by Barrie Shore
He was sound asleep. He could never resist taking a drop of ale at each of the inns on his round and he came back fast asleep at the end of the day trusting to Nell to know the way. But today he was different. The reins lay slack in his hands and his head lolled downwards onto his chest, and he snored with a gurgling sound in the back of his throat like a drain that was jammed.
Jack climbed onto the cart beside him. ‘Dadda, wake up.’ Nell was dipping her head, rolling her eyes. He took the reins, trying to calm her. ‘Whoah, there, steady now, girl.’
Nell threw up her head and whinnied, a high shriek that brought the ostler running out from the stables. He took one look at the horse and yelled for help, ran over to Nell and grabbed the bridle; Ned’s father came running, jumped onto the cart and snatched the reins, and the two of them managed to calm her. Jack’s father toppled slowly to one side, his weight heavy against Jack, his sour breath hot on his cheek. Ned’s father hauled him back, lifted his chin and slapped his cheek. His father’s head tipped back, his eyeballs rolled and his breath was fierce.
‘God Almighty.’ Ned’s father, a hiss of breath. ‘Run for your mother, lad, tell her she’s wanted at the yard.’
He set three places at the table: his father’s at the top, his mother’s at the other end, nearest the range, his own in the middle. He took three bowls from the dresser and put them to warm at the bottom of the oven, stood up on his toes, pulled the cuff of his jersey down over his hand, lifted the lid of the big, black pot on the simmering plate and stirred the stew. It smelled spicy and hot but it would be a while yet before he sat down to his tea.
He opened the fire door to see if the coal was burning well, riddled a bit and opened the damper by half a turn as his father did, and he saw that the coal hod was nearly empty. It was his father’s task to fill it each night, so Jack took it outside to the bunker in the yard, pleased at the thought of saving him trouble, especially when he was falling over with drink.
Jack filled the hod, one small shovel after another, and dragged it in fits and starts across the yard, through the scullery, across the kitchen floor and pushed it, with the help of his knees, into its place at the corner of the range. He wiped off the marks of coal from the floor with a wet rag and scrubbed his hands and knees in the scullery. His mother misliked seeing him dirty.
He sat on the floor with his back to the range and watched the light fade through the window till it turned to dusk and disappeared into night. He was not often in the house on his own and the kitchen seemed strange, filled with noises that he didn’t usually hear: soft creaks and bumps and a sighing sound from the draught in the chimney. He didn’t mind that his father drank. He was a quiet man, wise and strong; but sometimes he sat silent in his chair by the range, smoking his pipe and staring, as if his thoughts were far away. But the ale made him merry, and then he would laugh and sing, and take Jack on his knee and tell him stories: wild tales of ships and pirates, brave young soldiers and their lady loves. His mother would listen and purse her lips, and one time she cried out in rage and beat her fists on his father’s chest and told him that he was the Devil’s work. His father had raised his arm as if to strike her, then dropped it again and left the house, and he didn’t come back till the following day.
‘Whatever are you doing, you silly boy?’ His mother was angry. ‘Sitting all by your own in the dark.’
‘I didn’t like to waste the candle.’
His mother took her pinafore from the hook on the back of the door and buttoned it on. She went to the dresser, lit the lamp and took it to the table. Her pale face was yellow in the light and her eyes were stary.
‘And I suppose the stew is burned to nothing.’
‘No, I’ve stirred it well, and put the bowls in the oven to warm. And I set the table just as you like it.’
‘So you did.’ She was still scratchy but trying to hide it. She put her fingers to the corners of her eyes and pushed them up to her temples, then shook her head and cleared her throat. She went over to the range bent to the oven and fetched out the bowls. Jack went to the table and stood behind his chair; watched her ladling spoonfuls of stew into two of the bowls, slopping them hurriedly, heedlessly, sucking her thumb as it caught the hot drips. She brought the bowls to the table and set them in place, one for herself and one for Jack, then stood at her chair and bent her head to say the grace.
‘What about Dadda? Should we not wait for him?’
‘We’ll be a long time waiting.’
‘Why? Is he not coming home?’
‘No.’ She looked at him gravely. Her face was unreadable in the dim lamplight, but he thought it had pain in it, and something else, something unfathomable, that looked like she did when she’d taken her blessing in church and was at peace for a while. She took a deep breath. ‘Your father’s not coming home, he’s…’ She didn’t seem able to find her words. ‘He’s gone to a better place.’
Jack was astonished. His father had worked at the brewery all his life, he couldn’t think of him anywhere else.
‘What, tonight?’
‘Yes. Not an hour since, God rest the man.’ She gripped the back of her chair and her knuckles showed white.
‘I wish he had stopped to say goodbye.’
She looked at him sharply.
‘We cannot choose the hour of our going.’
‘No, I reckon we can’t.’
‘Suppose, not reckon. Reckon is common.’
‘I’m sorry, I forgot.’
She closed her eyes and Jack bent his head.
‘For all your plenty we thank you, good Lord. Amen’
‘Amen.’
‘Well, then, sit down and eat, else the Devil’ll get to it first.’
Jack sat down at the table and picked up his spoon. His mother seemed to forget her meal. She went to the sideboard to fetch her sewing box and a basket of shirts. She set them down on either side of her chair by the range and sat down, and she smoothed her apron, over and over, as if she was rubbing pain from her knees.
Jack wasn’t hungry any more. He carved a slow path through his stew, making two mounds on either side of the bowl and letting a pool of thin gravy gather in between.
‘Is it far away?’ he said, after a while, ‘the better place.’
‘No, it is near at hand.’
‘So we may see Dadda quite soon?’
‘No, not soon. But we must all of us go there in the end when the Good Lord wills it.’
‘Must we?’
‘There is nothing in this world more certain.’
‘Oh, good. I’m glad.’
He was cheered. He set to his meal and when he had finished took his bowl and spoon out to the scullery and rinsed them under the tap ready for washing, then went to his mother and knelt at her feet. She looked at him, startled, as she’d forgotten that he was there. She took another big sigh and shivered again.
‘Fetch me the lamp,’ she said. ‘I have sewing to do.’
His mother took in clothes to be mended. The box was full of her sewing things: reels of bright thread on a spindle, needle book, pincushion, bodkin, her thimble and scissors slotted into the coarse linen lining of the lid. She searched the basket looking for collars and picked one out. She felt the frayed ridge between her forefinger and thumb, and leaned to the lamp to examine the corners, pulling the stitches to test their tightness. Jack waited with the pincushion till she was ready. She took pins out and fed them between her lips in a row and then transferred them to the collar, one by one.
The collar she was working was a light grey-blue and Jack turned the cotton reels on their spindle, looking for a match. She transferred the last pin to the collar, and he gave her the thread which she took and examined under the lamp against the collar. She nodded, satisfied, and he held out the needle book for her to choose. But she didn’t take it. She tipped up his chin with her finger and
looked at him, frowning slightly. She licked her finger and ran it across each of his eyebrows. He could feel her rough skin on his forehead.
‘You’re a good boy,’ she said. ‘I thank God for you.’
And she chose her needle and held it up to the lamp to thread.
He knelt by his bed and repeated his prayers, but halfway through, lost his way and fell to thinking, not of his Father in Heaven, but the one on earth, and wondered where the Better Place might be. Was there a house at the better place? Was it large enough for everyone to live there? He counted on his fingers how many were going. They had no relations left, his grandparents all dead, no aunts and uncles, no cousins, nobody, but perhaps his father’s workmates from the brewery would come, except he hoped there wouldn’t be Mr Jonas, the foreman, who roared so much. And maybe his father’s friends from the George and Dragon: Bert Maiden, the hop man who lived next door in Temperance Terrace with his wife, and old Mr Parsons who was a thatcher till the demon drink took him and he fell off his ladder and broke his leg. But, no, not them for his mother was teetotal and would never allow it. He heard the clatter of pots and pans down in the kitchen, as if to admonish his wandering thoughts, and went back to his prayers.
‘God bless my father and keep him safe till we see him again. And God bless my mother too, and keep me from sin and the paths of wickedness, for thy Blessed Name’s sake. Amen.’
He blew out his candle and jumped into bed and before he slept he thought of old Nell and prayed that she wouldn’t be all of a mope because his father had gone to the Better Place and left her behind.
Jack’s bedroom was at the front of the house, overlooking the street. He sat next morning hunched up in the window seat, hugging his knees, watching the high sun as it shone briefly before disappearing behind the roofs of the houses opposite. It was Tuesday, only three more days of the summer holidays, then the weekend, then back to school on Monday. He thought of the boys down by the river and wished he was with them. It was a joyous thing to paddle about and splash, to cut sticks from the straggles of elder that grew on the bank and to poke about in the shallows at the water’s edge, trying to catch minnows and disturbing the toads from under the stones. But his mother said it was not seemly to be out to play at a time like this, so he stayed indoors or played out in the yard by himself and thought of his father and wished it might be soon when they went to join him.
He heard voices out in the street, watched two ladies coming to the house: old Mrs Moxon from across the road and Miss Maiden next door, and his heart skipped. Miss Maiden’s brother that she looked after worked at the brewery, and they might be come with news of Dadda. He listened to his mother letting them in, their subdued voices trooping through the passage into the kitchen, the scrape of chairs and the chink of china, and he took up his courage and went downstairs. His father’s Sunday coat was hanging on a hook in the passage and his best boots stood on a shelf underneath, slightly askew. Jack set them straight, crept to the kitchen door and listened.
‘Saw him not two days since, singing his head off, happy as sunshine.’ That was Mrs Moxon. She could be sharp as vinegar when she felt inclined but now she was whispering quiet, as if there was someone asleep who mustn’t be woken.
‘Such a merry soul as he always was.’ That was Miss Maiden who was silly and soft and cried a lot, at the least little thing so you didn’t take notice. ‘Gone so immediate, you’d hardly credit.’
‘And as for the boy, what’s to become of him?’
Then his mother’s crisp voice. ‘Don’t you mind about Jack. We’ll manage between us.’
The ladies fell silent as Jack came in, both turning their heads with such frowning faces that he thought they must be come to complain of him. Mrs Moxon tut-tutted and muttered to herself. Miss Maiden shed tears behind her hand.
Jack looked at his mother in alarm as she brought the teapot to the table.
‘Go up to your room,’ she said. ‘I have talking to do.’
*
There were many curiosities when he went back to school.
First, Miss Drewitt, the Head Teacher, who kept him back after morning prayers.
‘Come here, boy.’ She was surprisingly gentle for someone most of the time so stern. ‘How are you, child?’
‘Quite well, Miss. Thank you, Miss.’
‘That’s the spirit.’
Jack waited for more.
‘Off you go now, there’s a good boy.’
Then Miss Kemp in prayers before class.
‘God bless Mr Carter, so lately gone, and Mrs Carter and Jack. God keep them courageous in the midst of their sorrow.’
And recess. Huddles of girls, bunched in the playground, pointing and whispering behind their hands. The boys skirting round him, knocking his elbows, running away. And Ned, cock-a-hoop with his information.
‘So he’s dead, then?’
‘Who?’
‘Your pa, bristlehead.’
‘’Course he baint dead. My father has gone to a Better Place.’ It was a fine thing to say these words.
He ran home after school, anxious for news. In at the door, into the passage. And stopped. All was changed, everything wrong. His father’s peg was empty on the wall, the shelf below unfilled with his boots. And the smell gone, his father’s smell, that particular mixture of hops and tobacco and toil and sweat. Gone. Replaced with the sterility of polish, disinfectant and bleach. He threw down his satchel and crashed into the kitchen.
His mother stood over a board on the table, hammering meat with a wooden mallet to make it tender. She didn’t look up.
‘What a noise and a clatter on such a day.’
All was absence. No pipe or pouch on the shelf; no tankard or mug; no cushion on the chair by the range; no faded photograph on the wall, the one of his father with Nell, both of them grinning, showing their teeth. No smile. No smell. No father. No thing.
‘Where is he?’
‘Who?’ She lifted the mallet.
‘Dadda. He’s been and collected all his things.’
‘Jack…’
‘I want my Dadda, I want to see him.’
She brought the mallet down with such force that the meat jumped, sending speckles of blood onto the table. ‘Your father is dead. He was buried this morning.’
‘No!’ He screamed like a wild thing. Ran to his mother, beat his fists against her chest. She spread her arms as if in submission. He snatched the mallet from her hand, swung it high over his head. She flinched away, putting her arm across her face, as if she was used to defending herself. He hurled the mallet across the room. It landed with a splinter of glass against the window and thudded to the floor.
The range creaked in the silence and the wind sighed in the chimney.
She took a step towards him.
He backed away.
She reached out her hand. ‘Jack, dear…’
‘Never touch me…’
He ran from the room and slammed the door.
*
Headstones. Row upon row. Some standing up straight, some tipping forward, backwards and sideways, some fallen to the ground. Some grand with marble, some humble with rough cut stone. Crosses with arms outstretched, angels blowing eternal trumpets. Heavy inscriptions leaded in black. Fond memory. Rest in Peace. Praise the Lord. Thy will be done. Amen. Amen.
Earth, freshly turned, red with clay, lumpy with stone. Two women kneeling. Mrs Moxon with flowers, Miss Maiden dripping sniffs and tears. Cattle gathering over the wall, chewing their cuds with sideway jaws, lowing gently, lifting their heads, bouncing away as Jack skeltered up.
A rough wooden cross.
John William Carter.
Chalky letters running away with the rain as if they were crying.
‘Dadda… my Dadda…’
He half tripped, half threw himself down on the mound of soil,
covered his head with his arms and sobbed, till gentle arms lifted him up and closed him round, and he buried himself in Miss Maiden’s lavender warmth.
*
‘Go to your place.’ His mother at the range. Stiff backed, tight voiced.
He went to his chair, but no place was laid.
‘Not there. You must sit in your father’s place.’
‘I cannot.’
‘You must.’
‘I shan’t.’
‘You will.’
‘Why?’
‘You are the man of the family now.’
He scuffed to his father’s chair, stood behind it, stubborn, sulking. She brought his bowl to the table, his father’s bowl.
‘Well, go on.’
He bent his head. ‘For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.’
He hitched himself up onto the carver at the top of the table and sat with legs dangling, fists knuckled white on arms worn smooth by his father’s elbows. She watched as he picked up his fork, his father’s fork, and there was a something in her face that he didn’t want to see, a kind of hunger that wasn’t for food. And as he took his first mouthful of stew, he felt for a wild moment that it wasn’t he who ate, it was his father, that he had become his father, and he almost cried out with the pleasure and pain of it.
She was still watching him, with a little frown on her face as if she saw the glory in him and envied it. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said, ‘that you loved him so well. I could wish…’ She bent her head and turned away. ‘Never mind.’ She went back to the range and stirred the stew, and Jack saw that her shoulders were shaking. And if he hadn’t known her quite so well, he would have supposed that she was crying.
He liked to think afterwards that he took pity on her then; got down from his father’s chair, ran to her, put his arms round her waist, buried his face in the back of her pinafore, feeling its thinness, breathing its stale oniony smell, and that she was comforted. But he didn’t. And she wasn’t. And neither was he.