In its way Mr Nichols’ parlour was formal too, but Tess liked it better. There was a generous melancholy in its hulking old coffinwood furniture; in the way its tiny, net-curtained windows kept the room embalmed in permanent evening, warmed by the glow from the coal fire. Mr Nichols must have been listening to the Light Programme when she had knocked. He had lowered the volume on the antique wireless so that the announcer’s voice still churned away, almost inaudible and treacle-brown as the patina on the sideboard. Every surface bore its cargo of silver-framed photographs – not grinning Kodak snaps like those that littered her parents’ house, but stiff-backed studio portraits going back three or four generations.
She got up to inspect the photos on the mantelpiece more closely, looking for evidence of genealogy, trying to spot Jimmy’s features in the solemn faces of his Sunday-best ancestors. A wedding picture caught her eye – young Mr Nichols with a full head of hair back then. Neither the dressmaker nor the photographer had been unable to disguise the bride’s pregnancy.
Tess spotted a much older portrait. Here you are, she thought. Because the man in this photograph might have been Jimmy himself, trying on the fashions of half a century ago – a moustache, a checked cloth cap, a high single collar, a three-piece suit and a watch chain. Was it only that the features were similar, she wondered, or could she see the same critical eye peering warily at the camera? The same discomfort in the world? The same capacity for self-damage? She thought she could.
‘That’s my great uncle Terence. Dad’s father’s brother. One of our family’s famous lifelong bachelors.’
She turned around. Jimmy looked well, standing next to his father. Better than she had anticipated, though he obviously hadn’t been for a haircut or used a comb in a while. Nor had he ironed any of his clothes. He came past her and picked up the photograph she’d been looking at.
‘Poor bugger took a bullet in the face at Verdun when he was thirty-five. Didn’t kill him, but it left a nasty mess. I suppose he wasn’t so marriageable after that, even if he’d wanted to be. Looks kind of like me in this picture, doesn’t he? Everyone’s always saying so. And he had the old family curse too.’
‘Ain’t no curse,’ Mr Nichols added quickly. ‘Terry was a lovely feller. Nobody round here had a word to say against him. How a bloke is – you can’t blame him for that.’
Jimmy kissed the top of his father’s bald head. ‘Dad’s taken to defending me against everyone. Myself especially.’
Mr Nichols blushed as he lowered himself onto the settee. ‘My missus is passed on, and I’ve only got the one son. Don’t see no use driving him away. Would you mind turning my wireless up, Theresa?’
‘What Dad means,’ Jimmy explained, ‘is “would you two kindly go somewhere else, and leave me in peace to listen to Dick Barton, Special Agent?”’
‘No I don’t,’ Mr Nichols said. ‘That hasn’t been on for years. It’s Send for Paul Temple, if you want to know.’
They walked out to Jimmy’s shed at the end of the back garden. He was carrying a paint-spattered old dining chair he’d rescued from the under-stairs cupboard, and he kept up a steady stream of information with a buoyancy Tess didn’t entirely trust.
‘The coal company built these streets. This whole village, really, for miners to live in. All the houses have vegetable gardens, and everyone got a shed, for potting out and so on.’
Looking up and down the row of gardens Tess saw there was a similar squat brick building right at the end of each. ‘Potting out?’ she said. ‘What’s that?’
Jimmy laughed. ‘No idea. Anyway, Mum and Dad let me have this one right from when I was a kid. They must have realised my need for a hideout was greater than Dad’s. I never told them how rough it was at school, but—’
‘I got your letter,’ Tess interrupted. ‘It was in my pigeonhole for three weeks before I found it.’
He opened the door. ‘Here we are. It’ll be a bit cold right now, but I’ve got my Aladdin.’
Whoever had furnished the interior of Jimmy’s shed had not been a carpenter. He (Tess assumed it must have been a man) had taken assorted roughly sawn hunks of wood and grafted them onto what looked like old kitchen cupboards to form inelegant shelves and work surfaces, all painted the same powdery duck egg blue.
The shelves were covered in junk: souvenir figures made of glued-together seashells; toy cars; a broken piggy bank. Around the walls, Jimmy had pinned perhaps forty pages from a child’s colouring book. All the pictures showed cartoons of animals behaving like humans. Rabbits in tweed jackets carried wicker baskets of vegetables; a cat and a donkey in trilby hats played cards; a dog as a cobbler, hammered nails into the sole of a boot. All these images had been meticulously and correctly coloured-in. Blue skies, green grass, yellow daffodils. The clothing and fur or feathers of each character was of a sensible shade. They seemed recently done.
Jimmy set down the paint-spattered chair next to a similar one that was already in there. They each took a seat. There was a triangular paraffin heater on the floor. He leant forward to light it.
‘This is my Aladdin,’ he said, holding a match against the wick. The small yellow flame metamorphosed into a larger blue one, and the shed filled with a camphorated burning smell. ‘It’s good to see you, Tess. I wondered if you’d written me off as a bad job.’ He picked up a puppet from one of the shelves – a boxer, scarred and crop-haired, mounted on the end of a stick. ‘Do you remember that doorman from the Gaudi Club? The one who saved Marius from having to fight me? Could be him, couldn’t it?’ He pulled a trigger at the bottom of the stick to make the puppet throw a left then a right. ‘Two peas in a pod. Like me and Great Uncle Terence.’
‘Are you coming back to Moncourt, Jimmy?’
Another left, another right. ‘Pity I don’t know that doorman’s name. I’ve had to call this bloke Biffer.’
She waited for an answer.
‘Let’s not talk about Moncourt,’ he said.
‘Haven’t you done enough not talking, Jimmy? Isn’t that why you’re in this state?’
‘Well, I’m not in a state now. And if you remember, it was telling someone how I felt that got me in trouble in the first place.’
‘Nonsense. You said it yourself. That doctor gave you a scare, but there was never any real danger he’d lock you up, was there?’
Jimmy held the mechanical boxer up so it was facing him. ‘You hear that, Biffer? She’s turned my own words against me.’ He pulled the trigger again and the toy landed a punch on his nose. ‘Technical knockout!’
‘So?’
‘All that’s academic, Tess. It’s not my choice to make.’ He put down the puppet and picked up a sheet of typed foolscap from another shelf. ‘This is a letter from that awful Newbolt man. Due to my long period of unexplained absence, blah, blah, blah.’
‘I know about that. It doesn’t matter.’
‘Of course it matters. They’ve thrown me out, Tess.’
‘No. They haven’t. I went to see Benedict Garvey. He says you can have as long off as you need. As long as you submit a final piece, you’ll qualify for the second year.’
‘Why would Benedict Garvey decide to be so generous? What did you tell him?’
He was suspicious, ready to be angry. If she didn’t handle the next few minutes correctly, she thought, she’d lose him. ‘I explained you’d gone home because you were ill,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry if that was breaching a confidence, I didn’t know what else to do.’
‘You told him I was ill? That’s all?’
‘Obviously, he realised you hadn’t gone off with a bout of measles. He’s not stupid. But he didn’t ask for details about what was wrong.’ Hoping Jimmy wouldn’t notice she hadn’t exactly answered his question, she continued, ‘I’m to let you know you’re to ignore any letter you might have received from Mr Newbolt. Garvey told me you’re one of the most gifted artists this year. He’d prefer to keep you at Moncourt if he can.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Jimmy murmured.
That did it. He’d come back now for sure.
Later Jimmy suggested they go for a walk. The sun was almost down when they left the house.
‘It’s a bit of a risk, letting myself be seen around,’ he said. ‘But you’ll protect me, won’t you Tess?’
There was a council playground in the centre of the village green – a climbing frame, some swings and a roundabout – around which a cluster of children were playing tag. A girl of nine or so spotted Jimmy, and her clear, high voice sang out across the dusk.
‘Nine-bob Mary!’
‘Here we go,’ Jimmy said, as the other kids picked up the song. Its tune was vaguely familiar, a variant on some simple folk melody.
‘Don’t bend down when Mary’s around,
Or you’ll get a nine-bob SAUSAGE UP YOUR BUM!’
After their final rhythmic flourish, the children scattered into the growing darkness, giggling excitedly.
‘They probably have no idea what any of that means,’ Tess said.
She and Jimmy walked over to the freshly vacated playground. She sat on the teapot-lid roundabout and he spun it for her, timing his pushes to build up her momentum.
‘Actually, I’m not sure what it means either,’ she said after she’d been round the third time. ‘Why nine bob?’
‘From the common simile “queer as a nine-bob note”. Witty, isn’t it? A girl in my class called Freda Mason wrote that song especially for me. It had twelve verses originally – most people only know the chorus now, though.’
Tess gripped the bar tight, pushed herself inwards, opposing the centrifugal force. Something in her belly tingled with a kind of pleasure she hadn’t felt since childhood.
‘Twelve verses. That’s a lot of work,’ she said.
‘Isn’t it? I saw her recently, bumped into her in the village shop. She was completely nice about it. Said she’d just enjoyed fitting the words together and finding all the rhymes. She writes poetry now, dreadful stuff, once a week for the local paper. She did one about me, by way of apology.’
Still keeping the roundabout going, he recited the poem to her. Each line was a rotation, each first stressed syllable marked with a push.
‘We bullied you and made you cry.
Now I am older and I wonder why
Young children do such dreadful things
To clip each other’s growing wings
When all we all desire is to fly?
I hope now you are free and bold as I.’
He stopped pushing, let the roundabout slow down.
‘God,’ Tess said. ‘That really is poor.’
‘She’s made her mark, though. I reckon the kids of this village are going to be singing Nine-Bob Sausage at each other for generations, long after Freda and I are both forgotten.’
Tess stepped off the roundabout while it was still turning, misjudged its speed and stumbled into Jimmy. Instinctively he caught her around the waist. Before he could let go of her, she landed a kiss on his cheek. He released his grip and stepped back. Darkness had fallen, and the moon was lost behind the clouds. There were no street lights here, only the glow from the windows of a jumble of village houses around the green. In the distance, the pub had come to life, and above the noise from within, the cracked sound of an old woman’s singing drifted faintly to them.
Fresh aaaare the dayeezeezzz, I’ve cuuuulled from the gaaaaaarden. . .
They walked on in silence. The kiss had been an error, a transgression. Tess had meant it as a gesture of friendly solidarity, but she had tasted a teardrop on his cheek.
Outside the pub door two male shapes were pushing each other around, halfway between playfulness and a fight. There was a crash of breaking glass. Someone called Joe was a stupid cunt, and fucking owed someone else another fucking beer. Joe was sorry, but it had been an accident, and someone called Denny needed to watch his fucking mouth.
‘Let’s not go by there,’ Jimmy said. He turned and vanished into the black space between two cottages. Tess followed him into a lightless alleyway. Although she could see nothing at all, she heard him striding ahead with native confidence, and, assuming that must mean it was safe, she made her own way forwards. There was no path here. Underfoot it was soft and slippery, with the damp-mud odour of ground that never quite dried out. Soon her eyes acclimatised to what had at first seemed like a uniform darkness, and she began to make out vague shapes – just in time to avoid walking into the side of a coal bunker. The alleyway ahead of her opened out into a brighter space, lit by a thin wash of moonlight from behind the clouds. She saw a narrow path with a low hedgerow running along one side, and fields rising into the hills beyond. Jimmy was waiting for her.
‘If either of those two had spotted me they’d’ve put their differences to one side while they kicked my head in,’ he said. ‘Hope you don’t think less of me for avoiding them.’
It seemed the problem of the kiss had passed now. They would just not mention it again, and that would be fine. A flight of ducks passed high overhead, breaking the quiet with chaotic quacks and wingbeats.
‘I was wondering about all those colouring-in pictures,’ she said.
‘Oh yes. I’m rather proud of all those. Just after I came back, I found the book lying around at my aunt’s house. It belonged to her daughter, my cousin. She’d had a half-hearted try at the first picture, then got bored with the whole idea. So I borrowed it. I thought it would be soothing for me. Then it got to be a bit of a habit.’
He set off along the path, and she walked with him.
‘And have you done any actual work, Jimmy? Any painting or drawing of your own?’
‘Honestly, I’ve been afraid to let my imagination off the leash. Safer just keeping inside the lines, you know? And actually I’m beginning to think there might be something more I can do with those pictures.’ There was a gap in the hedge. He led her through it onto a scrubby field. ‘Look how far you can see, even in the dark. That’s something I missed when I was in the city.’
She followed his gaze, past a glum-looking pony tethered to a fence, beyond which she saw hills beyond hills, rising away and darkening in the distance so she couldn’t quite make out where the land finished and the sky began. ‘It’s the same in Yorkshire,’ she said. The air was cold here, out of the shelter of the path. It occurred to her that maybe the kiss had meant more to her than she’d realised. She moved closer to Jimmy.
‘Tess,’ he muttered. ‘You know I’m not—’
She was quietly insistent. ‘We’re friends, though, aren’t we – best friends?’
He pulled away from her. Even in the dim light, the outrage was evident in his face. ‘What are you up to, Tess? Christ! You don’t honestly think all I need to set me right is a woman, do you?’
She turned and strode away across the field. She had no idea where she was going; the ground here was uneven, rutted by tractor wheels, and she couldn’t move over it nearly as fast as she would have liked. As she picked her way from trough to peak, she yelled back, ‘Why do you imagine everything’s always about you, Jimmy Nichols?’
By the wall at the far side, she could see a rough shelter, built so farmworkers could hide from the worst of the weather. By the time she reached it Jimmy had caught up with her.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘If that’s what you want. I’ve no idea why, though.’
He was cross, defensive and fragile. If it were to happen now it would be awful, just another step in an argument. What on earth had she been thinking of? She looked around at the hard, chilly stone of the shelter, smelled its old animal stink, and thought of her long-abandoned fantasy: the sleeping poet, the attic room. Such romanticism was far behind her now. Even so, this wouldn’t do. She was ashamed of herself for having thought of it.
‘Let’s go back to the house,’ she said. Then, seeing his reaction, she added hurriedly, ‘Oh, not for that. I was just being silly. It’s getting cold out here, that’s all.’
They talked about other things on the way home,
to put what had almost happened behind them. Tess told Jimmy about how Penny (Penelope now) had changed. He wasn’t surprised. When they got back inside, she went to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water and Jimmy found his father in the parlour, sitting upright on the settee, fast asleep. The BBC having long since finished for the night, the wireless now hissed quietly away to itself. Gently, he touched the old man’s shoulder.
‘I was worried,’ Dad said, when he woke up. ‘I didn’t know where you’d gone.’
‘We took a walk around the village and down by the backs.’
‘Any trouble?’
‘Kids on the green taking the mickey, that’s all. And Joe and Denny Briggs were laying into each other outside the Star. Seemed sensible to keep out of their way.’
Tess came back into the parlour. Dad looked around at her. ‘Well, Miss. Have you persuaded my son to go back to your college?’
‘I hope so, Mr Nichols. It’s where he ought to be.’
‘I think I will,’ Jimmy said. ‘Not straight away, though. I’m not quite ready yet. But Tess says they’ll take me back.’
Finer Things Page 22