The Rabbit

by Ted Lewis

  “Well,” I said. “It was just about the lorry. None of us were there to unbolt the tailboard and there was a row.”

  “So Arthur started it.”

  “No, Frank lost his temper.”

  “Why should Frank lose his temper? What happens on the platform isn’t anything to do with him.”

  “I don’t know. I suppose he thinks everything that happens down here is to do with him.”

  “Now look, Victor. If I don’t get from somebody exactly what happened just now I’ll be forced to read the situation at its face value.”

  The still heat of the shed hung heavy in the small space. I took a cigarette out and lit up.

  “Well, the thing was, what made Frank mad was the Websters and Duggie were mucking about when they should have been back at work.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, he just got mad.”

  “And how did Clacker enter into it?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Was he taking their side against Frank? Because if he was...”

  “No,” I said. “No, well, what happened was this, the Websters and Duggie were fighting with Jackson—”

  “Fighting?”

  “Well, you know, horsing about.”

  “No, I don’t know. They were either horsing about or they were fighting. What was it?” “Horsing about. And Clacker was about to break it up when Frank came and got the wrong idea. He thought Clacker was encouraging it. Then they both had words and that’s how it started.”

  My father walked by me and opened the door and called for Frank. Frank came in and closed the door behind him. I waited, sweating, to be found out in my lie.

  “Frank, what was going on before you and Clacker set to?”

  “Duggie and the Websters were playing about with Jackson.”

  “Playing about?”

  “They had his trousers down. Willie Webster was playing with him.”

  The skin on my father’s face tightened so much that his hat seemed to rise back from his brow. His eyes began to travel towards me but I looked at the floor.

  “All right, Frank,” my father said, clearing his throat at the same time as the words came out. Frank went out. The silence he left behind him was terrible. I didn’t want to comment on or even acknowledge what Frank had just said and I knew my father felt exactly the same way.

  Eventually my father said:

  “And you say Clacker was about to break it up?”

  I nodded.

  My father thought about it for a while.

  “That’ll do, anyway,” he said. “Send Frank in, will you? And tell Clacker to go back to the wagons.”

  I opened the door and walked into the different heat of the bright sunlight. Clacker and Frank were in much the same positions as they’d been in before.

  “My dad wants to see you again, Mr Peacock,” I said.

  “Hut’s like a cuckoo clock and I’m the bloody cuckoo,” Frank said, going back inside.

  “We’re to go back to the wagons,” I said to Clacker. Clacker looked at me for a moment and then went back to studying his other fist.

  “I’ll wait here,” he said.

  I leant against the bottom of the chute and thought that I might as well stay too. It wouldn’t be long before Frank’s insistence on his own version of the fight would convince my father of the truth.

  A few minutes later Frank and my father came out of the hut. Frank’s face was like thunder.

  “Now then, Clacker,” my father said, not seeming to be surprised we were still there, “I want no more of this fighting. If it happens again, you’re off. So we’ll leave it this time and you and Frank can shake hands and be done with it.”

  Clacker sneered at my father and then looked back at his fist and shook his head.

  “Clacker?” my father said when it became obvious to him that Clacker wasn’t going to extend his hand to Frank.

  “Oh, ballocks to him,” said Frank, and stamped off down the side of the kilns.

  My father was stumped for a moment.

  “Tell those three I want to see them,” my father called after Frank.

  “Is it all right to get back to work now?” Clacker said.

  “Yes, bugger off,” my father said angrily.

  Clacker grinned again and turned away and clambered up the chute.

  “What’s happening?” I said to my father when Clacker had gone.

  “Never mind that. Get back to the wagons with the other two.”

  I gave him a look and climbed the chute and went back to the wagons.

  Jackson was standing on the platform with his hands in his pockets. Clacker was working in the wagon that Jackson and I had been working in before. I didn’t want to get into the same wagon as Clacker either, so I took the barrow over to the flint tip and emptied away what few flints there had been lying in the bottom. I sat down on the edge of the tip and stared across the wheatfield and the fields beyond to the foot of the wolds. I must have been sitting there for about five minutes when Willie Webster appeared bicycling along the track at the edge of the wheatfield, towards the station house and the road. As he passed the tip he looked up at me and got off his bike and spat at the ground with all the force he could muster. Then he gave me a violent double V-sign and when he’d done that he got back on his bike and continued on his way down the track. Then I heard the sounds of my father climbing the chute. So I stood up and began to wheel the barrow back to the wagons. Our paths met just before my father got to his car.

  “I’ve just seen Willie Webster on his bike,” I said. “What’s happened?”

  “I’ve buggered him off, that’s what’s happened.”

  “You’ve sacked him?”

  “That’s right. I’m not taking lip from that sort, not at my age I’m not.”

  He got into the car and slammed the door and drove off.

  “What did he say?” Jackson said.

  I wheeled the barrow the rest of the way to the edge of the platform.

  “Did he say somebody’d got sack?”

  “Yes,” I said “He’s sacked Willie Webster.”

  “Hell,” said Jackson. “What for?”

  I shook my head and watched my father’s car as it dis¬appeared down the road.

  “I know as much as you do,” I said.

  Clacker gave one of his laughs.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “He knows as much as you do. Not half.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  Clacker shook his head.

  “I’m sure you don’t know,” he said. “Anyway, if he was going to sack anybody it should have been me. But he daren’t. That, and because he wants job doing. The fucking creep. He hasn’t the guts to send me down the road. And I don’t care whether you tell him or whether you don’t.”

  That evening, after tea, my father was in unusually good spirits. The reason for his good mood must have been the continued presence of Uncle Eddie, because normally in the evenings all he wanted to do was to fill the house with the shadow of his tiredness after the day’s work. At the table he was talkative and joking and afterwards, in the dining room, he didn’t even settle himself to go to sleep. He and Uncle Eddie talked and remembered old times and I was included in the conversation as though the previous evening and the events of the day had never happened. At one point I hap¬pened to go into the kitchen and I said to my mother:

  “What’s up with him all of a sudden? It’s like he’s lost six¬pence and found a fiver.”

  “Don’t ask him in case he alters,” my mother said.

  I sat down at the kitchen table and lit a cigarette. To¬morrow was Saturday. Janet’s party. As always, I’d been putting off getting the final approval for my staying over¬night beca
use the longer I waited for that approval the longer I could live in the falsely optimistic state which was fostered by the not knowing. But now it was time to take a deep breath and expel the anxiety by asking the question. The worst aspect of asking for this kind of favour was the guilt that the asking inspired. I always felt that if I was really an appreciative son, grateful for the way of life my parents had made available to me, there would be no need for me to put in these requests for extra-mural activities. And also that the kind of requests I made seemed to my parents to indicate a veering towards a way of life which was dark and nasty and yet in some way inevitable, somehow expected of me.

  So I asked my mother and I went through the usual charade of indirectness and half-promises and non-committal speculations until the permutations had been exhausted and it was left, as usual, that my mother would see what my father said, only this time a reminder of what had happened the night before was added to introduce a salutary note of pessimism.

  After my mother and I had played this game I went back into the lounge where the merits of the Bolton Wanderers, whom my uncle supported, were being compared with the merits of Manchester United, who were supported by my father. I knew and cared very little about football in those days, but for the sake of the impending decision I joined in and threw in a few names so that my father could be pleased that Uncle Eddie could witness that I was in some ways at least my father’s son.

  After a while the conversation lapsed and after some thought my father said to me:

  “What are your plans for tonight?”

  “I thought I might stay in,” I said, hoping that my father’s question wasn’t a way of opening up a discussion about the previous evening. In fact I had been trying to decide what I should do as the next step in resolving the situation between myself and Veronica, wondering whether to go round and try and talk her out of her embarrassing behaviour or whether to devise some stunning plan to bring her rushing back to me, like losing my sight or falling off Barton Cliff.

  “You’ve nothing fixed up, then?” my father said.

  I shook my head.

  “Fancy coming to the club with me and your Uncle Eddie?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The club. Me and your Uncle Eddie were thinking of going later on.”

  The invitation was quite incredible considering what had happened the evening before. It must have been down to Uncle Eddie. Either that or sacking Willie Webster had put him in a good mood.

  “Yes, all right,” I said. “What time are you going?”

  “Oh, not till about half past eight. Don’t want to get there too early.”

  Of course, the invitation wouldn’t have been complete without the addition of the cautionary note.

  Out in the hall, the telephone rang.

  “Who the hell’s that?” my father said, as he usually did, but again as usual, waiting for my mother to find out. The sound of her heels echoed on the hall tiles and then there was the sound of her telephone voice. After that there was a silence. The receiver rattled on the hallstand and the dining-room door opened.

  “It’s for you, Victor,” my mother said. “I think it’s that girl.”

  My heart fluttered like a moth and I got up, red-faced, to answer the phone.

  “Aye, aye,” said Uncle Eddie, sounding like Jimmy Wheeler. My father grinned, his expression half proud, half reproach¬ful. I stumbled round the curtain and into the hall and picked up the phone.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Hello,” said Janet. “It’s me. Was it all right to phone?”

  “Yes, sure, of course it was.”

  “Well, I was just ringing about tomorrow.”

  It suddenly struck me that she was phoning to tell me the party was off. My stomach felt like lead.

  “Oh, yes?” I said, my voice a little shaky.

  “The thing is, I was wondering what time you were think¬ing of coming. To Hull, I mean. What boat were you going to catch?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I can get one any time.”

  “Because you remember before we parted we were talking about From Here to Eternity, about how great it was?”

  I remembered it well. The Life room empty except for the two of us, great swathes of dusty afternoon sunlight stream¬ing through the enormous windows and giving the plaster casts a Renaissance glow, and the far-off sound of the city traffic down below.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, it’s on at the Tower again this week. It finishes tomorrow. If you came over early, if you wanted to, that is, we could go and see it, if you liked.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, that would be great. Terrific. Just let me think.”

  There was a train at five to one that connected with the one fifteen ferry. That meant I’d be in Hull at twenty-five to two. It would be a bit tight getting home from work and getting ready but I could just do it.

  “Yes,” I said. “I can be there before two, anyway. Where shall I meet you?”

  “What time does the boat get in?”

  “Twenty-five to two, about.”

  “Well, why don’t I meet you at the pier?”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “That’ll be really good.”

  “So I’ll see you tomorrow, then. At the pier at twenty-five to two.”

  She sounded almost as excited as I felt.

  After I’d put the phone down I didn’t want to be con¬fronted by Uncle Eddie or my father because a return to the generous yet reserved leg-stretching atmosphere would have been a comedown from the way I was feeling so I decided to go out into the garden. Luckily my mother and my grand¬mother were arranging fruit-jars in the larder, so I negotiated the kitchen without being seen.

  The garden was quiet and the high ivy-covered wall threw a soft shadow on the lawn and on the flower beds. I walked through the orchard gate and I climbed up on to the barn roof. The tiles were still warm and I looked over the tops of the fruit trees and the roofs of the houses on West Acridge to the river and the long low skyline of the city and its docks five miles away. I wondered what she was doing now, now that phone call had finished. Was she couched in some dining room ensemble with her parents, the atmosphere of her parents’ lives intruding on her feelings, or like me had she gone to a place of her own to extend the mood the phone call had created? The speculation was sweet, especially under the warmth of the evening sun, surrounded by the sounds of the back gardens.

  My father, my Uncle Eddie, and myself walked down the road. My father and Uncle Eddie were wearing dark suits and white shirts and their shoes reflected the late sunlight. I was wearing a sports jacket and a pair of grey flannels in deference to the occasion. The rate of our progress had a puritanical slowness about it, as if to go any faster would be to admit that there was an unbridled urgency in getting to the first pint.

  The streets were empty. We reached the Market Place and I looked over at the George corner. The light was already on in the bar that the boys and myself used, but it was difficult to see who was in there because of the double layer of net curtains at the window. I wondered if Don was taking Veronica there tonight. I smiled to myself. How stupid I’d been to worry about it. Against the expectations of to¬morrow, the situation was trivial. Odd that now I could feel so unaffected by it all.

  We crossed the Market Place and when we reached the club my father pushed open one of the polished oak double doors and we walked through into the broad badly-lit hall¬way. Rooms with closed doors lined the hallway and at the far end was another set of double doors and beyond these doors were the sounds of snooker. We walked down the hall and through the doors.

  There were six tables, all of them occupied. The ceiling was very high and the long triangular table lights struck me as being precarious, suspended as they were on thin wires that went upwards through acres of darkness. T
here was a raised platform about a foot high going round almost the whole of the room and on this platform there were benches, flush to the wall, so that the non-players could sit and watch the players. Apart from the lights above the tables the only bright light in the room came from the tiny curved bar in the far corner.

  We weaved our way through the tables, pausing now and then while someone made a shot, my father occasionally acknowledging one or other of the players, and finally we arrived at the bar. My father ordered the drinks while the visitors’ book was put out on the bar for Uncle Eddie and myself to sign. After that the drinks came and I looked round the room to see who I could see. I felt at ease, standing there in the soft light from the bar, looking out across the pleasantly enveloping greeny-brown gloom, breathing in the smell of beer and baize and leather and tobacco, in the presence of the two older men, being acknowledged by my father’s friends with a nod here and a wink there. The only other person in the room who was about my age was Barry Lee, the dentist’s son, who was a couple of years older than me and just about to go to Dental School. I’d never cared much for him and we’d never really mixed in school or out, but he was one of the select band of sons of profes¬sional men or tradespeople that my parents had always urged me to cultivate. It gave me great pleasure, looking at Barry, to think that within the month he’d be to all intents and purposes leaving the town without my ever being to him the way my parents had wanted me to be.

  After a while a table became free and the three of us had a game of snooker with Sid Curtis, one of the local builders. My father was a good player, my Uncle Eddie fair, whereas although I enjoyed snooker and played it fairly often, I was useless. But Sid Curtis was the best player in the club, and he was unfortunate enough to be partnered with me, and almost entirely because of me, we lost the game, making my father and Uncle Eddie look better players than in fact they were. To make matters worse, the table we were playing on was the one closest the bar, therefore the table with the biggest number of spectators, which made Sid Curtis even more angry about losing the game. He didn’t exactly break his cue or anything, but he never tried to hide his exasperation when I missed or played us into trouble. In the end I was glad to get off the table.