‘Ruby,’ I said, ‘a small favour—’
‘What’s that?’ she said.
‘Will you not stick your nails into me like you did last Wednesday? You left bloody great long scratches all down my back.’
She laughed: ‘It was worth it, wasn’t it?’ she said.
It was for you, I thought. Great long weals they were – dug her nails right in she did. I took another drink of the whisky and chased it down with the lager.
‘I thought I’d put my brand on you,’ she said. ‘Keep the others off.’
‘What others?’ I said.
‘The others,’ she said.
Somebody’s been talking to her, I thought. It must be that time I took her to the club and Sharpey and Perce were there.
She’s had these two husbands. Both dead. And as I gave my back a rub it struck me that I had a bleeding good idea what they must have died of. She don’t spare you.
‘Don’t put your cold glass on my polished table,’ she said. She thinks more of her polished table than she do of my poor back, I thought. Still it had almost been worth it – at the time. Nearly everything is worth it at the time. I suppose they’ve got to have their bit of pleasure as well.
‘Don’t be so fussy,’ I said. I play up to them a bit and then I find I’m off going my own way. I chanced to knock a rose out of a big bowl she had on this table and she put it back and began to arrange them. She looked at me and said: ‘Do you ever think of taking flowers to your lady friends, Alfie?’
‘I often think about it,’ I said, ‘but I never do it. Not unless they’re in hospital.’
When I said that the memory suddenly came back to me about the bunch of freesias I’d taken to little Gilda that time she’d gone into hospital to have Malcolm. A thought will often drop in on me like that, a little moment from the past, you could say, and for a second the inside of me lights up with these faces that have gone. Know what – it makes you feel like a bleeding old man. I mean I could even see his face – his two faces come to that, what he was as an infant and what he was when they took him away from me. I came over choked at the thought. Because that’s something they can never make up again to you – a child’s only a child once. And there in front of me is this big lustbox Ruby, and I felt like picking up this big bowl of roses and flinging them through the bloody window and straight down on to the pavement outside. I mean just for a minute that ponced-up flat made me feel sick. Of course I controlled myself. You’ve got to.
‘What’s up, Alfie?’ she said.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
I got up and went to her bathroom. I must admit she had a smashing bath, put in special, primrose yellow, with all these mirrors round no matter which way you looked. Agreed it got a bit tight-fitting with the two of us in, she was some size was Ruby, but I’d had lots of fun splashing about and whatnot. The tricks we’d got up to in that bath. Yes, there were times when I’d felt lucky to step out of it alive. This Gilda had definitely misguided me. She’d made out she couldn’t live without me – but she could. It’s not playing the game really.
‘I’m not fussy, am I?’ said Ruby, coming in the bathroom behind me, and putting her arms round me. What can you do?
‘You are fussy,’ I said.
‘I’m not fussy,’ she said and she put her arms round the back of my neck and started kissing me and pressing her middle against me.
‘You’re a proper little sex-pot, ain’t you,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’m a sex-pot but I’m not fussy. Am I, Alfie?’
Know what, she seemed to have a tender look or something in her eye. As though I’d hurt her. She’s mumsie inside as well as outside, I thought, if she’d only give way to it. ‘Course you’re not,’ I said and I kissed her. I quite like the smell of a bathroom – I mean all the mixed smells hanging about. And you can’t be seen. I started slipping off her housecoat. After all, life has to go on. And same as I say, she’s in such beautiful condition.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I’d done a couple of weddings one Saturday morning and I’m through about two o’clock. So I go into the pub and start pinting it with Sharpey and Perce. I had a feeling not to go in in the first place – it came over me as I’m going in the door – because I’ve told Annie I’d be back for lunch. I’d never been one for eating much in the middle of the day, or if I did then I wouldn’t want much at night, but somehow she’s got me into the habit of eating at both times. Know what, I’ve come round to thinking that if there’s one thing worse than never having a meal put in front of you, it’s keep having food put in front of you all day long. She was a one for her cups of tea and bits of cake. They seem to have a notion up North that if you ain’t eating every five minutes you’ll drop dead. Course, I must admit I’d never been as well looked after in all my life as with that little bird in the home. And it’s one thing to eat little when you’ve only got little to eat and it’s quite another to eat little when you’ve got a lot.
Anyway, I’m bevying away with these two, and Perce is telling us about a driver called Little Benny. Now it seems this Benny is off on his night run up to Liverpool, and whilst he’s having a cup of tea in a caff at Barnet he gets his wagon and load knocked off. So he telephones for the police. Of course, the police naturally think he’s in on the job. Oddly enough he ain’t. So it’s well past midnight when they let him go. He gets a lift back to Peckham, and when he creeps in home so’s not to disturb his wife, he only finds her in bed with his shunter. In case you don’t know, that’s the bloke who’s handed him the wagon and papers over at the depot.
‘What did Benny do?’ said Sharpey.
‘What can he do?’ said Perce. ‘This geezer’s twice his size, and Benny’s missis must be all of twelve stone.’
‘I’d have smashed their bleedin’ heads in with a hammer,’ said Sharpey.
‘Now what good would that have done – a couple of dead bodies on his hands? He’d have ruined the bedclothes into the bargain,’ said Perce. ‘Anyway, he’s got these five kids and they’ve got to be looked after.’
‘What did he do?’ I said. It’s a funny situation. He wouldn’t have minded her having it off so much – although it’s not a nice thing with five kids in the next room, and the bloke your shunter, so that the chat is sure to spread – but what is definitely wrong is for her to let him catch her at it. It don’t give a geezer any proper way out.
‘Benny said that when this bloke gets out of bed,’ said Perce, ‘he gets in beside her. He didn’t fancy it all that much, one on top of the other, you could say, but same as he said, when you come to weigh it up, what else could he do?’
‘He was in what you call a dilemma,’ I said, ‘and in one of them it’s often best to take the simplest way out.’
‘I tell you I’d have smashed their bleedin’ heads in with a hammer,’ said Sharpey. ‘That would have been the simplest way for me.’
‘Then you do it,’ I said.
‘It’s time,’ said Vi, the barmaid, ‘it’s nearly three.’
‘Same again,’ said Sharpey, ‘three pints.’
‘Just top my pint up with a light ale, Vi,’ I said. I didn’t want another pint, in fact I didn’t want any more ale at all.
Perce turned to me. ‘You got your car outside, Alfie? You could run us round to the club.’
Suddenly I became aware of this little man that comes on to my shoulder at times. He likes whispering into my ear. I suppose everybody’s got one. She’ll have your dinner all ready now, Alfie, he whispered, and she’ll be waiting for you – you’d better get going.
‘I don’t think I’ll bother going round to the club,’ I said. She’ll have a nice clean pinny to greet you with, he said.
‘You’ll enjoy an hour or two at the club,’ said Sharpey, ‘it’ll make a change.’
‘I don’t think I’ll bother,’ I said.
After all, why run them round to the club, I thought, I’m not their hired chauffeur. At the same time this little man
had another rabbit: When you go indoors, Alfie, he said, she’ll have everything clean and spotless, and as soon as you take your things off, she’ll start washing them. As soon as you wipe your nose, she’ll take that hanky out of your pocket and boil it. And you’ll no sooner have your socks off than she’ll be kneading and squeezing them in Surf.
‘What’s come over you lately, Alfie?’ said Perce.
‘Come over me?’ I said, ‘nothing. Why? Good health.’
‘Well, why don’t you come round?’ said Sharpey.
There was something telling me not to tell them – not this little man, something else. I’ve usually got one or two little voices going on in my head. I don’t think it’s that I’m a nutter or anything of that sort, I think it’s just that I’m open-minded. I thought, I’ll just let them see how well off I am compared with them.
‘I’ve got this little kid called Annie staying at my gaff,’ I said. ‘She’s from the North and she can’t half cook.’
‘What’s cooking got to do with it?’ said Perce.
‘She don’t like it if he ain’t home for his meals on time,’ said Vi. ‘That so, Alfie?’
This Vi ain’t a bad-looker, and she can never make it out why I don’t play up to her like most of the other blokes do. Now the reason for that is this: I used to have it off with a woman who served in a transport caff – in fact I’ve had it off with more than one in that line – and right enough she was good for the odd packet of cigarettes, cup of tea, bacon sandwich, and so on, was this woman, but somehow she always seemed to be hovering about near me so that I never felt free. It ain’t worth it for your freedom of mind – the odd sandwich or cup of tea. I’ve tried it as well with one or two landladies, and sometimes with their daughters, but somehow it don’t never work out satisfactorily in the long run. It seems they get familiar or something. You’ve given it to them once so they begin to take it for granted. I don’t like anything like that. I like to keep my place so let them keep theirs. Now by playing it dead cool with Vi I’ve found I get far better service, and after all that’s what you go to a pub for. Not to chat up some soppy blonde behind the counter. The blokes who fuss round her get no thanks.
‘She doesn’t mind what time I get home,’ I said, ‘and she makes some real ’andsome nosh-ups she do.’
‘Vi,’ said Perce, taking a last swig at his pint, ‘giss three more quick pints.’
‘Too late,’ she said.
‘Not for me,’ I said.
‘Not like you, Alfie,’ said Vi, ‘heel tapping.’
‘Draw us two quick pints, Vi,’ said Perce. Vi starts drawing them.
‘What was you saying about this little bird?’ said Sharpey.
‘I was just saying she makes a marvellous steak-and-kidney pie,’ I said.
‘I hate the taste of kidneys,’ said Perce. ‘They’ve got a sort of dead flavour about ’em.’
‘Offal,’ said Sharpey. He looked at me. ‘I thought you was looking a bit blown out. What do you say, Vi?’
‘What do you mean blown out?’ I said, and I give myself a thump in the stomach. To be quite frank, I was feeling a bit duff in the guts, but I wasn’t going to let them see it. I mean you can’t be well fed without filling up.
‘I was only saying you looked blown out. Don’t you think so, Vi?’ said Sharpey.
‘He’s certainly put some fat on,’ said Vi, and she began to look me up and down.
‘Fat! Me!’ I said. ‘What are you talking about – fat?’
‘Don’t take offence, Alfie,’ said Perce, ‘it’s just the appearance.’
‘What appearance?’ I said.
Now Sharpey and Perce looked me up and down from tip to toe and then turned away and said nothing. Then I can hear this little man break in again: You know what, Alfie, that little gaff ain’t your’n any more, it’s her’n. Come to think of it he wasn’t far out. It meant more to her than it did to me, and I suppose that’s one way of something belonging to you.
‘Here’s the two pints,’ said Vi, putting them on the counter.
‘Make it three,’ I said, putting down a quid. ‘It’s my turn anyway.’ I had to force my beer down, and there was nothing said for a minute or two, only you could feel some thinking was going on, then Perce turned to me, looking very sympathetic and said: ‘It don’t really suit you, you know, Alfie.’
‘What don’t suit me?’ I said.
‘This poncified look you got,’ he said.
‘What poncified look?’ I said.
‘You look all puffed out,’ said Sharpey, and he tried to get hold of my cheeks with his fingers.
‘Turn it in,’ I said, ‘and stop mouthing about it. I tell you I’ve never felt fitter in all my life.’ I picked up the new pint and downed half of it at one go. My guts were feeling all swelled out. It’s the way she keeps feeding you, Alfie, said this little man. She’s getting you all fattened out.
‘Don’t misunderstand him – he wasn’t saying you wasn’t fit, was you, Sharpey?’ said Perce. ‘All he was saying was what with your collar looking so tight on you, and your trousers like they are, and that jacket gripping you tight under the armpits you were looking a bit—’
‘Poncified,’ said Sharpey, ‘in other words blown out.’
‘That’s it,’ said Perce, ‘blown out sort of.’
I turned to him. ‘Are you going to go on making a mouth of it, Sharpey?’ I said.
‘Now don’t get excited,’ said Perce.
‘Know what, Alfie?’ said Sharpey, ‘I reckon that Annie of your’n must be putting the block on you and you can’t see it. What do you say, Perce?’
‘The kid’s only looking after me,’ I said.
‘Don’t be a nit,’ said Perce, ‘that’s the way every bint puts the block on a bloke, by looking after him. Getting him dependent, see. Isn’t that so, Vi?’
‘It’s one of the ways,’ said Vi.
‘In twelve months’ time you won’t recognise yourself,’ said Sharpey, ‘you’ll be stuffed to the ears with all that bleedin’ hotpot.’
‘I tell you she’s only looking after me,’ I said.
‘She’s softening you up, mate, ready for the kill,’ said Perce.
They’re jealous that’s what they are, I kept telling myself. What man isn’t who can see a mate being better looked after by a bird than he is. Men detest that sort of thing, they all want to be in the same boat. If there’s one thing a drunk can’t stand is seeing somebody else sober. But at the time I couldn’t see all these things because I’ve got this little man as well to contend with. I don’t know whether we’ve each got what they call an evil thing in us – I shouldn’t be at all surprised – that whispers and tells us things that go against our better understanding. But same as I say, I definitely do hear this little man and other things, and the funny thing is this – if I don’t do what he tells me it nearly always turns out wrong. It might come right for the start but it’ll be wrong for the finish. If you have her around much longer, Alfie he kept saying, she’ll change you that much that you won’t be able to recognise yourself. He must have known that the one thing I detest is the idea of having a woman change me.
‘I’ll run you round to the club after all,’ I said.
‘That’s my boy,’ said Sharpey, ‘good old Alfie.’
‘I knew you’d see the light,’ said Perce.
Vi kept on wiping the glasses and looking at me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I could never understand Sharpey and Perce that day. I don’t know how it was I didn’t tumble they were needling me, but there was something else behind it. They came out with a very funny stroke in that club. They’re standing side by side, and you can see there’s something going on between them, and Sharpey said to me: ‘Are you still doing a line with that big bird, Alfie?’
‘What big bird?’ I said.
‘The hairdresser bint,’ said Perce. ‘The one you once brought round here.’
‘She ain’t a hairdresser,’ I said, ‘a
nyway who told you?’
‘It owns some hairdresser’s shops,’ said Sharpey, ‘and it lives in that big block across the river.’
‘Well, what about it?’ I said.
‘Well, you want to look out,’ said Sharpey, ‘a mate of your’n is after it.’
‘What mate?’ I said.
‘Never mind what mate. You want to keep an eye on it. What d’you say, Perce?’
‘Say nothing,’ said Perce. ‘He’s after you as well, Alfie.’
I couldn’t make out head or tail what they were talking about and they wouldn’t tell me any more, but I could see there was something behind it. Who could be after me?
Anyway, I dropped them off and then went round to my own gaff. I wasn’t drunk. Somehow their chat had sobered me, but sobered me nasty, if you see what I mean. On top of it I’d had this little man on my shoulder. Ain’t it funny how when life seems to be going on beautiful it can suddenly turn rotten on you. Then I’d gone on gin-and-tonics in the club and I find them sobering up after beer. In fact, the more I drank the more dead sober I went. Gin does that up to a point. I started thinking how it used to be before I met Annie, how I could go out with a free mind, all my troubles under my hat, as they say, and drink and do what I wanted without ever a thought of someone waiting for me. I find I don’t care for that feeling of having somebody waiting for me at home. It’s like you’re plagued with something behind your mind all the time. I know some blokes who love the feeling, but I do like leaving a room empty and feeling it’ll still be empty when I get back. Well it’s nice to get away from human beings now and again. And another funny thing is this – it’s a bigger burden for you to have some nice bird waiting for you than a real bitchy piece – because you won’t mind how long you keep a bitch waiting, if you follow me.
I was definitely getting fatter. That was a certainty. I’d never been used to regular meals and I think I felt more myself when I didn’t have them. All any man needs is one good meal a day. He don’t want a woman keep shoving cups of tea and bits of cake on him. Course they only do that because they want some themselves. The idea behind Feed the brute is that you can be feeding yourself at the same time. A man can go on nearly all day without ever thinking of food, but food, cooking, shopping, never seem to be out of a woman’s mind. Know what, a man’s wits are not nearly as sharp if he’s being well fed. I’ll bet if you put two rats in a cage, one well fed and the other kept hungry, that hungry one will run rings round the other. It’s the same with the other – if you’re getting it regular you seem to come over half blind, and many a nice piece of crumpet will escape you, just for the want of you taking notice. I’m always working things like that out in my little mind and I always end up with the same question: what’s the bleeding answer?
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