Our Mother's House

by Julian Gloag

  “It sounds nice,” said Mrs. Stork. Charlie ’ook ignored her. “Very nice. Some people are lucky.” There was an edge of sharpness in her voice.

  Charlie ’ook had lowered his eyes and was looking at the half-concealed headline of The Dispatch.

  Mrs. Stork glanced behind her and started to sit down on the black leather chair.

  “Have a chair, Mrs. Stork,” said Charlie ’ook suddenly, loudly attentive. “Take the weight off your feet.” He laughed. “ ’ere, Elsa, why don’t you take Mrs. S.’s flowers down and put ’em in a vase, eh?”

  White-faced, Elsa held out her hands for the flowers. She turned and left the room. They all watched her go, a sword of righteousness.

  “Ah, that’s better!” Mrs. Stork withdrew a blue silk handkerchief from her bag and dabbed at her forehead.

  For a moment there was silence except for the faint stirring of the fire in the grate. The air in the room seemed to press down upon them, laden with things to come. A faint breath of cool outside air touched the back of Hubert’s knees. The children stared and were quiet, waiting for Charlie ’ook to turn the old witch into a toad.

  “The cost of living,” murmured Mrs. Stork as if to herself, “the cost of living.”

  The spell was broken and she was not transformed.

  Charlie ’ook sat down and reached for his glass of Guinness.

  Mrs. Stork watched every movement. Her mouth pursed, she looked at the half-empty glass. She sighed, and then, as if following a previous train of thought, remarked, “Some have it good. That’s the way the world is. Some have it good. Some don’t.”

  “Like a drop, Mrs. Stork?”

  Her eyes were at once alert. “What, me?” She hesitated, touching her lips lightly with her tongue, as if testing the flavour of her reply. Then, suddenly making up her mind, “Oh, no—not me,” she said, “I never touch it—except for medical use, of course. My Tiger wouldn’t like it.” She attempted a titter of femininity.

  Charlie ’ook remained looking at her with a thoughtful lack of smile.

  Mrs. Stork sighed again and her glance flickered towards the children and then round the room and back to Charlie ’ook again. “It’s ever so nice there’s a man in this house at last,” she said. “It was lucky you come when you did, Mr. Hook. Dear-oh-dearie me, what would they have done with no one to take care of ’em? What a pretty pass that would of been. Pretty pass.” She smiled with melancholy. “Why, I expect they’d ’ave ’ad to call in old Mrs. Stork. I wouldn’t be surprised. That is, if she’d been willing to come—after the way she’d been … well, I won’t go on. What’s done’s done. That’s what I say.” She wiped the moisture from her palms with the blue handkerchief. “Mrs. Stork don’t bear no grudges. You could never say that about old Mrs. S.” She waited for Charlie ’ook to light his cigarette. “It’s a lucky thing you come when you did,” she continued, “very lucky. Of course it’s not the same as a woman’s touch. Every ’ouse needs a woman’s touch.” She glanced round the room, as if detecting beneath the superficial neatness a plethora of male grubbiness. She smiled indulgently. “All the years I spent in this house. Thursdays was my day. ‘Happy’ Thursday, my Tiger used to call it. Year in, year out all these years. An’ we never met till now! Oh, o’ course, I heard all about you. All about you, Mr. Hook,” she said with the faintest emphasis on the all.

  Charlie ’ook caressed his glass. “I heard a bit about you too,” he said with a grin.

  Mrs. Stork said benignly, “You don’t have to be polite of pleasure. “Me? Well there’s not much to tell about me!” She folded her hands in her lap. “Plenty I could tell, though. Plenty.” She said it in a placid murmur, as if she knew that she could draw long comfort, if not perfect security, from the fact.

  Charlie ’ook set his glass down carefully. He was almost grim.

  Hand in hand with Diana, Willy moved restlessly. “Let’s go in the garden and swing again, Dinah.”

  For a moment no one answered him, then Mrs. Stork cut in with sudden energy. “That’s right, ducks, you go an’ have a nice swing. ’Nough to give anyone the fidgets standing there and listenin’ to us talkin’ away. I expect you’d all like to run away and play, wouldn’t you?”

  “No,” Hubert shook his head, “we’d prefer to stay, thank you very much.”

  Mrs. Stork said benignly, “You don’t have to be polite with me. It’s ever so nice in the sun. Why don’t you all run along, eh? and then me and your father can have a nice little chat.”

  Charlie ’ook rose slowly. He looked from Mrs. Stork to the children.

  “We don’t want to go,” said Hubert firmly.

  “But I think you better, dear. Don’t you, Mr. Hook?”

  Charlie ’ook rubbed his forefinger gently along his upper lip. “Yes,” he said at length, “yes, I think you better.” He paused, and then, suddenly jovial, he said, “You got to look after that roast beef, haven’t you, Di? Mustn’t let the dinner spoil.”

  The movement among the children was reluctant. “But,” began Hubert, “but …” He could think of no adequate excuse to stay. Looking at Charlie ’ook, massive and smiling, and Mrs. Stork, snug in her self-assurance, Hubert was filled with a brief, fearful perception of something they understood that he, reach out as he might, would never grasp. He immediately obliterated the thought with an urgent obedience to Charlie ’ook’s command.

  “All right,” he said briskly, “come on, Jiminee.” He grabbed his brother’s arm and half pulled him from the room, the others trailing behind.

  “And no listening at the keyhole, mind!” called Mrs. Stork.

  Hubert led the way downstairs.

  In the kitchen, Elsa sat at the table, staring at the door as they came in.

  “Where are the flowers, Else?” asked Hubert.

  “I threw them away.” Her face was white and icy.

  “You what?”

  “I threw them in the dustbin.” She looked at her brothers and sister with contempt, daring them to challenge her.

  “What d-d-did you do that for?” said Jiminee.

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Elsa!” It was Dunstan who spoke. There was an unbreakable principle among the children that no one should ever be vicious to Jiminee. Laugh at him, yes—but not hurt him. Momentarily Dunstan gained something of his old power as he rebuked his elder sister. “Don’t talk like that to Jiminee.”

  “I don’t care.” She watched them almost imperceptibly draw together against her.

  “Why did you chuck the flowers away, Elsa?” Hubert asked quietly.

  “We’re not accepting anything from that woman.”

  “But she can’t do us any harm,” said Hubert.

  Elsa did not even look at him.

  “Charlie will—”

  “Him!” Elsa said violently.

  Diana moved closer to the table. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Elsa moved her lips in the parody of a smile. “Wrong! He’s a bad lot—that’s what’s wrong with him. Do you think he cares about us? No! All he cares about is himself.”

  “You didn’t think that,” said Dunstan, “when he first came.”

  “Yes, I did. And so did you!” she shot. “I just gave him the benefit of the doubt, that’s all.”

  Hubert said, “But there isn’t any doubt now.”

  “No, there isn’t, is there? He’s just a beastly good-for-nothing, that’s all he is. Look at the way he drinks—getting drunk and smoking and spending money. Where’s he get all that money from? And look at him now—hobnobbing with Mrs. Stork. He doesn’t care about you, any of you. He’s just a filthy, low-down—”

  Diana, leaning over the table, brought her hand round hard and slapped Elsa across the face. “Don’t you dare,” she said in a low voice, “don’t you dare speak like that about him. Ever. You’re just jealous because he loves us, and because he doesn’t love you most of all.”

  Elsa rose, the red hand-mark clear-cut on her cheek. “Loves
us,” she said expressionlessly. “All right, he loves us. But there was somebody else who loved us once—loved all of us. Mother! Remember, Diana? Remember that?”

  She went to the back door and pulled it open. She walked into the garden without glancing back. No one needed to be told that she was going to the tabernacle.

  Hubert turned and looked at Diana. Her cheeks were red and she gripped the edge of the table hard. Her hair gleamed like a helmet of brass. He was glad that she was his sister.

  For the first time since they’d entered the kitchen he noticed the smell of roasting beef. He sniffed. It was a good smell.

  32

  The funfair was a great grey cavern. Like the inside of an enormous elephant, thought Hubert. The constant beehive bumbling of the pleasure-makers rose to the girdered roof high above—a comfortable blanket of indeterminate voices, with sudden undertones of menace as the switchback cars roared into descent, pierced by the riders’ murderous screams of joy and the pell-mell shrieking of girls tumbling from the whirl-away cars. The brave tinkle-tinkle of the half-empty merry-go-rounds came through only now and again, in an unexpected hush, like a gentle reminder.

  “What you want to see first?” asked Charlie ’ook, raising his voice to a shout.

  “Tigers!” cried Willy.

  “Tigers it’ll be! Here,” he bent down and swung Willy by the armpits up onto his shoulders, “now you can spit on the world!” He let out a burst of laughter. Willy gripped Charlie ’ook’s brow determinedly. He looked down on the others staring up at him and put out his tongue. He turned his head away proudly as they laughed.

  “Follow me, eh? And mind you keep together.” Charlie ’ook began to push his way towards the low-roofed rectangular section where the animal cages and the side-shows were.

  Hubert’s trouser pockets were loaded down with pennies and shillings and sixpences. “A couple of quid’s worth of mixed change please, miss,” Charlie ’ook had said, slapping down two pound notes at the booth as they entered. Mixed change—it sounded rich and exciting. The coins clinked munificently every time he took a step.

  “Look, look!” said Jiminee suddenly, grabbing at the tails of Charlie ’ook’s jacket.

  Hubert read the signs outside the side show—“The Tallest Man in the World,” “Nature’s Wondrous Marvels,” “The Stick Lady,” “The Fattest Man in the Universe.”

  “Only a bob a head,” shouted the man at the entrance, and, catching sight of the children, “sixpence for the under-fourteens. I’ll let the little fellow in for nothing.”

  “I’m not little!” said Willy loudly.

  “Freaks!” murmured Jiminee as he gazed at the crude distortions of faces and limbs painted on the side of the booth.

  “Want to go in?” asked Charlie ’ook.

  “Oh, yes … yes … yes … yes, please.”

  As they entered, Hubert inhaled the smell of stale animals and straw and spilled beer and cheap sweets that was like the opening of the wide world.

  French Philip, the fattest man in the universe, was over forty-two stone. His flesh, which almost completely concealed the tiny stool he sat on, was contained in short bright pink satin pants and a sleeveless salmon-coloured vest. He was a gigantic pink balloon from which a little air had seeped, so that the rubber flesh sagged and seemed almost to flow from him.

  “He is fat,” whispered Jiminee.

  “Fatty Chance’ll look like that if he’s not careful,” said Dunstan unexpectedly, “when he grows up.” The others giggled.

  Then French Philip, who with his buried eyes and complete stolidity might not have been alive at all, began to move. His bulk shifted sideways and a hand like a large pink fruit reached slowly down and grasped the neck of a bottle of lemonade at his feet. The bottle went up and up and was plugged into the orifice of Philip’s mouth. It tilted gradually and stayed there for what seemed to the children an age. At last it was withdrawn and lowered to rest on Philip’s immense thigh. But the fat man’s mouth continued to move with the gentleness of the kissing gourami. Suddenly the lips closed and were still. Then, with a huge brief quiver of flesh, French Philip belched.

  In a moment, the children were consumed in an explosion of laughter. Up went their hands to their mouths, but nothing could contain their frantic mirth. Crippled with giggles, they were bundled out by Charlie ’ook, “ ’ere,” he said, unable to conceal his own grin, “you mustn’t laugh at the poor bastard like that.”

  “But … but…” They couldn’t speak. Hubert felt the tears streaming from his eyes.

  “He can’t help being fat,” said Charlie ’ook reasonably.

  “But,” Diana struggled, “but he was so rude!”

  “Wouldn’t, wouldn’t it have b-b-been f-f-funny if his stool had b-b-b-b-broke,” said Jiminee.

  “Cor blimey, you kids aren’t ’alf macabre. Listen, he’d only have to roll over once on you, and you’d never get up!”

  Laughter struck them again in their stomachs. “Oh, stop,” said Hubert, “please stop, Charlie.”

  “Yes,” said Willy from his height, “stop laughing.” He began to drum on Charlie ’ook’s head with his fists. “I want to see my tigers.”

  “ ’ere, Willy,” said Charlie ’ook, glancing up and back, “you sound just like Mrs. Stork.”

  “My T-T-Tiger,” Jiminee managed to get out.

  Charlie ’ook laughed outright too this time.

  By the time they got to the tigers they were almost recovered. The shreds of Mrs. Stork had been blown to invisibility in the lofty cavern of the funfair. Charlie ’ook’s announcement, earlier in the afternoon, that Mrs. Stork would be coming to do for them daily from now on, had diffused a fear, more potent because vague, within the children that even Charlie ’ook’s careful explanation had not dismissed. But now, it seemed to Hubert, the fear was nothing; for, after all, Mrs. Stork was nothing—nothing to be afraid of, not when Charlie ’ook was around.

  Meagre in their ferocity, the tigers were a disappointment.

  “Poke them,” said Willy, annoyed.

  “And get my hand chewed off? No thanks.” Charlie ’ook held up his wrist and flexed it lovingly. “I dunno about you, but I’m fond of this hand—only got one other.”

  It is possible to circle the funfair indefinitely without ever approaching the middle. For most people, the side shows and the coconut shies and the shooting galleries and the slot machines are merely a process of breaking in. There are those who linger perpetually over the bingo or spend their time forever rolling pennies down a chute to land on a numbered square; there are the fat ones who merely come to watch somebody else having a go; there are the bored ones in crimson, gold-frogged uniforms, lounging in decayed magnificence and smelling of the animals they guard. All these never reach the centre. Most of them hardly ever even raise their eyes to the big wheel or the switchback. They watch somebody else having her features romanticised in charcoal. They buy candy floss for the kids, and their duty is done. They never know the fearful joy of the water chute or the dignity of riding the horses with flared nostrils on the merry-go-round.

  By the time the Hooks reached the shooting gallery that jutted out into the territory of the big rides, their fever had mastered all timidity.

  “Let’s go on the switchback, Charlie.”

  “I want to slide down the tower with the chute.”

  “All right, all right,” said Charlie ’ook in mock impatience. “ ’ere, don’t none of you want to have a go at the shooting?—you might win a rabbit.”

  “You go, Charlie.”

  “Nah—I had enough of that in the war.” He grinned. “Besides, got my hands full here. Hu, you have a try—you ought to be pretty good.”

  “Yes—go on, Hu. Go on.”

  Charlie ’ook examined the guns. “This looks a good one, Hu.” Hubert took it into his hand. The stock was cold and greasy with dirty oil. He hesitated. “Look, I’ll show you.” Charlie ’ook swung Willy from his shoulders and took the gun from Hubert.
He demonstrated how to hold it. “Now you have a go. Ten shots he gets, doesn’t he?” he called to the man.

  “That’s right. Ten shots for a bob.” The attendant with the droopy moustache and the grubby white coat barely looked up from his examination of the caked grime in his nails. “If you knock down ten ducks while in motion you get the rabbit or any other of these magnificent toys—on the left ’ere—you may choose. Ten ducks—the toy of your choice.” He sighed. “Or, ’aving achieved your perfect score, you are entitled to add to that score with another free round. Seven or more hits on your free round will make you eligible for the grand prize,” he lifted his elbow to indicate a huge box with a teapot on top, “a beautiful genuine Wedgwood tea set as from the factory.”

  The ducks were on the top level and seemed to Hubert to be moving very fast. Below them a line of large mice went at a much slower pace. Hubert opened his mouth to speak.

  “Or,” said the man suddenly, “nine knockdowns entitles you to any object in that group, eight to any object in that group, seven to any object in that group. And—for five knockdowns you get one of these attractive cutie-pie dolls.”

  “What about six?” asked Hubert.

  “Cutie-pie.”

  “What d’you get for knocking down the mice?”

  “Mice don’t count,” snapped the man.

  “We’ll take a bob’s worth,” said Charlie ’ook. “Okay, Hu. Take a coupla’ shots and see how you do. Most of these guns don’t shoot true—you’ll most likely have to aim off a bit to the right or a bit to the left. You’ll soon get the knack of it.”

  Hubert tucked the stock against his shoulder and bent low. The ducks flashed past the sights. He pulled the trigger. Clang!

  “You hit one!”

  “Did I?” Hubert glanced up, smiling. It wasn’t difficult after all. He bent low and pulled the trigger again. Unharmed, the ducks marched. Out of his ten shots, he hit three ducks and a couple of mice.