Nell comes to the fence, and leans towards them so that Wolfe can see the long powdery slits of her nostrils. ‘Communists, you know, the pair of them,’ she hisses. Wolfe and Petra exchange glances. She moves back and speaks in her normal voice. ‘My Jim now, God bless him, he was the one to talk to about allotments. Best root crops in South Yorkshire. You name it, he won a show with it.’
‘Is he dead?’ Wolfe asks.
Nell gives him a freezing look. ‘I only wish our Rodney would carry on the tradition but … he hasn’t got the touch. I mean green fingers,’ she says hastily. ‘But he’s a good lad. He’ll keep my back tidy for me.’
‘Rodney’s your son?’ hazards Petra. ‘Any grandchildren?’
‘No. Our Rodney’s not what you might call a family man.’ Her eyes rest on Wolfe for a moment and then twitch away. ‘Well, must get on, lots to do.’ She turns abruptly from Petra and Wolfe to peg her tea-towels and aprons on the line.
Nell peels off her rubber gloves. Her hands are moist and sweaty inside from the heat of the water and she rinses them under the cold tap and dries them carefully on a towel. She dries between each finger, shuddering at the thought of the scabby little boy next door. Diseased. And then she thinks of Rodney. It is time for her morning coffee. She heats milk in a pan, and as she watches the surface haze over and begin to bubble, she decides to look at the albums. Just a bit of a look at some of Jim’s pictures. She hasn’t looked at them for years. It was always Jim who was the one for photographs. Always framing a scene with his fingers, always snapping away, always working in the cellar in the chemical-smelling blackness to bring the pictures floating to life. He could have done it for a living if he’d had half a mind. They’d discussed it once, early on, but the bank was steadier.
She flinches, remembering a humiliation during the war, during the time Jim was home convalescing after his wound. He’d been down in the cellar one night developing some pictures, and someone passing had seen the little red light that he used through the grille over the coal-hole. Someone had seen it flashing and word went round that he was signalling to the Germans, that he was a spy! Her Jim, a traitor! Nell blamed it on Olive living so close, a Communist, or near as damn it, and Arthur a conscientious objector. Conchy my foot, she thinks, coward more like.
The albums are all there in the sideboard, all labelled with date and subject. Nell chooses an early one, bound in blue leather. She sits with her coffee beside her and turns the pages. FIRST FAMILY PICNIC, she reads, JULY 1940. There is the checked tablecloth, and there she is in her tailored suit, tailored by herself out of striped mattress ticking, her hair a neat roll of curls around her head. On her knee is baby Rodney in woolly leggings, his face dark and fierce under the glare of her smile. She turns the pages and pauses at FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL. SEPTEMBER 1946. Thin knees beneath his baggy shorts, little man’s haircut, satchel on his shoulder. SUMMER HOLS. SCARBOROUGH 1948. Rodney standing on the promenade in his knitted bathing suit, his hand shading his eyes, unsmiling, a puzzled look on a face that was so like Jim’s …
She snaps the album shut and sips her coffee, shuddering at the cool skin that clings to her lip. She thinks of Rodney’s little boy’s body in the woolly swimsuit. How he used to complain! Itchy he said it was, but he had no choice. She’d unravelled a pullover to make it, and worked her fingers to the bone, sitting up late at night to get it finished for the holiday, and she was blethered if he wasn’t going to get some wear out of it. He was only eight then. He was still her boy then. His room is ready for him upstairs. It has been ready for him since he was seventeen. And now he is back and there is not a single excuse for her reluctance. She is his mother after all. She knows what Jim would say. But it is time for shopping now. Later there will be time to think.
Arthur’s fingers probe the earth, earth that he has dug and dug again and forked and fed and raked until it is the finest, cleanest tilth in England. His fingers tell him the temperature is right and he pushes the flattish, wrinkled broad-bean seeds into the soil. He likes to poke them in with his finger, so, just down to the second joint, and then cover them with the lovely blanket of the earth. It gives him satisfaction to bed them so comfortably. It is the time, the best time, just before full moon. There is no way that seeds treated so, to the luxury of Arthur’s earth, to the full waxing of the moon, will not flourish. Arthur puts his hand in his pocket when he has finished, just to make sure, and squeezes the godstone, warm from his body, in his earthy palm. He stands and surveys the neat job – the earth so brown and even, not a lump or a stone to be seen – and a bubble of pride, of love, swells and bursts in his breast.
He looks up from his own plot to the other variously cultivated rectangles that slope down to the shallow busy river and the park beyond. The allotments are south-facing, perfectly positioned, but some of them are tatty now, neglected. It’s not like it was when it was a case of ‘grow or go without’. Oh, people are keen now, as ever, but there’s not the same pride, the same commitment. There’s not the love. There is rubbish tangled among the dying stalks at this dying time of the year, polythene rags tangled on thorns; there are weeds, nettles and the ballooning heads of onions gone to seed.
Once Arthur had dreamt of a time when the land would be composed of industrial villages, where the workers would divide their labour between the factory and the land. He had sweated his own days away in the blasting heat of molten steel and laboured on the soil in the cool of the evenings – and it had meant something. Not just an old man’s pottering, a harmless hobby. But somehow, after the war, after the terrible grieving time, the core of his ambition had been lost, as if a bright glow in him had cooled to grey. He had continued just the same, his body performing the same actions, but the original motive, the dreams of change, had gone. Arthur remembers the youth that he was as if he were someone else, someone he had once known and admired and lost. And now he is an old man. Quite content. It hasn’t been a bad life, all in all. Just an ordinary one.
Jim’s plot is going to waste now. It’s next to Arthur’s and the two men used to work side by side on the soil, and Arthur misses Jim now, simply misses him. He remembers the arguments they had. Politics. It was always politics. Arthur smiles wryly. He knows that he was right and Jim was wrong; but Jim is dead now and Arthur will be before long, and then it will be all the same, will all have been the same for the both of them. The politics got in the way – but there was a sort of friendship between them. There was the love of the soil that they shared, the love of the green growth that came from their own labour. There was something between Olive and Jim once, around the time of the war. Arthur knew it and he didn’t object. How could he? There were others for him, too. That had been their way, Arthur and Olive. They were free. They chose to live together and they were free. They were happy and no one was ever hurt, it had been the right way for them. It was Jim who felt the guilt about his episode with Olive; and Arthur, amusement at his guilt. For Arthur was secure. There was never any danger of Jim coming between himself and Olive. The thought of Olive and Jim, such opposites, was even faintly comic. And they had never spoken of it. Oh no. For Jim was the sort who rarely talked about women or feelings. He worried a bit about the state Nell got into over Rodney, but mostly it was politics they talked about, and club-root and aphids, and they shared a pipe of tobacco over the boundary. But they never mentioned Olive, not more than in passing. And they never spoke away from the allotments, never more than nodded in the street, for Nell had taken against Olive and forbidden Jim to have anything to do with the pair of them. And Jim was weak in that way, a slave to the woman.
Now Jim’s plot is a sad tangle. A young couple did take it on and came every Saturday for a month or two while the weather was fine – and then gave it up. Results too slow. It was a sin. A good plot, the sort of earth that only comes from years of toil, of love, going to waste. He would take it on himself, but how can he now? He has neither the time nor the strength. His own allotment is as much as he can manage now with Oli
ve as she is. He sighs. That is the way it is going now that they are so old. He looks up at the sky. The distant white cumulus clouds of the morning have darkened, clustered closer to the earth, and in the air is the smell of approaching rain, and the low stirring of a preliminary breeze. Arthur looks regretfully at the turnips and parsnips that he’s yet to lift, at the tidying that wants doing. There’s a good day’s work there yet, but he knows in his bones that he ought to pack it in. He is not as strong as he was. There are pains in his knees that are worse in the cold and the wet. The first spots of rain flick the leaves. Best, anyway, to get back to Olive.
Three
By the time Olive has managed to force her old tweed coat shut across her chest, comb her hair, apply a slash of scarlet lipstick to her mouth and perch the cherry hat upon her head, the sky is already darkening. Kropotkin sees the lead in her hand, and understanding its promise he leaps at her, so ecstatic that she swallows her fear. It is not a proper fear, it has no particular object, it is just a vague dread of what might be, could be, outside the walls.
She fumbles to attach the lead to Potkins’s collar, lost in the curly hair on his neck. It is a fiddly thing, a metal thing that is hard against her fingers.
‘Stay still Potkins!’ she says. Oh, it is so difficult to bend these days. ‘Artie,’ she calls, for what is she doing struggling like this when he is perfectly capable? And then she remembers. Artie is out on his allotment. Why is it so hard to remember?
As soon as Kropotkin is attached he begins to pull. He pulls her down the passage and out onto the front path, and almost pulls her over. He pulls one way; she had thought to go the other.
‘Potty! You bad boy!’ she gasps, but he strains his plump wagging body forward regardless and she gives in, stumbles after him. She cannot remember the last time she went out alone, without Arthur to lean upon. Together, they go up to the Lamb every Sunday dinner-time for a glass of stout while the dinner’s cooking, but it is months since she ventured out alone. It must be months. It might even be a year.
Wrath Road is a flat road, but it is set in a network of hills and, to reach the shops or the park, a plunge down and then a long haul up is required, and Olive has simply given up trying. The hills tilt more steeply than they did in her youth when she strode up them regardless, or even did the climb on her bicycle, standing almost still on her pedals on the steepest bits, attracting the glances of passers-by: a beautiful girl, slim, black-haired and scarlet-cheeked. A healthy girl. She holds her chin up, remembering, and her jaw trembles – a new problem. She is impatient with her old bag of a body. Inside, when all is clear, she is the same. Through the middle there is a sliver of that same girl like the writing in a stick of seaside rock. Now Kropotkin ceases to pull and squats in the middle of the path, crapping. A passing man mutters something and looks askance at Olive. She gives him her most brazen look.
When Kropotkin has finished he sniffs in the gutter eagerly, but there is nothing for him, just tufty grass growing in cracks and bits of old orange peel dropped by the dustmen.
Petra comes along behind them with the little boy with the fierce name. He pauses to wipe his shoe on the kerb. ‘Hello,’ Petra says. ‘Taking the dog for a walk?’
Olive frowns at her. She has never had time for small talk, not useless talk like that.
‘Is that dog the one what barks at my bedtime?’ the boy asks.
‘Wolfe!’ says Olive, triumphantly remembering the boy. There are kids everywhere these days, hard to remember, hard to tell them apart. Wolfe looks at her expectantly, but her eyes switch away.
‘We’re popping down for some bread and things,’ Petra says. ‘Can we fetch you anything while we’re at it?’
Olive considers. Chocolate would be nice, but she has no money. Never mind. Artie will pay when he gets back. ‘Chocolate,’ she says. ‘Milk chocolate, and Artie will put the money through your door.’
Potkins snuffles up to Wolfe, who looks nervously at the dog. ‘He won’t hurt you,’ Olive says. ‘He’s friendly. He only wants to play.’ Wolfe doesn’t look convinced.
‘Hello!’ says Petra, suddenly, looking past Olive. Olive looks round and sees Nell. ‘We’re all out and about this morning.’
‘Almost lunch-time I’d call it,’ Nell grumbles, taking in Olive, and Kropotkin’s business, with one sharp glance. ‘Can’t stop now. Lots to do.’ And she hurries off, her hard heels clacking on the pavement.
‘Old slag,’ Olive calls after her.
‘Well, we must get on,’ Petra says. ‘A big bar? Cadbury’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘Be seeing you then.’ Petra grabs Wolfe’s hand and hurries him away. Olive can hear his piping voice drifting back as Petra whips him round the corner: ‘Mum, what’s a slag?’ and she chuckles.
At the corner, Olive tries to stop. She does not intend to go down the hill. It is too steep, the houses at the bottom impossibly far away, impossibly tiny. She stops and holds onto a fence post, but Kropotkin is determined to go down. He pulls and strains, panting and slavering as the collar bites into his neck. His eyes bulge. Olive is afraid that he will do himself a mischief but she can’t let him go, for he would be sure to get knocked down by a car, or lost, or stolen; yet if she doesn’t she’ll have to go with him down the impossible hill. It’s all right for some, she thinks, for Nell, only a few months younger, has gone briskly down and will be back later, bags full, balanced like a milkmaid. No, thinks Olive spitefully, not a milkmaid, more like a scarecrow with her scraggy frame. But there is no good thinking it, it is not true. Nell is immaculate. She has been all her life. Her neat grey curls cling to her head like sculptured stone, her coat is brushed, her shoes polished, her stockings smooth. Even the wrinkles on her face occur symmetrically. ‘No, I am the scarecrow,’ Olive mutters. She can see her reflection in window of a house. I am the scarecrow, fat and wispy in my cherry hat. She wants to cry out that it is not true, that she is beautiful. Beautiful, wild and rosy. She is not really a dumpy old bag with a trembling chin. Not really.
And Kropotkin will not give it up. He tugs hard and in the end Olive’s fingers, numb from the strain, give way and he is off, a fat torpedo down the hill. He chases a tabby cat with a white streak down its back like a spine. Olive rubs one poor hand with the other. Her fingers are trembling with the fright and the strain. She will have to follow Potkins. It is no good. She cannot let him go. Whatever would Arthur say? ‘Oh Artie!’ she moans, ‘this is your fault. It is. You will go out and leave me. Selfish, you are. Selfish.’ And all around the windows of the houses glint at her blindly and no one has seen her predicament, no one helps or cares. ‘Potkins,’ she calls, and she begins to stumble down the hill. She holds onto her hat with one hand and grasps the wall with the other for support. She has not been down here for months, not for years, down here past the hydrangeas and the privet that grows in the narrow strip between the walls, with their stumps of iron palings, and the windows.
Kropotkin had disappeared between the parked cars, and Olive hurries, almost running now, panting. Fear clutches at her, and her heart scrambles madly in her chest. Her face is wet, for she is crying.
‘Potkins!’ she calls, louder, and then she sees him, darting between two parked cars and out into the road. She reaches forward and then she trips and falls with a great fat wallop onto the pavement. At once Potkins is back, he is upon her licking her cheek and enveloping her in clouds of his doggy breath.
‘All right, missus? Come on, upsy-daisy,’ and she is hauled to her feet by two youths.
‘Are you all right?’ they keep saying. She is humiliated. No, she is not all right. She is far from all right. Her knees burn and her hands where they smacked the pavement. Tears run down her cheeks.
‘We’ll walk you home,’ one of them says. ‘This your dog?’
Olive points the way up the hill and the young men, who are good young men, take Olive’s arms, one each, and one of them hangs onto Potkins who continues to pull, and they walk slowly togeth
er back up the hill. They leave Olive at her door, offering to call a doctor, or fetch a neighbour in to help, but Olive shakes her head. ‘No thank you,’ she manages to say. ‘All right now. All better. Thank you.’
‘Well if you’re sure …’ and they go off, looking doubtful and awkward and young. Olive leaves Potkins in the yard with his lead on for she can’t be doing with all that fiddling now, not with her fingers so sore. Once inside, she makes the mistake of looking in Arthur’s shaving mirror, a mottled square above the sink, and she discovers that her face is red and swollen, the lipstick a grotesque smear on her chin – and that the hat has gone. It must have come off when she fell – her best hat, her only hat, the cherry hat that suited her so well. Olive sits down on the stairs, her coat straining under her arms, her knees and the palms of her hands smarting, and she weeps. Chairman Mao creeps downstairs and onto her lap. Her tears drip onto the bluish skin of his back and he purrs and his claws go in and out rhythmically, catching in the threads of her coat.
Nell tuts at the prices. In her wire basket she has a small bran-enriched loaf, a small tub of margarine, one bottle of disinfectant and one of bleach, and now she queues for her quarter of cheese. It is the nice assistant on the cheese counter today, she notices gratefully, the one who doesn’t object to slicing small pieces of cheese for an old woman.
Ahead of her in the queue is a shuffling old woman, the sagging type, the type who has let herself go, surrendered to gravity – like Olive. This morning is the first time that Nell has been face to face with Olive for quite some time. Satisfaction stirs in her breast and a tight smile puckers her lips. She hated Olive, even as they shared the same desk at school, even as she went to tea at her house, masquerading as her little friend. Olive was not quite nice, not quite suitable in Nell’s eyes, not that her family weren’t a nice family, for although her mother fancied herself an artist, her father worked for the Post Office. But Olive was wild. She had a loud laugh, a really shocking laugh, suggestive, not ladylike at all. And she had a wide red mouth and her eyes were almost black, they sparkled blackly, indecently, not like English eyes; and her cheeks were bright as poppies. She had nice clothes, always nicely made, but she always looked a mess, hair escaping from her plait, stockings wrinkled, sash twisted, a splash of something on her front. It drove Nell mad that it didn’t seem to matter. Nobody minded if Olive was a mess. Nell pats her perm. She always took such care to be a lady. And she was quite pretty enough too, in her way, in her quiet, decent, English way. She had pale brown hair, and pale blue eyes – like harebells Jim had said – and her skin was fair. She always had a tiny waist, and trim it is still, and her ankles still fine and bony. She smirks at the memory of Olive’s socks, and fat bare legs above them. Oh, she might have been a beauty once, Olive Owens, but now she is a fright.
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