West took a self-conscious position at the side of the fire, struggling to settle there. ‘We could have sent the cart into the village,’ he said. ‘If we’d known.’
‘The fault’s mine,’ Snuffy said. ‘We found a lift out of London but the off-roads were cut and we ended up pleading our case to a copper with a road crew. Told him we had a place figured out above a pub in the village. He pushed us out at The Black Bear and it was after midnight. Legged it from there.’
He became bashful as Victoria brushed water from his neck. He was the eldest in the room, early twenties, with some of the greater presence and all the weariness that bestowed. She looked a similar age, but those few years seemed to have given Victoria what they had taken from Snuffy.
A woman and a man, Radford knew, but he could not escape the thought of them as girl and boy.
‘You could have died,’ he said.
He had meant this to sound jovial, congratulatory even, but it induced only quiet and the reactions of Rich and Brass suggested he had trodden an unwelcome path. Even West looked betrayed.
‘Got me bang to rights there. It was rightly daft,’ Snuffy said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘That’s Radford,’ Rich said. ‘He’s new.’ New said with a weight of apology the word had never before been asked to carry.
‘I’m a Manor boy,’ Snuffy explained. ‘Well, was. Teddy had me stay on, employed me, like. Bit of a tinkerer, do odd jobs and the sort.’ Victoria sneezed into a towel and Snuffy went coy. ‘Thought I could get us from the village a mite quicker, even in the dark. I’ve done that trek home from The Black Bear enough.’
Rich took a step forward. ‘Remember when we pinched that barrel and rolled it back and the fields were all mud?’
‘I remember.’
‘You had that Chrissie in tow and she wouldn’t stop wailing until you put her up on your shoulders.’
There was a circle of laughter but it stopped short as the boys caught Snuffy’s objecting stare, his eyes flitting to Victoria.
‘So noble,’ she said. Healthy colour had returned to her lips.
‘Thought you had a stretch left,’ Brass said.
‘Teddy. They told me Teddy fixed it.’
‘So, how was it?’ Rich attempted a serious tone.
Snuffy went to speak but pulled the words back. There was some sombre agreement and West’s mouth closed in assent. Radford thought better of asking his question.
‘Bird,’ Snuffy said calmly to Radford. ‘Just did six months.’
Victoria faced Radford. ‘He’s incredibly hard now he’s been to gaol. Hard and impressive, you didn’t know?’
Brass piped in. ‘Thought you got a year and a half?’
‘Teddy, once again.’ He reached to retrieve Victoria’s palm.
Radford felt the urge to repay her for something he couldn’t identify. He considered if this was his fate, to be enraptured and turned stupid by the mere presence of those with personality.
‘Simon?’ This was Teddy at their side, re-tying his dressing-gown belt and patting its pocket.
Snuffy motioned to stand.
‘Stay, you’re drenched. You haven’t dared walk here?’
The pair bowed their heads and Teddy huffed and signalled for the boys to push the armchair closer in on the flames.
‘Victoria, isn’t it?’
‘It is. Thank you and I’m very sorry to have arrived like this and caused such a fuss.’
‘I’ll ask Lil to find you some dry things. And can someone please fetch some tea?’
Snuffy was red with sin.
‘They told me they would let me know when to expect you.’ Teddy was pacing. ‘I was going to arrange a car. You could have killed yourselves. I’ll be calling my man at the prison, I promise. I’m terribly cross at you, Simon.’ His pipe found home and he struck a match. ‘Terribly.’
Smoke encircled them, overtaking the humid puffs of the hearth, and Teddy called for the gathering to break. Radford watched the final adoring gazes, all fixed on this veiled, unslept Snuffy, all somehow denying Victoria.
‘To work?’ Teddy said, snapping the room from its fantasy. ‘Simon?’ This made the man definitively a boy and a wide smile surfaced. ‘When you’re dressed, I believe Lil is being given trouble by her ovens.’
She arrived with the sound of her name, pushing past Radford, throwing arms around Snuffy.
‘Morning, Lilly.’
She retracted. ‘Who are you to call me that? After you leave us for so long. All these days.’
‘Of course. Miss Grange.’
She helped the hair back from Victoria’s face. ‘Darling, you are so cold. Your skin is frozen to the touch.’ She glared at the boys. ‘You silly pigs have brought no tea?’
Lillian snatched a towel and draped it around Victoria’s knees before kissing her forehead. She gripped Snuffy by the ear and drew their brows together.
‘My Snuffy, you have never been in this kind of trouble. I have never been angrier,’ Lillian said. ‘Never been so furious.’
She kissed his hand ruthlessly.
FOUR
Radford had overslept. Upon hearing the distant tinkle of breakfast bowls being stacked he felt that monstrous sensation of having missed out. Despite any obvious need to do so, the house woke incessantly early. The boys were up just after the sun, with Lillian already in the kitchen, porridge warm and bread toasted, always before the first of them drifted down. As Radford pulled on his clothes it occurred to him that she might be driving this dawn-abiding enterprise. She might believe that early rising was in some way Provençal.
He would ask West.
This late morning few souls remained in the dining room and they were sat by the radio, fed. He rushed to the kitchen to see Lewis and another working the dishes, both in elbow-length rubber gloves and sweating over copper boiling pots.
‘You have errored,’ Lillian said and moved ahead to scratch her nails through Radford’s temples. ‘You are very lazy and very late and that is why you should starve.’
‘Yes.’
She gripped him by the nape of his neck. ‘I am a soft-hearted fool and I am weak. I have saved you a bowl and two slices.’
Radford went for the oven and then scooted from the room. He went to the edge of a dining table by the warmth and started into his limp toast, the radio boys glancing at him before returning to their news. The presenters spoke as all of their kind did; that they were wearing suits was obvious from their intonation. His mother had taught him that, about the newsreaders bothering to dress. She had told him as an amusement but also, he supposed, as demonstration of the taking of pride. It was a game he suspected he was skilled at, inventing lessons from his mother. He moved on to the porridge with its hardened skin as the newsmen spoke of the Freeze.
The fiercest falls yet had swept over the island and raged for a day and a half without respite. Great drifts had deposited atop cities. Wind had removed roofs and taken down walls. With the worsening weather Radford had noticed frustration showing itself more regularly in the Manor, fights and shouting matches bursting like sparks but extinguishing as quickly. An effort was being made, coiled punches held back.
Radford finished his meal and delivered the dishes into Lewis’s side of the sinks. The radio’s call grew faraway and hollow as he conquered the house. He wondered about West and the others. There had been talk of Teddy mounting an expedition to the village and that new straws would be drawn. The tobacco situation was beyond critical: even West’s secret stash was almost to nothing. The pair had taken to their smoking thrones only twice over the last few days, it having been too difficult to peel away undetected. Lewis had caught them the day before as they were nearing the belfry door and they had been forced to ad-lib a routine about getting some air. When Lewis insisted on joining, the three of them pushed their way outside and stood po
intlessly raw. West had taken huge breaths, puffing his chest out in search of credibility.
Radford reached the empty Long East Room. He would throw his hand up for the expedition. He owed something to each in the group, none more than West, and coming through with the smokes would go a long way towards absolution. It was only as he turned to leave, just as he was becoming sure of the cheers and slaps that would accompany his successful village return, that he noticed Manny rise from behind the table.
‘Oh, good morning.’
The man corrected his spine as if responding to a warden’s call.
‘Just saying good morning,’ Radford explained.
Mollified, Manny returned to his leather case, full with tubes and valves, all strapped and tied in place.
‘Are you giving a lesson?’
‘Was to,’ Manny said, his eyes staying down. ‘Teddy asked me. No-one came.’
Again Radford envisaged his triumph. Of the house door being blown open by hurtful wind to reveal the expeditioners bound down by their meat and milk and loaves. All the household would praise their obvious bravery, and at the peak of excitement he would loosen the strap to his shoulder bag and show West and the others its contents: a pouch, several pouches – perhaps a small canvas sack – of tobacco. This was not the repayment of debt, this was the making of a fresh god.
He thought of glory and kindness, what it took to crown or destroy a person.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ Radford said. ‘Only just got breakfast.’
Manny ceased the packing of the remaining device, a black box with leather handles and a banana-shaped face. ‘Late?’
‘Very late, I’m sorry.’ Radford looked as directly as he could muster into the man’s doggy eyes.
Manny flinched, smiled, flinched again. He turned his attention to the box. ‘Know what this is?’
‘No.’
‘What does it look like?’
‘Thermometer?’
‘Why would it be a thermometer?’
‘No idea, Manny.’
‘What does it say?’
He lowered to the device. ‘It says amp … ah, amp-eres and The Walsall Electrical Company.’
‘And what’s measured in amperes, or amps?’
‘I don’t think I know.’ After a few seconds Radford straightened and added a shake of his head. ‘No, sorry. No idea at all. Something … well, electrical?’
‘You came for the lesson?’
‘That’s right.’
A just-perceptible twitch came to the man’s eye. ‘Perhaps I could show you a few of the basics.’
And so for the rest of the morning Manny instructed on the fundamentals of electronics. Footsteps galloped about them, from the floor above and the adjacent hallway, which after a time Radford ceased to acknowledge. There were only Manny’s words with their subtle lisp. Just wires and what they could bring together.
Relays, switches, transformers.
He admired their size and density, their miniature perfection. Manny took a vacuum tube from its sleeve and placed it in Radford’s hands, telling him to hold it high to the daylight. It was the shape of an odd lightbulb stretched thin and long, with the glass darkened at its end. Inside was a tiny galaxy of silver and copper with small rectangles of black. It was arranged in exacting symmetry, everything being made parallel or sent off at a neat right angle, and Radford savoured its surprising weight. Manny described its function with words like anode and cathode, and became animated as he defined the process of black body radiation.
On many occasions Radford’s uncle had attempted to interest him in car mechanics. He had spent weekends being shown the passage of oil and petrol and exhaust. He had passed wirecutters and cloths and socket wrenches on command. Three times he had watched a carburettor disassembled, carefully laid out on a drop sheet, cleaned, dried, then reassembled. Three times he had failed to be moved by the experience. Here with Manny, however, he wanted to know all these mysterious articles and to befriend them.
‘Resistor,’ Manny said and placed it on the table.
This was the most pleasing curiosity yet, consisting of just a small tube with a stiff wire protruding from each end. All told it was the length of a matchbook and the tube bore four coloured bands, each to be deciphered: brown, green, orange, silver.
There was a chart: first number, second number, multiplier, tolerance.
One, five, three, ten.
After discussion and correction Radford announced it to be a fifteen-thousand-ohm resistor with a tolerance of ten per cent.
‘A fifteen-K,’ Manny agreed.
Radford did not know what ohms were or if fifteen thousand of them was at all a reasonable amount. He did not know what this resistor was ten per cent tolerant of but knew that he was quite properly in love.
‘Christ, I’ve spent all morning looking—’ West stood at the doorway, having halted himself. ‘Oh. Sorry, Manny.’
‘Fifteen-K,’ Radford explained and turned on his stool.
West smiled queerly, coming closer. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Manny, I’m looking to steal him away. Have you finished?’
Radford eyed the resistor.
‘We’ve finished,’ Manny said.
West pulled Radford to his feet and they walked from the room. Tiny fires of his heart fought to stay lit.
‘Thank you,’ he said over his shoulder, to which Manny gave a twitch and a nod.
It was all secretive fuss as they squeezed through a football game in a cramped downstairs room, moving to the kitchen. West remarked to Lillian that they were going out to chop wood.
‘Oui,’ she said, draping a tea towel over her face. ‘Should not take you long with all the help. Chopping wood is what all the others said.’
The stinging outer world met them as a gust slammed the door shut. West directed them close to the exterior wall. ‘Don’t worry, she wouldn’t grass.’
At the building’s end they stopped at a door that, in Radford’s time, had always been behind a robust chain and lock.
‘Off limits, strictly speaking,’ West said. ‘But what does Teddy expect? How are we to nurture our rebellion?’
He triumphed over the handle and the door fell open to shouting from inside about the cold. He bowed, rolling his hand for Radford to lead on.
‘Took your time,’ Brass said.
West shook away his snow. ‘He was building a robot with Manny.’
Rich put a cigarette into Radford’s mouth, encouraging him onto a floor cushion against a wall as West took the place opposite.
‘Worthy warrior, welcome to our tents,’ Snuffy said from the far end obscured by haze.
A velvet sheet was nailed to the ceiling in some attempt to conceal a bed. Opposite that was a toilet that made no effort to hide, alongside a sink and tin bath. The space that remained was taken with scarred furniture, clothes, and collections of rubbish that seemed to have been recently swept into mounds. Snuffy was sprawling around a record player. Albums lay in arcs and he and Lewis were examining one of their sleeves, the thing flexing under their scrutiny. In the air was wild sound: Radford hadn’t heard music like it though he recognised drums and a lone horn. All was afire and everyone drank the same dark something. Brass handed him a glass and a second lit stick.
‘Rich went with the boss to town. And he came through, got to hand it to him.’
Radford showed Rich a salute and the other boy blew a roof-bound plume, exceptionally pleased. West asked Radford his opinion of the tune and of Snuffy’s apartment.
‘Wonderful,’ Radford said and saw Snuffy gaze up from the vinyl. ‘Nice digs.’ He cringed as these awful words escaped him.
‘Thank you, my man. Consider them yours.’
Radford took a slug of the liquor as a cast-iron heater let out a hiss and he saw that not all of its smoke was finding exit t
hrough the stovepipe. A significant fraction was leaking through a crack where the pipe turned into the wall and this was joining the tobacco’s cloud, leaving all the room a slate mist. The record player jumped then rediscovered its uncivil rhythm.
It was all so soothing Radford thought he might really cry – like a weakling, like a bore – and so buried his head behind his arm and waited for the urge to pass.
Rich jabbed him. ‘Has us down whenever we’re able, when we won’t be pinched right away. Gets records in from the city. Snuffy,’ he called, ‘who’s this?’ He swirled his finger into the sound.
‘Dizzy.’
‘To Dizzy,’ West said, motioning for the room to similarly extol.
They repeated the call, falling hopeless in trying to meet glasses and complete the toast just as the door came open and allowed in a surge of sharp cold. Victoria. She shifted the hair from her face. A hand was left on her hip as she examined the mess of humanity spilling across the carpet.
‘You’ve reverted to beastliness,’ she said. ‘I was only gone a minute.’ She went by and took West’s glass, finishing his drink. ‘Pleased to see it, be beasts.’ She ruffled West’s hair, refilled his glass and returned it.
Lewis attempted another toast, ‘Beasts!’, which, quite rightly, inspired no response.
Victoria sat to Snuffy’s side and they were soon arguing and blowing smoke away from each other’s faces. Glasses knocked and paper continued to roll. Laughter and more saluting of Rich. It went on much like this for the remainder of Dizzy Gillespie and both sides of the Cannonball Adderley Quintet. This last record had brought quiet to Radford: not melancholy or anger, just a desire for silence. When Victoria squeezed down between him and Rich he had been contemplating that he had no idea what whisky was made from, and he would make sure that he never found out.
He shook hands with her. ‘Haven’t been here long, have you?’ she asked. ‘I’d only known these others for a little while, a few weeks before Snuffy went away. Last summer.’
‘You were allowed to stay?’
‘Just for a short time. Teddy found me the first morning and took me for a walk. We understand each other, a little at least.’
The Everlasting Sunday Page 7