Birthday

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘I make my living by putting words into people’s mouths.’

  ‘You’re lucky, being able to do that. And clever, I suppose. Not everybody can. If we’d been married you’d have got fed up with me in no time.’

  ‘Not if you’d had half a dozen kids.’ He would have made sure she didn’t, though it would have been cruel leaving her with no family.

  She was enjoying the game. ‘If you could know all about me that easily, you would. You’d have packed me in and gone off on your own, or with somebody else.’

  ‘I told you you knew everything about me.’

  ‘Well, I’m not that dense.’

  ‘I never thought you were.’

  ‘George often did, but I suppose he had a right to.’

  ‘Nobody with a head on their shoulders would say such a thing.’

  ‘He wouldn’t wear anything when we were in bed together, and then he grumbled when I got pregnant. But I suppose every man would.’

  ‘It sounds unreasonable.’

  ‘I couldn’t tell him that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He might have clocked me. He did now and again, though there wasn’t too much of it. I wouldn’t have put up with that. We got along all right, and I liked him most of the time. He was a cheerful sort, before his accident.’ She looked as if at last interested in someone walking along the pavement. ‘You don’t say much about yourself. Your life’s been a mix-up, according to what your mother said.’

  He could just see them, having a head to head natter. ‘I’ll get us another pot of tea, and some cake.’

  ‘I had that big dinner, but the kids tell me I never get fat because I burn it all up inside.’

  ‘The same with me. I eat like a horse, and never put weight on.’ He signalled the waitress. ‘We’ll have a proper tea, with scones and honey.’

  ‘I’ll have jam with mine. Honey’s too sweet.’

  ‘You want to know about me?’ The spread was laid before them. ‘So do I. I always have. I only know what happened, and never what any of it meant. I don’t think I have the sort of answers you want. Things happened too fast for me to learn much. Yet I knew very well what was going on but was too idle and self-centred to be able to learn, or to control myself. Bismarck said it was better to learn from other people’s mistakes, but I never could.’

  ‘It sounds sensible. Not that I think anybody else ever could, either.’ She leaned forward to touch his hand, a motherly gesture he could have done without. ‘You got on all right, though, by the look of it.’

  He certainly had. As Arthur reminded him, he had clothes on his back, all the food he wanted, a roof over his head, a car to drive around in, and he could spend without thinking too much about it. Some of his life had been difficult, but to tell her would be meaningless. ‘There’s not much I can say. You know me well enough as it is.’

  ‘I don’t think I do, otherwise we wouldn’t be talking like two separate people. I don’t know anything about your life. I can’t imagine it, even if you tell me. We’re strangers, though that’s what makes it nice being with you, because you don’t want to put one over on me. And if I’d really known you early on you might not have left me. I’d have been able to stop you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you? You knew me well enough. We split up. I married Pauline, which was a disaster. Later on, I had a few affairs, and then met an interesting and pleasant woman, as I thought, who came from Lichfield, though when I met her in London you wouldn’t have known. We were married for twelve years, till I read a bundle of my wife’s letters, and realized there was more than a chance my daughter wasn’t my own. When I tackled her about it she said her womb was her own to do what she liked with. So I left her. I’d brought the girl up as well. She was eleven when I lit off, but I kept sending her money to go through university.’

  ‘It was good to do that for her. Our Eunice wasn’t George’s, but he treated her like one of his own. I have to say that for him.’

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have let my first marriage go. We’d both had affairs, so neither of us could complain, though we fought like cat and dog about them. It livened our existences, and kept us together longer than it should. But to bring a kid into the family that she knew couldn’t be mine didn’t endear me to her. After that I had a few years on my own, and had what girlfriends I wanted.’

  ‘I expect they grow on trees in London.’

  He smiled. ‘Trees for men to hang themselves on. I got married again, and the couple of kids we had were surely mine. That lasted until two years ago, when she went off to become an art historian.’

  ‘You wouldn’t get married again, would you?’

  ‘No. I’ve done enough damage already.’

  ‘I like being on my own,’ she said. ‘Life’s good now, I don’t mind admitting. Eunice said the other day: “You’ve earned your peace, mam.” “Perhaps I have,” I told her, “but if I looked at it that way it wouldn’t be worth having gone through so much trouble.”’

  He went to the toilet, and paid at the desk before returning to the table. ‘I’d like to dock at Arthur’s before it gets dark.’

  ‘I’m ready, though there’ll be plenty of daylight left.’

  The way back was always shorter, traffic lights open at the Cromford turn-off, and no wait at the Whatstandwell bridge. He drove on dipped beams through the rain to Ambergate. ‘The River Amber joins the Derwent here, so I suppose that’s how the place gets its name.’

  ‘You learned a lot,’ she said.

  ‘Facts are easy. You get them out of any book. But knowing something useful is quite different.’

  ‘Can you make jam?’

  ‘I’d burn it.’

  ‘Can you knit?’

  ‘Only knots.’

  ‘Can you cook?’

  ‘Enough to stop myself starving.’

  ‘I know a few things you don’t know, then.’

  They laughed. ‘You certainly do,’ he said. He drove over the Erewash and along the dual carriageway back into Nottinghamshire, an area so familiar from childhood and youth it seemed he’d never been away. He certainly had no other place to come back to, yet knew that if he stayed more than three days a panic to travel overwhelmed him, to move and keep on going, especially in winter when dusk dimmed the countryside as if all life on the planet was draining away. He only belonged when in the kitchen with Arthur, or at Derek’s and Eileen’s, lights on and curtains drawn, bottles on the table and the smell of dinner cooking, talk crackling like squibs on Bonfire Night.

  An enormous greyblack cloud reared in front. ‘I’d like another fag, duck,’ she said. ‘It’s nice to have one in the car.’

  ‘It’s not fashionable to smoke.’ He passed the usual two, and she lit one for him.

  ‘I never was fashionable, was I?’

  ‘Nor me,’ he said.

  ‘Not many people are. Not round here they aren’t. They just do what they want to do.’

  A girlfriend once said that smoking defined the social class you belonged to. If you smoked, she said, you were working class. He replied that if such was the case he would join a cigar club, except that he never joined anything, being of no class at all, which shut her up. He made the affair so difficult that she broke off the relationship, a more kindly system which let her think she had abandoned him.

  He had done the same with Jenny early on, proving that you never change, only perfect the most advantageous techniques to live by.

  He parked by the house. ‘I’ll see you inside.’ The rain had stopped, daylight still, even a glisten of sun from behind a cloud. A small grey bird flew like a fighter plane by the chimney. He noted its marks and colours, then realized that Avril wouldn’t be able to tell him what it was.

  He followed her into the living room, noticing that the plaster birds had been taken away, the wall blank. ‘I’ve had a wonderful day,’ she said, ‘but I always feel good when I get back home.’

  He saw again the face of an old woman in her well lit room. ‘
It was a real pleasure being in Matlock with you.’

  ‘Will you stay for a cup of tea?’

  ‘No, thanks a lot. I want to see that Arthur’s getting on all right.’

  ‘I was ever so sorry about that. He must be having a rotten time. You’d better go, then, or he’ll be worried about you. Don’t forget to give him my love.’ She took his hand, out of regret for happiness lost, or for one she’d never had but felt some sign of today. ‘Come and see me any time you like.’

  ‘I will. I call on Arthur more often now that Avril’s dead.’

  ‘I’m sure he appreciates it. You’re a good brother, anyway.’

  ‘I can’t be anything else.’ Which he supposed couldn’t be entirely true.

  ‘I’ll phone Eunice and let her know I’m back.’

  ‘We don’t want her to think I’ve hauled you off to Gretna Green!’

  ‘She’d love to hear that, I expect.’

  Hard to say whether he went to her or she to him, but they stood in the middle of the room for a kiss which had all the passion of their early meetings. The only excuse he could find for not getting her to the floor and fucking her was that the scorched infant he suddenly turned into wouldn’t allow him to get a hard on, and when one came he saw panic on her face in case he tried. It was equally hard to know who broke away first, their pressing lips no more, after all, than a sign of days long gone.

  SIXTEEN

  Near the end of May he was on his way to see Arthur for the fifth time since the funeral. On the phone every few days, Brian never had much to say but Arthur always made sure there was something, even if only to prove he was coming out of the slough and back into daylight. And if he wasn’t he would never admit it.

  ‘She still seems to be in the house. I think of something, and get up to tell her, then I find she’s not there. The thing is, we did everything together. I saw Oliver the other day and he offered to bring some apples in the autumn, but I told him not to bother. I’ll never be able to cut up apples again. There’s a few jars in the deep-freeze, but I’ll eat them when I can. It’d be a shame to let them rot.’

  He steered into the inner lane so as not to miss the A606 turn-off. When he was pole-axed by the flu Arthur advised him to get some antibiotics. ‘You’re not as young as you used to be. I always have a jab before the winter, and then I don’t get the flu. So make sure the doctor gives you one next year, or I’ll thump you!’

  He had written letters, sent him books and magazines. ‘Reading a lot takes my mind off things,’ Arthur said, ‘so it’s good you keep feeding me interesting stuff.’

  ‘If I enjoy it I know you will.’

  ‘I finished A Scrap of Time, and now I’m about a third through Dreadnought. That’ll keep me going a few weeks. The trouble is it’s hard to sleep. In the day things aren’t so bad, but when it gets dark and I draw the curtains, that’s when it hits me.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

  ‘Not much to be done.’

  ‘We can only hope things’ll get better.’

  ‘They’re OK already. I took all the curtains down yesterday, and during the night I put ’em in the washing machine. It don’t cost so much electricity if you do it then. This morning I hung ’em out in the garden, and they got dry just before it rained. Now I’m hanging ’em back at the windows. Last night when I was making supper I spilled frozen peas all over the floor. I thought fuck it,’ he laughed, ‘I can’t be bothered to pick ’em up one by one on my hands and knees, so I just hoovered them up. It worked a treat. The vacuum cleaner had mushy peas for supper!’

  ‘Do you eat a hot meal every day?’

  ‘You bet I do. I can look after myself.’

  Traffic was slack when he turned off the Great Arterial, a restful drive between woods and fields to the large car park by Rutland Water. He slotted in a pound coin and put his ticket under the windscreen for a half-hour’s relaxation before going on to Nottingham, then descended the curving macadam track to a toilet complex. The sombre bark of a chainsaw from the trees stabbed at the silence, a rural noise never heard by Virgil.

  At one o’clock it was time for a chorizo sandwich, and to broach the flask of black coffee cooling by the brake handle so that it wouldn’t scald his lips. Through the trees that looked as if they had been scraped and sanded a tug-boat cruised to some anchorage he couldn’t see, the opposite shore green except for a field of yellow rape whose freshness was gone, richer pastures squaring it in. Fat crows by the shore enjoyed their morsels as much as he relished his sandwiches.

  On previous visits he had taken Arthur to Matlock, where he had never been with Avril, so he couldn’t be reminded of her. They ate an ample platter of good Derbyshire lamb at the Boat Inn, such a meal that Arthur didn’t need to cook for them in the evening. After a cold supper he slotted in a video about the Jews of Paris at Drancy concentration camp. ‘Why didn’t they get every single fucking German after the war who’d been responsible and make them pay for what they’d done?’ Arthur said. ‘I wouldn’t have rested if I’d survived. I’d have got them one by one, given them the pasting of their lives, then shot them in both feet and left them bleeding to death. Hanging would have been too good.’

  Next day they called on Jenny, and Arthur remarked on how much better she looked than at the funeral, especially her legs, which were not so swollen because she had, as they were told, seen the doctor and been given pills.

  A son, daughter and two young children were there, but Jenny sitting as if even now subdued by having looked after George for so many years. ‘But then, she’s always been a quiet person,’ Arthur said, ‘and difficult to know.’

  The steamboat wandered like a lost soul, as if not knowing where to berth. Black at the base, superstructure white, nobody was on the top deck due to a chill wind. They sat in the saloon, bored but comfortable, till the captain made up his mind and edged his vessel towards the jetty close to the car park.

  A woman stood between the trees looking at the water. He named her Edith Weston, after the nearby village. Tallish and slim, she wore dark slacks, a windcheater, a white blouse, and had short hair. He noted well cared for teeth and a fresh complexion when she walked to a small maroon car parked in the next row. Seeming pleased with herself after gazing at the water (though the wind had been sharp, and she had no more time to spare) she sat in the car and looked at a magazine through rimless gold-sided glasses, sipping from a can and nibbling a bar of chocolate. He imagined shapely legs when she took off her slacks and showed the whitest cotton knickers.

  On looking again she was no longer there, had finished her snack and driven away, though on what errand, whether to husband or lover or business, he couldn’t say, Edith Weston gone forever and leaving a pain at his heart she would never know about.

  Stories came out of imaginary confrontations, mental wanderings into realms more pleasant than the one he was in when alone. Encounters turned violent when he sensed assaults on his dignity: ‘What did you say? Who the fuck do you think you are?’ – in his earlier life no need to curb the forked lightning of his fists.

  Interior pictorial activity reinforced his cool Merton aspect. Verbal slambacks, laced with rehearsed slanders that no so-called civilized opponent could equal (once he was forced into speech) defended psychic territory valid to himself, the significance of an event not obvious until even twenty years had gone by, when he would realize too late the damage that had been done.

  He drove to the main road, and in Oakham got into the wrong lane for Melton Mowbray. Someone behind flashed him on his way, as he himself had often done, and halfway up the hill he realized that it must have been Edith Weston, but because she had turned in another direction he couldn’t pursue her to give thanks, and chat to her, cajole her phone number, find a way to see her again, arrange a clandestine weekend in some remote hotel in East Anglia.

  The rolling wolds of Rutland and Leicestershire were familiar from cycling trips on Sundays, his body still sluggish after sessions with Jenny
on Saturday night, and his spirit renewing before Monday morning’s start in the factory. He turned onto the Fosse Way so as to outflank Nottingham from the east, make the familiar indirect approach to Arthur’s.

  Ever since he’d had a car, whether married or not, whether he had a girlfriend or was living by himself on Vinegar Hill, he kept material in the boot with the notion of driving away at half a day’s notice, and living on the road for as long as life and money lasted – a motorized tramp, no less.

  He would drive to Rumania or Russia, or perhaps not to Rumania and Russia till he had done with Spain and Portugal, taking in Italy and Sicily before Rumania and Bulgaria, then into the Ukraine and Russia, to see if he could drive to Siberia and Turkestan, with enough fluid cash in his account, and his little leather satchel or credit cards. The more inches on the map, the greater the chance of getting away from himself. His passport was always up to date, though he occasionally panicked that it might not be, and pulled into the next layby or petrol station to fumble through his wallet.

  The inventory of equipment and supplies was such that Lepporello would have run out of foolscap, and on boring stretches of mainroad or motorway he ticked each item, knowing that in one box was a highway atlas of Europe, with Blue Guides for civilized places and Lonely Planets for the rough. Treating the car as his desert island, there was a King James’ Bible, the single volume Shakespeare, a dictionary, Herbert Read’s poetry and prose anthology for soldiers in World War Two called The Knapsack, and the stubby little SAS Survival Guide.

  He’d make sure there was a radio with short wave and plenty of spare batteries, in case he felt a pang to know whether the world was still going, or even to hear the current equivalent of the Goon Show, should he be so lucky, which would be little different to the news.

  A supply of Partagas cigars would create a satisfying cloud of solo bonhomie in the evening, or send mosquitoes away coughing fit to die if they strayed too close. (Mustn’t forget half a dozen boxes of matches.) The serpentine tubes of a water purifying kit, which he didn’t know how to use but hoped would serve him well when he stopped at dusk by a scum surfaced pond to make safe liquid for a brew up was also carried.