by David Storey
‘If I come in I mightn’t behave,’ I said.
‘That’s all right,’ she told me. ‘I think I can take care of myself.’
I followed her inside and she shut the door. We went into the lounge. Its curtains were drawn, and only a reading-lamp was lit. One or two patches on the leaved wallpaper were all that was left of the Christmas Eve party. I sat down in the chair she showed me to, and she sat opposite, beneath the lamp. She had a wool dress on that made her look stouter than before. Her head had the usual mass of tight curls.
‘Shouldn’t you be training tonight?’ she said. ‘Thursday … that’s one of your nights, I believe.’
‘I’ve skipped it tonight.’
‘Why? Aren’t you well?’
‘I didn’t feel like it. I felt like a walk or a talk.’
‘And that’s what you came to see Mr Weaver about?’
‘I suppose so. I don’t know what I came to see him about. I just came to see him.’
‘Are you in any sort of trouble … with the police, or anything?’
‘No, it’s nothing like that.’
‘Well,’ she said, getting up, and closing the book she must have been reading. ‘Let’s see if it’s anything a drink won’t cure.’ She went to the cabinet by the gramophone, and filled up a small glass. She carried it across and stood close while I took it from her hand. She went back to her seat and watched me take a first sip.
‘I presume you like whisky,’ she said. ‘It’s all we have in, I’m afraid. Very bad housekeeping.’
I coughed over it, I wondered whether to take my overcoat off, but I’d got my overalls on underneath. She’d already guessed, or seen, and she didn’t mention it.
‘What’s the cause of your sudden lack of enthusiasm for football?’ she asked, looking at me as at a patient. ‘You’ve not been taking any more tiles off, I hope.’
‘It’s probably trouble at home,’ I said clumsily, but with enough obvious intention that she found my stare a bit too much and looked away. Her fingers found a strand of wool to pull from the arm of the chair. Then she folded her arms under her breasts and looked back.
‘With Mrs Hammond,’ she suggested.
‘Yeh.’
‘I’ve often wondered about you—and her,’ she said. ‘If you don’t mind me talking about it, Arthur. Mr Weaver used to be very concerned about it. You might remember the night you were signed on at Primstone he took you home. He said then how surprised he’d been to learn you were living there, with a widow and two children. He couldn’t understand it. I doubt if he does even now. He appeared to think you were asking for trouble. … Do you mind me talking like this? You’ve only to say. …’
‘No, I don’t mind. I’d like to know what other people think.’
‘Well, it certainly isn’t every young man’s cup of tea. I suppose when you first went there you didn’t have much choice. But I’d have thought later on, when you were more secure, you would have moved to a more congenial domestic atmosphere. From what Mr Weaver said, Mrs Hammond’s marriage wasn’t a very happy one. Her husband was a very sombre, moody man. There was some talk when he was killed that it wasn’t all an accident.’
I finished the whisky. I’d never thought why I’d stayed in Fairfax Street. The news about Hammond relieved me. I seemed to see Mrs Hammond there in the room. Not so much see as feel. ‘Why have you stayed there?’ Mrs Weaver asked.
‘I was just trying to think why. I’ve always felt at home there, if you like. Maybe it was just a habit. I think I felt I had to give a hand … I know I first went there because it was cheap, and I thought I was on to a good thing. Then when I’d been there a bit I saw what a load of trouble they were in, and I felt it was only right I should give them a hand. After that … it went from one thing to another. The two kids aren’t anything I’d look at by choice. At first I thought they were ugly little … kids. I remember, they seemed to be crying and screaming all day. I suppose she was too upset at that time to care. I don’t know. But once I’d started helping they all started looking to me for it. Mrs Hammond always tried to refuse … you know how a woman’s like that. But she needed what I gave her, and the kids weren’t so choosy. I reckon I more or less took over from their dad. That’s what it looks like now. But I’ve always thought—you know, that I was independent.’
‘And now you’ve found you’re not,’ she said.
‘Maybe. It’s just that she won’t admit anything. She thinks I’m doing all this for her because it makes me feel good. She doesn’t think I care about anything. Except playing football, having crowds after me, and that sort of stuff. She taunts me with it. She tries to make fun of me having no feelings. She drives me off my nut at times, till I’ve got to hit or something. Like tonight. She thinks I only want to see her give in, to become really … relying on me, then I’ll go away and find some other mug. That’s what she thinks. And to make it seem it really is like me to be like that she comes out with all these stories people tell her about me. You know the sort of muck. She doesn’t believe them. She just thinks it’s something she can hold over me. It’s the carrot I’m chasing, trying to show her I mean what I say, and every time she says she can’t believe it, that I’ve lost. … I know this is all talk. I hope you don’t mind listening. It’s either this …’
‘No, no, Arthur. I don’t mind one bit. I feel quite overwhelmed. I’m glad you’ve told me. I honestly never thought you felt so much about things.’
‘I suppose that’s my fault. I’m a natural professional. What I don’t get paid to do I don’t bother with. If I was paid enough to feel then I’d probably make a big splash that way.’
‘Well, that sounds more like the old you. That’s the sort of brash thing you usually say. It’s the sort of thing which makes people think of you as … big. But your feelings about Mrs Hammond. They’re a different matter. If you’d only get down a while from that great big height you see yourself on. For one thing I’m sure I can understand some of the reasons why Mrs Hammond is frightened of you. You’ve probably convinced her more than you have yourself what a Big Man you are. To you it may all be show. But to her, I should think seeing the money you earn, the things you buy, your photograph in the City Guardian every other week—all those things must have convinced her that you are big. And she must have asked herself what it is you see in her, and how on earth, once she’s admitted some feeling for you, as a person, she’s going to keep you. Things like that mightn’t occur to you as a man. But I can assure you they do to a woman. She’s in a particularly vulnerable position—a widow with two children. You, a young man with the opportunity to go off with almost any girl in town. She must be terrified of showing any feeling for you. Particularly if she knows she has some, if she’s committed herself.’
Having both shot our loads we lay back in our chairs. It was very quiet in the dark room. The ship’s-wheel clock ticked. But there were no sounds from outside. ‘I used to admire you very much,’ she said. ‘As you know. And in spite of what’s happened I think I must still do. I wouldn’t have felt this concern if I hadn’t. So don’t imagine I’m just getting one back at you, Arthur. … Taking ordinary people like yourself, and putting them into a sudden limelight can have extraordinary results. You must be aware of that now. Do you think it would help any if I saw Mrs Hammond myself? Perhaps I could smooth things out.’
‘I’d thought of that while you were talking. But she’d probably be suspicious. She wouldn’t like it, I know. But thanks for the offer.’
‘I see. …’ she said, reading something else into it. ‘Then you’d better face it yourself. But a little more gently than you seem to be doing. You both have my sympathy. Mr Weaver and I—we seem to be always patching up people’s troubles, including our own. Mr Weaver is up at Judith Parkes’s house tonight, I believe. Trying to solve their difficulties, and Maurice’s. I hope things work out. Phone me up and let me know how you�
�ve gone on.’
She came to the front door to see me out. She gave me her advice again, and offered to drive me into town when she saw I hadn’t the car. I said I’d walk or catch a bus. She stood in the lighted doorway till I was out of sight down the drive. I heard the door shut in the stillness of the big garden. I realized I hadn’t thanked her.
Mrs Hammond had already gone into a gradual decline, looking to me to force the break. She was puzzled why I didn’t do this, and particularly why I showed no interest in marrying Judith. ‘It’s your chance to become respectable,’ she told me in the slow voice she’d suddenly adopted.
When I got back from Mrs Weaver’s she only stayed up to say this, then went to bed, locking herself in with the kids in the front bedroom. I didn’t go to work Friday. I tried to talk to her without getting angry, but it was no go. The more I talked and the more begging I became, the more convinced she was that I’d something to hide. She wouldn’t listen. In spite of all she’d heard and all she’d said, she had felt all along that I’d been faithful to her. Now she staggered about the house from one room to another, from one job to another, as if she’d been hit with a hammer. It was a physical affliction: her legs wouldn’t straighten as she walked, her head wouldn’t lift. She didn’t even talk to the kids.
When I told her, after phoning up Mrs Weaver, that Maurice had decided to marry Judith, she was even more shocked. The first thing she asked was, ‘Is he doing it for you?’
‘No. It’s his kid she’s having,’ I told her for the fifth time.
She seemed hurt it had cleared up this way: she’d used Judith as the last crutch to prop up her own thick pride. She even said, ‘You’ve been let out of this too easy,’ as if she still felt I was to blame for Maurice and Judith’s behaviour. It was as though she’d been waiting for this Judith affair to come for a long time, and when it had she’d been thankful, in spite of the pain. A part of her wanted it. It meant she could reach a decision. She’d even built up in her own mind the strength to meet the break. And now that it had come, and the cause suddenly taken away, by Maurice, she was left dangling—the ground had disappeared and she couldn’t keep her balance. I hadn’t been bad after all, and she wasn’t in a position to believe it. And I could have killed her for not seeing all the stinking protection I gave her. She seemed determined to carry on as though I was still to blame.
She was watching TV on her own that particular night. The kids had gone to bed, though I could still hear Lynda crying about something upstairs.
She didn’t look up when I came in.
‘You haven’t sold it yet?’ I said.
‘Not just yet,’ she said tonelessly, in a way that could either have meant interest in the screen or just lifelessness.
‘I keep coming home expecting to see the brokers carrying thy fur coat and the TV out of the door.’
‘I’ll let you know when it’s likely to happen.’
‘According to you I won’t be here. … They wouldn’t keep you long. What would you do then? I was wondering only recently why you never pressed for damages from Weaver’s when Eric died.’
I waited for her to look up from the play she was watching, but she sat hunched up without moving. ‘Even some sort of compensation,’ I added. ‘Or did you keep that on one side?’
She turned round, already vicious. ‘I know you’re half drunk, Mr Superman, drowning your sorrows. But just how low can you grovel? Can’t you get any smaller than that?’
‘If you push me to. You generally do.’
‘What have I done to get all this!’ she cried out, her eyes turning up to the ceiling where Lynda was already moaning. She picked up a cigarette tray no one had ever used and lugged it at the set. It missed the screen and fractured the woodwork. The faces went on performing unconcernedly. Just above was a mounted press photo of me scoring a try.
‘I must want you to notice I’m still around,’ I told her.
‘I’ve noticed. Don’t worry, I’ve noticed! I can smell the stench from here when you come in the door.’
‘Can you now? Well that’s the smell of work,’ I told her. ‘Perhaps there’s not enough of it around here.’
‘You’ve never worked in your life. You live like a spiv, you smell like a spiv … and you live with me like one an’ all.’
‘Because I don’t come home grunting, swearing, and sweating like the other pigs round here it doesn’t mean I don’t work—I do! You bitch! You’re always trying to make out I do nothing!’
She got up and came to stand beneath my chin so she could shout what she’d been wanting to shout for weeks. ‘Well you can get out right now and join those other pigs because I don’t want you in my house any more!’
I stepped back to look at her quietly. ‘I’m not going,’ I told her, calming down. ‘I like living here. I’ve paid for a lot of the stuff. I like to see you benefit from all I do for you. I like to see these kids get plumper and fitter and a bit more cheerful on the decent living I give them. …’
‘You’ll get out!’ she screamed, and ran past me up the stairs. She must have thought of doing this often, because when I reached my room she’d already torn up a couple of shirts. She’d pulled the drawer out, and was standing with one foot in it, straining to rip my best nylon shirt between her hands. The rest of my clothes and some of my paperbacks were in the yard. My first impulse was to kill her. To push her out of the window.
Then I told her, ‘Your stuff’ll get just as torn when I fling it out of the front.’
She came dragging after me on the landing. She fell on her knees and put her hands together. ‘Please, please, Arthur. Leave us alone.’
‘I can’t. I love you.’
She spat up at my face. But it only reached my shirt. Her face was screwed up like a dried weed. She dribbled on her grey dress. In the bedroom Lynda was screaming, and then Ian. I tried to imagine how it must sound outside.
Lynda opened the door slowly and looked at her mother sobbing on the floor. I felt shy of the kid. She rushed into her arms. ‘It’s all right, Lyn. I just fell.’ They buried their heads in each other’s shoulders.
I went downstairs and out at the back to pick up my clothes. Across the back people were standing about like cattle, listening and watching, scratching in the ashes, having a good laugh, pretending nothing had happened. When I went in she was already in the kitchen. The TV screamed through from the other room. Washing powder.
‘Are you going now or in the morning?’ she said, and watched me dusting down the clothes and shaking the ashes out of the books. She had quietened. Her hands were still flushed from tearing cloth.
‘I’m not going at all.’
‘What is it you want … to make you go? I’ll give you anything. Ought we’ve got.’ She pressed herself against the table. ‘Do you want to go to bed?’
‘I don’t want anything you’ve got. I’m staying.’
‘I’ll have to fetch the police then,’ she said emptily.
‘They can’t turn me out without a week’s notice.’
‘I’ll go then. I’ll take Lyn an’ Ian. I’d rather we live in a hole in the backs than stay here with you. You poison us all. Listen at them—scared stiff.’ She pulled open the kitchen door so I could hear the kids wailing.
‘That’s your own bloody fault for screaming round like a maniac. You want to get used to the idea—I’m staying. You’ll waste less energy.’
‘I can’t think of any better way of wasting it. You don’t seem to know what you are. What you look like to us.’
‘All I can see is the food you eat. The clothes you wear, the pleasure you get. When I came here you hadn’t a strip of underclothes between you that wasn’t in rags.’
‘Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure! You say pleasure! You standing over us! Like a bloody lord and master. … You made us enjoy anything we ever did. You made us.’
�
��You don’t seem to appreciate one bloody thing—not one bloody thing I’ve done for you,’ I shouted, crazed by her stinking lack of gratitude. ‘I’ve treated you better than my own parents even. How can you say a thing like that? You’ve a life better than any other woman on this street.’
‘You must be a lunatic. You must be a lunatic if you think I’ve got any … any, any thing for what you’ve done. You’re raving! You’ve done nothing for us that wasn’t just your fancy. You’ve done just what you’ve liked. You must think you’re God Almighty … stuck up there in your tin motor-car, with your TV and your cheap fur coat. I’ll burn everything! Everything you’ve touched I’ll burn. The minute you leave this house, every stick and every morsel you’ve touched. … You can’t see yourself. You just can’t see. A better life than any other woman on this street! My life is hell! I can’t lift my head without somebody pointing at me and saying I’m your … slut!’
‘Who says that?’
‘Who says that! Just listen to him. Who? …’ She choked with laughing, with pulling up laughter, strangled, from her belly. ‘Is God hurt because somebody calls me a slut? Is God going to go out there in his big motor-car and knock them down … knock them down because they don’t say good morning to his kind of dirt? Well—you hit them! Massacre them! You smash and tear them up until there isn’t two bits of them together! Just you make sure they won’t ever do it again. … They all laugh at you. Now that’s surprising, isn’t it? They all point you out. Did you know that? They think you’re trying to be different. They all point you out. And they point me out. And Lynda. And Ian. We’re not proper people now because of you. Because you show off every Sat’day in front of thousands of them. We’re like cripples that daren’t show ourselves. You’ve put your stenching mark on all of us.’
‘This must sound right good next door.’
‘No better … no better than it’s ever been. They listen every night. Tonight’s no different. … If it’s a week’s notice, then you’ve got it.’