12
She came out of the hairdresser’s with a scarf over her head. Her hair was held in place. The wind could no longer blow it about, even without the scarf. She collected a blouse and skirt from the cleaners, for the more often she changed her clothes the sooner she would know the kind of person she wanted to become, and thereby recognize who she was. She had little enough to wear, so there was no danger of becoming more than one person, though such a thought did not faze her at a time when she didn’t particularly want to become anyone at all provided she could recognize herself when she saw her.
Frozen fish was cheap at the supermarket. She bought an orange as well, then bread and a bottle of milk before going back to her room. She could close the door, and no one would be able to come in unless asked. The room was hers. She had no other, and didn’t need more than one. The space within its walls and ceiling was enormous when she needed it to be, and also small when raw cold had to be heated by gas and paraffin.
She took off the scarf and walked to the mirror. She didn’t know herself, but realized she would have to get used to the face still unwilling to smile back at her. Short hair made her look thinner and harder. She was glad to be different. Maybe even George would have to stare twice before saying hello if they passed on the street.
If she were tired in the morning from having gone late to bed she needn’t get up, and if she felt exhausted in the afternoon she could sleep till the onset of darkness which would be transformed by filling the enclosed space with electric light. Short hair, easier to wash than the scrag-ends that George had found ‘womanly’, gave her the illusion of making a new start. She was more in charge of herself.
But she was still not so firmly in control that she didn’t think of George and his family much of the time, knowing that as long as such memories plagued her so did the danger that she might go with packed cases to St Pancras and take the first train north. The inner conspiracy, worked entirely by herself, could lead only to one end. Nightmare came at her happiest moments, and rendered her null and void by a terror that could spread no further. At its worst she was unable to move. The only way to defeat her impulse was to let all recollections swamp over her, to see them in the mirror, and listen to them day and night till they lost the power to torment her and pull her back.
She was obsessed by George’s family because she had separated him from them sufficiently to become his only real support, and now that she had abandoned him he was entirely alone. Another version, not so neat and simple, might say he had never relied on her, nor properly cut himself off from his family, though he had often been more vehement about his intention of doing so than she.
When he told his brothers never to come and see him unless they first telephoned to find out whether or not he was at home, he said it was because Pam wanted it that way. He turned down invitations to go with them to pubs at the weekend because, he said, he didn’t think Pam would want to go. He later refused to help them with money because, he said, he agreed with Pam that if you once started lending there would be no end to it.
Often it was not George who detached himself from his family as much as his brothers who, after his offhand treatment, wanted nothing more to do with him. George did not accept this, preferring to believe that Pam had been the prime mover in their separation. But now that she had left him he could say whatever he liked.
There was a time when the three brothers tried to follow George’s example and ‘better themselves’ by pooling resources to create their own painting and decorating business. After telephoning for an appointment they came to the house, and Alf described to George how he had been a lesson to them in the ways of hard work, and in setting up schemes for making money without being under the heel of a boss. After they had paid back debts, profits would be theirs to share. They created a vision which George admitted could become reality. With their hundred pounds, and two hundred from him, which they hoped that for old times’ sake he wouldn’t refuse, they would buy a second-hand van, as well as a set of ladders and a load of paint from a bloke they knew who was just going out of business and wanted to sell everything before declaring himself bankrupt.
Bert said their first job was already arranged, so it wouldn’t be long before they would pay back the two hundred pounds. A garage owner in Lenton wanted his premises painted, and Harry had sent an estimate which no sane man would turn down. Alf also knew somebody in Mapperley who needed their house doing up, a big job that would make a few hundred profit if they played their cards right.
George lent them the money, and they swore everlasting friendship as he handed the cheque to Bert.
‘If they succeed,’ George said to her later, ‘we won’t have much to do with them, though I suppose that whenever they want more equipment they’ll ask us for some cash, or if the business starts to fail, which it well might, knowing them, they’ll ask me to save it from going under. We shouldn’t have helped in the first place, but they’re my brothers, after all, so there wasn’t much else I could do.’ If success depended on the amount of faith George and Pam had in their abilities, they were doomed.
The profits, as Bert told them when he called one Sunday morning (without telephoning first) in his new Vauxhall car, were rolling in. ‘So well, in fact, that we might soon see our way to paying a bit of the money back that you lent us.’
When they made no further effort to get in touch, George thought it was either because they had so much to spend that they forgot what was owed him, or because, which he felt was more likely, their trading of paint for pound notes had, as it were, come unstuck somewhere along the way. If the latter assumption was correct, he did not consider it immoral to gloat on their difficulties, because since they had not repaid his two hundred pounds while they were flush, there was little hope of them doing so in their decline. Such entertainment was, however, expensive, and he was galled at imagining their talk when the first money came in.
‘We’ve got enough dough to pay our George back,’ Harry might have said, throwing bills and invoices into an empty drawer before spreading money and cheques on the table.
Bert picked up a ten pound note to make sure it was real. ‘Don’t be a dozy bleeder. We need this for some paint and another ladder.’
‘A new car for all of us, more like,’ Alf laughed. ‘We don’t have to pay our George back yet. He don’t need it like we do.’
Bert scribbled a few sums on a sheet torn from the appointments diary. ‘He’s well-off. He’ll be lucky if he sees a penny o’ that two hundred nicker, old tight-fisted will. It took long enough to squeeze it out of him. And as for that stuck-up wife of his, you know what she wants, don’t you?’
George knew that his recording was exact, because he had been one of them for so many years. But he hoped they were doing profitable business, and had at last curbed their feckless habits in face of the stark realities of the commercial world. He added to Pam that he was glad to see a spirit of ingenuity and co-operation between them as well as, it seemed, a determination to work.
He saw proof of this while driving through town one day when he stopped at a traffic light and, looking in the direction of a hooter, saw their van pull up by his side. Alf greeted him, and pointed to the others who were asleep in the open back, dead to the universe and caked with paint.
‘We’ve just done seventeen hours nonstop, slogging all the way!’ Alf shouted in triumph, before shooting at the amber and getting half along Parliament Street, a stream of red cloth waving from the ladders tilting up out of the van, before George’s careful driving had taken him across the intersection.
13
Still in their working clothes, they came to see George one night. Pam brought them tea and biscuits in the living-room, hoping they would go soon, and not leave too much mess. She disliked herself for such a mean thought about her brothers-in-law who had worked hard all day and were now sitting wearily (and smelling of beer) in her best armchairs.
‘We’ve come to ask,’ Alf said, looking as pale,
she thought, as if he were on the point of dying, ‘whether you’ll let us paint your house.’
She doubled the sugar in his tea, and told him to take more biscuits.
‘I knew you’d see me right, love!’ he said.
George stood in front of the television, legs apart, and hands behind his back. There was nothing to say, though he knew he must not sit down, otherwise he would feel intimidated. Nor must he become too friendly in case he agreed to whatever it was they wanted.
‘The thing is,’ Harry put in, ‘that all we’ve got on for the whole of next week is somebody’s living-room, and we can’t charge more than forty quid for that.’
Bert surfaced sufficiently from his executive bout of deep thought to say everybody ought to sit down, but George replied that he had been on his arse all day at the office and preferred to exercise his legs a bit in the evening.
‘Not only that,’ Harry said, ignoring such a poor excuse, ‘but the rob-dogs are trying to get some income tax out of us. I fucking ask you! Income tax! Us!’
Bert shivered, his close features raw with fury: ‘I got a demand yesterday for three hundred quid.’
So had they all, or something close, but George said he found this hard to credit because he assumed they got paid for their jobs in cash with no questions asked.
‘No,’ Bert told him. ‘You allus get the bleeder who holds you to the penalty clause and wants you to work to a pulp, and the swine who’s frightened to part with real notes and gives you a cheque and wants a receipt so’s he can set it against his own tax. Too many o’ them meat-grinding bastards in the world’ – his tone hinting that George was more than likely one of them. ‘Some people won’t let you live. If they think you’re trying to make an honest bob or two they choke with envy.’
‘Wouldn’t give you the clippings of their toe-nails.’ Harry reached for another biscuit, and knocked the ashtray over so that Pam was obliged to go to the kitchen for a brush and dustpan. They laughed when she’d gone, and George suspected they had planned her removal so that they could talk to him on his own.
Bert spoke hurriedly. ‘We’re desperate for a bit of work, George. Any old job. It’ll only be for a while, because the week after next there’s a couple of things that’ll keep us busy. Ain’t that right, Harry?’
Alf nudged him viciously. ‘Wake up, dozy bastard!’
Harry leapt from his stupor and looked murderously at George, as if holding him responsible for the pain in his ribs. ‘We’re fucking desperate.’
Despite his fearlessness and relatively prosperous, self-employed status, George knew there would be trouble if he didn’t promise something. When faced with all three of them he couldn’t believe he was a grown man, for in their own way they knew how to reduce him in seconds to feeling like a kid. He recalled when, at the age of ten, a neighbour had given him a box of chocolates for doing a week’s errands while his wife had been ill, and his brothers had waylaid him at the man’s door to snatch the lot.
Knowing why Harry had knocked over the ashtray, Pam came back quickly, and hoped George at least was happy to see her. She scooped up the mess and laid the pan in the hearth till later. ‘There’s nothing we can do for you. The house won’t need painting for another three years.’
George’s left hand twitched. ‘She’s right. Not as far as I can see, either.’
She imagined the three brothers setting up ladders and scaffolding, part of an army of occupation that would mark the house by leaving its quiet dun-coloured intimacy a complete ruin. They would move from room to room mixing paints, stubbing out their cigarettes, and leaving a litter of beer tins and pie wrappings. In sheltering from the rain they would tread their plaster-covered boots on her carpets, and use her kitchen to fry their dinners and make tea.
George’s picture showed them taking clothes from his wardrobe and searching pockets for anything they could slip into theirs, knowing he wouldn’t say anything in case a fight started that he was unable to finish. The word must have been passed around town that they didn’t take care in their work, which was why they had few jobs. He saw them dabbing their thin and doctored paint over the woodwork, and swinging planks and ladders so that door panels got split and panes of glass shattered. They would lark about and fall out of windows, holding him responsible because they knew he was insured, and would get sufficient compensation to stay six months in bed at a private clinic while their families lived in luxury on the strength of what extra compo they would receive after taking skinflint George to court. It was a watertight plan. They wouldn’t fail to prise more money out of him and get their own back for wrongs he couldn’t imagine having done to them.
He was businesslike. ‘Ring me tomorrow, and I’ll let you know if I have any ideas.’
‘I don’t think you know how bad things really are,’ Alf said, seeming remarkably fit and lively, she thought, compared to a few minutes ago. ‘I can’t put it into words. My voice croaks when I try to tell people, and it ain’t only because I want some tea – though I wouldn’t mind another bucketful. It’s good tea, duck!’ he said to her with a smile and a wink.
‘I’m dying o’ thirst, as well,’ Bert said.
She didn’t respond, not yet willing to be their slave.
George cleared his throat. ‘I’d be quite happy to put you in the way of earning a few hundred if I could, so that you’d be able to pay back what you owe me from before. If you’d like to decorate the house inside and out for that tidy little sum, then that’s all right by me.’ He turned to Pam. ‘I’d like some more tea myself, love, if you wouldn’t mind.’
‘That ain’t what we mean.’ The veins stood out on Bert’s temples.
Harry tore a patch from his overalls at the knee and put it into his jacket pocket. ‘You’re too fucking clever,’ he said to George. ‘That’s your trouble.’
‘All of us could do with some tea, and that’s a fact.’ Alf didn’t want to be seen hanging back in the common effort. He looked pale again, deprived, as if he’d had no sustenance for a week. They ate plenty of food, she knew, but it was cheap and rotten, though neither she nor George had any doubt of their strength and tenacity. ‘But we also want the right to work,’ Alf added, after a knowing look from Bert.
Pam washed cups and waited for the kettle to boil. Alf’s description of George as having been hatched rather than born revealed that he was disliked far more by his brothers than he ever could be by her. They lacked the sense to realize that whatever they said behind George’s back was bound to reach him before a few days were out. Or perhaps they knew it, but didn’t care. Their opinions, being totally unconsidered, had to be put into hurtful words at the soonest possible moment, which proved to her that words weren’t important to them, since they had no sense of control.
Because they didn’t think before they spoke, and distrusted anyone who did, their views on themselves and others, and on anything at all, could never alter. They had always treated George as if he had left them in the lurch by becoming a toffee-nosed bleeder who wouldn’t give them two ha’pennies for a penny. On the other hand they could be pleasant enough when it suited their purpose.
Alf, between jobs, once came on a friendly call, hoping they would send him away with a few pounds in his pocket. While drinking his tea he informed her and George what his brothers thought of them (after he had taken the money) though she knew (and so did George) that he would tell the others later what mean bleeders they were for not giving him even a cup of tea at a time when he was on his uppers.
The silent room was thick with cigarette smoke, and she didn’t suppose she had missed much more than her imagination supplied. She opened the window. ‘I thought you’d have sorted yourselves out by now.’
‘It ain’t so easy,’ Bert said.
Her headache was so intense she thought her period was about to start, though there wasn’t much chance while they were in the house. Not even George said thanks when he took his tea. ‘Some people have to go to work tomorrow,’ she said.
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‘The lucky ones do,’ Harry said glumly.
Bert pretended to scrape something from the end of his nose, then made a vicious flicking motion across the room towards George, who half closed his eyes as if expecting a fist to follow. ‘So you’ll see us go down the chute,’ he said scathingly, ‘before lifting a finger?’
Pam noted that it was nearly ten, and that if George didn’t get to bed by half-past he would be tired and upset in the morning. ‘There’s nothing I can do,’ he told them. ‘If there was I’d do it, but there isn’t. And that’s the cold truth.’
Harry held out his cup, and sighed.
‘Why do you always come to us when you’re stuck?’ She was so angry she even poured him more tea.
‘There’s no one else,’ Alf said.
Which was true, and she was filled with guilt and pity, but how they used the fact to hold her and George over a slow fire! Even so, it was impossible to send them away without help, which they very well knew, and she was hoping for an idea that would be acceptable to all when Bert turned to George with one that must have been in their minds from the beginning. ‘I passed your factory the other day.’
This did not sound plausible, since it was in a cul-de-sac, and little more than a glorified brick shed backing on to a canal.
‘And it seemed to me – didn’t it, Alf? Our Alf was with me, because we’d just took a load o’ rammel on Dunkirk tips – that your factory wanted painting. That wall looks terrible. It’s the worst bit o’ wall on the street.’
‘It’ll do for a while,’ George said mildly.
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