A Prodigal Child

by Storey, David;

  ‘You haven’t done anything you shouldn’t, have you?’ Mrs Morley inquired, this side of her husband’s character a mystery to her.

  ‘You never know if I shall.’

  ‘I doubt if you’d get special privilege by knowing Mr Foster,’ Mrs Morley said. ‘They’re not allowed to use the law like that.’

  As it was, in the evenings and at weekends, Morley scavenged the half-completed houses for odd bricks and lengths of wood and shovefuls of cement, which he brought back to the house in buckets, making paths, building a trellis himself, erecting a barrier to keep back the coal in the coal-house outside the back door.

  ‘He’ll not pinch me for that,’ he would say whenever Mrs Morley complained about the amount of material he did bring back. ‘It’s stuff they’ve thrown away, for one thing, and I gave him a bit of the wood, for another.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him where it came from,’ his wife replied.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But he’s a good idea.’

  Mr Foster never accompanied Mr Morley and Mr Patterson to the Spinney Moor Hotel and, largely because of this, Mrs Morley saw his influence as a more wholesome one on her husband than that of their other neighbour.

  ‘He never drinks,’ she would say. ‘Yet he’s perfectly happy.’

  ‘His father wa’re a great tippler,’ Mr Morley said.

  ‘How do you know that?’ she asked.

  ‘He told me.’

  ‘At least he’s learnt his lesson. Like Alan will, no doubt.’

  ‘He’s nought to be afeared of in me,’ Mr Morley said.

  ‘The amount you drink at times,’ she said, ‘he’ll be bound to notice as soon as he gets older.’

  Yet Morley had gone to some lengths to curtail his drinking; for one thing, once the household bills were settled, and their way of living more certain, he had very little money left to spend at the Spinney Moor, or at the Three Bells on his way home from work. Most weeks, from the Wednesday morning until the Friday evening, there was no money in the house, save a shilling for the electric meter and three pennies for the gas. ‘Maybe I should have been a bobby,’ he would say, looking over at the contented household on the other side of the garden fence. ‘They’re set, you can see, for a happy life.’

  ‘At least, he saves his money. We never save a penny,’ Mrs Morley said.

  ‘What’s the point o’ saving?’ Morley would inquire. ‘Are you going to be happier in a fortnight than you are today by saving a couple of bob each week?’

  ‘At least you’ll know where you stand and you’re not worrying from Monday till Friday that you’ll have enough to see you through.’

  ‘We’ll have enough,’ he replied, yet, at the end of the week, when he received his wage, he would be working out new ways of siphoning off a coin, if only a shilling, so that his evenings at the Spinney Moor should not be further curtailed.

  ‘You’re a family man. Not like Patterson. He has no children.’

  ‘He’ll be having some. Don’t worry. Then he’ll complain.’

  ‘Are you complaining because you have a child?’

  ‘I’m complaining about nought,’ Mr Morley said. ‘All I’m saying is, he’ll get fastened up.’

  ‘Is Mr Foster fastened up?’ she asked.

  ‘He has no need to be. He’s content with what he has.’

  ‘Aren’t you content?’

  ‘It’s that I can’t see the logic of waiting for tomorrow to enjoy what you can just as easily enjoy today.’

  ‘It makes nothing of life,’ Mrs Morley said. ‘It makes it all spending, without thought and reason.’

  ‘To me, it makes common sense,’ Mr Morley replied. ‘A second wasted is a second lost.’

  ‘A penny saved is a penny wiser.’

  ‘You’ll be saying the same at eighty, if we live that long.’

  ‘Everything we’ve got here is what I’ve saved,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve asked Spencer for more,’ he told her for, prior to moving to the new house, he had asked Spencer for a rise, only to be refused, and to be offered, in recompense, the loan of the cart.

  ‘Perhaps you should get another job.’

  ‘What other job?’

  ‘At Chatterton’s: sheet-metal working. Engineering.’

  ‘I could never work indoors,’ he said. ‘I’m used to being in the open. I’ve alus been in the open. I don’t think there’s ten week I’ve lived in barracks, for example, in the army: nearly all the time I wa’re under canvas.’

  ‘You’ll get no money at Spencer’s. There’s no money in farm-work,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Maybe I’ll look round for another farm.’

  ‘No farm pays more than another. They have it settled,’ she said, ‘between them.’

  ‘I’ll think of something, don’t worry,’ he told her.

  Yet it wasn’t Mr Morley’s nature to worry long, and it wasn’t his nature to hold a grudge, or to remember the conclusion of an argument for more than twenty-four hours. By the end of the same week he was looking at his wage packet again and thinking of what excuse he could make to open it and extract a shilling.

  Beyond Mr and Mrs Foster lived the Shawcrofts: a father and a mother and a baby in a pram, together with a second child a little older than Alan. Shawcroft worked at the coke ovens at the edge of the town, a slim, thin-featured man, dark-haired, his wife even smaller and darker than himself. The garden at the back was left unattended, weeds growing in profusion as far as the fence. In the evenings the couple often quarrelled, the child crying in the pram, the other child screaming, the voices of the father and the mother calling from the open door.

  ‘At least we haven’t reached that stage,’ Morley would say, picking up Alan.

  ‘Nor are we likely to,’ Mrs Morley said.

  ‘I suppose one morning we’ll find he’s killed her,’ Morley said.

  ‘Or she’s killed him.’

  ‘More than likely.’

  Yet the unease caused by the Shawcrofts’ arguments was absorbed by the greater feeling of confederacy which united the tenants of the estate, neighbours calling to neighbours once the first few days of strangeness had passed, a sense not only of being pioneers, occupying land which had never been lived on before, but the feeling that theirs was a common venture, uniting people who had never been drawn together before. Beyond the Shawcrofts came the O’Donalds, who owned a cycle shop, and, beyond the O’Donalds, with their two young children, were the childless Harrisons, of whom the wife worked in an office and the husband as a postman. Beyond the postman lived a cobbler and, next door to the cobbler, the Barracloughs, with four young children, the husband employed as a painter by the Corporation.

  The houses, on completion, were steadily filled; the gardens were dug; children played in the field and brought back news to their parents. Sheds were built, hens appeared, a motor bike was tested in one of the gardens. At the bottom of Spinney Moor Avenue the row of shops was finally completed and, in the space between the shops and the Spinney Moor Hotel, the foundations of a cinema were being laid out. On Sundays the bell tolled from the church and each weekday morning crowds of children ran up the narrow roads to the school and in the evening came running down again: the sounds of their voices, calling, came out across the slope each playtime, the flood of sound, ebbing and rising, marking the intervals of the day for the women in the houses.

  Over the summer Morley was late home each evening as Spencer took in the harvest; he worked Saturdays and Sundays and, when he did come home, he would sit on the step and chide the tall figure digging in the adjoining garden, ‘By go, I could be a bobby myself, the hours they have to work.’

  ‘It’s the responsibility, Arthur,’ came Mr Foster’s reply.

  ‘I could have the responsibility as well, walking about all day wi’ nought to do.’

  ‘You’ll soon be sitting back when you’ve done your stooking,’ Mr Foster would add.

  ‘It’s threshing after that. Then ploughing. Then sowing. There�
�s ne’er a day left free from now till Christmas. Aye,’ he would call into the open back door, ‘I think I’ve missed my profession, love.’

  ‘Oh, he’s always complaining, Sam,’ Mrs Morley would call, more familiar with Mr Foster on these occasions than was her husband.

  ‘Sam, is it, now?’ Mr Morley would call. ‘I can see I’ve been spending too much time away from home,’ Mr Foster laughing, leaning on his spade, and adding, ‘He’s caught us out, Sarah. Might as well admit it.’

  ‘That’s the way the flag is flying, and I never saw it,’ Mr Morley would add. ‘By go, no wonder he’s alus home. Hear that?’ he would call to Mrs Foster. ‘Never mind his stripes and his policeman’s collar: just see which way his boots are turned.’

  Yet, if the bantering scarcely concealed Morley’s resentment, once inside the house and the door closed he would complain more vehemently about the hours he worked. Sometimes he wasn’t home until after dark and, if not stopping at the Three Bells, by the time he reached the Spinney Moor he would be too tired to resist the temptation and, once inside, he would empty his pockets across the counter, arriving home to find his supper cold, and with scarcely enough energy to go to bed. One night he lay till morning in the chair by the fire and another morning he slept so late that by the time he got to work he had to feign an illness. He was back at the bar the following night.

  One evening he arrived home to find the house in darkness. Assuming Sarah to have gone to bed, he stepped into the scullery and took off his boots and looked round for his supper. There was nothing in the oven and the fire was out: all the pans were on the shelf.

  He went upstairs, surprised to see the bedroom door still open.

  The door to Alan’s room was also ajar: he looked inside; the cot was empty.

  The double bed in the front bedroom was still unmade.

  He looked in the bathroom, in the spare bedroom at the back, returned downstairs, put on the lights, looked at the mantelpiece, the sideboard and the table, examined the cupboard in the scullery, re-opened the back door and looked out at the garden.

  He knocked on the Fosters’ door.

  After an interval the lock was turned and the bolt drawn back.

  Mr Foster appeared in his pyjamas, a raincoat over the top.

  ‘You haven’t seen Sarah?’ Morley asked.

  ‘I haven’t, Arthur,’ Foster said. ‘I’ll ask the missis.’

  Mrs Foster came down; Alan and Mrs Morley had not been seen that afternoon.

  ‘She must have gone to her mother’s, or one of her brothers’, and missed the last bus,’ Morley said. ‘I’m sorry to have got you up.’

  ‘That’s all right, Arthur,’ Foster said, and gazed out at him as he went back to the house.

  After waiting an interval he locked the back door and wheeled out his bike.

  He rode slowly along Town Road, the street lamps lit above his head.

  Close to the town, before the last steep rise to the central hill, he turned to his right along a thoroughfare which led, narrowly winding, between mills and factories, to come out by the river; the gas lamps here were more dimly lit. Passing the ends of several narrow streets he turned into one adjacent to the unlit structure of a mill and, propping his bike against one of the lamps, he knocked at a door.

  A light showed in a window overhead.

  A tousled head leaned out.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘It’s Arthur.’

  The window was lowered.

  As he stood by the door to knock again a bolt was drawn and the door pulled back.

  His mother-in-law, a small, grey-haired figure with, in the darkness, a grizzled face, gazed out. She hadn’t put in her teeth and stood with one hand on the doorpost, barring his way.

  ‘She doesn’t want to see you.’

  ‘Is she here?’

  ‘She’s asleep.’

  ‘Is Alan here?’

  ‘He’s been in bed for three or four hours. So have I,’ she added.

  Below her shawl was a night-gown and, below the night-gown, a pair of slippers.

  ‘She came because she’s fed up with your drinking. I told her afore she wed but she never listened.’

  ‘Nay, I’ll come in,’ Morley said, making to force his way in the door.

  ‘You’ll never,’ the mother said. ‘I’ll call the bobby.’

  ‘Call him,’ Morley said and forced his way through his mother-in-law’s arm. ‘Where is she?’ he added. ‘In the room at the back?’

  But already a figure had appeared on the stairs: she was in her night-gown and had evidently come prepared. Only her silhouette was visible, for the lights had not been put on in the kitchen into which the door of the house directly opened.

  ‘I don’t want to see you,’ she said.

  ‘You left no message,’ Morley said. ‘What am I supposed to think, wi’ you and Alan gone?’

  ‘You can think what you like.’

  ‘I wa’ never drunk.’

  ‘As close as makes no difference.’

  The door to the street had been closed by the mother. She said, ‘I want him out of here, or you both go back together,’ passing her daughter on the stairs and closing the door on the landing.

  ‘Are you coming back?’ Morley asked.

  ‘I’m staying here.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll take Alan,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll do no such thing.’

  ‘I’m having him,’ he said, yet he stayed on the stairs, craning up at his wife whom, in the greater darkness, he could scarcely see.

  ‘I want you out of here,’ she said. ‘I’ll never forgive you if you wake him.’

  ‘Are you coming back tomorrow?’ Morley said, seeing no way out of the dilemma except by using force.

  ‘No.’

  ‘When are you coming back?’

  ‘I’m not coming back.’

  ‘What have I done, Sarah?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve warned you. I’ve begged you. You drink every last penny you can get. You leave us with nothing. I’m not having it any longer.’

  ‘I’ll give it up.’

  ‘I’ve heard that before.’

  ‘I’ll give it up definitely.’

  ‘I’m not going to argue about it any more. If you try and take Alan I’ll go to the police. Mrs Patterson knows how much you drink.’

  ‘You’ve been talking to her about your husband, have you?’

  ‘She can see enough as it is.’

  ‘Aye, and I thought Patterson wa’re a friend,’ he added.

  ‘He is. But he drinks in moderation, and only once a week.’

  ‘Aye, we can’t all be angels,’ Morley said.

  He turned to the door.

  ‘In that case, I s’ll go back home.’

  He thought, ‘I can go and join the army tomorrow and be damned to all of them. No more Spencer, no more wukking, no more nagging. I can drink as much as I like, for as long as I like wi’out anybody nor nobody butting in.’

  Yet, once in the street, the smell of the malt-kilns and of the dark presence of the mill soon brought to him the realization that he couldn’t go back: the army was a young man’s game and, towards the end of it, he’d got sick of it and, Sarah apart, he’d wanted something settled.

  In any case, he concluded, there was Alan: he couldn’t leave someone, bearing his name, who was all the world to him, in a place like that.

  He couldn’t leave Sarah, either, for, as he got on the bike and looked back at the house, he thought of all the things he might have said: ‘Haven’t I done everything for her? Haven’t I kept a job? Haven’t we got a home? Haven’t I looked after her like a husband should?’

  He got back to the house and made some food, set the alarm and went to bed.

  Yet he scarcely slept. He was up again at six and already on his bike by half-past, pedalling back once more towards the river, knocking on the door in Hasleden Street, waiting for it to be opened, this time by his father-in-law, a tall, willo
wy man who stepped aside and said, ‘Nay, it’s nought to do wi’ me. She wa’ warned afore she wed,’ his overalls already on and his snap-bag packed, leaving the house for the mill only moments after Morley had entered.

  He strode up to his wife’s bedroom at the back and could hear her talking already to Alan.

  When he opened the door she looked up in surprise: she was still in bed and Alan, in pyjamas, was sitting on the cover.

  ‘Are you coming, or do I carry you?’ Morley said, antagonized by the sight of the two of them together and by the cup of tea which, steaming, he saw had been placed on a chair by the bed.

  ‘I’m not coming back, and you won’t carry me,’ she said. ‘I’ll report anything you do to the authorities,’ she added.

  But for the child, he might have grabbed her.

  ‘Come on, Alan,’ he said. ‘We’re going home.’

  Yet the child continued to cling to its mother.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s lift you.’ He tugged the child and it cried in terror.

  He heard his mother-in-law in the door behind. ‘You’ll kill her.’ He felt the woman’s fist across his back.

  He went back to the door.

  He wiped his face, watching his wife bowed over the child, she crying, the boy screaming.

  ‘Tha s’ll be home tonight, or I’ll come again.’

  He went to the stairs.

  ‘You can tek him where you like. I’ll find you.’

  His legs tremored: he could scarcely mount the bike. He stopped at the end of the street and held his head. ‘What have I done now?’ he thought. ‘Does she want me to be like Patterson next door, or Foster? Nothing but a woman’s man?’

  His eyes full of tears he cycled from the town.

  ‘What’s up, Arthur?’ the farmer called, seeing him enter the farmyard early. ‘Clock got stuck?’

  ‘Aye, Mr Spencer,’ Morley said. ‘Just about.’

  In the evening he delayed returning home until it was almost dark. ‘The light’ll either be on or it won’t,’ he thought. He didn’t raise his head until he’d dismounted at the gate.

  The curtains were undrawn. No smoke came from the chimney: the scullery and the living-room were as he’d left them.