The sudden sound of a door opening in the hall caused Ma’s relaxed body to stiffen in her chair and the smile to leave her face, and turning to Nellie she murmured, ‘If he comes in here take him back.’
Perplexed, Rooney watched the little one squeeze out from behind the chair and table and make for the door. But before she reached it, it was pushed open and an old man shambled a step into the room. He looked a good age, about eighty, Rooney thought, and the most striking thing about him was the shaggy growth of white whiskers which sprouted from his face at all angles. He was small and slightly bent, but his eyes were bright and alert, and they fixed on Rooney with an almost tangible hold.
‘What’s goin’ on here?’ His voice was a thin squeak.
‘Come on.’ Nellie went towards him and took hold of his arm.
‘Leave be, Nellie. Something’s goin’ on here. Who’s he?’
Ma rose, and going to her father-in-law, cupped her mouth with her hands and yelled in his ear, ‘Mr Smith. He’s come to stay.’
‘What? Why can’t you speak up? Who is he?’
Ignoring the old man, Ma turned to Nellie. And she, taking a pencil and a little pad from her overall pocket, wrote one word on it, then stubbing the paper twice with her pencil in a precise, definite movement she handed it to him.
Pushing his head back into his shoulders and holding the pad at arm’s length away from him, the old man read out the word ‘Lodger’.
Rooney gave a conciliatory smile as the fierce old eyes came on him again. ‘Don’t want no lodgers. Whose house is this, anyway? It’s my house.’
‘Oh!’ Indignation was now being expressed from every curve of Ma’s body. She was rearing as she cried, ‘Go on to your room!’
‘What?’
She pointed.
‘Don’t order me about. I’m nigh frozen in there. What I want to know is, about this chap.’ He pointed a quivering finger at Rooney.
Ma turned her back on the old man and in an aside to Rooney she whispered, ‘I’m sorry. Don’t take no notice.’
Rooney, not yet used to the technique, looked at Ma and answered reassuringly, ‘That’s all right.’
‘Talkin’. I can hear you. Go on!’ Grandpa glared at Ma’s bulging back muscles, and on this she turned and yelled at him, miming as she did so by thrusting her finger into her ear, ‘Well, where’s your ear thing? Where is it if you want to hear?’
‘That!’ Grandpa’s chin was thrust up aggressively at her. ‘It’s like you, no damned good. I can hear better without it.’
Nellie again took his arm, firmly this time. And his manner undergoing an immediate change, he said with almost childish pleading, ‘No, Nellie, I don’t want to go back yet, I want to sit here.’
Again Nellie took the pad and wrote one word, finishing it off with a double stab, and again at arm’s length he read it. Then throwing the paper on to the table and lowering himself into a chair he muttered, ‘Behave! Behave!’
No-one spoke for a moment and, under the gimlet stare of Grandpa, Rooney began to shift uneasily, until he thought of his baccy. Taking his pouch from his waistcoat he opened it and pushed it across the table. The old man continued to look at him steadily for a time before his eyes dropped to the tobacco. There were three short rolls in the pouch, and the old man, touching one, said, ‘All this? Do you want me to have all this?’
Rooney nodded. And Grandpa, taking a roll, put it into the pocket of his woollen jacket.
The silence returned to the room, and during it Ma refilled the teacups and also a large chipped cup that Nellie had brought in from the kitchen. It was Nellie who handed it to the old man.
‘What’s his name?’ he asked of her.
Patiently Nellie again wrote on the pad, ‘Mr Joseph Smith. Call him Rooney.’ And as she wrote, Rooney visualised her in the shop continually writing out little bills—stab, stab—stab, stab.
After a long gulp of tea, Grandpa read the slip of paper, then asked pointedly of Rooney. ‘Why Rooney if your name’s Joe?’
Rooney held out his palms and shook his head and mouthed, ‘Middle name…mother’s.’
‘What’s he say?’ Grandpa turned to Nellie again. But she did not write any more explanations. Instead, taking up the Shields Gazette from a chair, she handed it to him, whereupon Ma, making the pretence of poking the fire, exclaimed angrily, ‘Now what did you have to go and do that for? You know what he is when he gets the paper. Try to get him back.’
‘He won’t go yet. He’s better with the paper than talking. He’ll be all right,’ said Nellie, and, lifting up the curtains from the table, she left the room.
Rooney knew that he too should rise and go upstairs, but it was always the way when he got sat down, he found it most difficult to get up again and had to wait for an opportune moment. And that moment, he somehow sensed, was not yet, for Ma was worried over the old boy. Well, she needn’t be on his account, he had quite taken to the old fellow.
Somehow he made him feel more at home, sort of levelled things down a bit. He had seen a few like him in his time. The only really happy place he had lived in was with a Miss Cuthbert, and her father was just like this one. He had been a good old fellow really, and when he had died she had got herself married to a bloke who objected to lodgers, and that had been that. So the old woman here need not get herself into a stew about what he might think of the old man. As far as he could see there was no doubt but that this one was an old tartar, and Ma had his sympathy in a way, for by the sound of him he’d take some putting up with.
‘Damp-day pains are caused by rheumatism.
For speedy relief, take Thirty Days
Rheumatic Tablets.’
Grandpa read out the advert in a slow, high croak, then added, ‘Tripe! Tripe! All adverts are tripe. And it’s under Personal an’ all…It’s false pretences.’
Ma groaned audibly, and attacked the fire with the poker.
‘First Church of Christ Scientist.
Subject for Sunday: Adam and The Fallen Man.’
‘They’ve got it wrong.’ Grandpa looked at Rooney. ‘Eve and the fallen man, it should be. There’d have been no fall without her.’ His eyes flicked towards Ma, where she was now gathering up the cups. ‘Women! They should be smothered at birth…Are you saved?’
This question was addressed with startling pointedness to Rooney, and he again spread out his hands, smiled and shook his head.
‘Well, you can thank God for that. And don’t you be saved. And stop anybody from trying to do it. Women and religion, they drive you barmy. How old are you?’
Although Ma in an aside muttered, ‘Take no notice,’ she stopped and watched Rooney put up both his hands three times, then one hand with the fingers and thumb spread out.
‘Thirty-five?’ said Grandpa. ‘You don’t look it. No more ’n thirty. Married?’
Rooney shook his head, and Grandpa stared at him fixedly.
At this point the front doorbell rang sharply, and Ma, after a moment’s hesitation, left the room. The old man’s eyes followed her; then leaning across towards Rooney, he whispered, ‘You be careful, lad. I’m warning you. That scarlet menace’ll have you singing hymns afore you know where you are…And more’n that…Aye, more’n that an’ all. You look out. I’ve known her some years, and I’m tellin’ you…What brought you here?’
There was the sound of the front door closing, and Rooney indicated Ma’s return to the old man with a movement of his head, whereupon Grandpa, taking up the paper again, stared at it, and as Ma came into his view, he read aloud,
‘Regent Cinema.
Shields Operatic Society.
Annie Get Your Gun.
Full Chorus and Dances.’
He sniffed up both nostrils before going on,
‘Palladium.
Sitting Bull.
Westoe.
Back to God’s Country.
Savoy.
Mightiest Spectacle of the year on the screen.
The Prodigal.’
‘Women with no clothes on. Look at them! That’s the Bible for you…D’you go to the pictures?’
Rooney nodded and pointed to a picture of James Stewart in a Stetson under the heading of ‘The Man from Laramie’. ‘Cowboy,’ he said.
The old man ignored this, and his eyes continued to roam over the paper. Then he exploded loudly, ‘Birthday Greetings! Many Happy Returns! Lot of bunkum! Every week birthday greetings and congratulations to Tom, Dick and Harry. What do they want to stick them in the paper for? Who wants to see them? Who does it matter to anyway, but among themselves, eh? Show-off! Daft show-off. That’s what people do, they show off. Skint and save to show off. No coal. Look—’ He pointed to the fire, and Ma, coming swiftly from the kitchen like a tugboat cleaving through the water, went to the room door and called sharply, ‘Nellie! Nellie!’
There was a movement in the room above, and then a moment later Nellie came into the room, and without asking any questions she took Grandpa firmly by his arm and raised him to his feet.
‘What’s up? I don’t want to go, Nellie. I’m all right. What am I saying? Nowt wrong.’
‘Come on.’
Steadily she led him out of the room, and as the door closed on them Ma sank into a chair and covering the side of her face with one hand exclaimed, ‘I’m so ashamed…I wouldn’t for the world…’
As was often the case, Ma did not go on to explain what she wouldn’t for the world, and Rooney said soothingly, ‘There’s no need to worry. I mean, about me. Why, there’s nothing to worry about—he’s only an old man.’
‘An old man! A wicked old devil. Oh…!’ Ma checked her description, and her voice dropping she ended, ‘If you only knew what my life’s been like with him…what I’ve gone through these past years…I could write a book…’
The moment now seemed appropriate for rising, and Rooney rose. ‘I’ll have to be getting me foodstuff down,’ he said. ‘And then I’ll be going out for the evening. It’s time I was putting a move on.’
Ma said nothing, but she looked slightly taken aback, and with puckered brows she watched him depart.
On entering his own room Rooney was amazed to find his curtains up. How, he wondered, had the little one managed it? Even if she had stood on the window sill he couldn’t see her reaching the cornice pole. She wasn’t more than five foot two, if she was that.
The curtains made all the difference to the room. Where they weren’t faded they showed a soft pink and, being the remains of a good-quality pair, they hung nicely. They were lined and warm-looking. Now, he thought, if only he had a fire on he would have been inclined to stay the night, but as he hadn’t and no coal to make one—he hadn’t dared remove the small amount of coal he still had left at Mrs Sparks’—he would keep to his usual routine and go to the dogs.
Ma cooked him the two rashers of bacon and the egg he took down for his tea, and set before it his halfpound of butter, a loaf and a pot of jam. But as he ate he did not feel entirely at ease, for Ma and Nellie were sitting down to small slices of what looked like cold potato pasty. Rooney liked to see a good table, and give Mrs Sparks her due she had been a good cook and ate well herself and always saw that there was some tasty bit for him. Yet Ma here looked as if she could eat her share, for that bulk wasn’t sustained, he imagined, on cold potato pasty.
‘How,’ he asked Nellie after a long uncomfortable pause, ‘did you manage to hang me curtains?’
‘Oh, it was quite easy. I—’
‘She’s got a set of steps in her room,’ put in Ma. ‘It saves lugging them up and down stairs.’
‘Well, thanks,’ said Rooney.
Nellie did not acknowledge the thanks, but kept her attention on her plate. And Rooney, as he ate, glanced at her from time to time, and he thought that he had never seen anybody so white-looking. Perhaps it was the size and darkness of her eyes that made her face look paler than it really was. Her hair was the same colour as her eyes, dark brown, and could have been nice hair if it had been cut properly. But it looked as if it had been cut round a pot-pie basin. She was wearing a shapeless, grey woollen jumper, and, he mused, she could have done with a bit of Ma’s bust, for it looked as if she had none of her own. Once, while Ma was refilling the teapot in the scullery, she raised her eyes to find his upon her, and hers did not drop shyly away but stared back at him with some defiance, and it was his head that went down and his colour that went up.
Later, dressed in his good brown suit and best cap and with his mac over his arm, he called in the living room to ask if he could have a key.
Ma was sitting before the fire staring into it, her arms hugging her breasts, and she started and turned to him, surveying him a moment appraisingly before saying, ‘Well now, we’ve only got the one key, but the back door’s always open. You could come the back way.’
This to Rooney was a bit of a damper, for it meant that he couldn’t go in or out without coming to the notice of whoever was in the kitchen and living room, but, as usual, he couldn’t press his point so just said, ‘Well, if that’ll be all right with you and I won’t be intruding…?’
‘No, no, not at all. Are you off to the pictures?’
‘No, not tonight. I generally go to Horsely Hill on a Saturday night.’
‘Oh!’ Ma’s expression became blank, and it was evident to Rooney that she was one of those people who weren’t in favour of the dogs.
‘Well, I’ll be off. So lo…Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Ma. ‘And you can go out the back way if you like.’
From the sitting-room door he turned on his heel and with unsteady steps crossed the room and went into the kitchen.
It was a fair-sized kitchen but appeared small, for most of its space was taken up with a large table opposite the sink, and odd cupboards flanking the walls.
Nellie was standing at the sink, evidently finishing the washing up, and as he passed her he said, ‘Good evening.’
She did not raise her head, but answered, ‘Good evening.’ And he went out thinking, I can’t make her out at all. She’s not uppish like that lot the other night, but she’s more stiff somehow.
After half an hour at the dogs, Rooney came to the conclusion that the new place had brought him luck, for he’d had two wins and was richer by three pounds fifteen. Now, as with living, Rooney had a method with his winnings. When he won, which wasn’t often, he put two-thirds of it in the Post Office to swell the mounting store that his saving of a pound a week was making. The other third he would put on his favourite the following week. But tonight he felt a bit reckless, not quite himself at all, and in a sudden flash of devil-may-care he decided to risk the lot, and not on the favourite but on a bit of an outsider. That he had gone and done a real daft thing he was certain when he saw the dogs lined up; and even when they were off, bounding after the uncatchable hare with Tarantella lying third, he was bitterly regretting his impulsiveness. And then in one great, inspired spurt, Tarantella was home by a head.
He took off his cap and crushed it in his hands, breaking the peak, which showed how deeply he was stirred, for it was a new cap. Four pounds was the most he had ever won, and now to win thirty or over, just like that. What if he put the lot on the next race? No. No, that was a fool’s game. He knew when to stop. And he wasn’t going to put a third of this on next week either. He’d buy a suit with that third, and start in the usual way again, making ten bob his limit.
Pushing through the crowd, he collected his money and made his way outside the ground, carrying with him thirty-three pounds more than when he had entered.
On the bus from Westoe to Laygate he looked out on the shops, and he felt a little regretful that they were all closed for he had the desire to buy something for somebody…but who? Ma and the little one? No, he mustn’t start that. No, something for Bill’s bairns. Toys, or sweets, or something.
From Laygate he made his way to The Anchor, and was a bit surprised to find only Bill occupying the MPs’ corner.
‘Fred not b
een in?’ he asked. ‘Nor Albert?’
‘No, nor likely to,’ said Bill. ‘You missed somethin’ the day, not comin’ in.’
‘Did I?’ said Rooney. ‘Well, I was moving me things, as you know. What’s up?’
‘What’s up? What isn’t up!’ Bill threw off the remainder of his drink, drew his finger across his upper lip and began, ‘It was like this. We called in as usual, and were sitting just here when a chap comes up and says he’d like a word with Albert. Well, they go to the door. And weren’t there a minute when Albert comes back. White as a sheet, he was, and wouldn’t say nowt for a minute. And then he ordered a glass of whisky. And then another as quick as lightning. And then he opens up. Apparently the fellow had tipped him off—his wife’s goin’ round with a coloured bloke.’
‘A coloured bloke?’ repeated Rooney in a slightly shocked tone.
‘Aye, from across the water. And they usually cross over in the ferry about two o’clock, the fellow said. By! lad, I’ve never seen anybody as mad as Albert. Although he knew fine well she was carrying on night after night at different dance halls he had done nowt about it, until he knew the bloke was coloured. “What’s the bloody difference?” I said, trying to quieten him. “He’s just another bloke. They’re all the same under the skin.” But it was no good trying to reason with him; it was as Danny said, “All black boys are oor brothers until they want to marry oor sisters or make a pass at oor wives, and then they’re not even human beings.” Well, off he went…Albert. And we felt a bit uneasy. So the three of us decided to go home, have our dinner, and be at the ferry round about two. And it was as well we did. There he was, at the corner of the market place, in a doorway. We kept out of sight for a bit. And then they came, her done up like a doll, and this black bloke. Fine-looking chap, mind, I will say. Albert didn’t wait, he went right in. Man, did that dark boy look surprised, but he would’ve knocked the daylights out of Albert if we hadn’t interfered and pulled him clear. It was all over in a minute, and her and the bloke had cleared off afore the bobby showed up. We said there had just been an argument, and he told us to get moving.’
Rooney Page 4