The young man who had thrown the dart sported an electric-blue suit, brown shoes, yellow pullover, a brown tieless shirt, and several pimples on his face, a face all scrunched-up, with eyes half blind so that you could almost see the drink slooshing around behind them. ‘Can I have my dart back?’ he asked Arthur.
Arthur looked up, speaking quietly: ‘Say you’re sorry, then, because your dart stuck in my leg.’
Fred wanted to tell the youth: ‘Do as he says, then you’ll be all right.’ But he just sat there, placing bets with himself as to what would happen next. The youth looked down at Arthur: ‘I want my dart,’ he said. His friends shouted impatiently: ‘Come on, Ted, get that dart back and have your throw. We’re waiting.’ The youth grinned at them, then said again with slightly more truculence: ‘Give me back my dart.’
Arthur made a reasonable request: ‘Just say you’re sorry, and I’ll give it back to you.’
‘I say I’m sorry to nobody,’ the youth cried, suddenly finding his way through the beer and bravado that clouded his brain. ‘Give me back my bleedin’ dart.’
Arthur stood up and hit him, putting into his fist all the bursting irritation of the past few weeks. It was such a blow that the youth went staggering against the bar, kept upright by his tripping feet that took him gracefully back like some trick dancer. He jogged through his friends, who moved out of his track and stared at him with bulging eyes as he passed. Then he rebounded and hit Arthur, and Arthur’s fist burst out as if he were a robot and a button had been pressed in him by the youth’s blow, and the youth followed the same track once more to the bar, only this time spinning slightly as he went. He returned again, with his friends.
Fred said later that it looked like a wonderful free-for-all in a cowboy film. He was able to give this objective picture because as soon as the fight started he made for the door that led outside to the lavatory. He felt bad about leaving his brother to fend for himself, but had to get out of the way of flying fists and upturned tables, not being allowed by the doctor to take part in fights because of his bronchitis.
Arthur was doing all right, he decided. The youth had apparently thought that Arthur wasn’t as tall as he was when he saw him sitting down, and now realized his mistake: Arthur was so much bigger than the others that they could hardly get at him. He lashed out left, right, and centre, and was not averse to dealing occasional kicks with his heavy working boots. The barman and publican beat their way close to him. Fred shouted: ‘Do a bunk, Arthur!’ He watched him pause, look back and give him a nod, hit out once more at the youth who had caused it all, and rush for the swing doors.
They met outside. ‘Let’s bolt up this street,’ Fred said. A lamp shone weakly, and one or two panes of yellow light came from an occasional window. They walked quickly along, and were turning the first corner when a commotion broke out behind. Fred said they should run, but Arthur replied that it was better to walk quietly so that no one could know which direction they had taken. They turned several corners in the maze of streets, and came out on to the lights of Alfreton Road. ‘I think I could do with another drink,’ Arthur said, fastening his coat.
After the ten o’clock turnout of public houses Canning Circus gave in to its curfew and became silent. Late cars changed gear as they ascended the hill, showed their dark snouts upon circling the island at the top, then disappeared into the oblivion of an opposite road. A moon illuminated the island’s flowerless garden, and the junction’s green lamp-poles were dimly lighted in comparison to such lunar brilliance.
Arthur and Fred walked by the almshouses talking about war, Fred gesticulating as he threw out his opinions on tactics, fluently comparing Korea to Libya, mountain to desert, ‘human seas’ to tanks. A light shone from a public house in which people were still washing-up. All other doorways and buildings stood empty, their windows darkened by blinds. A few people were about, one man stalking along in the shadows, another walking boldly across the island whistling the latest song hit. A third person came unsteadily out of the public house clutching a glass beer mug. ‘See that?’ Arthur said, pointing to him. ‘What’s that funny sod doin’?’
Fred saw only an interruption to his flow of speech, but on drawing closer heard the man humming an unrecognizable tune, as if to disguise the purpose of his expedition across the road. He stepped on to the pavement and looked intently into the window of an undertaker’s shop.
‘I wonder what he’s up to?’ Arthur repeated.
Having made up his mind, the man took three calculated strides back to the pavement edge and threw the beer mug with great force at the window. The smash sounded musical and carefree, and glass splashed on to the pavement, while the man adroitly dodged the chaos he had caused.
Arthur was stirred by the sound of breaking glass: it synthesized all the anarchism within him, was the most perfect and suitable noise to accompany the end of the world and himself. He ran towards the disturbance, each strike of his boots on the pavement sending an echo through the empty circle of buildings, rebounding from each deserted corner.
‘Come on,’ he called to Fred.
Several people already stood near the undertaker’s window, as if they had sprung out of the ground, and by the doorway a woman held the bewildered culprit by his wrist. Arthur peered closer and saw that another woman, younger and wearing an army uniform — the colour of which immediately prejudiced him — had taken command, and had sent someone to fetch the police. Fred grinned at the jagged hole, at giant cracks running away from it in all directions, at head-stones, scrolls, and earthen flower vases splattered with glass. He laughed at the wreck, and pushed some glass into the gutter with his shoe cap.
‘What’s up, missis?’ a raincoated pipesmoker wanted to know. ‘What’s ‘e done?’ — nodding at the man held by the wrist, who grinned with great friendliness at each new arrival.
‘Chucked a pint jar at that winder,’ Arthur said.
‘He did that,’ the woman in khaki told him, pointing at the wrecked window like a museum guide showing off a prize exhibit. She was a woman of about thirty-five, her prominent bosom emphasized by highly polished buttons. Arthur noted her thin lips, high cheekbones, eyes that did not open very wide, a low forehead, and hair that just curled out of the back of her peaked cap and rested on her shaved neck. Weighing her up, he wondered if she had ever been loved. He doubted it. She was the sort of woman who would spit in a man’s eye if he tried to be nice to her, though at the same time he supposed her to be the sort who wanted most of all in the world to be loved. Only you could tell by her face that she would kick you if you tried. Old Rat Face, he said to himself, that’s what she is. Potatoes and Horsemeat.
‘She’s a fawce bogger,’ a man said, half in admiration, half in contempt. ‘She knows what she’s doing right enough.’
‘You’ll get a stripe for this,’ Arthur cried. ‘Right across your back.’
Most of the interest was focused on him, standing mutely by the woman who held his limp and resistless wrist. He was neither young nor middle-aged, a man who seemed to have a stake in two generations without being cradled and carried along by either one. His face seemed marked by some years of marriage, yet his bearing branded him as a single man, an odd, lonely person who gave off an air of belonging nowhere at all, which caused Arthur to think him half-witted. The uniformed woman looked as though she also had never had a home and belonged nowhere, but she had aligned herself with order and law, and sympathy was against her. The man turned slightly towards the window. He had brown hair that receded over a narrow forehead, and his pink face looked as though it had just been thoroughly washed. With the arm that was not held, he pointed through the glass to a black flower vase covered by a metal grid, and to a grey, partly inscribed headstone. ‘In Loving Memory Of.
‘I only wanted one o’ them,’ he said, looking around for approval, ‘and one o’ these.’ He spoke with a whine, as though he never really meant to smash the window, and that for this reason he should eventually be released b
y the elder woman at his side.
‘Why did you do such a barmy thing, mate?’ Arthur called out. ‘That winder worn’t worth smashin’.’
He looked at him as if he brought some hope, and pointed again to the two objects. ‘I wanted that there,’ he said with simple insistence.
Sympathetic voices gave him confidence, and while he still hoped for some sort of release, seemed pleased that he was such an attraction. From the look in his eyes and the grin on his face, it was as though he thought he might be dreaming, or did not quite believe where he was, or that the situation was some kind of game. ‘I wanted them things for my mother’ — inclining his head again to the window. The tone of his voice indicated that he should continue, but he stopped speaking, as if only capable of making one short sentence at a time, and in a moment of excitement he had thought to stray beyond this line.
‘Let’s go off home,’ Fred suggested. ‘Them owd ‘ags’ll ‘and ‘im over to the coppers. There’s nowt ter wait for.’
Arthur preferred to stay, standing with a blank mind, as if he were at the theatre watching a play, fascinated but unable to participate. ‘Where’s your mother then?’ several people called out at once.
The woman in khaki braced herself. ‘Leave him alone. The police will ask him all the questions. He can do all his talking to them.’ Some wit from the crowd asked him again where his mother was, and he turned to them with a grave look, saying solemnly: ‘I buried her three months ago. I didn’t mean no harm, missis,’ he said gently to the woman holding him.
‘All the same,’ she said, ‘you didn’t need to do this.’
A woman called out that the police were coming. Fred edged closer to the prisoner. ‘You was daft to do that,’ he said, in a voice that precluded either hope or assistance.
‘There are bigger and better winders ter smash downtown,’ Arthur said. ‘I know a clinker on Long Row, wi’ furniture behind it!’
‘I wanted it for my mother. I’ve only just buried her.’
‘You’ll get six months in Lincoln for this,’ someone from the back shouted, showing a dual knowledge of geography and justice that made everybody laugh. The woman holding him asked them to be quiet and leave him alone: their taunts made him nervous.
‘Let me go, missis,’ he said to her secretively, as if her plea meant that she was now on his side. ‘Go on, be a sport. I didn’t mean no harm. I’d on’y had a pint or two.’
The woman in khaki turned on him sharply. ‘Shut up, you. You’ll stay where you are and wait for the police.’
‘Ark at ‘er,’ somebody said. ‘She talks to ‘im as ‘e was dirt, the poor bogger.’
A new wave of curiosity caught every member of the crowd at the same time, and interest moved to the vital statistics of the man himself. They asked where he lived, how many kids he had, where he worked, what his name was, and how old he was. But so many questions confused him, and he could not answer. In a loud voice the woman in khaki told them to leave the questions for the police, as though her only function on earth was to live until they came.
He still looked for salvation from the woman by his side. ‘Let me off, missis, please,’ he said. ‘Be a sport.’ She held him so loosely that it did not occur to him to snap his wrist free and run. Such a thought had been in Arthur’s mind for some time. ‘Why don’t you run, mate?’ he whispered. ‘You’ll be all right. I wain’t stop yer, and my brother wain’t.’
‘Don’t put ideas into his head,’ the army woman barked.
‘You shut yer bleedin’ rattle, Rat Face,’ he said contemptuously. ‘You want a good pastin’. What good will it do you to hand him over to the coppers? Your sort won’t let a bloke live. Just walk off,’ he called to the man. ‘Rat Face won’t stop you.’
The man had so many allies that he looked at each new voice as it piped up, a radiant grin never leaving him, even when he again mentioned the fact that he hadn’t long ago buried his mother. The crowd began shouting that he be set free but, standing with her legs slightly apart, the woman in khaki held her ground. Arthur passed him a lighted cigarette, placing it between his trembling fingers. ‘Run!’ he whispered.
‘I couldn’t,’ he said, puffing nervously. ‘This woman won’t let me.’
‘She ain’t got owt to do wi’ it,’ he argued. ‘Get crackin’ an’ run.’ A gangway opened through which he could escape. ‘They’ll shove you in clink,’ Arthur said, ‘and no mistake.’
Panic overspread his face, and with a sudden movement he snapped his wrist free.
‘Stay where you are!’ Rat Face roared.
He looked around, bewildered, not knowing what to do, unable to force the ratchet-claws of the trap from his brain. Arthur stood on the roadway so as not to obstruct his escape. Quick decision entered into all the lines of the man’s face at once, and the grin that it had worn for so long left it like the flick of a shutter.
Rat Face attempted to hold him. She caught him by the arm but he pushed her roughly away. She tried to slap him but he held her wrist and twisted it, and encouragement from the crowd gave him strength to break finally from her grip. He stood trembling, ready to sprint clear of them.
As suddenly as his way of escape opened, the crowd for some reason closed their ranks. Hope never left a human face more quickly. A police officer stood facing him.
Questions were answered truthfully, briefly, and with alacrity, as if the man had been asked the same ones many times before, and as if he was now relieved that he did not have to make the decision whether or not to run away. He enjoyed giving the answers, as if his salvation lay in appearing pleased to do so, and in his smile was an all-embracing desire to satisfy the police with their clarity, and amuse the now silent crowd by their contents. The two women who held him made their statements.
‘Any more of you like to witness?’ the policeman said, looking around. No one moved. The squad car with the man inside circled the island and descended towards the city centre by a subsidiary street, its wireless antennae bending backwards and forwards from the sudden movement of starting.
Arthur felt as if he were coming out of a dream, and the first thing he noticed were his cold feet. He imagined Brenda now warmly in bed, snug and obliviously asleep, the two children perhaps with her. ‘I could do wi’ a pint,’ he said, as they turned down Alfreston Road.
‘I wouldn’t have thought it possible,’ Fred cried in a hopeless rage. ‘How could anybody do a thing like that?’
‘Because she’s a bitch and a whore,’ Arthur cursed. ‘She’s got no heart in her. She’s a stone, a slab o’ granite, a bastard, a Blood-tub, a potato face, a swivel-eyed gett, a Rat-clock. But the man was a spineless bastard, as well’ The broad road, banked by shops and workyards, was well lighted by the moon and an occasional lamp. Arthur walked on the pavement edge, hands in pockets, thinking: They’d nark on their own mother, some people. You might as well live in a jungle with wild animals. You’d be better off, in fact. Fang-and-claw in the army was better than this. At least you knew you had to be on your guard. You could always fend for yourself there. A car raced down the middle of the road, followed by a motor-bike rattling away full-tilt towards Basford. A policeman, trying shop locks, followed them fifty yards down the road with his eyes. Fred walked steadily, but Arthur still held his arm. They turned on to Hartley Road, between a church and a school, both buildings standing deserted like unwanted corpses. Fred said he would like to fix his fingers around somebody’s throat, any human throat, as long as he could press down hard and kill. The empty street was filled with a pleasant smell of tobacco from the Boulevard factory. At the next crossing Arthur suggested a short-cut home.
They stepped off the pavement and walked diagonally towards the opposite corner, on their way through the sleeping suburb. In the middle of the road, when each was locked in his separate thoughts, a small black car appeared from a side-street, primed to full speed on a quick journey home. They did not hear its approach in the dull silence; it skidded towards them on the tarmac, it
s driver trying at the last minute not to knock them down.
Fred was the most sleepy and preoccupied, yet the first to realize what was happening. Car tyres drummed on the road, but could not swerve clear. ‘Look out, Arthur!’
Brakes screeched, and he leapt out of the way, feeling Arthur fall forward as he pulled his arm. Arthur was too late. A hammer-blow caught his thigh, a companion piece knocked him in the side, a hard sharp corner scratched his lagging hand, and he flattened on the road, palms and face pressed on to a solid cold surface, so that he felt as if a coal fire had been rammed into the back of his throat. Then a hand tried to push him underwater. The car stopped nearby.
Arthur was able to sit up. ‘Where’s that car?’ he demanded, rubbing his leg.
Fred, whose knees were trembling, told him to stand. ‘Are you all right, then?’
‘Christ, it got me a good ‘un,’ he answered. ‘That bastard wain’t feel none too good when I get hold of him.’ Fred hooked an arm beneath his brother’s armpit and forced him to his feet. Walking to where the car stopped they heard the sharp click of a closing door. The man lit a cigarette as he walked towards them.
‘You bloody young fools,’ he shouted, defending through attack. ‘Why didn’t you look where you were going?’ He made as if to knock Arthur down. His height was medium, his raincoat open, and a fierce chin jutted from an ordinary face. His tiny four-seater friend stood waiting at the kerb. Arthur still felt the dull ache of a bruise on his thigh and side, and was forced to keep a rigorous control on legs that wanted to lead him in a direction he had no intention of taking. Neither he nor Fred spoke for a moment, and the man’s offensive tactics seemed to be succeeding.
‘I might have killed you both. Do you always walk about blind? Or were you too drunk to notice? You want to leave the ale alone, then you won’t be a danger to people like me, and you’ll be able to cross the road properly.’
Waves of whisky-breath came into their faces. Fred thought the only thing to do was to be sensible. We’ve been stone-cold sober since Canning Circus. ‘You want to have less of it,’ he cautioned, ‘or we’ll have you run in for drunken driving. Anybody can tell yer’ve had too much booze.’
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Page 12