You know how you sometimes hear sounds, and you take no notice of them – well I can hear a little baby crying. So I stop and listen, and sure enough, no mistake, I could hear this crying. Quite distinct it was. Well, there was no kid in sight anywhere, and there’s no infant in the house, so I reckoned it couldn’t have been a child. But I stood there and listened, and on and on it went. I thought it might have been the wind outside, see, moaning or something, you know the way it does. But there was no wind. But I shut the window tight to keep it out and make sure. But that didn’t stop it. Then it struck me it could be the water in the pipes. You often get those things making noises. So I shut the tap off dead hard to be certain. Yet it still kept on in my ear, this baby crying. So I decided it must be the imagination, and on and on it went, wailing and wailing away, as if it would go on wailing to the end of my days.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I decided to give myself a complete change; fresh shirt, socks, trunks, suit, shoes, the lot. In fact I put on my lightweight flannel trousers and dark blazer, which I hadn’t worn for a bit. I find I’m very influenced by what I’m wearing at any one time, and I thought if I dressed casual I might begin to feel more light hearted or something. It might have struck Lily that I was a long time tidying up, but she seemed to be lying in a faint doze on the sofa. She was miles away, you could say. Now as luck would have it I find I have a tin of Sainsbury’s pure coffee in, flavour sealed, one that Annie must have stored away. So I opened it, and I make a big jug full of coffee. Then I went in to her and tapped her on the shoulder, and showed her I was looking all bright and chipper. Never let a woman see what you’ve gone through. Well, I mean, they might feel sorry for you.
‘Here y’are, gal,’ I said. ‘There’s a nice cup of coffee for you, the real thing. I’ve put the top of the milk in for you, and I bet you wouldn’t get a better cup no matter where you went.’
I think the real secret is to use plenty of coffee, have the jug hot, and see that the water is on the sizzle as it’s going in. I was afraid for the minute she might say: ‘No, thanks.’ That would have spoilt everything, but she didn’t. I kept on chatting her up as she was drinking it about how a man will always make better tea or coffee than a woman because he’s got more patience. Same as I say, you’ve got to say something. And I find I’m very good on those little tactics. She didn’t speak, and she didn’t not speak, if you follow me, but she looked a lot better after she’d drunk it. A little tinge of colour started coming to her cheeks.
‘Now, if you’re ready, Lily,’ I said, ‘I can run you all the way back home.’
‘I’d sooner go alone,’ she said. She was quite flat about that.
‘Suits me,’ I said, ‘if you’d sooner go on your tod. You can get a train from Waterloo, or there’s a Green Line bus will run all the way. I’m not sure of the times.’
‘I know the way,’ she said. ‘I’ll get home all right. Don’t worry.’
She put on her coat. I didn’t like to see her going off like that, but it’s a mistake to press a woman against her will. ‘Here y’are,’ I said. ‘Don’t forget your basket.’ I picked up her basket and we both looked into it and saw the same thing – the squiggly letter the kid had written to his Dad. Now when I saw that a funny thought struck me.
‘Just a tick, Lily.’ I said, ‘I knew there was something.’
She stood there near the door wondering what the something could be. You can always catch a woman with curiosity. I went to the wardrobe, and felt on top at the back. I was afraid for a minute that it might have been knocked off, but it hadn’t. I got out this large brown bag. Yes, it was quite safe. Never been opened for years. Never been touched, never been looked at.
‘Here y’are,’ I said to her. ‘You can take this home for young Phil. Mind, the bag handle’s got broke.’
‘For who?’ she said, staring at me.
‘Young Phil,’ I said. ‘Your youngest kid what writes these funny letters to his Dad.’
‘I didn’t know you knew,’ she said.
‘I know a lot more than you think,’ I said. ‘I bought this for a kid I used to know – but somehow I never got round to giving it him.’
She stood there and seemed to be in two minds about taking the parcel off of me. ‘What is it?’ she said.
‘Would you like to see it?’ I said.
I put my hand inside this brown bag and take out this marvellous Teddy bear that I’d bought for Malcolm on that Saturday morning a long time ago. Wasn’t it strange, though, how he didn’t even know his own father? There was more truth than I’d imagined in what I told old Harry about the way kids forget. You try to teach somebody something and ten to one the lesson of it will come home to you first.
Without thinking I took out the Teddy bear, held it up and then threw it across to Lily. It went flying through the air and she made a grab with her two hands held upwards as though she was catching a child. She held it still for a second or two up in the air, then pulled it down to herself. Just then it let out a tiny little squeak. I’d forgot it had this squeak built in. Know what, that sound went right through me.
Anyway, I see she’s standing there a-holding this Teddy bear in her arms and looking in a real daze. So I put my arm round her shoulders. I mean I couldn’t have let her go home on her own in that state. She might have been knocked down. Then there would have been questions asked. So I said: ‘Come on Lily, I will run you home after all. You tell him it’s from his Uncle Donald.’
So Lily turns to me and puts her face right up against my chest. Pressed it into me. Somehow I thought that was what you call a friendly gesture. Forgiving you might say. So I patted her little back, what seemed to have got stooped like she was a lot older than her years.
‘Come on, mate,’ I said. ‘The kids will be waiting for you.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I got Lily seated in the car. ‘I’ll not be a minute,’ I said, ‘there’s something I have to pick up.’ She nodded and sat there, with the Teddy on her knee. I slipped in next door to Sharpey. He was watching the box. ‘You ain’t got a pony handy?’ I said. He put his hand in his fob pocket, took out a little roll and peeled me five fivers off. ‘See you,’ I said. ‘Take care of yourself,’ he said. A good mate Sharpey. You can’t have everything.
It was funny that drive down to Maidenhead. I don’t think we spoke more than two words, yet it was real understanding all the way. Never attempt to make out what you’re not to a bird – because what you are is bound to come out sooner or later. And it’s that that she can get hold of. That’s why women often prefer a villain to the average man – at least they know what he is.
Lily just sat there looking straight in front of her. And for some reason best known to herself she would keep that Teddy bear on her knee. Of course, same as I say, it was a real beauty, this lovely nylon fur, and the woman who made it had struck it off to perfection. I had a funny thought kept coming to me – that in a way I’d been as close to Lily as old Harry had ever been. Not as close as husband and wife are, in their kids and their chat about families and all that, but as close inside as a man and woman are likely to get in this life. And I don’t mean the little kefuffle on the river bank. I mean that little moment when I flung her the bear and she came and leant up against me. You get closer in pain than in pleasure.
So there we are driving along this new road they’ve built, and I’m thinking how old Harry will one day come out of the sanatorium, and they’ll start their little life again, at home, with the three kids, and she’ll have to go about her daily routine, and they’ll eat together and chat together and watch the telly in the evenings, and put the kids to bed together, and have a little talk about the future, about the kids’ education, the price of meat and the winter sales, and then they’ll go to bed themselves, and old Harry might perform or he might not, and he’ll lie there beside her and he’ll think, if he thinks at all, it’s my little Lily who I know inside out, and then he’ll drop off to sleep content, and l
ittle Lily might drop off, or she might have one last memory and thought in her mind, about this day that’s just gone, and come to that, she might even remember our little three-minute fling that Sunday beside the bank of the Thames, since if you work it out, one goes with the other. It must be dead funny the things that go on in a bird’s mind as she lies there next to her old man at night. Yet it must happen to all of us at some time.
Now the odd thing is this – you might think a thing like that would come between husband and wife. I don’t think so. I think if they love each other it could bring them closer together. I’ll bet when she has that thought she won’t turn away from old Harry. She’ll turn towards him and put her arm round him and he’ll think: Blimey, old Lil’s got one of her lovey moods on her tonight.
As she was getting out of the car I gave her a kiss on the cheek, and slipped the five fivers into her pocket. I done it so nice, see, I couldn’t help admiring myself as I drove off: Alfie, I thought, you’re quite the little gentleman – in your own way, that is. It’s a cosy little feeling to get now and again is that, though it wouldn’t do for regular. I expect it would work out too expensive in the long run – for what you’d get out of it, if you see what I mean.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The trouble in this world is that you’ve got nobody to talk to. People only hold it against you, what you tell them. I was longing to find somebody, a mate or even a bird, that I could talk to about the things that had happened to me that day. I think your life only starts sorting itself out once you begin to have a good rabbit about it and put it into words; on top of which look what you get off your chest at the same time. Now for a talk like that to come off you’ve got to have a good listener – and it can either be a good mate or a complete stranger. If it’s a stranger, it’s got to be somebody you’ll never meet again, and if it’s a mate, he’s got to be prepared to forget the whole thing once you’ve told him. You don’t want him to keep bringing it up. You only tell him to shift the load. You don’t want to take it back again. But somehow in these days nobody seems to want to listen. I suppose what it amounts to, they’ve all got troubles enough of their own. Not only that, but when you get down to it we never listen to anybody but ourselves. Leastways, I hardly ever do. Course, had I told Sharpey and Perce I know exactly what they would have said: All right, they’d say, you put her up the club – but she asked for it – and you behaved real decent, didn’t you, you helped her out. What more can a man do? It’s exactly what I’d have said myself if it had happened to some other geezer instead of me. But when it happens to you, you get to know things they can never know.
Now about nine o’clock that same evening, I’ve driven back to London but I find I can’t face going into my own gaff. Not alone. I’ve still got the memory of this little dead thing on my mind. Well, not the memory – I’ve more or less buried that when I buried him – but I’ve got this dark little lump of cold grief or something settled over my heart. It could, of course, be wind, since I’ve hardly eaten all day. Just the same, I reckon it’ll take a bleeding good Maclean’s powder to move that little lot.
Now I didn’t want to wander back on to my own stamping ground in case I should run into Sharpey or Perce or any other mate, so I just stop the car on the Embankment, just there opposite Scotland Yard, where you can look across the river to the County Hall, the Festival Hall and all that other stuff they’ve put up there. So I lean over the Embankment wall and look down at the Thames that’s going out. I find it very soothing to the eyes seeing that water flow by. Apart from the load of rotten rubber goods that go floating by, sometimes you’ll see as many as a dozen, the odd one about a foot long, slipping by like a narrow-gutted ghost, all that’s left from some young couple’s minute or two of sealed-off passion. It makes you think. And whilst I’m looking down at these and other little signs of London life going by, the odd dead cat and so forth, I begin to realise a very funny thing: I have that Ruby behind my mind.
Now who’d have thought a great big lustbox like that would worm her way into a man’s feelings – let alone mine! Thinking it over, however, whilst she might have looked a hard case to some, that was only a front, and underneath, when you got a glimpse of it, she could be real mumsie. And same as I say, she was in beautiful condition. And that’s not a thing to be sneezed at in these days. They don’t come riper than Ruby. Know what, I’m beginning to think she was beautiful. I mean it’s not in the eyes you see beauty, it’s in the hunger of your poor bloody heart. If that’s not coming it too strong.
Then I begin to wonder is this love lark really worth it. I mean, when I look back on my little life, and I think of the birds I’ve known, and of all each one of those little birds has done for me, and of how little I’ve ever done for them – yet they couldn’t have cost me more or took more out of me if I’d given them everything I had. That’s the rub. The feelings have got to be drawn out of you one way or another, so it’s as well to hold nothing back at the start. With birds it’s as well to give – give – give; it’ll work out cheaper in the long run.
As I was standing there I looked up and there I saw one geezer coming along eyeing me, and as he got nearer I thought – poor old sod, he’s queer, and then the thought half struck me as he went by, looking a bit sad like some of them do, like they were always on the lookout for something they know they’ll never find, and if they do find it they know it won’t last, and same as I say, the thought went through my mind how many a young bloke like me might go over, if you see what I mean, and look round for one of these bent old boys who was rich, and who would take him in, give him a home, buy him his gear over in Jermyn Street or somewhere, shirts made to measure and all that caper, and make a fuss of him, perhaps set him up as his chauffeur, and see he was never short of a tenner, and at the same time relieve him of his responsibilities. Not that you have that many if you’re like me. I mean it looks such an easy number for any goodlooking young layabout a life like that, that I’m only surprised more don’t go in for it. Mind you, for a start you’ve got to be a bit bent yourself underneath to take up that way of living, otherwise just imagine how horrible it must be at certain times. Another snag is this – if a bloke’s queer it’s odds-on he’ll hate parting with money. It’s not only that they don’t like parting, but into the bargain they want to have you around, and to keep you on a string. They work it out that the more they give you the less dependent on them you are. Leastways that’s been my experience – such as it’s been. And it’s a dead cert that the odd queer who has a generous heart will already have been lapped up by some young villain, and will have been turned over more than once.
So I put that thought aside, and I think to myself, as I lean over the Embankment wall and watch old Father Thames steaming by, look at me now! I’ve got some money, haven’t I, and I’ve got a few good suits, a fair car, and I’ve got my health back. But I haven’t got my peace of mind. And if you haven’t got that you’ve got nothing.
There’s one certainty: I’ll go no more a-birding. I suppose I’ve just got to sweat this little lot out of me one way or another – what they call suffer it through. But what’s the answer? That’s what I keep asking myself. I suppose it’s what everybody in this life is asking themselves.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Those sort of feelings about is-your-life-worthwhile don’t half knock it out of you. They’re worse than a day’s graft. Especially if you’re not in training for them. So what do I decide to do but cross the frog and slip into a pub down a side-street opposite the House of Commons. Now, I’m just having this quiet drink, a Worthington as a matter of fact, which I don’t like the taste of all that much, but being Sunday I didn’t want to pint it, and it is a strong drink, and somehow it always do make the bloke behind the bar look up a bit when you order one of them, leastways that’s the impression I’ve got. Now let me see how it was. Yes, I’m drinking this when I spot a woman’s back in a little cubby recess at the side. I know those shoulders, I think; I look a bit closer
and guess what – it’s only Siddie!
She’s sitting there on her jacksie, reading one of these colour things out of a newspaper – the Sunday Times Supplement or whatever they call it. It’s got one geezer on the cover with a stocking over his face. I can’t understand why she hasn’t got a bloke in tow. So I creep up close, don’t I, and stoop and whisper into her ear: ‘Suck one of these mints, Siddie, so he don’t smell your breath!’
She turned and stared up at me like I was a ghost from the past. That’s the best I can put it. And once she’s recognised me I can see from the look in her eyes that she’s debating inside herself what line to take with me: the brush off or the half welcome. So I clinch it, don’t I. ‘Siddie,’ I said, ‘you look marvellous! You look younger than ever. How do you do it? Cor, that’s a lovely bit of Musquash’ – and I stroke her coat. ‘Course you always was a snazzy dresser.’
Naturally, in the middle of all this she comes out with something about: ‘Alfie, I wouldn’t have known you!’ But I decide to cock a deaf ’un to that. I mean I’m not sure how she intends it. So I ride it.
‘What are you having?’ I said. ‘The usual – vodka and tomato juice?’
‘I’m waiting for somebody,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and he’s arrived.’
‘He hasn’t,’ she said. ‘He’s a buyer from the firm.’
‘You were never one to wait for a man, Siddie,’ I said.
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