Alan went into the hall to take off his coat but changed his mind. It was too cold. He didn’t dare put the gas poker to the fire before Mother came back.
‘What time’s Mum coming in?’ he asked Madge.
She shrugged. She was drawing a border round her picture.
‘Well, you won’t be going out this evening at any rate,’ he told her with satisfaction. ‘Not after staying off school.’
‘Yes I will,’ she said. ‘A bit of air will do me good.’
He had to clench his hands to keep control of himself. ‘Listen,’ he began mildly. ‘You shouldn’t go out in the dark.’
‘It was for a new suit for you,’ she said, suddenly remembering. ‘Shall I sign the blinking cheque?’
‘I don’t want a new suit,’ he shouted. ‘Will you concentrate on what I’m saying. What do you get up to every night … in the dark? You can’t see the beauties of nature.’
‘Shut up,’ she said.
‘Well, what do you do?’
‘Nothing,’ she said.
‘Traipsing about the shore—’
‘I don’t traipse,’ she said.
‘There’s unexploded bombs,’ he told her.
‘Rubbish.’
‘It’s dangerous on the beach,’ he shouted. ‘You should stay in the house.’
‘In the house?’ She looked at him contemptuously. ‘Don’t you think it’s dangerous here?’ And she stared dramatically about the kitchen as if there were bogey men peering out from the leaves of the rose-patterned wallpaper. ‘There’s worse things than bombs, you know.’
He flung his scarf on to the table, enraged. He wished she wouldn’t talk like that. It made him want to hammer sense into her with his bare fists.
After a moment she said: ‘I don’t go on the beach, anyway. Not right on it.’
‘You’re running wild,’ he muttered. ‘It’s not normal.’ He regretted instantly his choice of words. He thought she would launch into some drivel about normality being relative. For once she kept silent. Encouraged, he said: ‘Don’t you see what friction you cause in the house? They’re worried sick over you.’
‘It’s not me, Alan,’ she said. ‘It’d be all the same if I stayed in. It’s money … and that solicitor.’
She didn’t seem to grasp that it was the trouble she caused him personally that was his main concern. He was long past marshalling the reasons for his parents’ behaviour – it would be like emptying a cupful of ants into a butterfly net for safekeeping. All he wanted was for Madge to stay indoors at night, so he needn’t return to find his father jumping up and down, demented, at the kerb.
He ought to switch the wireless on before Father came home, in case he was in a worse mood; they turned it on for the sake of the neighbours, to deaden the unbridled language and the slamming of doors. But he couldn’t talk to Madge properly against a background of dance bands. He stood indecisively behind her chair, looking at the wireless, trying to make up his mind.
‘Do you like it?’ she asked, holding up her drawing.
‘Will you concentrate on what I’m saying?’ he demanded, tapping her on the shoulder.
She sulked. She sat offended at the table, scraping her pencil box up and down the wood.
‘You’ll make a mark,’ he warned. ‘Stop it.’
She pouted; if she’d had a penknife handy she would have engraved her initials out of cussedness.
He remembered the time she wanted to come with him to Ronnie Baines and he wouldn’t let her. She hid behind the bins and when he came out of the back door, she thumped him over the head with the yard brush. He sank to his knees. Mother gave her a clout over the ear but she broke into a fit of coughing and it ended up with Madge being put to bed and waited on, while he had a lump on his skull as big as a fruit drop.
‘Try to be reasonable,’ he said. ‘I’m concerned for your welfare, that’s all.’
She looked sideways at him, and then down at the drawing.
‘It’s smashing,’ he said patiently. ‘You’re good at Art.’
She smiled a little.
Cautiously he asked if she went anywhere near the camp.
She didn’t know where he meant.
‘The P.O.W. camp,’ he told her.
‘What are you getting at?’ she cried indignantly.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘You were seen with one of those chaps.’
‘By a couple of adulterers,’ she shouted, jumping up from the table in fury. ‘I know what you’re insinuating’ – he noticed there was a blue crayon mark, like a vein, on her temple – ‘Just because you’re a dirty bugger yourself, writing verses about sailors, you think everybody’s the same.’
He had to retreat into the scullery to avoid hitting her. The cheek of it – ferreting about in his cupboard. ‘Where have you hidden it?’ he demanded. ‘You tell me where you’ve put it or I’ll knock your block off.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, upset at what she had done. ‘I threw it down the lav. I thought I heard Mum coming upstairs and there was nowhere to hide it.’
He switched on the wireless and flung himself into the armchair. He couldn’t look at her.
She made him a cup of tea, though God knows what Mother would say if she came in and caught them.
He didn’t say thank you. He drank it without a word.
She sighed several times to show how sorry she was. At last, too late, she wanted to tell him where she went every night in the dark. She never coincided with anyone if she could help it. When he was happy, she felt sad, when he closed up like a clam, it was then she wanted to be open and confiding.
‘I don’t want to know,’ he told her. ‘I wash my hands of it. Do as you please.’
She didn’t persist. She laid the cloth for the evening meal, tidied her pencils away, peeled potatoes at the sink. She had the nerve to ask him if he had any money. He hadn’t and he told her so. She went upstairs to the front bedroom; he could hear her moving about above his head.
Mother came in, dressed in furs, face delicately pink from the walk along the promenade at Southport. She didn’t comment on the unwashed cups and saucers left on the draining board. She inquired if he’d had a nice day at school and if Madge had taken her cough mixture. Her tone was perfectly pleasant but he was aware at moments that she eyed him coldly; he was puzzled, knowing that it was Madge, not her, who’d found the poem in his dancing shoes. A letter had come from his housemaster by the morning post, giving the date of the parents’ coffee evening. He would have to be fitted for a new suit, no doubt about it.
‘What’s wrong with my uniform?’ he asked.
It was out of the question – it was to be quite an informal affair, just the sixth form and the parents, and they’d all be in lounge suits.
‘You as well,’ he said, but she didn’t hear.
‘Is your father home?’ she wanted to know.
‘Not yet.’
‘I expect he’s gone creeping round to that sister of his,’ she said, eyes glittering with malice behind the little grey veil of her hat.
Alan found it absurd that his father couldn’t admit he saw Aunt Nora daily. When he himself married, and he supposed he must – how else would he be taken care of? – he intended, if she hadn’t been blown to pieces before then, to visit Madge as often as he pleased.
Later that evening, Mr Harrison called at the house with a friend. Mother and Father were caught in the same place, trapped together in the kitchen – Mother had popped downstairs to fetch her spectacles. When the knock came at the door, Madge was out into the hall and letting the callers in before anybody could stop her. She led them straight into the kitchen. It was unheard of, people dropping in without an appointment, Father in his battledress and Mother barelegged, her skirt torn at the hem. They stood white-faced and shaken, united by the calamity.
‘Come in, come in,’ said Father, recovering first, darting glances at Mother. He had a funny smile on his face, welcoming and yet fanatical.
The sm
all room was immediately crowded. Alan was edged into the scullery.
‘What an imposition,’ said Mr Harrison. ‘I do apologise, but I assure you it was expedient.’
His friend, a tall man with insets of velvet on the collar of his long black overcoat, stood pressed to the wall.
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Father, dragging the armchairs away from the fire, desperate to make space. It was no use ushering the visitors into the lounge; without a fire laid several hours in advance they ran the risk of frost-bite. In such a dilemma, and dressed as she was in her indoor clothes, Mother sacrificed Madge.
‘Bed, darling,’ she said. ‘Come along.’
She lowered her head as if shy. By an effort of will she kept her hands from her face, to hide the smudged eyebrows and mouth devoid of lipstick.
‘I’m off out,’ cried Madge, outraged.
‘Silly little sausage,’ Mother said, pushing her firmly into the hall.
Madge could be heard protesting as she was propelled by force up the stairs. She started to cough directly overhead.
Mr Harrison was a scholar and had known Father for six years. According to Father they’d met on the train and struck up a conversation over some article about Stalin in the morning paper. Mr Harrison had been lucid on the history of the Russian people. He said Rasputin wasn’t the devil the books made him out to be. Mr Harrison had visited the house on a few occasions, mainly out of doors in the summer time. He spoke at length about the decadence of pre-revolutionary France and about his sister Nancy who was failing fast. Mother yawned and yawned in the golden sunshine. Only once had he been invited to proper tea in the front room. He addressed Mother as ‘she who is beyond praise’, and slopped his bowl of tinned pears on the cloth. Mostly Father met him on the train. He said it was obvious, by accent and turn of phrase, that the man was educated. Why else would he be so careless in his dress and carry so many volumes of books under his arm? It was an edition of the poems of Swift that had brought him to the house that evening. He needed it, he said.
‘I shall fetch it,’ reassured Father. ‘Say no more.’
Alan couldn’t remember Father ever reading poetry. He listened to it on the wireless but he didn’t look in books. Mother was the artistic one in the family – she’d taught Madge to recite ‘Come hither Evan Cameron, come stand beside my knee …’ that and ‘The Slave’s Dream’. Father had once sketched a tulip for Madge, but it was hopeless and she threw it in the fire.
Mr Harrison introduced his friend as Captain Sydney. He’d had a dreadful experience with Rommel. Father, lock of hair dangling, greeted him effusively. He himself hadn’t been fit enough to fight – he had done his best in the A.R.P. Mother came down, changed into slacks, her nose freshly powdered. She had a turban wound about her hair. Captain Sydney said he couldn’t sit down.
‘Why ever not?’ said Mother, twinkling roguishly at him. She bustled in and out of the pantry carrying a packet of cream crackers and a pot of jam.
‘I have,’ he said, ‘a gathering …’
‘Oh dear,’ said Mother, and she gave a little scream of hysteria as she took a piece of wrapped cheese into the scullery.
Mr Harrison’s sister was still failing, but no more than usual. ‘Tragic,’ mourned Father, shaking his head dismally.
Mr Harrison stared into the fire. He wore a spotted bow tie and evening-dress trousers and held his thin tapering hands in an attitude of prayer.
‘And the teaching?’ inquired Father.
‘I’m content,’ said Mr Harrison. He taught History to boys who weren’t up to scratch in the school certificate examinations.
‘Won’t you take a chair?’ asked Father of Captain Sydney, who was still lounging against the wall. But he again refused. He wasn’t elderly. He looked wealthy and cared for – a bit of a dandy. He wanted to know if Alan was still at school.
‘He is,’ said Father. ‘At Derby Hall.’
They turned to look at Alan. He wished Madge was downstairs to deflect the conversation.
‘How old are you?’ asked Captain Sydney.
‘Seventeen, sir.’
‘A difficult age,’ observed Captain Sydney, and Father flung up his head like a frisky horse, as if to underline the trouble Alan caused.
‘It’s vital,’ said Mr Harrison, keeping his voice low and confidential, ‘that I should obtain that which I mentioned earlier.’ He looked at Father meaningfully.
‘Say no more,’ urged Father, glancing apprehensively towards the scullery and Mother laying a little white cloth on a tin tray. ‘Alan,’ he said. ‘Go upstairs and look in the box in the blue room. A gold-leafed book. The poems of Swift.’
‘What room?’ he asked. Madge was quite right – with the furniture shifted and the colour schemes altered so often, one could never be sure which room was which. Only the sycamore tree stayed in one place.
‘Would any of you gentlemen like Daddy’s sauce on your cheese?’ cried Mother.
‘Hurry up,’ Father said, jerking his head in the direction of the door.
Madge was crouched shivering on the landing. She was cradling in her arms a pair of slippers made out of some red material.
‘What are you doing?’ Alan asked.
‘Thinking,’ she said.
He opened the wardrobe and felt in the darkness for the ammunition tin that housed Father’s spare coppers and documents. He’d been told so often to turn off the light that he’d developed a sense of touch like an animal.
‘That blinking wardrobe,’ said Madge. ‘It needs throwing out.’ She squatted in the doorway in her knickers and vest, knees bulging, holding the slippers like a doll. She hated the cabinet covered in green felt. ‘It looks like it’s sprouting grass,’ she said.
It was one of her annoying affectations to notice textures and shapes. She often disliked someone’s hair or the pattern on a teapot, when both appeared unremarkable to anybody normal.
‘Get your coat on,’ he told her. ‘You’re a big girl now.’
When they were very little, he didn’t know how young, they had listened to the arguments going on downstairs and Madge had crept into his bed for comfort. The rows usually involved Father’s business partner before the war or Grandfather’s stinginess. Beneath the bitter words came the faint scraping sound of chairs shifting backwards and forwards across the worn lino. ‘Why are they shouting?’ Madge wanted to know, putting fat arms around his neck. ‘They’re not,’ he said. ‘They’re just talking.’ They lay under the satin counterpane, scarcely breathing. They played a game. There were three lanes leading to a thatched cottage with a geranium in the window. Through the curtains they could see a table laid with scones and a meat pie. Only one path led to the front door; the others took them into stinging nettles and pig sties. He didn’t know how he’d thought up the game. One path went from Madge’s arm to her neck, the other across her chest to her armpit. The third path ran down her stomach to between her legs where it was warm and rubbery; they both knew it was the correct route, though they never spoke about it. Madge guessed it was the right path, even though she was little, because she chose it last – like when he ate the crusts of his bread first to enjoy the soft jam centre that remained. It wasn’t rude, not really; he hadn’t meant any harm. It was just a way of blotting out the angry voices beneath them, the shouting that Bob Ward was nothing but a fifth-columnist, that Mr Drummond was a mean old bugger. ‘What’s a bugger?’ asked Madge. ‘Why is Grandpa a bugger?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he told her truthfully. ‘Don’t listen. Which is the path to the cottage?’
Alan found the book. It had gold lettering on the front.
‘If you ask me,’ said Madge, ‘that Mr Harrison’s a bad influence.’
‘Nobody asked,’ he said sharply, leaving her on the landing.
Father snatched the book from his hand and slipped it to Mr Harrison as if he was playing pass-the-parcel. Mr Harrison bundled it into the pocket of his raincoat.
Captain Sydney was on his way to a gathering
in Ainsdale. ‘A little discussion,’ explained Mr Harrison, ‘on the effects of war on the younger generation.’
‘Are you a teacher?’ asked Mother. She was very keen on education. She’d been to a finishing school in Belgium – the cheapest one available according to Father, who had attended boarding school and left before his learning had hardly started, let alone finished. Mother helped Alan with his French homework; she even knew a smattering of Latin. For all that, she wasn’t moved when she heard Twelfth Night on the wireless.
‘No,’ said Captain Sydney. ‘I’m just making a few inquiries on my own account.’
Mother told her lurid story of Madge’s pneumonia during the blitz and having to choose between death under the dining-room table or lung congestion down the air-raid shelter in the back field. ‘There was very little difference … Oak on the one hand, yellow soil and a bit of corrugated tin on the other.’
‘We decided on the table,’ said Father. ‘No two ways about it.’
‘It was the damp grass that made up my mind,’ said Mother. ‘Wading through those poplars in the dark. And dogs went in during the day, you know, and did their business. It was a torment to me,’ she recalled.
‘I meant damage,’ said Captain Sydney. ‘To the emotional life of the child. Fear … dreams … symptoms of one sort or another.’
A Quiet Life Page 5