. Arthur passed a lighted cigarette to Doreen, then lit one for himself. He broke the match-stick into little pieces and set them out along the edge of his plate, then flicked them one by one towards the piece of cheese in the middle of the table. Doreen asked him again about the soldier in the public house. ‘I’ll tell you what went on,’ he said. ‘You see, he was my mate in the army. He got put on a charge once, and I put him on it. I couldn’t help doing it, you see, because an officer was with me, and he got seven days’ jankers. Well, when he’d finished his jankers he met me in town and set on me, and we had a fight, and ever since then we ain’t bin such good pals. But now I suppose it’s all right. He’s a good bloke, and we had some good times together before I had to put him on this charge. Now you can see why we was mad at each other when we met tonight.’ He went on to elaborate the details of their adventures together, until Doreen was convinced of his story by the sincere narrative tone of his voice, which took some minutes to acquire.
Mrs Greatton rustled her paper on to the back page. Sports news, Arthur thought, I’m sure she won’t want to read them.
‘Does your mam do the crossword puzzle?’ he asked with magnificent disinterestedness. ‘If she does, she’ll be at it until four o’clock.’
‘No, she tried ‘em once, then gave it up because all them black and white squares hurt her eyes.’
Relieved to hear this he watched Mrs Greatton’s eyes travelling up and down the paper. Chumley had been upstairs for twenty minutes. When will she bloody well get up and move? he wondered. She’ll sit there all night at this rate. He caught and killed a fly that walked on his wrist. Mrs Greatton looked up at the sound of the smack, then went on reading. I’ll sit her out, Arthur thought grimly, if she stays in that chair till morning. A car drove by along the road. ‘That’s the fish and chip van going back to town,’ Doreen informed him. It was a quarter to eleven. They heard the insistent stomp of Chumley’s stockinged feet on the bedroom floor. ‘She’ll go now,’ Doreen said.
But she did not go. Get up them stairs, for Christ’s sake, Arthur said to himself. Mothers are so bloody-well awkward when it comes to a thing like this. Why don’t you go?
At eleven o’clock she stood up and folded her newspaper. ‘Well,’ she said, looking at them both, ‘I’m off to bed. And don’t be long yourself, Doreen.’
‘All right, mam. Only ten minutes. Arthur’s got to go now. He’s got a long walk home.’
‘I ’ave an’ all,’ Arthur shouted. ‘I’ll get crackin’ in a bit.’
‘And I’ll wash the pots, and clean up before coming to bed, our mam,’ Doreen said as she went out. When her footsteps sounded on the loose board at the top of the stairs Arthur held Doreen and kissed her passionately. ‘I thought she’d never go.’
‘Well, you were wrong,’ she said reprovingly, slipping away from him. She moved clothes and newspapers from the settee so that they could sit down and kiss there undisturbed, a Saturday-night routine already well established by the few Saturdays that had gone before. A few minutes later she broke free and stood up: ‘Let’s make as if you’re going now.’
‘The same old trick,’ he said, following her through the scullery to the back door.
Doreen opening it with a loud click, calling out forcefully:
‘Good night, then, Arthur.’
‘Good night, duck,’ he shouted out so that the whole estate must have heard. ‘I’ll see you on Monday.’
The door slammed so violently that the house shook, Doreen making sure that her deaf mother’s ear reacted to the noise. Arthur, being still on the inside, followed Doreen tiptoe back into the warm, comfortable, well-lit living-room.
‘Don’t make much noise for a while,’ she whispered in his ear.
He smoked a cigarette and lay back on the settee, whistling softly to himself, spread out at his ease while Doreen cleared the table and washed the dishes in the kitchen, making discreet but appropriate noises that floated through the house, hoping they would lull the mother to sleep, or at least into believing that her daughter was safely doing her work in an empty downstairs.
She came out of the kitchen and took off her apron, standing by the table in her dark-green dress that showed the curves of her breasts and slender body so well that Arthur said: ‘I’ve never seen anybody look so nice as you do.’
She smiled, and sat down by him. The room was warm from fire still in the grate. He threw his half-finished cigarette into the coal bin. ‘I love you,’ he said softly.
‘I love you, too,’ she replied, but flippantly.
He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I’d like to live with you.’
She gave a wider smile. ‘It would be nice.’
‘How old did you tell me you were?’ What the bloody-hell’s that got to do wi’ it?
‘Twenty, soon.’
‘I’m twenty-four. You’ll be well off with me. I’ll look after you all right.’
Her face grew radiant: ‘I shan’t forget that walk we did that Sunday,’ she said quietly, taking his hand, ‘when we looked into the water near Cossal, and then went into the fields.’
‘You know what I mean, though?’ he demanded sternly.
‘Of course.’
They did not speak. Arthur was subdued, his mind blocked with questions and unsatisfying answers, fighting the last stages of an old battle within himself, and at the same time feeling the first skirmishes of a new conflict. But he was good in his heart about it, easy and confident, making for better ground than he had ever trodden on before. I must be drunk, he thought. No I’m not. I’m stone-cold sober.
They sat as if the weight of the world had in this minute been lifted from them both and left them dumb with surprise. But this lasted only for the moment. Arthur held her murderously tight, as if to vanquish her spirit even in the first short contest. But she responded to him, as if she would break him first. It was stalemate, and they sought relief from the great decision they had just brought upon themselves. He spoke to her softly, and she nodded her head to his words without knowing what they meant. Neither did Arthur know what he was saying; both transmission and reception were drowned, and they broke through to the opened furrows of the earth.
He sat by the canal fishing on a Sunday morning in spring, at an elbow where alders dipped over the water like old men on their last legs, pushed by young sturdy oaks from behind. He straightened his back, his fingers freeing nylon line from a speedily revolving reel. Around him lay knapsack and jacket, an empty catch-net, his bicycle, and two tins of worms dug from the plot of garden at home before setting out. Sun was breaking through clouds, releasing a smell of earth to heaven. Birds sang. A soundless and minuscular explosion of water caught his eye. He moved nearer the edge, stood up, and with a vigorous sweep of his arm, cast out the line.
Another solitary man was fishing further along the canal, but Arthur knew that they would leave each other in peace, would not even call out greetings. No one bothered you: you were a hunter, a dreamer, your own boss, away from it all for a few hours on any day that the weather did not throw down its rain. Like the corporal in the army who said it was marvellous the things you thought about as you sat on the lavatory. Even better than that, it was marvellous the things that came to you in the tranquillity of fishing.
He drank tea from the flask and ate a cheese sandwich, then sat back to watch the red and white float — up to its waist in water under the alder trees — and keep an eye always close to it for the sudden indication of a fortunate catch. For himself, his own catch had been made, and he would have to wrestle with it for the rest of his life. Whenever you caught a fish, the fish caught you, in a way of speaking, and it was the same with anything else you caught, like the measles or a woman. Everyone in the world was caught, somehow, one way or another, and those that weren’t were always on the way to it. As soon as you were born you were captured by fresh air that you screamed against the minute you came out. Then you were roped in by a factory, had a machine slung around your neck, and then you were hooked up by the arse with a wife. Mostly you were like a fish: you swam about with freedom, thinking how good it was to be left alone, doing anything you wanted to do and caring about no one, when suddenly: SPLUTCH! — the big hook clapped itself into your mouth and you were caught. Without knowing what you were doing you had chewed off more then you could bite and had to stick with the same piece of bait for the rest of your life. It meant death for a fish, but for a man it might not be so bad. Maybe it was only the beginning of something better in life, better than you could ever have thought possible before clamping your avid jaws down over the vital bait. Arthur knew he had not yet bitten, that he had really only licked the bait and found it tasty, that he could still disengage his mouth from the nibbled morsel. But he did not want to do so. If you went through life refusing all the bait dangled before you, that would be no life at all. No changes would be made and you would have nothing to fight against. Life would be as dull as ditchwater. You could kill yourself by too much cunning. Even though bait meant trouble, you could not ignore it for ever. He laughed to think that he was full of bait already, half-digested slop that had certainly given him a share of trouble, one way or another. Watching the float so intently made him sleepy: he had been with Doreen until two the night before. They spoke of getting married in three months, by which time, Arthur said, they would have collected a good amount of money, nearly a hundred and fifty pounds, not counting income-tax rebate, which will probably bump it up to a couple of hundred. So they would be sitting pretty, Doreen replied, because Mrs Greatton had already offered to let them stay with her for as long as they liked, paying half the rent. For she would be lonely when Chumley left. Arthur said he would be able to get on with Mrs Greatton, because living there he would be the man of the house. And if there was any arguments, they could get rooms somewhere. So it looked as though they’d be all right together, he thought, as long as a war didn’t start, or trade slump and bring back the dole. As long as there wasn’t a famine, a plague to sweep over England, an earthquake to crack it in two and collapse the city around them, or a bomb to drop and end the world with a big bang. But you couldn’t concern yourself too much with these things if you had plans and wanted to get something out of life that you had never had before. And that was a fact, he thought, chewing a piece of grass.
He fixed the rod firmly against the bank and stood to stretch himself. He yawned widely, felt his legs weaken, then strengthen, then relax, his tall figure marked against a background of curving canal and hedges and trees bordering it. He rubbed his hand over the rough features of his face, upwards over thick lips, grey eyes, low forehead, short fair hair, then looked up at the mixture of grey cloud and blue patches of sky overhead. For some reason he smiled at what he saw, and turned to walk some yards along the towpath. Forgetting the stilled float in the water he stopped to urinate against the bushes. While fastening his trousers, he saw the float in violent agitation, as if it were suddenly alive and wanted to leap out of the water.
He ran back to the rod and began winding in the reel with steady movements. His hands worked smoothly and the line came in so quickly that it did not seem to be moving except on the reel itself where the nylon thread grew in thickness and breadth, where he evened it out with his thumb so that it would not clog at a vital moment. The fish came out of the water, flashing and struggling on the end of the line, and he grasped it firmly in his hand to take the hook from its mouth. He looked into its glass-grey eye, at the brown pupil whose fear expressed all the life that it had yet lived, and all its fear of the death that now threatened it. In its eye he saw the green gloom of willow-sleeved canals in cool decay, an eye filled with panic and concern for the remaining veins of life that circled like a silent whirlpool around it. Where do fishes go when they die? he wondered. The glow of long-remembered lives was mirrored in its eyes, and the memory of cunning curves executed in the moving shadows from reed to reed as it scattered the smaller fry and was itself chased by bigger fish was also pictured there. Arthur felt mobile waves of hope running the length of its squamous body from head to tail. He removed the hook, and threw it back into the water. He watched it flash away and disappear.
One more chance, he said to himself, but if you or any of your pals come back to the bait, it’s curtains for ‘em. With float bobbing before him once more he sat down to wait. This time it was war, and he wanted fish to take home, either to cook in the pan or feed to the cat. It’s trouble for you and trouble for me, and all over a piece of bait. The fattest worm of the lot is fastened to the hook, so don’t grumble when you feel that point sticking to your chops.
And trouble for me it’ll be, fighting every day until I die. Why do they make soldiers out of us when we’re fighting up to the hilt as it is? Fighting with mothers and wives, landlords and gaffers, coppers, army, government. If it’s not one thing it’s another, apart from the work we have to do and the way we spend our wages. There’s bound to be trouble in store for me every day of my life, because trouble it’s always been and always will be. Born drunk and married blind, misbegotten into a strange and crazy world, dragged-up through the dole and into the war with a gas-mask on your clock, and the sirens rattling into you every night while you rot with scabies in an air-raid shelter. Slung into khaki at eighteen, and when they let you out, you sweat again in a factory, grabbing for an extra pint, doing women at the week-end and getting to know whose husbands are on the nightshift, working with rotten guts and an aching spine, and nothing for it but money to drag you back there every Monday morning.
Well, it’s a good life and a good world, all said and done, if you don’t weaken, and if you know that the big wide world hasn’t heard from you yet, no, not by a long way, though it won’t be long now.
The float bobbed more violently then before and, with a grin on his face, he began to wind in the reel.