It was Nardy now who answered for me, saying, ‘I’m glad to hear that. Give us five minutes, then fetch him in.’
During the five minutes which stretched to ten we had two cups of tea each, and a sandwich, then the door opened and Janet came in leading Harold by the hand, and on first sight he appeared a different child. The last time I had seen him he had been wearing patched jeans and a scruffed little jacket, over which part of a none-too-clean shirt collar had probed. But coming towards us now was a smart little fellow in bright blue jeans and a white tee shirt.
When Janet relinquished his hand, he stood in front of us looking from one to the other; then he stumbled sideways as Janet’s hand pushed him none too gently, saying, ‘Mind what I told you. Behave yourself.’
I watched him slant his eyes up at his grandmother, then he emitted a long drawn out, ‘Oo…h!’ as she left the room.
‘Hello, Harold.’
Harold did not answer me; he was looking at Nardy. Now Nardy said, ‘Hello Harold.’ And to this Harold deigned to reply, ‘Hello.’
There was silence now between the three of us, and the questioning seemed to be carried on by our eyes because, first, Harold would lift his gaze from Nardy, look at me, then look back at Nardy again; and I would look at Harold, then look at Nardy, then look back at Harold once more.
‘Have you been a good boy?’
There was no answer, but a definite nodding of his head. Harold wasn’t acting to form. It seemed to be that Nardy’s presence was stilling his tongue. Then I found I was mistaken, for what the young man now said, addressing himself directly to Nardy, was, ‘You the fella as got burnt?’
I heard Nardy swallow. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m the fella as got burnt.’
‘All over?’
‘No, no, not quite.’
‘I got burnt once.’
‘You did?’
‘Aye, I did.’
‘Where were you burnt?’
‘On me arse.’ He started, while at the same time I started, and Nardy started, and our joined glances went swiftly towards the door as if we expected to see his grandmother flying up the room, her hand uplifted. After a moment I heard my own voice, mock stern now, saying, ‘You didn’t mean that, did you, Harold? You meant your bottom?’
He looked at me, the expression on his face telling me that he definitely wasn’t going to sink as low as that, for he emitted one word, ‘Backside.’
Then switching his gaze to Nardy again, he said, ‘You want to see?’
I daren’t look at Nardy, but his voice sounded steady as he said, ‘Yes. Yes, I’d like to see where you were burnt.’
I watched the small hands deftly now unbuttoning the straps that kept his jeans up and when they were dropped around his ankles, he shuffled forward, turned round, at the same time pulling down a tiny pair of clean underpants. And there, across one small bare buttock, about four inches by two, almost covering the whole pad of flesh, was a scar that proved the extent of a bad burn.
‘Dear, dear! You have been burnt, haven’t you?’
‘Yes. An’ if I sit like this’—he now bent over and pushed his bottom out—‘I can see it in the glass.’
As I had once done, I saw Nardy cover his eyes with his hand; then he made a strange sound before he asked, ‘How did you manage to get burnt like that?’
The small pants were being pulled up, then the jeans, and these were safely buttoned before the answer came, ‘I sat on the bloody fire bar.’
There seemed to be pandemonium in the room. I was coughing hard, Nardy was bent forward, his hand still over his eyes; Hamilton was racing round the lot of us, and not alone now, but dragging Begonia with him.
When I found my voice I said, ‘How on earth did you manage to get burnt by a fire bar?’
‘Grandad Stodd showed me. He used to lift up ’is shirt at night, like this’—he now demonstrated, bending over again and holding up an imaginary shirt away from his hips—‘to warm his a…backside.’
I realised that was a good effort and, trying to keep my face straight, I said, ‘And you followed suit?’
He hesitated a moment before answering, his eyes screwed up again in a manner with which, in the future, I was to become well acquainted whenever he tried to understand the meaning of some word or saying. Now, seeming to get my gist, he said, ‘Well I stood on the fender, an’ it was slippy an’ I fell backward, an’…an’ I raised hell. Grandad Stodd said they heard me down at the fish market. An’ I kept on when I was in the hospital; I raised the bloody place. An’ you know what?’ He now transferred his gaze from Nardy’s tortured expression to mine, and he moved a step nearer to me and, poking his head forward and his face going into a smile, he said again, ‘You know what?’ And I shook my head as I said, ‘No: what?’
I watched him press his lips tight together before he said in what to him was his whisper, ‘The nurse, she kissed me when I was comin’ out.’
‘Never!’ I shook my head as if in disbelief.
And now indignantly and loudly, he cried, ‘She did! An’ she said, if I would like to sit on any more bars she would see to me. She did. Why you holdin’ hands?’
Our fingers parted as if a spring had released them; then Nardy said, ‘Because we are fond of each other, we like holding hands.’
He stared at Nardy for some time, then moved from one foot to the other before he spoke again: ‘Me mum went off with a bloke,’ he said.
What could you say to that? We said nothing. And he went on, ‘An’ me dad’s bit, she doesn’t like me.’ He shook his head vigorously now. And when I was forced to say, ‘Oh, I’m sure you are mistaken, Harold,’ his voice came back at me in an almost screaming bark as he yelled, ‘No, I’m not mis…mistakin’. She clouted me, not like Gag does, like that!’ He used his hand to demonstrate by banging himself on the ear. ‘She hit me with the dog’s lead.’ Then he added in almost the same breath,’ Gag says you’ve got a dog. Where is it?’
‘A friend of ours is bringing it down by car from the north. I…I think you’ll like it. His name is Sandy.’
‘Will you bring it round to Gag’s?’
My eyes widened in surprise as I said, ‘No, no; you’ll see it here.’
‘I won’t, ’cos…’cos this is me finish.’
‘Your finish?’
‘Yes. I’m not comin’ back any more, Gran says, ’cos…’cos of you.’ He was now nodding at Nardy. ’Cos…’cos you bein’ an old man, you want to be quiet.’
‘He’s not an old man.’ I indignantly spoke up in Nardy’s defence. But my opponent, looking my husband over from top to bottom, stated flatly, ‘He is an’ all.’
Nardy was nodding at him now: ‘Yes, yes, of course I am, but that doesn’t mean you can’t come here to see me.’
‘Yer mean I can? Can I?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Every day?’ He was looking at me now and I nodded and said, ‘Yes, except the weekends when your grandmother doesn’t come.’
He now glanced towards the door again and, his voice dropping; he emitted, ‘God Almighty!’
‘What’s wrong?’
He was appealing to me now: ‘Will…will yer tell her that you asked me, else she’ll bash me ear ’ole for me?’
‘Yes, I’ll tell her. And Harold…’
He waited, and while pulling myself to the end of the couch I put out my hand and caught his and said, ‘What you have just said…‘
‘What?’
‘The’—I stopped, looked down, and was aware of Nardy moving restlessly to the side of me—‘the expression you used about…about God.’
‘Oh, God? Like on a Sunday night on the telly?’
‘Yes, like on a Sunday night on the telly.’
‘Gag looks at that ’cos she says it clears the house.’
Puzzled, I bent my head towards him and repeated, ‘Clears the house?’
‘Yes, ’cos me Uncle Greg and Rodney and me Auntie May, they go out and sit in the kitchen. But I
sit with Gag…well, ’cos, she makes me. But…but I don’t mind, I don’t, ’cos I sit on her knee then an’ sometimes I fall asleep.’
His eyes roaming round the room, he now made a statement: ‘I’d like to live in this house,’ he said.
‘I’m sure you would, I’m sure you would.’ My voice was brisk; and giving him now a slight pat on the bottom, I said, ‘Go and tell your grandma that we’d like some more hot water.’
He didn’t move, but, instead, asked, ‘An’ will I tell ’er I can come every day ’cos you say so?’
‘Yes.’ I looked at Nardy, and he endorsed this. ‘Yes, yes, of course.’
With this he darted down the room, and I saw Hamilton, still holding on to Begonia, dancing after him.
‘Amazing.’
I nodded at Nardy, saying, ‘Yes, isn’t he just.’
‘How old did you say he was?’
‘Five now, I think.’
‘He’s bright. He thinks; you can see his mind working. But what will he end up like among that lot? Poor Janet. You cannot imagine her breeding that crew, can you? I wonder whom he takes after?’
‘Well, evidently not his mother, and by all Janet’s accounts his father’s a very ordinary individual.’
‘Anyway,’ he laughed now, ‘he’s picked up a wonderful vocabulary. I don’t think I’ve laughed so much since I first met Gran and George. Yet’—he turned and looked at me—‘you know what you said when you left me the other night? It’s made me think.’
‘What was that?’
‘Well, I imagined you were a bit tired of the constant wisecracking of George and Gran. And, if you remember, you said, everything should be doled out in small amounts, except love and peace of mind.’
‘Did I say that?’
‘Of course, you did. You know you did.’
‘Well, yes, I suppose it’s true, because’—I started to chuckle now—‘fancy having Harold for twenty-four hours of the day.’
‘Oh, yes, just fancy. Still, I think I’m going to see him as a diversion in the future, during the times I get bored with you.’
As I put my arms about him and we kissed, a long, soft, tender kiss, I tried to thrust to the back of my mind the knowledge of his condition that I now carried with me.
A couple of hours later Tommy arrived with Sandy. I had become a little worried when he didn’t show up about the same time as us, but, as he said, he had taken it slowly because of Sandy’s nerves.
Sandy’s greeting of me was as if we had been parted for weeks; and he greeted Nardy the same. And Tommy, looking at the dog kissing first one and then the other of us, remarked, ‘What it is to be loved.’
At this I made Sandy behave.
Tommy refused tea but accepted whisky. He was drinking more of late, I noted. And as he stood sipping his drink, he looked round the room, saying, ‘One can see how you wanted to be back. I’d forgotten what this room looked like.’
I noted that he had never asked Nardy how he was feeling, or how he had stood the journey. Tommy was indeed changed; he created a feeling of uneasiness in me.
I was glad when he got up to go.
I opened the door for him and crossed the hall to the lift with him, and we stood looking at each other for a moment while he said, ‘This time next week I’ll be on my way.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really. It’s all fixed, passport, route, the lot. At least the route is until I get overseas; then who knows?’
‘Have you any idea where you’re actually aiming for once you arrive?’
‘No, none whatever. My idea is to get lost, and perhaps in getting lost’—he paused—‘I’ll find myself.’
‘Oh, Tommy.’ I had the desire to put my hands out and take his, but I resisted, because I was afraid of what the result might be. Yet, I kept telling myself that his change of personality was not due in any way to a feeling he might have for me, because supposedly he’d felt like this before the fire, and it hadn’t caused him to act in this strange way.
‘Bye-bye, Maisie.’
‘Bye-bye, Tommy. You will look in before you go?’
‘Yes, if I can manage it.’
‘Tommy!’ He was inside the lift and my voice was loud now. ‘You’ve got to say goodbye to Nardy. What’s the matter with you anyway?’
He stared at me before saying again, ‘Bye-bye, Maisie.’ Then the lift doors closed on him and I was left standing listening to the soft hum as it descended to the ground floor. I felt angry. What was the matter with the man anyway? Nardy was his best friend and he had, in a way, put up with him for years listening to his tirades against his mother.
I actually shook my body as if throwing something off. I had enough on my plate without worrying about him. He was going, apparently out of our lives, to get lost. Well, let him get lost, and the sooner the better.
It was the following Thursday night when Tommy came to say goodbye. The shadow of his old self seemed to have returned and he sat with us and talked normally. He showed us two routes: one did seem to cover the world, taking in Nepal and the foothills of the Himalayas before plunging back into the crowds of Singapore and later Hong Kong. Another plan showed a less sophisticated route. Here he thought of walking through the Rockies, after realising a childhood dream of crossing Canada via the CPR.
When we had our last drink together, he held his glass up towards Nardy, saying, ‘Here’s to you taking the stairs instead of the lift.’
I helped Nardy to his feet and there they stood looking at each other. Nardy put out his hand and Tommy took it. They gripped tight while Nardy said, ‘You will keep in touch, won’t you? Let us know where you are.’
‘Yes, I promise, if it’s only by cards. Goodbye, Nardy. Thanks for everything, right back down the years.’
I saw that Nardy was too full to make any reply, and, as I looked at them, I had the most dreadful feeling of foreboding; it looked as if they were saying goodbye forever. I turned from them and went hastily down the room and into the hall. And when, a few minutes later, Tommy joined me, I was wiping my eyes; and then, there before me, stood the old Tommy.
‘Oh, Maisie, Maisie, don’t please. I beg of you, don’t. Look, I’m not going away forever; I’ll be back in your lives before…before you know I’ve gone.’
I looked up at him and said quietly, ‘Nardy is in a bad way, Tommy. Before we left the hospital the doctor told me that his heart had been affected, so much so that they hadn’t done any more grafting. I…I suppose they were afraid to use the anaesthetic. And he was examined yesterday by our new doctor, a Doctor Bell, and he confirmed this. But, as he said, taking it easy and with care and attention—he’s having therapy every other day—it will likely strengthen.’
I put out my hand and touched Tommy’s arm, saying, ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ for he had put his hand to his brow, shading his eye, like I did when wanting to hide a smile from young Harold. But Tommy wasn’t trying to hide a smile; his mouth was open and he was drawing in a long, shuddering breath.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
He took his hand away, blinked at me, wet his lips, then said, ‘Yes, yes, Maisie;’ and then he added, ‘No, no; I’m not all right.’ He stood with his arm outstretched and his finger on the lift button for a moment before he burst out, ‘Why had you to happen to me?’
The lift door slowly closed itself across my open-mouthed amazed gaze.
Why had you to happen to me?
It was me then that had brought about the change in him. But why had he been so affected by what I had told him about Nardy?
I walked into the hall. There was a half-moon table set between the dining room and kitchen doors. It had a mirror above it. I leant my hands on the table for support and bowed my head and, like that, I thanked God that Tommy had gone out of our lives. When I lifted up my face, there I was looking at myself. And at this moment the image was no different to what it had been three or four years ago: the hair was brown and straight, the face was heart-
shaped, the eyes were round, the nose straight, the mouth wide. Reading these features as a description, they should have made, if not a beautiful face, then a bonny face, a homely face; but their combination resulted in none of these, I was plain. That was the name for me, plain. Perhaps in my eyes I had one asset, they were kindly. Another could be my voice. But given those, what was there about me that could sever a lifetime friendship that had existed between two men? What was it about me that had attracted either of them?
The reflection in the mirror was shaking its head: it didn’t know. And behind it now, the rest of the glass was taken up by Hamilton. I looked at him and he said, You’ll never get the answer to that question. If you could put your finger on what creates love, you’d be Solomon’s first wife. And in your case you could ask yourself, too, why that same face could create so much hate, not only from Stickle, but from your mother.
I turned away. There was a deep sickness in my stomach.
Fourteen
The weeks followed pleasantly. The therapist was getting good results: Nardy was able to walk unaided around the flat. But as I watched him I was amazed at how he could bear to move his scarred legs. At my first sight of them, I had been shocked: the left leg was burnt up to his thigh; the scars on the right leg ended just above his knee, but below the knee, down one side as far as the calf, the skin seemed to have been stuck on the bone; the other side had been built up from the skin taken from the thigh of the same leg. This had left sickly white patches here and there that appeared like burns themselves. And I was made to wonder how he had ever survived; and also how poor little Kitty had survived.
And now, according to the letters from Mary, she was doing splendidly, still having graftings but being allowed home in between times. But even with the letters from Fellburn they all now seemed a part of another life, a dim, fast receding life. The only life I was experiencing was the daily routine in these very pleasant rooms, the companionship of Nardy, and the lighter amusing intervals provided by Harold.
Goodbye Hamilton Page 19