‘You should take it as it’s meant,’ she said, ‘like other people.’
‘I would,’ he said, ‘if I didn’t love you.’
‘Love,’ she exclaimed. ‘You don’t know what love is.’
‘Not much, our Doreen. I know a bit more than yo’, I’m sure.’
‘You’re a crack-pot,’ she said, ‘that’s what yo’ are.’
‘Ah!’ he called. ‘All this fuss because I wanted a pint and you didn’t get your own way. And just look at yourself supping that shandy down. Anybody’d think you were born in a public house. I’d be ashamed to own you if I didn’t love you, watching you drink like that.’
She bit her lips and glared at him. ‘Anybody’d think we were already married,’ she threw out, ‘the things you say, and the way you carry on. You get your own way all the time.’
‘And aren’t you glad when I do?’ he demanded in the same light-hearted infuriating manner. ‘Don’t you love it? And it’s only right that I should always get my own way, you know that.’
‘My God,’ she said, ‘if we weren’t in a pub I’d crack you one, a good one as well.’
‘I bet you would, Doreen Greatton. I’d like that too. But I’d crack you one back. You know that, don’t you?’
‘A lot of good it would do you,’ she said, but in a milder tone. Then remembering his previous remark: ‘Besides, who says I love it? It’s not you that makes me love it, I can tell you.’
‘Yes it is, and stop telling lies. Have you forgotten all them nice things you towd me, about how you liked it? I don’t know, you allus say one thing and then tell me you meant another.’
She fell silent, and watched him ask for more beer. He offered her a cigarette and, when she refused it, lit his own with an exaggerated striking of the match. ‘You think you’re the cock o’ the walk,’ she said, implying: ‘But I’ll tame you, you see if I don’t.’ Turning to drop his match he noticed that the man nearby was wearing army uniform. He was tall and well-built, good-looking in a soldierish way, though his face was too flushed below dark hair and would soon become florid, and the moustache was clipped too short above livid red lips. His cap lay on the counter, beside an empty beer-mug. He looked at Arthur long enough for mutual recognition, then turned away.
‘Ain’t your mate wi’ yer tonight?’ Arthur demanded.
‘Who’s that?’ Doreen asked, pulling at his elbow.
The handsomeness fell from the swaddie’s face when he said with a wrathful sneer: ‘What’s it got to do wi’ yo’ whether my mate’s wi’ me or not?’
‘If yer still want trouble yer can come outside,’ Arthur said. ‘Keep quiet,’ he said to Doreen. ‘He’s an owd pal o’ mine.’
The swaddie did not move, leaned against the counter, with brows wrinkled and eyes half closed, as if he had drunk too much. ‘I’m not looking for trouble,’ he said, beaten by Arthur’s iron stare.
‘What do you mean?’ Doreen cried in a sudden high-pitched frightened voice. ‘Saying he’s a pal o’ yourn?’
‘Well I’m warnin’ yer,’ Arthur said to the swaddie, ‘if ever yer want trouble, yer can ‘ave it.’ He’ll never say he’s sorry, and I’ll never say I’m sorry. If he worn’t a sowjer he’d be on my side, grabbin’ ‘is guts out at a machine like mine, thinking about making dynamite to blow up the Council House. But no, he’s a brainless bastard. I can’t see what Winnie sees in him, the poor sod. I’ll bet a bob he’s having more trouble with her. I’ll ask him to have a pint on me: ‘Have a pint, mate,’ he said.
‘No thanks,’ the swaddie answered.
‘Come on,’ Arthur said in a friendly way, ‘have one.’ He ordered it, and another for himself, and the jars were placed side by side on the counter. The swaddie looked at it suspiciously, as if it were a mug of poison.
Arthur lifted his glass: ‘Cheers. Drink-up, mate. I’m getting married next week.’
The swaddie came out of his bitter trance, saying; ‘Good luck to you then,’ and finished off the beer in one swallow.
They took a bus out to the estate, sitting silently during the ride like two people in an aeroplane for the first time and too frightened of its motion to say much. When they were walking along the crescent she asked: ‘Who was that soldier?’
‘An old pal of mine,’ he answered. ‘I knew him in the army.’ And he would say no more.
They walked down the garden to the back door, entering the narrow porch between the coal-house and lavatory. Arthur followed her into a kitchen smelling of stale gas and washed clothes. The living-room was untidy. It’d get cleaned up if I lived here, Arthur thought. A line of dry washing hung diagonally across the room, and both dresser and shelf were crowded with old recumbent Christmas cards, snapshots standing against hairbrushes, clocks with no hands, and cigarette packets. A twenty-year-old wireless crackling from the dresser was switched off by Doreen’s mother as soon as they came in. The table was set for supper: teapot and cups, sugar, a tin of milk, bread, cheese, and some knives and forks.
Mrs Greatton sat by the fire reading a newspaper, and a Bombay Indian crouched opposite by the coal-box, smoking a cigarette through his clenched hand. Doreen’s mother was deaf and wore glasses, and Arthur guessed her age to be about fifty. He wondered what her Indian friend saw in such a big loosely built woman with no beauty, whose hair had gone thin and grey near the forehead. The Indian had not spoken a word to Arthur on his previous visits to the house, merely nodding to him because he apparently knew not a word of English. Doreen’s mother said he worked at an engineering factory in town, and that after three years he could go back to Bombay with a thousand pounds saved, where, she said, you could be a millionaire with a thousand pounds. The Indian wore overalls and a jacket, and a cloth-cap that Arthur had seen him take off only once — when he followed Mrs Greatton upstairs to bed, showing himself to be completely bald. He was a man of about forty, good-looking in an Indian way, though Arthur did not like him. He always sat silently gazing at the pictures in some magazine, smoking cigarette after cigarette very slowly and meditatively through his hand, his lips never touching the tip of the cigarette. Mrs Greatton would occasionally look up from her newspaper and make some affectionate remark to him that he did not understand but that he acknowledged by a grunt and a nod or a word of his own language that she did not understand.
Mrs Greatton folded her newspaper and served them supper, doing every action with a cigarette in her mouth, looking down over her glasses, moving in slow cumbrous movements so that Arthur was surprised when food was finally set out neatly before them in the short time of ten minutes. Neither was hungry. They sat facing each other, munching slowly at bread and cheese and tinned meat, Arthur winking at Doreen when Mrs Greatton’s head was turned, and putting outstretched fingers to his nose at the Indian when he was looking down.
‘Your mother teks all night to read that newspaper,’ he remarked quite loudly because Mrs Greatton was deaf. ‘Does she read slow, or is she looking at the adverts?’
‘She reads every word of it,’ Doreen replied. ‘She loves the newspaper, more than a book.’
Mrs Greatton looked up. Her sharp eyes told her that they were talking. ‘What are you saying?’ she asked with interest.
‘I was telling Arthur you read all the adverts in the paper,’ Doreen shouted.
‘They’re interesting,’ she said briefly. The Indian — Arthur had never heard them use his name, as if they hadn’t troubled to ask him what it was — looked up and smiled at hearing them speak.
‘He’s a lost soul,’ he said to Doreen as she smiled back at him.
‘What?’ Mrs Greatton wanted to know.
‘He’s a lost soul,’ Arthur bellowed.
‘Not so lost,’ Mrs Greatton said. ‘He’s all right. He’s a good bloke.’
‘Ain’t he got a name?’ he asked Doreen.
‘I don’t think so,’ she answered, ‘but we call him “Chumley” because that’s what it sounded like when we asked him what it was. Didn’t it, Chum
ley?’ she shouted across to him. He turned and stared at her, as if she were trying to get some secret from him, then turned back to the fire.
‘He ain’t mad,’ she explained, pouring Arthur another cup of tea. ‘He likes us to talk about him.’
‘He looks lonely,’ Arthur said, as if obsessed by this fact.
‘He’s not really,’ she said, ‘mam and him get on well together. He don’t have too bad a life.’
‘Well, he looks lonely to me,’ he said. ‘He should go back to India. I can tell when a bloke’s lonely. He don’t say owt, see? And that means he misses his pals.’
‘He’s got mam,’ Doreen said.
‘It’s not the same,’ he answered, ‘not by a long way.’
They finished eating, but stayed at the table talking. Arthur was waiting for Chumley and Mrs Greatton to go to bed, out of the way, so that he could be alone with Doreen, who spoke less and less, as if impatience was gnawing at her also.
Chumley stood up and, cap in hand, bald head shining beneath the strong electric light, walked towards the door. Mrs Greatton’s shield of newspaper rustled and lowered when she sensed his movement. ‘I’ll be up soon, sweetheart,’ she said.
‘Let’s hope so,’ Arthur muttered.
They heard Chumley treading slowly up the stairs, and Mrs Greatton went on reading, as if she would stay at it doggedly all night. Arthur passed a lighted cigarette to Doreen, then lit one for himself. He broke the match-stick into little pieces and set them out along the edge of his plate, then flicked them one by one towards the piece of cheese in the middle of the table. Doreen asked him again about the soldier in the public house. ‘I’ll tell you what went on,’ he said. ‘You see, he was my mate in the army. He got put on a charge once, and I put him on it. I couldn’t help doing it, you see, because an officer was with me, and he got seven days’ jankers. Well, when he’d finished his jankers he met me in town and set on me, and we had a fight, and ever since then we ain’t bin such good pals. But now I suppose it’s all right. He’s a good bloke, and we had some good times together before I had to put him on this charge. Now you can see why we was mad at each other when we met tonight.’ He went on to elaborate the details of their adventures together, until Doreen was convinced of his story by the sincere narrative tone of his voice, which took some minutes to acquire.
Mrs Greatton rustled her paper on to the back page. Sports news, Arthur thought, I’m sure she won’t want to read them.
‘Does your mam do the crossword puzzle?’ he asked with magnificent disinterestedness. ‘If she does, she’ll be at it until four o’clock.’
‘No, she tried ‘em once, then gave it up because all them black and white squares hurt her eyes.’
Relieved to hear this he watched Mrs Greatton’s eyes travelling up and down the paper. Chumley had been upstairs for twenty minutes. When will she bloody well get up and move? he wondered. She’ll sit there all night at this rate. He caught and killed a fly that walked on his wrist. Mrs Greatton looked up at the sound of the smack, then went on reading. I’ll sit her out, Arthur thought grimly, if she stays in that chair till morning. A car drove by along the road. ‘That’s the fish and chip van going back to town,’ Doreen informed him. It was a quarter to eleven. They heard the insistent stomp of Chumley’s stockinged feet on the bedroom floor. ‘She’ll go now,’ Doreen said.
But she did not go. Get up them stairs, for Christ’s sake, Arthur said to himself. Mothers are so bloody-well awkward when it comes to a thing like this. Why don’t you go?
At eleven o’clock she stood up and folded her newspaper. ‘Well,’ she said, looking at them both, ‘I’m off to bed. And don’t be long yourself, Doreen.’
‘All right, mam. Only ten minutes. Arthur’s got to go now. He’s got a long walk home.’
‘I ’ave an’ all,’ Arthur shouted. ‘I’ll get crackin’ in a bit.’
‘And I’ll wash the pots, and clean up before coming to bed, our mam,’ Doreen said as she went out. When her footsteps sounded on the loose board at the top of the stairs Arthur held Doreen and kissed her passionately. ‘I thought she’d never go.’
‘Well, you were wrong,’ she said reprovingly, slipping away from him. She moved clothes and newspapers from the settee so that they could sit down and kiss there undisturbed, a Saturday-night routine already well established by the few Saturdays that had gone before. A few minutes later she broke free and stood up: ‘Let’s make as if you’re going now.’
‘The same old trick,’ he said, following her through the scullery to the back door.
Doreen opening it with a loud click, calling out forcefully:
‘Good night, then, Arthur.’
‘Good night, duck,’ he shouted out so that the whole estate must have heard. ‘I’ll see you on Monday.’
The door slammed so violently that the house shook, Doreen making sure that her deaf mother’s ear reacted to the noise. Arthur, being still on the inside, followed Doreen tiptoe back into the warm, comfortable, well-lit living-room.
‘Don’t make much noise for a while,’ she whispered in his ear.
He smoked a cigarette and lay back on the settee, whistling softly to himself, spread out at his ease while Doreen cleared the table and washed the dishes in the kitchen, making discreet but appropriate noises that floated through the house, hoping they would lull the mother to sleep, or at least into believing that her daughter was safely doing her work in an empty downstairs.
She came out of the kitchen and took off her apron, standing by the table in her dark-green dress that showed the curves of her breasts and slender body so well that Arthur said: ‘I’ve never seen anybody look so nice as you do.’
She smiled, and sat down by him. The room was warm from fire still in the grate. He threw his half-finished cigarette into the coal bin. ‘I love you,’ he said softly.
‘I love you, too,’ she replied, but flippantly.
He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I’d like to live with you.’
She gave a wider smile. ‘It would be nice.’
‘How old did you tell me you were?’ What the bloody-hell’s that got to do wi’ it?
‘Twenty, soon.’
‘I’m twenty-four. You’ll be well off with me. I’ll look after you all right.’
Her face grew radiant: ‘I shan’t forget that walk we did that Sunday,’ she said quietly, taking his hand, ‘when we looked into the water near Cossal, and then went into the fields.’
‘You know what I mean, though?’ he demanded sternly.
‘Of course.’
They did not speak. Arthur was subdued, his mind blocked with questions and unsatisfying answers, fighting the last stages of an old battle within himself, and at the same time feeling the first skirmishes of a new conflict. But he was good in his heart about it, easy and confident, making for better ground than he had ever trodden on before. I must be drunk, he thought. No I’m not. I’m stone-cold sober.
They sat as if the weight of the world had in this minute been lifted from them both and left them dumb with surprise. But this lasted only for the moment. Arthur held her murderously tight, as if to vanquish her spirit even in the first short contest. But she responded to him, as if she would break him first. It was stalemate, and they sought relief from the great decision they had just brought upon themselves. He spoke to her softly, and she nodded her head to his words without knowing what they meant. Neither did Arthur know what he was saying; both transmission and reception were drowned, and they broke through to the opened furrows of the earth.
16
He sat by the canal fishing on a Sunday morning in spring, at an elbow where alders dipped over the water like old men on their last legs, pushed by young sturdy oaks from behind. He straightened his back, his fingers freeing nylon line from a speedily revolving reel. Around him lay knapsack and jacket, an empty catch-net, his bicycle, and two tins of worms dug from the plot of garden at home before setting out. Sun was breaking through clouds, releasing a
smell of earth to heaven. Birds sang. A soundless and minuscular explosion of water caught his eye. He moved nearer the edge, stood up, and with a vigorous sweep of his arm, cast out the line.
Another solitary man was fishing further along the canal, but Arthur knew that they would leave each other in peace, would not even call out greetings. No one bothered you: you were a hunter, a dreamer, your own boss, away from it all for a few hours on any day that the weather did not throw down its rain. Like the corporal in the army who said it was marvellous the things you thought about as you sat on the lavatory. Even better than that, it was marvellous the things that came to you in the tranquillity of fishing.
He drank tea from the flask and ate a cheese sandwich, then sat back to watch the red and white float — up to its waist in water under the alder trees — and keep an eye always close to it for the sudden indication of a fortunate catch. For himself, his own catch had been made, and he would have to wrestle with it for the rest of his life. Whenever you caught a fish, the fish caught you, in a way of speaking, and it was the same with anything else you caught, like the measles or a woman. Everyone in the world was caught, somehow, one way or another, and those that weren’t were always on the way to it. As soon as you were born you were captured by fresh air that you screamed against the minute you came out. Then you were roped in by a factory, had a machine slung around your neck, and then you were hooked up by the arse with a wife. Mostly you were like a fish: you swam about with freedom, thinking how good it was to be left alone, doing anything you wanted to do and caring about no one, when suddenly: SPLUTCH! — the big hook clapped itself into your mouth and you were caught. Without knowing what you were doing you had chewed off more then you could bite and had to stick with the same piece of bait for the rest of your life. It meant death for a fish, but for a man it might not be so bad. Maybe it was only the beginning of something better in life, better than you could ever have thought possible before clamping your avid jaws down over the vital bait. Arthur knew he had not yet bitten, that he had really only licked the bait and found it tasty, that he could still disengage his mouth from the nibbled morsel. But he did not want to do so. If you went through life refusing all the bait dangled before you, that would be no life at all. No changes would be made and you would have nothing to fight against. Life would be as dull as ditchwater. You could kill yourself by too much cunning. Even though bait meant trouble, you could not ignore it for ever. He laughed to think that he was full of bait already, half-digested slop that had certainly given him a share of trouble, one way or another. Watching the float so intently made him sleepy: he had been with Doreen until two the night before. They spoke of getting married in three months, by which time, Arthur said, they would have collected a good amount of money, nearly a hundred and fifty pounds, not counting income-tax rebate, which will probably bump it up to a couple of hundred. So they would be sitting pretty, Doreen replied, because Mrs Greatton had already offered to let them stay with her for as long as they liked, paying half the rent. For she would be lonely when Chumley left. Arthur said he would be able to get on with Mrs Greatton, because living there he would be the man of the house. And if there was any arguments, they could get rooms somewhere. So it looked as though they’d be all right together, he thought, as long as a war didn’t start, or trade slump and bring back the dole. As long as there wasn’t a famine, a plague to sweep over England, an earthquake to crack it in two and collapse the city around them, or a bomb to drop and end the world with a big bang. But you couldn’t concern yourself too much with these things if you had plans and wanted to get something out of life that you had never had before. And that was a fact, he thought, chewing a piece of grass.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Page 23