by David Storey
She bent down and screamed into the fireplace—something to the Farrers next door. ‘You’re my witnesses,’ she told them. ‘For when the police come. A week’s notice to get out from tonight.’
‘You must think they’ve minds like yours. There’s no need to go screaming like a lunatic. …’
‘I don’t think they’re like me. I know they’re not. They’re much better. Everybody’s much better than me. Before you came here … you don’t know, but I was respected. Everybody round here, everybody in the street—everybody, they all respected me. They thought well of me—of how I brought up Lynda. … But I’m not going to cover myself up now. I don’t kid myself. Not like you. I know what I am.’
‘You’re feeling like this because you’re frightened. …’
‘You don’t know me!’
She went round the room, glanced out of the window, looked back at the walls. ‘I know you,’ I said. ‘I ought to. I’ve been here long enough.’
‘You don’t know me. Just how do you know me? You don’t look at anybody but yourself. When I was younger. … Before, I felt young. You only make me feel old. I’ve always been old with you. And I’ve tried. I’ve tried to be right. I’ve tried and I’ve tried. I wanted … I only wanted to be left alone. I didn’t want you. I didn’t ask you to come here and push yourself in.’
‘But you’ve taken all I’ve given you. Don’t say you didn’t want somebody. I’ve treated you like a queen. Just look at what I’ve given out here.’
‘How you go on! I don’t see what you’re trying to get out of it.’ It looked as though she’d finished, that she was going out. Then she added, ‘Can’t you get it into your head? We don’t need you.’
‘The trouble with you is it drives you mad to see somebody who won’t crawl about. Isn’t that right? You want me to crawl about like the rest—like Eric crawled. Look at the people round here. The people who won’t say good morning, tickle me fancy, to you. Just look at them. There’s not a bleeding man amongst them. They’re all flat out on their backs and anybody can walk over them. They haven’t the nerve to stand up and walk about like me. And because of that you try and make out that it’s me who stinks. Me!’
‘How you go on. …’
‘Shut your hole a minute and listen to me. These people want you to act like this. They don’t like you because you’re on to a good thing. If we had no cash, no car, and no fur coat you could have a hundred men living here. All they want is to see you in the same miserable dirt as themselves. Can’t you see what you’re doing? I could tell you some things people have said to me that’d make your toe nails drop off. And just because I’m a Rugby League player. Isn’t that right? You know that’s right. Tell me it’s right!’
‘You don’t know. You don’t know what it’s like.’
‘I know what’s it’s like. They hate me, they hate you … they even hate Ian and Lynda. Only you don’t want to see it. For some stupid crazy reason you prefer to think like them.’
She twisted against the table, beating it for silence, shaking her head: everything as if I actually had hold of her and she was trying to break away. ‘You don’t know. You’ve never gone without a thing in your life!’
Somebody, Mr Farrer, was banging on the wall, then he rooted at the back of the chimney. I banged back with a poker. A piece of plaster fell in the hearth. Kids ran screaming in some game over the ashes.
‘The police’ll be here any time,’ I told her. ‘Better get the beer out and the set warmed up.’
‘Nothing’s clean to you,’ she murmured. ‘You filthy everything you touch.’
‘You’re too sentimental. I don’t like these arguments either, but I’m not complaining. These people I’m talking about—they’re my friends, my fans. I don’t mind what they think. If they say anything to me about it I just knock their teeth in. Me—I don’t complain about anything. You—you resent me helping.’
She looked at me thoughtfully, dazed, as at some new revelation. ‘Thank God there’s a part of my life you never touched. There’s something that’s clean,’ she said. ‘That’s one thing which must really hurt you. I can see it, now. You must hate Eric. He’s one thing you can’t touch. He’s what brings me through all this. Him and Lyn and Ian. The one really good thing in all this. …’
‘Come on, come on—get it over with. You might as well put his bloody boots back in the hearth. Let’s all get down and pray for the good soul of Eric—the father of this house.’
‘How he must hurt you,’ she said with all the keenness of at last finding something she thought really did hurt me.
‘If I’ve ever seen a crazy thing, that’s it—a pair of dead man’s boots in the hearth. Christ, they put people into nuthouses for less than that these days. You even polished them. As if he was going to step into them the next minute. I know enough about you to keep you in a rubber room the rest of your life.’
‘What. … What do you know about how good Eric was to me—how he treated us? How would you know what a decent father does for his family? How hard he worked? What do you know about Eric?’
‘I know he can’t have done so bloody much going by what I’ve seen here. I know he shoved a file in his guts. He was such a good father he virtually killed himself on that lathe. It was no accident. …’
She stumbled against the table. ‘You want to kill me!’ she screamed. ‘You treat me as if I didn’t exist. I’m just nothing, to you. You make me think I’m nothing. Anything I do you knock down. You won’t let me live. You make me think I don’t exist.’
She got into a chair and wiped her hair aside with her wrist. She was completely exhausted, panting and sobbing.
‘I want to live with you. I don’t want to squash you.’
‘Everything I do you make as if it wasn’t important. You make me feel that I’m dead.’
‘But I want you!’ I shouted.
‘I’m one thing you can’t have like everything else.’
She seemed a long way off, and disappearing.
‘You don’t want me to go, do you? Say you don’t. Say you don’t want me to go.’
‘I don’t want you to stay here,’ she said slowly, forced, reciting an idea she’d got too used to to let go. She sat still. Her eyes were glazed. If her mouth hadn’t gone on saying it I’d have thought she was dead.
2
I got to Primstone on Saturday afternoon to find my name scrubbed off the team sheet. No one knew why, apart from the fact I hadn’t turned up for training Thursday, and the committee men directed me to George Wade who didn’t happen to be on the ground. I found I wasn’t worried. In fact I felt relieved. I didn’t want to play football ever again, and this was the short cut.
I drove back to Mrs Hammond’s and packed my things into the car. She’d locked herself in the kitchen with the kids, as she had on the previous occasions I’d been back that day, so I didn’t say good-bye.
I could hear the Primstone crowd as I drove round town. I hadn’t realized before how the roar filled the valley: in Market Street, thick with shoppers, the heads turned like pale flowers in the direction of the stadium. I stopped to buy a paper copy of Somebody Up There Likes Me.
I got myself a place near the bus depot where I’d stayed years before when I first left home. It was in different hands now. There were two others asleep in the room when Cameron, the latest owner, showed me up. From what was lying around I gathered they were bus conductors. On the window were stuck Eire emblems and a nude. It cost a quid a week, and half a dollar for breakfast. I was back exactly where I’d started.
I paid him and went and sat in the car, which I’d parked on some waste land behind the house. I read the beginning of Graziano’s life story, then fell asleep.
It was about midnight when I went back to the room. The other two occupants weren’t in. I must have lain awake over an hour before I dropped off. When I did wake
in the morning it was to the noise of their heavy breathing. Two bottles of beer and a new alarm clock stood on the cabinet by the beds, and another empty propped up an English Beauties on the chest of drawers.
Cameron was sitting in his vest on the front step reading a Sunday paper. He shielded his eyes against the early morning sun. ‘How d’you sleep, whacker,’ he said, ‘with those two alarm clocks?’
‘I never heard them come in.’
‘Still got all your money in your pockets?’ He suggested I look through. ‘Want any breakfast?’
‘I’m just going out.’
‘That saves a lot of trouble then … as long as you don’t come back later wanting some. I’ve fourteen to cook on a morning like this. It’s a crying shame, don’t you think?’
‘You charge enough for it. Why should you worry?’
‘Oh, it’s no worry,’ he decided with a vague stare. ‘Unless you’d have wanted yours. That was why I looked at you in that queer way when you came out just now. Perhaps you noticed. I always give that look when I think people might cause trouble. I find it often puts them off.’
‘I never noticed it,’ I said.
‘Didn’t you?’ His mild stare turned to concern, wondering how it could have gone wrong. ‘Is your name Arthur Machin?’
When I nodded he tried to look either serious or interested. ‘I thought so, when you came. I thought I recognized your face. I’ve seen you play at Primstone.’ He turned a couple of sheets of his paper. ‘What’re you down this end of the town for? Come for the fresh air? No trouble involved, is there?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll take your word for it. Remember I’ve said that. You see, I don’t mind who I take, Marilyn Brando, whoever you like, I’m not choosy, but if there’s any trouble involved—no thank you. I’m a man who believes in absolute peace. No fights, no trouble, no nothing,’ He spread his hands either side of him as he wiped all thought of trouble away. ‘I’d rather sleep in the house myself.’
‘You don’t stay here then?’
‘Me and the missis live in the garage at the back. You might drop in sometime when we’re not at home and have a look. It’s quite cosy. By the way, is that your car at the back?’
‘I just left it there for the night.’
‘I meant to tell you, whacker. It’s a bad place. The nippers round here are mustard. It’ll be all spare parts if you leave it too long. You’d do better to park it in the street out here, then we can keep an eye on it. If you want it cleaning let me know. I’ll do it for a dollar.’
I waved at him as I drove past, and watched him in the mirror. He stood up, impressed, to see me out of sight.
‘If it isn’t the man from the Pru!’ Frank said, looking up from his digging. ‘I’m glad thy’s come, Art.’ He stepped off the soil, scraping the mud from his boots on the brick path. ‘The wife’s still i’ bed, but she’ll be up when she hears thy’ve come.’
‘Hello, Mr Machin,’ his twelve-year-old boy said from the back door, then rushed up the stairs to tell his mother.
‘Where d’you get to yest’day?’ Frank asked. He pointed the way through to the living-room, and stayed in the kitchen to take off his boots. ‘They thought thy’d gone away to sulk.’
‘They might’ve been right.’
‘Aye. It was a bit of a shock. But then … where did you get on Thursday? Riley said you came in for your wage, but apart from him nobody saw you.’
Mrs Miles came in laughing. ‘It’s right good to see you, Arthur. You’re a stranger round here nowadays—apart from the dog track, that is. Go and put the kettle on, Kenny,’ she told the boy. ‘You can have some tea, Arthur, while you watch me eat my breakfast. I was half up when I heard your car.’
‘Mother’s day i’ bed,’ Frank said. ‘I had mine at half past six, mind.’
‘He can’t break the habit … getting up for the early shift.’
‘It’s true.’ Frank admitted his fault seriously like a big boy. ‘I can’t sleep much after half past five on a morning. I’ll have a bit of breakfast with you, love. And put in a couple of eggs for Art.’
‘Haven’t you had no breakfast?’ Elsie asked.
‘I can tell he hasn’t,’ Frank said. ‘He hasn’t even shaved. You do as I say, while him and me go in the front room.’
Elsie nodded significantly.’ I was sorry to hear you were dropped yest’day, Arthur,’ she told me.
‘Yes, love,’ Frank told her.
We went in the front room and he shut the door. He looked immense in this not very large space, his bull neck bowed in fear of the ceiling.
‘I see you’ve come in the motor,’ he said, nodding at the window where the top of the car showed over the hedge. ‘It was news to me, Art, yest’day. I didn’t hear a thing about it until two fifteen. It’s not like Wade to cross out a name then run away. I didn’t see him at all at the match.’
‘I don’t suppose you can blame him. He probably feels bad about it himself.’
Frank put himself on to the settee. It buckled and flattened under his weight. ‘Why do you think you were dropped?’ he asked seriously.
‘You should know, Frank—I’ve played bad for too long. I didn’t turn up Thursday, and I never told them why. I’m not blaming anybody for being dropped … I didn’t really come about that.’
He was full of slow surprise. ‘Anything the matter, Art?’ He was a big pained dog.
‘The little lady’s kicked me out at home.’
He waited for the news to be absorbed. I could hear Elsie talking to Kenny next door.
‘But you’ve been with her more’n three year.’ He couldn’t keep the tone of reproach out of his voice.
‘I didn’t want to leave. In fact I’m going to try and go back when she’s had a chance to calm down. But things have been mounting up. … This week they seem to have broke.’
‘Well, you’ll un’erstand, Art, I never shove my nose into things not my concern, but to be honest—and you’ll know why I say this—it comes as no surprise to me. How you’ve missed it so far is a mystery to me. It beat me how you ever got tangled up wi’ Weaver—cos he’s done you no good. I’ve been up yonder over twelve year, and I doubt if I’ve spoke to him more’n that number of times.’
‘Some people get in the way, Frank. Others don’t.’
‘Aye. And there were you, straight out of nowhere, and a car and Weaver at your disposal in no time. I told thee men what to be ’ware on.’
He nodded his censure at me with a severe kind of exasperation. ‘It rankles me seeing you down in this condition, because it’s nowt to do wi’ football. And that’s all you are, Art, socially or any other road. I mean’—he leaned forward and pushed out his huge fist—‘Rugby League’s a great game. It’s about the only manly game left, and it’s only spoilt by people who try and make it something else. Any trouble you’re in now, Art, stems from you being too big for your bloody boots. And if anybody encouraged you to that state of mind it’s Weaver. I’ve often wanted to say this, so I hope you won’t mind getting it o’er. You rose like the sun at Primstone, and if you’re not to set like one you’ve got some hard thinking to do. What I meant about rankling, about me being rankled, is that George Wade told me they had you in mind for captain when I go. You see, that’s how it affects me. A’ve built that team up o’er the past few years, and all that’s chucked away because you had to go sucking up to Weaver, or laking around with that Mrs Hammond. Christ, Arthur, you’re on the edge of making a right mess of everything.’
‘What do you think I should do? I just don’t feel up to playing football again. Do you think I should see Wade, and tell him?’
‘It’s up to you. I don’t know what you should do. I only know how you’ve stopped yourself from playing. If this Mrs Hammond’s at the root of it then I reckon you ought to get that settled. I mean—what is the woman to
you? I know she’s been hanging around the background all the time, but what’s she supposed to be? Did you reckon on marrying her, or was she something you went home to each night? And by the way—I haven’t mentioned anything about her to the wife. She doesn’t even know Mrs Hammond exists. So don’t mention it to her. She thinks you’re a right good lad where tarts are concerned.’
Having expected some sort of dumb sympathy from Frank I found there wasn’t much I could say. He listened to a few excuses, and didn’t say anything else beyond I should ‘put it right with Mrs Hammond.’ When Elsie knocked on the door and put her head shyly round we were both standing and looking out of the window in silence.
I spent the day with Frank, digging in the garden, playing with Kenny. I took them out in the car after dinner. In the evening Elsie had her people in: they played with Kenny too, and at cards. Families kill me. When the lad went to bed I made it an excuse to go, and Frank didn’t argue. He came out for a last word as the others waved from the window.
The front door was locked when I got back—locked or stuck. There was a light on in one of the upstairs rooms. I banged on the door and nothing happened. It was the same when I threw a pebble against the lighted window.
Round the back there was a light in the garage and one of the large doors was half open. A woman dressed only in a skirt, her breasts folded down like two sacks, put herself behind a curtain. ‘Yes?’ she said.
‘I can’t get in. The front door’s locked.’
‘You don’t use the front door at night,’ she said. ‘Use the back. Push it if it’s stuck, there’s no latch.’
Her shadow waited on the curtain to hear me go. I climbed up twelve steps at the side of the garage and pushed open the door. There was the sound of celebrating upstairs, and as I passed the door of the lighted room a couple stopped dancing, tripped over a bottle, and stared at me somewhere at the level of my knees. ‘Get stuffed, Paddy. Don’t look in other people’s rooms,’ the man said and kicked the door to. Then there was an argument, and when I reached the end of the landing the door opened again and the man put his head out. ‘Sorry if I sounded rough, cock,’ he called. ‘Freda says come in and have a drink.’