by Ted Lewis
I turned the car into the White Lion car park. It was early yet and I could pick my spot. Not that the White Lion had much of a carriage track. The trawlermen that did the real spending moved from spot to spot in taxis, so as not to let anything like a fatal accident interfere with their drinking.
I pulled on the hand brake and Eileen said, “What, are we going for another drink?”
“No,” I said. “At least, not here. We may have one in the studio. This is where I park the car. I have an arrangement with the pub.”
We got out of the Mercedes and splashed our way across the car park’s reflected neon. We rounded the pub corner into the spitting rain. Facing the pub was a sheer eyeless row of old warehouses. Rain sidled across their faces in great drifting sheets. Beyond the warehouses, further down the road to our right, was a level crossing. The gates were closed and a sluggish goods train, black-wet, trailed across the cobbled road. Eileen shivered and I took her arm and led her across the road towards the warehouses. I stopped at one of the warehouse doors and unlocked the padlock on the smaller door inset in the woodwork. Next to the padlock, on the brickwork, there was a sign that said, PETER KNOTT, INDUSTRIAL PHOTOGRAPHY.
I pushed the door inwards and leant in and found the light switch. Inside the loading bay and the string sacks of bananas were flooded with neon. I stepped back.
“After you,” I said to Eileen.
Eileen pulled a mock-nervous face.
“Bit creepy, isn’t it?” she said, tentatively lifting a nyloned knee to step into the ghastly light.
“The only thing that’s creepy in there,” I said, “is spiders.”
She withdrew her leg quickly causing her coat to fall open and her skirt to ride up and reveal even more thigh than was usual.
The dryness arrived in my throat and Eileen said, “Christ, I hate spiders, I really do. Can’t stand them. They make my skin crawl.”
“Shall I go first?” I said. “Then I can squash all such spiders that dare to cross your path as I go along.”
“Ugh,” said Eileen.
I stepped through the opening. The damp decaying vegetable smell immediately hit me and the cold of the stone floor seemed to chill my feet and my ankles.
I turned round and held out my hand and helped Eileen through the doorway.
“God,” she said, shivering, “isn’t it cold.”
I could see she was beginning to have her doubts. I smiled to myself. The surprise when she saw my studio would be more unbalancing than usual.
“Up the stairs,” I said, indicating the tall stairwell. The stairs themselves were rough planks put together in an open fashion that led without invitation up into the rank gloom of the upper storeys of the warehouse.
Eileen looked at the stairs.
“You’ve probably guessed,” I said. “It’s right at the top.”
PLENDER
The White Lion didn’t have any ice. They managed a piece of lemon that was all peel. I supposed that that was something. I took a sip from my glass. Fluff from the drying-up towel lined the dry part.
“Do you have a pay phone?” I said to the Mick.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Between the two bars. Next to the snug door.”
I went through a door with ornate opaque glass panes that carried flowery versions of the brewery’s name. I was in luck. The telephone directory had some pages in it. I found the Ks and then I found the Knotts. There were twenty or so of them. But only one P. A. Knott. Only one Peter Arthur.
I looked at the address: The Cottage, Corella. Corella was a river village that lay in the lee of the wolds, about twelve miles farther inland. A haven for the well-heeled businessman who considered the city’s richer suburbs suburban. A very nice little spot indeed, if you had the cash. The few locals that were left there must have been the greediest. The prices were fantastic by the standards of other places in the area. I knew that for a fact because I knew someone who’d bought a place there and I knew how much they’d paid.
Froy had lived there for nearly two years now. I closed the book and went back into the bar. I drained my drink and ordered another. While it was coming I looked at my watch. It was nearly nine o’clock. The meeting at Peggy’s should have been getting under way by now but it didn’t look as though I was going to make it back there to keep an eye on things. Not now. Now that I was about to renew my acquaintance with my long lost mate, Peter Arthur Knott.
It was funny, but I could remember the day, the precise kind of day, the day we first met. Sunshine. Golden August sunshine. No clouds in the sky, the dust in the streets of the small rural town warm and static in the drowsy morning. The smell of the engine of the big green removal van outside number forty, the wet shirts of the removal men, the newness of the three piece suit. And the car. The shiny maroon car. An Austin—with a sparkling chrome grille. The first car in the street, at least as far as my short memory had gone back. A lot of people hadn’t liked that, I remember. Particularly my mother’s mate, Mrs. Parker, our next door neighbour.
“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Parker, arms folded. “You can tell. Consider themselves a peg or two up from us.”
My mother filled the kettle again and sat down at the kitchen table and lit up. I wondered how Mrs. Parker knew, how she could tell. But my mother always agreed with Mrs. Parker, and so that meant Mrs. Parker was never wrong.
I wandered over to the side window and looked out at the shimmering road beyond the green corrugated shed. The omnibus edition of Dick Barton was droning out of the wireless in the dining room but this morning I was too interested in what was going on across the road.
A minute or two ago a boy of my age had come out of number forty with a bat and ball and had begun to play on the path that ran down the side of the house, bouncing the ball off the wall with the bat. Once he’d got started he bounced and returned the ball without making a mistake, not even the smallest slip. The regular sound was hot and hollow in the still of midday.
Then a different movement caught my eye on my side of the street. Robert Rankin appeared in his garden, bouncing a tennis ball on the iron-hard ground, pretending not to notice the activity over the road. Robert Rankin was second in command in my gang. He was a pretty good fighter, the best I’d got, and he’d found us our hideout in the fields at the back of the crescent as well. Obviously he’d come out to draw the interest of the boy across the road so that he could find out what he was like and report back to me all that there was to know about him. Then I’d decide whether he was fit to join our gang, whether he was going to be friend or foe, and if he was friend, what role he was to play in the gang’s structure. I hoped he was a good fighter; we needed some. The Butts’ Road gang had raided our hideout a few days ago and we were bound to strike back. We would use the new kid if he was any good. And if he wasn’t then we could have some fun with him. You could always find some kind of a game to play with sissies.
So I watched and waited to see what happened. The sounds of the different bouncing made a drowsy pattern in my ears. The new boy made no attempt to speak to Robert, but it was obvious he’d seen him because once the ball had bounced wrong and run loose, and to pick it up, the boy had had to walk in Robert’s direction, facing him, but it was as if Robert wasn’t there. The boy just went back to his bouncing. So eventually Robert left his garden and went into the road and kicked the ball against the curb so that he had to rush up and down in the road to collect it every time.
The new boy stopped his game and walked over to the fence and watched Robert for a while. Now Robert just carried on with his game. Eventually the new boy said:
“Are you all mad-heads round here?”
The sound of his voice echoed round the empty crescent. His accent was different to ours. Robert trapped the ball and looked at the new boy.
“You what?” Robert said.
“I said are they all mad-heads round here?”<
br />
“No,” said Robert. “Why?”
“Don’t you know it’s cricket season?” said the new boy. “You can’t play footog this time of year.”
“Yes you can,” said Robert. “You can play it when you like.”
There was a silence while the two of them looked at each other.
Go on, Robert, I thought, ask him if he can fight. Ask him.
The new boy said, “Do you like Dinkys?”
Robert stared at him.
“Do you?” said the new boy.
“Some of ‘em,” said Robert.
“Do you want to see mine?” said the new boy. “I’ve got thousands.”
“Where are they?” asked Robert.
“In the house.”
Liar, I thought. That’s why he’s said they’re in the house. That way he can’t prove it: kids didn’t often go in each other’s houses round here. Parents didn’t like it.
“Bet you haven’t got thousands,” Robert said.
“Bet I have,” said the new boy, and turned away from the fence and walked towards his house. He stopped in the open doorway and turned back to look at Robert.
“Are you coming in, then?” he said.
I drained my glass again. I smiled to myself as I saw in my mind’s eye the exact movement of Knott’s head as he’d beckoned Robert into number forty. That had been the beginning of it all, that little inclination. The beginning of his takeover. By the end of the summer the gang that had been mine was his. So I’d had no choice but to become his best friend but it wasn’t until the grammar school that I’d really begun to hate him.
KNOTT
Click.
“Right, if you can just move your arm a little, yes, lower, that’s it, more to the left, that’s better . . .”
Click.
She’s loving it. You can tell. Brought the roses to her cheeks. She’s being a somebody. This is a real event.
Click.
“Now, if you lean forward a bit, put your arm back up again as if you’re looking out for someone, someone in the distance, that’s it . . .”
Click.
I expect she’s wondering when the pass is coming. Any minute, I expect. The next time I get in close. I can see her tremble a bit when she thinks I might be moving in.
But she’s got the wrong idea.
“Fine,” I said, putting the Yashica down. “Okay. Have a break. I want to set up the Rollei and change the background.”
Eileen relaxed and leant against the plaster sundial while I slid the photo-mural of the thatched cottage out and replaced it with a kitchen interior.
“Drink?” I said, dusting off my hands.
“Well . . .” said Eileen.
“Drink,” I said and poured two more.
As I poured I watched Eileen. She was still taking in the place, her eyes flicking from object to object. The initial impression hadn’t left her. She hadn’t had enough time to get over her surprise at finding a layout like this on the top of a smelly old warehouse.
“Have . . . have you had this place long?” she said as I passed her the drink. She was trying to sound as if she was in this kind of place every other day.
“No, not long,” I said. “A year or so.”
Since Kate and I had moved back up North. Since Kate’s old man had given me his catalogue contract. Since I’d understood what the word affluence really meant. And I always took a perverse pleasure in showing the place off; it always made me feel more guilty when I saw how it impressed the girls I brought up here. Reminded me that I was cheating on the person who’d made it possible: God knows I’d never have got what I’d got without her. Or rather without her old man. But as my mother said, I couldn’t have wished for a nicer father-in-law. As far as she was concerned he was the ultimate in family planning. Still, thanks to him, my mother could look on me as the success she’d always insisted I should become. Which suited me fine because it meant I appeared to be successful without actually having had to do anything about it, while at the same time I could indulge my guilt complex on the different aspects of the situation: not realising the potential my mother had encouraged myself and everyone else to see in me, marrying for reasons of class and money as a means to a successful end, and cheating on the reasons for my false success. But so long as appearances were kept up it didn’t matter how deceptive they were, as far as my mother was concerned. But then it had always been that way. Like that time when I’d been eight or nine . . .
Early evening, after tea. The high blue sky was still and quiet. The only sound was of Mr. Morris putting his motorbike and sidecar away in his creosoted shed, scraping his heavy studded boots on the rough cast concrete. I stood in the front garden and looked across the road towards the sound. Beyond the privet I could see the big black-coated figure of Mr Morris move stolidly across the threshold of his shed. I waited until he’d closed the door behind him. Then I opened the gate, trying not to let the latch click so that my mother might not come out and ask me where I was going. If that happened I’d have to lie, say I was over to Brian’s or Robert’s or Stewart’s, and if I said that that was what I was going to do, then I’d have to do it, while she waited and watched to make sure I did. Because she’d suspect me the minute I answered. She always knew when I was lying. And if I acted out the lie then I wouldn’t be able to meet Linda and, as she was already at the place we’d arranged, then not to go was unthinkable. I knew she wouldn’t agree to meet again if I didn’t turn up. She was that kind of girl. She behaved to suit herself and no one else.
I’d seen her cycle past our house five minutes before, slowly, lazily, not sitting on the saddle. That had been part of the arrangement, too. I was to look out of my bedroom window at six o’clock and if she cycled past I was to follow her on foot to Johnson’s Field.
I’d gone up to my room on time, full of dread, because to go upstairs except at bedtime was in itself worth suspicion, even more frightened in case Linda looked towards the house and my parents might see in her face what we were planning to get up to. But she’d sidled by without the flicker of a glance and so I’d gone downstairs again and let myself out of the front door which was also risky because to go out via the front door implied secrecy.
Once out of the garden and walking along the warm dusty pavement my fear was even worse. I had to push myself forward because I knew, I just knew, that if I met Linda my mother would find out. It was a terrible certainty but it was as if I were dreaming: I couldn’t turn back.
I rounded the corner of the crescent and turned into the lane that ran behind the high board fencing at the back of the gardens in my row. Johnson’s Field was on the other side of the lane.
I jumped through the gap in the hedge and cut diagonally across the field to the adjacent hedge where the three tall oak trees were, where the hedge was densest and lent itself to the transforming of bowers into dens. It was in one of these dens that Linda waited for me.
I crackled my way through the thick twiggy entrance and then suddenly found myself face to face with Linda in the still cool space of the den.
Linda was two years older than me, the only girl in the gang. She was as good at fighting as any of us boys, but in the games we played she usually had to be content to pretend to bandage the wounded, whether she was being a cowgirl or a knight’s lady. And as I loved her I always allowed myself to be wounded early on so that I could lay my head in her lap the way she insisted it was done, just like they did on the Saturday pictures.
But of course as leader of the gang I had no choice but to keep my feelings to myself. So when, one day on the way home from school, she’d ridden her bike along the curb next to me and suggested what she’d suggested then I’d been flooded with a mixture of dread and happiness. Linda loved me, that was obvious, otherwise she wouldn’t want to meet me alone. We could be hero and heroine together, unobserved; I would be able t
o be loving her without anyone laughing.
But the minute I stepped into the den fear fluttered at the bottom of my stomach. The expression on Linda’s face explained the real reason for our meeting.
“Hello, darling,” she said.
Darling. The way she said the word was smug, self-conscious, triumphant. The sound of the word made me feel sick. It was a horrible word, a word that brought laughter and derision whenever it was spoken on the Saturday morning screen. A word that shouldn’t be spoken to a boy. My parents never said it, never even acted what it meant, to me or to each other. It was a sissy word. I’d seen my parents exchange disgusted satisfied smiles whenever it was used on the radio. Their glances told me the word was nearly as dirty as swearing.
I didn’t answer Linda.
“First,” she said, “we’ll have a kiss.”
She reached for me and pulled me to her and we kissed, flat mouthed and awkward. The warmth of her face made me shudder. She stepped back.
“There,” she said, “now it’s as if we were married.”
I found my voice.
“Good,” I said. “I’ll pretend to be Jungle Jim and you can be my wife and prepare me a meal while I . . .”
It was no use.
“Oh, no,” she said. “That’s just a game. We can play at that any time.”
Very quickly she pulled her dress over her head. I stared at the stark whiteness of her vest and knickers.
She draped her dress over a thin low branch and then took the rest of her clothes off.
“Look,” she said.
I looked, amazed at the lack of anything to really look at. This was it. This was what boys and girls weren’t supposed to do together. It seemed so stupid. Now I’d seen what Linda was like, all the fuss didn’t seem to matter. The fear I’d been feeling disappeared. But only for a second because Linda said:
“You can touch me if you like.”
I stared at her, horrified. How could I? I couldn’t, not there. Besides, how? What did you do?
“Come on,” she said. “Look, like this.”