Arthur went into the front room with his cousins for a game of poker. With locked door — to foil any spontaneous and mischievous migration from the living-room — they switched on the light and sat around the smooth polished table. Dave lifted the plant-pot from the centre and set it on the floor beneath the window.
‘No cheating,’ Bert said.
‘Anybody cheats in this ‘ouse, and they get smashed,’ Dave shouted, smarting from some previous injury. ‘And that means yo’, Bert. Yer got seven bob out o’ me las’ week because o’ them extra three kings.’ He snatched the cards from Bert, who was about to deal, and began counting through the pack, his thin red face bent close to them.
‘I’ll deal,’ Arthur volunteered, taking the cards. ‘You can trust me, can’t yer? I’ve never cheated in my life, I’ll tell yer that now.’
‘Never trust a bloke as says that,’ Bert said, dejected. He turned to Dave, his fists clenched with fury: ‘If ever yer tek them cards from me again like that, you’ll get summat.’
‘You shouldn’t be such a bleedin’ cheat,’ Dave said. ‘It serves yer right.’
Arthur dealt the cards, a regulation five to the others, and lucky seven to himself, without them seeing. The two lowest cards he dropped on to his lap before either Dave or Bert looked up from their argument. A series of thuds and shouts were heard from the living-room. ‘Hark at them lot,’ Arthur said innocently. ‘Fightin’ over the crusts now.’
Dave gave a great guffaw. ‘The trough, you mean’ — then scowled when he saw his cards.
‘Bluffin’,’ Bert said. ‘That means he’s got a royal flush.’
‘Royal flush, my arse,’ Dave said, throwing them down without waiting for a second helping. Bert took two from the pack, smiled and pushed a shilling to the middle of the table. Arthur sorted his cards and raised him half a crown.
‘Steady on,’ Dave said, umpire now. ‘That’s big money. You can’t play like that.’
‘He’s bluffin’, that I do know,’ Bert said, cocksure, and raised him another lump-sum.
But Arthur was not bluffing. ‘Take that,’ he said, spreading them out on the table.
Jack-queen-king-ace of clubs. He cleared seven shillings.
‘How many cards yo’ got?’ Bert demanded suspiciously.
‘Same as yo’,’ Arthur retorted, lips set tight against such mistrust. He raised his cash-pile to fifteen shillings on the last game. They took his luck with humour and resentment, to which Arthur replied: ‘Cheat? Of course I cheat. I allus cheat. Don’t you know that?’ From which they gathered that he did not. He shuffled his half-dozen secreted cards back into the pack.
Arthur went with Bert to the town centre for a drink. It was dark on the bridge. The Castle was invisible, hiding behind a night-screen of mist, smoke, and darkness. A wind ascended from low-flying marshalling yards, from swampy canal banks and minnow streams, causing Bert to swear at the rawness of it, and Arthur to button his coat.
Bert was a short, ferocious, blue-eyed son of Doddoe, who knew that danger meant unpleasant things but threw himself head-first into it until only his fair and curly hair was visible above the rum-scuffle. Such methods of attack had been his education in Remand Homes and Borstal. His brothers, in fighting to clear themselves of the police, had shown as much — if not more — courage than if they had been shovelled with rifle and bayonet on to a battlefront. But Bert, for some unknown reason, was most like Doddoe and had not tried to escape the army. In fact he joined too young by giving a false age and at seventeen had been thrown into the last offensive over the Rhine, emerging from the mêlée with less wounds than his brothers who had served in the forlorn ranks of the deserters. Bert was the spit-and-image of his father, Ada said, and she loved him for it and for his sharp intelligence and sentimentality that was part of herself. Bert had never allowed Ralph to replace Doddoe. Doddoe had been bully and dictator, and now in his place Ada reigned on a stable throne, with Ralph as ineffectual consort, whom Bert the realm protector threatened to knock down whenever he spoke to her with raised voice.
They walked down the bridge-slope in silence, crossing Castle Boulevard, passing a darkly windowed Woolworth’s to a pub on the edge of a backstreet wasteground for the first pint of the night. Bert said they should try to pick up a couple of tarts, and as the dimly lit Match showed nothing of interest they progressed by slow stages to the Nottingham Rose. They seemed luckier there, but the two loving and hilarious girls who battened on to them, after consuming thirty-bob’s worth of drinks up to closing time, gave them the slip and hopped on to a bus. So Arthur and Bert made their way through animated Slab Square and descended homewards to the Meadows.
With the canal dampness came misery, and Arthur meditated on the weight of Brenda’s trouble hanging over him, which now seemed heavier than ever.
‘We’ll go back to the house,’ Bert said, ‘and get some supper. I expect mam’ll get a bit o’ meat for us.’
Arthur could think of nothing better. The streets were almost empty. A late bus rumbled by on its way to the depot, all lights shining, the conductress sitting on a back seat looking tired to death.
‘If ever I see them tarts agen’ — Bert lit a nub-end found among the burrows of his overcoat pockets — ‘I’ll paste their bloody heads, I can tell you.’ They stepped off the curb and crossed the cobbled road.
‘All they want is ale,’ Arthur said. ‘But what can you expect? When you pick a tart up in a pub you tek a big chance. Sometimes they give and sometimes they don’t.’
Bert raved that they’d skin a bloke dry, but Arthur’s big worry had come back, and when he passed the horse-trough by the labour exchange he felt a drunken impulse to lie down in it and drown himself. He laughed. Not deep enough. And it’s cold. And besides, hadn’t Ada given him some good advice? He hoped to Christ she had, and that it could be brought off. Latest sports models gleamed faintly behind the window of a bicycle shop, with the shadowy cardboard form of Sir Walter Raleigh bowing nobly from their midst. Bert, whose senses were more acute after an evening of disappointment, stopped and turned, attracted by something lying on the ground: a half smell, a faint sound, the animal knowledge that someone was sprawled out on the stone floor of the doorway. Arthur, who wanted his cold-meat supper, asked impatiently what was up? Bert had forgotten the sponging tarts. ‘Some poor sod’s come a cropper,’ he said, bending to look at the prostrate body. ‘Drunk as a lord,’ he grinned. ‘Smells it as well.’
Arthur prodded the body with his boots, and Bert told the man to get up. ‘You can’t lay there like this. Yo’ll catch yer death o’ cowd.’ Showing more interest, Arthur noted that his head was bare, that his clothes were old and worn at the elbows. Though a cold night he wore no overcoat, and his trousers were pulled up above his ankles by the twisted position into which he had fallen, showing that he wore boots but no socks. About fifty, Arthur guessed.
‘We’ll get ’im on ‘is feet,’ Bert said, but on trying to lift him found they could move no more than head and shoulders. He grunted, but would not get up. ‘Come on, mate, the cops’ll get you if you don’t start movin’.’
He grunted again, his eyes rolling as if to shake away the fifteen pints he must have drunk. Suddenly he shook from head to foot and made a great effort to get up but, breathing heavily, lay back with a sigh. Arthur looked up and down the road to make sure a policeman wasn’t in sight. ‘If we don’t get ‘im up ‘e’ll find ‘issen in a cell, and get a fine in the mornin’. Ranklin’s the magistrate these days, and he’s a real bastard.’
Ben shook him until he gurgled and opened his eyes. ‘Where’s yer digs, mate? Where do yer live?’
The man folded up slowly, like a jack-knife, and rolled sideways. Bert levered a fist under his armpits, and dug him sharply in the ribs until he stood on his feet. By the lamplight they saw that his eyes were swollen: Bert said it looked as though he had been knocked down. Each took a firm hold and walked him along the road, up the hump of the bridge. At the next lamp-
post Arthur stopped and bawled right into the man’s ear: ‘Where do you live, mate? We might as well tek ‘im ‘ome,’ he added to Bert. The man’s lips were thick and clumsy with drink, and he could not manipulate them into any sound that might be understood. His lips moved. He lifted his hand, then let it fall. They made out the name of the street, but could get no number. Had his eyes been open, the movement his lips made would have resembled a smile. Still supporting him, they walked on. When they let go, thinking he might be able to walk, he fell on to the pavement and they had the hard trouble of getting him up again. Bert talked to him, as though he was not drunk at all, asking if he had had a good night and drunk plenty of booze. Bert said he was a Mick and called him Paddy, asking what part of Ireland he came from, if he had ever kissed the Blarney Stone, and whether he had worked at Guinness’s brewery in Dublin.
He lived on a long straight road leading from the railway station to Trent Bridge, and Arthur hooted into his ear once more and asked the number of the house he lodged at. No reply. ‘I know,’ Bert said. ‘Doddoe stayed at a boarding-house one night when mam locked the door on ‘im. There’s some down this way.’ The man was no longer a dead-weight, his boots not dragging so heavily on the pavement. When they came to the boarding-houses Bert thumped him: ‘Which one, Paddy?’
‘Thish wun,’ emerged from his bronchial voice, and he turned forcefully towards the iron gate. Arthur steered him along the gravel path, Bert holding on to the gate so that it wouldn’t grind on its hinges and crash to.
The man pulled his arm away. ‘Lemme go,’ he said, leaning against the door and fumbling with the knob. Arthur searched for it, feeling the pulsating heat of the man’s body pressed on to his fist, and when he turned the handle the man slumped indoors. He’ll waken up in an hour or two from the cold, he thought, then go to bed. He pushed him inside, closed the door, and walked back to the road.
Bert fell into step by his side. ‘That’ll save ‘im a night in clink,’ Arthur said, opening a packet of cigarettes. ‘The bastard worn’t very thankful, though.’
Bert passed the man’s wallet over, ‘I frisked ‘im, but it’s stone empty.’
It was a cheap blue one, smelling of sweat as if it had rested for years against the sweating chest of a nigger-driven navvy, smelling also of tobacco, one of its compartments having served as a pouch for flat dark flakes of some strong mixture. Bert was right. There was nothing in it except a tiny newspaper clipping cut neatly from the ‘situations vacant’ column, which Arthur screwed up and sent rolling over the cobblestones into the gutter.
6
The ample lower portions of Brenda’s body slid further down into the long zinc bath. The water was becoming too hot to bear, but she gave a sigh, signifying that it was better this way than the other, and said:
‘Another saucepanful, Em’ler.’
Arthur leaned against the sideboard, morose and angry, as if he could not bring himself to unbutton his overcoat in the stifling room because it seemed to give protection against steam, gin fumes, and unpredictable women. Having rushed through tea, he had changed clothes and caught a bus to Brenda’s, complying with her stern request that he should be present at the ceremony of ‘bringing it off. Em’ler, Brenda’s old companion at the stocking factory, had been called in to help on the big night, and she was said to be a bit touched. No sooner had Jack left for the nightshift and the kids been despatched to the pictures with a well-paid neighbour’s girl till ten, than a bath appeared from the coal-house, gin-bottles from the sideboard cupboard, and Em’ler sidled through the scullery to stoke up the fire for water. When she opened the back door Arthur recognized her, drawing back in surprise because he had expected a stranger. She was known as a blabmouth in all the pubs, and in a one-second flash he pictured her tomorrow spreading the news of tonight through every jug-and-bottle in town. But he remembered that she was a bit touched, and that even if anybody believed her information it would be so ravelled-up that they wouldn’t be able to make head or tail of her tittle-tattle. So he smiled and said: ‘Hey-up, duck,’ as he came into the large kitchen where the table had been pushed beneath the window and the zinc bath set square in the middle of the floor.
Em’ler stood by the bucket of boiling water that was balanced on the coal-fire. She sighed in sympathy with Brenda’s ordeal in the bath, repeating: ‘I don’t know,’ again and again, in a tone that got so much on Arthur’s nerves that he wanted to throttle her, ‘I don’t know’ — dipping the aluminium saucepan into the bucket and pouring a thin trickle into the bath, so that fresh clouds of rising steam spread in all directions over the ceiling. ‘I don’t know, I really don’t.’
‘Shut yer rattle,’ Arthur said.
‘It won’t do the paper any good,’ Brenda remarked, winking at him. ‘The last time, it all peeled off afterwards, and Jack was ever so mad,’ she laughed.
‘He stood need to be,’ Em’ler said angrily. ‘If he’d use his noddle a bit he’d know that he was the cause of all this. But how can you expect any man to use his noddle?’ Arthur grinned: she thought it was Jack’s they were trying to get rid of. It was impossible to tell how the twilight workings of her mind accounted for his presence in the house.
Brenda looked across at him. ‘Cheer-up, duck. It’ll be all right. Have a drink of gin. Em’ler, pour Arthur a drink.’ Half a tumblerful was thrust into his hand, but after the first sip he set the glass down, screwing up his mouth. ‘You don’t like it?’ Brenda shouted from the bath, waving a hand to him.
‘Poison,’ he said.
‘Mothers’ Ruin,’ she called out, an ecstatic look on her face that was high-lighted in the glare of the electric-bulb. ‘It’s wonderful.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ he said, ‘the way Em’ler drinks it. She’ll be dafter than ever if she goes on like this.’ Em’ler had finished a glassful since he came in.
‘She’s like me,’ Brenda said, ‘she can take it.’
‘I am an’ all,’ Em’ler agreed, heaping more coal on the fire. ‘I was brought-up on it.’
‘That’s what sent her crackers,’ Arthur said.
Em’ler resented this: ‘I’m not so daft as you think. Not half so daft as you men, I can tell yer.’
Brenda reached out for a glass of warm gin on the chair, and as she turned fresh trickles of sweat broke out on her forehead, ran down her face and neck, and hastened between her breasts into the water. After a liberal drink she let her hand fall back heavily, shivering as it disturbed the placid water that rippled its heat against her flesh.
‘I don’t know,’ Em’ler moaned, ‘I don’t know, I’m sure. I don’t like to see you suffer like this.’ But Brenda saw a threat to deflect her from her purpose and became as angry as the hot water would allow. ‘It’s got to be done,’ she said.
Arthur glared at Em’ler: ‘Why don’t you shut your mouth?’
She stared back. ‘It’s you as wants to shut your gob,’ she said with a sneer. Arthur lit a cigarette and threw the still lighted match by her face and into the hearth. She turned to force more gin on Brenda: ‘Drink this, duck. It’ll do you good.’
Brenda took a few sips and put it on the chair. ‘It’s too hot,’ she complained.
‘Shall I put some more water in?’
‘A drop.’
Em’ler let the boiling water trickle slowly into the bath. ‘Another?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘It breaks my heart to do this,’ Em’ler said. ‘I do wish the other stuff’d ‘ave worked.’
Brenda reached for the gin: ‘I took it as long as I could, but it’s over a fortnight now, you know.’
‘I’d rather you’d ‘ave the kid,’ Em’ler said. ‘I’d look after it. You could give it to me. I’d bring it up and love it, I can tell you.’
‘I know you would,’ Brenda said. ‘You’re as good as gold, Em’ler, but I can’t do it. It’d cause a lot of trouble.’ She drank her gin, her lips twisting as it went into her stomach. Em’ler took a cork-tipped fag fro
m her red handbag, and Brenda refused her offer to light one and put it into her mouth. ‘It’d on’y get wet. Put some more water in.’ Her eyes rolled and she slurred her words. ‘That’s enough,’ she said at the fourth ladle, the water now above her waist.
Arthur took off his coat and sat with legs stretched out over the mat, smoking cigarette after cigarette. He watched Brenda’s face disintegrating, her features mixing beneath the fire of hot gin and a sea of water. Never again, he kept saying to himself, never again. No more bubble-baths for Brenda. Never again. I’d rather cut my throat. He felt drunk, though he had taken no more than a sip of the gin. Sometimes he was part of the scene, sitting among the two women, warmed by the fire, choked by the steaming bath; then he was looking down on it, like watching the telly with no part in what he was seeing. He was only real inside himself. That did not change, proved by the agony of fatigue that lingered from his day’s work, intensified by the fever, swelling through him. Cigarettes tasted like manure, but he smoked. A glass of beer attracted him, but there was none in the house, and he couldn’t go out to the pub because he was unable to drag himself away from the scene that held him like an adjustable spanner. And when he forced it loose he felt that if he tried to leave the two women would leap on him and rip him to bits.
Em’ler was crying out that she wanted to take Brenda to bed. ‘I do wish you’d give it up. It’s going to be all right now.’
Brenda opened her eyes wide; they were brown and turned good-naturedly on the room around her, as if she were taking her normal Saturday-night bath. ‘No,’ she cried thickly, ‘don’t be daft. It’s not that easy, I’m sure.’ She turned, as if to fix herself into firmer resolution, but the slight movement disturbed the water so that she groaned and closed her eyes from its heat.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Page 9