The Sweet-Shop Owner

24

The sun blazed in the High Street, but it had lost its morning freshness, and inside the shop, despite the electric fan and the door opened to the street, the air was close and heavy. It made Mrs Cooper itch and prickle beneath her nylon shop coat and grow irritable, so that she glanced more accusingly at Sandra and muttered when the girl got in her way or took her time at the till: ‘Confound you!’ She wiped her glasses. Flies buzzed round the shelves; the counter was sticky; the coins and notes customers handed her were hot and damp with sweat. These things gave her a feeling of distaste — which was quite unlike the feeling she had had as she left home at seven, patting her hair, the dew still bright on the patch of grass by the entrance to the flats, and the word ‘Holiday’ ringing in her mind as something to put before Mr Chapman.

‘Confound you!’

‘Temper!’ said Sandra.

The clock over the door showed ten to one. Sandra went to lunch first, from one to two. Mrs Cooper’s own lunch break was officially one-thirty to two-thirty, but in practice she usually took less. Loyalty to Mr Chapman — and un-willingness to leave him alone for long with Sandra — made her scurry back from her sallies to the supermarket as early as two. Sometimes she took no lunch-break at all, merely sat for a while in the stock room. Mr Chapman never took a break — despite her warnings. Just sat on his stool with a cup of coffee and a sandwich — a cheese sandwich — which he would put down, circular bites out of it, whenever a customer needed serving. Since his wife’s death she herself had begun to cut his sandwich (‘Cottage cheese only Mrs Cooper — doctor’s orders’) or fetch him things from the baker’s. That was a valued privilege. And yet she wished, rather, he’d take a proper lunch. Go over, perhaps, to the Prince William, and leave her solely in charge. Hadn’t he said, on that wet evening sixteen years ago, that there’d be times when she’d have to mind the shop herself? And yet it seemed that, except for those visits to the hospital, which were over now, he’d never yet trusted her to be alone regularly at the counter.

Fridays had their consolations, it was true. She and Sandra took their lunch as usual, but at two-thirty Mr Chapman would leave, taking in his briefcase some packages from the safe in the stock room, and drive over to Pond Street. There were the two to be paid over there — Bryant and Miss Fox — and the odd order to discuss. He would be gone perhaps three quarters of an hour, and she would relish that time as an opportunity to hold sway over Sandra.

She took her eyes from the clock. Five to one. Sandra fidgeted by the till. Oh yes, she’d be ready to dash off on the stroke. Flitting down the High Street, ready to fritter away her pay-packet. She thought of setting the girl some task that would cut into her lunch time.

‘Sandra,’ she said commandingly, ‘before you go to lunch —’

But then Mr Chapman surprised her.

‘That’s all right, Mrs Cooper. I’d like you to go to lunch first today.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘If that’s all right.’ Mr Chapman edged forward from the refrigerator. ‘Sandra was late. I think you should go first, for a change. Let her cope with the lunch-time rush.’

She stiffened.

Change? She always went to lunch second; the pattern had never changed.

‘But I always —’ she began. But Mr Chapman’s glassy look made her falter.

‘Today,’ he said, in oddly final tones, ‘is different.’

It must be because he wanted to be alone with the girl. He wanted her to go so they could talk about her behind her back.

She raised her neck and swallowed the little upsurge in her throat.

‘Besides,’ Mr Chapman stared more waterily, ‘in this heat — I expect you’re ready for a breather.’

Breather indeed!

‘I’ve my shopping to do,’ she said, rebutting the suggestion she had time to relax.

She looked at Sandra as if it was she who had directly contrived all this. And Sandra, seeing Mrs Cooper for once genuinely at bay, gave a look of out-and-out ferocity.

‘Good then,’ Mr Chapman said. ‘You go off till two, and Sandra, you take from two to three.’ (Mrs Cooper’s eyebrows shot up at the whole hour he would be alone with Sandra.) ‘I’ll go to Pond Street when you come back. It’ll mean of course, Mrs Cooper,’ Mr Chapman paused and his eyes seemed to take on a distinctly tender gaze, ‘that you’ll be alone in the shop while I’m gone. But,’ he paused again, ‘perhaps it’s time you were used to managing by yourself.’

Mrs Cooper sniffed at the attempt at appeasement.

But then — what did he mean? — ‘time you were used to managing by yourself’? Her feelings rose at the sudden prospect of him yielding at last to her much-repeated advice — taking care of his weary body in those plump arm-chairs at Leigh Drive — dozing under a sunshade in the garden (with a fold-up garden table and an iced drink) — where she would at last join him, but only after first staunchly conducting the day’s business at the shop. Eventually they’d sell the shop. They wouldn’t need it anyway, with all that money (she’d find out how much it really was) Mrs Chapman had left. They’d simply stop work. And they’d take, at last, that holiday. That long, long holiday …

But it didn’t alter the fact that there was something between him and that girl.

‘Well —’ she drew a breath. ‘One o’clock it is then. You won’t mind if I rest my legs a while in the stock room?’

Mr Chapman nodded, turning to a customer.

She went into the stock room, filled a tumbler of water at the sink and pulled one of the battered easy chairs as far back as possible, opposite the doorway into the shop, so that she sat, like a hidden observer, spying on the others through the veil of the plastic strips. The strips fluttered now and then in the breeze from the electric fan. She couldn’t see Mr Chapman, only occasionally his left shoulder, but Sandra rocked on her stool before her, got up, moved to and fro along the counter and sometimes glanced sharply in at her as at an animal in a cage.

Well, she wouldn’t budge until she absolutely had to. She’d stay here and watch them as long as she could. Spend her whole lunch hour here if need be. She strained her ears for words, but caught nothing. She looked around at the cluttered stock room — the piles of cardboard boxes, the door to the lavatory, the sink and mirror in the far corner with the collection of brooms, brushes and floor-cloths heaped beside it, the thumbed and tattered lists on the wall, the murky sky-light above with its rust-streaked glass, masking even now the brilliant sunshine — and felt something of the prisoner’s desolation. She sniffed. He never bothered about the stock room, let it get into the filthiest state. It was almost as if he relished the difference between its shabbiness and the brilliance of the shop itself. Once a fortnight she tidied it — though he never asked — swept the dust and scraps of paper from the floor, cleaned the sink and lavatory, made it as spotless as possible. But he never thanked her.

She looked at Sandra’s back on the stool and her tumble of glossy hair, through the plastic strips. She wasn’t deceived.

From her inner recess the shop, even the street beyond with its dazzle of traffic, seemed momentarily fanciful and intangible — a surface you could stick your hand through. How hot it was! Her neck itched. Her skin crawled and pricked. The heat made her feel soiled, abused. Going to lunch first! Upsetting the pattern!

Lunch-time customers were crowding the counter, but, between their shoulders, she just glimpsed, out there in the street, the door of Hancock and Joyce open and Mr Hancock step out into the sunlight. Would he come to the shop first, across the road? No: along the pavement, past Powell’s, and straight — she knew without having to keep sight of him — to the Prince William. A stiff, upright figure as he strode. But she wasn’t deceived. Everyone knew: that wife of his. She was funny in the head. They’d put her away once. Eight years ago she’d run off with some other man. And someone had told her once, on good authority, that that other man was none other than Mr Chapman’s brother-in-law.

All deceit and running away. She watched the hot faces at the counter. Look at Dorothy, his daughter, running away like that. Some man, a university lecturer — he’d said that much. And look at her own wretched desertion, twenty-seven years ago. It was a sultry, heavy afternoon — the kids, at least, were asleep — and she’d known he wasn’t coming back. He was all fixed up with that bag of tricks in Birmingham. Letter on the bedside table. She’d sat unmoving on the sofa in that room left untidy by the boys. Cushions on the floor; toys. And even later, when the boys had grown and she moved to the new flat, even now, she hadn’t shaken off from herself that sense of the world receding and that room fixing round her, with the upset toys, still and frozen. Then she’d got up and pursed her lips and begun to clear the mess. And she hadn’t stopped since.

Through the doorway in front of her Mr Chapman appeared, edging towards the till — how laboriously he moved sometimes — and as he did so he seemed to lean over deliberately towards the girl.

The plastic strips shimmered for a moment, like striped deck-chairs on a hot beach, like coloured sunshades …

Twenty-past by the clock. Her shopping had to be done. At least she had no illusions. Let him have his little fancy and let them talk about her while she was gone. She could still act, she could still have her scene. She’d get her own back on that little bag of tricks.

She put the empty tumbler back above the sink and drew out her handbag from the shopping basket propped against the wall. Eyeing herself in the mirror, she powdered her nose, spread the collar of her blouse a little more flatly over her shoulders and sprayed a jet of sandalwood under her chin. She entered the shop with a sudden flinging back of the plastic strips and paused for a moment, taking breath, levelling a glance at Sandra, in the doorway.

‘Off to the shops. Anything I can get you, Mr Chapman?’

‘Er, no thanks, Mrs Cooper.’

She brushed past the girl and the man — sixty years old! — and out into the hot envelope of the street.

Mr Chapman watched her turn right under the awning and pass by the window. How old is that woman? he thought.

25

1969. You were twenty that June. A student at London University. No longer a girl. Your smooth swaying stride and your softened woman’s figure — in blue jeans and a purple coloured top, now you were going to university — should have proclaimed it. Save for that uncertain way you held your head, as if you were surprised to find, so soon, you’d grown up.

You had left school for the last time. Out of the gates, with the others, scuffling homewards, onto the noisy bus, through the High Street, warily, in your uniform; for the last time. ‘O’-levels, ‘A’-levels, your essay on Keats which won the school prize: a place at university. Did you step away from it all, as you stepped out of your uniform, as if a new life beckoned?

Blue jeans and a purple corduroy jacket; hair long and straight and unstyled. Alone in that room the other side of London, with a gas-ring, your books and your independence. Don’t think I wasn’t proud of you, Dorry. My own daughter at university. But why didn’t you seem glad, even at your own success? And why did it seem to me (other youngsters, whom I winked at, over the counter, wore those bright, flamboyant clothes because it was fun) that you wore your student’s outfit as if it were only another uniform?

Who was happier, Dorry. you or I, when we were twenty?

You even came back to us that summer — tired of that gloomy bed-sitter where no one had forced you to go. You caught the train up to your lectures in the morning, and did not return, often, till late, very late. Irene would look at you when you were late as if testing you for something.

But they found you a new room, the next autumn, in one of the halls of residence. Small and neat. There was an anglepoise lamp; a pin-up board; a bed which folded back against the wall; and scarcely enough room on the formica shelves for all your books. But you would be looked after there. There was central heating and a launderette and they would clean your room for you and give you meals in the dining hall; and it was for you they’d built those new clean-lined buildings (there were still piles of scaffolding and sand beneath your window), employing the best architects to draw the plans. See how far the milk and orange juice had gone.

And you wouldn’t be lonely, for in that neat residence hall, like a luxurious barracks, there were fifty other girls like you, each with a room like yours with a number on the door and a slot for a name-card. I saw them, and felt embarrassed, as I helped you carry in your cases and bags. They giggled or gave little aloof, intense glances. Doors were half opened and record-players competed. As we passed along the corridor I glimpsed them, sitting on beds and floors, looking serious, cradling thick coffee mugs, demonstratively smoking cigarettes.

New, clean-lined buildings; purple bricks, glass, and wooden slats; newly-sown grass outside your room in which rows of saplings had been planted. I felt old and out of place as I left and walked round the grass to the car; so that I was relieved by the gardener, with raw-looking hands, tying up the saplings, who nodded as I passed.

You stayed there two years — oh they moved you in your third year to another building, a bigger room, but it still had a number and a name-card. You came home in the holidays and sometimes you phoned and sometimes wrote. But it seemed as if you could never tell us clearly what you were doing or what was happening. ‘I’m working hard,’ you said. ‘My tutor says I could get a First.’ As if all that time you spent, until the beginning of that last year, were spent in waiting, waiting.

‘Ingratitude,’ we said, like an excuse.

‘Don’t you miss her, Mr Chapman?’ Mrs Cooper asked, stirring the morning tea.

‘She’s only the other side of London.’

‘And she’s grown up now of course, isn’t she? Old enough to lead her own life.’

Her eyes had swivelled behind the spectacles, looking for reactions.

‘What is it she’s studying exactly? English? I mean, what’s it for?’

‘Oh — not like this’ — he glanced at the newspapers. ‘Literature. Poetry.’

‘Oh.’

The gaudy colours of the toy display in the Briar Street window were reflected in the lenses of her glasses. Her sleeve brushed the magazine counter from which young faces grinned and pouted: Honey, Nineteen, Disc, Melody Maker. She looked grave, unmoved, amidst all the dazzle.

And yet, he knew — in eleven years he’d had time to discover it — that beneath her toil and tenacity, Mrs Cooper nursed dreams of her own.

1969. The kids were coming out of school, barging down the pavement as if the world was theirs. And stepping out, at the kerbside, from a pearl-grey Rover and having to pick his way through them, was Hancock. He walked briskly and purposefully — as well he might. For those house prices were rising, faster and faster. There would be a real boom soon: thousands added in a matter of months. He would flatter himself he’d foreseen it and watch the fees flow in (as he himself, behind his counter, watched the money fill the till — four hundred, five hundred pounds a week).

But there was a stiffness now and an aloofness in Hancock’s bearing as he stepped, scarcely seeing them, through those waves of school-children. No swagger in those long legs; no roguishness in that once sprightly face. As if all that had stopped, years ago.

Was it the stiffness of discretion — or of age?

26

Clomp, clomp. What was that? Smithy’s young assistant Keith, hastening into the shop in his new leather boots and flared trousers, and standing for a moment, open-mouthed, in the middle of the floor, not seeing him as he crouched, replacing stock behind the counter — while the little spasm in Mrs Cooper’s throat — he saw it even from where he stooped — rose in sudden alarm.

‘Mr Chapman!’

For all his twenty-one years, the smart clothes, the medallion round his neck, Keith looked for a moment like a helpless schoolboy come to seek the master’s aid.

‘It’s Mr Smithy, Mr Chapman. I don’t think he’s breathing.’

Wail of the ambulance up the High Street and the flash of its blue light as it passed the Prince William and Powell’s and the Diana and drew up beyond the entrance to Briar Street. It parked close to Smithy’s door. The ambulance men made an attempt at concealment, opening the rear doors ready. But people had stopped to watch — Mrs Cooper watched through the window full of toys — and they had time to see that the body on the stretcher as it was carried out was entirely draped by the red blanket.

‘Through here, Mr Chapman. Look.’

And there, in the little back room of the barber shop, was Smithy, in the easy chair, his head to one side, the glass of water that he was going to drink smashed on the floor. ‘Don’t touch anything,’ he said. ‘Nothing must be touched.’ Although why he said it, he didn’t know. Nor why Keith and Sullivan, Smithy’s other assistant, bowed, ditheringly, to his command, put the ‘Closed’ sign on the door when he told them, sent away the single customer stiil lingering, half-shorn, in the shop, let him deal himself with the ambulance men.

November the sixteenth, 1969. The figures on the pavement who had stopped to look moved on and the traffic in the High Street seemed to resume a halted progress like a film jerking back into life. In the shops they returned to business, to sudden energetic talk, activity. But they had seen: old Powell behind his racks of fruit, Hancock behind his photographs of property, and the proprietor of the Diana pushing aside the plastic menu placard hanging in the window. And they’d known. It was Smithy.

‘Did it go all right?’ she asked as he appeared at the door in his coat and his black tie. He shrugged.

She returned to her seat, under the standard lamp, and seemed just a little perplexed when he did not sit down immediately after entering from the hall, but stood looking out of the window at the lilac tree.

‘Grace all right?’

‘She’s not taking it badly. She’s going to her cousin’s.’

That afternoon at the crematorium he’d stood with the little group of mourners and helped Smithy’s sister in and out of the car and apologized because Irene was too ill to come. And Grace had said, ‘Look after that wife of yours’; and he’d said with a wan smile, ‘Oh, it’s she who looks after me.’

She watched him sit down and not volunteer further comment.

‘Shall I tell you something?’ she said. ‘I once went into Smithy’s shop. It was in the war when I was in London with Father. I went to see the shop was all right; and then Smithy gave me a cup of tea, in his back room.’

‘You went into our shop?’ he said.

‘Yes.’ Her face was hollow and thin, but the gaze was firm, as if she’d known at the time she would store up those past moments to recall them now.

‘That was nearly thirty years ago,’ he said.

It wouldn’t last. Outside the hospital the flower-lady trimmed and cut her bunches of flowers. Doctor Marsh replaced Doctor Cunningham on her appointment card, but Doctor Marsh could do no more than Doctor Cunningham, save to send her to Doctor Fletcher at St Thomas’s. But that was not for the asthma; that was for her heart.

‘Brrring! Brrring!’ The telephone rang on the shelf next to the cigarette racks and Mrs Cooper answered. Over a year since Smithy’s death; and Sullivan had taken over the barber shop and the red and white pole no longer twisted over the corner of Briar Street — ‘The wrong image for today,’ Sullivan said.

‘It’s Mrs Pritchard.’

Mrs Cooper held out the receiver, and as he took it, placed it to his ear, and watched the expression of peculiar anticipation on Mrs Cooper’s face, it seemed to him he had already heard the terse message, had already thrown his coat on and was driving, dry-mouthed, to the hospital; had enacted that scene, many times, before, though he never believed it was real — so that the thin, frightened voice of Mrs Pritchard (the woman they’d hired to do the housework) sounded like some voice from inside him:

‘It’s Mrs Chapman. They’ve taken her to the hospital.’

27

How strangely untroubled you looked, appearing there at the swing door which the nurse, raising a finger and pointing, opened for you. You had come at once, taking a taxi at each end, so that it seemed you arrived only minutes after I phoned. You wore a long, dark-red dress under your coat, and black boots, and you walked with a sure and steady stride, so that I thought: Yes, she too seemed to look her best in times of trouble — against the dark-green blackout curtain; walking down a corridor in that same hospital, where her father died.

We hugged. Your cheek was cold from the wintry air outside but your breath was warm. We had never embraced like that before. You squeezed my wrist, and went to speak, purposefully, to the sister, and you didn’t seem the same girl as I’d left in that neat room with its number and its slot for a name-card.

‘Listen Dad, it wasn’t a severe attack. She’ll be all right. The same as they told you. She’s been sedated. There’s nothing we can do here. Let’s go home.’

How untroubled you looked. You sat me by the fire, made tea and cooked a supper which I didn’t want, but which you made me eat. I ate slowly, in silence. And then we talked. That was the only time we ever really talked. I told you about old Harrison. Why did I dwell on old Harrison? He lay in a coma in that same hospital in 1945, while outside they danced and sang and celebrated victory with bonfires. And you told me — that was the time you chose to tell — about Hancock and those meetings with Paul. I never knew you knew so much about her family. And you spoke with a commiserative and tentative look, as if you were telling me something that ought to be kept from me.

For there was one thing you didn’t tell me that night, wasn’t there? Though I knew. Don’t ask me how. Call it a father’s instinct. You sat in the armchair opposite, leaning forward, your face like a torch in my eyes, and now and then your hand pulled smooth that red dress over your knees. But that movement wasn’t like it used to be. There was something new in your voice and in your eye, and I knew: it had happened at last; you were no longer waiting, waiting. When, Dorry? It must have been sometime that term. Where? In that neat room with its number on the door and its rows of books?

‘So Grandfather gave her the money?’

‘Yes.’

‘But why her, why not Uncle Paul or Grandmother?’

‘Because he wanted, I think, to be forgiven.’

‘For what?’

‘I don’t know. He always made demands of her. They never got on.’

‘And that money bought the shop?’

‘No — this was after the war. We bought the shop in ’37. She had some money when we married.’

‘And Grandfather’s money?’

‘Hers. None of it went into the shop. I think she felt it wasn’t to be touched. She made sure it kept its value. Her investments — and all these things.’

You looked around pensively at the crystal and the china behind the glass in the cabinet. You seemed glad to be alone with me.

‘But after Grandfather’s death you needn’t have kept on the shop.’

‘No — but we did.’

‘And then she never saw her family again, did she, after the war? I mean, Uncle Paul and Grandmother —?’

So many questions, Dorry, about the past — when you had stepped so boldly into the present. I paused, peered into my cup of tea.

‘But how are you doing now? Things okay?’

You lowered your eyes. You didn’t want to answer questions either.

‘Oh — I’ve started the special paper for Part Two.’

‘What’s that then?’

‘The English Romantic Poets.’

The mantelpiece clock chimed one in the morning. Late enough. But I didn’t want to go up to lie alone without her, and to think of her lying alone. Or to leave you.

I said, ‘I’ll phone the hospital.’

‘No — it’s all right. They’ve got our number. If there’s any need they’ll phone you.’ You pressed me back into the armchair.

‘Don’t worry, Dad, she’ll be all right.’

‘All right now maybe.’

You sighed reproachfully, at those despairing words.

I said, ‘You will forgive her, won’t you? You won’t be hard on her?’ You glanced up again questioningly. ‘I know it seems she’s always been against you.’

‘Oh — that was only really since that business with Uncle Paul …’

‘No, but before, before. She always … she always found it hard to be — to give certain things.’

‘Things?’

‘You know what I mean. You know.’

You frowned.

But I saw you knew.

‘What I want to say is that she was always like that. It was the same for me too.’

‘Even when you got married?’

‘Yes, I suppose even then.’

‘So you knew what you were doing?’ You looked at me like a woman who means to get her way.

‘No, Dorry. No, I never did.’

I put my head in my hand and looked up through my fingers at your eyes.

‘Forgive me too.’

28

Sandra rocked gently on her stool. The lunch-time rush of customers had slackened and the clock was nearing two. She wasn’t bothered by Mr Chapman’s switching of the lunch-breaks — she had none of Mrs Cooper’s mania for routine. After Mrs Cooper had left she’d sighed, puffing out her cheeks and said, ‘She’s a fusser, ain’t she?’ — but he hadn’t taken up the point. And now he was looking at her again from his stool by the fridge — oh not in a way she was used to (the way old men looked at her on buses and trains), but almost disappointedly, regretfully, as if he expected her to be something she wasn’t.

‘And what will you be doing this weekend, Sandra?’ he suddenly said.

‘Oh — might go down the coast, Sunday. Or up the swimming pool.’

Her shoe slipped from her foot beneath the counter onto the floor, but she made no effort to retrieve it. She ran her toe over the wooden panel on the inside of the counter. Her legs were sticky where they crossed. Her cheek rested on her palm which was sticky too. Still he looked. She kept her eyes to the front of the shop where, beyond the window, the sunlight flashed on car windows and, to the right, on the empty beer glasses on the low wall outside the Prince William. ‘Well, sorry,’ she said to herself, recrossing her legs and wondering simultaneously what she would do at the weekend, ‘Whatever it is, I’m not it.’ And she turned at last to Mr Chapman, whose heavy, purplish face seemed suddenly quite forlorn, like some stone figure that has inexplicably melted and lost its shape.

‘Well, there is no use disguising the fact,’ she said, easing herself into her seat and pursing her lips.

She had come home that morning after two weeks in hospital; he’d left Mrs Cooper in charge of the shop. Somehow he hoped a new woman might have returned to him, but he saw by that flatness of the lips, it was not so.

‘A heart condition is a heart condition,’ she continued.

It was almost Christmas, and cold. Outside, the garden looked damp and raw. She asked for a blanket and he got her one — the large red and brown blanket which they’d used as a picnic rug in the days of their Sunday drives. She asked for her handbag and her medicines and he put them on the trolley beside her chair, along with the inhaler, the papers, and the antique collectors’ journals which she still liked to scour, sending off for catalogues. She looked very weak. But only once, as he tucked the blanket round her and felt for a moment like a father putting a child to bed, had her expression admitted this weakness. And then it was in the form of resentment, annoyance. Her mouth twisted curiously as he leant over her.

He stayed at home with her all that day. She spoke briefly about what the doctors said. There was a risk: no exertion; precautions must be taken. And he talked about the shop. He didn’t anticipate such large Christmas sales this year — but he’d said the same the year before.

Then he was going to ask: ‘Should we be thinking about selling the shop?’

But that evening she said, as if to forestall him, ‘I think we should get another shop.’ And in the new year they bought Pond Street.

29

‘I’ll be off to Pond Street then, Mrs Cooper.’

He stood in the doorway, parting the plastic strips, having exchanged his shop coat for his jacket, rinsed his hands and face, and put the wage-packets from the safe — they were made up differently this week — in his briefcase.

Mrs Cooper had returned, puffing, from her shopping, with an air of accusation, as if she were about to discover some scandal. Sandra had slipped out, to her own lunch, pressing a new stick of chewing gum into her mouth, and as she passed Mrs Cooper in front of the counter the two women had glowered icily at each other.

‘Have you eaten?’ Mrs Cooper asked him, and without waiting for a response she turned to rummage in her shopping bag. ‘I got a sandwich from the snack bar — chicken, you can eat that. And there’s some apples from Powell’s.’

‘That’s kind of you.’ He pushed the bags to one side. ‘Later, eh?’

Magnanimously, she waved aside the coins he held out to her.

‘Don’t be silly. You’ll be back within the hour then? Before she comes back.’

‘No, Mrs Cooper. I imagine I’ll be quite a while. I thought I’d walk.’

‘Walk!’

Mrs Cooper stared wildly.

‘It’s the other side of the common! You’ve never walked to Pond Street before, you’ve always driven.’ The lump rose and quaked in her throat. ‘Mr Chapman, be sensible! In this heat — with your leg — and when the doctor keeps telling you not to overdo it. You might —’ her voice suddenly lost all subtlety — ‘What on earth do you want to walk for?!’

He’d predicted all this. It was almost amusing to watch it occurring just as he expected.

‘I have my reasons, Mrs Cooper. It is’ — he nodded to the doorway — ‘a fine day.’

He stooped to shut the catch on his briefcase and do up the straps.

She looked unbelievingly at him.

‘You’re a fool,’ she said with sudden involuntary force. Then seemed dazed by her own words.

He raised his head.

‘That’s as may be,’ he said calmly.

He did up the second strap on the briefcase and straightened his jacket. She stood aside, stunned, as he lifted up the flap in the counter and nodded as he said, ‘Look after things, won’t you?

‘Bye now.’

‘Bye.’ She couldn’t say anything else.

The toy monkeys shook over the counter as he shut the shop door. She watched him turn right, then cross the road and stand poised for a while on the traffic island.

Why had she said those words to him? A sudden panic seized her.

But she’d meant them.

He stepped onto the opposite kerb. There was only the dull ache in his chest. Black trickles of melted tar gleamed in the gutter, and the cars as they gusted by seemed to raise a hotter, not a cooler draught. He walked through the thick shadows of the trees on the paving-stones, as if entering some long-rehearsed scene. And as he walked they noticed him: Hobbes; Simpson, behind his cool green and blue chemist’s bottles; the secretary in Hancock’s, sitting back now from her typewriter while the boss was at lunch. And they wondered, what was he doing, Mr Chapman, who was only ever to be seen in his shop or driving to and from it, and who never walked anywhere — except to the bank?

Simpson’s, Hancock’s, the Diana. On the corner, under the faded, dark-green awning, the wasps buzzed over Powell’s strawberries and plums. And there, in the shady recess of the shop, as if he really had nothing to do with the sun and the bright fruit on his stalls, in his grey, eternal cardigan which seemed to match his bloodless skin and ashen hair, old Powell himself, raising a hand, half surprised, as he passed. He would never know if it was true: that scar that was supposed to cover half his body.

Traffic filtered out of Allandale Road. A bus, a delivery van. And there, on the opposite corner, outside the Prince William, like holiday-makers, they sat and sprawled, shirts unbuttoned, glasses shining, with ten more minutes of drinking to go.

He turned into Allandale Road. As he did so, Hancock emerged, on the opposite side, from the back-entrance to the saloon, squaring his shoulders, raising his head but blinking in the brightness. And blinking too, as he crossed the road, at the sight of the sweet shop owner on the pavement with his briefcase.

The same and not the same. I once joked about the Prince William, Dorry. I said to Irene: ‘The Prince Willy — they named it after me.’

That was one evening before the war, when I was still preparing the shop for opening, and I asked her to meet me, at six, in the Prince William. There was a beer garden then, grass and wooden tables and cherry trees — where Armstrong’s garage is now — and there was a big wooden pub sign hanging at the front: Prince William himself in a bronze breastplate, sash and wig, and a smoky background suggestive of battles and storms. That was the only time the High Street regulars saw Irene. They looked at her, over their drinks, and perhaps they confided to each other later, already spreading my legend: ‘That woman with that new feller, Chapman, in the pub last night. You’ll never believe it — his wife.’

I told her to meet me after work and to wear the blue and white dress she wore on our honeymoon, because I wanted just one perfect evening. She came. She wore the dress. She looked like someone acting under instructions. She sipped the Pimms I bought her; she smiled across the wooden table, and even laughed at my joke, because she knew this was expected of her and it wouldn’t happen again and I must have one perfect picture …

I still keep that picture, Dorry. A mental photograph. Though the beer garden’s gone, Prince William in his breastplate’s gone … and she’s gone.

We walked back over the grass of the common, under the trees. How green this part of London always was. And up in the bedroom, behind the green curtains, the scent of Pimms and lemon on her lips … I let you touch me but I’m not touched, I let you take me but I’m not possessed, I let you …

That was in ’38. Two weeks later I slipped off a ladder and damaged my back. And a year after that — that was after the shop opened and Mother and Father died — the war broke out. But I didn’t fight. I wasn’t fit for active service. I only learnt to count, to number, not to touch.

30

‘Something up with the car?’

He gripped the briefcase more tightly, as if Hancock, stepping over onto his side, might have been about to snatch it.

‘No. No. I thought I’d walk. For a change.’

‘Sure you’re up to it old man?’

Hancock’s breath smelt of drink. The face was bleary-eyed, brick red. Five years ago the voice might have held a taunt (you — with your limp and weak chest — walk to Pond Street!), but now it seemed almost to waver with sympathy.

‘Pay-day at Pond Street?’

‘Yes.’

They stared inertly at each other as if looking into mirrors. Save for Hancock’s visits to the shop, they scarcely met, and now that they came face to face in the street it was as if something needed explaining.

‘I — er — was going to pop in on my way back.’

‘That’s all right. Mrs Cooper’s there.’

‘Of course. Look — are you sure you should be walking over there?’

‘Sure enough.’

Hancock shuffled awkwardly.

‘Well — mind how you go.’ He held out a hand indecisively. It was as if he were about to offer support — or needed to be steadied himself. But he changed the gesture in mid-course and pointed to the briefcase.

‘Hang on to the goods,’ he said drily.

Down Allandale Road. Past Armstrong’s garage. Armstrong’s pump attendants, who no longer were issued with blue and yellow overalls, lounging in the heat in faded singlets and jeans. Up above, the garish blue canopy with the company insignia and a sign saying ‘Quadruple Stamps’ — as if to make up for the hard prices on the petrol pumps. Those Arabs had driven a tough bargain. But on the forecourt there were great glistening black patches. See, it still gets spilt, precious stuff.

Across Allandale Road. Shade on this side. Breathing hard already. Pain in the chest just nudging. He would have to gauge it carefully; rest now and then.

A few shops to left and right. An electrician’s, an Asian food shop, a betting shop; and then the rows of tall, bay-fronted Victorian houses, with basements and steps up to the door, converted into offices and dental surgeries, or knocked down to make way for new blocks. Builders’ merchant’s; a car showroom; the squat, oblong office of a firm that made light bulbs. Dairy on the left opposite Finch Street (horses once, snorting and clopping; troughs outside, yellowish at the rim). Baptist church, zebra crossing, then more shops. Follow the road where it descends and curves to the left, and you get to where Mrs Cooper lives.

He turned right, out of the shade, into Finch Street, carrying the pain in his chest as if it were something he could retain or release at will. Finch Street was a cul-de-sac. Like the other streets to the right off Allandale Road it ended in railings and the footpath which skirted the common.

I told her, Dorry. That winter she came out of hospital and we bought Pond Street. She would have found out anyway. She had a way of knowing things, of sensing them before I even guessed them, so that what she didn’t know you felt compelled to tell her. ‘I think Dorry’s got a boy-friend,’ I said. ‘At last,’ I added, as though to pass it lightly off. She was sitting in her chair where she always sat now, that Angora shawl round her shoulders, pink with a grey-blue weave in it. She didn’t answer at first, as if she were waiting to hear something else.

‘Who?’ she said quietly.

But I didn’t know who. I didn’t say it was only a father’s guess. I knew nothing precise. You came home that Christmas and you said nothing, but you knew she knew, and you looked at me accusingly. She studied you, as if you might be marked, changed. You found it hard to meet her eyes.

And as though to overcome all that, you said blandly and indifferently one weekend in February: ‘Oh, I’ve met a man at college. A history graduate. We’ve been going out some time.’ As if you were afraid to make your voice sound glad.

‘Oh, that’s nice. Isn’t that nice, Willy? We must meet him sometime.’

You looked at her as if she were mocking you, calling the bluff of your own casualness. As if you’d expected anger, alarm.

‘You must bring him down here, Dorry.’

‘Maybe.’ You shrugged. ‘All right.’

And so you brought him, a fortnight later. To outface her challenge and to call her bluff in return? Or do I mis-judge you, Dorry? Did you come simply to oblige an ailing mother and a fond father?

Were you still, then, the good, the loyal daughter?

31

The tea things were laid on the trolley and on the mahogany cake stand. Salmon and egg and cress sandwiches, which she wasn’t allowed to eat; a cake, a Dundee. Mrs Pritchard had come specially to clean and help in the kitchen and I’d asked Mrs Cooper (‘That’s all right,’ she said, ‘I’ll manage’) to stand in at the shop. We hadn’t had a visitor in that house for so long. She put on a cream silk blouse, unworn for years. The sleeves seemed filled only with air. But she covered them with her shawl and sat in her chair, waiting. We heard the car pull up outside. I watched from the window. A blue Mini.

You had a bunch of flowers in your hand which you gave to him as he finished locking the car door. You whispered something as you came up the path. He buttoned his jacket. You straightened your dress. A performance.

‘This is Michael. Michael, Mother and Father.’

He was tall, keen-eyed; a large, strong hand held out for mine. His robust, intelligent good looks made me think of Doctor Cunningham, so that I shrank a little, as I did under those cool questions at the hospital, having expected someone somehow less imposing. He spoke deftly and fluently, crossing his long legs on the sofa and clasping his knee, and I felt my own voice falter when I offered: ‘History. Now I’ve always been fascinated by history.’ And I felt forlorn as you looked at me reproachfully, then turned your head in embarrassment at the conversation that failed to follow. In the silences, he gazed round, curiously, at the porcelain in the cabinet and the vases on the mantelpiece. His eyes would fix on Irene, then look quickly away. And I noticed, more than once, he gave the same look to you.

Your face reddened. With shame, with anger? I watched the colour deepen, the more the cups chinked, the more she wheezed in her armchair, plucked at her shawl and now and then coughed into her serviette, patting her throat and saying, ‘Oh I’m very sorry, please do forgive me, please’ — and I watched it flare up as if some draught had fanned it when she brushed crumbs from her blouse and announced:

‘Well Michael, it’s so nice to see you. You know, Dorothy doesn’t tell us much about you. She keeps her secrets. So you’re working for a doctorate. We must think of your futures, mustn’t we?’ She lifted her cup. ‘What exactly are your arrangements?’

I didn’t know she would have said that. Believe me, I had nothing to do with those words; and even I sat, with my slice of Dundee cake poised, in surprise, before my lips. Should I have intervened, put down my plate, and said, like a discreet husband, ‘Now really dear,’ and laughed? Made it clear it was only a game of bluff? But I wasn’t clear if it was only a game. Games turn into fights.

‘Well, when you say arrangements, Mrs Chapman’ — confusion and hostility suddenly upset the deftness — ‘I’m not sure that I — we — that’s to say it doesn’t — it’s a question of — what exactly do you mean by “arrangements”?’

And I watched Irene, in her chair, almost imperceptibly, draw in her feet.

Later, as you washed up the things together, dutifully, in the kitchen, I overheard snatches of your talk: ‘That was fun, wasn’t it?… I told you, didn’t I?… He doesn’t say much, does he?… Oh you were lucky he took time off from his precious shop to see us — he’ll be straight off again after this … this bloody china … so we know what to do now, don’t we Mike? Don’t we?…’

‘Bye.’

‘Goodbye.’

She didn’t come to the door. She had her excuse. She sat hunched with her shawl in the armchair.

‘Glad to have met you.’

I stood in the porch like some helpless mediator. I waved. The car lights winked, moving off down Leigh Drive. That was the only time I saw him, and the last time I saw you, without its being — what shall I say? — under conditions of truce.

He reached the end of Finch Street and passed beyond the gap in the railings.

Mrs Bennet said the world was ahead of you. Twenty-two that summer and your final exams to sit for. A First — as Mrs Bennet might have predicted. But no celebrations or congratulatory gifts and kisses. I only said to Mrs Cooper, who didn’t understand, ‘She got a First.’ ‘It’s the best you can get,’ I explained. ‘It means she’s got her degree.’ And I told Hancock, when he asked. ‘Always was a clever girl,’ he said. But I moderated my pride, in each case, for fear of the question that would follow — ‘What will she do now?’ You’d phoned up to tell us your result, almost disdainfully (‘Oh that’s wonderful news, Dorry, that’s wonderful’). And later you announced that you’d made up your mind to try for a Ph.D. Then nothing. Not even a word to say you’d be home for the summer. You had to vacate your college room at the end of the term but we could guess, surely enough, where you’d be living. Only a brief letter at the end of July, which said, ‘I’m taking a holiday. I’m going to Greece next month with Michael.’ ‘He’ll pay for her I suppose,’ was all she said, as if she were washing her hands of something. But I sent you a cheque, secretly, and wrote on the back of it: ‘For your holiday — enjoy yourselves.’ You didn’t return it. And four or five weeks later we got the postcard — a blue sea, white houses, a beach — marked somewhere in Crete; and on the back, signed only by you, was the message: ‘Enjoying ourselves.’

When I saw you next, that September, you still had traces of a sun-tan, but you didn’t want to discuss your holiday, and I felt jealous and thought of our meagre fortnights in Dorset.

She was in hospital again then — nothing bad; tests, observation. I hadn’t asked you to come. But did you time that visit carefully, knowing she wouldn’t be there? We didn’t do much talking. You had your large suitcase with you and you said you had to pick up some things. Books, papers, your tape-recorder. Yet most of those things had gone already. So why were you turning out drawers, taking things we could have kept for you, your perfume bottles from the bathroom, the Devon pottery that you bought in Teignmouth? You didn’t go to visit her at the hospital, and I never told her you were at home. ‘How’s Michael?’ I asked you. ‘Oh he’s fine, fine.’ But you didn’t say, ‘How’s Mother?’

And after that, letters, about once a month, which said little. Irene never read them, though she recognized them from the envelope. She left them to me as if they weren’t hers to touch. She seemed to be renouncing all contact with things. I opened them in the evening, and took them to the shop the next morning, tucked in my breast pocket (like this letter now), and I kept them, first in a cash tin in the safe, then in another tin — an old Oxo tin — which I have at home.

February, March, April ’73. Was it only last year? ‘How is she?’ was all Irene said after she knew I’d had a letter. ‘All right,’ I’d say and she’d turn and look away. ‘How is she?’ But that was more than you ever asked of her. Though she was dwindling, Dorry, in that armchair.

Another spell in hospital, that April. When I went to see her she was wired up and connected to some machine. Little wires from her neck, from her chest, a tube in her arm and nose. And she looked up oddly from beneath all that clutter, like a child who has put on a disguise or hidden behind something but easily been discovered. When she came home she said, ‘I’m going to have Barrett round. I want things to be settled.’ Barrett was her solicitor, Dorry.

And all this time I was working, harder than ever, in the shop. Though the face I saw in the mirror seemed to have become suddenly the face of an ageing, over-worked, livid-cheeked, corpulent man, a man who needed to ease off, take more recreation, retire. And already in my left side, though I scarcely noticed it till later, was that little pain, with its name like a rare butterfly’s.

April, May, June ’73. Then we got your letter, in July. It was the first one I showed her, though I was afraid — no stress, no excitement.

‘What will they do?’ She looked up blankly. ‘What will they live on? She won’t have any money.’ Though it wasn’t the money that troubled her. She raised her face and said — she who’d always seemed able to predict things — ‘What now? What happens now?’ Though behind those words there was something else, a cry, far off, as if sounding over waves — which I knew then I’d never stopped hearing.

I believe she would have seen Barrett again. She would have changed it, Dorry. If there’d been time.

Dear Mother and Father,

I’m giving up my course here. I can always finish the thesis later. Michael’s been offered a research post at Bristol and there’s a chance of a lecturership. I’m going with him to live with him.

32

The common littered with people. Couples fondling each other on the grass. Prams. Kids. Plastic balls. A commotion and a frenzied splashing down at the paddling pool. He made his way along the asphalt path, screwing up his eyes against the sun. He patted momentarily his breast pocket.

You can see it all from here, Dorry. The world ahead of you. Down there on the right, the stretch of the High Street where it flanks the common. Traffic lights beyond. Then the railway bridge: green sign with a white arrow pointing to the station. Domed roof of the Town Hall, gabled roof of Gibbs’ department store. There are the shops, straight ahead, on Common Road, where she used to get all her things; Mason’s the butcher’s, Cullen’s, Henderson’s. Beyond them — you could have seen the clock-tower once, over the roof-tops — the school where my parents toiled to send me. And, far-distant, half-left, poking up from the shoulder of the hill, the grey, ill-proportioned spire of St Stephen’s.

I met her here those first times, Dorry; here on the common. She looked as though she were lingering on some errand. And up there, at St Stephen’s, you were christened, and your grandfather, whom you never saw, was buried, near the plaque to his already dead son. We never moved out of these narrow bounds. Born here, schooled here, worked here. And even when I met her I stood here on the common and thought: enough, now everything is in its place, and I in mine.

Spire of St Stephen’s, domed roof of the Town Hall, grey paths across the green common; trams passing. The sun was warm on our necks as we leant on the railings. But I never believed you could have the real thing.

She would have acted, Dorry; would have seen Barrett. There was that last week. She would have said, ‘Willy —’

July ’73. Up the Common Road, past Mason’s and Cullen’s, past the evening plane trees, my briefcase, with the books, on the back seat. She was waiting for me to come. I used to let myself in, so as not to disturb her. How many times had I done these things? Past the clock and the mirror in the hall. It must have been between the time Mrs Pritchard left and I shut the shop. Her head was on one side. The cap still on her tube of pills: she hadn’t reached for them. Her lips were blue and cold and had a sickly smell when I bent to touch them.

He always claimed he’d seen her. That morning. Though they didn’t believe him, Stephen and Bob. Don’t believe what old Phil tells you. He didn’t tell Mr Chapman. It was an honour to do the round Mr Chapman’s house was on. Leigh Drive: number thirty-three. There was dew on the garden and sparrows chirping. She must have heard him put the papers through — always three or four dailies at thirty-three. For he saw her at the front window as he propped his bike on the opposite kerb. It was the only time he’d seen her. And she stood there for a moment, behind the window, pulling back the lace curtain — did she want to call him, to say something? — like someone trapped in a glass case.

Up that slide, Dorry — there where the kids are playing. When she said, ‘Why don’t you?’ I did, I obeyed. I clambered up that slide and slid down.

Mrs Cooper wiped her glasses. There hadn’t been a customer for nearly a quarter of an hour. Three o’clock. The mid-afternoon lull. She sat by the till. Her glasses were misty. Where was he? Half way up the Common Road? In Russell Street? Gasping, straining his poor heart. Mr Chapman — she’d do anything, anything. She rested her elbow on the counter and propped her cheek in her palm. No customers; the shop to herself. She rocked gently back and forth on two legs of her stool, crossing her legs one over the other — a slither of nylon — and feeling her shoe on her right foot, under the counter, hang just by the toes.

Sandra stood before the mirror in the changing cubicle. It was hot and oppressive down here in the basement of the shop. The electric lights, the music, the blow-ups of Mick Jagger and Paul Newman on the walls, put there to make it seem they were watching you undress. Two rows of cubicles with flimsy curtains. Though the thing was, of course, not to draw the curtains. She stood in her bra and briefs looking at herself. Yes, she was all right in the right places. She didn’t need a bra — she had a good mind to take it off and go back to the shop with only her T-shirt on, just to see that old bag’s eyes pop. She’d tried on the red dress. Yes, it looked great on her. She would buy it, with Mr Chapman’s money. But she paused, irresolutely, before the mirror. Just for a moment, it was as though some other person looked back at her, unreachable behind the glass.

Children’s playground. Grey spire of St Stephen’s. Dome of the Town Hall. Everything in its place. He put his left thumb in his breast pocket and touched the letter.

‘You will see in the end.’

Yes, well all right. Even though she never changed the will, most of that money should have been yours. I didn’t need it. But — don’t you see? I kept it because it was all I had that was hers. It was her price, my dues from the bargain. And I would only have kept it — not touched it. So that in the end, anyway –

And supposing I’d given you the money — with indecent promptness, after the funeral? ‘Here — it’s mine, but I don’t want it.’ You’d have gone off with it, for good — to him in Bristol. Don’t you see? I kept that money to keep you too.

So I wrote you that letter in August. She’d been dead only three weeks.

Dear Dorothy,

You know that Mother made clear in her will that no money of hers should be passed on by me to you, except through a will of my own. You know my feelings about it. You know had she ever discussed it I would have persuaded her against it. But out of respect for her wishes — out of respect for your dead mother — I think we must do what she wanted.

Where did I find those sanctimonious words? I should have added: ‘Out of respect for her wishes you ought to stay with me, be with me.’ You were her gift. And you wrote back — that was only a month after we cremated her — ‘What about the respect due to me?’

I waited for you to come. All through last winter. I thought: if you come back, what does the money matter? But only your demanding letters came. Were we really at war?

I waited through Christmas. I did all those things I’d done before — got up at five-fifteen, made my breakfast, sat at the table at night with my books on the green baize cloth — automatically and mechanically, as if she were still there. I touched nothing. The furniture, the china, her chair by the window. I said to Mrs Pritchard: Nothing must be changed. The same and not the same. And in the shop I felt my face, over the counter, go hard like a shell. I thought, this is what happens: you harden, you set in your mould. I worked on like a machine, counting the weekly takings I no longer needed. Though that was a winter of sudden thrift: power-cuts; no oil, no lights in the shop windows, a three-day week. And I saw on Hancock’s face as he came in for cigars a stony look like my own: it’s all over, that mad boom, now we can count the cost.

The cost? I had these pains in my side. I knew it was my heart. I went to Doctor Field’s. And then to the hospital, where they tested me and cardiographed me and entered little notes in files. How fragile we are. Doctor Field explained and prescribed tablets. They’re the same ones as my wife took, I said, and he said, Yes. Then he told me: ‘And you must take the pressure off. Perhaps it’s time you were thinking of giving up that shop of yours.’

Mrs Cooper said, ‘Well he’s right too. You could give it up now. Take a complete rest. I’d manage for you.’ She had the air of a hired nurse who has earned a share in her patient’s decisions. Along the High Street she was broad-casting, with her own embellishments, my story — our story, Dorry. ‘Went off and left him, she did. Only turned up for the funeral. Went off with some student — and him with a heart condition. Little bitch.’ Though I knew what she was thinking: ‘Poor, poor Mr Chapman — the old tight-wad.’ ‘Come, come and spend Christmas with me,’ she said, ‘You can’t spend it all on your own.’ And I knew I had to watch out.

I waited, Dorry. The money was only a token. I never meant us to fight.

33

He reached the Common Road, under the shade of the plane trees. The pain in his chest was like a tight breastplate. He paused for a moment by one of the peeling tree trunks, gathering his breath; removed his jacket and hooked it over his right shoulder. A ‘Mr Whippy’ van, pink and cream, with a jangling loudspeaker that played ‘Greensleeves’, had drawn up on the pavement. Hands reaching. Good weather for business.

He crossed over the road, breathing deeply, waiting for the gaps in the traffic, then turned up Russell Street.

I used to walk along this same road, Russell Street, on my way to school, with a briefcase in my hand then. For Mum and Dad said, now you’ve got to the grammar school you must have a briefcase, not a satchel like the ordinary kids. I used to get the tram from where we lived, which was not far from where Mrs Cooper’s flat is, down Allandale Road, then walk over the common. At four o’clock back again, less briskly, by the same route; though not before taking the detour, with the others, down Pond Street — to Mr Vincent’s shop.

If someone had said then: One day you will own that shop; one day you will walk along Russell Street with your briefcase containing wage-packets and order forms, I wouldn’t have been surprised. If someone had said, There, where you walk across the common, you will meet your future wife, there she will decide to marry you, I would have replied, All right, so be it. I didn’t believe, despite being at grammar school, that the future belonged to me. I thought: things would come to you anyway, and when they did they would already be turned into history.

Shady on this side of Russell Street. Gaunt Edwardian houses offsetting the new estate on the other side. Then the turning-off which, if you follow it, curves up past the old people’s home to St Stephen’s church. Then the brick wall — there are slogans on it in chalk and aerosol spray — ‘Russell Bootboys’, ‘Judy Freeman fucks coons’; ambitiously sketched bits of anatomy — which someone has tried to remove. Then the railings, the double row of chestnuts, their outer branches jutting over the railings and the pavement. Pause here. Breathe. The shade under chestnut trees is always dense and cool. They are one of the first trees to sprout in spring and to shed in the autumn. That was something I learnt at school, Dorry, by not paying attention; by looking from the window.

School gates open, splitting the wrought iron motto in two. Virtus et Fortitudo. Asphalt area beneath the blocks of class-rooms — silent now. To the right of the gates, beyond the trunks of the chestnuts, in a square plot bordered with marigolds, the memorial.

Perhaps I knew him then, perhaps I was already his memory, this old, breathless figure, the same and not the same as me, with a briefcase, walking now down Russell Street. Perhaps I knew Mr Vincent’s shop would become Mr Chapman’s; perhaps I knew when I walked home over the common that I was crossing the path I would one day take home to my wife. Life was set out like a map. Like the waxy, pastel-coloured maps that hung, that afternoon, in the History Room. ‘Europe after the Seven Years’ War’; ‘The World — Present Day’. The history master was explaining about Henry VIII. From that second-floor room you could see, if you looked one way, the playing fields with the white goal posts, and, the other way, the asphalt, the chestnut trees, the gates leading out into Russell Street. It was an icy afternoon in March but the sun was bright. Shrill cries were coming from the playing fields. History. The master said I didn’t have the right attitude. ‘Does not concentrate; poor essays’ (‘Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries because he’d have done so anyway’). Even that afternoon he tried to recall me to the present (in a history lesson, Dorry!) with his sharp ‘Are you with us Chapman? Not paying attention again!’ But I put my head to the window and the view like a map, and I saw.

That was the day before the school sports. I was the favourite for the mile. I’d won it the year before and equalled the school record, and I was seldom beaten in house matches. I was sixteen, not athletic-looking, but I had strong legs and stamina. I was hopeless at schoolwork but I had this one talent for distance running. I’d win again they said — and even the history master had to concede (the class laughed) as he caught me gazing out of the window — ‘All right, Chapman, you’ll have your moment tomorrow, but would you mind telling us now why Thomas Cromwell was executed?’

He moved on past the school gates, put the briefcase down, paused again, held his left side, waited.

34

‘Right, let’s be having you!’

The voice of Mr Hill, the games master — veteran of Great War drill halls and still apt to let his sergeant’s voice rap and chafe them as if they were troops departing for the front — rang out over the track. His black starter’s pistol lay on the grass and he strode now up and down in front of them, his stop-watch dangling from his neck, calling out their names, which he knew perfectly well, and ticking them off on his list, as if, at this moment of action, it were all the more necessary to keep precise records.

‘Right, up to the line when I tell you.’

In front of them the black cinder track, already churned and pitted by the afternoon’s events, stretched away to the finishing line and the judge’s table, then curved to the left. The mile; the culminating event of the day. Ahead, beyond the hawthorn hedge and the cricket sight-screens, the playing fields. On the inside, the high jump and long jump pits; on the outside, the spectators. Boys in blue uniforms; exhorting parents. To the left, across the track, the elm trees and wooden fence marking the school boundary. Tops of the houses in Woodruff Road beyond; the spire of St Stephen’s.

A fresh wind stirred the branches of the elm trees and the sun sailed out and then was shuttered again behind swift clouds. The day was bright, but colder than one expected for late March, and the watching parents stamped their feet and rubbed gloved hands, partly from chilliness and partly to prove their heartiness as spectators.

‘He’s the one to watch.’

Thompson was speaking to him as they waited, jogging and limbering behind the starting line. He was nodding towards a tall, muscular boy, built like a sprinter rather than a distance runner, with dark hair and clean features, whose face, at that moment, looked tense and severe.

‘He’s won the 440. If he wins this he’ll get the Victor Ludorum, as well as the Mile Cup.’

‘If we let him win.’

He smiled; and for the first time heard his voice sound as if he were playing a part.

Thompson grinned. Thompson was captain of his house, a senior prefect and one of the honoured of the school. He would stand by the track one day, vigorously shouting-on his own son.

‘You’ll let me take up the running at first as usual?’ he said, deferring graciously. The parting in his sandy hair was clean and straight, even now at the end of a day’s athletics.

‘Why? Won’t you try yourself? This isn’t a house match.’

Thompson shook his head protestingly. His duties were to his house, the school, to fair play and credit where due. There was nothing he wouldn’t sacrifice for these things.

‘No. It’s your race.’

They paced to and fro, loosening their limbs, waiting for the judge’s signal and Mr Hill’s command. They wore white shorts and singlets and, since they were finalists in a major event, had black numbers on white cards fixed to their backs. He watched them flexing and drawing breath. There were signs of strain, of apprehension on the waiting faces, mixed with odd looks of pride and earnestness, as if they were thinking, only this moment matters, only the race counts. They paused, communing with themselves, summoning their strength, glancing down at their bodies and up again, as if looking into mirrors.

And he felt none of this — not any more. He stood on the grass at the track-side, bending and stretching his legs mechanically, as if he, the favourite, were not really a participant, as if the race about to be run were already decided. For wasn’t it? He looked beyond Thompson at the dark-haired boy, whose face with its clean, grave expression suddenly turned with a look of hostility.

‘Take your marks!’

Mr Hill’s voice rasped and the crowd at the track-side quietened distinctly, like a theatre audience when the lights go down. He took his place on the line, between Thompson and Cox. He was expected to win. From out of the crowd he heard his own name, carried shrilly on the wind: ‘Chapmaaan …’ He had won the 880, beating that same dark-haired boy into third place, and he was famous in the school, if for nothing else, for the mile. ‘Chapmaan …’ He was expected to win, but the crowd would like a battle. People liked battles.

‘Wait for it then.’

Mr Hill walked pompously across in front of them, in-specting the ranks, waving his pistol in his right hand as if about to carry out an execution.

Black cinders, with the white lanes marked ahead. March, 1931. Four-thirty, by the school clock-tower. Most of them would be leaving that summer.

The sun came out from behind a cloud, shining into their faces, gilding their expectant brows and jutting chins, making tiny specks in the cinders sparkle in front of them.

Now!

A mile. Five and a third laps of the black track. Plenty of time. Time to think as well as act; time to watch as well as take part. That was the beauty of distance running. A send-off cheer from the crowd; the blur of faces by the finishing line; and by the time they had rounded the first bend a pace and a pattern had emerged. The dark-haired boy, wearing number three, in the lead: to be expected. Holloway chasing him, then Thompson, making his sacrifice; then Peters, Cox, with his number card already coming loose, and himself, without having consciously planned it, tucked in in mid-field. Hawthorn hedge on the right; sound of breathing and scuffed cinders; and their own shadows, in the sun, suddenly swinging round from behind them and appearing on their left.

To be expected — number three in front. Valiantly to the fore. A fierce pace. Never mind. Stick to the mid-field. Settle back, watch.

Boundary fence and Woodruff Road on the right. Shouts of the crowd sounding thin over this side of the track. Round the bend towards the starting line. This is the point at which you realize what it entails, running a mile. Legs already tired, breath short; and over four laps to go. Never mind. The end of the second lap’s worse. Third and fourth laps hardest of all. But somewhere in the middle you find a second strength. The pains in the calves, the ache in the chest are only signs that the body is working. A machine.

He felt it now, thudding beneath him like a motor, bearing him up as if he were being carried by something that wasn’t part of him.

Keep your eye on the landmarks as you round the bends: St Stephen’s spire, into the back straight; the clock-tower, into the home straight. That’s the trick of it. ‘Not paying attention again Chapman!’ But, didn’t he see, that was precisely what he was doing? Looking at things that were fixed while you moved yourself. That was how you endured.

They came out of the back straight and round the bend towards the third lap. The number three had a good three yards’ lead and had only slackened pace slightly. Holloway followed, shoulders rolling a little. Thompson clung gamely onto Holloway — he had enough perhaps for another lap. Cox had edged forward into fourth place and Peters slipped back; so that in the front running there were three distinct divisions, about nine yards spanning them all. The sun shone again as they entered the home straight and he saw Peters dropping back, red-faced and curly-headed, at his right shoulder, screwing up his eyes exasperatedly.

Past the winning post, round the first bend, the shadows on the grass swivelling round mockingly in front of them. Barely half the race run, but already — you can sense it — they are getting lost in their struggles. A grimness setting in. They don’t notice the wails of the crowd or the encouragement of the figures clustered round the winning post and the judge’s desk — sports masters, house monitors in blazers and flannels, Mr Hill, bending over the track, waving what seems a threatening fist as they approach; the clock-tower, the spire. Don’t they see, the secret is not to think of the race? But they notice only the endless dark circuit of the track. A grimness. The crowd senses it. The cheering changes tone. They like a battle.

Winning post for the third time. He ought to move up now, not let the gap open. Cox was in second place; Holloway struggling; Thompson falling back, spent at last. Peters had pressed ahead again, and he could hear a determined breathing — it was Price perhaps, or Skinner — close behind him. Move up now. It was expected.

‘Chapmaaan …’

He pressed his toes down harder and stretched his pace. The machine adjusts: the power is there. He moved up past Peters and alongside Thompson who turned, as he passed, a haggard, sweaty face, proud of having done his bit, performed his duty, and fell back. Then he settled in behind Holloway.

A surge of noise from the crowd. The back straight. Holloway was a heavy lumberer; stamina, but no finish. Cox would try, and Peters, behind, might have something left. But his eyes were on the black number three, holding its position perhaps four yards ahead.

How brave, how solitary. The eternal athlete, the eternal champion, running into his future.

He picked up the briefcase and walked on slowly past the war memorial.

Into the top bend. The sun was out, tinselling the grass, shining on the straining bodies in front of him. He looked at the black numbers on the white singlets, 3, 4, 8, all careering on, and suddenly felt that he wanted to laugh.

He kicked his legs into another spurt, passed Holloway and moved beside Cox as they entered the home straight. The crowd yelled — the last lap about to begin — wrapping them in a tunnel of fervour. They love this. This is the stuff of which stories are told. He could hear them saying, when the race was over: ‘The way Chapman moved up’, ‘The way Cox fought back’; spreading the legend. And they themselves, the competitors, in the changing room afterwards, flushed with the drama: heroes.

He overtook Cox, who held on, gasping, behind him. Past the jumping pits. Past the trestle table, set back from the track — next to the loud-speaker apparatus and the judge’s desk — on which were laid out the trophies. Cups, shields, glinting in the sun. A glimpse of the prizes to be won. Then the bell, at the finishing line, ferociously clanged; Mr Hill’s bugle of a mouth; a confusion of yelled names. Chapman had poised himself. To be expected. Keep up the performance.

The hawthorn hedge; back of the sight-screens. For the last time. The figure two yards in front had given a back-ward glance as they left the bell behind, and the face, appearing for an instant over the shoulder, was taut with determination. He looked at the tensed torso — the shoulders, still steady, the sleek black hair. How innocent it seemed. A better body than his, the kind of body that would wear well and look good in photographs and always seem in its prime. Whereas his own body (they laughed at him in class) had a sort of unyouthful clownishness about it. The sun went in. He drew closer to the unyielding leader. He winced suddenly. Then he was past. Only the black track ahead: fence, spire of St Stephen’s.

What had he done? Excitement in the crowd. He had passed the leader on the bottom bend with still most of the lap to go — not, as usual, on the last bend. Begun his final spurt early. That was unexpected.

He ran down the back straight. He thought: why was Thomas Cromwell executed?

Round the top bend. Pain in the chest. To be expected. The crowd in uproar. They saw he hadn’t shaken off his rival: the former leader was catching up again. He knew it.

School clock-tower. The minute hand had moved only that little. The race is decided. It’s over as soon as it starts. They think it’s a battle but it’s only a performance. They think it’s action but it’s only a pattern. You move and keep your eyes on what is fixed. And if you win it blinds you. You think, ‘This moment is mine.’ It’s yours, like the silver cup they give you with your name on it (‘Mile Champion, 1931’), but you forget it’s only a performance, and it’s the moment that captures you. Down the straight. The last time. If you win, you lose. The crowd is screaming. There will be the victory ceremony, the trophies, proud smiles, grandiloquent words on the loud-speaker. Virtus et Fortitudo. After the excitement, the crowd will go away, light cigarettes, buy evening papers.

The dark-haired boy was perhaps only a yard behind. Hold him off a little longer. But let him have his moment. Let him think it’s the real thing.

The jumping pits, the trophy stand. For the last time. The tape stretched out ahead. Heads arching in over the finishing line. A photographer for the school magazine, with a boater, squatting on the track beyond the tape.

The dark-haired boy’s name was Harrison. Jack Harrison. He had a younger brother who was captain of cricket. He would be leaving in the summer. His parents were there, amongst the crowd, smartly dressed in tweeds, the father imposing, the mother pale-skinned, chestnut-haired. And she might have been there, the sister, Irene.

They would be shouting now, the mother and father, the father bellowing himself hoarse (would he remember him later — ‘Chapman’?) as they urged their son to take the lead once more. There would be cries of delight as they watched him breast the finishing tape; frenzied clapping and self-important smiles as they watched him walk up to take the 440 Trophy, the Mile Cup, the Victor Ludorum. The father would light a cigar. Honour to the family. Rejoicing in the home that night.

There he was, at his shoulder, in the outer lane. Brow wet, chin jutting. He could force him back, if he wanted to, run faster. The power was there. Thirty yards to go. Neck and neck. Sun in their eyes. Twenty, fifteen.

All right. Now.

35

You were standing in the hallway with the front door open. I had seen the car parked outside as I drove up Leigh Drive. The blue Mini — his Mini; the boot open and already packed with boxes, clothes on hangers, polythene bags, jumble. You didn’t know I was there. You must have been upstairs when I pulled up on the drive. And you weren’t expecting me. It was only five on a sunny evening in May. You didn’t know I had this pain in my chest, attacks of breathlessness, and that that afternoon I’d shut the shop early. Otherwise, you chose your moment well.

I got out of the car, walked over to the Mini, then in at the front gate. There were tulips out by the front path. You were standing at the foot of the stairs, sideways on, adjusting your grip on a loaded cardboard box. It was one of the cardboard boxes in which goods used to arrive at the shop. You raised it up from beneath with your knee. You hadn’t seen me and weren’t expecting me. When people aren’t expecting to be seen they look their truest. How innocent you looked. You were wearing jeans and a white blouse, and the way you shifted the box with your leg was so determined, so absorbed. Then, as you turned, you looked up and saw me. Your eyes hardened, as if a childish prank had turned suddenly into a crime. But before that they flickered: a moment of fear, of precariousness, as if, if I’d made a sudden move, you might have toppled.

‘Father.’

‘Dorry.’

My eyes took their photograph of that moment. Your face framed in the doorway; half turned; your profile caught in the mirror behind. You looked trapped. In the box you were carrying I saw the edge of the little wooden chest — polished walnut with a brass catch — in which Irene had kept her jewels. You didn’t have a key. You must have known where I put them — in the drawer of the bureau.

‘Dorry, what are you doing?’

You clung to the cardboard box as if I’d have wrenched it from you.

‘I’m taking the last of my things.’

‘Those are her things.’

‘Were. They’re mine now.’

I stood on the porch steps, my keys in my hand. You had occupied the house and were forbidding me entrance. There was a pain in my chest like a metal bar, which you weren’t aware of. We stood like that, for what seemed an infinity. I thought: I can see what ought to happen, what should happen; but it won’t, it will turn the other way. If you hadn’t been holding that box I would have stepped forward to embrace you.

‘Dorry, let’s talk.’

‘No. Not now.’

Your voice was exasperated rather than defiant. I noticed another cardboard box at the foot of the stairs with one of her fur stoles inside, just visible beneath a sheet of brown paper. I remembered when she bought it.

‘Dorry, we ought to talk. We can settle this.’

You shook your head. The box was getting heavy in your hands, but you clung to it like a defence.

‘Will you let me take this to the car?’

There were a score of phrases ready to hand — ‘Now listen here my girl … You’ve no right … Take those things back this minute’ — but I said nothing. I thought: I’m not going to fight; if there is no fight then no one wins.

I said, ‘Dorry, what are you doing?’

The weight of the box was beginning to threaten your pose. You raised it again with your knee. There was a moment when it seemed your act of daring might end in comic catastrophe — necklaces strewn over the stairs, emeralds and pearls over the hall carpet. But you steadied yourself, propping the box against the stair-post.

I stepped inside. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’

A stupid question, I know. But it made it seem as if I’d half expected you; that the fact that you were looting the house wasn’t important.

‘Oh don’t worry — I would have left you a note!’

Your brow knotted. If I had fought you it would have been so much easier, wouldn’t it?

‘Dorry, I had no idea —’

‘Well you’ve caught me in the act, haven’t you? I thought you’d be at your shop.’ You hissed the last word.

‘I shut the shop early today. I’m not so well, you know, Dorry: I have to take things easier —’

‘Well if it’s all such a strain why don’t you shut that bloody shop for good! Give it up for good!’ Your fingers clawed at the box. Then you added suddenly: ‘You can now, can’t you? She’s been dead nine months, you know!’

That was your victory cry. You stepped forward, hug-ging the box, as if you knew you could step through me. I didn’t prevent you. On the wall behind you was your photograph — you in her arms, with me looking on, at your christening. I held my side. I said, ‘Look, I’m not well. I’ve got to sit down. Come to me — when you’ve finished.’

But I didn’t go to sit down at once. I leant against the stair-post like some dumb, helpless statue, while you passed to and fro, ignoring me, taking away her things like trophies. I thought: she gave you to me in place of what she couldn’t give herself; now you are taking from me what had been hers. Through the open door, I watched you lay her furs on the back seat of the car, carefully, lovingly — a way you never treated her.

When you passed me for the fourth time I said, ‘I’ll be in there,’ and tottered into the living-room. I sat in the armchair, facing the windows, with my back straight, my knees square in front of me and my arms on the arm-rests as if I were made of bronze. The garden was in shade but there was sun on the lilac tree. I said to myself: I will give you the money. And when I give you the money I will give up the shop. But first you must come to me one last time.

Upstairs you were opening and closing drawers. I thought, Mrs Pritchard will learn of it, Mrs Cooper will get wind of it. I would have to perform for her benefit, invent another legend: ‘You see, that’s what daughters do, Mrs Cooper, that’s the thanks you get for all your trouble.’ I heard you pass in the hall. You said nothing, not even ‘Goodbye’.

36

Bryant and Miss Fox looked up over the counter, amazed, as if they hadn’t expected to see him; then they looked doubly shocked, seeing the state he was in — gasping, sweat pouring off him.

‘Didn’t you come in the car?’ Bryant asked.

He leant on the counter.

‘I walked. It’s all right.’

‘Quick, Susan — a chair for Mr Chapman.’

Miss Fox opened the flap in the counter, brought out a wooden, round-backed chair, and he sat down in it, like an honoured customer.

‘And a glass of water, if you wouldn’t mind,’ he said.

He reached for the bottle of pills in his pocket.

‘Why on earth did you walk?’ said Bryant, almost scoldingly. ‘In this weather. You shouldn’t.’

‘It’s all right. I know what I’m doing. Be fine in a moment.’

Bryant was bald on top but with sleek growths of pale hair at the back and sides; he wore thick glasses over brown, needly eyes. Miss Fox just turned twenty, was plump and brisk.

‘There,’ he said, having dissolved the tablet under his tongue and drained the tumblerful of water.

They both still looked at him as if he were some escaped convict.

Normally on Fridays he got to Pond Street at a quarter to three. It was half-past three now. Not such a great difference. But they seemed to sense everything had changed.

‘Well — what’s new?’

Bryant tried to appear unperplexed. He rubbed his chin uneasily. ‘Oh — average week. Ice-cream and soft drinks up, of course, with the weather. Sure you’re okay?’

He felt weak, despite the effects of the pill, but he said, ‘Yes, yes.’

‘Think it will last?’

He looked up, momentarily puzzled.

‘The weather.’

‘Oh — the forecast was good this morning.’

Bryant ran his palm over his bald crown.

‘As long as it lasts for the weekend,’ said Miss Fox.

‘Going away somewhere?’

‘Broadstairs. With my sister.’

‘That’s nice.’

A customer entered and Bryant said in a self-conscious, impatient voice, ‘Susan, see to this gentleman will you?’

Bryant leant forward towards him, while Miss Fox moved down the counter. Bryant liked to display his authority and to indicate to Miss Fox that he had a special, confidential relationship with Mr Chapman which allowed him to delegate tasks. It was all quite transparent. He was hoping soon the shop would be his. He was waiting for Mr Chapman to pass it on. He even hoped that the Briar Street shop, Mrs Cooper’s claims notwithstanding, might one day be his.

‘About those copies of the orders which I phoned about. There was only one, Jackson’s — and he came yesterday. Have you got the others?’

‘No.’ He patted the briefcase. ‘There’s some receipts, some wholesalers’ lists — and, the usual. I didn’t make out those orders.’

‘But —’ Bryant looked confused — ‘we’re getting rather low on some lines.’

‘Never mind. You’ll see,’ he said calmly.

Bryant frowned, scratched his cheek, seemed to be about to ask something, but then smoothed his expression. He resented his employer’s insistence on doing so much of the paperwork himself; and the fact that that paperwork was now becoming lax and haphazard seemed further proof that the boss should step down.

Miss Fox moved up the counter, having served the customer.

‘Broadstairs?’ resumed Mr Chapman, undoing the straps of his briefcase.

‘Yes — my sister and her husband have a holiday flat down there.’

‘Holidays eh?’

The girl smiled. She had a sober, rather flat face which rippled now and then with girlishness. He half suspected that Bryant and Miss Fox didn’t get on.

‘Parents going down too?’

‘Yes — maybe.’

‘Good.’ He fished in his briefcase. ‘Well I’d better do what I came to do.’

The pain in his chest had subsided and he breathed more easily. Bryant and the girl still looked perturbed, but they seemed more reassured when he produced the familiar buff envelopes. Well, they would be surprised again. Out of common propriety they wouldn’t open their packets and count their money now. They would see the usual figure on the advice slip inside the opaque envelope windows. Perhaps later, after he’d gone, they would check their money separately and not dare to tell the other their discovery, in case of jealousies, recriminations. But they would know. One hundred for Miss Fox. Five hundred for Bryant.

Paid.

Sandra walked into the shop, the new dress, in a smart pink and brown carrier bag, in her hand. She was late, but she didn’t care. Mr Chapman wasn’t back yet. Only the old cow, alone at the counter. She swung the carrier bag casually and met Mrs Cooper’s eyes.

‘You’re not going to walk back again?’ said Bryant belligerently. Then, placatingly, ‘Here, let me run you back in my car.’

‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘I know what I’m doing.’ And then, reshouldering his jacket and eyeing his watch, ‘You’ll be getting the rush from the school any minute.’

‘Get the bus back along the High Street,’ Miss Fox urged, looking confused.

‘Yes, maybe. You enjoy that weekend now. So long.’

He took a last, curious glance around the shop. He’d never told them, Bryant or Miss Fox, that once he’d come here on the way home after school, for comics and liquorice sticks. Vincent was a fat, round-faced, jovial man — like some figure in a pack of ‘Happy Families’. Now his own name was over the door.

He stepped out and up towards the school, not down towards the High Street; and was aware of their eyes, inside, watching him helplessly, as if, as he left, he had turned the key in the door.

‘And what’s this then?’ said Mrs Cooper. Her hand was on the edge of the carrier bag, into which she had peered beadily, spotting the red dress.

Down Russell Street. Steadily. The body is a machine. The sun fell on his back, sending a shadow out in front of him which gave his blunt and portly frame an air of sprightly elongation. Behind him they were coming out of school. Out through the mottoed iron gates. Blazers slung over shoulders, sleeves rolled; loose, restless limbs. They carried books and bags carelessly and had their uniforms adapted so as to keep in the fashion: wide-bottomed trousers — once it was tapered legs and sharp-toed shoes — and platform heels. They scuffed along by the railings, under the chestnut trees, loosening the blue and cream striped tie he had once worn. White shirts and blue blazers under dappled leaves. He let them pass him as if he were being overtaken in a race.

‘Nothing better to squander your money on?’ said Mrs Cooper.

‘Can spend it how I like, can’t I?’ said Sandra. She bent over the fridge, took out a can of Coca-Cola, pulled off the ring-tab and, as Mrs Cooper’s lips drew tighter, said coolly, ‘It’s all right, I’ll ring it up.’

‘Nothing but spend!’ Mrs Cooper said. She’d put a hand inside the carrier bag and was feeling the slippery material.

‘As a matter of fact,’ Sandra added, ‘I wasn’t really spending anything. More of a present.’ She tilted her head aloofly. ‘Mr Chapman gave me an extra twenty-five quid this morning. He said to buy a new dress with it.’

She swallowed a gulp of Coke.

‘What did you say?!’ Mrs Cooper’s face was pale and contorted as if she were about to scream. ‘What?!’ She clutched the carrier bag and looked suddenly, with widening eyes, at the front of Sandra’s T-shirt as if she’d spotted the signal to attack.

Not now, not now. Wait, watch. Look at what’s fixed.

He was leaning with one hand on the railings beside the children’s playground. Someone said, ‘You all right?’ and held out a hand, and he said, ‘Yes,’ though it was difficult to speak. The common was as crowded as when he’d passed in the opposite direction. Children on the swings in the playground and under the willow beside the paddling pool. School-kids going home. Boys from John Russell meeting girls from Allandale and St Clare’s and sprawling on the grass. But none of this belonged to him. He felt cold in the sunlight.

Not now. Breathe. Spire of St Stephen’s, dome of the Town Hall. Look at these things. I was an athlete once.

The grass beside the playground was worn and thin. He lowered his head to stop the giddiness. Against the foot of the railings litter had blown and wedged itself. Cigarette packets, newspapers, sweet wrappers.

Dorry, I sent you the £15,000. You’ll come.

37

They watched him cross by the traffic island and then disappear for a moment as he stepped onto the near pavement. It was almost four-thirty. He was walking in a shuffling, unsteady fashion, his sleeves rolled, his jacket draped loosely over one shoulder.

Mrs Cooper gripped the edge of the counter. All things being normal, she would have been ready now, as he staggered in through the door, with her ‘I told you so’ and her ‘What did you expect?’, ready with her taunts and then, sitting him down, fussing round him, with her un-diminished devotion. But something had happened. She had torn apart the red dress. She had pulled and Sandra had pulled; and she had felt suddenly, in pulling, that it wasn’t a dress at all but Mr Chapman she was pulling, back and forth, in the most shameless way; and when it had ripped suddenly down the seam it was as though Mr Chapman had come apart, in the same flimsy fashion, and that was all there was left of him.

‘He never bought you this,’ she said.

‘ ’Ere, give it ’ere!’

‘Little liar! Little bitch!’

Then Sandra had said those words, and her eyes had stung with tears.

All things being normal, she might even have experienced a feeling of relief, of inexplicable pride, watching his lumbering frame returning across the High Street, still breathing, still living, the fool, like some winner at the finishing line. But all that had changed. She clung to the counter, to its worn wooden surface. How well she knew, after sixteen years, every lump, crack and ridge on that counter.

Sandra sat erectly on her stool. The dress lay, almost torn in two, in the crumpled bag at her feet. But it was worth it. What did it matter, a new dress, a bit of flimsy colour? It was worth it to be able to say at last: ‘You’ll never have him.’

He walked in at the door. It seemed for a moment that he might have blundered mistakenly into some shop that was no longer his own — or that he might see, behind the counter, some grotesque replica of himself confronting him. He had to concentrate, not only to recover his breath, but to overcome the sense of strangeness. Then he saw that something had happened. They were standing looking at him with the distinct stillness of people after there has been action.

‘Mr Chapman — you look dreadful.’

Mrs Cooper spoke. Expected words. But she uttered them in a peculiar way, with neither anxiety nor reproof, as if she were merely mouthing a part.

‘I’ll be all right in a minute —’ he wheezed. ‘Must admit — overdone it a bit.’

He lurched towards the counter. The little still tableau seemed suddenly to start into life again, as if by clockwork. Sandra, who was by the flap, lifted it for him but said nothing. He noticed that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

‘Be with you in a moment — just get my breath back.’

He put a hand out to part the veil of plastic strips.

Mrs Cooper, like some attentive valet, followed him mechanically into the stock room. He stood for a moment by the cardboard boxes, clutching the briefcase.

‘Here, let me. You sit down,’ Mrs Cooper said. The same old predictable phrases, but they no longer had that wheedling, abrasive tone. They were spoken almost with meekness.

She took the briefcase and put it in its regular place, on top of the safe. Then she hung his jacket on the wooden hanger on the peg by the sink. She filled a glass of water from the tap. She seemed to be going through these simple motions in order to hide something.

‘Pill?’

‘Breast pocket,’ he said, not thinking — and then remembered, and looked on aghast. Standing by the sink, Mrs Cooper reached inside the pocket and pulled out, with the little phial of pills, the folded piece of light-blue notepaper. At any other time obsequiousness would not have prevented her, even in his presence, from opening it and quickly scanning the contents. But now she simply glanced at it incuriously without unfolding it and put it back where it had come from.

She undid the bottle and tipped out a pill onto her left palm.

‘There.’

She held out the glass in her right hand and the pill in her left, as if offering food to some unfriendly animal.

‘Thanks.’

‘What a thing to do,’ she said as he took the pill. ‘What did you do that for?’ — but still in that subdued, unscolding tone. And she added softly, before turning and walking back into the shop:

‘You know, she won’t come back.’

He sat for several minutes in the stock room, digesting Mrs Cooper’s words. They were the first words of hers in sixteen years that had actually penetrated him, pierced him with a sense that she was tuned to his secretest thoughts. But what struck him most was the manner in which they were said — as if their force applied to her; as if she herself were deserted, abandoned, and no longer pretended.

He swallowed the pill. You were supposed to melt them in the mouth, not swallow them, but it didn’t matter.

What had happened in his absence? He looked through the plastic strips to where Mrs Cooper and Sandra were dealing with a flurry of customers. They looked unnaturally busy, ignoring each other’s presence, like people who know they have done wrong.

He drained his glass of water and, after rinsing his face and arms at the sink, shuffled, still breathless, back into the shop.

‘Everything — er — all right?’ he asked, standing by the plastic strips.

‘Yes — yes,’ Mrs Cooper replied.

Sandra said nothing and scarcely turned. Why had she taken off her bra? It made her look vulnerable rather than provocative. There was a bag by her feet, a chocolate and pink carrier bag torn at the handle. As his eyes moved to it Mrs Cooper looked up helplessly. Then he understood. The whole history of the afternoon became clear to him: Sandra had bought the dress. It was in the carrier bag. Mrs Cooper had discovered, misinterpreted. There had been a fight.

Suddenly he wanted to laugh. Did Mrs Cooper see — looking at him imploringly, as if he were about to punish her — that he really wanted to laugh?

‘Mrs Cooper, Sandra,’ he announced. ‘I’m going to shut the shop.’

They looked up, lips parted.

‘I’m going to shut the shop at half-past five. You can leave early.’

And not come back, thought Sandra.

He no longer wants us, thought Mrs Cooper.

The clock over the door stood at ten-past five.

‘I’m none too well, you can see that — I’m closing early.’

They didn’t protest.

‘Sandra, before you go, would you mind doing the awning?’

He took up his position at the counter. The evening rush had begun, and he started to flick the evening papers off the pile, fold them and hold them out, his hand cupped for the coins.

‘Much obliged. Thanking you.’

You had to perform to the last. Even with a pain like an iron bolt in your chest.

He watched Sandra outside on the pavement, struggling with the High Street awning. Her body was unavoidably on show as she reached with the pole, but — unlike Phil, displaying his strength in the morning — she seemed suddenly unnerved by the fact. When two youths, passing by, feinted a grab at her, she rounded on them almost menacingly.

She re-entered the shop, slid the pole into its resting place and then stood, rubbing her palms on her skirt.

‘Is it all right then — if I go?’

The clock showed only twenty-past — but it made no difference.

‘Yes, of course.’

No snapped interjection came from Mrs Cooper.

Sandra lifted the flap in the counter and passed into the stock room. She returned with her shoulder bag and then, hesitating momentarily and lowering her eyes, stooped to pick up the tattered carrier bag. She lifted it, crumpling the paper tight and held it protectively over her bra-less breasts.

Mrs Cooper’s hands scurried extra quickly over the piles of papers.

‘Right then —’

‘Okay Sandra. Have a good weekend.’

‘Oh — yeh.’ And she turned to the door.

After she’d left, he couldn’t resist asking Mrs Cooper, ‘What was in that bag?’ And Mrs Cooper said, without meeting his eyes, ‘Oh, nothing important, I shouldn’t think.’

They worked on in silence at the counter. He waited for her to say, true to form: ‘If you want to go home, Mr Chapman, it’s all right, I don’t mind, I’ll stay and close up.’ But she didn’t. When half-past came he said, ‘Off you go then,’ and she took off her shop coat and gathered her things without a murmur.

‘Tomorrow then, Mr Chapman.’

‘Yes. Tomorrow.’

Somehow it seemed they both knew they were pretending.

She walked briskly to the door and only then did she pause.

‘Goodbye then.’

‘Goodbye Janet.’

He had called her Janet.

38

Half-past five. It seemed as if he were making his escape. He had always known it would be like this. Tomorrow they would discover the fraud, the deception: the costume discarded, the things left untouched so as to make it seem nothing had changed.

He watched Mrs Cooper lug her shopping bag across Briar Street and pass out of sight round the corner where Smithy’s pole had twirled. Then he lifted up the flap in the counter. There was a timely gap in the succession of customers. The pain in his chest gave little evil prods. He moved to the door, twisted round the plastic sign to ‘Closed’, released the latch and slipped across the two bolts at the top and bottom.

There. It was done.

He moved back to the counter. Now the ‘Closed’ sign was up and the door locked it seemed he was somehow shut off from the flow of the High Street. The noise of the homeward traffic, thickening on the near side of the road, seemed muted, and the cars and pedestrians passing by the window might have been moving in some vast sun-barred aquarium.

He sat down on his stool. No need to hurry. Half-past five. They would be coming home now, in their hordes; work over, pleasure in store. Down at the station the trains would unload from Cannon Street and London Bridge; hot and crumpled commuters, sweaty and fidgety from the stifling carriages, but freed, at last. Across the road the Prince William would open its cool saloons to receive them. The landlord would be blessing the sunshine. Thirsty weather: good weather for trade. And along the High Street the shops which kept the normal hours would be closing. Business done: life begins. Simpson would count his cash. Powell would take in his trestles. In his wood-panelled office, behind the shading blinds and with the electric fan whirring on the filing cabinet, Hancock would lock away papers, give a terse good-night to his departing staff, and even though it was a warm, careless evening in June, would make sure his jacket was buttoned, his tie in place, his shoulders straight before leaving.

He looked round at the crowded shelves of the shop. The cellophane wrappers crinkled, as ever, as under some invisible, covetous touch, and the toys dangling and perched in the Briar Street window seemed to jostle visibly, as if the plastic dolls, action-men and model knights in armour, whose promise was to be like the real thing, were actually about to come to life. He felt like a conjuror, amidst his tricks, for whom, alone, there is no illusion.

He opened the till drawer. Everything must be done as normal. He pulled back the spring-clip over the five-pound notes and started to count.

At Briar Street they would expect to call, as usual, walking up from the station, for their little trifles of tobacco and newsprint. But they would find the shop closed. Chapman — who never closed; who was always open, Sundays too, raking in the cash, which he never had time to spend; who was always there with your cigarettes or paper, as late as seven in the evening. They would rattle, annoyed, at the door and rap on the glass; and peering in they would see him, sitting in his usual place, still and unperturbed, like the statue of someone who had once been a shop-keeper. See — there was someone already, and another, looking at the ‘Closed’ sign as if it did not mean what it said and staring in, hand held over eyes, as into the cage of some unobliging pet. He raised a hand and moved it slowly in a lazy, indifferent wave. They would gather perhaps at the corner; try to force the door. And perhaps he should let them. Fling back the bolts. Let them swarm in to plunder and grab. Gorge themselves on sweets and ice-creams, fight over the boxes of Havanas. And he would sit motionless in the midst of the looting, as if, after they had emptied the shelves, they would set to work to dismantle his effigy.

He lifted himself from the stool onto his feet. The pain seemed to rock inside him like a weight that would over-turn him. He steadied. Not now. But he wouldn’t take a pill. People were stopping now and then at the door and trying the handle but he took no notice of them. He started to count the one-pound notes, then the coins. Everything must be done as usual; everything must look the same. He carried the money in the little pink and blue bank bags and placed them inside the green cash tin inside the safe. Then he made a note of the figure inside the maroon cash book. These were actions he had carried out so many times that he could do them almost without thinking; and yet, this time, they seemed like unique operations, as if he hadn’t counted up and closed numberless times before. He shut the cash book. £92. Twenty years ago you would have been glad to take ten. He put the cash book in his briefcase and locked the safe. He had got the safe in ’49. There were scratch marks on its door and the black paint on the handle was worn away to the metal from years of opening and shutting. He went back into the shop; switched off the electric fan, checked the fridge, set the time switch for the display lights, put his hand down to the lever beneath the telephone which activated the burglar alarm — but then withdrew it. It didn’t matter now — they could break in and steal. The shop door was already fastened. He would leave by the rear door in the stock room. It led to a narrow passage which turned at a right angle into Briar Street. For some time he had meant to fit a better lock on it. But today it could be left unlocked. Once outside he could even throw away the keys. Toss them out into the swirl of the High Street.

Someone else was rattling at the door, looking in and making pleading, desperate gestures. He took no notice. He looked at the counter and the shelves. Then he turned his back on the shop and passed through the plastic strips. Best to go by the back. Actors slip out by back-exits, leaving their roles on the stage. He moved to the wash basin to rinse his hands and comb his hair. He expected to see for a moment, in the mirror, the face of a young man, unchanged, with a thirties stiff collar and a waistcoat.

He put on his jacket, took up his briefcase and then opened the rear door. He walked along the passage-way, where, here and there, tufts of grass and dandelions grew in the cracks in the concrete, then out, across the wide pavement, by the cinema adverts, to the car.

The car was drawn up, half on the pavement, pointing away from the High Street. Normally he drove down Briar Street, avoiding the awkward U-turn out into the main road. But it didn’t matter now. Normally he didn’t shut at half-past five; normally he didn’t walk to Pond Street. A sudden exhilaration came over him. He took a packet of cigars from under the dashboard and lit one. The doctor had warned. Then he swung out, in a break in the traffic, into Briar Street and out into the queue of cars in the High Street.

He did not look back. Not at the front window, with his name, in blue and gold, emblazoned above; nor at the door, at which they were still tapping and rattling perhaps, trying to discern him within. No, there was no longer a sweet shop owner.

The sun shone from the direction of the town hall, dazzling on car bonnets and in the glass frontages where Simpson’s and Hobbes’ had already shut shop. Only the Diana was open, dilatorily serving out limp salads and milk-shakes, the manager chasing flies behind the counter. The traffic moved slowly, in two lanes, down towards Allandale Road and the traffic lights by the common. Always congested at this time; both directions. Drivers were propped on elbows against open windows, holding up idle arms and drumming irritably with their fingers on car roofs. A motor-cyclist revved impatiently. And on the pavement the pedestrians walked with that peculiar agitation of people travelling home from work on a Friday evening. Why did they look so intent, so vexed, when, up above, the lime trees shone, green-gold, in the sun?

His foot rocked on the pedals as he crept forward in the line of cars. They were drinking in the Prince William as he passed. Through the open saloon doors he was half prepared to glimpse the big, ornate french windows, the beer garden.

Past the Prince William. Past the Council buildings where once the baths had been where Dorry swam. He placed his left hand on his chest as he drew up again for the lights, and blew the blue cigar smoke, painfully pleasant, out of his mouth. Common on the left, criss-crossed with paths.

What was the name of that thesis you were writing, Dorry? ‘Romantic Poetry and the Sense of History’? And now you are living with a historian. What do you learn from history, Dorry? Was it history that made you come and plunder your father’s house? Or the opposite? Did you want to escape history, to put it all behind you — me, her, those twenty-odd years in that house? To have your moment, your victory at last, with one wild gesture? But — don’t you see? — it’s the moment (framed in the doorway with your heavy box of loot) that captures you.

And have you escaped history, down there in Bristol? Found new life? Encumbered with all those things of hers, encumbered with the money I sent you (that money, which was only converted history). Don’t you see, you’re no freer than before, no freer than I am? And the only thing that can dissolve history now is if, by a miracle, you come.

39

He turned into Leigh Drive. He had put on the car radio. The weather man was saying, in apologetic tones, that rain was expected for the morning. But along the curving pavements, the sycamores and rowan trees were stirring blithely in the deepening sun. Earlier homecomers were already out, in shaded front gardens, watering flowers and trimming edges. Mr Norris, in number twenty-eight, knobbly-kneed in long khaki shorts, like a dauntless colonial. Mr Dixon, in number thirty, with a pair of shears.

He drove onto the crazy paving of the garage drive and stopped. The neighbours, with their clippers and hoses, would look up, seeing the cream coloured Hillman, and think, ‘He’s early’; and then continue their tasks. ‘Don’t blame him, on an evening like this.’ They would see his usual stout figure stepping from the car; but they wouldn’t see the pain swelling inside his ribs. Mr Dixon waved. He got out, the engine running, to unlock the garage. The metal handles were hot to touch and as he pulled open the heavy doors he had to gauge the effort carefully. Not now. He returned to the car, drove it into the garage, emerged again with his briefcase, and shut, laboriously, the two doors. Then he walked along the path by the bay window and the hydrangeas to the front door.

Outside, all was clear, obvious. Inside he seemed to enter a submerged, aqueous world in which the past was embedded like sunken treasure. He’d drawn all the curtains in the morning to keep the house cool; and he moved now, slowly, like a diver with heavy boots, through a shady, flickering world, shot with eddies and swirls of light, where the sun found its way through chinks or penetrated dimly, as into the hollows of a wreck, through the rippled curtains. He hung his jacket over the post at the foot of the stairs and put his briefcase in the usual place beside the umbrella stand. The ticking barometer-clock, the photographs on the wall loomed through the ooze, and as he opened the door into the living-room, the polished cabinets, one for china, one for glass, the green baize on the oval table, the spiralling stem of the standard lamp swam into view, as if he were really discovering, let down in his diving suit, a world left long ago, miraculously preserved. ‘See, things remain.’

He crossed to the french windows and drew back the beige curtains, so that the murky relics inside were suddenly raised once more into the fresh, familiar light of the present. Should he redraw them? Was it more fitting to return to the veiled museum-world? But he kept them open. The lilac was half within the shadow of the house, but its upper leaves, where the mauve cones had already bloomed and died, fluttered in the sunshine. He opened the quarter lights of the window so that the sound of lawn-mowers, clippers, a smell of cut grass trickled in on the breeze.

She could never get enough air. Or was it that air assailed her?

He turned round again to face the room. The clock on the mantelpiece showed half-past six. Its hands might have stopped for ever at that position, like a clock rescued from some catastrophe, recording the exact moment of disaster. But not yet, not yet.

Normally, when he returned from the shop he would change his clothes, eat the meal that Mrs Pritchard left, prepared but uncooked, in the kitchen, wash up, sit at the table and make up his books — or, on an evening like this, potter gently in the garden. But there was no need of those things now. He had been lifted clear, it seemed, of that frame of routine that had been built around him, able to see it at last like some visitor from outside. So that his feet led him to wander now, with the immunity of a ghost, round this deserted monument of a house.

He climbed the stairs. Each step cost an effort. Yet he could almost encourage the pain now. He passed into the bedroom, gloomy behind the drawn curtains; into Dorry’s room — lingering several minutes; into the spare bedroom with its long, quilt-covered trunk. He ran his eyes diligently over objects, like a curator making a final tour before the gallery is locked.

It is all here, Dorry. Locked in little mementos, fixed in little tokens of the past. As if its only purpose were to be saved for this final glance.

He opened the heavy lid of the trunk. This required concentration. His hands reached down to a red tin box, hidden beneath other boxes full of objects wrapped in tissue-paper and old newspaper.

You never delved this far when you came. Did I prevent you? These are the letters she wrote to me when I was a quartermaster’s clerk in Hampshire and she worked at the Food Office. How good we always were at minding the store. How well we’ve kept everything. Up till now.

His eyes studied the worn envelopes, with the addresses crossed out, several times, for re-use, and the red stamps with the head of George VI. But he didn’t open the folded notepaper.

Sometimes, in museums, Dorry, you think what you see isn’t real. And these (he took another batch of envelopes from the tin box), these are all your letters from college — when you would write just to me and not to her.

The china shepherd and shepherdess on the dressing-table still anticipated their embrace. He wasn’t aware how many times he slipped from one room to another, inspecting their silent contents. Was it to make sure all was complete, secure? To summon life from those unmoving objects? To laugh at their fraudulence? Perhaps he was already sitting, motionless himself, in the armchair where he’d decided he would sit, and it was only some shadow of himself, touching but not touching these frozen items of stock, who drifted now — out of his daughter’s room — onto the landing at the top of the stairs.

I don’t believe in ghosts, Dorry. But sometimes, alone in this house, I’ve thought she’s watching me, her moist eyes stalking me still, ensuring that I keep all just as it was. Perhaps she’s watching me now. Is her face set, Dorry, in that old tenacity? Or smiling? Or torn with remorse? And what does she want now, watching over me? Is she saying: Forget her, Willy? Or is she hoping, too — you will come?

He grasped the bannister to descend. His head swam, looking down. Don’t fall. He came down, gingerly at first, then more rapidly. No more precautions. He picked up his jacket from the stair-post. He moved across the hall, not looking at the photographs on the wall. The needle in the barometer pointed to ‘Change’.

In the living-room he eyed the clock as if there were some deadline.

Twenty-past seven. You wouldn’t come till after my normal time for getting in.

The shadow had crept further up the lilac tree. Bryant would have closed, an hour ago, at Pond Street. Miss Fox would be on her way to Broadstairs. Sandra would be home — trying on again that new dress? Mrs Cooper would have opened her pay-packet at last, and discovered, beside her normal wage, the five hundred pounds.

He moved to the armchair by the standard lamp, turning it to face the window, and sat down. Though he sat, the pain didn’t diminish. Her shawl was draped where it had always been, over the head-rest. He held his jacket in his lap. When she died she was waiting for me to come.

He looked out at the lilac and the sun-flecked garden.

I always liked gardening, Dorry. If I hadn’t been a shop-keeper I’d have been a gardener. Arranging the flower beds was like arranging the sweets in the shop window. I never knew if she liked gardens too. She wouldn’t come outside, because of her asthma. Though she used to sit watching me intently, from the window, mowing the grass, tending the flowers. But perhaps she preferred all those lifeless, lasting things: cut glass, willow-pattern plates, vases with pictures of flowers, not real flowers, on them. And she left them to me, as you can’t leave real flowers, as her memorial.

The clock chimed half-past seven. The pain rose in his chest so that his face, always so wooden, so expressionless, might have been convulsed and torn.

Memorials. They don’t matter. They don’t belong to us. They are only things we leave behind so we can vanish safely. Disguises to set us free. That’s why I built my own memorial so compliantly — the one she allotted me, down there in the High Street. A memorial of trifles, useless things. And what will you do with my memorial, Dorry?

Something caught in his throat like a stuck laugh. Not yet.

Spit on my memorial, Dorry, sell it up, forget it. That’s what memorials are for. You might have had the real thing. You got the money. And you didn’t have to extort it, for it would have been yours, anyway, in the end. That money was always meant to be passed on. It was never hers; it was only the token of something. She used it to buy useless bits of glass and china. And do you know where it really came from? It belonged to her uncles, your great-uncles; three of them. They were knocked down like pins in the First War, and now they have their own, bronze memorial, outside the town hall. That was long before I met her. She never talked about the past, but she told me about that money, in one of those letters, up there in the Oxo tin in the trunk. It never belonged to her. It belonged to the bronze soldiers. And what will you buy with it, Dorry? History?

He gripped the arm-rests. Metal pain was filling his limbs and welding him to the chair. Was all this happening in an instant or was it the effect of years, an age? Be still, look at the things that are fixed. Sunlight cascaded over the lilac and the flower beds. The garden beckoned, as things do which cannot be touched. She will not come. She will come. He clutched the jacket with the letter in it. Today is your birthday. The lilac swayed. Tomorrow rain would fall on it — the weather-man had said on the radio — patter through the dawn light onto the leaves. There would be a victory, but not his. She would come: he would be a cold statue. Can you capture the moment without it capturing you? His chest was transfixed. You stood on the edge of the diving-board. It seemed you might be poised there for ever. He couldn’t move. He was a powerless skittle towards which was hurtling an invisible ball. Not yet. You stood on your toes, raised your arms. She will not come. The lilac shimmered. The garden framed in the window was like a photograph.

All right. All right — now.