by David Storey
‘You started off a very big man. So I was told. I never saw you in your prime and if I had I doubt if I or anyone else would believe it now. No wonder Elise and Catherine have turned out as they have.’
‘Get yourself a drink,’ he said, going to the door.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To make a call.’
‘Your future wife.’
‘It could be.’
He went upstairs and closed the bedroom door.
On the walls of the room he had hung at one time the trophies of his past career – photographs, chiefly – cuttings, match programmes, medals mounted in a felt-covered tray. With the advent of the children he had taken them down. The discoloration of the paintwork, however, remained – odd patches on the walls which, if not covered by the children’s posters, marked off an area of his life which had no significance for him now at all.
He rang the bar at the Buckingham Hotel: Fredericks had left. When he rang his flat there was no reply.
He tried the York Arms, then the Devonshire, then tried the Cavendish Grill.
Fredericks came to the phone.
‘Can you collect the copy?’ Attercliffe asked.
‘What for?’
‘I can’t get in this evening.’
‘Not the baby-sitter again?’
‘Not this time.’
Fredericks paused. ‘Why not bring it round tomorrow night. After the results.’
‘I thought you preferred to see the copy.’
‘You can write “Pindar’s Round-up” singlehanded. I shan’t be going to watch tomorrow.’
‘Anything happened?’
‘Celebrating,’ Fredericks said.
‘Anything special?’
‘I shall think of a reason,’ he said, ‘tonight.’
The phone was put down the other end.
‘Who was it?’ Sheila said when he went back down.
‘Didn’t you recognise the voice?’
‘You don’t imagine I’d be listening to your private calls.’
‘I thought you were.’
‘I knocked the telephone in the hall on my way from the door.’ She indicated a glass of water in her hand. ‘What a prescribed existence you lead.’
‘It is.’
Having drunk from the glass she set it by her feet.
‘We’ve come to a dead-end, Frank.’
‘On your part,’ Attercliffe said.
Having picked up his glass of beer he finished it and set it on the bookcase beside a pile of Cathy’s and Elise’s records.
He added, ‘I’ll take Bryan and Keith back here. Lorna, too, if it’ll be any help.’
‘You’ll take all the children, as well as the house?’
‘I’ll sell the house,’ he said.
‘And find a terrace.’
‘That’s right.’
‘The world at his feet at twenty-one, and on his knees at fifty.’
‘Three years to go.’
‘Martyrdom as well as sainthood.’
‘If it’s freedom you want, you can have it.’
She reached for the water, sipped it, then said, ‘You said you wanted me back.’
‘That was two and a half years ago. I’ve moved on since then. I’m not going back, just as you’re not coming back.’ He stood by the fire. ‘Has Maurice kicked you out already?’
‘People don’t work along those lines.’
‘Do you want me to have the children?’
‘Half of them are mine.’
‘That’s right.’
‘All of them are mine.’ She added, ‘You’ll not use them as pawns between us, Frank.’
‘I’m not allowing you to disrupt their lives, more than they’ve been disrupted already,’ Attercliffe said. ‘I’ve had a rough time with Elise and Catherine, and no doubt you’ve had your problems with Keith and Bryan.’
‘Not to mention Lorna.’
‘She can stay with her sisters. Otherwise, you’re free to choose, as you have been all along.’
She clapped her hands, so slightly, they scarcely made a sound.
She bowed her head.
‘How kind.’
‘Take it or leave it, Sheila.’
He added, ‘Half this house is mine.’
‘I’ll talk to Elise and Cathy.’
‘All right.’
‘Try and convert them to a woman’s way of thinking.’
‘Convert, or pervert?’ Attercliffe asked.
‘Direct them,’ she said, and rose.
She picked up her gloves, her handbag, set them aside, then picked up her coat.
She drew it on.
‘Do you want a lift to the bus-stop?’
‘No thank you.’
‘Or into town.’
‘No thanks.’ She drew out her headscarf from a pocket of the coat. ‘Trust you to think of the minimal gesture first.’
‘Trust you,’ he said, ‘to try it on.’
‘This isn’t a try-on, Frank. I intend to move back. It’ll take more than the law, as it stands, to stop me.’ She drew on her gloves. ‘You’re quite capable of purchasing a flat. I’ve cost you nothing the last two years.’
‘I’m on an overdraft at present, and we have another nine years to run on the mortgage. We’ll own this house by the time I’m nearly sixty,’ Attercliffe said.
‘You could find the means, and leave me here to live with the children.’
He gazed steadily into those greyish eyes and it was significant, he thought, that, in gazing back, they wavered.
‘I’ll see you soon,’ she added.
‘Right.’
‘I’ll talk to the girls tomorrow.’
‘Here, or on the telephone?’
‘I’ll ring.’
‘I’ll pick up the children as usual,’ he said.
‘I’ll keep them with me tomorrow,’ she said. ‘They should have been with you tonight. Because of the match I did you a favour. Elise didn’t want to baby-sit. Nor did Cathy. I’m not very fond of these weekends,’ she added, ‘with your Sunday and sometimes Saturday afternoons away. I never know whether there’s someone here I can trust.’
‘I have the girl from next door,’ he said. ‘If Elise and Cathy are going out.’
‘The girl from next door is not their mother. Nor is she old enough to cope.’
‘Her mother comes in.’
She laughed. ‘Frankly,’ she said, ‘I’d be surprised if a court would give you custody at all. It’s not your fault. It’s the nature of your job. But your job, of its nature, prevents you from being a proper father.’
She went to the door, opened it, and stepped out to the drive: pausing on the path, she glanced back and, after a further hesitation, called, ‘Good night.’
A moment later, straight-backed, she passed beneath the lamp beyond the gateless gateposts.
He closed the door, went back to the living-room, picked up her glass and, together with his own, took it back to the kitchen.
Benjie, for some reason, he realised, he’d omitted to mention at all.
4
There was a pause between his ringing the bell and the sound of Fredericks’s voice from the incongruous-looking intercom beside the former vicarage door – an interval during which Fredericks, no doubt, had put his head out of the top-floor window to see who it was – then Attercliffe heard the click of the lock and, having entered, looked up in time to see the grizzled head stooped over the banisters and recognise what, having sat so close to him the previous afternoon, he must have missed: his friend was ill.
‘Been for a walk,’ Fredericks announced as Attercliffe reached the top-floor landing.
‘Late closing, aren’t they?’
‘Stayed till early opening.’ He winked; dark pouches underlay each eye. ‘Know the landlord. Ought to.’ He indicated his door. ‘Kept him in luxury the past twenty-five year.’
The hall of the flat was made up from the original landing; a living-room looked out
to a square of terraced Victorian houses: in the centre of the square stood a church, a tall, rectangular building with round-headed, clear-glass windows and a tower topped by a soot-encrusted cross.
The floor of the living-room was littered with papers; two old upholstered chairs confronted a gas-mantled fire: opposite the fire stood a desk and, behind the door, its lid raised, an upright piano. Sheets of music were propped on the stand.
‘Booze?’
‘Tea,’ Attercliffe said.
‘You’d better make it, Atty.’ Fredericks took the copy and slumped in one of the two armchairs facing the fire. ‘Light it afore you go,’ he added and, feeling in his jacket pocket, produced a pipe and, after the pipe, a box of matches. He tossed them across. ‘Sorry about this afternoon.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘I heard the results.’
‘I’ve done the round-up,’ Attercliffe said. ‘And featured yesterday’s match.’ He indicated the copy then, having lit the gas-fire, went through to the kitchen.
It overlooked a garden – much overgrown – with the bowed shapes of several fruit trees leading down to a tall brick wall; beyond – the slope subsiding sharply over the roofs of a row of recently-constructed houses (facsimiles of his own in Walton Lane) – lay a vista of the moors to the west of the town: in the furthest distance stood the television mast at Hartley Crag.
The kitchen was cramped; originally the vicarage bathroom, the lower half of its window was frosted glass: a cooking-stove and a narrow table left scarcely sufficient space to stand sideways at the sink.
Attercliffe lit the gas beneath a kettle, found a teapot, put in a couple of teabags – reflected that his activities here were much the same as they were at home – set a tray and when, finally, everything was ready, carried it back to the living-room.
Only after he had poured the tea did Fredericks raise his head, and say, ‘F’und everything, have you?’
‘Fine.’
‘There’s a bottle on the shelf, if you’ll pass it down.’
He picked up the copy which had fallen by his feet and when Attercliffe handed him a glass he added, ‘Pour it, man, don’t dribble it,’ and when Attercliffe sat down and drank his tea Fredericks looked round at him and asked, ‘You’re not getting censorious like Pippy Booth and Attwood?’
‘Have you read it?’
‘I’ve read it.’
‘Any suggestions?’
‘It’s fine.’ He drew the copy up and, after squinting at it, took out his glasses: he drew them – between thumb and forefinger – from the top pocket of his jacket and since, plainly, he hadn’t taken them out until then, and therefore couldn’t have read the copy, Attercliffe got up from his chair and crossed to the window. ‘Champion. Couldn’t be better,’ Fredericks said behind his back. ‘You don’t need me on this. Never have. Never will. You’re a natural.’
The copy was already lowered and the glasses removed by the time Attercliffe turned round.
‘You look ill, Freddie.’
‘I am, lad.’
‘What with?’
‘One of these newfangled things.’ He swallowed. ‘Four consonants and three vowels afore they gi’e you a word about ten feet long. I have it i’ the bowel.’
‘Are they going to operate?’
‘O’er my dead body.’
‘What treatment have you had?’
‘A bloody good ’un.’ He raised his glass. ‘I could carry a portable container, tha knows, if they cut it out, and though the offer’s tempting, particularly wi’ the company I have to keep at present, I turned it down. I’ll go i’ one piece, if I go at all.’ He drained the glass and held it out.
‘You’ve had enough,’ Attercliffe said.
‘Not half,’ he said, yet added nothing further when Attercliffe took the glass and set it on the mantelshelf beside the bottle.
‘Shouldn’t you do what they ask?’ he said.
‘They ask for nought less than half a bowel and don’t give me much chance with the half that’s left.’
Attercliffe sat in the other chair before the fire.
‘Bit of a liability,’ Fredericks said.
‘Not much.’
‘Not half.’ He shaded his eyes: the glow from the fire illuminated his figure. ‘Trouble with the missis?’
‘She wants to come back.’
‘Inclined to let her?’
He shook his head.
‘Want my advice?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Thank God for that.’ He reached for the copy, and added, ‘Get out of this racket. Tek up wi’ summat else.’
‘Like what?’
‘Phyllis Gardner.’
Attercliffe laughed.
‘Dafter things have happened.’ He dug his finger below his paunch. ‘When the saints used to say, “Thy will be done”, they couldn’t have said it more sincerely than me. Mine’s a secular “will be done”.’ He ran his hand across his stubbled scalp.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Attercliffe said.
‘Don’t want to, lad.’ He glanced across. ‘You look like a bloody lost weekend.’ He laughed. ‘Before this happened I had a dream. I wa’ sitting i’ this chair. It wa’re i’ the middle of the afternoon. My faither wa’ standing afore me. I hadn’t thought of him for fifteen years. There he was, as large as life. Just behind him stood my mother. Their faces glowed. I thought, “This is a dream,” and tried to wek up. I thought I had. Yet there they were. Still glowing. My father looked down at me and said, “It’s beautiful, Freddie,” and when I said, “What is it, Father?” he said, “It’s beautiful, lad. Don’t worry.” Then I woke. Two weeks later I had such a gut-ache I went to see the doctor. He put me up to the County General and they pumped me up like a bloody balloon and spun me round on an X-ray table, and sat me in a room where this feller came in and said, “There are one or two patches: nothing we haven’t seen afore,” and gave me six months if I did nought about it.’
‘How long ago was that?’
‘At least five.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I have.’
‘You should have let them operate, Freddie.’
‘I’d have been a shitless wonder for one or two weeks. Even wi’ a plastic bowel I mayn’t have lasted much more than a year. On top of which,’ he gestured round, ‘my heart isn’t up to a big operation.’ He added, ‘I’ve been looking at all this stuff you’ve written.’ He indicated a pile of newspapers, back copies of the Northern Post, already yellow, on the floor. ‘Don’t let it rot.’
‘You’re letting it rot when you could have had it out.’
‘I’ve had my shot.’ He tapped his chest. ‘Be what you were when you started.’ He laughed. ‘In the next twenty years you’ll come into your own.’
He fell asleep, so swiftly that, for several seconds, Attercliffe imagined he’d suffered an attack.
He got up from the chair, reassured himself of Fredericks’s breathing, and retrieved the copy.
For some time he wandered round the flat, gazing into the kitchen, into the bathroom, cluttered up with clothes drying on a rail above the bath, into the bedroom with its oak-ended double bed: by the time he returned to the living-room it was growing dark.
‘Do you want to go to church?’ Fredericks said, suddenly, without turning his head.
‘If you want to.’
‘I’d like to.’
He got up as if he’d been awake for some time.
‘I had a coat.’
Attercliffe found it for him.
‘And a pair of shoes.’
These, too, Attercliffe looked for, and finally found in the kitchen.
One or two other groups of people were crossing the road to the church when they went out to the square: lights glowed from the clear-glass windows.
They sat in a pew at the back; Fredericks hadn’t shaved and his stubbled features appeared more ashen still in the overhead light: his hands were clenched together.
‘Amen,’ Fredericks said and, as they rose from a prayer, added, in much the same tone, ‘Have you seen enough? I think I have.’
They retreated to the aisle, opened the glass-panelled doors, and stepped out into the darkness of the square.
‘Think I’ll go back home,’ Fredericks said.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Attercliffe asked.
‘Better get down to Benton Lane,’ he said. ‘They’ll be wondering where we’ve got to.’
He left him at the vicarage door.
‘Know where the present incumbent lives?’ He indicated the dark Victorian building. ‘In a place like yours: garden, central heating, tool-shed and a garage.’ He laughed, ‘Executive dwelling!’ stepped to the door, unlocked it, and disappeared inside.
The entrance to the Northern Post offices stood at the apex of Benton Lane and Norton Square. At the top of Benton Lane stood the most prominent building of the town, the large, sandstone hulk of All Saints Church: as Attercliffe drove past, coming from the direction of the Buckingham Hotel in the city centre, the sound of an organ playing and of singing came from its open door.
Lights were on in the offices; the hallway was deserted. The room Attercliffe occupied with Fredericks and two other colleagues was located in ‘The Sump’, a corridor which, marking the steepening descent of Benton Lane, to the river, was approached by a flight of concrete steps, above which, to the angled ceiling, was attached a notice reading ‘Duck Your Head’, and on which, Attercliffe observed that evening, the ‘D’ had been changed to an ‘F’.
A man with a bald head, large, thickly-framed spectacles, and a broad, thickly-fleshed nose was typing at a desk.