Key to the Door: A Novel (The Seaton Novels)

by Alan Sillitoe

  “What?” Brian asked.

  “I’m goin’ ter find a big wood and right in the middle o’ this wood I’m goin’ ter build an ’ut. An’ I’m goin’ ter grow all my own grub in a garden, and shoot rabbits and birds so’s I’ll live like a lord wi’ lots to eat.”

  “Smashin’,” Brian agreed. “Can I live there as well?”

  “You can if you want.” Brian pondered on the geography of it, brewing pertinent questions: “Where will yer put this ’ut?”

  “I ain’t thought about it yet—somewhere in Sherwood Forest, I suppose, near where Robin ’Ood lived. Then when I pinch stuff from shops in villages, or poach rabbits like our dad does sometimes, I can do a bunk back to my ’ut in this wood, and the coppers wain’t be able to find me. They wain’t if it’s far enough in, anyway. And if I pinch stuff I’ll hide it away, and live off it in winter when grub don’t grow and it’ll be hard to shoot it.”

  “What about fags, and bullets for your gun?”

  “Easy. I’ll just ’ave ter pinch enough to last me all I want. And maybe I’ll pinch ale as well so’s I can get drunk now and again like dad does. But I’ll eat rabbit stew, and tomatoes and bacon if I can, and bread with best butter and strawberry jam on it, and I’ll sit in my hut in winter when it’s snowin’ outside, and I’ll have a big fire in the grate and put the kettle on, and I’ll just sit there day in and day out mashin’ tea and readin’ comics. That’s what I want to do when I grow up: live in an ’ut all on my own, wi’out a thousand kids swarming all over everywhere. It’ll be smashin’, our Brian, I’m tellin’ yer. When I’m in this ’ut I shan’t care if it rains every day, as long as I’m inside with the winders and doors closed. Nobody to bother me, that’s what I want when I grow up. That’s why I want to find an ’ut like I’m tellin’ yer and fix it up just fer me. Then p’raps yo’ can get an ’ut like it not far off, and you can come and stay with me now and again, or nip in fer a jamjar o’ tea when you’re passin’ with your gun to shoot rabbits or summat, and I’ll see yo’ in your ’ut sometimes. It’d be smashin’ if that’s how we could both live when we grow up.”

  “Wouldn’t yer want to go to t’ pictures?” Brian asked. “Or go down town for a walk?”

  “Not me. If I’d got this ’ut I wouldn’t want to do owt like that. I’d ’ave too much work to do. I’d be out wi’ my ’atchet every day choppin’ wood for the fire, or plantin’ lettuces, or settin’ nets and traps for rabbits. If you lived in an ’ut on your own you’d ’ave plenty to do and wouldn’t bother wi’ goin’ to the pictures. That I do know, our Brian.”

  A dominating question had to be asked. “What would you do if it thundered?”

  “Nowt,” came the ready answer. “I’m not frightened o’ thunder like yo’. It wouldn’t bother me a bit. In fact, the more it thundered the more I’d like it. I shouldn’t bother if it thundered and rained and snowed for months, as long as I’d got plenty o’ grub and wood inside the ’ut. That’s what I’d like more than owt else to ’appen: to be stuck in my ’ut for months and months wi’ plenty o’ grub so’s I’d never ’ave to worry about nobody or nowt: just listen to it pissin’ down and thunder goin’ like guns, while I drank tea and puffed at a Woodbine.”

  “Smashin’,” Brian said. “That’s what I’d like to do. And I’ll do it, as well, when I grow up. I shan’t go to wok when I’m fourteen like mam says I will. I’ll run away from ’ome and go to Sherwood Forest and live there. I don’t want to work in a factory, do you, Bert?”

  “Not me. If I ’ave to wok I’ll wok on a farm or summat like that. Out in the open air. That’s what Doddoe says: it’s best to be a navvy or wok on a farm, then you wain’t get consumption. That’s the on’y wok I’d bother to do—diggin’. I like wokking wi’ a spade, diggin’ taters up, or shiftin’ sand, or shovellin’ coal into t’ cellar grate, or chuckin’ rubbish about. A spade is what I like because it’s easy an’ yer’ve got to be in the open air wi’ a spade. And blokes as wok wi’ spades aren’t on dole as much as other blokes are.”

  “My dad’s allus on dole,” Brian informed him, “and ’e’s got a spade. It don’t mek no difference, ’cause when there ain’t no wok there ain’t no wok. Doddoe’s often on dole as well, an’ yer can’t say ’e ain’t. Nearly all the kids at school ’ave got dads on dole.”

  “Well, if they can’t get wok,” Bert said, “then they’ve got to go on t’ dole, ain’t they? It’s better than nowt, though it ain’t enough to manage on, is it? That’s why I want to get an ’ut when I grow up, because then you can get your own snap and you don’t need to go to a factory or some new ’ouses to get a job because you can grow all your own grub. And then if you do that you never ’ave owt to do wi’ gettin’ the dole. That’s why I’d like an ’ut. It’s the best way to live, if yer ask me.”

  “It is an’ all,” Brian agreed. Lights gleamed along Wollaton Road, a double line of mist-dispersers with traffic roaring between them into town. “It’s cowd,” Brian felt, so Bert set the parcel down and took out Doddoe’s working jacket, passing it to Brian, who put it on and folded it around him like a topcoat. Bert wrapped his father’s trousers around his arms and shoulders, topped his head with the too-big cap, rolled the newspaper into a ball, and kicked it before them to the goal of home, passing with quick footwork to Brian and screaming “GOAL!” every time he shot it along the pavement. “Doddoe says he’s going to mek me a jockey when I grow up because I’m little, but I’d rather be an outside left for Notts Forest. I’m getting quick as lightning with a ball. A crack shot when I get near a goal. I’ll never be as good as Doddoe, though.”

  “You might,” Brian put in, booting the ball of paper back.

  Bert pulled him to a stop, gave the ball a final slam away. “There’s a lemonade lorry outside Deakins’ shop—look.”

  A weak roof of light came from a gas lamp farther down. “It’s loaded,” Brian said, “with bottles. Do you think they’re all full?”

  “Some on ’em,” Bert said, “so let’s walk by quiet, on the outside, and grab a bottle as we go. Then we can drink it in our house.” They sauntered along the middle of the road and closed in towards the lorry. The street was empty, not a footfall or murmur anywhere. A door banged far away and did not matter. Brian looked into the lorry cab, but no one was there, so he stepped back a few paces and closed his hand around the neck of a bottle and drew it from the wooden crate.

  “Round the back,” Bert said when they reached the house. Once inside and safe, Bert put two bottles on the table, Brian one. All dandelion and burdock. Bert cursed: “I wanted lemonade.”

  “This is better than nowt,” Brian screwed the wooden top off, lifted the bottle to his lips. Three younger children clamoured for a drink and Bert gave them an open bottle, which they took into a corner to fight over and spill. “It’s a good job Colin and Dave ain’t in,” Bert said, “or we wun’t a seen much o’ this lemonade.”

  “They wun’t get my bottle,” Brian affirmed, who had no elder brothers to lord it over him.

  “Let’s drink up and go out to the Nag’s ’Ead,” Bert said. “I went there las’ Sat’day an’ ’elped to collect glasses and the bloke gen me a bar o’ choc’late and tuppence.” They buried the empty bottles in the garden with one of Doddoe’s spades. “We’ll tek ’em back to the shop in a week or two,” Bert said, “and get a penny each.”

  Still sharing Doddoe’s cap and coat, they clambered over five-foot boards on to the railway, crossing it as a mighty train took the bend out of Radford Station. They kept together in the pitch-black fields, calling out when marsh became blood-sucker pool and flooded their shoes. A railway signal-box stood like a lighted watchtower, a man walking to and fro between banks of levers as they drew near the drier path and went through allotment gardens, a route high-bordered by privet and thorn. “Me and Dave came up here last week and scrumped a load o’ taters and lettuces,” Bert told him. “We was ’ere till twelve at night, Dave diggin’ ’em up, and me loadin’ ’em in
a sack. Nobody seed us, but we nearly got run over by a train when we was crossin’ the lines.”

  “I went scrumpin’ once,” Brian said, “up Woodthorpe Grange, for apples, but on the way back we found they was all sour, so we pelted the high school kids wi’ ’em on Forest Road. Jim Skelton was wi’ me, ’e can tell yer. ’E’s in my class at school.”

  “Well,” Bert said, “a mate o’ mine got sent to ’prove school for breakin’ into gas-meters. That was two years ago, an’ ’e ain’t cum back yet. ’Is mam says he’ll be back this summer, though.”

  “I’d rather not pinch than get sent to borstal,” Brian said. “Anyway, dad’ud kill me if I got sent away. He says so. So if I pinch owt I’ll mek sure I wain’t get found out, that’s all.”

  “Sometimes yer can’t ’elp gettin’ found out,” Bert informed him. “Our Johnny pinched a bike lamp last year, an’ a bloke seed ’im an’ towd a copper. So ’e got put on probation for a couple o’ years, and ’e’s still on it, though it don’t mek any difference, ’cause ’e still can’t keep ’is ’ands to hissen.”

  “A lot o’ my pals is on probation,” Brian said. “All they do is go down town every Thursday, and get their bus-fare paid, as well. Our dad goes down town every Thursday to get his dole, but he don’t get his bus-fare paid.”

  The path widened to Bobbers Mill Bridge. Across the tarmac fork shone the Nag’s Head, where people crowded at tables set out between parked cars and a children’s playground. Bert and Brian decided on a visit to the fish-and-chip café nearby. Hunger gnawed as it always did, even after a Sunday dinner, or during a week of inexplicable surfeit. They gazed inside from the half-open door, at tables reaching far back into the large saloon. Few people were eating, but at some tables were plates not yet gathered by the waitress.

  They advanced into the hall, went from table to table, scooping each plate clean, gathering up cold chips, tasty cod-shells of yellow batter, or crusts of bread and butter. Neither spoke, and the whole operation went on in silence. A man digging into a pile of steaming fish and chips stared at Bert, who was composed enough to take up the vinegar bottle and sprinkle it over what was in his hand, giving the impression either that he worked in the place collecting scraps like this, or that this was a form of super-cheap meal served by the café to unobtrusive waifs and tramps. Bert cleared another table, glancing now and again at the chatting waitresses nearby. A blonde-dyed, heavily painted woman passed Brian half a cup of still hot tea, which he drank too slowly for the job he was out with Bert to do. He set the cup down, and a man who had seen him drink the tea covered his meal protectively. Brian had never done this before, might normally have been afraid to come into a café and play locust to its cast-off food, but he was too surprised at finding such edible nutriment set out plainly for the getting to worry about who was looking on.

  They sat under a wall, their findings spread on a newspaper that Bert had collected with the same insouciance as the food. Both ate hungrily, sorting minuscular chips that had been fried as hard as fishbones and using them to stab big soft ones, but liking the batter best—which meant a scrupulous sharing out. Some had fried fish left in the folds by fastidious eaters, and these prizes were scooped with thumb into ever-ready maw.

  Brian dragged Doddoe’s coat sleeve across his mouth and stood up. “Why do people leave such smashing grub on their plates? That batter was marv’lous. I never knew you could get snap for nowt like that.”

  “Well, I’ve got lots o’ things to show yer yet,” Bert boasted. “Colin an’ Dave tell me ’ow ter goo on. Yer should see the things they get up to. Last week they pinched a box o’ reject fags from Players and when they got ’ome Doddoe batted their heads and said they shun’t pinch things like that. Then ’e sat down to smoke ’em ’issen. I bet ’e sowd a lot on ’em later as well, because ’e got drunk that night and ’ad a big row with mam, and they was swearin’ and bawlin’ till two in the morning. The next day mam ’ad a black eye and Doddoe ’ad a big bump on ’is ’ead. It’s allus like that in our ’ouse.”

  “Our old man’s a rotten sod as well,” Brian contributed. “I wish we was rich, don’t you?”

  “I do an’ all. If I was I’d buy a bike and ride off on it wi’ my pockets full o’ pound notes. I’d go to Skeggy an’ never come back.”

  “I’d get on a ship and go to Abyssinia,” Brian said.

  “What do you want to go there for?” Bert wanted to know. “There’s a war on.”

  “I’d go to India then, and ride about on elephants, and shoot at tigers.” Bert pulled the over-large cap down to his eyes. “Let’s go to the Nag’s ’Ead and ’elp ’em to get empty glasses in. People often drop dough when they’re drunk, so don’t forget to look under the tables, will yer?”

  “I’m not lucky at findin’ things like yo’ are,” Brian answered. “I don’t think I’ve ever found owt like that in my life.”

  “Keep on lookin’, though,” Bert said, “because you never know what you’ll find. If you see any big nubs pick ’em up and put ’em in your pocket so’s I can smoke ’em later, see?”

  People sang beneath dim lights, and Brian’s ear caught the hypnotic clash of money as some table paid for its beer. “I’ll never waste my dough on booze when I grow up,” he said. “I’ll save all I get and buy a bike.” Bert’s eyes were elsewhere. White-coated waiters were unable to cope with the flood of work, so he hooked up half a dozen glass-handled jars and carried them to the counter.

  The rhythmical often-beating pub piano thumped and jangled as Brian went from table to table with thread-looping fingers, making his route back to the counter when a maximum load of wet and slippery handles was reached. In darker corners men and women kissed, arms folded into well-coated bodies—for the night was fresh—double heads flush against the wall, undisturbed at the rattle of glasses as phantom Brian stole up to collect—wondering what they found in it all. A man sitting alone was seen to have a tiny pus-filled wound above the bridge of his nose at which he occasionally picked and dabbed with a handkerchief. Brian stared at it every time, and Bert said the man came there often, knew Doddoe in fact, who’d said that the hole had been shot there by the Jerries and wouldn’t heal. Bert pushed a chocolate biscuit into his hand: “The waiter gave me a couple.” Near ten, few glasses were left to look for, and both stood by the seesaw, hawk-eyed for put-down empties and ready to leap at any snatchable tankard. Brian was tired, wanting to go home. “So’m I,” Bert said, “but let’s wait a minute. They might gi’ us a tanner for what we’ve done.”

  A cold wind blew, as if each gust were fitted with grappling hooks to scale walls and search out those without vests and jerseys. “I hate wind,” Brian said. “And rain and snow. I like it most when the sun shines.”

  Bert pointed to a table. “Summer’ll be ’ere soon, then we wain’t need coats. Get them glasses in, and I’ll do the next lot.”

  Fair was fair. They were at the far end of the yard, two halves left on an empty table, hooked with an easy experienced swing while pushing the rest of the biscuit into his mouth. The pub was about to close—towels overspread the three-handled beer pumps inside—and he walked quickly through the last-stand inebriated bawlers. A chair was pushed into his track by someone too drunk to get up slowly, and Brian skidded on a banana skin he had seen from a distance and meant to avoid.

  The glasses went out at arm’s length, hooked too firmly to be thrown off in time. No one looked up at the musical crash, too busy swigging final drops, reaching for handbags, fur coats, walking-sticks, and Brian lay with orange sparks flicking and jumping before his eyes. Then in one sick flood he knew himself to be the cause of two priceless glasses having been destroyed, that could never be paid for because he had no money. Prison, borstal, his father’s big fist flashed before him in a bloody picture, and impelled him in a mad bullet-like charge towards the gate and clear of the pub.

  A car came one way, a bus advanced with calm assurance from another, but he ran between them to the dark side
of the road, back among the safe high hedges of allotment gardens, then into a ghost-ridden funereal zone of pathways that he wouldn’t otherwise have taken. Mud splashed him, thorn bushes scraped his face and pointed a way to drier land by the railway.

  A goods train went slowly by and he watched the blaze from its engine cab, feeling more comfort with the dynamic unknowable monster than with the ordinary overalled men wielding shovels within. It went under the bridge to the colliery, leaving him wishing for a ride even though it was heading back for the pub. He kept its sound in his ears as long as possible, until it slid into a murmur, swallowed and killed by the bigger and all-embracing fog-dragon of night.

  A voice replaced it, coming from paths he had traversed, rose gruffly and stayed high for a second, then tapered off. Blackness won a further round, voice dead as well as train gone. A hand tingled as if biting-ants were running over and, holding it up, he saw two jar handles firmly fixed into his middle fingers. With the other hand he forced them open, pulled off the glass and threw it as far as the blackness would allow.

  The voice lifted again, nearer this time: “Brie-ie-e-errrn!” He sucked blood from his cuts and stayed quiet, listening for footsteps to back up the voice but hearing only frogs leaping in a nearby stream. “Brian, where are yer?” the gruff voice called from nearby. They weren’t chasing him, because it was only Bert. Why weren’t they? He’d smashed two glasses, hadn’t he?

  He answered: “I’m over here,” gripped a blackened handkerchief in his teeth, held the other corner with his good hand and bound it around the cuts.

  “Are yer orright?” Bert asked, by his side. “’Ere y’are, I’ll tie it up”—snapping it so tight that no blood could leak. “Why did you run away?”

  Brian was surprised at the question. “I broke two glasses. Didn’t yer see me?”

  “It didn’t matter,” Bert said. “Nobody said owt.”