Birthday

by Alan Sillitoe

  Some kids turn out to be good no matter what their parents are like, he wanted to say. ‘I expect that’s true.’

  ‘You bet it is.’

  ‘Come on, mam, I want to talk about which ones you like. Then you won’t complain if I pick the ones I want.’

  ‘She’s a real sharpshit.’ He was delighted, and heard her say when her mother paused at the shop entrance: ‘Who’s that bloke, then?’

  Brenda laughed. ‘Never you mind.’

  ‘One of your toy boys, I suppose. Looks like he still fancies you.’

  He’d seen neither since, no point looking, in spite of Joan’s face now and again vividly before him. Sometimes he wondered whether she really was his daughter, yet knew she was because she didn’t have the tight miserable face of Jack. Maybe he had one or two more kids scattered around, and would turn into a doddery old man buttonholing people in the street wanting to find out, and getting kicked in every time for putting such a question.

  Nowadays you can get a DNA test if you aren’t sure (though it hadn’t occurred to Jack) so maybe those happy fuck-a-day times are over. Soon there’ll be do-it-yourself DNA booths at every service station, big signs flashing twenty-four hours a day saying: TRY DNA WITH YOUR KIDS. A POUND A GO. REDUCTIONS FOR FAMILIES! Blood all up and down the motorway. He couldn’t help feeling sorry for any bloke whose wife had a kid he thought was his but wasn’t. In the old days you didn’t even care about catching AIDS.

  He clipped another set of lights, a touch on the brake pedal passing the constabulary headquarters. ‘The cops must have your number by now,’ Brian said.

  ‘They have. Didn’t you see them give me the nod as we went by? They know me, always Arthuring me and my old ducking me when I see one in a pub. “Have a pint on us, Mr Seaton.” He’s even younger than Harold. Coppers look like kids who’ve just had a uniform and cosh in their Christmas stockings. “I saw you pass our headquarters in your old tin lizzie, and you were doing a tad over fifty in a thirty mile zone. We have a very wide view from the second storey.” “I was only doing twenty-six and three quarters,” I say. “We clocked you, Arthur, just for the fun of it. When you’re ninety and got Alzheimer’s as well you’ll have to slow down a bit.” They’ve known me so long they talk about me all the time.’

  ‘In the old days you wanted to hang all the coppers from lamp posts,’ Brian reminded him.

  ‘That’s when I thought they’d like to hang me, or bang me up for ten years. But we all belong to the same outfit in the end.’

  Avril went down the garden path to deactivate the burglar alarm. ‘She always does it,’ Arthur said, ‘because I once plugged in the wrong number. Before I knew what was happening the bells of hell sounded all up and down the street. There was a policeman at the front door, one at the back, and one coming down the chimney. I’ve never seen them move so fast. While they was at it a couple of fire engines covered the house in foam. Smart lads, them firemen. The only way you could tell the coppers from Eskimos was when they ran out of the house shouting into their radios. They gave me a right bollocking, so now I let Avril do it.’

  He filled the empty kettle for the next mashing of tea so that Avril would only have to flick the switch with her good arm. ‘Just sit down,’ he told her. He brought out bread, butter, cheese, a jar of homegrown onions, their garden tomatoes, radishes, hearts of lettuce, and a large pork pie.

  ‘We should have filled up at the party,’ Brian said, ‘except none of us were hungry.’

  ‘In the old days,’ Arthur said, ‘we’d eat everything we could get our hands on, because we were never sure where our next meal was coming from.’

  Brian relished the crust, jelly and rich spiced meat of the pork pie, never trusting any in London that might come from Sweeney Todd Limited. ‘You might cut one open, and find a shirt button inside.’

  ‘Avril gets the best Melton Mowbray.’ Arthur uncorked a bottle of Valdepenas. ‘It’s corn in Egypt in this house. I’m glad we had it rough when we was young. Kids today don’t know they’re born.’

  ‘Here we go again,’ Avril laughed, as he filled her glass.

  ‘But I want everybody to have enough to eat. And there was people worse off than us, like all them starving to death in Poland. The Germans did it on purpose. It don’t bear thinking about. If them kids could have had half what we had they’d have thought they was in paradise.

  ‘A few years ago at work an apprentice was sent to me so that I could teach him how to saw metal. At lunch break he opens his box and takes out some sandwiches his mother must have packed for him. “Bloody hell,” he said, “not cheese again. I had that yesterday,” and he flung the whole packet straight into the rubbish bin. I shot up, and put my fist under his nose. “You young bastard,” I shouted, “you ought to fucking die for doing that. If I see you do it again I’ll kill you. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  ‘I just about went mad. I must have terrified the poor bogger, but it served him right. The other blokes agreed with me. “I’d have given my right arm for them sandwiches once upon a time,” I told him. After the break I said to the foreman: “Get that kid out of my sight. I don’t want him working with me.” And in a couple of days he was put somewhere else.’

  Brian asked how he got the job, knowing that a metal sawyer was only qualified after a long apprenticeship. ‘I was made redundant at the bike factory,’ Arthur said, ‘but while I was there I worked every machine they had. I could only get a job as a van driver when I left, fetching and carrying the firm’s metal products all over the Midlands. I was standing in the main assembly shop one day, where the metal was cut for making the arms of robots that we supplied to car firms and automated factories, and I said to the foreman: “I can do that job.” “Well,” he said, “we’ll be shorthanded after Joe leaves next week, and we haven’t trained anybody to take over yet. Give it a go, and we’ll see how you get on. We can easily get another van driver, but we can’t get metal-cutters. Joe will tell you what you don’t know.”

  ‘I was bluffing a lot, and after Joe left I couldn’t work out a blueprint thrown on the bench showing the shape and size of some metal to be sawn. But I asked around, and one of the other blokes would put me right. It took me nearly a year to get the hang of it properly, but the man I took over from left because the work was too heavy, even though he was younger than me. Big pieces of steel and brass had to be lifted onto the machines for shaping, and you had to make exact calculations. The change to metric complicated things, but not for long. I even invented a special stop to the machine, which saved on the brass and steel. The firm was pleased, but I just thought it through, and did it.

  ‘The noise wasn’t as bad as in the bike factory. There’d be screeching for a few minutes, then it got quieter till next time. You had earmuffs, but hardly anybody wore them. If they went deaf they couldn’t claim compensation. Goggles were provided against bits of metal flying about, but you only wore them now and again, and if something did get in your eye you put ’em on straightaway and said it had jumped in from underneath. When a bloke came in with a bad back from grafting all weekend in his garden he tripped over a box, and said he’d done it at work. He got a week off fully paid. I never had a day off because it was highly skilled and interesting. Some jobs took three days, another only three hours. I worked as a sawyer for eighteen years, and some of the young lads started calling me dad when they came to me for advice. I was nearly sixty, so couldn’t get mad. But I got good money, and was never short of a crust. But I’ll tell you one thing, no grub was ever left on my plate.’

  ‘We even have to buy peanuts for the birdtable in the garden,’ Avril said, ‘because there are never any leftovers. We used to have lots of sparrows and greenfinches, bluetits as well, but there are hardly any now. I can’t think where they’ve gone. We get more insects.’

  Arthur topped up the glasses, though only a little for Avril. ‘I used to think they’d died because of poison on the fields, but I’ve never seen any corpses. I’ve ofte
n wondered where birds go when they die.’

  ‘Do you remember the sparrowhawk that came down?’ Avril said. ‘All the birds flew into the honeysuckle, so it didn’t get any. Arthur would have had it for breakfast if he’d set a trap, but he didn’t like what they fed on.’

  Brian peeled the cellophane from a cigar and, on his way back to the table with an ashtray, glanced out of the window, seeing the colours of yellow marigolds, fuchsias, petunias, michaelmas daisies and geraniums planted by Avril while Arthur toiled at the vegetables. ‘I’ve never seen a garden so neat.’

  Arthur turned to her. ‘We’ll give you a tour in the morning.’

  She blew smoke from her food, most of which had been left. ‘When there’s a cold east wind in winter and plenty of drizzle it doesn’t look so good.’

  ‘It’s a wonder nobody comes over the fence and helps themselves,’ Brian said.

  ‘They’d be taking their life in their hands.’ Arthur’s lips went down. ‘They’d have to climb over the garage, for a start, and if I caught them I’ve got a cavalry sabre under the bed that we found in a junk shop. I sharpened it like a razor at work. If anybody broke in I’d cut a piece off them. I wouldn’t hesitate. You get let off if you kill somebody in your own house.’

  Brian didn’t doubt Arthur would wield it. ‘Just show it to them, and they’d run a mile.’

  ‘Everybody keeps their eyes open for everybody else in this street,’ Avril said. ‘We’re on Neighbourhood Watch.’

  ‘Alice next door lost her husband last year,’ Arthur laughed, ‘so her son paid for a phone to be installed by her bed, and I nearly pissed myself when I looked out of the window and saw three big chaps from the phone company coming down the path to install it. One man could have fixed it in ten minutes. You shove a cable through the wall, tie the connections, do a bit of making good, and it’s finished. The three of them stayed half a day drinking Alice’s tea. I’d have done it for her, but she didn’t think to ask.’

  ‘It’s better than them being out of work, or walking the streets looking for a house to break into.’ Avril stood to clear the table, till Arthur told her to sit down: ‘It’s my job, for a while.’ He filled the kettle for a last cup before going to bed, as if they should have something in their stomachs as ballast for settling bad dreams, or liquid to smooth the final moments of the day before saying goodnight.

  Brian went up for a shower, then lay in the dark lulled by muted talk from the kitchen as Arthur finished the washing up and put it in the cupboards.

  The next thing he heard was a thump at the door, and a mug of coffee set on his bedside table. ‘Gerrup, you idle bastard, it’s quarter to eight. You should have been in the factory an hour ago. How will you pay the rent if you get the sack?’

  Part Two

  ELEVEN

  Motoring to visit his brothers he would either travel along the M1, or go up the Great North Road, depending on whether he intended calling at Derek’s first, or at Arthur’s. He would sometimes avoid the latter route due to a forecast of mist, and take his chance among coagulating lorry traffic on the motorway.

  Whichever he chose, he could home in on either of his brothers’ places as if a Decca navigator had been planted in his brain from birth, much as a bird might have its own inertial system. When his sister Margaret lay dying in the City Hospital he got there in two hours due to far less traffic, but nowadays, even steaming along the outside lane, he couldn’t often reach the legal limit.

  A car in front, which would not get into the middle lane and let him go by, ought to have been scorched by the dexterity of his curses but, without the guts or know-how to increase speed, or lacking the sense to shift back to where he belonged, annoyingly was not. Brian never supposed himself to be in a hurry, but the motorway existed, so it seemed sensible to make the best headway possible. His fine-tuned reactions had taught that the faster he went (within limits) the less energy was used, a throwback from his factory days.

  Even so, somebody faster than you, with whatever philosophical justification, or most likely with none at all, would be coming up behind, a blood-red underslung gobbet of speed flashing white lights into the back of your skull, in which case you either became in his mind what the slowcoach was in front of you, or you got in and let him by, then came out again and fell in behind the same car still trying to thrust ahead but getting only as far as you had been a few moments before.

  On the Great North Road (otherwise the A1 (M)) though mostly dual carriageway, the urge to go fast was less acute, since occasional traffic islands slowed you down. The more relaxing route could take up to an hour longer, because you were now and again slowed by a gaggle of juggernauts jockeying for position to overtake, the drivers no doubt fed up with seeing the same fat-arsed pantechnicon and boring logo for mile after mile, though for all their effort the only alteration in the scenery when they had finished their nerve cracking manoeuvre was a different number plate.

  On the A1 (M), close to the A606 turn-off, he was reluctant to risk a stomach upset at a service station, so stopped to eat his sandwiches by peaceful Rutland Water. Having much of the parking area to himself, he wandered to the shore, the surface cut by the plumage of gliding swans, fields beyond subtly indicating that he was in a country with no name in the motoring atlas, a landscape from one of his dreams in which the seemingly unpeopled terrain belonged to him alone.

  He recalled quizzing Arthur on the meaning of life, who had replied: ‘What’s the point thinking about what you can never know? I came out of my mother, and when I kick the bucket I’ll go into the soil. No more daylight. Nothing at all. What more can you say?’

  Looking across at the coastal indentations of the artificial lake created by engineers and surveyors, he felt no need either to wonder about where he would surely be going, yet could imagine a Grand Deity responsible for every change of the universe, controlling the labyrinthine progress of all human and animal beings.

  The chill wind of the winter’s afternoon sent him to his car and on to Nottingham. Avril’s chemotherapy was finished, nothing more to be done, corpuscle wreckers undermining her body with ravages invisible except to X-rays. She had been sent home, and Arthur was looking after her, with only optimism to deploy against the unstoppable course of her illness.

  Driving over Trent Bridge he got in lane for his customary glance at the sluggish band of water wide enough to keep the two halves of the country from each other’s throats. He had swam in it, rowed boats in it, played by its banks as a kid, walked and cycled along it, fished in it once with Arthur, and many a time fucked in the shrubbery along the Clifton bank. There was no other river for which he felt so much affection, sliding sinuously with never the same face, for which familiarity had bred love and never contempt.

  He threaded the traffic, eyeing each signpost in case instinct let him down in the morass of roads and one-way turnings that, according to Arthur, Derek had taken such pleasure in creating. His latest script had been handed in and would go into production soon. Another lump sum was on its way but, he told Arthur, he would feel like vomiting when his name came up on the credits. Though the idea was more banal than usual, he had regretted not being able to laugh as loud as those in the studio on hearing it was to be called: ‘Anyone for Dennis?’

  Derek reminded him that the money he got for it would buy a lot of Alka Seltzers, and that nothing mattered as long as you made people laugh for half an hour and forget their troubles. Let television live for them, and hope they stayed tuned in.

  At the city centre cars spun in from every angle as he turned into Slab Square and cruised around to observe the people, well fed now and comfortably dressed in anoraks and bomber jackets and trainer shoes, no overalls or sports coats, or drab footwear. He saw black faces here and there, or someone wearing a Moslem pillbox hat, or turban, though he’d noticed that when such people opened their mouths the accent was often as Nottingham as the rest, language a perfect mixer.

  Arthur helped him in with his camera bag,
a holdall, a cardboard box of books and magazines, a couple of bottles of wine, and a carton of the best orange juice from the supermarket for Avril. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Not too well. But she always says she’s all right. She’ll never say how badly she feels. But she can’t keep her food down anymore.’

  ‘Does she rest a lot?’

  ‘All she can. I’m glad you’ve come, though. She’ll be glad to see you.’

  She sat at the kitchen table in her usual place, as if dressed for going out, wearing a beige sweater, and a skirt as neat as if just back from the cleaners, her wig smoothly combed and so exactly placed one would never guess her affliction.

  He kissed her on the lips. ‘How are you, then?’

  She smiled, ‘Oh, so-so.’

  ‘You look all right.’

  She had drawn more into herself, gathering her resources to fight off what was attacking her; but the more she did so the weaker she became, which made her even less able to preserve her wellbeing. Science had failed, and it was up to her, she was on her own, she would get weaker, when the lack of resistance would leave only hope, as effective as a stick in a typhoon.

  ‘Well, I’ve got to feel all right, haven’t I?’ She put a spoon into the bowl of half finished soup. ‘It’s just that I can’t keep much down, though I’m trying.’

  A stranger might assume the frail aspect to be her normal physique, but he recalled her former stateliness and wit on her countering Arthur’s outlandish humour. She smiled, and lifted the spoon to her lips. ‘Did you have a good run up?’

  ‘Yes.’ He sat by her. ‘Not too much traffic on the Al. Hereward the Wake must have been asleep. But I did have a run-in with a camper van near Norman Cross.’

  She gave her usual dry laugh of disbelief. ‘You’re a bit of a devil, if you ask me.’

  ‘The bloody madhead drives too fast,’ Arthur said.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault. I was on the outer lane, and this day-glo coloured vehicle with rusty bumpers swung out and nearly knocked me across the barrier, so for the next mile or two I worried him. I could see rats leaping out of the rusty holes thinking this was it. Then he lost his nerve and stopped on the verge, half tilted over. When I looked in my rear mirror he was shaking his fist because his engine had dropped out. At least I woke him up.’