A Prodigal Child

by Storey, David;

  He made some supper and thought about going down to the Spinney Moor.

  Finally, he went up to bed and lay in the darkness, gazing at the pattern of the street light on the ceiling.

  He heard a knock on the door and when he went down he found his neighbour, Foster, standing there.

  ‘Everything all right?’ the policeman said. He was in uniform and had either just come off or was about to go on duty.

  ‘Aye. All right,’ Morley said.

  ‘The wife all right?’

  ‘Champion.’ The policeman glanced past him into the scullery. ‘She’s staying at her mother’s.’

  ‘We thought she might.’

  ‘Wi’ the harvesting I’ve scarce time to go back’ard or forr’ad,’ Morley said.

  ‘Aye.’

  The policeman stepped back from the porch.

  ‘If there’s anything we can do you’ll let us know.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll let you know,’ Morley said, nodding at Foster then closing the door.

  He stood listening to the policeman’s steps as they crossed to the adjoining house.

  ‘Nay, he’ll twig it,’ he thought. ‘But I s’ll not care.’

  Yet he lay in bed, his body curled to the shape of his wife.

  He imagined her lying in bed by the river. ‘Two more nights down theer, and she’ll come crawling back,’ he thought. ‘I shall be the winner.’

  But Sarah didn’t come back the next day or the next; Morley, on the fourth night, called in at the Spinney Moor and stayed till closing time, coming home on the arm of a man he had never seen before.

  ‘Can you see your way on from here?’ the stranger asked.

  ‘Let me tell you a secret,’ Morley said. ‘Never get wed.’

  ‘Never,’ the man acknowledged.

  ‘Not ever.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Word from a wise man.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Which way am I?’

  ‘Uphill, Arthur.’

  ‘See you tomorrow.’

  ‘All being well.’

  ‘May the sun always shine.’

  Lurching from side to side he set off up the road.

  The street lights reeled above his head and, when he reached his gate, he fell against the hedge.

  For several seconds he struggled to pull himself upright and finally fell through the thin sheaf of privet and knelt for a while on the halfgrown grass the other side.

  ‘All for nothing,’ he thought. ‘All for nothing-othing-o!’

  He pulled himself up, found the path, went round the side of the house then hunted for several minutes in his pockets to find the key.

  He looked about him; he retraced his steps: he got down on his knees and finally found the key beneath the hedge.

  He returned to the door, unlocked it and, having staggered inside, collapsed in a chair and, thinking some time later he might get up, he turned, collapsed and lay there oblivious until the sunlight, streaming through the window, finally woke him.

  He cycled to work with no money in his pocket and, on arriving at Spencer’s, he went directly to the door of the house. The barking of dogs came from inside and Spencer himself looked out.

  ‘I thought tha wa’ poorly,’ the farmer said, indicating that, whatever Morley might make of the rest of the day, he wouldn’t count it as a full one.

  ‘My wife’s left me,’ Morley said. ‘I’m in a bit of a fix.’

  It was the first mention he’d made of his private life, beyond the fact that he was married and had had a baby and had got a new house, and the farmer stood in the doorway uncertain what to make of it.

  ‘Come in, Arthur.’ He pulled the door wider and Morley stepped into the stone-flagged kitchen. Rabbits were strung up from hooks on the low-beamed ceiling: a fire burned in a black-enamelled grate.

  The dogs, barking, ran into the yard.

  ‘Fancy a cup of tea?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ Morley said.

  ‘How long ago has she gone?’

  ‘A week.’

  ‘A stiff ’un is it?’

  ‘I think so,’ Morley said. He sat at the large farmhouse table, at which he had only rarely sat before and, for no reason he could account for, began to cry: there was something enclosed about the gesture so that when the farmer’s wife, a slender, delicately-featured woman with thin, fair hair swept sharply back, paused at the door she glanced in with consternation, gazing at the robust figure standing by the table who, shrugging, merely shook his head.

  ‘Here go, Arthur,’ the farmer said. ‘Let’s have a cup o’ summat stronger.’

  ‘Nay, I s’ll never touch drink again,’ Morley said. ‘She left me for I could never ge’ past the Spinney Moor without stopping off.’

  Aware of Mrs Spencer, he dried his eyes, turning away, pulling out a handkerchief.

  ‘I’m sorry to have troubled you.’

  ‘Nay, it’s no trouble to me, lad,’ the farmer said, yet content to stand there, waiting for his wife to take command.

  ‘I shall make a cup of tea, Arthur,’ she said and Morley turned, blinking, rubbing his eyes. ‘I tell Mr Spencer, but he never listens.’ She gestured to the farmer as she made the tea. ‘He’s a Three Bells man, if ever there was one.’

  ‘In moderation.’

  ‘That’s not how a wife must see it,’ his wife replied.

  ‘That’s a fact.’ Spencer glanced at Morley and winked ‘Would you like the missis to have a word, and see if she can pull it through?’ he added.

  ‘If she won’t listen to me she’ll listen to no one,’ Morley said.

  ‘She might listen to another woman. Send a heifer in to butter another heifer up, but ne’er put in a bull,’ he added, laughing and finally sitting as his wife, protesting, came up to the table.

  ‘That’s no way to talk about it,’ she said when a child, crying, called from another room.

  ‘She’ll sort it. She can thread a needle from a tangle if you leave her long enough,’ the farmer said, pouring the tea himself. ‘Give her five minutes, and she’ll soon have the wife back home.’

  A child, scarcely more than eighteen months, was carried into the room: its pale-blue eyes, like those of Spencer himself, examined Morley gravely.

  ‘Here’s Margaret, fit for no one and nothing,’ the farmer said, leaning over to squeeze the chubby leg and then the chubby cheek and running his hand finally over the mop of light-coloured hair. He laughed, leaning back, adding, ‘Ought to eat with that, then, Arthur? I bet thy hasn’t had a nibble. If the missis,’ he concluded, ‘’ll rustle summat up.’

  That evening, when Morley got home, he could see from the angle of the curtains and the smoke from the chimney that the house was occupied, and as he came up the path at the side he could hear Alan playing in the garden and, rounding the corner, saw Sarah taking in washing from the line.

  She said nothing, and he said nothing either, following her into the house, taking off his boots, hanging up his coat, avoiding the clothes, stooping to the sink and washing.

  ‘Ought to eat?’ he said.

  ‘It’s in the oven.’

  He opened the oven door, getting out the plate, running with it, hot, to the table and thinking, ‘She believes she’s beaten me, and I suppose she has: nothing between us’ll ever be the same again.’

  When the child came in Morley nodded his head.

  ‘How go, Alan?’ he said, the child standing at the door. ‘Ar’t coming in?’

  Yet the boy, instead of answering, turned to the hall and from there called to his mother who, coming through, said, ‘Got everything you want?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, for the table had been set.

  ‘Mrs Spencer came to see me.’

  ‘She said she would.’

  ‘Pity you have to go telling everyone about it.’

  ‘I’ve told nobody,’ he said, ‘apart from Spencer. I’ve told next door you were away for a while.’

  He ate his food slowly, lo
oking at the table, at the plate, at the window, occasionally glancing back at the boy.

  ‘I’ve given up the drink.’

  ‘So Mrs Spencer told me.’

  ‘I swore Spencer I would.’

  ‘I thought you said you had.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘We should be all right.’

  ‘He’s upped me another two bob a week.’

  ‘Mr Spencer told me he had.’

  ‘I’d never have thought he’d play, but he has.’

  ‘It’s hardly more than a farthing an hour.’

  ‘Better than nought.’

  ‘Next to it, I’d say.’

  He didn’t add anything further.

  ‘Is your supper all right?’

  ‘Champion.’

  ‘I’ll take your plate,’ she said, ‘if you’ve finished.’

  He put out his arm to the boy and, after a moment, Alan came to him.

  He lifted him to his knee; his hair smelled freshly from a recent bath.

  ‘Now, then, how are we?’ he said, and kissed his mouth.

  The boy’s head turned, listening to the sounds from the scullery.

  Mrs Morley, in tidying the kitchen, had begun, faintly, to hum a tune.

  ‘What did Mrs Spencer say?’ he asked when she came back in.

  The boy, already, had slipped from his knee.

  ‘She said I’d done right.’

  ‘Did she?’

  He waited, but she said no more.

  ‘Bed for you,’ finally, she told the boy and her feet a moment later came from the stairs, followed by the undressing in the bathroom.

  ‘Normally she undresses him down here, but now it’s suddenly i’ private,’ Morley thought, and for an instant the suspicion that perhaps she wouldn’t be sleeping in their bed had crossed his mind.

  When he went up, however, he found the cover of the bed turned back: he went into the boy’s bedroom, kissed him in his cot, and drew the curtains, turning to him once again before he followed Sarah out.

  ‘What else did she say?’ he asked when the door was closed.

  ‘I’ve come back, haven’t I?’

  ‘Aye, you’ve come back, love,’ Morley said. ‘And I’m glad. Though I feel for some reason, more, it’s me that’s come back home to you,’ he added.

  FOUR

  The following spring Mrs Morley announced herself to be pregnant a second time. A change had come over Morley; at the news of the child he merely glanced up.

  ‘Aren’t you glad?’ she asked him.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘You don’t sound it.’

  ‘Nay, I’m glad.’

  He had no way of showing it; even with the farmer he maintained his reserve: he pedalled more stoically to work, and he pedalled more slowly back. His purpose was to consolidate, to provision the fortress which, in his mind, their little house on Stainforth estate had now become. Never having worried about the future, the house had fallen into his lap; now that it was there it was a possession which, because of its value, had to be secured; not only had the garden to be dug but the house, six months after their arrival, had to be painted, the walls papered and, less than a year after, the paintwork once again retouched. The linoleum had been laid, a carpet added, a rug, a mat: utensils were bought to complement his bag of tools; coal, because of its price, had to be conserved; the vegetables grown in the garden were carefully rationed.

  In one corner of his mind Morley was asking, ‘What have we to be worried about?’ but in the forefront of his mind he shared his wife’s misgivings: life started in blackness and ended in blackness: darkness threatened it on every side. Not only had his youth departed but fresh burdens were being added to his back. He wasn’t used to measuring, and each measure that he had to make was more painful than the last. ‘Am I,’ he began to think, ‘to be condemned to live like this for ever?’

  It was against this speculation that he protected Alan; and it was against this speculation, too, that he intended to protect the child to come. The measure of the protection he gave was seen in the number of times he never went near the Spinney Moor, and in the number of times he cycled to work and the number of times he cycled back, and the hours of overtime he could get, and in the number of wage packets he brought back unopened, pocketing the sixpence and occasionally the one shilling Sarah gave him after opening it on the living-room table.

  The whole process of her campaign against life was revealed in the opening of the envelope which, each Friday night, he gave her – her examination of Spencer’s careless scrawl which denoted the number of hours worked, and at what rate, and what deductions had been made, this calculation being confirmed before she poked her finger beneath the flap and tore it carefully along the edge in order not to disturb the writing; the drawing out of the money, the counting of the coins, then the division of the sums into what would be needed the following week: so much for rent, so much for insurance, so much for electricity and gas, so much for the Hospital Fund, so much to Morley, so much to be set aside for coal, so much, if possible, to be saved, so much for items of clothing she intended buying, a decision which had to be anticipated by several months, and so much, finally, for food. In no time the sum had vanished, most of it into her purse, each item finding a place in a separate compartment, the remainder into a variety of tins; in a separate tin, which had once held tea, she placed, as she had since the day they had married, the brown-paper envelope itself, securing it to a wad of similar envelopes by a rubber band.

  Morley acquired a strange contentment from seeing this weekly ritual, for, once the money had been counted, and each sum assigned to its specific place, and he had had his wash, done what jobs had to be completed and seen Alan into his cot, he would set off on his bike to the fish and chip shop which had been built, like a miniature cottage, on the adjoining Moor Field Road. If his income had been sufficient he would purchase two fish, with the accompanying chips, or if not, two fishcakes, cycling back with the supper, wrapped in a newspaper, tucked inside his jacket, the warmth adding a feeling of achievement to the final day of the week.

  ‘I s’ll get used to living in a prison,’ he would think, dismounting from his bike at the gate and looking up at the curtained window, at the coil of smoke from the chimney. ‘Perhaps it’s the only place where any of us live, for isn’t Spencer, who has a car and a house like a palace, always complaining about how hard things are, and have I ever known anyone who didn’t feel in some way fastened down and cheated?’

  With the baby due he redoubled his efforts to help about the house, and redoubled his efforts, too, with the garden; he brought Major several times to the house, hauling on each occasion a load of manure, awarding due portions of it to Foster and Patterson, and even to MacMasters, a large, fat man who drove a lorry and who, in exchange, brought him one night a load of paving: he constructed a path down the centre of the garden to the field, and built a forecourt immediately around the porch. Plants, too, he got on occasion from Spencer, and these he also divided amongst his neighbours. In the evenings and at weekends the men played cricket: he joined them in the field, using shears to cut back the grass, the stumps set up from broken fences, the men, after the game was finished, lying in the grass, roaring amongst themselves, drifting off, finally, in ones and twos. In this way he got to know nearly everyone in the square of houses, for those who didn’t play often came to the fences, called over, or stood and watched; in the winter, too, when the field wasn’t wet, the same men climed over, set out a pitch, and kicked a ball from one end to the other.

  ‘They play more than the children,’ Sarah said, watching the young husbands running up and down, their voices calling, almost screeching, bursting into laughter, their coats tossed down, their shirt-sleeves rolled, then sitting, later, in shadowed groups as, the light fading, they lay back in the grass. ‘More like children,’ taking little account of the number of times Morley himself climbed over the fence, merely complaining whenever he came
back, ‘Somebody has to wash those: just look at your clothes.’

  ‘Want me back i’ the Spinney Moor?’ he would ask, and she would add, ‘I thought you’d made your decision. It’s no account to me what you do.’

  They preserved a peculiar silence between them; it was never more apparent than on the Friday evening: the division of the wage, the clearing-up, the putting of the child to bed, the departure for the supper, the return to find the table set, the fire burning; afterwards, the table cleared, they would listen to the radio, a gift to them, second-hand, from one of Sarah’s brothers, Sarah sewing, Morley reading the paper or sitting, abstracted, gazing at the blaze.

  On Saturday mornings Morley worked but Sarah went into town to do her shopping, pushing the pram along Town Road, up the steep hill to the Bull Ring and the adjacent market. Occasionally, if she could be sure Morley would be back in the afternoon, she would wait for him to return and they’d go together, Morley pushing the pram, Sarah walking beside him, the bag for the shopping suspended from the handle.

  Ever since her taking the child and leaving the house and returning to her mother’s, a mark had been put on Morley’s life – a wound which, if it had healed, had left a scar so deep that it had acquired the characteristics of a natural feature. On their silent walks to the town a vibrancy existed between them, like two people linked by a chain, the one unable to move without the other.

  At the market they would push the child before them, drawing it aside or thrusting it through a gap in the crowd, the money they were to spend already allocated, an occasional indulgence allowed, after some discussion, when they forewent one commodity in favour of another, or Morley delved in his pocket and spent a few pence of his own allowance. Then, after the crowds and the shouting, came the journey back, the swinging of the bag in Morley’s hand as he walked beside the pram, occasionally, as was his habit, calling to the child, ‘See that?’ at the train passing over the bridge that crossed the steep incline leading to the town, or lifting him sometimes from the pram to look in the beck that, for the first hundred yards or so, flowed alongside the Town Road before it separated up either flank of Stainforth estate itself.

  Once back at the house came the sorting of the purchases – as carefully stored in the stone-slab pantry as were the various divisions of their weekly wage in the pockets of the purse – the bread into an earthenware bowl, the biscuits into a large square tin, the bacon on to a dish which in turn was placed beneath an upturned saucer, the meat on to an oval plate which was covered by a sheet of paper, the margarine and the butter, if any had been purchased, being placed either end of a wooden shelf. On the topmost shelf would be set the raisins and currants in their blue-coloured bags and, on the bottom stone shelf, a piece of dripping wrapped in greaseproof paper. The sugar was carried through to the living-room where it was kept amongst the plates and the cups and saucers in a cupboard by the fire.