“Did you get it?”
“There was too many.”
“It’s a bogger, i’n’t it?”
He was bitter: “Don’t bother. They’ll want me soon. I know they will.”
“You all ought to get together,” she said, “and give ’em what for. Mob the bleeders.”
“You can’t fight wi’ no snap in you. Look at what ’appened to them poor boggers from Wales: got the bleddy hosepipes turned on ’em.”
“They’ll suffer for it one day,” she said. “They’ll have their lot to come, yo’ see.”
“Besides, I give you thirty-eight bob, don’t I?” he said now.
“And how far do you think that goes?” was all she could say.
“I don’t know what you do wi’ it,” was all he could think of.
“Do you think I throw it down the drain?” she screamed, going to the door.
“It wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Nowt surprises yo’, numbskull.”
She waited for him to spring up and strike, or throw something from where he was. But he sat there.
It went on, stupid, futile, hopeless. Brian listened outside the window, each word worse than a dozen blows from Mr. Jones’s fist. “They’re rowing,” he said to himself, a knotted heart ready to burst in his mouth. Margaret stood by him: “What are they rowing about?” “Money,” he said.
“Tell me when they stop, wain’t yer, our Brian?”
“Wait with me here,” he said, looking through the window, seeing his father still sitting by the grate, shoulders hunched and face white. His mother was at the table reading a newspaper. “They ain’t stopped yet,” he told her. They stayed out till dark, then went in hoping that somehow their father would be in a better mood, that their mother had miraculously been and cadged or borrowed, begged or stolen or conjured up out of thin air some cigarettes for him.
One day when a quarrel was imminent Seaton put on his coat and rode down the street on his bike. He returned an hour later on foot, a cigarette between his lips and a carrier-bag of food in each hand. Brian followed him in, saw him put the bags on the table and give Vera a cigarette.
“Where’s your bike?”
“I’ve got you some food,” he said, proud and fussy.
She smoked the cigarette and laughed: “I’ll bet you’ve sold your bike.”
“I ’ave, my owd duck.”
“Yo’ are a bogger,” she said with a smile.
“I’d do owt for yo’ though!”
“I know you would. But I don’t like it when you’re rotten to me.”
He put his arm round her: “I’m never rotten to you, duck. And if I am, I can’t ’elp it.”
“You’re a piss-ant,” she smiled: “that’s what you are.”
“Never mind, Vera,” he said. “My owd duck.”
“How much did you get?”
“Fifteen bob. I sowd it at Jacky Blower’s on Alfreton Road.” He’d had it over a year, always working on it, reconditioning a lamp, new brake-blocks he’d been given, a bell he’d found, hours spent cleaning and polishing. She’d never imagined him selling it.
“I went to one shop and they offered me six bob. Six bob! I said: ‘Listen, mate, it ain’t pinched,’ and walked out after tellin’ ’em where they could put their money. I did an’ all.”
“I should think you did.” He took off his coat and cap, pulled a chair to the table. Seeing Brian, he stood up again, saying: “Hey up, my owd Brian! How are yer, my lad?”—caught him in his broad muscled arms and threw him to the ceiling.
“Put me down, our dad,” Brian screamed, frightened and laughing at the same time. Seaton lowered him, rubbed his bristled face against his smooth cheek, then let him go. “Come on, Vera, mash the tea. There’s sugar and milk and some steak in that bag. If you send Brian out for some bread we can all have summat to eat.” The kettle boiled and Seaton stirred his tea. When Brian wasn’t looking he put the hot spoon on his wrist, made him yell from the shock and run out of range. Brian was glad when no one quarrelled, when they were happy, and he could love his father, forget about what he had thought to do when he grew up to be big and tall.
Vera often saw in her children similar rages and moods that she detested in Seaton, diversions of petty misery created between the big one of no fags. When Brian came in from the street she asked him to go out again for a loaf. He slumped in a chair to read a comic. “Wait till I’ve finished this, our mam.”
“No, go now,” she said, pounding the dolly-ponch into the zinc sud-tub of soaking clothes. “Come on, your dad’ll be ’ome soon.”
He didn’t answer, glared at the comic but saw nothing more of Chang the Hatchet Man. Vera emptied fresh water into the tub. “Are you going,” she demanded, “or aren’t yer?”
“Let Margaret go. Or Fred.”
“They aren’t ’ere. You go.” He could hold on for a while yet. “Just let me finish reading this comic.”
“If you don’t go,” she said, wiping the wet table dry before setting the cloth, “I s’ll tell your dad when he comes in.”
“Tell ’im. I don’t care.” Having said it, he was afraid, but a knot of stubbornness riveted him, and he was determined not to shift.
When Seaton came in and sat down to a plate of stew he asked for bread. Brian wished he’d gone to the shop, but still didn’t move. It’s too late now, he told himself, yet knowing there was time to ask his mother casually for fourpence and go out for the load so that his father wouldn’t know he’d been cheeky. He stayed where he was.
“There ain’t any,” she said. “I asked Brian to go for some ten minutes ago, but he’s too interested in his barmy comic to do owt I tell ’im. He’s a terror to me sometimes and wain’t do a thing.”
Seaton looked up. “Fetch some bread.”
He held his comic, as if courage could be drawn from it. “Wait till I’ve finished reading, our dad.”
“Get that bread,” Seaton said. “I’m waiting for it.”
“The devil will come for you one of these days, my lad, if you don’t do as you’re towd,” Vera put in. He dreaded the good hiding he knew he’d get if he didn’t move that second, but picked nervously at a cushion.
“Don’t let me have to tell you again,” Seaton said.
When Brian didn’t move Seaton slid his chair out from the table, strode over to him quickly, and hit him twice across the head. “Tek that, yer little bleeder.”
“Don’t hurt his head,” Vera cried. “Leave him now.” He got another for luck. Seaton took a shilling from the shelf, thrust it into his hand, threw him to the door, and bundled him into the street. “Now, let’s see how quick you can be.”
Brian sobbed on the step for half a minute and, still crying, slouched along the wall towards the corner shop, making fervid plans to kill his father with an axe, if he could get an axe, and as soon as he was strong enough.
To reach the bednight attic, Brian led the three others up through mam-and-dad’s room, then climbed a broad ladder to a kind of loft, a procession of shirts and knickers going up there out of sight. Arthur at three was ready to do battle with the rest, and the flying melee of fists and feet that broke out as soon as the makeshift latch had been dropped caused Seaton to open the far-below stairfoot door and bawl: “D’ye ’ear? Let’s ’ave less noise or I’ll come up and bat yer tabs.” He stood for a few seconds in the electric silence to make sure it continued, then went back to his supper. It was all Arthur’s fault, Brian whispered. He’d put his foot into the communal last-Christmas train set as soon as he got into the room. So let’s jump into bed, or dad’ll come up and posh us.
He spread the sandwich packet and placed the bottle of water on the table, threatening wiry Arthur with his fist as he grabbed at the paper. Margaret held him back, saying: “We’ll share it, now,” while Fred looked on from a secure position on the bed. Night was a picnic time, when Vera filled a bottle with water and Seaton sliced bread and dripping, saying: “All right then, I’ll cut yer a
few slices. Yer must ’ave summat t’eat after you’ve climbed that wooden ’ill. Come on, Brian-Margaret-Fred-Arthur, it’s time you was up that wooden ’ill!”
With each divided portion scoffed, they blew out the candle. “Go to sleep now,” Brian bossed them.
“Tell us a story,” Margaret said.
He’d known they wouldn’t sleep unless he did: “What shall I tell you about?”
“Tell about war,” Fred said, his lips breathing from the darkness of bedclothes.
Arthur’s sharp feet seemed to attack every leg and backbone at the same time. “Stop it,” Brian called, “or I’ll thump you.”
“Thump you back,” Arthur threatened, but kept his feet still. “I’ll tell you what,” Brian said, “I’ll tell you all a serial story.”
They approved and curled up to listen. Arthur’s feet-stabbing subsided, and Brian narrated how three men with machine-guns sat in a cellar that they used as a den, drinking whisky, planning how they would rob a bank. In the middle of the night they came out of their den and drove up the dark street in their big black car, and when they came to the bank they put ten sticks of dynamite under the big doors and stood on the other side of the street while it blew up with a great big bang. And when the smoke had cleared and they could see again they all rushed in through the high doors shooting off their machine-guns. When they got to the strong safes, there was a nightwatchman who said: “Get back or I’ll shoot you with this gun under my coat.” But the robbers took no notice on him and shot him stone dead and put more dynamite under the safes. And when this blew up, they went inside and took all the money, millions of pounds. And when they’d put it all into sack-bags they had with them, they ran out of the bank. A man tried to stop ’em getting into their car, and one of the bandits said: “That’s the means-test man; let’s blow him up.” So they shot him dead. And then another man jumped on ’em, and the boss said: “I know him. It’s the schoolboard man. Let him have it.” And they killed him dead as well. So they got into their big car and drove off over Trent Bridge and out of the town into the country at ninety miles an hour. But later they stopped at a caff to have a drink of whisky and something to eat and a detective called Tom Briggs was in the same caff having something to eat with his girl. And as soon as Tom Briggs saw these three men coming into the caff he knew they was robbers and that they’d just robbed a bank because he saw moneybags that they had under their arms. “Stop, yo’ lot,” he said, and pulled a gun out that he allus carried, but they had their machine-guns ready and tied him and his girl up, and when they had them tight tied up to chairs, the boss of the robbers said: “We’re goin’ ter kill ’em now.” And he put some more bullets into his machine-gun and held it to their heads and said: “Is everything ready, boys?” And the other two said: “Yes, let’s kill ’em. It’s all ready.” So the boss of the robbers said: “All right, I’ll shoot ’em now,” and he started to pull the trigger of the machine-gun, and in two seconds they’d be dead. He killed ’em anyway, and then one of the bandits said to the boss: “Look out o’ that window and you’ll see we’re surrounded with fifty coppers. It looks as if we’re done for.”
“And that’s how part one ends,” Brian said. A car crashed through the silence below. Arthur breathed softly. “It’s smashin’.”
“What happens next?” Margaret demanded.
“I can’t tell you,” Brian said, not yet knowing. “Part two don’t come till tomorrer night.”
“How many parts has it got?” she asked.
“Four, I think.”
“Serials at pictures have twelve,” she said. “Sometimes they’ve got fifteen.”
“Do the coppers get ’em?” Fred demanded from down the bed.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
Arthur put his spoke in: “Now.”
“You’re ever such a good story-teller,” Margaret said. So he told them more, and went on till no one was left awake.
On his way to sleep Brian heard the whistle from a train rumbling out of Radford Station: like a squeal of surrender in the lead-heavy night, a downward note hurled from a black cavern by some unknown terror. He shuddered, rolled in a half-sleep, suffocated among bundles of bodies. The fearful low piping followed him into over-arching slumber, the train gone, and the whistle alone was an almost visible monster crying in the mouth of the night. “Dad!” he wanted to shout. “Dad!” being afraid, and when he looked from wide open eyes, he saw the Devil on the end of the bed.
The sad long wail sounded again, muted and resigned and more discouraging than before, coming from what was beyond his experience because it was nearer than he to the pits and brink of dying. His fear was of the coalswamps, a million years back and a million years on, the dead already calling from the future behind the black flames of life, as if dying and living were no more than a vast circle broken at one tiny place—where he was. The whistle persisted its soul-in-agony hooting, imprisoned in the dark spaces of his brain, even while his eyes were staring at the Devil on the end of the bed.
The Devil wore a crimson triangular hat, had a grey round face, a snubbed nose, and big loose grey lips. Brian was aware of him grinning, and when the whistle blew again it was part and parcel of him, and the jaggle of trucks on the railway line was chains rattling when his arms lifted (though his body did not move); and they were the chains with which he was to take him away.
The small dark room ignored the silver of moon outside, and shrunk in size until the Devil seemed closer. The squat figure grinned and beckoned, and his chains rattled again, impatient to take him to the owl-whistles and mastodon coalswamps. The grey face leered, and Brian stared at the crimson triangular hat that, even in the darkness, he saw was the colour of dried blood. The Devil had come to take him away, and he didn’t want to go. Brian and heart and fibre were against it, and he opened his mouth to cry out. Nothing. Dad! Dad! Dad! No sound came. He couldn’t breathe, as if a giant hook were fixed into the mechanism of his lungs, though in a way it seemed more tolerable to cry out than breathe, except that his cries made no sound, and the figure of the squat Devil sat waiting, patient and assured, wearing an oxblood triangular hat and rattling grey chains in grey invisible hands. The whistle stopped, as if the train had fallen sheer over the missing span of a bridge joining two banks of night; and Brian without knowing it dropped into sleep.
He told his father he had seen the Devil. It was only a nightmare, Seaton said. You often have nightmares from eating too late at night. Brian didn’t believe it. It was the Devil, who had come to take him away. Yes, his mother said, it was the Devil right enough, and if he didn’t behave himself and do all her errands from now on, then the next time the Devil came he would wrap them chains around him and take him away, for good. Then he’d never see anybody again, not even his grandad Merton.
CHAPTER 10
After a hefty downward press of his boot, Merton swung back the fork and lifted an abundant root of potatoes, shook them vigorously to the soil, then cast the useless tops aside for Brian to load on the small red barrow.
Brian didn’t yet know how hard he worked, was enjoying himself, having been in the garden since breakfast, unplugging weeds and nettles and gathering broad beans for one o’clock dinner. He pronged up potato-tops in Merton’s wake with his own quick-working fork, piled them high on the barrow, then fixed himself into the shafts—like a pit pony, as Merton said. He ran a sleeve across his forehead, brought it down mucky with sweat and a couple of squashed thunder-flies. The hot days had lasted a long time, making his face red, then brown, below his close-cropped threp’nny haircut whose front scrag-ends dipped over, turning his normally high Seaton brow into a lower Merton one and falling almost to his angled blue eyes.
With dug-in heels the barrow was heaved from a self-made rut, drawn between flowers and marrow patch towards a dumping ground by Welltop Hill. A series of lorry-like manœuvres sent the wheels climbing a mount of weeds and heads already brown from the sun. Every weekend Merton started a fire under th
em with a sheet of newspaper, and Brian stood back with him while flame and grey smoke rose, then returned to see the circle of black ash at dusk. He charged like Ben-Hur back to the garden, taking corners at full speed and axle-catching the gatepost as he went by, to see that his grandfather had scattered more tops and carried several buckets of potatoes into the arbour-shed.
Merton leaned on his fork to watch Brian fix another load on to the barrow. He liked to have Vera’s lad with him, working strenuously yet not breathing hard, thrusting the fork under a load of refuse and testing its weight to make sure it wasn’t too heavy before swinging it on to the barrow. Each sure movement was recognized as an unconscious work-rhythm that he, with his oft-lotioned back, was beginning to lose.
He smiled widely at Brian, who did not know he was observed, admiring him for a good worker, a quality that made him fond of anyone. Yet he recollected him in the kitchen at evenings, head down over a book or pencilling an imaginary map, pastimes he couldn’t reconcile with the innate good sense of toil exhibited by the Brian now before him. It was an amusing combination that did no harm, and he didn’t suppose it could, as his grandson in yellow shirt, short trousers, and burst plimsolls loaded more weeds and potato-tops.
“Come on, Nimrod,” he called, standing erect and shouldering the fork, “stop doin’ that for a bit, and we’ll go and cut some rhubarb. ’Appen yer gra’ma’ll mek you some custard wi’t for your tea.”
After dinner he was equipped with brush and scraper to clean out the pigeon hut, a job he didn’t like but accepted because—apart from it pleasing his grandfather—he’d been promised a penny at the end of the day. A scraper-blade in his teeth, he crawled through the low opening and out of sunlight. Letting the scraper fall, he used his mouth for breath after the first force of the smell brought water from his eyes. Gradually he was able to see and move about, pushed his scraper along half-rotten boards, heaping excrement and feathers towards the far wall. He gave up trying not to dirty his clothes, and sat down whenever he felt tired. Working open-mouthed from corner to corner, he isolated the large central patch; then he cut lanes through it and gradually enlarged the island of clean-scraped board in the middle, until only a broken perimeter of filth remained. When this vanished he pushed the scrapings from the door with a dustpan dragged in from outside by his muscular sleeve-rolled arm.
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