The Likes of Us

by Stan Barstow

  She ran and clung to him. ‘I want you to ask me,’ she said; ‘because I want you. I want to give you peace and love and a home, and, someday, kids. Everything a man should have from a woman. Everything you’ve never had in your life.’

  ‘You’re a grand kid,’ he said, stroking her hair. ‘So sweet and good and grand. I keep telling myself, if only I’d met you earlier, and then I remember that you were only a nipper then. You’re not much more now really.’

  ‘I’ll be all the woman you’ll ever want,’ she said fiercely, clinging to him. ‘You’ll see.’

  They came apart with a start as the woman’s voice hailed them from the foot of the stairs. ‘Hello, are you there?’

  The man crossed the room to the door and called down, ‘Yes, we’re just coming.’

  He looked back at the girl and she joined him at the head of the uncarpeted stairs. They went down, the girl twisting the signet ring on the third finger of her left hand, to where the woman was standing in the living-room.

  ‘Well,’ she said, watching them keenly, her hands folded under her clean pinafore, ‘have you seen everything?’

  ‘I think so,’ the man said.

  ‘It seems very nice,’ the girl said.

  ‘It’s not a palace,’ the woman said bluntly; ‘but of course, you’re not looking for a palace, eh?’

  ‘No,’ they said, and smiled.

  ‘Six hundred, you said, didn’t you?’ the man asked.

  ‘Six hundred cash,’ the woman said. ‘Six-fifty otherwise.’

  ‘Oh, we’d pay cash, but we’d have to see about a mortgage first.’

  ‘No need to do that,’ the woman said briskly. ‘That’s what I mean by otherwise. My solicitor can draw up an agreement. You pay me a hundred and fifty down and the rest at thirty shillings a week. ‘That’s fair enough, isn’t it?’

  ‘I think that’s very decent,’ the man said. ‘We were a bit worried about the building society. They’re getting very choosy about their loans nowadays.’

  ‘Aye, and putting their interest rates up every other week,’ the woman said. ‘Well, we’ve no need to bring them into it at all. I’m selling all my houses the same way. It gives me a bit of capital and a regular income. That’s my offer, and you won’t get better anywhere else.’

  ‘I’m sure we won’t,’ the girl said, and she and the man exchanged glances.

  The man said, ‘We’ll have to talk it over.’

  ‘Yes, have a talk about it. But don’t wait too long if you want it. Would this be your first home?’

  ‘Yes, the first.’

  ‘With your in-laws now, is that it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ the man said, and the girl found herself wondering what change there would be in the woman’s brisk friendliness were she to tell her that he had left his wife and they wanted somewhere to live in sin. She thought it would come out eventually anyway. You wouldn’t hide much from this woman for long.

  ‘Well you think it over,’ the woman said, moving across to the door.

  ‘Yes, we’ll let you know either way,’ the man said.

  Walking away from the house, up the long street, the girl with her arm through his, the man seemed suddenly full of hope and high spirits. ‘Just right,’ he said. ‘Not too big, and no messing about with building societies. That’s a stroke of luck. I think I know where to scrape up the deposit, and we’ll manage nicely after that.’ He squeezed her arm. ‘Just imagine,’ he said, ‘living there together all nice and snug. All our troubles ’ll be over then.’

  How easy, she thought, for her to dim the optimism in his voice and extinguish the bright hope on his face. She shuddered as she felt the shadow of a third person walking between them. But echoing his eager tones, she said, ‘Yes, all our troubles ’ll be over then,’ while in her heart she wondered if after all they might be only just beginning.

  ‘Gamblers Never Win’

  In the dusk of the winter afternoon Mrs Scurridge stirred from her nap by the fire as she heard the light movements of her husband in the bedroom overhead, and she was already on her feet in the firelight and filling the soot-grimed copper kettle at the sink when he came into the big farmhouse kitchen, his thin dark hair tangled on his narrow skull, his sharp-featured face unshaven, and blurred with Saturday-afternoon sleep. He crossed the room to the fireplace without a word or a glance for her and ran his hand along the mantelshelf in search of a cigarette-end. He wore a striped flannel shirt, without collar, the sleeves rolled up above his elbows, and over it an unbuttoned navy blue waistcoat. Besides braces he wore a heavy leather belt buckled loosely about his thin waist. He was a shortish, bandy-legged man and he had to stretch up on his toes to bring his eyes level with the mantelshelf. After a moment’s fumbling he found the partly smoked Woodbine, and pushed a twist of paper into the fire to get a light. The first mouthful of smoke started him coughing and he was helpless for some moments, bending over and supporting himself by the palm of his hand on the tall, old-fashioned fireplace while the phlegm cracked and gurgled in his throat. When the attack had passed he spat into the fire, straightened up, wiping the spittle from his thin lips with the back of his hand, and spoke:

  ‘Tea ready?’

  His wife pushed him aside and put the kettle on the fire, pressing it firmly down on the glowing coals.

  ‘It can be,’ she said, as soon ‘as you know what you want.’

  She picked up the twist of paper that Scurridge had dropped in the hearth and lit the single gas mantle suspended directly over the table. The gas popped and flared, then settled down to a dim, miserable glow which revealed the heartbreaking shabbiness of the room: the square table with bulbous legs hacked and scarred by years of careless feet; the sagging chairs with their bulging springs and worn and dirty upholstery; the thin, cracked linoleum on the broad expanse of damp, stone-flagged floor; and the great brown patch of damp on the wall – as though someone had spilt a potful of coffee against the grimy wallpaper – in one corner of the room. The very atmosphere was permeated with the musty odour of damp decay, an odour which no amount of fire could drive from the house.

  Scurridge reached for the morning newspaper and turned to the sports page. ‘I fancy a bit o’ bacon an’ egg,’ he said, and sat down beside the fire and placed his pointed elbows in the centres of the two threadbare patches on the arms of his chair.

  His wife threw a surly glance at the upraised newspaper. ‘There is no eggs,’ she said, and Scurridge’s pale, watery, blue eyes fixed on her for the first time as he lowered the paper.

  ‘What y’mean “there is no eggs”?’

  ‘I mean what I say; I didn’t get any,’ she added with sullen defiance. ‘I couldn’t afford ’em this week. They’re five-an’-six a dozen. Something’s got to go – I can’t buy all I should as it is.’

  Scurridge smacked his lips peevishly. ‘God! Oh! God. Are we at it again? It’s one bloody thing after the other. I don’t know what you do with your brass.’

  ‘I spend it on keeping you,’ she said. ‘God knows I get precious little out of it. Always a good table, you must have. Never anything short. Anybody ’ud think you’d never heard of the cost of living. I’ve told you time an’ again ’at it isn’t enough, but it makes no difference.’

  ‘Didn’t I give you another half-crown on’y the other week?’ Scurridge demanded, sitting forward in his chair. ‘Didn’t I? It’s about time you knew how to spend your brass; you’ve been housekeepin’ long enough.’

  She knew the hopelessness of further argument and took refuge, as always, behind the bulwark of her apathy. She lit the gas-ring and put on the frying pan. ‘You can have some fried bread with your bacon,’ she said. ‘Will that do?’

  ‘I reckon it’ll have to do, won’t it?’ Scurridge said.

  She turned on the upraised newspaper a look in which ther
e was nothing of hatred or malice or rebellion, but only a dull, flat apathy, an almost unfeeling acceptance of the facts of her life, against which she only now and again raised her voice in a token protest; because, after all, she was still capable, however remotely, of comparing them with what might have been.

  She laid a place for Scurridge on a newspaper at one corner of the table and while he ate there she sat huddled to the fire, nibbling at a slice of bread and jam, her left hand holding the fold of her overall close over her flaccid breasts. The skin of her face was sallow and pouchy; her hair, dark and without lustre, was drawn back in a lank sweep and knotted untidly on the nape of her neck. Her legs, once her best feature, were swollen in places with ugly blue veins. Only in her eyes, almost black, was the prettiness of her youth ever revealed, and this only momentarily when they flashed in an anger now rare. For most of the time they were like dirk windows onto a soul lost in an unmindful trance. Little more than forty-five years old, she had become already worn and aged before her time in the unending struggle of her life with Scurridge in this bleak and cheerless house which stood alone on a hillside above Cressley, an eternity from lights and noise and the warmth of human laughter.

  Scurridge pushed away his plate and ran his tongue across his greasy lips. He drank the last of his tea and set the pint mug down on the table. ‘Been better wi’ an egg,’ he said. His forefinger groped into his waistcoat pocket, searching absently for another cigarette-end. ‘You want to economise,’ he said. He smacked his lips, seeming to savour the word along with the fat from the bread. ‘Economise,’ he said again.

  ‘What on?’ his wife asked wearily, without hope of a reasonable answer. She had been whittling down her own needs for years, pruning where he would feel it least, and now there were only the bare necessities left for her to give up. It was a long time since any little luxuries had cushioned the hard edges of her existence.

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ Scurridge said. ‘It’s not my job to know, is it? I’ve done my whack when I’ve worked an’ earned the brass.’

  ‘Aye, an’ spent it.’

  ‘Aye, an’ haven’t I a right to a bit o’ pleasure when I’ve slaved me guts out all week, eh? An’ how do other folk manage, eh? There’s many a woman ’ud be glad o’ what I give you.’ He got up to search on the mantelshelf once more.

  ‘Nine out o’ ten women ’ud throw it back in your face.’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ Scurridge said, ‘I know you think you’re badly done to. You allus have. But I know how t’men talk in t’pit an’ happen you’re better off than you think.’

  She said nothing, but her mind was disturbingly alive. Oh! God, he hadn’t always been like this: not at first: only since that demon had got into him, that demon of lust, lust for easy money and a life of idleness. She had never known the exact amount of his wages but she had once caught a glimpse of a postal order he had bought to send off with his football pools and the amount on it had horrified her, representing as it did the senseless throwing away of a comfortable, decent life.

  As Scurridge straightened up from lighting his cigarette he peered at her, his eyes focusing with unaccustomed attention on one particular feature of her. ‘What you don wi’ your hand?’ he said. He spoke roughly, without warmth, as though fearing some trap of sentiment she had laid for him.

  ‘I caught meself on the clothes-line hook in the back wall,’ Mrs Scurridge said. ‘It’s rusty an’ sharp as a needle.’ She looked vaguely down at the rough bandage and said without emotion, ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if it turns to blood poisoning.’

  He turned away, muttering. ‘Aw, you allus make the worst of anythin’.’

  ‘Well, it’s not the first time I’ve done it,’ she told him. ‘If you’d put me another post up I shouldn’t have to use it.’

  ‘Aye, if I put you another post up,’ Scurridge sneered. ‘If I did this, that an’ the other thing. Is there owt else you want while we’re at it?’

  Goaded, she flung out her arm and pointed to the great stain of damp in the corner. ‘There’s that! And half the windows won’t shut properly. It’s time you did summat about the place before it tumbles round your ears!’

  ‘Jesus Christ and God Almighty,’ Scurridge said. ‘Can’t I have any peace? Haven’t I done enough when I’ve sweated down yon’ hole wi’out startin’ again when I get home?’ He picked up his paper. ‘Besides, it all costs brass.’

  ‘Aye, it all costs brass. The hens cost brass so you killed ’em all off one by one and now you can’t have any eggs. The garden cost brass so you let it turn into a wilderness. The sheds cost brass so now they’re all mouldering away out there. We could have had a nice little smallholding to keep us when you came out of the pit; but no, it all costs brass, so now we’ve got nothing.’

  He rustled the paper and spoke from behind it. ‘We’d never ha’ made it pay.’ This place ’ud run away wi’ every penny if I let it.’

  The mad injustice of it tore at her long-nurtured patience and it was, for a moment of temper, more than she could bear. ‘Better than it all going on beer an’ pools an’ dog-racing,’ she flared. ‘Making bookies an’ publicans their bellies fat.’

  ‘You think I’m a blasted fool, don’t you? You think I’m just throwin’ good money after bad?’ His hands crushed the edges of the newspaper and the demon glared male-volently at her from his weak blue eyes. ‘You don’t see ’at I’m out for a further fetch. There’ll be killin’ one o’ these days. It’s got to come. The whole bloody kitty ’ull drop into me lap an’ then I’ll be laughin’.’

  She turned her face from the stare of the demon and muttered, ‘Gambling’s a sin.’ She did not really believe this and she felt with the inadequacy of the retort surprise that she should have uttered those words. They were not her own but her father’s and she wondered that she should clutch at the tatters of his teaching after all this time.

  ‘Don’t mouth that old hypocrite’s words at me,’ Scurridge said without heat.

  ‘Don’t tell you anything, eh?’ she said. ‘You know it all, I reckon? That’s why your own daughter left home – because you ’at knew it all drove her away. Well mind you don’t do the same with me!’

  This brought him leaping from his chair to stand over her, his face working with fury. ‘Don’t talk about her in this house,’ he shouted. ‘Damned ungrateful bitch! I don’t want to hear owt about her, d’you hear?’ He reeled away as the cough erupted into his throat and he crouched by the fire until the attack had passed, drawing great wheezing gulps of air. ‘An’ if you want to go,’ he said, ‘you can get off any time you’re ready.’

  She knew he did not mean this. She knew also that she would never go. She had never seriously considered it. Eva, on her furtive visits to the house while her father was out, had often asked her how she stood it; but she knew she would never leave him. Over the years she had found herself thinking back more and more to her father and she was coming now to accept life as the inevitable consequence, as predicted by him, of the lapse into the sin which had bound her to Scurridge and brought Eva into the world. Eva who, as the wheel turned full circle, had departed without blessing from her father’s house, though for a different reason. No, she would never leave him. But neither could she foresee any future with him as she was. She had come to believe in the truth of her father’s prediction that nothing good would come of their life together and she was sometimes haunted by an elusive though disturbing sense of impending tragedy. The day was long past when she could hope for a return to sanity of Scurridge. He was too far gone now: the demon was too securely a part of him. But she too had passed the point of no return. For good or for bad, this was her life, and she could not run away from life itself.

  They sat on before the fire, two intimate strangers, with nothing more to say to each other; and about six o’clock Scurridge got up from his chair and washed and shaved sketchily in t
he sink in the corner. She looked up dully as he prepared to take his leave.

  ‘Dogs?’ she said.

  ‘It’s Saturday, in’t it?’ Scurridge answered, pulling on his overcoat.

  All the loneliness of the evening seemed to descend upon her at once then and she said with the suggestion of a whine in her voice, ‘Why don’t you take me with you some Saturday?’

  ‘You?’ he said. ‘Take you? D’you think you’re fit to take anywhere? Look at yersen! An’ when I think of you as you used to be!’

  She looked away. The abuse had little sting now. She could think of him too, as he used to be; but she did not do that too often now, for such memories had the power of evoking a misery which was stronger than the inertia that, over the years, had become her only defence.

  ‘What time will you be back?’

  ‘Expect me when you see me,’ he said at the door. ‘Is’ll want a bite o’ supper, I expect.’

  Expect him at whatever time his tipsy legs brought him home, she thought. If he lost he would drink to console himself. If he won he would drink to celebrate. Either way there was nothing in it for her but yet more ill temper, yet further abuse.

  She got up a few minutes after he had gone and went to the back door to look out. It was snowing again and the clean, gentle fall softened the stark and ugly outlines of the decaying outhouses on the patch of land behind the house and gently obliterated Scurridge’s footprints where they led away from the door, down the slope to the wood, through which ran a path to the main road, a mile distant. She shivered as the cold air touched her, and returned indoors, beginning, despite herself, to remember. Once the sheds had been sound and strong and housed poultry. The garden had flourished too, supplying them with sufficient vegetables for their own needs and some left to sell. Now it was overgrown with rampant grass and dock. And the house itself – they had bought it for a song because it was old and really too big for one woman to manage; but it too had been strong and sound and it had looked well under regular coats of paint and with the walls pointed and the windows properly hung. In the early days, seeing it all begin to slip from her grasp, she had tried to keep it going herself. But it was a thankless, hopeless struggle without support from Scurridge: a struggle which had beaten her in the end, driving her first into frustration and then finally apathy. Now everything was mouldering and dilapidated and its gradual decay was like a symbol of her own decline from the hopeful young wife and mother into the tired old woman she was now.