At the end of the meal Mother suggested they might like a cup of coffee. At this, Father, who had been eating a piece of cheese, flung his knife on the cloth and sat back so abruptly that he caught his shoulder on the overhanging wireless.
‘My word,’ he sneered. ‘We are grand. Been getting a few ideas from our military friends have we?’
Nobody knew what he meant. Mother took no notice; she hummed a little song as she waited for the water to boil. Janet helped to carry the dishes to the sink. It was something his father normally did, not out of duty or habit but because he thought no one else could do the job properly. Madge said he should have been a parlour maid, the way he fussed over the scouring of pans and the polishing of the cutlery.
Janet didn’t know where any of the plates belonged, so she stood in her wool dress, arms folded, and remarked on the prettiness of the garden beyond the window. She’d been to the hairdressers; her curls ran stiff as cardboard over her rounded head.
‘It’s a terrible lot of work,’ said Mother, looking at the swampy lawn and the dormant branches of the rambling rose.
Trailing his rake behind him, Father walked slowly down the path to the greenhouse.
Mother took Janet upstairs to show off her jewellery and her hats in the wardrobe. Madge never paid any attention to such things. Alan could hear his mother, shrill with delight, opening drawers and cupboards above his head. He thought it odd that women of whatever age were so similar in their ways, loving clothes and babies, forever going on about friends and relations and prices of materials. Madge was the exception. You wouldn’t catch Madge spending an afternoon trying on hats and admiring a string of beads.
As he was dozing by the fire, he became aware of someone peering in through the curtains at him. It was Father, come to see if the tidying up had been done properly. He rearranged several plates on the scullery shelves and then scrutinised the kitchen floor for scraps. He needn’t have bothered; it was only Madge who dropped her food in an abandoned manner. As he searched, his behind caught the edge of Grandfather’s chair, tumbling the arm to the rug. It was too much for him to bear. He ran to the back door and hurled the offending piece of wood clear over the privet hedge on to the lawn. Alan stood at the window and watched him race after it – he kicked out; the wood slithered even further down the garden. He was like a demented saboteur swooping down on a faulty hand grenade, lobbing the curved arm towards the trenches where the vegetables grew.
At the greenhouse Father paused and spun round. Alan ducked and scuttled to sit at the kitchen table. He was glad Janet Leyland was upstairs playing milliners with Mother. Father came in and seized last week’s newspapers from behind the bread bin; he took a packet of candles from the pantry. He was breathing heavily. All his gestures were grandiose and liberal. The ironing board was knocked to the floor. He didn’t seem to care about the mud he was trampling into the scullery mat. He still ran, as if walking might slow down his sense of purpose. Disappearing behind the greenhouse, he emerged finally, minus his newspapers, one finger held up in the air as if he asked for silence.
It’s rum, thought Alan, not knowing what he should do. Father was obviously going to burn the arm. Whatever would Mother say? He tried sitting experimentally in the chair to see what difference it would make, and even though he knew what to expect he banged his wrist on the pegged upright of wood that was now exposed. It was dangerous – trip over the hearthrug and you could lose an eye.
As he sat there, mentally listing the accidents that could happen, Father came at him like a madman. Gripping the lapels of his school blazer, he dragged Alan out of his seat and flung him into the scullery. Father was manhandling the chair out of the kitchen, over the mat and on to the path. He was trying to carry it down the garden.
‘What are you doing, Joe?’ Alan cried, struggling to pull the furniture away from Father; he was hampered by the thought of Mrs Frobisher next door seeing them. He relinquished his hold and went back indoors. The chair, with its lumpy cushion and padded back, was heavy; Father’s legs were buckling as he passed the pagoda. Somehow, lurching and pursuing a zig-zag path across the sodden grass, he managed to reach the greenhouse. There he dropped his load and bent over, clutching his side. His A.R.P. beret fell to the ground. After a moment he dragged the chair out of sight.
The kitchen looked odd without it. The lino was dusty where it had stood. A tennis ball and a knitting needle lay in a wad of fluff against the skirting board.
‘Mum,’ Alan called.
‘Won’t be a minute,’ she answered.
But she was half an hour. By that time there was a strong column of smoke rising into the air beneath the poplars.
‘Go into the lounge,’ said Mother. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
Janet whispered how lovely his mother was, what hats she owned, what jewellery. ‘Trays of it,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She’s a great hoarder.’
It was all cheap stuff he knew, because she’d told him: costume jewellery from the Bon Marché, paste diamonds sparkling like the real thing but not worth insuring.
‘She’s charming,’ said Janet. ‘You’re lucky.’ And she sat wistfully on the sofa hugging herself for warmth, admiring the polished desk and the watercolours framed in gilt on the white walls.
He couldn’t sneer at her; they were both alike, saying the right thing out of ignorance or good manners.
Mother couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t take Janet home after tea. He said curtly, ‘You best go on your own,’ and Janet stood up and fetched her coat without a word.
‘You’ll take her home surely,’ rebuked Mother, distressed at his lack of gallantry.
‘It’s quite all right,’ Janet said meekly. She trembled at his indifference and his mother’s regard for her feelings.
‘I can’t go out,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you at the club this evening.’
‘After your piano practice,’ snapped Mother, turning spiteful.
He couldn’t look out of the window for fear the whole sky was darkened by the black smoke from Grandfather’s chair.
‘She’s a very nice girl,’ said Mother, when Janet had been waved down the road. ‘Very sensible.’
He thought maybe it was a criticism, and he thought she was possibly justified. But on the credit side, sensible girls wouldn’t lapse into moody silence or burn possessions out of spite.
‘Look,’ he said, taking his mother to the window. ‘He’s made a bonfire.’
After all, there was only a thin scribble of smoke like a pencil mark drifting above the greenhouse. Mother hadn’t noticed the absence of the chair, but when he told her she was out of the back door before he had finished his sentence, running down the garden with the panel of her dress floating behind her. He followed, anxious for them all.
Mother swore at Father. She called him a twisted old bigot. ‘What harm did it do you?’ she cried, as though speaking of a domestic pet, looking at the charred remains of the fireside chair and wringing her hands in misery. ‘How could you?’
‘Shut your trap,’ shouted Father, leaning on his rake. The embers of the fire glowed as the wind swept through the grass.
‘You’ve no right,’ she said, high and bitter, rubbing her goose-pimpled arms. ‘It was an antique.’
‘It wasn’t worth a brass farthing,’ he countered. ‘He couldn’t give it away, the mean old bugger.’
‘You’ll end badly,’ said Mother. ‘By God, if there’s any justice, you’ll end whimpering.’
‘Please,’ pleaded Alan, ‘come on in,’ and he tried to take her arm.
She pushed him away and advanced upon Father, fluttering her hands and demanding, ‘What did your family ever give you? They never had two pennies to rub together … what did Nora ever get out of life?’
‘Leave my sister out of it,’ warned Father, raising his rake like a weapon.
‘You wouldn’t let her have a life of her own in case it interferred with your business. Bob Ward might have mar
ried her if you hadn’t put your oar in—’
‘Don’t mention that damned fifth columnist.’
Father spat with anger. His cheeks wobbled as he tried to find words. Something fell from him and landed in the fire. Sparks eddied upwards into the trees. He clutched his mouth and Mother turned away in disgust. Alan knelt and groped in the warm ashes for the dentures. As Mother ran back up the garden, she began to laugh. She trotted over the wet grass and went squealing behind the privet hedge; the sound of her laughter carried across the bleak and desolate gardens.
‘It’s all right,’ said Alan. ‘Here they are.’ He wiped the pink gum on his coat and handed it to Father. He knew why his father had false teeth – he’d been told often enough. Lack of vitamins, poverty, neglect. Father was fed, in his day, on bread and potatoes, and if he had toothache he either wept or was taken to the paupers’ hospital, where the dentist in the butcher’s apron dragged out the molar by brute force, and left him bloody in the chair. Rationing and nutritional planning had changed all that.
Alan went into the house to find Mother. She’d put herself out to make the day a success – the cake, and the little paper napkins tucked under the plates. The chair had burned because she had spent time being nice to Janet Leyland. She wasn’t in the kitchen. Alan stood on the landing and listened to her sniffling inside the bedroom. ‘Mum,’ he said. He hoped she wouldn’t hear. ‘Go away,’ she wailed. ‘Leave me in peace.’ He put on his overcoat and went into the front room to do his piano practice. He had such chilblains that he stopped playing several times to scrape his fingers against the edges of the keys.
Alan met Madge at Exchange station after school, to take her to visit Nora. It was their aunt’s birthday. Mother had given Madge money to buy a potted plant and a box of hankies. Selflessly Madge gave him the hankies so that he wouldn’t arrive empty handed.
He didn’t like the town at dusk – the ruined buildings that dwarfed the hurrying people, the damaged statues tilting on cracked and monumental pedestals in the square. He could see Queen Victoria on a chair of stone, dumpy and offended under the lamplight, knees shattered and the coiled hair on her neck silvery with the droppings of gulls. His own mouth drooped in ill humour as the office workers rushed homewards along the pavement, buffeting him as they surged forward under the glittering strands of the overhead cables and broke like a wave to cross the street. He hated standing there with Madge, flamboyantly raising her eyebrows in expectation, making a show of herself, searching each face in the crowd as though she looked for someone in particular. When the tram came rattling down the hill, she clapped her hands like a child at a party, gazing in wonder at the fizz of blue sparks that spat into the night sky. ‘Stop it,’ he hissed. ‘Behave yourself.’ She leapt aboard the tram, not listening, and parked herself on the long bench with lips parted like a movie queen, glancing about theatrically, her shoes swinging clear of the floor and her laces trailing in the dust. She was desperate for attention. He dug his elbow sharply into her ribs; but she smiled, sly and wayward, fixing her eyes on the old woman seated opposite, calling out above the clatter of the tram as it accelerated up Argyle Road, ‘We’re going to visit my auntie. It’s her birthday.’
The old woman tittered, swaying in her seat, trying to avoid Madge’s bright and beady eye and drawn back every time, until she was forced to ask: ‘Your auntie, is it?’
‘This plant’s for her.’ Madge held up the pot swathed in brown paper. There was a crackling sound, like fire, as she unwound the stiff wrapping, revealing a small fern with corrugated leaves, thin and weakly. She lifted it up for all to observe. ‘Did you ever see anything that pretty?’
Alan wished her in hell, making an exhibition of them both. His cheeks burned at such exposure. He sat upright on his seat and felt afraid. The company he chose for himself afforded security – he could predict reactions – with extroverts like Madge or his father he was continually pitched into situations of danger. He was trapped like a rabbit on a country road, mesmerised by the headlamps of murderous cars, waiting to be struck down.
The old woman was standing on the platform ready to alight. The driver dragged on the brass handle of the brake and the tram shuddered to a halt beside a blitzed acre of ground.
‘Tarra,’ called the old woman, stepping down into the gutter.
In the pockets of darkness lay the bomb-sites, rubble overgrown with tall and multiplying weeds; the wind blew constantly from the river, scattering the dust and the seeds across the demolished city. Father said the high explosives had blasted the plants out of the granite rock beneath the town. In summer, between the twisted girders, in fields of brick the purple flowers bloomed. It wasn’t natural.
The tram started again; the hammering of his heart became less urgent. Cruelly he took hold of Madge’s arm, pinching the skin so that she winced and drew away.
‘If you say another blithering word,’ he warned, ‘I’ll get off and leave you.’
She sulked but stayed silent. It wasn’t that she was bothered at being left alone – it was what Mother would say if he told on her.
Aunt Nora lived in a rented house in Everton Street. She paid thirteen shillings a week for the cramped dwelling and the slateyard at the back with the wash house she never used. Father stored papers and old clothes in the wash house – he couldn’t bear waste. In a carrier bag was a child’s suit with a tattered lace collar that he’d worn at a school concert when he sang ‘Lily of Laguna’.
At the end of Nora’s street stood a Chinese laundry.
‘I love the smell,’ said Madge, wrinkling her nose.
She was romancing as usual. The laundry was closed, the soap suds rinsed clear down the drains. He could smell nothing save for the stench of tomcats issuing from the mouth of the air-raid shelter.
Aunt Nora was busy making sandwiches. She said she was expecting friends for a little celebration. He thought she must mean the lady next door. She kissed his cheek, holding him tightly against her flat chest, telling him he was a lovely lad to bring her hankies.
‘Is my dad fetching us?’ he asked.
‘Search me,’ she said. ‘He’s in a right paddy these days.’
She let Madge make tea and butter the scones. Alan read the newspaper and struggled not to yawn. He was fond of his aunt, he might almost have loved her, but despite himself whenever he entered the mean little house with the ugly patterned wallpaper and the curtains stained lemon with age, he wanted to fall asleep. His aunt never minded. He lay on the sofa and dozed against the cold and musty cushions. He could hear Madge chattering on about home and the chair that had gone up in flames.
‘Sheer foolishness,’ said Nora. She was out in the back, washing dishes.
‘I never liked it,’ said Madge. ‘There wasn’t room to turn round.’
‘He never had such a temper when he was a lad,’ observed Nora. ‘He’s grown mardy.’
‘When he was little,’ asked Madge, ‘was he quiet, like our Alan?’
He didn’t approve of the way his aunt confided in Madge. She was too free with her talk. Anything she said would be round the village in no time; Madge didn’t hold with secrets.
After some time he heard Nora say, ‘Your mam demands too much. She drives him too hard. Expecting this, expecting that. What’s the poor devil to do?’
He wanted to protest. He muttered into the cushions: ‘Mother sent the handkerchiefs. She told us to come and see you.’ Nobody heard him. His mouth left a wet stain on the satin cover. He was like an animal hibernating for the winter – curling up his limbs he buried his head deeper into his arms. They were emptying a drawer full of photographs on to the table. He’d seen them all before – seasides, gardens, outings of long-gone relatives – himself in a pram squinting into the sunlight with open mouth, bald head fragile under a cotton bonnet.
‘Those bathing costumes,’ screamed Madge.
‘We thought we were bobby dazzlers,’ tittered Nora.
The two of them at the table broke into d
ifferent kinds of coughing, Nora wheezing and asthmatic, his sister barking like one of those dolphins illustrated in the geographical magazines.
‘Your dad,’ said Nora. ‘He never knew what hit him.’
‘People choose,’ Madge said, daft as always. ‘It’s not random.’
‘He was engaged to Annie Mud,’ Nora said. ‘For seven years. I had Bob Ward. We went to Blackpool.’
That fifth columnist, he thought, with the oiled quiff of hair and the rounded collars, dead but not forgotten. Someone had told him that the departed only crumbled to dust when they were no longer remembered by the living. Bob Ward must be lying fresh as a daisy in his wooden box.
When he woke he saw Father was in the room, standing in the kitchen doorway with Nora. He was saying, low and urgent, ‘But it doesn’t suit me to have you hand over just yet.’
Nora replied tartly, ‘That’s a pity, I’m sure.’
‘I can’t see what ails you,’ said Father. He was trying to be controlled.
‘It makes for bad feeling. I can’t stand your Connie giving me the cold shoulder.’
‘Don’t talk soft, woman.’
‘And she’s within her rights. It’s not good for relatives to come between man and wife. You sign the whole caboodle over to her. Get her off me back. I don’t want the aggravation any more.’
Father moaned and cried bitterly, ‘God damn you, Nora. I thought better from you.’
He stood under the centre light in his hat and coat. As Mother aged, she grew round and rosy, encased in a warm layer of fat that obliterated the young woman under the cloche hat in the family album. Father was shedding his flesh, paring away to the bone beneath, letting the skeleton emerge. He ground his teeth with passion. He could never be on an even keel – he was either elated or depressed; he knew of nothing in between. He thumped the table with his fist. Nora held her ground.
A Quiet Life Page 9