On the fourth day sun shone through the bedroom window and made a javelin-point of light across his rumpled bed. He sat up and read the Daily Mirror, and at eleven o’clock shouted for a cup of tea. His mother came up with a plate of cream biscuits and set them down on a chair. Watching him dip one in his tea, she said: ‘You’re in a fine mess, I must say. What did you do to get like that?’
His grey inflamed eyes looked at her. He spoke with swollen lips, with graze marks scarring the side of his face. ‘I fell down. You know how I am when I’m drunk. Do you want a biscuit?’
‘I’ve had some. Fell down! You don’t get all that wi’ fallin’ down.’
‘I fell off a gasometer for a bet,’ he said.
‘More likely some woman’s husband had it in for yer. If he did, let it be a lesson to yer. You can’t play wi’ fire wi’out gettin’ yer fingers burnt.’
He grimaced, and set his empty cup down. ‘I suppose Fred’s bin opening his big mouth. You can’t even trust yer own brother now.’
‘Nobody needs ter tell me owt about yer,’ she said, standing well away from his bed as if to see him clearer. ‘I can tell what’s wrong wi’ yer. Ye’r my own son, aren’t yer?’
He couldn’t deny it. ‘I’ll stay in bed for a day or two more. I don’t feel well. I’ve got a bad back again, and my guts are rotten.’
She folded her arms, pride and tenderness in her eyes. ‘Shall yer ‘ave another cup o’ tea?’
‘In fact I wain’t go back to wok till nex’ Monday,’ he decided.
She took his cup. ‘Don’t be mardy. You can go to wok tomorrow.’
All she wants is to get me back to wok, he thought. ‘I’m not mardy. I’ve got pains in my stomach.’
‘I’ll get you some Indian brandy, and some oil to rub your back. Shall you have some more biscuits? I got half a pound from the shop.’
So he changed his mind: it ain’t true that she’s pushin’ me back to wok, and he wanted to kiss her and put his arms around her. ‘Good owd mam,’ he said, doing so. ‘Yes, I’ll ‘ave some more biscuits.’ And she went downstairs to get them.
He lay back, pains burning his swollen eyes, his head aching as if his brain lay open to the sky. Thinking increased the pain, but he couldn’t stop thinking now. He sensed that though he had merely been beaten up by two swaddies — not a very terrible thing, and not the first time he had been in a losing fight — he felt like a ship that had never left its slipway suddenly floundering in mid-ocean. He did not move his arms to swim, but gave himself up to rolling buffeting waves and the stabbing sharp corners of jetsam that assailed him. The actual blows of the swaddies were not responsible for this, because by the fifth day their effect had gone.
He felt a lack of security. No place existed in all the world that could be called safe, and he knew for the first time in his life that there had never been any such thing as safety, and never would be, the difference being that now he knew it as a fact, whereas before it was a natural unconscious state. If you lived in a cave in the middle of a dark wood you weren’t safe, not by a long way, he thought, and you had to sleep always with one eye open and a pile of sharp stones by your side, within easy reach of your fist. Well, he realized, I’ve allus done that, so it wain’t bother me much. He had often dreamed of falling from the top of a cliff, but could never remember smashing himself as he landed. Life was like that, he thought, you floated down on a parachute, like the blokes in that Arnhem picture, pulling strings this way and that so that you could put out your hand to reach something you wanted, until one day you hit the bottom without knowing it, like a bubble bursting when it touches something solid, and you were dead, out like a light in a Derbyshire gale.
Well, that’s not for me. Me, I’ll have a good life: plenty of work and plenty of booze and a piece of skin every month till I’m ninety. Brenda and Winnie were out of his reach, penned in by Jack and Bill, but there was always more than one pebble on the beach, and more than one field in which clover grew. He went back to sleep, taking to it as though he hadn’t had any for years. And it was true now that he thought of it, that he had never in his life stayed in bed for more than three days, ever.
Margaret came on Friday night and ascended the narrow stairs with a child on each arm. William trailed behind, dressed in woollen leggings, and a cap that Arthur snatched from his head and held up for him to reach. But William was surprised and shocked at seeing Uncle Arthur in bed at such a strange time of the day, and did not leap up for it. Margaret sat down and told Arthur that she’d had a television set installed. ‘It’s marvellous, our Arthur. I never thought I’d be able to afford one, but Albert don’t drink so much any more, and he said he’d pay the thirty-bob a week. So whenever he gets on to me, I can just switch on the pictures and forget him.’ She even forgot to ask why Arthur was in bed.
Television, he thought scornfully when she’d gone, they’d go barmy if they had them taken away. I’d love it if big Black Marias came down all the streets and men got out with hatchets and go in every house and smash the tellies. Everybody’d go crackers. They wouldn’t know what to do. There’d be a revolution, I’m sure there would, they’d blow-up the Council House and set fire to the Castle. It wouldn’t bother me if there weren’t any television sets, though, not one bit.
‘Arthur,’ his mother shouted. ‘There’s a young lady to see you. Can she come up? she wants to know.’
He supposed it was Fred playing a joke on him. ‘Send her up,’ he called out with a laugh. ‘But tell her to watch out!’
He knew the particular tread of everybody’s feet in the family as they ascended the stairs, but the footsteps coming closer to his door were those of a stranger, the light hesitant footsteps of a woman. What sort of a joke was this? Were they passing one of his aunts off as a young woman? Or was it Winnie? Or Brenda? No, they wouldn’t have the cheek to come and see him. His heart stopped beating at the thought. He switched on the light as his visitor fumbled with the latch.
‘That’s it, duck, that room there,’ his mother called up from behind. He heard laughter downstairs, and silently swore at them.
The door opened, and it was Doreen.
‘I’ve come to see how you’re getting on,’ she said, apparently wondering whether she was doing the right thing.
He was shocked, not having thought about her for days, but lifted himself up on the pillows, saying: ‘Come in, duck, and sit down. I didn’t expect you to come and see me.’
‘I can see that,’ she remarked wryly. ‘You look as though a ghost just walked into your room.’
‘No, I’m sure I didn’t.’ He leaned back on his elbows and looked at her distrustfully.
‘I like your room,’ she said, her eyes on the open curtain of his wardrobe. ‘Are all them clo’es yourn?’
‘Just a few rags,’ he said.
She sat up straight, hands in her lap. ‘They look better than rags to me. They must have cost you a pretty penny.’ She wore lipstick, and some perfume whose pleasant smell gave more life to the room.
‘I get good wages,’ he said, looking at the coloured headscarf on her knees, ‘and spend ‘em on clo’es. It’s good to be well dressed.’ He felt uneasy, ashamed at having been caught in bed. Them bastards downstairs really played one on me this time. ‘Did you see a good picture this week?’ he asked, grudging even this small chip to the conversation. When wounded he liked to be alone in his lair, and he felt intimidated by her visit, as if he would have to pay for it with his life.
‘Oh yes,’ she said eagerly, pleased to see him less truculent. ‘It was ever so good. “Drums in the Jungle”. You should have been there, Arthur.’
‘I would have, only I couldn’t get out. My crutches were at the cobblers being soled and heeled. They promised ‘em for Monday morning so’s I could ‘obble to my lathe, but they worn’t ready.’
She laughed. ‘Perhaps you’ll be able to come next week,’ she said, too unsure of herself to make it a definite hint. He looked morosely towards the win
dow. ‘It’s a cold night out,’ she ventured, little else to say.
‘Not in bed,’ he said. ‘It’s warm in here with all these blankets.’ Then with inspiration that he could not reject: ‘You should come in and try it.’
‘No fear,’ she smiled. ‘What do you take me for?’
‘I bet it wouldn’t be the first time,’ he said with a grin.
‘Don’t be cheeky.’ But he knew from the look on her face that it wouldn’t have been the first time. Other words came to her lips, less revealing of herself, but galling for him:
‘Tell me how you feel,’ she asked. ‘You really were in a state when I brought you home from the White Horse last Friday.’
‘I feel better,’ he said, non-committally.
‘You look better, I must say.’ The conversation lapsed for a few minutes, then: ‘What happened to you?’
‘I towd yer,’ he answered gruffly, having forgotten what he had told her. ‘I got run over by a horse and cart. I didn’t see it till it was almost on top of me. I thought I was a goner.’
‘You’re very secretive,’ she said, unsmiling. ‘You won’t tell anybody anything.’
‘Why should I? It pays to keep your trap shut.’
‘No, it don’t,’ she said. ‘You talk to me as if I was the dog’s dinner.’
‘I towd yer how it was,’ he said, resisting her wiles.
‘Ye’re fibbin’,’ she retorted. ‘You know you are.’
I am a bit of a bastard, he said to himself, after she’s been so nice to me. ‘You wain’t like it if I tell you,’ he said aloud.
She laid her hand on his wrist. ‘I won’t mind.’
It don’t much matter whether she minds or not, and he said: ‘I got beat-up wi’ two sowjers. I’d bin knocking-on with two married women for a long time. So they bested me. Two on to one. I’d have flattened them if they’d been one at a time.’
She took her hand from his wrist. ‘Were you going with these women while you were taking me out?’
‘Sure,’ he said, glad to hurt her for asking this. Can’t she put two and two together? he thought.
She turned her betrayed expression away from him. ‘I think you might have said something sooner.’
He hated her for this, and hated himself more for having told her. It might not have been a very nice trick he had played, but there were no promises between them, he told himself. ‘Never mind,’ he said soothingly, ‘it’s all over now.’
‘Maybe,’ she said, turning to him, wanting him to say something else, to say he was sorry. But he thought he had said enough already, too much. Though perhaps it’s better to have it out now, and be done with it.
‘That’s how it was,’ he said. ‘But I wain’t see either of the women again. It ain’t much of a paying game.’ He lifted a hand to one of his bruises.
‘So them two women on Goose Fair with you weren’t your cousins?’
‘Yes,’ he said roughly, ‘they were my cousins. I’m not that much of a liar.’ He had given her an inch and she wanted a yard.
‘They weren’t,’ she said, ‘but you don’t need to tell me. It upsets me when you tell such big lies.’
He was angry. ‘Well, I’ve been through the mill as well. And we worn’t engaged or owt like that, don’t forget.’
She saw the wicked logic of his remark. ‘Even so,’ she began.
‘But I’m glad you came to see me,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I think I’d ‘ave stayed down in the dumps for good if you hadn’t.’
‘I wondered how you were getting on. You were half dead last week.’
He came closer to her, so that he was lying near the edge of the bed. Her coat was open, showing a green blouse, and he put his hand inside, but she drew back. ‘It’d tek more than two swaddies to kill me,’ he said with bravado.
‘I suppose so,’ she went on, evading his ubiquitous hand again, ‘but I wanted to see what was happening to you because I was worried. I like you Arthur and I kept on hoping you were all right and that you weren’t dead or something. When I brought you home last week your mother looked at me gone-out, as if I’d made you like that. She was so sharp I felt I was in the way, so I left straight away. This week though, she was nice.’
He held her wrist, and they talked for another hour.
‘We’ll go to the pictures on Monday,’ he said, as she buttoned her coat to leave. ‘I’ll meet you at seven, earlier if you like.’
‘No, at seven, because I want to get my tea. I’m allus hungry when I’ve finished work.’ She bent down to kiss him, and he held her firmly around the neck and waist, both hands out of bed.
‘Come in, duck,’ he whispered, feeling the passion she put into the kiss.
‘Later, Arthur, later.’
Monday was not far off, and perhaps time would pass quickly.
14
His finger jumped back from the drill and a mound of blood grew from his sud-white crinkled skin, broke, and ran down his hand. He wiped it away with a bundle of cotton-waste: a small cut, but the blood poured out, over his palm and down to his wrist. He drew a dry finger across and diverted it to the floor, away from his bare sinewy forearm. He cursed the lost time, and set out for the first-aid department, to have his finger hockled and bandaged. It meant going from one end of the factory to the other, so he walked quickly across the main lane-way, his finger held down, blood dripping freely on to the grease-soaked floor of the corridor. At the turning of a corner, he met Jack.
Arthur stopped, and watched him lighting a cigarette. He struck the match slowly, and lit-up with care, so that the cigarette, now that Jack had set his mind to lighting it, didn’t stand a chance. It was a slow and efficient operation, like all his other jobs. He threw the match down and looked up before continuing his journey, then saw Arthur standing before him. For some reason he was shocked and turned pale.
Without knowing why it was, Arthur did not feel friendly towards him. He didn’t greet him, but only said: ‘What’s up wi’ yo’?’ when he noticed the heightened pallor of his face. ‘Do yer want some smellin’ salts?’ In the split second before the reason for it fully came to him, he had made the first words of a sarcastic demand: ‘Or did you think they’d killed me?’
Jack could not speak, looking as if a rope were about to be fixed around his neck. Who else but Jack could have told the two swaddies where he would be at a certain time on a Friday night two weeks ago?
‘Killed you?’ Jack said. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I didn’t think you would,’ Arthur said. ‘That’s the sort of bloke you are. Until you get bashed in the face, then you’d squeal like a stuck pig.’ The corridor was empty, and both realized it at the same time. Arthur clenched his hand, now covered in blood from the cut. He didn’t think it was worth it: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but he had had more than his fair share of both. He said; ‘Why don’t you have the guts to admit it, you sly spineless bastard?’
Jack drew back at the outright statement and mumbled some answer that Arthur didn’t bother to understand. They stood against the wall to let a trolley-load of chromed handlebars go by. They looked at each other in silence, Jack unable to unclamp his eyes from Arthur’s finger, at the jewels and diamonds of blood dripping copiously on to the floor, his eyes blinking as each drop fell.
‘Well, what if I did tell them where you were?’ Jack said at last, with some show of truculence. ‘You shouldn’t have gone out with Brenda like that. It worn’t right.’
Arthur had an impulse to hit him, to smash him again and again, from one end of the factory to the other. Jack felt this, and looked away, at the back-end of the trolley now rounding a corner. Not here, Arthur thought. I can get him the same way as the swaddies got me, in a dark street at night. ‘You don’t need to tell me what’s right and what ain’t right. Whatever I do is right, and what people do to me is right. And what I do to you is right, as well. Get that into your big ‘ead.’
Jack had let his cigarette fal
l, and now lit another, his eyes turned from Arthur’s close, granite-set face. ‘I might as well tell you,’ he said, ‘that Winnie’s husband is still after you. He’s on leave over Christmas, so watch your step.’
Arthur fumbled with one hand for a cigarette, but could not reach the packet. ‘Thanks for telling me. But if he’s on his own, he’ll regret it. I’m warnin’ ‘im now: if I get him, I’ll break him, so don’t forget. And I mean it.’
Jack saw that he did. ‘You’re too much of a trouble-maker,Arthur,’ he said mildly. ‘You’re too violent. One day you’ll really cop it. And you’ll ask for it as well.’
‘And you’re too narrow-gutted ever to get into trouble,’ Arthur responded, feeling no kind words for him.
‘That’s as it may be,’ Jack said. Seeing Arthur struggle with his one hand: ‘Have one of my fags,’ and he thrust the packet forward.
Arthur reached his own at that moment. ‘Don’t bother,’ he said, covering the match-box with blood before getting a light.
Jack wanted to go on his way, but for some reason, he couldn’t. ‘Are you still working in the turnery?’ he asked, unable to stand the silence between them.
‘Where do you think I got this cut? I’ll be in it till Doomsday. Unless I go barmy first.’
‘No fear of that,’ Jack said. ‘You’ll get a big bonus this Christmas from the firm. How many years have you been working here now?’
‘Eight. It’s a life sentence. If they make it twenty-one I could have done a murder.’
Jack laughed hollowly. ‘That’s right.’
‘Not that there’s anybody I’d like to murder. I don’t think anybody in the world’s worth murdering, unless it’s for fun. Not yet, anyway.’
‘Don’t think like that,’ Jack said in a friendly forbearing voice, giving him an intimate piece of advice. ‘You won’t knuckle under, Arthur. If you would, you’d enjoy life.’
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Page 20