Father rinsed the cups and after an interval followed Mother upstairs; he was going to loofah her back.
With her parcel of slippers, Madge ran down the garden and returned out of breath, her socks wringing wet. Directly she sat down she began to cough.
‘Shut up,’ Alan said. ‘You turn it on like a tap.’
‘I can’t help it. I’ve got a tickle in me throat.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with your throat,’ he said bitterly. ‘The specialist never found anything.’
‘Nothing physical,’ she snapped. ‘I didn’t have a shadow on my lung, but he did ask me if they ill-treated me.’
‘You make me sick,’ he said. He was thinking of the ten shillings Father was going to give her.
‘The trouble with you,’ she said. ‘You keep everything bottled up. You won’t face facts.’
He wouldn’t answer her.
‘Take your suit,’ she said. ‘You didn’t want it, and yet you went like a lamb to be fitted. You never stood up for yourself.’
‘You took that new costume at Christmas,’ he said. ‘And that velour hat with the feather.’
‘I didn’t wear it, though. I’ve never had it on.’
She was right. No matter how Mother raved and stamped her foot she refused to put on the purple costume and the tyrolean hat.
After a moment she said, ‘There’ll be trouble over that Captain Sydney. You mark my words.’
It was an expression of Father’s. He couldn’t help smiling.
‘I don’t trust Mr Harrison,’ she said. ‘He’s a dirty old man. Any friend of his is up to no good.’
‘Don’t talk daft.’
‘He lends Father dirty books. I read one. It was all about somebody doing wee-wees in chamber pots.’
‘You’ve a wonderful imagination,’ he said.
She grew indignant. ‘It’s the truth. It was that book you got out of the ammunition tin. It was—’
‘They were poems—’
‘About wee-wees and Stella making rude noises.’
He laughed out loud, though he didn’t like her talking of such things. Above their heads, they could hear Mother chuckling in the bathroom.
‘Hark at them,’ said Madge. ‘It’s the only time she lets him near her … when he’s going to buy her something.’
‘Be quiet,’ he said.
‘She shaves down there, you know. I’ve seen. She must think she’s an artist’s model.’
‘You want to wash your mouth out,’ he cried in a fury, jumping to his feet and slapping her knowing pink face.
He got told off for his pains. Father leapt downstairs and belted him over the head. He went to bed in disgrace.
5
Several weeks passed during which Janet Leyland established herself as his girlfriend. Every day when he came home from school she contrived to be waiting for him on the platform. At choir practice and the club she attached herself to him like a shadow. She was always at his elbow, smiling, picking up the ping-pong balls, fetching him cups of tea. She stopped being bossy. When he looked up from his hymn book she was observing him tenderly. Her skin was so delicate that the least touch left a pink spot, slow to fade. He was flattered and bewildered by her attentions and not sure that he cared to be taken over so completely. His friends teased him, but he knew they were envious.
‘I didn’t think,’ said Ronnie, ‘that you’d be the first. Not with your family.’ Mrs Baines encouraged him to go to dances and was always chiding him for not yet courting. He asked Alan what he did with Janet.
‘Kissing and that,’ he said.
‘Anything else?’ he wanted to know.
‘Give over,’ he said. ‘What sort of a question is that?’
He stopped larking about with the boys after church. They went to the pictures together once but Janet Leyland came too and nobody really enjoyed it. There was a constraint between them. They couldn’t talk as easily with her sitting there clasping Alan’s hand tightly for all to see. She made a face when he jumped over the seats to buy an ice-cream.
Mrs Leyland turned the gas fire on and let them sit in the front room of an evening. When nine o’clock came she brought in a little tray with tea and biscuits.
‘Thank you very much,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’
In the beige room with the neat furniture and the three-piece suite, he might have been at home. Mrs Leyland thought he was very polite, very much the college boy. She told Janet his family were well-to-do, owning a car and everything. She would have liked to question him personally, but was too reticent. She sipped her tea with them and Janet sat between the two people who were now sharing her life, important and languid, occasionally laying her hand on Alan’s sleeve and casting a fleeting triumphant glance at her mother. Then Mrs Leyland sighed and collected the dishes to go into the kitchen to her husband. Now it was settled they were going steady, Janet didn’t expect him to behave in a demonstrative fashion. They spent a fair amount of time kissing and squirming on the leather sofa, but she never put his hand on her chest. It satisfied her that they were seen to be courting – when they walked in the village she linked his arm as though they were a married couple. He turned his head away and whistled as if he was indifferent to her.
Moira called once to sit with them. Janet leaned her head on his shoulder and stared sleepily into the fire. The cat lay across her stomach like a small black rug. He didn’t think it was true that Moira had a crush on him; she didn’t speak directly to him nor would she look at his face. At first she spoke in an animated breathless way about the blouse and skirt she was making in needlework at school. It was blue and white and her teacher thought it very stylish.
‘The blouse has a Peter Pan collar and pearl buttons,’ she said.
‘That’s nice,’ said Janet.
‘The skirt is sort of fitted, with a pleat here and another at the back.’ She stood up and ran her fingers down her hips to show what she meant. She wore her reddish hair tied back with blue ribbon, exposing large, highly coloured ears. Alan couldn’t help noticing her legs. ‘I’ve been making it for four weeks now. I can’t wait to get it finished.’
‘It sounds lovely,’ said Janet. ‘Doesn’t it sound lovely?’ The cat jumped down from her knee and she was now stroking Alan’s neck with one cold little finger.
‘Yes,’ he said, jerking his head away.
‘I saw your mother tonight,’ said Moira. ‘At the station.’
He thought at first she was talking to Janet. ‘My mother,’ he said. ‘Do you know her?’
‘She wears very smart clothes,’ said Janet. ‘You can’t mistake her.’
‘You can,’ he said firmly. ‘She never goes out at night, unless she’s with my dad.’
They fell silent then until Mrs Leyland came in with the tray. After a short while Moira said she must go home. There was a lot of whispering in the hall before the front door was opened.
Janet returned to stand pensively on the rug, staring down at the fire. ‘You like her, don’t you?’ she said.
‘She’s all right.’
‘Do you like her better than me?’
‘Don’t talk silly. I hardly know her.’ He didn’t think it suited her, being so childish. It was all right for Madge to pout her lips and bow her shoulders – Janet looked like her mother, head on one side, corkscrew curls tipped over her ear.
‘She’s spiteful, you know. She’s played some nasty tricks on me.’
He knew he should say something to reassure her, but he couldn’t be bothered. He had a little picture in his head of Madge sallying forth into the garden with her watering can. He was sat half-asleep in a deck chair. She poured a thin jet of water down his sock. Did Janet mean that sort of trick? Or throwing those verses belonging to the school prefect down the lavatory? He sat for twenty minutes, not talking, reading the newspaper that someone had left on the fireside table. He sensed that Janet was watching him. She lay across the carpet, stroking the stomach of
the cat and crooning into its fur. He stood up finally and stretched his arms above his head. He waited for her to say goodbye, but she didn’t move. So he let himself out thinking if she felt like that she could lump it. She followed him immediately and clung to his arm as he manoeuvred his bike down the path.
‘I’m sorry, pet,’ she said. ‘Don’t be angry.’
‘I’m not angry,’ he said reasonably, mounting his bike and riding away.
She ran after him. He knew she was chasing him – he was afraid to ride too fast lest she should lose him; but then he didn’t want her to overtake him. It would be too cruel to get clear away. Never before had he been the cause of such a scene – he was consumed with guilt and excitement. At the Grapes hotel he had to wait while a vehicle drove out of the car park; in the public bar they were cheering over a darts match. Her footsteps pursued him along the pavement. She seized his arm and almost pulled him to the ground.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said, looking at her face blotched with misery.
He saw tears in her eyes and the melting outline of a cheek against the dark background of the street. He couldn’t continue with his show of bravado. He dropped his bike with a clatter into the gutter and patted her shoulder remorsefully.
‘I’m not worth it,’ he said wisely. ‘You don’t want to let me upset you.’
‘What was it about?’ she asked, the tears running down her face.
He didn’t know. It was probably something different for her.
‘You will see me?’ she pleaded.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Of course I will.’
He didn’t walk her back up the road because he thought her mother might be watching from the window. Instead he stood at the kerb, waving his hand encouragingly as she shuffled up the street in her slippers. He couldn’t help thinking he was like one of those shepherds making signals to a collie dog, herding sheep into a fold.
His suit was half-finished. It was a reminder that he was that much nearer the day of the school meeting, when his progress would be discussed. It was like the dentist – the date was chosen and nothing short of death would cancel the appointment. It soured his days and made him sleep badly. He woke in the night, eyes wide open in fear, the room going round and round as if he were fainting. He saw very little of his family. When he came in from the Leylands he went straight up to bed or did his homework in the front room; he’d stopped asking his mother for permission. Sometimes Madge was missing and Father would be stamping about on the front porch, muttering and blaspheming. He presumed relations between his parents were again strained, as Mother was usually in bed when he went upstairs. The light was on, but he didn’t say goodnight, because he never had. It would have been admitting some kind of guilt if he had called out on the landing that he was there, that he was home. He had to keep up his pretence of detachment.
One night Father caught him in the scullery preparing a cheese sandwich. He’d thought he was safe and that Father was keeping his vigil for Madge under the sycamore tree – but Father had sneaked up the side path and rushed through the door, catching him with the bread in his hand. Father spat with fury. He got down on his hands and knees and picked up the crumbs one by one from the string mat and hurled them into the fire.
‘Do you think it’s a blasted hotel?’ he shouted.
‘I would have brushed them up,’ Alan said. He wiped nervously at the marble slab in case the margarine had smeared.
‘You’d do nothing,’ Father bellowed. ‘Nothing. None of you do a blasted thing.’ He was throwing the carving knife into the sink and turning on the tap with such force that water splashed up the sides of the bowl and hit the wall.
‘Keep your voice down, Joe.’
‘I’ll shout in me own home. If you don’t like it, clear off out. Let your mam go off too with her fancy man if she likes. I’ll be glad to see the back of her. She can go to that wonderful family of hers—’
Alan watched his father. Another word and he might have struck him. He felt hatred for a moment. He couldn’t bear the sneering mouth, the mean forehead lowered under the dark blue beret.
It was all Madge’s fault – giving her ten shillings hadn’t made a blind bit of difference. He left his sandwich uneaten on the plate and went into the kitchen. Father followed, rushing forward at a great pace to seize the poker from the hearth. Alan started back – he thought his father had gone mad – but he was only bending down to rake the fire. He muttered savagely under his breath, ugly sounds that petered out into a low groan of pain as he stood upright and cracked his skull on the mantel. Alan would have helped him then, but Father blundered away, nursing his head, and hid like a wounded beast in the dark scullery.
Miserably Alan went upstairs. He heard his mother calling. She was propped up in bed reading a library book.
‘What was that all about?’ she asked.
‘I dropped some crumbs,’ he told her. She made him feel shy, lying there with her glasses perched on the bridge of her small nose, her mouth still red with lipstick. Something in his voice touched her.
She said: ‘Don’t take any notice, Alan. Just ignore him.’
‘Why can’t he control himself?’
‘Don’t take any notice. Is the wireless on?’
‘He ought to get himself seen to,’ he said.
She looked at him with pity. ‘Don’t let it upset you. It’s not worth it. He’s a rotten old man.’
It made it worse not better. He cried out: ‘Leave him alone … he’s hurt himself.’
‘Come here,’ she said gently, patting the bed.
He wouldn’t go to her. He stood with averted face, looking at his grandfather’s photograph on the chest of drawers.
‘What’s all this I’ve been hearing about you and some girl?’ she asked. Her voice wasn’t angry.
‘Where did you hear it?’ he said.
‘Mrs Cartwright in the fish shop mentioned it. I felt a bit of a fool not knowing what she was talking about. The girl’s in the choir by all accounts.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Well … go on … tell me about her. Is she nice?’
‘She’s just a girl,’ he said.
‘Wouldn’t you like to bring her home?’ She didn’t look at him. He imagined her mouth trembled as she waited. She said: ‘You’ve every right, you know. You’re not a child.’
He wondered if she was waiting to participate in his life, seeing she had none of her own. Would it make her happier? She had no wrinkles on her face that he could see, no traces of the difficult years she had lived through. Her eyes had a bright bland look behind the cheap spectacles.
‘I don’t mind,’ he said. She was so anxious to please, he wondered if he dare mention that he wasn’t doing so well at school.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘You choose the day and let me know when she’s coming.’
‘What about my dad?’
‘Don’t fret yourself. I’ll handle him.’ She was quite pink in the face with satisfaction. She jettisoned her book on to the floor and clapped her hands so childishly that he couldn’t help smiling.
They chose a Saturday lunchtime for the visit; it was unusual but it was the day Father spent most of his time in the garden, hoeing the frozen ground and raking the stones from his vegetable patch. It wore him out and made him more tranquil.
Mother behaved with generosity. Dearly as she would have loved Janet to see the dining room, the silver and the cut glass arranged on the sideboard, she understood that Alan would prefer it if they ate in the kitchen without fuss. She made Father a cup of tea at eleven o’clock to mollify his temper; he raised his eyebrows at her gesture. There’d been an incident the night before about a telephone call which Mother took and said was a wrong number. Father said she was a blasted liar, just like Mr D. She shut her ears to him, refusing to go white and mute up the stairs; she was too busy making a cake for Janet Leyland. Madge wasn’t in to lunch. She was down at the shore. It was just as well because there wouldn’t have been
room for them all round the table. Before Janet arrived Mother took hold of Alan’s arm and said he was a good boy. He was ashamed of the tears that came unbidden to his eyes. He shook her off and continued to open the tin of condensed milk.
‘I won’t go on about it,’ said Mother. ‘But I appreciate you replacing that five shillings in my drawer.’ She went and fetched her purse from behind the wireless. ‘It was too much,’ she said. ‘Only four shillings went missing.’ And she pressed a shilling into his hand.
What could he do? She thought he’d stolen and she thought he’d put it back. One denial cancelled out the other. He was richer by a shilling for not doing anything.
Janet chatted about her cat and her holidays in the Isle of Man, which was a much nicer place than anyone ever thought, and really everyone ought to go there sometime. Of course her dad had been born there, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
‘And what does your daddy do?’ asked Mother. ‘In business, is he?’
‘He’s in the Bank,’ said Janet.
Mother raised her eyes in surprise – it was more than she’d hoped for.
‘She’s rather pretty,’ she said kindly when Janet went upstairs to wash her hands. Father grunted a lot and curled his lip. He wasn’t impolite but there was an edge to his remarks. Mother gave him several severe glances which he took meekly enough.
‘I want to do something with animals when I leave school,’ Janet said. ‘But you need a lot of qualifications.’
‘Really?’ said Mother. ‘You do surprise me.’ She was thinking of Mr Riley who kept ferrets down the road and a grey whippet that he’d once entered for the Waterloo cup. Alan hoped she would keep her mind on animals and not dwell on future careers. Usually she told everybody at the drop of a hat that he was going to be a Town Clerk – as if it was something you fell into quite accidentally, like a hole in the road.
Janet had two helpings of steak-and-kidney pudding out of politeness. ‘I love steak and kidney,’ she said.
‘I can see that,’ said Father, and he laughed sardonically and stuffed the food into his mouth. For once he had kept his teeth in – he was making some effort. Mostly he put them in his handkerchief at the commencement of a meal. It made Madge ill; she said he was ugly and insensitive. ‘It’s only me blasted teeth,’ he would cry, champing his gums to annoy her.
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