The Likes of Us

by Stan Barstow

  Suddenly overcome, Eva fell down beside her mother’s chair, grasping her roughened hand and pressing it to her face in the rush of emotion that swept over her.

  ‘Oh, Mother, Mother; come away with me. Come away tonight. Leave it all an’ have done with it. I’ll make it right with Eric. He’s a good man; he’ll understand.’

  Mrs Scurridge gently withdrew her hand and touched her daughter’s head. ‘No, love. I thank you for what you’ve said; but my place is with your father as long as he needs me.’

  Carried along in the crowds that swarmed from the greyhound stadium, but alone, was Scurridge, richer tonight by six pounds. But it give him little joy. He knew that next week or the week after he would lose it again and probably more as well. His ultimate aim was not centred here; these small prizes were of only momentary satisfaction to him and it was only the constant urgings of the demon, the irresistible pull of something for nothing, which brought him here week after week. He turned right at the opening of the lane and walked along the pavement with his slouch-shouldered gait, chin sunk into the collar of his overcoat, hands deep in pockets, a dead cigarette butt between his lips. His pale eyes were brimming with tears, his thin features pinched and drawn in the biting wind which scoured the streets, turning the slush on the pavements and in the gutters to ice. He still dressed as he had in the lean thirties, in shabby overcoat and dirty tweed cap, with a silk muffler knotted round his neck to hide lack of collar and tie. The new prosperity had left no mark on Scurridge.

  He was making for the Railway Tavern, one of his customary Saturday-night haunts, and as he neared the pub he heard himself hailed with joviality and beery good-cheer by two men approaching from the opposite direction.

  ‘Fred! Ey, Fred!’

  He stopped, recognising the men. He nodded curtly as they drew near. ‘How do, Charlie. Do, Willy.’

  They were better dressed than Scurridge though they were, like him, colliers – coal-face workers: the men who earned the big money, the elite of the pit. The one called Charlie, the taller of the two, came to a halt with his arm thrown across the shoulders of his companion.

  ‘Here’s old Fred, Willy,’ he said. ‘Ye know old Fred, don’t you, Willy?’

  Willy said Aye; he knew Fred.

  ‘I should bloody well an’ think you do,’ Charlie said. ‘Everybody knows Fred. The life an’ soul of the party, Fred is. Here every Sat’day night; an’ every other night in t’week he’s at some other pub. Except when he’s at t’Dogs. When he in’t in a pub he’s at t’Dogs, an’ when he in’t at t’Dogs he’s in a pub. An’ when he in’t at either, Willy – where d’you think he is then, eh?’

  Willy said he didn’t know.

  ‘He’s down t’bloody pit wi’ t’rest on us!’ Charlie said.

  Wheezy laughter doubled Charlie up, the weight of his arm bearing Willy down with him. Willy extricated himself and carefully straightened his hat. Scurridge, at this moment, made as if to enter the pub, but Charlie, recovering abruptly, reached out and took his arm.

  ‘Know what’s wrong wi’ Fred, Willy?’ he said, throwing his free arm back across Willy’s shoulders. ‘Well, I’ll tell you. He’s got a secret sorrer, Fred has. That’s what he’s got – a secret sorrer. An’ d’you know what his secret sorrer is, Willy?’

  Willy said no.

  ‘No, ye don’t,’ Charlie said triumphantly. ‘An’ no bugger else does neither. He keeps it to himself, like he keeps everythin’ else.’

  Feeling he was being got at, and not liking it, Scurridge tried to free his arm: but Charlie held on with all the persistence of the uninhibitedly drunk.

  ‘Oh, come on now, don’t be like that, Fred. I’m on’y havin’ a bit o’ fun. I allus thought you’d a sense o’ yumour. I like a feller with i sense o’ yumour.’

  ‘Come on inside,’ Scurridge said. ‘Come on an’ have a pint.’

  ‘Now yer talkin’, Fred lad,’ Charlie said. ‘Now yer bloody well an’ talkin’!’

  They followed Scurridge up the stone steps and into the passage, where he would have gone into the taproom but for the pressure of Charlie’s hand on his back. ‘In ’ere’s best,’ Charlie said. ‘Let’s go where there’s a bit o’ bloody life.’ He pushed open the door of the concert room. Beyond the fug of tobacco smoke, there could be seen a comedian on the low stage, a plump man in a tight brown suit and red tie. He was telling the audience of the time he had taken his girlfriend to London and some laughter broke from the people seated there as he reached the risqué punchline of the story. ‘Over there,’ Charlie said, pushing Scurridge and Willy towards an empty table. As they sat down the waiter turned from serving a party nearby and Charlie looked expectantly at Scurridge.

  ‘What yer drinkin?’ Scurridge said.

  ‘Bitter,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Bitter,’ Willy said.

  Scurridge nodded. ‘Bitter.’

  ‘Pints?’ the waiter said.

  ‘Pints,’ Charlie said.

  The waiter went away and Charlie said, ‘Had any luck tonight, Fred?’

  ‘I can’t grumble,’ Scurridge said.

  Charlie gave Willy a nudge. ‘Hear that, Willy? He might ha’ won fifty quid tonight, but he’s not sayin’ owt. He tells you what he wants you to know, Fred does, an’ no more.

  ‘He does right,’ Willy said.

  ‘O’ course he does, Willy. I’m not blamin’ him. Us colliers, we all talk too much, tell everybody us business. Everybody knows how much we earn. They can all weigh us up. But they can’t weigh Fred up. He keeps his mouth shut. He’s the sort o’ feller ’at puts a little cross on his football pools coupon – y’know, no publicity if you win. Wha, he might be a bloody millionaire already, for all we know, Willy.’

  ‘Talk some sense,’ Scurridge said. ‘Think I’d be sweatin’ me guts out every day like I am if I’d enough brass to chuck it?’

  ‘I don’t know, Fred. Some fellers I’ve heard tell of keep on workin’ as a hobby-like.’

  ‘A fine bloody hobby.’

  The waiter put the drinks on the table and Scurridge paid him. Charlie lifted his glass and drank deeply, saying first, ‘Your continued good ’ealth, Fred me lad.’

  Scurridge and Willy drank in silence.

  ‘Well,’ said Charlie, putting the half-empty glass back on the table and wiping his lips with the back of his hand, ‘Is’ll be able to tell me mates summat now.’

  ‘Tell ’em what?’ Scurridge asked.

  ’At I’ve had a pint wi’ Fred Scurridge. They’ll never bloody believe me.’

  This continued reference to his supposed meanness angered Scurridge and he flushed. ‘You’ve got yer bloody ale, haven’t yer?’ he said. ‘Well, you’d better sup it an’ enjoy it, ’cos you won’t get any more off me.’

  ‘I know that, Fred,’ said Charlie, in great good humour, ’an’ I am enjoying it. I can’t remember when I enjoyed a pint as much.’

  Scurridge turned his head and looked sulkily round the room. The entertainer had come to the end of his patter and now, accompanied by an elderly man on the upright piano, was singing a ballad in a hard, unmusical pseudo-Irish tenor voice. Scurridge scowled in distaste. The noise irritated him. He hated music in pubs, preferring a quiet atmosphere of darts and male conversation as a background to his drinking. He lifted his glass, looking over its rim at Charlie who was slumped against Willy now, relating some anecdote of the morning’s work. Scurridge emptied the glass and Charlie looked up as he scraped back his chair.

  ‘Not goin’, are yer, Fred? Aren’t you havin’ one wi’ me?’

  ‘I’m off next door where it’s quiet,’ Scurridge said.

  ‘Well, just as yer like, Fred. So long, lad. Be seein’ yer!’

  Relieved at being free of them so easily, Scurridge went out and across the passage into the taproom
. The landlord himself was in attendance there and seeing Scurridge walk through the room to the far end of the bar, he drew a pint of bitter without being asked for it and placed the glass in front of Scurridge. ‘Cold out?’ Scurridge nodded. ‘Perishin’’. ‘He pulled himself up onto a stool, ignoring the men standing near him and the noise coming faintly from the concert room. Close behind him, where he sat, four men he knew, colliers like himself, were gathered round a table, talking as the dominoes clicked, talking as all colliers talk, of work...

  ‘So when he comes down on t’face, I says, “I reckon there’ll be a bit extra in this week-end for all this watter we’re workin’ in?” An’ he says, “Watter! Yer don’t know what it is to work in watter!” “An’ what do yer think this is seepin’ ovver me clog tops, then,” I says: “bloody pale ale?”’

  Scurridge shut his ears to their talk. He never willingly thought of the pit once he was out of it; and he hated every moment he spent down there in the dark, toiling like an animal. That was what you were, in animal, grubbing your livelihood out of the earth’s bowels. He could feel the years beginning to tell on him now. He was getting to an age when most men turned their back on contract working and took an easier job. But he could not bear to let the money go. While there was good money to be earned, he would earn it. Until the day when he could say good-bye to it all...

  He drank greedily, in deep swallows, and the level in his glass lowered rapidly. When he set it down empty the landlord came along and silently refilled it, again without needing to be asked. Then with the full glass beside him Scurridge prepared to check his football pool forecasts. He put on his spectacles and taking out a copy of the sports final, laid it on the bar, folded at the results of the day’s matches. Beside the newspaper he put the copy coupon on which his forecasts were recorded, and with a stub of pencil in his fingers he began to check his entries. If was a long and involved procedure, for Scurridge’s forecasts were laid out according to a system evolved by him over the years. They spread right across the coupon, occupying many lines, and could only be checked by constant reference to the master plan, which was recorded on two scraps of paper which he carried in a dirty envelope in an inner pocket. Consequently the glass at his elbow had been quietly refilled again before he came near to the end of his check and a gradual intensification of his concentration began to betray in him the presence of growing excitement. And then the movements of the pencil ceased altogether and Scurridge became very still. The noises of the taproom seemed to recede, leaving him alone and very quiet, so that he became conscious of his own heartbeats.

  Mother and daughter heard at the same time the low growl of the motor-cycle as it approached the house.

  ‘That’ll be Eric now,’ said Eva, glancing at her wristwatch. ‘He said about ten.’ She reached for her boots and slipped her feet into them.

  ‘Won’t you have a cup o’ tea before you go?’

  ‘No, thanks, love.’ Eva stood up. ‘We really haven’t time tonight. We promised to call an’ see some friends.’ She reached for her handbag and felt inside it. ‘Before I forget... here, take this.’ She held out her hand, palm down. ‘It’ll come in handy.’

  Her mother had automatically put out her own hand before she realized that it was a ten-shilling note she was being offered. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Thanks all the same; but it isn’t your place to give me money.’

  ‘I can give you a present, can’t I?’ Eva said. ‘Take it an’ treat yourself to something nice. You don’t get many treats.’

  ‘How should I explain it to your father?’ Mrs Scurridge said. ‘He thinks I squander his money as it is. And I couldn’t tell him you’d given it to me.’

  Eva put the note back in her bag. ‘All right. If that’s the way you feel about it…’

  ‘I don’t want you to be offended about it,’ her mother said. ‘But you know how it is.’

  ‘Yes,’ Eva said, ‘I know how it is.’

  The sound of the motor-cycle had died now at the back of the house and there was a knock on the door. Eva went out into the passage and returned with Eric, her husband. He said, ‘Evenin’ to Mrs Scurridge and stood just inside the doorway, looking sheepishly round the room, then at his wife who had put on her coat and was now adjusting her headscarf over her ears. He was a big fair young man, wearing a heavy leather riding-coat and thigh-length boots. A crash helmet and goggles dangled from one end.

  ‘It’ll be cold riding your bike tonight, I expect?’ Mrs Scurridge said. She felt awkward with her son-in-law, for she had had no chance of getting to know him.

  His eyes rested on her for a second before flitting back to Eva. ‘It’s not so bad if you’re well wrapped up,’ he said. ‘Ready, love?’ he said to Eva.

  ‘All about.’ She picked up her handbag and kissed her mother on the cheek. ‘I’ll pop over again as soon as I can. An’ you’ll have to make an effort to get over to see us.’

  ‘I’ll be surprising you one of these days.’

  ‘Well, you know you’re welcome any time,’ Eva said. ‘Isn’t she, Eric?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Eric said. ‘Any time.’

  She wondered vaguely what would be their reaction were she to walk in on them unexpectedly one evening; when they had company, for instance. Then she pushed the thought from her mind and followed them out to the back door where she and Eva kissed again. Eva walked across the crisp, hardening snow and got into the side-car. Mrs Scurridge called good night and watched them coast round the side of the house. She waited till she heard the sudden open-throttled roar of the engine before closing the door and going back into the house.

  She sat down and looked into the fire and in a moment a flood of misery and self-pity had swept away the uncertain barrier of her indifference and was over-flowing in silent tears on to her sallow cheeks. For the first time in years she allowed herself the luxury of weeping. She wept for many things: for the loneliness of the present and the loneliness of the past; for that all too brief time of happiness, and for a future which held nothing. She wept for what might have been and she wept for what was; and there was no consolation in her tears. She sat there as the evening died and slowly her sorrow turned to a sullen resentment as she thought of Scurridge, away in the town, among the lights and people; Scurridge, struggling through the Saturday-evening crowds to stake her happiness on the futile speed of a dog in its chase after a dummy hare. Leaning forward some time later to stir the fire she was suddenly transfixed by a shocking stab of pain. The poker clattered into the hearth as the pain pierced her like a glowing spear. Then with an effort that made her gasp, and brought sweat to her brow, she broke its thrust and fell back into the chair. Lumbago: a complaint with a funny name, that lent itself to being joked about. But not in the least funny to her. It could strike at any moment, as it had just now, rendering her almost helpless. Sometimes it would pierce her in the night and she would lie there, sweating with the agony of it, until she could rouse Scurridge from his sottish sleep to turn her on to her other side. She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It might be in hour or more before Scurridge returned. She longed for the warmth of her bed and with her longing came a fierce desire to thwart Scurridge in some way.

  It was then that she first thought of locking him out for the night.

  It was a pathetic gesture, she knew; but it was all she could think of: the only way to show resentment and defiance. She foresaw no benefit from it and her imagination, dulled by the pain which hovered across the threshold of every moment, could not stretch even as far as Scurridge’s rage in the morning. The immediate horizon of her thoughts contained only the warm bed and the oblivion of sleep. It could neither encompass nor tolerate Scurridge’s drunken return and the possibility of a demand for the satisfying of flesh that was a mockery of their first youthful passion.

  She boiled a kettle and filled a stone hot-water bottle and hobbled with it upstair
s. Then she made some tea and searched the cupboard where she kept the remains of old medicinal prescriptions and bottles of patent remedies accumulated over the years, until she found a round box of sleeping pills once prescribed for her. The label said to take two, and warned against an overdose. She took two, hesitated, then swallowed a third. She wished to be soundly and deeply asleep when Scurridge came home. Standing there with the box in her hand it occurred to her to wonder if there were enough tablets to put her into a sleep from which she would never awaken, and she thrust the box out of sight among the bottles and packets and returned the lot to the cupboard. She poured herself some tea and sipped it before the fire, her hands clasped round the warmth of the mug. At eleven o’clock she raked the ashes down from the fireback and went into the passage and shot the bolts on the back door. Even as she stood there in the act she felt the insidious creep of the old apathy. What did it matter? What good would it do? She turned away and went back into the kitchen where she doused the gas. By the light of a candle she made her careful way upstairs. She undressed and lay shivering between the clammy sheets, moving the hot-water bottle round and round, from one part of her cold body to another, until eventually she became warm, and in a short time after that, fell asleep.

  Scurridge stared from the pools coupon to the newspaper. A man came in and stood next to him at the bar counter. He ordered his drink and said to Scurridge, ‘A real freezer out tonight, isn’t it?’ Scurridge made no answer; he was hardly aware that he had been addressed. His mind was a maelstrom of excitement and he put his hand to his forehead and by an effort of will forced himself into sufficient calmness to recheck the column of results. It was right, as he’d thought. No mistake – he’d forecast seven drawn games and he needed only one more to complete the eight required for maximum points. One forecast only remained to be checked and that was a late result printed in blurred type in the stop press column of the newspaper. He peered at it again. It could be a draw or an away win, he thought. If it was an away win he would be one point down and eligible for a second dividend. That one point could mean the difference between a measly few hundred pounds and a fortune.