Birthday

by Alan Sillitoe

  Tom’s father hadn’t been able to sleep the night before. A clear June sky kept the sunshine recorders working as much overtime as the men and women, focussing the sun’s rays as it swung overhead from one horizon to the other. Blocks of ice were brought into the factory to cool the TNT, but the weather turned more sultry, and the atmosphere in the powder gallery was so oppressive that some found it hard to breathe.

  They had been grumbling about the heat for weeks, and knew the machinery was overworked, but each shift vied with the other to turn out powder and fill more shells. The sticky TNT made the bearings overheat, some had been raised as dust to mix with the air, but work went on because the soldiers in France were suffering far worse.

  On the First of July (another one, Arthur said) Leo walked out of the boiler house where he worked on maintenance, hoping for a cooling breeze, recalling how he had said to his mother at breakfast that he’d rather be up the Trent doing a spot of fishing in such weather. Standing on the concrete, he took his watch out at just after seven in the evening.

  People in a cinema nearby were watching a film (silent, in those days) about an explosion, when the floor vibrated and dust started to fall from the ceiling. Eight tons of exploding TNT shook the ground as far away as Nottingham, breaking windows for miles around.

  Leo took an orange from his pocket, then it vanished from his hand and he was thrown across the path to the laboratory door, too stunned to know how he got there. The whole compound was falling apart, nothing but smoke and wreckage as everyone tried to reach the safety barriers. Unable to stand, a man whose right arm was a bloody mess of rags and bone put his left arm around Leo and dragged him towards safety.

  Every kind of vehicle was used for getting the wounded to the hospital, Leo on a cart pulled by a brewery horse, one of a long procession of injured men and women on the road to Nottingham. Pools of blood formed between the cobblestones, groans and screams terrifying the horses as whips cracked to drive them on.

  Leo’s legs were amputated and he died ten days later, one of four hundred killed and wounded. A week later the plant was turning out shells again.

  ‘A real killpig,’ Arthur said. ‘Tom worked there in the next war, but they didn’t fill shells anymore. Even so, he nearly got blown up.’

  ‘Maybe it runs in the family,’ Brian said. On opening his eyes in the morning Tom had a few puffs while pulling on his trousers and shirt. He walked downstairs whistling a tune, and put the fag in his mouth to pull the door open. No sooner had he stepped into the room than a flash and a bang knocked him back, his eyebrows burnt and the fag blown from his lips.

  ‘It must have been like a bomb going off,’ Arthur said. ‘I expect to mam it sounded like the biggest bang since the Blitz. Tom said he got over the shock in a couple of seconds, but mam swore it was at least five minutes before he could speak. She came down in her shimmy, and opened the doors and windows, while Tom went out to give the gas board blokes the worst bollocking they’d ever had. The man who came said it was a miracle he hadn’t been killed, seeing as how big the leak was.’

  ‘But you’ve got to sympathize,’ Arthur went on. ‘These days he would have counselling. Social workers would have been all over him. Any whiff of trouble and they’re like flies on raw meat. But some people phone up for them, even if it’s only a husband or wife walking out on a marriage. And the social workers think they’ve got to come in case anybody does themselves in.’

  He blew a smoke ring towards the stove. ‘I heard about a bloke who had a car accident, just a bang from somebody coming out of a side road, but he was so upset at his crunched up car he couldn’t stop shaking, and took himself to bed with a cup of tea and a hot-water bottle. He wouldn’t come down to go to work next morning, so his missis phoned the social services and asked ’em to send some counselling.

  ‘A young woman came, just off her course. I suppose they told her at head office to go and practise on him. The man’s missis sat downstairs waiting, but it seemed to be taking a long time, and when she went up to see how things were going she found ’em in bed together. There was fucking ructions. You could hear her screams all up and down the street, doors banging and cars stopping, even people switching off their tellies to come and see what the fuss was about.’

  Brian stopped laughing to refill their glasses. ‘You’ve got to be exaggerating.’

  ‘Me? I never exaggerate, you know that. A bloke was going on about it at work. He lived two doors down and his wife heard it all. The social worker drove away in her natty little powder blue hatchback and nearly collided with someone turning into the street, so I expect she needed counselling when she got back to the office – before they gave her the sack. Anyway, the bloke she’d been to see went off to work the next day as happy as a bird because he’d pulled a young woman into bed. It all came out later that he hadn’t needed counselling at all. He was a sly bleeder: he’d only stayed in bed knowing his wife would phone for one and that they’d send a young girl. They’re like that round here. I’m sure his wife didn’t have him counselled again, however much he needed it by the time she’d done with him. But social workers are the enemy number one. Most people are wary of them. Nearly every other house has an absconded kid hiding in the attic, and social workers come round in vans now and again trying to get them put into care, like Germans looking for Jews. But nobody gives them up.’

  After a silence Brian said: ‘I wonder where old Tom is now?’

  ‘Probably sniffing around Chilwell, to find out what caused the explosion that killed his dad. No, he’s well rotted in good earth, the only place after you kick the bucket. I suppose we like to think of people looking down on us after they’re dead, and I must admit I sometimes wonder if Grandad Merton’s keeping an eye on us. If he’s up there at all, or down, I’m sure he’s dressed in his best suit, with a dicky collar, a waistcoat and watch chain, and shining black boots. Old Nick favoured blacksmiths, so he’ll be looking on everybody with contempt because they’re moaning about the blazing fires. I can just see that gleam nobody could stand up against.’

  His five daughters hated him, but he wanted to protect them from the dangers of a changing world. If he was hard it was because he had been born that way, working at nine in his father’s forge, and never learning to read or write. His older brother George beat him around the shoulders with a steel bar for any small fault, but he grew to well over six feet tall, into the sort of man who imposed his will on others. Bringing up eight children on the earnings of a farrier hadn’t been easy, but his three sons were also tall and fit and, like the five girls, lived well beyond three score and ten, though the credit for that was due even more to his wife Mary-Ann.

  ‘I was in grandad’s house at Christmas once,’ Arthur said, ‘and I noticed him looking at me as I tackled the plum pudding. He had his eye patch on. He had a smart black one to match his best suit, which grandma probably ironed for him. Anyway, his good eye made it seem as if he was about to laugh. “Don’t eat your pudding too quick, you young bogger,” he growled. Normally he liked to see you getting stuck into your food, so I suspected a trick. Then my teeth bit something hard, and I picked a silver threepenny bit out of my mouth. He’d got grandma to put it in for me, but he didn’t laugh, just looked pleased when I sucked it clean and put it in my pocket.’

  ‘He was good to us,’ Brian said, ‘but if any of Aunt Ada’s kids came to his door he’d chase ’em away with a stick.’

  ‘They were a thieving lot,’ Arthur said. ‘He thought people who got in trouble with the police were scum.’

  The bottle being empty, Brian went to the front room for another. ‘I read that a litre a day keeps you healthy.’

  ‘I could do with a couple at a time like this. Grandad never said much, but I remember one Sunday dinner when I was slouched in my chair, he said: “Sit with your back straight at the table. And if you want summat ask for it, don’t reach. And don’t keep your hands on the table when you’re not eating.” So I had to behave, but I learn
ed a lot from watching him. I expect he talked plenty in the pub with other men, though he’d have a lot to say, living in the area all his life. A few pints inside him and he’d be as talkative as anybody else. Not that he had much money to spend on ale, not on the old age pensions they got in those days. He worked his bollocks off all his life, then lived the last few years in poverty, like old people still do.’

  Arthur clinked his glass. ‘We’ll drink to him. Aunt Ada said I took after him more than anybody else in the family. She said as long as I was alive Merton would be.’ He speared the last segment of pie. ‘Sure you won’t have it?’

  He laid two black Toscanos between their places, the last from a fat cylindrical box from Italy. ‘I’m stuffed.’

  ‘Me and Avril drove to Spain once.’ He lit up, a noticeable relaxation of his features. ‘We got to Bordeaux and it was hard to stop, but after Bilbao we found a hotel on the coast. It was cheap and the grub was marvellous. We couldn’t speak any Spanish, but we got on so well with the people who ran it they couldn’t do enough for us.’

  He stood at the stove to make coffee. ‘We took turns driving, but Avril did most of the navigation because I got us lost once in a French town. On the way back I wanted to drive around the Great War cemeteries in France, and see where the Nottinghamshire battalions got wiped out, but we only had a few quid left.’

  ‘In the next year or two,’ Brian said, ‘I’ll take both of you in my car. That’s a promise.’

  ‘I’ll keep you to it,’ Arthur said. ‘I like travelling, and so does Avril. We went to Rimini on a coach ten years ago, but I’ll never do that again. My legs were jammed against the seat in front, and I needed a few buckets of wine before I could straighten myself up. I had one though with every meal while I was there. I always feel good when I’m abroad.’

  ‘You, me, and Avril together. We’ll do it.’

  Arthur knocked the ash from his cigar. ‘You think so? I don’t know. It’s a bastard, isn’t it?’

  It was no use shirking the matter. ‘You’ve got to prepare for the worst,’ Brian said, ‘yet hope for the best. If I can’t speak openly to you I can’t do it with anybody.’

  ‘There’s nobody else I expect it from,’ Arthur said. ‘Or get it from, except Avril. She talks straight about it, and I talk to myself about it all the time, unless I’m saying it out loud to you. I’m always glad to see you for a couple of days.’

  ‘When I’m not here, if there’s anything I can do, give me a bell.’ Not even God controlled life and death, so any support would be feeble, though better than nothing. He would have taken Arthur’s pain had it been possible, but pain was greedy and never shared itself. He had known women survive cancer of the breast, and men who had beaten cancer of the colon if they caught it early, but no one had lived with cancer of the liver. Yet what if she started walking to Constantinople, eating nothing but garlic; or went by air to the alps of New Zealand and looked on scenery that would shame her illness away? He wanted the glint of mischief to miraculously reappear in her eyes, the colour of apples to shine in her cheeks, strength return to legs and arms, appetite reaffirm itself.

  Arthur, a good-looking man who carried his age well, might marry again, easy to imagine, though he felt treacherous thinking so, as if impatient with her dying. ‘When I get back to London I’ll phone the hospital, but I’ll call you first, to check that it’s all right to talk to her.’

  ‘That’d be best. She might be back here in a few days, but I know she’d like to hear from you. She thinks a lot of you. I told her the other day I’d kill her if she died, and she said: “Well, I’ll have to come through, then, won’t I? I wouldn’t want you to kill me.” He poured coffee without asking. ‘The fact is, she civilized me. I settled down with her more than with any other woman. Everything that’s good in me I learned from her, and it’s a mystery to me why somebody who’s so marvellous got cancer.’

  ‘I’ve known more women recover from it than men,’ Brian said. The nursery bricks of hope couldn’t explain what lay at the core of illness, though science and a determination to defeat it were on Avril’s side. ‘People walk the streets who’ve been at death’s door,’ he said, to help Arthur’s fragile optimism, which may not survive his putting out the light for sleep. ‘Women have a way of fighting it men don’t have. Maybe it’s faith.’

  ‘She’s got that.’

  ‘When we go to France we’ll travel on minor roads and find nice little hotels in the evening. Whatever work I’m doing, I’ll put it by. Tell Avril. It’ll give her something to think about.’

  There was no deceiving Arthur, though he was glad to hear of the plan. When Avril died it would be good to get him to France, after the year of mourning. On the other hand, all three might go, no one able to foretell the future.

  THIRTEEN

  When Brian told his father he was writing for television and making money at the game (real money: he raked in more in the first two years of his success than the old man had earned in a lifetime) Harold Seaton found the whole thing a mystery he hadn’t a hope of making plain. The fact that one of his sons worked for a medium which had mesmerized him from its first appearance was unbelievable. ‘You’re so lucky, our Brian,’ he said. ‘You’ll never have to work again.’

  He smiled at the unforgettable comment, lucky indeed at not having to labour the way his father had (when not on the dole) with shovel and pickaxe. As a boy of twelve Seaton carried upholstered armchairs and sofas on his shoulders up flights of stairs. Nowadays such objects were moved by machines, or by two full bodied men, nobody treated as beasts of burden anymore, hernias or heart attacks or sprains bred out of common tolerance.

  The weights he had shouldered in the factory at fourteen were now moved by forklift truck, though he didn’t recall being unhappy, as he looked around his carpeted study with its shelves of books impossible to live without. In the early days in London he had humped them about in suitcases, but later they were boxed by expert packers who, as he checked that they were taken down and put back in the right order, made him feel guilty at not having to stretch his muscles like them.

  Reference books on the lowest shelf saved searching for some arcane fact or other in the public library, while above were texts of playwrights from ancient days to the present, as well as biographies of actors and comedians, books on the theatre, cinema and television. A ladder was necessary to reach Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, The Prince, The Crowd by Gustav le Bon, Hobbes’ Leviathan and Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man. Even higher were shelves of Everyman and Oxford Classics: Melville (especially The Confidence Man), novels by Conrad, Dickens, and scores of others, into any of which he could retreat from whatever miseries he made for himself. Without such books he would know even less who he was, and he feared to take many from their places because after the first page he would be compelled to read the rest.

  On a side table stood objects of comfort and reassurance: a prize statuette from the Fellows of Humour Society for the best comic writing of one year; a Craven ‘A’ cigarette tin from his service days; a coat of arms mug of his home town; and a photograph of the bust of Euripides from the National Museum in Naples.

  He came into his room every morning after a shower, and a breakfast of orange juice, cereal, bacon, egg, sausage and tomato in the kitchen. Except for a quick lunch of salad and bread and cheese, and the occasional making of coffee, he worked till time for a three-course spread in the evening, which never took more than half an hour to get on the table: cold fish for a first course, then meat with vegetables, and fruit or tinned pudding to finish, with half or a bottle of wine to send it down. If he wanted to see faces he went to the Café Rouge, always full of interesting people, and young girls with good figures.

  He saw a traffic warden ambling up the street, with so much technological machinery swinging from his stocky white-shirted figure he looked as if about to go into action in Vietnam. He glanced at every windscreen to make sure the car had the correct accreditation. Stopping b
y a vehicle, he began tapping into his computer and Brian, with a surge of loathing, fetched his high velocity air rifle from behind the clothes in the wardrobe.

  The man was gleeful at having collared a victim only half an hour before parking restrictions came off for the evening, maybe some poor bloke passing a few minutes with his girlfriend before her husband came back from work. Break the rifle, push in a fat bellied lead slug with his thumb, snap it shut, silently open the window an inch, and aim at the man’s neck. What a fucking surprise he would get. He would jump twenty feet, notebooks and clobber, flat copper’s cap and two months’ supply of little plastic envelopes winging across the pavement, as he screamed like a stuck pig. That would settle his nice white shirt. Paint it red. What a fuckface. Little Hitlerian bastard.

  Not caring to waste the next few years in jail (‘AGEING SCRIPTWRITER IN DISGRACEFUL SCENE’) he slid the rifle back in its hiding place, though maybe serving time would give material for an updated version of Porridge. The man stuck his penalty notice in its neat little plastic envelope under the windscreen wiper, a smile on his pasty chops as if expecting people to clap from their windows, or jeer execrations, which he would like even more.

  The tree-lined area was usually quiet, but tonight fireworks crackled as if a serious bout of street fighting had broken out, the odd thud suggesting one side or the other had got their hands on a trench mortar.

  He dimmed the lights and stood by the window, red, green and orange bouquets flaring in every direction, hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth decorating the sky in loud continuous explosions, so much seeding of the clouds it was bound to deluge with rain in the morning, as after the Battle of Waterloo.

  The multicoloured fire of primitive potlach went on and on, not so much to denigrate Guy Fawkes as to make him regret that the incompetent bastard couldn’t come back and do the job properly. As if a thunderstorm also plied its mischief, he recalled scores of earsplitting rounds fired at German bombers during the war, and missiles in the piercing certainty of their descent as you sat in the shelter hoping your number wasn’t chalked on the snout. Fireworks were harmless, joyful music to the heart, with no significance of death or wounds, rockets exploding in fairy colours, whistles going up instead of coming down.