Oh oh oh Olive knows Jim, knew Jim, knew Jim. And he loved Olive, oh yes he did, he loved her in every way, every way. He was such a big man, big body, bigger and hotter and clumsier than Arthur. He stuffed her so full she used to cry out with a sort of startled joy and she cries out now through the toffee so that they look at her, all of them, and Nell doesn’t know what that sound means, and Arthur begins to fret. Big fingers he had too, gentle. But he never understood the rules, if they were rules – for was it a game or was it serious? Oh don’t ask that, that is one too many for now. He could never understand that Arthur was Olive’s and Olive was Arthur’s and the physical thing was all that she wanted, the sensation of him, and it wasn’t supposed to be a secret, that Arthur knew and that Arthur had other lovers too. He couldn’t understand all that so it had to be kept secret from Nell, and that made it furtive. And although she loved – more than that, respected – Arthur, although he was her comrade, they stood back to back against the world, although she loved Arthur, part of her melted towards Jim, who talked of their running away together until Olive had to set herself against him, and force herself to laugh and tell him to run back to Nell if he wanted to run anywhere. And he did. And so she turned back to Arthur and all that he meant to her. And although she was quite certain that Jim was the father of her child, Arthur thought he was. He was in all the ways that matter. No one knew any better. It was kinder that way. She had thought it was kinder, all for the best. But all these years Arthur has mourned a son who was not his own and there is pain inside her that tells her she was wrong. But she cannot tell him now. She cannot take away that six-week trace of fatherhood. She cannot bereave him afresh.
The Catherine wheel will not spin properly. Tom prods it with a broom-handle and the children scream, ‘Don’t, don’t!’ and despite Tom’s efforts it will only flip over in a bright little arc and then stick again, squirting its sparks onto the ground.
‘They always do that,’ grumbles Petra. ‘I’ve never known a Catherine wheel to spin right yet. Never mind, Tom, let’s have the rockets.’
‘Of course,’ begins Nell, ‘my Jim had the secret of Catherine wheels. A loose nail through the centre …’
‘My Jim,’ scoffs Olive, loudly.
‘Hush Ollie,’ pleads Arthur, but his heart sinks. He knows the signs, the look in her eyes, the heaviness of her stance. She has gathered her wits and her temper is up.
‘My Jim … oh if only you knew. There’s things I know about your Jim would wipe that look off your face.’
Nell looks away sharply. ‘Well then, perhaps the rockets,’ she says to Petra in a stifled voice.
‘Yes. Tom,’ says Petra hastily.
‘Mine first,’ begs Wolfe.
‘I had him,’ Olive boasts. ‘Oh yes, I had him and he was a bugger for it, wasn’t he Nell? Did he give it to you like he gave it to me? A big bugger, wasn’t he?’
There is a silence broken only by Bobby sniggering.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Arthur. ‘She’s not herself … perhaps we ought to …’
‘Not myself!’ cries Olive, ‘not myself! What sort of rubbish is that? I’m more my —’ but the toffee has done for her teeth and they fly out with the force of her passion to click to the ground.
‘Wheee!’ exclaims Petra desperately as Wolfe’s rocket whizzes into the sky and feathers down its sparks of green and silver and blue. Arthur lets go of Olive’s arm and bends to retrieve the glistening dentures.
‘Talk about stretch,’ continues Olive, unbashed, in a flabby voice. Now that she is free of Arthur she moves threateningly towards Nell.
‘Really!’ she says, superior in her fright. Arthur tries to grab Olive’s arm but she shakes him off.
‘Buffy’s rocket,’ announces Tom, but everyone is watching the lumbering form of Olive, massive in her bulging coat, advancing towards Nell who clings to a wilting Rodney.
‘She’s not herself,’ pleads Arthur in her defence. ‘Come on, Ollie, home now, come on, duck.’
Olive stumbles and drops her glass. It shatters and the wine bleeds away into the black ground. She hesitates and looks round for Arthur. It has gone now, the temper, and she is confused. ‘Artie?’ she says. Relieved, he goes to her and takes her arm.
‘There now,’ he says. ‘Home now, I think … Sorry about glass,’ he adds to Petra.
‘Don’t worry. Sure you don’t want to stay for a potato?’
‘I think we’d best get back.’
‘Bye-bye,’ calls Wolfe, sadly. Arthur leads Olive out of the gate and down the passage and as they leave he hears the voices drifting after them.
‘Brilliant!’ says Bobby, ‘I thought she was going to land …’
‘Shhh.’
‘Poor old dear,’ Nell’s voice is tremulous but loud and carrying. ‘All too much for her I suppose. What nonsense she does speak … delusions you know …’
‘I’m sure,’ says Petra, comforting, relieved. ‘Now, what about Buffy’s rocket?’
The fireworks are finished, the fire relaxing into its embers, the potatoes eaten. Wolfe wanders into the kitchen. He licks his finger and presses it into the corners of the Tupperware box to collect the crumbs. He sucks his fingers. They taste of ginger and smoke.
‘Still hungry?’ asks Rodney, who is suddenly there behind him.
‘Me? No,’ Wolfe replies. He turns round, his back to the table.
‘Boys are always hungry,’ Rodney says as if he hasn’t heard. ‘Boys like to eat.’
Rodney’s ears stick out and they are very pink with the light shining through them, like fatty bits of bacon. There are bristles in his ears and his nose, and on the end of his nose is a drip. ‘Didn’t you like the fireworks? Were you scared of the bangs?’ Rodney is drinking wine from the glass and his lips have left smeary marks on it. He fingers are funny at the ends, thin and flat like spades.
‘I’m not scared at all,’ Wolfe says. ‘Course I’m not.’
‘A brave boy then,’ Rodney smiles. ‘How old are you?’
‘Me? I’m eight.’
‘Only a little boy, for eight,’ Rodney says.
‘Well I am eight,’ Wolfe says, and then because he likes to be polite, ‘only I do look younger, everyone says.’
‘And you’ve got poor sore hands …’ Rodney puts down his glass and reaches out his hands to Wolfe but Wolfe puts his behind his back. Rodney lets his hands drop sadly to his sides, and Wolfe is sorry. ‘Have you been to see the Cutlers’ Wheel?’ Rodney asks.
Wolfe shakes his head. Rodney’s head looks too small for his tall body, tiny, almost pointed, with its huge ears, and he leans it now towards Wolfe and his lips are very wet and his eyes flicker behind his glasses.
‘No. What is it?’
‘Through the park, through the woods, over the bridge to the Cutlers’ Wheel. Where they used to grind cultery. Water power. It’s a grand sight. Grand sound. Water rushing and the great wheel – all rust and moss now but still working – and the belts all rattling away inside.’
‘Oh … no, I’ve never heard of it.’
‘You must see it. Would you like to see it? Rodney could take you to see it.’
Wolfe hesitates. The drip on the end of Rodney’s nose drops.
‘It’s all right, thanks, I’ll ask my mum to take me.’
‘No … if you go first, then you can surprise your mum, tell her all about it, show her the way, take her to see it.’ He is nervous, Wolfe sees, his eyes jumping, his fingers fiddling with his glass. Perhaps he is lonely, like Wolfe. Perhaps he wants to make friends. Wolfe knows how horrible it is to have no friends, and Rodney looks the type of person people might make fun of. Big Ears, they might call him, or Blubber Lugs, or Four Eyes.
‘All right then,’ says Wolfe. After all, although he is strange, Rodney is not a stranger but a neighbour. It is strangers that you must say no to.
‘When?’ asks Rodney. His mother comes into the kitchen. Wolfe sees the way she stares at Rodney, her face sharp as a beak.
‘When what?’ she demands.
‘Nothing,’ says Rodney.
Nell looks at Wolfe. ‘Nothing,’ he agrees.
‘Yes,’ Nell looks from Rodney to Wolfe and then takes Rodney’s arm. ‘Well anyway, you can come outside with me where I can keep an eye on you.’
Wolfe, left alone in the kitchen, grimaces, and goes back to licking the last crumbs from Nell’s box. He’d die if his mother spoke to him like that in front of someone else. Especially if he was grown up.
‘Mao,’ Olive calls from her bed. ‘Artie, where’s Mao?’ Arthur swallows. He’d hoped that Olive hadn’t noticed the absence of the cat.
‘He’s all right,’ he evades, stepping out of his trousers.
‘But where?’
‘He went out.’
‘Out? Artie, out? On a night like this!’ Olive struggles to a half-sitting position.
‘He’ll be all right. Don’t fuss.’
‘But the bombs Arthur! The bombs and the blazes …’
‘Fireworks is all they are. He’ll be all right. He’ll be holed up somewhere and back in morning, you see.’
‘But Arthur he’ll freeze! You must go out and search …’
‘No, Olive,’ says Arthur sharply, and he never speaks sharply to her and she stops, about to speak, with her mouth open. ‘And you were bad this evening,’ Arthur continues. ‘Didn’t know where to put myself when you went off like that. Language like that! And with the kids there too.’
‘Bloody old buggering bitch,’ says Olive reflectively.
‘No excuse … I don’t know what got into you.’
‘The way she talks about him as if he was some sort of apostle. He liked a good …’
‘Ollie!’ Arthur climbs into bed beside her and unwillingly rolls down into her warmth. She snuggles and murmurs. ‘What am I going to do with you?’ he sighs. She is dreadful, a dreadful woman with a filthy tongue and he is angry with her, and he is excited by her. She will never give up. She gets worse. He rolls on top of her. She smells of bonfires and sweet toffee and there is a faint taste of wine on her lips. She is endlessly big and soft and he burrows himself down into her, kissing and squeezing and kneading her. She moans luxuriously.
‘Oh yes, Artie, that is what you do with me, that’s it,’ and together they rock in a familiar pleasure, a tender crumpled pleasure that ends not in fierce spurts of passion, not in ecstatic cries, but in a gentle dribble of content, a mutual slowing to a stop.
‘There, there, my bad lass, my wicked lass,’ murmurs Arthur, but Olive is already slipping through into the deep of her sleep. ‘Sweet dreams.’
Olive, softly, snores.
‘A good wash, mind,’ says Nell. ‘Fires spread dirt right through the air, and it was none too clean inside, though you wouldn’t have noticed I don’t suppose. And the state of that cup! How she expected me to drink out of that! And her in the family way.’ Rodney looks vacantly at Nell.
‘And Olive made a proper fool of herself tonight, didn’t she, Rodney? Didn’t she? Pitiful really. Talking such stuff and nonsense about your father. Mad. Senile, that’s what she is, spouting those filthy lies. Fantasies I’d call them. Such filthy fantasies about your father! Oh she really went too far. Whatever must they think? It almost makes me feel sorry for her. And in front of the children too!’
Nell is light-hearted, excited, almost happy. She smiles at Rodney. ‘Get a move on then. Shoes off and have a wash and then I’ll get the kettle on for a decent cuppa.’ She washes her hands under the kitchen tap. ‘Praise where praise due though, Rodney, I must say I was proud … well not ashamed of you tonight, Rodney, with your hair cut and all. He made a tidy job of it, that barber.’
Rodney bends to untie his shoes.
‘Put them on a bit of newspaper by the door, that’s it. And what was it you were saying to that little lad in the kitchen?’
‘Nothing much,’ Rodney moves towards the teapot.
‘No, leave that. I’d as soon do it myself. I’ll have a biscuit, I think. You? A proper wash now, the soap’s there.’ She watches the water flowing over Rodney’s hands. ‘I didn’t fancy those potatoes – I’ve never seen the point of leaving the dirty old skins on – but now we’re back I’m not sure I’m not a bit peckish. I’m not saying you’re not to be trusted, Rodney, I’m not saying that, but you just stay away from the lad next door, from all of them. Understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you think of them, next door?’
‘Not bothered.’
‘Well, that’s all right then.’ Nell reaches down the biscuit tin. ‘There’s no call to be getting what your father would have called over-friendly, always best to keep a distance.’
‘Lead us not into temptation,’ Rodney mutters.
‘What’s that?’
‘Part of a prayer. The Lord’s Prayer. Deliver us from evil.’
‘Oh yes, well, no harm in a prayer I dare say, but just you …’
‘He knows.’ Rodney’s face is flushing. His hands are dripping on the floor and he never used the soap after all that, but Nell holds her tongue. She pours the boiling water into the pot and scratches a little spot off the sink with her thumbnail as she waits for it to brew.
‘Where they think they’re going to put another child, I don’t know,’ she says. ‘It’ll be like sardines in there by the time they’ve finished. I don’t know what your father would have said …’
‘Leave them be, Nell.’
‘What?’ asks Nell, startled.
‘That’s what Dad would have said – if he’d said anything at all.’
Nell stalks round the bedroom in her long nightdress. Her hair is still damp from her bath and trapped to her head in a tight mesh cap. Her long bony feet are cold from pacing the floor, but she cannot be still. She is recounting to Jim every detail, every word, every speck of dust, and his eyes follow her around the dim bedroom from his sunny frame.
‘And that Arthur, such a dried-up old fogey he is. How he still copes with his allotment I don’t know. He’s not up to it, Jim, never has been if you ask my opinion, not like you were.’
‘Why not get into bed, my love?’ suggests Jim mildly. ‘Hop in now. You must be frozen.’
‘And her next door in the family way. Did I say, Jim? And did I see a wedding ring? Did I heck. And that Olive … oh that precious Olive … well I don’t know where to start. It’s all lies. Of course, I don’t need to ask because it’s all lies, isn’t it, Jim? I know you thought she was a looker with her lips all red like I don’t know what – but she was obvious, wasn’t she? You always said she was obvious. And it’s all lies. Of course, it’s all lies. And the precious hat, well that’s all ashes now. Those children burnt it. I wasn’t to know they’d burn it, was I. And it was all lies, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?’ Nell’s voice has risen to an anxious bray but Jim is silent. He does that, could always do that, go silent all of a sudden, shut off. It enrages Nell that he can do that, withdraw like a snail into its shell just when her anger is rising. Of course, he is right. It is never a good thing to display anger, or any passion for that matter. Especially not in public, but not in private either, for one must always be in control. Not like Olive. All that loud laughter, shouting, crying even, in public, and look at her now, not even in control of her teeth let alone her emotions.
‘Well anyway, she’s properly senile now, the old tart,’ she hisses. ‘How could you ever have looked at her … and that nincompoop Arthur stuck with her. Stuck with a fat old geriatric trollop. Twenty stone she must be, no exaggeration Jim, and me still only nine. And you should have seen the performance she put on tonight! The filth that came out of that mouth! And it’s not true, is it Jim, no I needn’t ask. Of course it isn’t true. Is it? Is it? Why can’t you just …’ And the anger wells like a balloon expanding in her chest. But she will be calm, she must be, must be calm. She breathes in deeply, counts the seconds, breathes deeply of the cold, reassuringly Dettol-scented air.
�
��Hop into bed, love,’ Jim advises again from the heaven of his frame.
Nell sits down before her dressing table and gazes at her bony face in the mirror. She will be calm. In the mirror her face is calm. She thinks calming thoughts. ‘Now if Olive had had children, had children that lived …’ That thought calms her. ‘Oh you really should see her, Jim, you should see her now. You wouldn’t look twice now, you’d look away. And I’m not so bad for my age, not so bad, not an ounce more than on our wedding day.’
Nell’s mind drifts back to her wedding day. Her face softens at the memory. She had married young, the first man to propose, a man some few years older, not a boy, a proper man. A man her father approved of: Jim. She had been a tall willow of a girl and her dress had been of creamy crêpe de Chine. Like a fragile blossom she’d been, and she’d held her father’s arm as they’d walked outside the church, and he had squeezed her hand and smiled complicitly, smiled his approval, and she’d trembled then in perfect happiness, perfect fulfilment. That was probably the best moment of her life, she realises, surprised, that tiny moment alone with her father, waiting for the organ to strike up. Poised between the two men in her life, on the boundary between daughter and wife, trembling on the brink.
The day had been perfect, long shafts of sunshine penetrating the dim church interior, seeming to bless their union. And afterwards wine and cold meats and cake, and then the speeches and the toasts; and Edwin seeming suddenly young and gauche and Nell smiling generously upon him from her exalted position. Olive had been there too, dressed in something tawdry and rayon, with a smudge upon her cheek no doubt, but for once all eyes had been on Nell.
It was only afterwards, towards the evening when the air was growing chill, that she had overheard her father say to someone, ‘Well that’s her off my hands for good and all,’ as if she was not so much a fragile blossom as a troublesome puppy. She had turned away then, pretending not to have heard. And it was her own fault: after all, eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves, and he probably hadn’t meant it. It was just the sort of thing fathers-of-the-bride say at weddings, and so she had smiled bravely and gone to look for Jim, husband Jim. In her memory sometimes now, the faces of her father and of Jim become curiously confused, the one superimposed upon the other. It strikes her how alike they were.
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