Birthday

by Alan Sillitoe

  Once a year he put up the Marechal bivouac tent and crawled in with a flashlight to be certain the moths hadn’t got their incisors into its canvas, a tent he had used years ago on taking his children camping in the New Forest. A safari bed that fitted inside would also go in the car.

  A pocket barometer would warn of foul weather, and combine as an altimeter to tell the height of Dracula’s castle while exploring the Carpathian Alps, though scientific observations wouldn’t distract him long enough for a vampire bat to lock on to his throat because he’d wear a woollen scarf and a string of fresh garlic around his neck.

  A compass was necessary in case he had to abandon the car and make his way over desolate moors, or go through a ride-less fairy tale forest, and beam onto the nearest small town where a snug hostelry smelling of delicious roast meat (a nubile young serving girl to welcome him in the doorway) would glow from all windows in the main square.

  Should he cross a desert other than the one in himself a thermometer would measure the heat of his heart before it burst. A pair of binoculars would pick out distant figures homing towards him with malign intent, or would scan the heavenly meadows of a Shangri-La he’d always hoped to make real from his dreams.

  With an electronic calculator and pamphlet of mathematical formulae he would reckon how far he had travelled after going round and round in the same circle, during hours of loneliness when he would wonder why the hell he was where he was. Or he could actuarially predict the time remaining which he had to live, or tell how much money was left for his self-indulgent wanderings, and even how many miles and kilometres back to Calais. Otherwise the calculator could pass the hours (having finished the Bible three times and Shakespeare twice) while stranded by flood or snowfall in some outlandish candle-lit flea-bitten caravanserai of the Balkans.

  A camping stove slotted neatly into its metal container would fry bacon-egg-sausage in the peace that may or may not pass the hallmark of understanding in the tent at evening, followed by coffee and powdered milk under a storm lamp to read by when on his last nightstop before the Coast of Bohemia. Or he could use the signalling attachment should he be stricken by a strangulating hernia, a massive cardiac arrest, snake bite or broken limb.

  For sustenance in emergencies, if all shops were shut or empty, and there was no room at the inn when he wanted a bath, he stored (apart from soap) half a dozen tins of sardines and anchovies, cans of baked beans and corned beef, steam puddings and a tin of pineapple chunks, some marmalade, packets of soup, a jar of Mrs Ellswood’s gherkins – and a Leatherman tool to get everything open. Every so often he took the supplies into his flat to check the sell-by dates, to replace any that had elapsed or were about to.

  Eating-irons and a tin plate were wrapped in a tea towel, with a metal mug, a small kettle, a teapot, and a mess-tin kit picked up from Laurence Corner. Rolled blankets, sheets and a sleeping bag, a spare sweater, oilskin trousers, Wellingtons (green) and a long cape, would keep him warm and dry in the worst of weather.

  Tangled jump leads would help to rescue anyone whose car battery was spent, preferably a young woman with the magic of Edith Weston (maybe the very woman herself) stranded by the roadside, and his expertise would be so appreciated that she would accept his offer of dinner at the next town, and they would spend the night having delicious sex in bed.

  On the other hand the jump leads might be useful in the frosts of Transylvania, or the damps of the Danube Delta, should his own car be as uncooperative in coming to life as a dead dog, and he shivering for an hour before a motorist stopped and transferred enough power to get him back on the road.

  A toolkit, already stowed, included an axe sharpened by Arthur, in case he ran out of camping gas and needed to chop wood for a fire on which to cook his supper and keep the wolves away if stranded in a forest. An entrenching tool would dig the wheels out of sand or snow, or be used for self-defence against violent peasants when he slaughtered a gaggle of poultry driving through a village or, slithering along a road of grey mud, hit and killed a grey donkey.

  Cartons of cigarettes from the duty free were to hand out as gifts in repayment for minor favours when money would be insulting or the local currency worthless. A brace of full whisky bottles lodged in a box would raise the spirits, toast a meeting, repay hospitality, or get him quietly sozzled over supper before zipping up the entrance to his tent and saying goodnight to the world and himself, the entrenching tool at his feet in case animal or human marauder thought to disturb him.

  Or maybe his car would be the only one in the main square of some Moldavian backwater and, within locked doors of the car, he would make his way through both bottles in good old English being-abroad style, then stagger out blind drunk for a bit of mayhem among the local riff-raff or gilded youth, a seventy-year-old in the lock-up putting the town into The Guinness Book of Records.

  Fitting into two or three cardboard boxes, such supplies took up little space in the ample back of his estate, the list endlessly checked, a hand-held tape recorder-notebook on the spare seat should anything need to be added.

  He could set out for the mainland and support himself on the road for as many months as he cared to take, with the assurance that if the world ended while on his travels there was enough material on board to begin civilization all over again. With such foresight, why hadn’t he so far done it? One day he surely would, become one of the landboat people in a vehicle that might crash but not sink.

  SEVENTEEN

  Beyond Saxondale Crossing Brian turned left for Lowdham, over the River Trent yet again, a glance at wide and placid water, dull grey today, always a sign of getting home whichever of the four bridges he went over.

  He walked through drizzle to the front door and shouted in his roughest voice: ‘I’ve come to collect the rent!’

  ‘Mam isn’t in,’ Arthur bawled, ‘so fuck off, and see if you can do better next door.’ He was no longer the pitprop he’d been as a young man, but still straightbacked and alert, more middle-aged than elderly, an aspect helped by short hair and a clean shave.

  They embraced in the hallway. ‘You look so well I thought I’d come to the wrong house.’

  ‘Well, it’s no use crying, is it? It’s funny, though, I still imagine her voice in the next room, that she’s dozing over her sewing machine, or I’m waiting for her to come back from the supermarket.’

  ‘It’s not half a year yet, don’t forget.’

  Arthur turned to six-year-old Philip who sat at the table in the clean kitchen. ‘He’s Mary and Jonah’s lad. Aren’t you, young boggerlugs?’ He lifted him off the chair, held him to the light. ‘Look at him! A bleddy great cannonball with curly hair on top!’

  ‘Put me down, grandad. And don’t swear. I’m not a boggerlugs.’

  ‘They dumped him on me, to go shopping, but they should be back soon.’

  Brian, unseen, closed a pound coin into each hand, and held both towards Philip, back at the table with his book. ‘There’s a pound in one of these hands, and if you guess which one it’s in, you can keep it.’

  Philip stood, a finger moving over one and then the other as if his future depended on the choice.

  ‘Don’t take all day,’ Arthur said, ‘or he’ll put it back and spend it in the pub tonight.’

  Philip touched a knuckle, then smiled at his luck, and cried out with pleasure when Brian opened the other hand as well. He put the two pounds in his pocket. ‘Now you can finish telling me that story, grandad.’

  Arthur pulled him onto his knee. ‘But where were we?’

  ‘That monster-man was going up the dark staircase.’

  ‘So he was. He was following this little woolly haired six-year-old nipper called Sabbut Handley up the mildewed slippery steps, and daft young Sabbut didn’t know Boris the Frankenstein was only a few steps behind as he went higher up the tower. He didn’t hear him, though if you ask me, the little bogger had no sense poking his button nose where he shouldn’t have done. Boris put a foot down every time Sabbut did, s
o the poor lad didn’t hear that somebody was right behind.’

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t, would he, grandad?’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t, but then he soon wished he had heard him, because when he got to the top of the tower lightning was flashing all over the mountains, and thunder was booming like big guns in a war, and he felt bits of icy rain coming at his daft little face.’

  He lowered his voice to an ominous growl, Philip’s face turning paler with, Brian thought, simulated fright. ‘A hand went around his neck, and young Sabbut didn’t know whose it was. He was just about to say “Hey, what the bleddy hell do you think you’re up to?” when he heard a scream from Boris, because Boris hadn’t heard somebody coming up behind him, and putting a foot down everytime he did.

  ‘The man behind Boris was little Sabbut’s father, who’d come out looking for him. His father was a champion heavyweight boxer, and he gave Boris a terrible pasting, the biggest fight you ever saw, blood all over the place. He went hurtling over the wall, and hit the boulders a hundred feet below. It looked like he’d broken every bone in his body, because he just lay there moaning, though I don’t suppose we’ve heard the last of him.

  ‘Mr Handley lifted careless little Sabbut on to his shoulders, and took him back to the cottage they lived in, where they had cream buns for tea, sitting by a blazing fire. Sabbut’s mam was ever so glad to see them safe and sound. And that’s the end.’

  ‘Oh, grandad, that was smashing. Tell me another story. I want another.’

  Arthur kissed the top of his head. ‘I’ll think one up for next time. I’ve got to mash the tea now, or Brian’ll die of thirst.’

  Philip’s lips went down, then he smiled. ‘When mam and dad come I’ll go back home and play with the computer.’

  ‘Are you on e-mail yet?’ Brian asked.

  ‘No, but dad says he’s going to fix it all up for my birthday. I’ll only believe it when I see it, though.’

  ‘He always keeps his promises, don’t he?’ Arthur said. ‘Dads always do.’

  ‘Well, I’ve still got to see it, haven’t I?’

  Arthur swung him. ‘You’re the sharpest little sharpshit, and I don’t know what we’re going to do with you.’

  ‘Chop me up for firewood!’ he screamed.

  He set him on a chair and turned to Brian. ‘He’ll be all right, won’t he?’

  ‘I’m glad to see he’s reading.’

  ‘He always is. Can’t keep him away from it.’ The bell sounded, and Arthur let in Jonah and Mary, both in too much of a hurry to wait for the offered tea. ‘We won’t be able to get Philip in the car,’ Jonah said. ‘It’s jammed with shopping. You’ll have to stay with Arthur.’

  ‘Oh yes! He can tuck me up like last time, and tell me another story.’

  ‘Then again,’ Jonah winked, ‘we might tie him on the luggage rack, if you can find a bit of old rope.’

  Mary took Philip’s hand. ‘Let’s get you home. We bought some cupcakes for tea, so’s we won’t have to stop at a cob shop.’ He went out on his father’s shoulders, the exodus leaving Brian and Arthur to a few minutes of silence at the table till Brian asked how things went at the local elections.

  ‘Labour lost this seat, I suppose because only twenty-nine percent bothered to vote.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘I didn’t, for a start. I’m sure it’s this bombing of Yugoslavia. I just can’t believe it. They should have spent all the billions dropping TVs and washing machines, then the people would have stopped killing each other to get at them. Or they could drop a million mobile phones so’s people could start talking. That Blair’s a real prat. Bombing hospitals and orphanages – it’s cruel. And all they can do at home is cut benefits for the disabled. A lot of people round here say they won’t vote Labour again.’

  ‘In London we get the Euro elections soon,’ Brian said, ‘but I won’t vote, for the same reason.’

  ‘I never will again, not for anybody,’ Arthur said. ‘I can’t stand Blair and Cook and Robertson yammering about NATO winning the war when they’ve never heard the whistle of a bomb. The fuckpigs started it in my name, and spout about how right they are, but I just want to live in peace and have a good time like everybody else, as far as fucking miseries like that will let me. All the rest is propaganda.’

  A bottle of supermarket Bordeaux stood by the usual lavish supper when Brian came down from an hour’s sleep. ‘I phoned Derek and Eileen,’ Arthur said, ‘and they’re picking us up in an hour to go to The Five Ways for a drink. Meanwhile, eat some of this. You must be clambed after driving up from London.’ He loaded both plates. ‘I heard a few rumbles of thunder while you were upstairs, but it might blow over.’

  As if to deny it, a clatter sounded from close by. ‘I didn’t hear a thing. I go right down, and wake up as if there’s a clock inside me.’

  ‘I wish I could. The doctor offered me some tablets, but I didn’t bother. It’s better than a few months ago, but I don’t sleep in the afternoon in case it stops me getting under at night. I sometimes read till one o’clock.’ The window was covered by a flash, and the rooftops seemed to explode. ‘At least there’s nothing lethal at the end of it, like on those Serbs and refugees.’

  Brian took a swig of wine, rain as if driving against the house from all directions, ripples of light cutting out the battleship grey sky, followed by shattering blows of thunder. Arthur went upstairs to make sure every window was shut.

  ‘It’s going like the First Day of the Somme,’ Brian said.

  Sulphur tanged the air, and a flash and immediate blast put the lights out. ‘That’s done it.’ Arthur walked through the gloom and took out a packet of candles from the cabinet to put into holders, but a minute later the lights came on. ‘On the Somme every flash could have had your number on it. At least we’ve got a million to one chance. Let God do His worst, is what I say. Come on, we’re nearly at the end of the bottle. We’ll split what’s left.’

  Slaps and hugs over, they got into the car, and Derek drove them to The Five Ways. The storm had grumbled its way north but the streets were still empty, so that in ten minutes they were in their favourite music-free drinking place close to the City Hospital – where many in the family had died, though if any recalled sad times (and Brian knew they did) none mentioned them.

  The appetizing smell of freshly drawn ale greeted them at the entrance to the lounge, Derek doing a quick march to a table for four. ‘They must have kept it for us,’ Arthur said.

  Young men and women, maybe nurses who worked at the hospital and lived close, talked and drank at tables not packed against one another. The publican, a slim man in his fifties, dressed in a suit and wearing glasses, thin hair combed back, came to offer his hand to Brian, which he shook as if they were old friends, though he hadn’t been in for weeks, while the barmaid pumped up pints of Mansfield and fixed the shandy for Eileen.

  Built in the early thirties, some of the rooms were under a preservation order so couldn’t be altered, the walls of the room covered with drawings of past customers, done by local artists. Such faces were dead and gone, but alive in their small frames and looking (if they could) at what was now poignantly missed.

  ‘There was a lot of protest when the company said it was going to make alterations,’ the publican said, ‘and now they can’t do it, which makes me happy as well as the clientele. It would have been a shame to tart up a nice place like this.’

  Arthur was telling a story about Stan the shop steward at a factory he once worked at. ‘He was red hot, old Stan was, always calling meetings. Anything wrong, or supposed to be, and he’d go from one machine to another getting us to drop tools and gather around him for a half-hour talk. He called the gaffers blind, and we cheered him all the way. The management didn’t know what to do about it. They were going off their heads, specially if he got us to drop tools when there was a rush order on, which there nearly always was. They didn’t know what to do. Stan was a real demon, and there was hardly ever a dull day.<
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  ‘Well, I suppose the gaffers put their heads together at the board meeting, or they must have had a bottle of whisky on the table that day, because one of the directors had a brainwave. They decided to promote Stan, and the next Monday morning he turns up, not at half past seven, but at half past nine. He was wearing a suit, with a collar and tie. The little white tip of an ironed handkerchief peeked out of his lapel pocket, his thick fair hair went back in waves, and his shoes shone like black glass. He walked across the shop floor with his nose in the air and a clipboard under his arm, not saying a word to any of us. We couldn’t believe it. The cunning bastards had found him a job in the office, and doubled his wages. He got a salary now. In other words, they bought him off, and it paid ’em to do it.

  ‘But it was no job at all. He’d got nothing to do. They sat him at a desk and gave him a writing pad, a box of paperclips and a set of coloured biros. Maybe they told an office tart to sit on his knee now and again, but all the time they must have been laughing at him behind his back. They’d post something on the sly to a branch in Birmingham, and send him in the company car to fetch it back, saying it was urgent, just to make him think he was useful and might get promoted one day. Or they sent him to a firm as their representative, telling him to collect some obsolete spare parts in the boot.

  ‘We teased him unmercifully whenever he had to walk through the shop. “Hey up, Stan! How are you?” we’d shout. “Have they put your rate up lately? Where are you going, then, Stan? Are you going to buy the directors’ condoms? When are you coming back to work with us? We ain’t had a meeting for a while. We’re just longing to down tools.”

  ‘He didn’t know where to put his face. We ragged him so much he got to be the fastest walker in the factory. Not that we could blame him. I suppose most of the others would have fallen for it as well.’

  Derek took a long drink. ‘So what happens to a bloke like that?’