Mother said it was time to make another pot of tea. ‘Or perhaps,’ she suggested, looking at Mr Drummond, ‘you’d prefer something stronger?’
‘That would be welcome,’ said Nana.
Aunt Nora dug her in the ribs with anticipation. Father was putting his cards down and counting his pennies.
Grandpa said: ‘Did you make that appointment, Connie?’
Mother went pale. She laid her fingers fanwise over her breast.
‘What appointment?’ asked Father, low and menacing.
‘The solicitor chappie I advised her to get in touch with,’ said Grandpa. He wasn’t looking at Father’s face.
Father hurled his pennies across the room. The women cowered backwards on the settee.
‘By God, I might have known,’ he cried, bent double over the brass tray as if he had been stabbed.
‘That’s it,’ said Madge, jumping to her feet. ‘I can’t stand any more.’ And she ran out of the room.
Alan caught hold of her in the hall. She was trying to open the front door.
‘Don’t,’ he warned. ‘Don’t add to it.’
There was a confusion of voices coming from the back room, rising and explaining and threatening. They could hear Mother crying out, wild and scornful – ‘Take no notice, Dad. Don’t demean yourself.’ Then Father, desperate with jealousy, stuttering in anger – ‘No n-notice. N-no notice. God damn it, the mean old bugger.’
Madge fled up the stairs.
Aunt Nora came into the hall to fetch her coat from the pile humped over the banisters.
‘Don’t go,’ said Alan.
‘I’m not stopping here,’ she said. ‘It’s a madhouse.’ She struggled into her sensible coat. ‘Do you know,’ she hissed, ‘how much it cost me to come here to witness this little carry-on?’ She looked old and crumpled, itemising her expenses, jabbing her finger against his chest: ‘There was the bus fare and the chocolates for your mam. There was me ciggies on the journey. There was knitting wool for your Madge.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Don’t go.’
She jammed her felt hat on her head and opened the front door. He followed. She walked rapidly along the deserted Sunday road. It was cold and he shivered as he trailed her. Anything to get away from the house. A flash of electric blue came from the railway crossing as the Southport train sparked on the frozen rails.
She took pity on him. She stopped and fumbled in her bag.
‘Go home,’ she said, handing him half-a-crown. ‘You’ll catch your death.’
‘Will you be all right?’ he asked.
‘Don’t talk silly. I’ll be on the bus in no time.’
He didn’t like her going home through the night, on her own, back to her little empty house, without a fire, without cakes in the pantry, without a family.
‘I reckon,’ she told him, beginning that throaty cackle, ‘that it is them you ought to worry about.’ And she strode off, starting to cough as she reached the crossing.
He waited till the bus arrived. She turned to wave at him. The lighted windows slid past: a man and wife, a boy alone, his Aunt Nora spitting into her handkerchief.
He saw his grandparents coming out of the house. He crossed the road and hid in the shadows of the elm trees. First Grandpa, then Nana walking three paces behind, clutching her bag like a squirrel.
Father had stormed upstairs to bed. Mother tidied the lounge, gathered up the pennies from behind the cushions. She picked the tipped vase up from the rug and hurled the blooming daffodils into the fire. White and mute she fetched a rag and rubbed at the carpet; she looked as if her blood had drained away with the flower water. Alan wheeled the trolley into the scullery. She followed him.
She said: ‘He can’t control himself.’
‘No,’ he agreed. He felt disloyal, bitter, and yet she needed him.
‘My poor father,’ she said. ‘He was only trying to help.’
He couldn’t share her sentiments but he kept silent. He nodded hypocritically.
‘He thought it would be a good idea. It’s in all our interests.’
‘What shall I do with the leftovers?’ he asked.
‘You see, he thought the solicitor might sort things out.’
‘Shall I put them on the fire in the back room?’
‘The lounge,’ she said.
‘Or in the bin?’
‘Listen to me,’ she cried, holding his arm and badgering him. ‘We had to see that fellow. You don’t know what it’s been like all these years. Not knowing if anyone would check up. Why should Nora benefit?’
‘Did you say thank you for the chocolates?’ he said.
‘And he’s not getting any younger. Anything might happen. What if—’
‘I don’t want to know,’ he said, thrusting her hand away. ‘It’s none of my business.’ And he went into the front room and chucked the crusts of bread on to the fire, on top of the singeing daffodils.
3
He was coming home from school with Ronnie. At this hour the carriage was half-empty. They lolled about and put their feet up on the seats. Through the windows the flat coastline was blurred with rain. Alan was a day boy at Derby Hall, six miles away on the outskirts of the city, and Ronnie went to the grammar school in the same suburb. Now they were in the sixth form they didn’t have to wear their caps, nor were they forced to exercise in the yard at break. They went bareheaded in the street and after their dinner they sat loafing in common-rooms. These twin privileges were a sign of their maturity. For the rest, they were told what to do and when to do it.
‘Do you realise,’ Ronnie said, ‘if the war had lasted a few years longer, we’d be treated as men.’ His brother Michael, at the same age, had marched through Europe.
‘I daresay,’ said Alan.
He didn’t really care – he had ceased to notice that he was regimented and ordered about from morning till night. He’d begun to fall behind in class and his teachers warned him he might do badly in the exams. It hardly bothered him. He had been good at Latin and History and considered fair at science. But lately, neither lessons, nor games on the windswept playing fields, nor the other distractions offered by the school, held his attention. He wasn’t unhappy or disturbed; he merely sat motionless at his desk, a placid expression on his face, thinking of other things. Only at moments, when some foolish prank was played, did he start up in his seat and like a child at kindergarten join in the sniggering of his friends. Most of the time he thought about Janet Leyland – the way she looked at him, what she said, a certain mannerism she had, of touching the lobe of her ear when she was unsure. He wasn’t lovesick or anything like that. He wasn’t off his food. It was more that he was engrossed in her acceptance of him – his ideas, his cleverness. She thought he knew a lot. He came from a household that regarded men as inferior; they were fed first and deferred to in matters of business, but they weren’t respected. Janet even liked his hair-cut. It was a revelation. It made him think about the future, the complexities of earning a living and acquiring possessions. Several years back, he wanted to be a farmer – he was good at milking cows and stooking corn, he drove the tractor for Mr Ledbetter in the holidays. Mother, however, had decided he should study municipal law and become a Town Clerk. He tried to envisage himself returning home from work to Janet Leyland, sitting in a similar kitchen, fully furnished, with the proper quota of cutlery and china in the cupboards. He imagined he would be sentimental and talkative; he’d tell her about politics and history and she’d listen, nodding, holding his hand, her slightly popping eyes looking into his. She’d wear a nightie, he assumed, when she went to sleep. His mother wore her slip and cardigan in bed, and Father retired in his combinations; Alan had never seen either of them without clothes. He supposed they would come to tea on Sundays. He knew, somewhere at the back of his mind, that he could only hope to be an extension of his parents – he’d step a few paces further on, but not far. His progression was limited, as theirs had been. He’d read Mendel’s theory in the fourth f
orm – colour of eyes or structure of mind, it was all the same. It needn’t mean he’d end up with nothing to talk about, only that there’d be some things over which he had no control, certain preferences and priorities. He’d always be polite and watch his manners. Most likely he’d vote Conservative, in rebellion against his father. He would want the house to be decorated nicely. If possible, there’d be a willow tree in the garden.
‘What did Lacey say when you told him you’d lost that thing about the sailor?’ asked Ronnie.
‘I didn’t listen,’ he said.
The train was passing the rifle range and the row of nissen huts that housed the German prisoners of war. There were red curtains hung at the windows. The barbed wire fence rolled in disrepair across the wet sand.
Ronnie said: ‘The vicar’s invited the blighters to Morning Service. He must be batty.’
‘Our Madge was chased by one the other night. So she said – she came home bellowing, anyroad.’
‘Get off.’ Ronnie was scornful. ‘Your Madge isn’t frightened of anything.’
He thought Ronnie was right. Madge only cried when she was caught out in a downright lie, or when it suited her to be dramatic. He knew that some of the local girls had been seen fraternising with the Germans, down by the shore. It was worse than going with Yanks. He wouldn’t put it past Madge to be hanging about the camp, though God knows what she hoped to attract, wearing her mac and her knee socks. When she was twelve she’d brought home a young soldier from Harrington barracks. Mother and Father were out. She said she was only following Father’s example, being kind to our gallant lads in khaki. She was referring to Dunkirk and the time Father had fetched three members of the forces from the reception centre in the village and put them on deck chairs in the garden. ‘It’s not the same,’ Alan told her, worried that the neighbours had watched from the windows. She made eggs on toast for tea. There wasn’t any harm in Madge – she was only a child – but he hadn’t forgotten how the soldier ate his poached egg with his fingers. Alan had been forced to put down his knife and fork and shut his eyes; it turned his stomach. ‘Pardon,’ the young soldier had said. ‘Is he saying Grace?’
‘What does your mum think?’ asked Ronnie. ‘Has she complained to the Commandant?’
‘Not yet,’ said Alan. ‘She’s very bothered. They both are.’
Since his grandparents’ visit, his mother and father were not on speaking terms. It was back to Madge carrying messages between the two of them. ‘Mum says can I have the money for the Insurance man?… Dad says has Roly Davies rung yet from South Wales … There’s a funny noise coming from the pipes in the loft. Will you have a listen?…’ Father came home at his usual time and sat upstairs in the cold. There wasn’t anywhere else for him to go. Maybe he called at Aunt Nora’s and she gave him food – he didn’t eat anything Mother prepared. When she went upstairs directly after tea, he came down. He rushed past her violently in the hall, making the clock chime, averting his face as if her breath smelled. He listened morosely to the mutilated wireless. Mother read her library book at the bedroom window. When Alan wheeled his bicycle down the path he knew she was there, behind the branches of the sycamore tree, watching him. His legs felt like lead as he rode away. Madge came in from school, changed out of her uniform and marched whistling along the dark road to the shore. No one else he knew behaved like she did or had such freedom of action. At her age, the sisters of his friends were in the Girl Guides or going to tap-dancing classes. Somebody ought to speak to her, for her own good. The difficulty was to sustain his sense of responsibility throughout her prevarications. He didn’t want a lot of irritating chat about religion being in the pinewoods and the back garden, and didn’t he feel near the Holy Ghost when he played the piano? The way she talked you’d think God was living in their greenhouse. She drove him mad with her airs and her silly romancing.
‘They shouldn’t let a stupid kid like her out on her own,’ said Ronnie. ‘She’s a blinking menace. She always was.’
‘They don’t,’ he protested. ‘They keep a tight rein on her.’
Madge was barely fifteen and she did as she pleased. Nothing stopped her, neither Mother’s suffering nor Father’s bullying. She went carefree as a bird, in her school raincoat and her old panama – as if it was high noon in an Indian summer – towards the railway crossing. The night was black as pitch down there on the shore, the wind blowing in from the Irish Sea, the waves booming as they broke upon the beach. There were still undetected mines and unexploded shells in the woods. The enemy planes had unloaded their bombs before reaching the sea. She could be blown to bits as she stumbled between the dense and groaning pines. She came home drenched with rain, her hair tacky with salt; in the morning, at the back step, he could see the heap of sand she had emptied from her shoes.
‘Don’t you remember,’ said Ronnie. ‘That time in Hall Road?’
‘Hall Road?’
‘When she went into that bombed house and walked along the rafters.’
‘No,’ said Alan.
‘Your Dad gave you a hiding.’
‘Don’t talk daft,’ he said. And he swung his satchel on to his shoulders and stood by the doors, waiting for them to open.
They had a mug of tea in the porter’s room, under the arch of the station. Above their heads, along the slopes of the bridge, in six feet of earth the crocus bulbs waited to germinate. The ticket man liked young boys; he was forever mussing Ronnie’s hair and telling him he had a skin like a girl. For all that, they felt like men, sitting at the solid table, swearing, drinking their strong black tea.
‘You nipped off bloody quick after choir practice,’ said Ronnie.
‘Shut up,’ he said, imagining he was smirking all over his face. He’d walked Janet home twice now and kissed her once, on the mouth, behind the laurel hedge in her front garden. He dreamed he saw her in the bath – he couldn’t wait for summer to come and for her to be rid of that heavy coat and those woolly jumpers.
The room was a warm cave; the great fire glowed in the iron stove. The air was heavy with the smell of engine grease and coal dust. Outside in the small village, life was ordered and predictable. There were no noises in the night since the siren had ceased its sudden swoon of alarm – only the shuddering of the Lavender cart as it rolled past the silent houses. On the coastal road the woods had shrunk to a small wedge of pines; the trees were no longer a jungle, laced with the webs of poisonous spiders – the time had gone when he could climb to the top of the sand dunes and think he was El Cid reaching the sea. Nothing happened that he couldn’t understand. Here, with the trains rumbling behind the granite wall and the lantern swinging above the unswept floor, he could for a brief moment imagine that anything was possible.
‘Are you coming to camp this year?’ asked Ronnie.
‘I might,’ he said. He hadn’t been allowed to go last time because the year before he’d arrived home with impetigo. His mother had to buy him long trousers so that the neighbours wouldn’t see the scabs on his legs.
‘It was wizard, that week we had in Windermere,’ Ronnie said. ‘That dope Wilson falling in the lake—’
‘It wasn’t Wilson. It was the little brat from the wool shop.’
‘It was smashing climbing that mountain. We were miles up.’
‘It was a hill, not a mountain.’
‘It felt like a mountain,’ said Ronnie. He fiddled with the heap of tickets stacked on the table. He smiled widely. ‘Wasn’t it smashing, though?’
‘Smashing,’ agreed Alan. He’d hated it. He couldn’t stand the damp nights and the insects crawling over his skin.
Mother was in Southport and Madge was on her own, drawing at the kitchen table. Without a fire the room was shabby. The paint was peeling from the pantry door. Mother didn’t bother much about the kitchen – she only decorated the rooms they scarcely used. Madge said she’d had the day off school.
‘Are you ill, then?’
‘My cough.’ The tip of her tongue protruded. Sh
e was crayoning a reptile with flames coming out of its mouth.
Alan grunted. He thought her cough was something she cultivated. It didn’t stop her walking in the rain.
‘That and the cheques,’ she said, laying down her pencil. ‘He wanted me to sign another one this morning.’
Alan flared up at that. ‘Why do you cause trouble? Why can’t you do as you’re told?’
He dumped his football boots on to her pencil box to aggravate her.
She took no notice. Behind her head the flowered paper was scraped clean, exposing the plaster. When Madge was younger she used to lie face downwards on the polished surface of the table and spin round and round, scuffing the wall with her shoes. It was sheer vandalism. Then as now, she could do with a thundering good hiding.
‘If he’d explain what it’s all for,’ said Madge, ‘I wouldn’t mind. You can’t be too careful about that sort of thing. He’s a fool. My name’s not just a squiggle on one of his cheques, you know. I’m at a very sensitive age. He can’t wipe me off, like fingerprints on a jam jar.’
It was no use arguing with her. He didn’t know himself why it was necessary for her to sign Father’s cheques. She had to write her name on documents as well. Father folded the papers so she couldn’t read the print, leaving only the dotted line at the end of the page. You could hear them battling away upstairs at least once a week – Father thumping the dressing table where he’d laid his bit of paper and Madge crying out: ‘Why should I? I want to know why?’ She complained to Alan that Father was spending her money. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he told her. ‘You haven’t got any money.’ She said it was obvious she had; otherwise why did the bank need her signature? ‘Someone may have left me a fortune,’ she argued. ‘A dead relative or something.’ They hadn’t got any dead relatives apart from Father’s parents, who had died poor as church mice, when he was a boy. ‘Anyway,’ she persisted, ‘I talk to all kinds of old people. I always have. I’m very interesting to talk to. How do you know one of them hasn’t left me war bonds?’ For some reason Mother sided with her over the cheque signing. She said repeatedly that Father ought to make better arrangements.
A Quiet Life Page 4