I went nervously into the lounge. Gran was sitting in her chair with a shawl over her shoulders, drinking weak tea and moaning composedly to show that she was still not herself. I breathed heavily with relief and went through into the kitchen, where my mother had started making scones.
‘Is she all right,’ I said gruffly.
‘As all right as she'll ever be,’ my mother said wearily, in her martyr's voice. I decided to let it go at that.
She nodded towards the parcel under my arm.
‘What's that?’
‘Books. Papers. Records,’ I said.
‘Where are you going with them?’
‘Chucking them out, like he told me to,’ I said, using my own martyr's voice.
‘Don't be silly,’ my mother said easily, and went on baking. I walked out of the house. The old man was still messing about in the garage.
Instead of walking down Cherry Row I walked up it, into Valley Gardens, along Valley Gardens into Moorside Gardens, and along Moorside Gardens past the builders’ huts and over the rubbish tip that led steeply down into Stradhoughton Moor.
Stradhoughton Moor was a kind of pastoral slum on the edge of the town. It was fringed on Moorside by the dye-works, Stradhoughton Town football ground, and some public lavatories. The centre of the Moor was paved with cinders, where generations had tipped their slag and ashes, and where the annual fairs were held. There was a circumference of sparse yellow grass where the old men walked in summer, and I took the path they had worn towards a pocket of stone cottages, mostly condemned, that huddled miserably together in a corner of the Moor. Behind the cottages Stradhoughton Moor rose steeply again, out of an ashpit, to meet the scraggy allotments and, beyond them, the real moors of Houghtondale, such as were illustrated in the Council yearbook. I intended to drop my parcel of calendars down a pothole.
I enjoyed walking here. Given a quiet day I could always talk to myself, and it was easy to picture the clifflike, craggy boundaries of the Moor as the borders of Ambrosia. The sun was still out, in a watery sort of way, and there was a hard, metal-grey shine on the afternoon. The faint waves of shouting, and all other noises, sounded remote and not very real, as though heard through a sheet of glass.
In Ambrosia, we were settling down to a shaky peace. The reactionary, Dr Grover, weakened it was true by his Quisling record but still a power to be reckoned with, had got hold of some letters I had written to Arthur, outlining our plans for taking over the state. Liz, potentially the country's first home secretary, was abolishing the prisons.
I had reached the broken-down cottages by now. ‘Mr President,’ I said aloud, negotiating the ashpit and wondering whether to drop the parcel of calendars in it to be found, soggy and disintegrating, like a baby's body in a shoe box. ‘Democracy is a stranger to Ambrosia. And yet this is a country of democrats. You know what this is?’ – I held up the gramophone record I had brought out with me – ‘It is a ballot paper. Mr President, I will not rest until we have democracy by vote in this, er, ancient land of ours.’
I scrambled up the ashpit, until I had reached the top of the Moor and was standing on the verge of grass surrounding the allotments. I looked down over the acre of cinders, across the lines of washing and the terrace-end pubs, the grandstand roof of the football ground advertising Bile Beans, and the black stone police station.
‘We will rebuild –’ I began in the ringing voice. I heard a slight crunching noise behind me, and turned round. A rough path of stone chippings led through the plots of beetroot and big blue cabbages towards the tufty moorland. Staggering along the path like some lost shepherd, doubtless living out his own private dreams as Dr Johnson or George Borrow or somebody, came Councillor Duxbury himself, dabbing his streaming eyes and clutching his gnarled old stick.
My heart missed a beat, and I wondered quickly how many beats it had missed this day, and whether it could only miss so many before you were dead, and if so how far was I off the total. There was nothing to dodge behind, unless I cared to jump back into the ashpit, but in any case he had seen me. I composed my face to look as though I wasn't doing anything, and tightened my grip of the suddenly enormous parcel of calendars under my arm.
Councillor Duxbury came flapping down the stone path, raising his stick in salute.
‘Afternoon, lad!’ he called in his rich, so-called Yorkshire relish voice.
‘Afternoon, Councillor!’ I called in the robust voice.
‘It's a sunny 'un, this! ‘Appen tha's watching t' football?’
‘Nay, ahm’ just bahn for a walk ower t' moor.’ I always talked to Councillor Duxbury in his own dialect, half-mockingly, half-compulsively, usually goading myself into internal hysterics when I thought how I would reproduce the conversation to Arthur later.
‘What's ta got theer, then? T' crown jewels?’ He pointed with his stick at my parcel, his old face set in the serious, deadpan expression that had won him his tiresome reputation as a wag in the council chamber.
‘Nay, old gramophone records,’ I said, wildly producing the one record I did have, as proof. He did not ask me where I was taking them.
‘Aye, ther' were nowt like that,’ he said. His memory had been jogged so many times by Echo interviews that he now regarded every statement as a cue for his reminiscences, and no longer bothered to add ‘when I were a lad' or ‘fot'ty year ago’. ‘Ther' were nowt like that. We had to make our own music if we wanted it, else go without.’ He rattled on as though he were himself an old gramophone that has just been kicked back into action. I was not sure that he knew who I was. Entirely lost in himself he began to mumble about the Messiah and I let him, full of frothy self-congratulation because I would be one up on Arthur when the next Duxbury routine came up.
‘No, ther' were nowt like that.’ He stopped at last to wipe his nose, making a ritual of it with a coloured handkerchief about the size of a bed-sheet. He paused between sniffs and shot me what he imagined to be a playful glance, the expression he always wore when he asked people how old they thought he was.
‘Does ta think ah could climb down yon ashpit?’
‘Nay, tha'd break thi neck, Councillor!’ I said, giving him entirely the wrong answer. He gave me a sour look and said: ‘Aye, well ah'sll have to manage it, whether or no. Ah'm bahn down to t' police station.’
My heart missed another beat, or rather ceased operating altogether for a second.
‘What's ta bahn down theer for, then?’ I told myself optimistically that if it were about me he would be going to the town hall, never mind the local police station. Besides, he didn't know who I was.
Councillor Duxbury chuckled. ‘We're pulling t' bugger down.’
I gulped with relief, although my heart was still at it. ‘That's not, is ta?’ I said, packing some incredulity into my voice.
‘Aye, we are that. All yon cottages anall, they're going. And they won't get council houses for three and six a week, neether.’
I shook my head in sympathy, and saw that he was going into another of his reveries. I transferred my parcel from one arm to the other.
‘It's all change,’ said Councillor Duxbury. ‘All change, nowadays. T' old buildings is going. T' old street is going. T' trams, they've gone.’
‘Aye,’ I said, sighing with him. ‘It's not t' same wi' t' buses, is it?’ One good shove, I thought, and he would be down at the bottom of the ashpit, where he wanted to be.
‘It were all horse-drawn trams, and afore that we had to walk. It's all change. T' old mills is going. T' old dialect, that's going,’ he said. I suddenly realized that he knew perfectly well that I did not talk in dialect all the time, and also that it was ridiculous to imagine that he did not know I worked for him. To prevent him saying whatever he might have been going to say next, I began to talk, looking desperately down over Stradhoughton Moor.
‘Well, progress is all very well,’ I said. ‘But it's a pity we don't have a Yorkshire tradition o' progress.’ I was trying to modify the dialect so that I could drop out o
f it completely within the minute. I nodded down at the police station. ‘I don't mind dark satanic mills, but by gum when it comes to dark satanic shops, dark satanic housing estates, and dark satanic police stations -’ I broke off, realizing that I had never worked out the end of this sentence. I looked at Councillor Duxbury for the feedline but he was away, staring glassily over the Moor.
‘– that's different,’ I concluded lamely. He did not seem inclined to speak. ‘And yet,’ I went on, grabbing half-remembered tufts of my Man o' the Dales conversation, ‘and yet we've got to remember, this isn't a religion, it's a county. We've, er -’
I tailed off again. Councillor Duxbury had the fixed expression that old men have when they are lost in their thoughts, or what they claim are their thoughts, not listening to a word I was saying. A quick gust of wind swept around our ankles. I opened my mouth to speak again, remembering another bit, and then suddenly, without moving, he carved straight into my monologue.
‘Tha's a reet one wi’ them calendars, i'n't ta?’
I blanched, rocked on my heels and nearly fell over the grass edge into the ashpit below. I looked into his face to see if there was any suspicion of a boys-will-be-boys chuckle, but he maintained his deadpan look as though he were telling wry jokes at a masonic dinner.
‘By, that's capped me theer, Councillor!’ was all I could think of to say.
‘Aye, and tha's capped me anall! Ah were reet taken back when Shadrack rang me upon t' telephone. Ah'd ha' thowt a lad like thee would have had more sense.’ He spoke easily and not sternly, like a Yorkshire butler filling in plot-lines in a dialect comedy. I fancied that he was peering with keen suspicion at the parcel of calendars, and wondered if it were true that there were wise old men and he was one of them. I didn't know what to make of it. Even if he knew I worked for him, I was surprised that he could distinguish me from Stamp and Arthur. I had a reckless impulse to tell him that I was Arthur and that he was getting the two of us mixed up.
I said nothing.
‘So tha's going to London, is ta?’ he said with mild interest, as though the subject of the calendars had been settled entirely to his satisfaction.
Hopefully, I said: ‘Aye, ah'm just about thraiped wi' Stradhoughton.’ I remembered too late that ‘thraiped’ was a word Arthur and I had made up.
‘How does ta mean?’
‘It's neither muckling nor mickling,’ I said, using another invented phrase in my complete panic.
‘Aye.’ The old man poked the ground with his stick, and said again, ‘Aye.’ I had no indication what he was thinking about at all. I tried hard to keep talking, but I could not think of a single word of any description.
‘Well tha's gotten me in a very difficult position,’ he said weightily, at last.
‘How does ta mean, Councillor?’
He studied me keenly, and I realized for the first time, with a sinking heart, that he was not as daft as he looked.
‘Is ta taking a rise out o'me, young man?’
I felt myself flushing, and found my whole personality shifting into the familiar position of sheepishness and guilt. ‘No, of course not.’
‘Well just talk as thi mother and father brought thee up to talk, then. Ah've had no education, ah had to educate myself, but that's no reason for thee to copy t' way I talk. He spoke sharply but kindly, in a voice of authority with some kind of infinite wisdom behind it, and at that moment I felt genuinely ashamed.
‘Now sither. We'll noan go ower t' ins and outs of it, tha's been ower all that down at t' office. But young Shadrack theer thinks ah ought to have a word wi' thi father about thee. What does ta say to that?’
‘I don't know,’ I muttered, hanging my head. I wondered how I could ask him, without actually begging for mercy, not to talk to the old man.
‘Well don't look as if tha's lost a bob and fun sixpence! Tha's no deead yet!’
I looked up at him and gave him a thin, grateful smile.
‘Straighten thi back up! That's better. Now sither. Ah don't know what ah'sll do. Ah'sll have to think about what's best. But sither –’ He gripped my arm. I did not feel embarrassed; I was able, even, to look steadily into his eyes. ‘Sither. Tha'rt a young man. Tha's got a long way to go. But tha can't do it by thisen. Now think on.’
He released my arm, leaving me feeling that he had said something sage and shrewd, although I was unable to fathom quite what he was getting at. He was stuffing his handkerchief into his overcoat pocket, preparing to go. I did not want him to go. I did not feel afraid. I felt a kind of tentative serenity and I wanted him to go on with his old man's advice, telling me the things I should do.
‘My grandma's poorly,’ I said suddenly, without even knowing that I was talking. But he did not seem to hear.
‘Ah'm glad to have had t' chance o' talking to thee,’ he said. He turned and began to make his way gingerly down the gentlest slope of the ashpit, feeling the way with his shiny stick. Half-way down he turned back awkwardly. ‘Think on,’ he said.
I looked down after him, only just beginning to realize that for the first time I wanted to tell somebody about it, and that I could very probably have explained it all to him. I had to resist an impulse to call back after him.
I stood there until he was safely on the grass perimeter surrounding the stretch of cinders. I had a feeling, one that I wanted to keep. It was a feeling of peace and melancholy. I was not at all afraid. I walked happily along the rough stone path through the allotments to the quiet moorland beyond, and even while I was burying the calendars the feeling was still with me.
7
THE Witch was already fishing in her handbag for an orange, but I was in a rare mood of optimism, as though I were starting a new life or something. We were on top of the No. 17 bus, bound for the Corporation Cemetery. I was humming quietly, and fingering two or three of Stamp's passion pills in my pocket. The Witch was fuming to herself over the approaches that had been made to her by various men in raincoats while she waited for me in St Botolph's Passage. Luckily for me the experience had put her out of mood for window-shopping.
Half-way to the cemetery, she was still going on about it. ‘There are some nasty people about.’
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘Have a passion pill.’ I held two of the little black beads out in the palm of my hand. ‘Energy tablets, they are,’ I added hastily, realizing what I had just said. ‘We always call them passion pills. They're supposed to give you energy.’
The Witch was digging her thumbnail viciously into the peel of her orange. The bus was passing a row of advertising hoardings.
‘Look, there y'are,’ I cried excitedly, clutching her sleeve and jabbing at the window. ‘Too late. It was an advert for them. P.P., they're called. That's why they're nicknamed passion pills. You're supposed to take two.’
The Witch, stuffing bits of orange into her mouth, gave me her pitying look. ‘What is the boy talking about?’ she said.
I put on the frank and open grin and held out the two black pills. ‘Very nice with fruit!’ I said in the persuasive voice.
The Witch made some heavy weather over a sigh. ‘Better humour the boy,’ she said with an attempt at mock-resignation. She took the two pills in her mouth and knocked them back with a slice of orange. ‘Satisfied?’
I sat back contentedly and lit a cigarette.
‘Fifth today.’
‘Last one,’ the Witch cautioned.
Life seemed temporarily good. We got off the bus at the cemetery gates and walked up the broad red-gravel avenue between the white gravestones. Sometimes, in expansive moments such as this, I could understand what the Witch found so fascinating about this place. In fact it sometimes fascinated me. It was open, tidy, and secure, like the campus in an American college musical. After the black, streaky tombs of St Botolph's churchyard there was something pleasantly normal about the symmetrical rows of neat headstones and the tidy oblongs of clean pebbles. All the people here seemed to have died a modern, healthy sort of death.
We strolled on to the grass verge between the graves, making our way to the public shelter outside the red-brick chapel at the end of the long drive. The Witch, completely in her element, darted busily from one grave to another, admiring the angels and the September flowers, and crying ‘Oh, look, pet, isn't it sweet!’ whenever she found a stone crib. From time to time she would stoop reverently over a headstone and read out one of the verses chipped in gold, square lettering.
With you dearest Mother and darling dad,
Happy were the years we had,
And it is comfort in our pain
You are now together again.
I listened to all this benevolently. So far as I was concerned, this was the scene where you see a close-up of a clock and the minute hand moves round a quarter of an hour to show the passage of time. Remembering the fiasco earlier in the day, I decided to give her a good twenty-five minutes this time, and she had quoted enough verses to fill an anthology before we reached the deserted shelter by the mock-Norman door of the burial chapel.
I got her snuggling up to me in the dark corner where we had carved our initials; that was the first step.
‘Happy?’
‘Mmmmm.’
I kissed her. She responded drowsily.
‘Barbara? Tell me, how do you feel?’
‘Contented,’ she said, squeezing up to me kittenishly.
‘You don't feel – you know, restless?’
‘No.’
I sat there stroking her sleeve, trying to get some action out of her. I put my mouth close to hers again, but she was messing about making little kissing noises with her lips, and it was impossible to get at her for any length of time.
‘Would you like another energy tablet?’
Billy Liar Page 9