by David Storey
‘Of Lorna?’
‘She’ll be all right.’
‘My God. What are you doing to our children?’ she cried. ‘Someone, somewhere,’ she beseeched, ‘must understand.’
‘I’ll get in touch tomorrow,’ he said.
‘Please bring Cathy home. I’ll do anything she asks.’
‘She’d soon grow tired of that,’ he said.
‘Just say we’d like to talk to her.’
‘You talked to her on the phone.’
‘She refused to discuss it. She said she’d made her decision, just like I’d made mine and you’d made yours.’
‘All I’ve done,’ Attercliffe said, ‘is to accommodate the wishes of everyone around me.’
‘I can’t stand the thought,’ she said, ‘of her coming to any harm.’
He said, ‘She won’t come to any harm.’
‘With criminals!’ she cried.
‘With evangelists,’ he said.
‘Is she religious? She’s not religious? She’s not become religious!’ Her voice rose, once more, to a wail.
‘I am talking of their sense of vocation, rather than the content of their doctrine,’ Attercliffe said.
‘It’s like a nightmare. It is a nightmare. I can’t believe it’s happening,’ she said. ‘We’re the only family I know who has had anything to do with blacks. Why,’ she went on, ‘does it have to be us?’
‘It’s because,’ Attercliffe said, ‘your children have more spirit.’
‘More desperation,’ she said. ‘More despair.’
‘That’s not how anybody else would judge them,’ Attercliffe said.
‘How will it look if she’s arrested again?’
‘She wasn’t arrested before,’ he said.
‘She was taken in!’ she screamed. ‘Why are you so perverse?’
‘You’d better calm down,’ he said.
An argument, conducted in screams, erupted in the flat behind.
He waved Bryan back upstairs.
‘If anything happens to those children I shall never forgive you,’ she said.
He put the phone down, knocked on the flat door, and, after an interval of silence, during which he knocked again, a voice inquired, ‘Who’s that?’
‘It’s Mr Attercliffe,’ he said.
The flat door was shaken.
A latch was turned.
Mrs Wilkins, dressed in a coat with its collar drawn up, barefooted, nightgowned – a grey-haired, thin-featured figure without an upper set of teeth – looked out.
‘Sorry about the telephone,’ he said.
‘Robert’s gone out,’ she said and, aware, suddenly, that she had no upper teeth, she covered her mouth and added, ‘I shan’t be a minute.’
Attercliffe gazed into the minuscule hall of the flat – a passage from which several doors opened out: from one shone a light; a face appeared from inside another. After glancing out, it vanished.
Mrs Wilkins returned; she smiled.
‘On the next occasion it rings in the night,’ Attercliffe said, ‘I’ll answer it, Mrs Wilkins.’
‘I don’t mind.’ She smiled again.
‘Or,’ he said, ‘we can leave it off the hook.’
‘That’s no problem at all, Mr Attercliffe,’ she said as a baby’s crying started in one of the rooms, followed, an instant later, by the screaming of her daughter.
‘I’ll tell Robert you called,’ she said. ‘He went to get some air.’
Later, as Attercliffe lay in bed, he heard the front door close downstairs, then a creaking on the stairs themselves: he got up in time to forestall Wilkins tapping on the door.
‘I went out for a spot of air.’ His neighbour’s figure was silhouetted on the landing. ‘Not back in prison is she?’
‘No,’ Attercliffe said. ‘Sorry about the telephone.’
‘What’s life for,’ Wilkins said, ‘if you can’t call on a friend?’ and, murmuring, ‘Where would we be without it?’ he returned downstairs, turning to his door where, stooped, he paused, before inserting his key.
22
The interior of the shop was filled with wooden crates – most of them dismembered – and a number of wooden benches, the metal legs of which had been removed. A door, at the rear, leaning from its hinges, led into a darkened passage.
There was a smell of damp; wooden laths showed through the ceiling.
A door, on one side of the passage, gave access to a flight of stairs; paper, peeling from the wall, released a cloud of dust: a banister, at the top of the stairs, was propped against a wall.
In a room scarcely broad enough to take a single bed a figure stooped over a knee-high table: on the table stood a metal stove; a smell of gas obscured the more prevalent odour from the floor below.
The figure looked up: its hair long, its feet bare – skirted, bloused – it inquired, ‘Have you come about the money?’
‘What money?’ Attercliffe asked.
‘Aren’t you the man from the council?’
He shook his head.
‘What do you want?’
‘I’m looking for Catherine Attercliffe,’ he said.
‘She’s out.’
She returned her attention to the stove: it comprised a hot-plate and a tiny oven.
On the hot-plate stood a segment of dough.
‘Is Benjie here?’
‘He’s out.’
Though younger than Catherine, her figure – crouched, shrouded in the skirt and the loose-fitting blouse – might have been, Attercliffe reflected, that of an older woman.
Beside the stove, on the knee-high table, stood a mound of dough which, discoloured, the girl picked up, tore in two and rolled into balls.
‘Cooking?’
‘Baking.’
She beat the dough with her fist; the table rattled: the stove shook.
The girl’s eyes were dark, her hair black, her cheeks – apart from the smears of dust – red: picking up a knife, she prised the dough from the table.
‘Is Tiny here?’
‘Who?’
‘Benjie’s friend.’
‘Through there.’ She directed the blade of the knife along the landing.
He was aware of music and voices as he entered a dilapidated room on his left: a hole, caverned out of the brickwork, led into an equally dilapidated room in the adjoining building.
A voice called out: several black faces scrutinised his arrival as, having scrambled through, he glanced about the room the other side.
‘Is Benjie here?’ He straightened.
A figure, leaning from a window, turned, withdrew its head, and asked, ‘Anything you want?’
‘I was looking for Benjie,’ Attercliffe said.
Several of the figures moved to the door.
‘Are you from the council?’
‘I’m unemployed at present,’ Attercliffe said.
A cassette-player, removed from the room, was pitched to a higher volume on the landing outside.
‘Or Tiny?’ Attercliffe asked.
The remaining figures left.
‘Who’s Tiny?’
‘Steve?’ Attercliffe suggested.
‘Who’s Steve?’
‘I don’t know him by any other name.’
‘Benjie I never heard of.’
The youth was bald, his head glistened.
‘How did you get in?’ he asked.
‘Through the shop.’
‘Hey,’ he stepped out to the landing, ‘the shop’s left open.’ Turning back to the room, he added, ‘You can’t come in without permission.’
He closed the door behind him.
A moment later, reopening it, he said, ‘Anything you want?’
‘I was looking for Catherine Attercliffe,’ Attercliffe said.
‘Not here.’
‘Perhaps,’ Attercliffe said, ‘I could leave a message.’
‘Next door.’
‘Anyone in particular I should talk to?’
‘Do you speak English?’
‘That’s right,’ he said.
‘I only speak Arabic.’
‘I understand you perfectly,’ Attercliffe said.
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘why don’t you piss off?’
He closed the door again.
Attercliffe returned through the hole in the wall.
The girl, crouching to the stove, was taking a bowl of food from the oven.
‘Do they think I’m the police?’ he asked.
‘I’ve no idea.’ She turned to a sink set beneath a window at the end of the room.
She turned a tap; a pipe shuddered on the wall: stooping to the sink, she rinsed then lifted out a number of pots and pans.
‘Are you a friend of Cathy’s?’
‘I know her.’
Her figure was stocky, her feet black, her heels blistered; through crouching, the backs of her calves were red.
‘Did you come through the shop?’
‘How else can you get in?’ he asked.
‘Through the yard.’ Thick, unwashed strands of hair were flicked across her shoulder.
‘Do you have a name?’ Attercliffe said.
‘Selina.’
‘Do you have a second name?’
‘No.’
‘Are you at school with Cathy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you still attending?’
‘Yes.’
A figure appeared in the door: black, wide-eyed, it surveyed the back of Selina then, without glancing at Attercliffe, inquired, ‘Anything you want?’
Dressed in a black, low-crowned hat and a simulated leather overcoat, it leaned in the door: to the crown of the hat was attached a brightly-coloured feather.
‘I’m looking for my daughter.’
‘This her?’
Attercliffe shook his head.
‘What you doing, girl?’ the figure asked.
‘Cooking.’
‘Looks like washing-up to me.’
‘I’m washing-up as well.’
‘Don’t want to see no dirty pots.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Looks good.’ The figure smiled. ‘You leave that door unfastened?’
The girl didn’t turn; nor did she pause in her washing-up: one rinsed pot, followed by another, was inverted on the draining-board beside the sink. ‘I’ve been cooking.’
‘What you cooking?’
‘Baking bread.’
‘Smells good.’
‘You can have some.’
‘Later,’ the figure said. ‘As soon as your visitor leaves.’
He stepped back to the landing, turned, and disappeared, not to the room at the back, but up the stairs: a moment later, from overhead, came the sound of a door being fastened.
‘Do your parents know you’re here?’ Attercliffe asked. When she didn’t answer, he added, ‘Are they worried about you being here?’
‘How should I know?’
‘Have they been to visit you?’
‘Why should they?’
‘I thought they might.’
‘I don’t see why they should.’
Pulling out the plug in the sink, she picked up a discoloured strip of cloth and began to wipe the pots.
‘Do you want a hand?’ he asked.
‘No thanks.’
She squeezed past him and, the cloth in one hand, a pot in the other, opened the oven door, looked in, closed it and, squeezing past him once again, returned to stand at the sink.
‘Where does Cathy sleep?’ he asked.
She gestured to the wall.
‘A room like this?’
‘Bigger.’
‘How did you come across the shop?’ he asked.
‘I heard about it.’
Setting each pot upright, beside the sink, she added, ‘You ask too many questions.’
He answered, ‘Wouldn’t you be better off if you lived at home?’
‘This is my home.’
‘How old are you?’ Attercliffe asked.
‘Sixteen.’
She went out to the landing and, turning to her right, closed a door behind her.
A banging of boxes came through the wall.
The one chair in the tiny kitchen, the back of which had been broken off, stood against the door, the edge of which it was propping open.
Attercliffe sat down.
A street-lamp came on in the road outside.
Down the flight of stairs a door was banged.
Dancing upwards, her hair flung up at each quick step, Catherine’s head appeared.
‘Shopping?’ Attercliffe asked.
‘That’s right.’
Carrying a plastic bag, she shouldered past him.
‘Everything going all right?’
‘Perfect.’
She was wearing a skirt and jacket; her hair had recently been washed and, still wet, was drawn back from her face by a ribbon.
‘Selina’s in there.’
He indicated the adjoining room.
‘How long are you staying?’
‘As long as you like.’
‘I’d prefer you to go.’
She was removing the contents of the plastic bag: a cupboard, lined with paper, and attached by hooks to the wall, shuddered as each item was placed inside.
‘Where does the money come from?’ Attercliffe asked.
‘The usual place.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘My pocket.’
She folded the plastic bag into four, squeezed past him, turned to her right, opened the door of the adjoining room, stepped in, closed the door behind her and asked, in a voice loud enough for Attercliffe to hear, ‘How long has he been here?’
‘Not long.’
‘Been asking a lot of questions?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Has he talked to anybody else?’
‘He went next door.’
The sliding of the boxes continued.
Attercliffe stepped out to the landing and knocked on the door.
When Catherine called, ‘Come in,’ he pushed the door back.
Windows, curtained by blankets, looked out to the street.
Wooden cases had been arranged around a table. Two mattresses lay side by side on the floor, an open suitcase beside each one.
The floor was pitted; wooden laths showed through the plaster both in the ceiling and on the walls.
Catherine was kneeling by a suitcase: from it she was extracting clothes, folding them, and laying them on the mattress furthest from the door.
‘I’ll watch the bread,’ Selina said and, without glancing at Attercliffe or Catherine, stepped outside, closing the door behind her.
‘Perhaps we could talk about it,’ Attercliffe said.
‘All you want.’
As she went on folding the clothes, he said, ‘There’s nothing we can do to stop you living here. Nor,’ he added, ‘if this is what you want, am I here to persuade you to leave.’
‘You couldn’t,’ she said, ‘if you wanted.’
Her eyes were bright, her cheeks pale, her lips taut.
‘It’s not a battle,’ Attercliffe said.
‘It is for me.’
‘Why should it be?’
‘We’ve been through this before.’
‘Not in a place like this.’ He gestured round.
‘This place is no different,’ she said, ‘from any other.’
‘It looks a good deal different to me,’ he said.
‘Looks,’ she said, ‘aren’t everything.’ She leant back on her heels.
‘It’s only natural that your mother and I should feel concerned.’
‘Just as I feel concerned,’ she said, ‘about the things that you do.’
From the room next door came the sound of dough being thumped against the table.
‘Which is a concern your mother and I share with you,’ Attercliffe said.
‘I doubt it.’
She got up from the floor, dusted her skirt and, taking
care to avoid a number of loose floorboards, crossed to the window.
‘What do Selina’s parents think of it?’
‘Her father’s abroad and her mother,’ she announced, ‘lives with another man.’
‘Aren’t they concerned with how she’s living?’
‘Her mother lives in a place very much like this. It’s why,’ she continued, ‘she gave us this address.’
‘Isn’t she concerned about the friends you have next door?’
‘Her boyfriend,’ she said, ‘happens to be black.’
‘I see.’
‘We’ve been through this before.’ She folded her arms and, turning away, gazed at the darkening street.
‘It’s not their colour but their criminality that disturbs me,’ Attercliffe said.
‘Their criminality,’ she said, ‘is their colour. Their criminality,’ she went on, ‘is their cultural response to living in a consumer society.’ She added, ‘The goods mean nothing in terms of possessions, no more than a toy or a piece of food or a garment means anything to a child.’
‘You see them as children?’ Attercliffe asked.
She said, ‘I am making an analogy, Dad. The only one you understand. I see them as people whose values are punished by the world we live in. To me, those values are more to do with living than those you cling to in your pathetic attempt to stay attached to your children, and your even more pathetic attempt to stay attached to Mum. My coming to live here is more real than my living anywhere else. I prefer it to the values of Walton Lane.’
Having unfolded her arms and turned to the room she gazed at Attercliffe directly.
‘All I want you to know is that whatever happens I’ll still be around. Walton Lane or not,’ he said.
She sat on one of the boxes.
‘Do you need any money?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Is Benjie living here as well?’
‘On and off.’
‘And Tiny?’
‘In the other building.’
‘Are they separate habitations?’
‘They’re supposed to be two.’ She added, ‘They punched a hole in the wall. Before that,’ she gestured off, ‘they came across the roof.’
There was the sound of someone calling from a window, then a rush of footsteps across the landing followed, from the bowels of the shop, by the calling of Selina’s voice.
The same voice and that of one other person came from the stairs; a moment later, a short, bulky figure, dressed in a robe, was followed by Selina into the room: dark-eyed, dark-haired, red-cheeked, it gazed round at the room with a look of pleasure.