Present Times

by David Storey

  ‘She turned it down. It’s why,’ he went on, ‘she threw this fit and got you to persuade me to let her have it.’

  ‘All I’m proposing,’ she said, ‘is that your wife and children should live together.’

  ‘What you’re offering me,’ Attercliffe said, ‘is exclusion from my home.’

  ‘All we’ve decided,’ she said, ‘is that you and your wife should live apart. The material advantages of this arrangement are entirely in your favour.’

  Attercliffe stood up.

  ‘Think about what I’ve said. Your wife, after all, has little left to lose.’

  ‘You’ll have to reconcile her,’ Attercliffe said, ‘to living in a smaller house, and with only those children who choose to live with her.’ He added, ‘She may have to go out to work as well. I’ve lost my job and the redundancy I’ve been paid will not be enough to keep either of us.’

  ‘Perhaps when Mrs Attercliffe hears about your job,’ she said, ‘it will add a different complexion.’

  ‘She’ll be out of here in a flash.’

  She smiled. ‘I’d like to think,’ she said, ‘we both have the welfare of your wife at heart.’

  Over his shoulder, from the door, she called, ‘I’ll see Mrs Harrison next.’

  A gaunt, grey-haired, dark-eyed woman looked up from the row of chairs in the corridor outside.

  The voice behind him called again.

  The door closed.

  The sound of voices, speaking simultaneously, came from behind the frosted glass.

  ‘This is Benjie,’ Catherine said.

  Wearing a hat of variegatedly knitted wool, the jeaned and denim-jacketed youth stood up: his features were sharply defined, the forehead low, the mouth protuberant, the nose snub-ended.

  ‘This is my father,’ Catherine announced.

  ‘Hello, Benjie.’ Attercliffe shook his hand. ‘We’ve almost met before.’

  A second figure, too, stood up; over six feet tall, its hair close-cropped around a black and neatly-featured face, it too leaned across and shook Attercliffe’s hand.

  ‘This is Tiny,’ Catherine added.

  ‘Do you have another name?’ Attercliffe asked.

  ‘Steve.’ The jeaned, dark-shirted, six-foot figure looked from Attercliffe to Catherine then back again.

  ‘Make yourself at home,’ Attercliffe said, and added, ‘Have you had a cup of tea?’

  Elise, sitting on the floor by the hearth, indicated a tray on the sideboard: music, as he had entered the house, had been turned down, and had been turned down further as he had entered the room itself, followed, the moment after he had come in, by the sound of Elise’s laughter.

  From overhead came the sounds of the boys and, amidst their voices, the plaintive call of Lorna.

  Catherine announced, ‘We were having a cup before Benjie and Tiny left. I cooked them a meal. We’ve washed up the pots in the kitchen.’

  ‘Do you know this part well?’ Attercliffe asked.

  Benjie shook his head.

  Tiny folded his muscled arms: his massive hands were fisted.

  ‘No,’ Benjie said. ‘I’ve been up once or twice with Cathy.’

  ‘Do you work in town, Steve?’ Attercliffe asked.

  Tiny shook his head, glancing across, then down.

  ‘Have you thought of playing football?’

  ‘All these questions!’ Catherine said. ‘It’s not an interrogation, Dad.’

  The two black figures laughed.

  ‘It’s a good way to earn a living,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘And a good way, an’ all, of getting hurt.’ Tiny laughed, lightly, at Catherine, and Benjie laughed as well.

  The two girls joined in.

  ‘The pay in my day,’ Attercliffe said, ‘was less than it is at present. As for getting hurt, it’s better than doing nothing.’

  They laughed again: Elise drew up her knees, resting her chin against them, her mouth ajar.

  ‘There’s also the pleasure of playing,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘I don’t mind kicking a football around.’ Tiny folded his hands behind his head. ‘Doing it because I have to,’ he gazed at the ceiling, ‘is a different matter entirely.’

  Benjie laughed – a high-pitched, gurgling sound, prolonged, and taken up by the figure beside him, then by Catherine and, finally, her gaze still fixed on the figures before her, by Elise.

  ‘Mum any better?’ Elise finally inquired.

  ‘I didn’t see her this time,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘Cathy and I,’ she said, ‘go up tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll give you some things to take,’ he said.

  ‘We ought to be going.’ Benjie turned to the door.

  ‘Don’t go on my account,’ Attercliffe said. ‘I’ll make some more tea,’ and, picking up the tray, went through to the kitchen.

  ‘Don’t go yet,’ and, ‘You don’t have to go,’ had come, alternately, from Elise and Catherine, followed by a murmur as Attercliffe had closed the living-room door then, more clearly, ‘Just because he’s back,’ followed, as he had entered the kitchen, by a high-pitched laugh.

  He put on the kettle and went upstairs; the boys, a number of toys around them, were playing in their room: Lorna, lying on her eldest brother’s bed, raised her arms to be lifted.

  ‘Have they gone?’ Keith said. Both he and Bryan were playing on the floor. ‘They’ve been here hours,’ he added.

  ‘Not that long,’ Bryan said.

  Attercliffe picked his daughter up, sat down, and said, ‘Go downstairs, if you want to.’

  ‘I don’t like them,’ Keith said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘There has to be a reason.’

  ‘They’re both criminals,’ Bryan said. ‘One of them’s on trial.’

  ‘You’re innocent until proved guilty,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘That’s not what Cathy and Elise have said.’

  From downstairs came the slamming of the door: a moment later, humming, Elise ran up to her room.

  The door closed.

  Lorna pressed her head against Attercliffe’s cheek; taking her with him he returned downstairs.

  The living-room was empty; in the kitchen the kettle steamed: no sooner had he prepared tea than the boys appeared, sat at the kitchen table, and started to eat.

  ‘We can go and watch telly,’ Keith said and, taking their food, they both departed.

  Releasing herself from Attercliffe’s knee, Lorna slipped down, ran to the door and joined them.

  ‘Shut it,’ came the cry from the living-room and, a moment later, the door was slammed.

  He had scarcely tidied the kitchen than the back door opened and, red-cheeked from running, Catherine came in.

  Slamming it behind her, the glass rattling in the panes, she said, ‘Anything left?’

  ‘I thought you’d eaten?’

  ‘Ages ago.’

  ‘Benjie and Tiny didn’t have to leave,’ he said.

  ‘They only stayed out of politeness,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I said you’d be coming back.’ She looked in a cupboard, got out a tin of food, opened it, poured it into a pan, set it on the stove and, going to the bread bowl, got out a loaf of bread.

  ‘Have you washed your hands?’

  ‘Do I have to?’ She ran her hands beneath the tap, dried them, then buttered the bread.

  ‘How about a plate?’ he asked.

  ‘This is purgatory!’ She slammed open a cupboard, got out a plate, slammed it down, picked up the bread, dropped it on to the plate, turned to the stove, stirred the food, and added, ‘You made them feel at home.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘All those questions.’

  ‘I invited them to stay. I offered them tea. I showed I was interested in what they did.’

  ‘Tiny was impressed.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘He doesn’t meet many typical
whites. When he does,’ she added, ‘unlike you, they invariably cover it up.’

  ‘If he’d been white he wouldn’t have had such a neurotic reaction,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘If he’d been white,’ she said, ‘he wouldn’t be where he is at present.’

  ‘Does he live on the dole?’ he asked.

  ‘He might.’

  She stirred the pan, looked round for a plate, went to the cupboard, got out a bowl, picked up the pan and poured the food out.

  Steam rose in the kitchen: she dropped the pan in the sink.

  ‘Why tell the boys he’s a criminal?’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  She bit the bread, pulled open a drawer, took out a spoon, closed the drawer, stirred the food, releasing a fresh cloud of steam, then, still chewing, raised a spoonful, blew across it, blew again, then sipped it.

  ‘Elise told me.’

  ‘How does she know?’

  ‘He came to her college one afternoon and asked her to hide a gun and say he’d been with her all that morning.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘You keep invoking him,’ his daughter said, ‘but it never seems to do much good.’

  She blew on the spoon again, sipped, took a bite of bread, then, getting up, opened the fridge door, took out a bottle of milk, poured some of its contents into a glass and, returning to the table, sat, sipped, gasped, chewed and swallowed:

  ‘Benjie, you’ll be glad to hear, is in the clear.’

  ‘He won’t be going to prison?’

  ‘They all got off.’

  ‘How?’ Attercliffe sat down.

  ‘When the man they attacked was asked if he recognised any of the ones who attacked him he said, “All these blacks look alike to me.”’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I was in court.’

  ‘You never told me.’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you everything, Dad.’

  ‘Was that enough to get him off?’

  ‘He was the only witness. Earlier he’d said he’d recognise all of them again, but at the parade he picked out all the wrong ones.’ She swallowed her food more quickly.

  ‘What about their statements?’

  ‘Benjie and his brother said they were intimidated by the police and made them under duress.’

  ‘Benjie told you he did it.’

  ‘You don’t know how black people have to live,’ she said. ‘They only survive,’ she added, ‘by using the means that are used against them.’

  ‘His brother stabbed a man,’ Attercliffe said. ‘Eight of them,’ he added, ‘tried to kick his head in.’

  ‘He provoked them.’

  She drank from her spoon again, slurped, sipped, blew, swallowed.

  ‘I don’t understand your preoccupation with these people,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Coming from a home like this.’

  ‘This isn’t a home,’ she said. ‘It’s an anachronism. What you don’t understand,’ she went on, ‘is the persecution they have to endure, moral, spiritual, physical and economic. It’s a war. No one wants to accept it as such, least of all the liberals. But it’s a war of survival. Their survival. The whites,’ she concluded, ‘look after themselves.’

  ‘Did the police intimidate them?’ Attercliffe asked.

  ‘They intimidate them by being what they are,’ she said. ‘If the world were a better place they wouldn’t have to defend themselves. They’d live like you and me.’

  ‘You’re like your mother,’ Attercliffe said. ‘Right becomes wrong, reason unreason.’

  She clattered the spoon in the bowl, rinsed the bowl beneath the tap, turned it upside down beside the sink, wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her jacket and said, ‘Do you know what’s written up outside the Fosters’ house? “Any blacks here next week and this house will be burned to the ground.” At night they have messages pushed under the door and regularly people knock at the window. Mrs Foster has to have medical treatment and her daughters are frightened to go out at night.’

  ‘The police aren’t superhuman,’ Attercliffe said. ‘They can only keep order in a society that wants it.’

  ‘Benjie’s parents want it.’

  ‘They don’t seem to have succeeded,’ Attercliffe said, ‘where Benjie and his brother are concerned. Not to mention Tiny.’

  ‘Tiny was kicked out of his home by his parents.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘His stepfather thought he’d become a criminal.’

  ‘He had.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Can you keep your voices down?’ came Elise’s voice from the stairs. ‘It comes right through the ceiling.’

  ‘To accommodate one injustice,’ Attercliffe said, lowering his voice, ‘you turn the whole of justice upside down.’

  ‘It’s a revolution,’ Catherine said. ‘No one wants to admit it. They prefer to pretend it isn’t there, and scream like you when it’s pointed out. Benjie and his brother, and Tiny, are people I respect. What legality has a law which accepts as uncontrollable the illegalities that are thrust on them? The whole of it,’ she turned to the door, ‘is an injustice in itself.’

  All Attercliffe was aware of, apart from the music drumming through the adjoining wall – and a reciprocal drumming coming through the ceiling above his head – was the back of his daughter’s skirt, her stockinged calves, her jerseyed shoulders, arms and waist – her hair suspended loosely down her back – as, uncertain which direction she might take, she turned to the living-room and, opening the door, inquired, ‘What’s on?’

  The door banged to behind her.

  He went upstairs; when he knocked on Elise’s door and pushed it open he found her standing stripped to the waist and, stepping back, called, ‘Could I come in?’ to which a muffled voice replied, ‘For Christ’s sake, Dad, I’m only dressing.’

  A jersey was being pulled over her head and the torso which, moments before, had been turned to a mirror was turned to the door.

  ‘Did you know Tiny was a criminal?’ he asked.

  She laughed, picked up a raffia basket from her bed, took out a lipstick and, turning back to the mirror, began to paint her mouth.

  ‘Are you going out?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She tightened her lips, her brows puckered, then, her head drawn back, she examined the effect from a greater distance.

  ‘He asked you to look after a gun.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ She ran her finger along her lower lip, stooping, peering at the mirror, then leaning back. ‘Only for a morning.’

  She glanced up.

  ‘He only asked me to hide it.’

  ‘If he’d killed someone with it, you’d be an accessory,’ Attercliffe told her, ‘after the fact.’

  ‘What fact?’ She returned her gaze to the mirror.

  ‘Of murder.’

  She laughed, examining the effect in the mirror then, turning to the bed, she picked up a tissue, wiped her lips, picked up a second tissue, wiped them more thoroughly, ran her tongue across them, wiped them again then, stooping to her raffia basket, took out a second lipstick, unscrewed the top, and applied to her lips the colour which, earlier that day, had characterised those of Doctor Morrison.

  She said, ‘Tiny wouldn’t murder anyone.’

  ‘Benjie,’ Attercliffe said, ‘had a damn good try.’

  ‘That’s his brother.’ She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘He was innocent, in any case,’ she added.

  ‘He said he’d done it,’ Attercliffe said.

  Elise stooped, retouched her lips then, leaning back, inclined her head first to one side then the other. She examined her mouth through narrowed, mascaraed, eye-shadowed eyes. ‘If he’s innocent he can’t be guilty.’

  ‘Were you questioned about the gun?’ he asked.

  ‘He came in the afternoon and picked it up.’

  ‘Doesn’t any of this concern you?’ Attercliffe said.


  ‘Why should it?’

  ‘That you’re involved with people who thieve for a living.’

  ‘If they lived in a society that wasn’t racialist and didn’t try all the time to cover it up they wouldn’t have to be like they are,’ she said.

  ‘Not all of them are like that,’ he said.

  ‘The best of them are. The ones,’ she said, ‘who have any spirit.’ As the record on the turntable came to an end she switched it off. ‘I don’t know why you go on about it, Dad. You’ll end up like Mum. When you talk to Benjie and Tiny in the way you do, all you do is make them laugh. Pretending like the rest that what they do is wrong, yet condoning the world that compels them to do it.’

  She replaced the cap on the lipstick.

  ‘It’s horrible sharing your room,’ she added.

  ‘When you leave home,’ he said, ‘you can do what you like.’

  ‘I can’t wait for it,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll be losing my job,’ he said, ‘in a month.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Redundancy.’

  ‘What will you do for a job?’

  ‘Join Benjie’s gang.’

  ‘Wrong colour.’

  ‘I could, following your logic, start one of my own.’

  ‘I don’t see you as a criminal, Dad.’

  ‘Don’t you care about how I feel?’ He sat on the edge of Catherine’s bed. ‘I don’t mean as your father, but as someone who is trying to do certain things with his life.’

  Moving to the door she announced, ‘All these values are only values to people who can afford them. It isn’t that we don’t love one another, but,’ she went on, ‘love, as Mum is finding out, means the opposite of what was intended.’

  Her footsteps stamped from the stairs; the living-room door was opened; a crescendo of music intensified then faded.

  14

  Standing in a row, the sea lapping against their ankles, they gazed out at the brightly-illuminated bay: the sun was suspended to their right, above a projecting headland.

  ‘It’s cold.’ The boys paddled out while the girls, distracted, wandered along the water’s edge: only Lorna remained, holding Sheila’s hand, periodically running back as the waves lapped higher – venturing out again, taking her mother’s hand, distracting Sheila with her screams and shouts.