The Likes of Us

by Stan Barstow

  ‘Like some you could mention, eh?’

  ‘I didn’t say it.’

  ‘But you meant it.’

  ‘Look’ – he stirred uneasily – ‘what is this? First you accuse me of being bitter, and now you put the words into my mouth. I haven’t seen you for fifteen years, Annie; let’s not be like this.’

  ‘No, you’re right.’ She picked up the basket and slid it along to her elbow. ‘I’m sorry, Arthur. I was just so disappointed when you didn’t get here in time.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Bronchitis. The old complaint. Been troubling him for years. The last cold spell finished him.’

  They made their way back to the avenue and turned up the slope, walking towards the gate.

  ‘Well,’ she said after a silence, ‘what did it feel like coming back to the place after all these years?’

  ‘A bit queer…’ He frowned. ‘I couldn’t see that it had changed much – a few estates about – but it was sort of different somehow.’

  ‘That’ll be all the years away.’

  ‘Aye, everything seems different when you’ve been away a time.’

  She looked at him with a swift sideways and upwards glance. ‘Everything?’

  ‘Well, no,’ he said, hesitating, ‘perhaps not everything.’

  She sighed audibly and his voice when next he spoke had sharpened slightly with irritation. ‘We’re all the same people, y’know, Annie. Did you think when you saw me of Henry and Cissie killing the fatted calf? I’ve been away and they’ve stayed here – but we’re still the same people.’

  ‘He wasn’t the same.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Father... You’d never have believed the change in him. You couldn’t credit what the woman did for him, not having witnessed it. But I saw it all. I watched it happen, month by month; day by day, even.’

  ‘How did she change him?’

  ‘She softened him, Arthur. Mellowed him. He was a different man when he’d been married to her a few years. All that hard sourness and bitterness seemed to drain steadily out of him. And he wanted to see you again. It was his dearest wish that he might make his peace with you before the end.’

  ‘I was at sea,’ he muttered. ‘What could I do?’

  ‘But you did come,’ she said, ‘as soon as you could.’

  ‘Aye, as soon as I could.’

  He did not tell her that it had taken him a week after the ship docked to make up his mind, but he felt somehow that she guessed the truth. Anyway, he would have been too late. He felt for and lit now the cigarette he had denied himself earlier and they walked on in silence to the gates.

  ‘You’ll be coming –’ she began as she made to pass straight out into the street. But he took her arm and restrained her.

  ‘Let’s sit down for a minute,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk for a while.’

  She allowed him to lead her to a near-by bench where they sat down together, he leaning back, legs crossed, pulling at his cigarette, she sitting straight-backed, hands resting on the handle of the shopping-basket on her knee.

  Now it seemed that neither of them had anything to say, and they sat in silence for some minutes until he shivered suddenly and pulled up the collar of his raincoat.

  ‘Cold?’

  ‘It is a bit chilly up here.’

  ‘I thought it was quite warm,’ she said. ‘A nice spring day.’

  ‘Spring!’ he said with a scoffing laugh. ‘English weather! Every time I come back from a trip I’m half-frozen.’

  ‘You’ll be used to used to hotter parts, I reckon?’

  ‘I love the warmth and the sunshine,’ he said. ‘It can’t be too hot for me. Some blokes I know can’t stand South America, but I just lap it up. I reckon I’ll end up there for good, or some place like it, before I’ve done.’

  She was silent for a moment before she said, ‘You’ve never thought of coming back, I suppose?’

  ‘What,’ he said, ‘here? What is there here for me?’

  ‘Same as there is anywhere else.’

  ‘Ah, I’m all right as I am for a bit: going places, seeing things. Deck-hand. No responsibility; no trouble. Sign on for wherever suits me.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘When you’ve been everywhere and seen everything. What then?’

  ‘Well, like I said: South America, or somewhere else far off.’

  ‘It’s the same all over, Arthur,’ she said. ‘There’s people and things, just as there is here.’

  He threw the end of his cigarette across the path. ‘I had all I wanted of this place a long time ago.’

  ‘And you got out.’

  ‘Yes, I got out. And not before time.’

  She started to speak again, then stopped and turned her head.

  ‘That’s half-past eleven striking,’ she said. ‘I shall have to be off. It’s half-day closing and there’s one or two things I must get.’

  They stood up and moved out together into the street.

  There she said, ‘Anyway, there’s no need for you to trail round the shops with me, unless you want to. You can go and wait for me at the house. Lucy’s out, but you can take my key.’

  He shook his head, ‘No, Annie. The visit’s over. I’ve seen all I want to see now. I was too late for anything else.’

  ‘But you’ve only just got here... You can’t go now. Lucy’d be ever so pleased to see you.’

  ‘Why barge in on her?’ he said. ‘She doesn’t know me. Why bother her now?’

  ‘And there’s Henry and Cissie.’

  ‘Ah, dear old Henry and Cissie. How are they these days, by the way?’

  ‘Oh, doing well enough. Henry has his own plumbing business and Cissie’s husband’s manager of the Co-op grocery. Henry’s thinking of standing for the council this time.’

  ‘All nicely settled and going steady. All good sober industrious citizens. No, they’ve nothing for me, Annie. And I’ve nothing for them. They’ve no need ever to know I’ve been here at all if you don’t tell ’em.’

  ‘But, Arthur –’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I mean it. I want you to promise me you won’t tell ’em you’ve seen me. Let ’em think of me as they always have. Don’t have ’em trying to reckon me up all over again.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘but, Arthur –’

  ‘Promise,’ he said, and suddenly smiled. At her puzzled look, he said, ‘I’m just thinking of a long time ago. Remember how Father used to make us go to bed early, and I used to slide down the coal-house roof so’s I could get out to see that lass over Newlands way?’

  ‘I remember. And I remember the last time you did it, that night in December, with a fall of snow on the ground.’

  ‘And I lost control and shot clean over the edge into the yard and brought Father out to me. You stuck up for me, and Henry spilled the beans.’ He looked reflectively past her shoulder. ‘He leathered me black and blue, and I leathered Henry. That was the night I finally made up my mind to get out. I told nobody of my plans but you. You didn’t give me away then, and you won’t now, will you, Annie?’

  She looked at him long and steadily. ‘I’ll never give you away, Arthur,’ she said.

  ‘Gentle Annie,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘Sweet little Annie... Why has no man ever married you?’

  She coloured faintly. ‘I’m all right. What about you?’

  ‘Oh me... you know me. Like I said – no ties: no responsibility.’

  ‘And now you’re off again?’

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘this minute.’

  He kissed her lightly on the cheek and released her hand. ‘So long, Annie’ he said. ‘Take care of yourself.’

  She did not move from the sp
ot as he walked away from her. After a few yards he turned and waved, then turned away again. His steps suddenly became jaunty, and several more yards brought a shrill whistle to his lips. Why, he could not have said. Not to deceive the passers-by, for why should he want to deceive them? Perhaps to deceive himself, then? Certainly not to deceive her, for the one he had never been able to deceive was the one who stood now and watched him go.

  The Search for Tommy Flynn

  On a December evening just three weeks before Christmas after an uneasily mild day that had died in a darkening flush of violet twilight, Christie Wilcox came down into Cressley to look for his long-lost pal, Tommy Flynn.

  His mates at the factory said Christie was only elevenpence ha’penny in the shilling, and had been ever since the war; but like the management, they tolerated him, because he was able-bodied and harmless, and for most of the time as near normal as hardly mattered. For most of the time – except on the occasions when this blinding urge came over him, this unswervable obsession to find Tommy Flynn, the pal he had not seen since the night their ship was blown from under them. And then he would leave the little house on Cressley Common where he lived with his widowed mother and go down into the town to search. Sometimes he would stop someone on the street and ask, ‘Have you seen Tommy Flynn?’ and the questioned would perhaps mutter something, or just pass by without a word, only a look, leaving Christie standing on the pavement edge, looking after them with helpless stupefied loneliness and dejection on his face and in the droop of his head and shoulders. But mostly he bothered no one, but simply scanned the features of people on the streets and opened the door of every pub he passed, searching the faces in the smoky taprooms and bars. Tommy Flynn had been a great one for pubs.

  But he never found him. He never found him because They wouldn’t help him. They all knew where Tommy Flynn was but They wouldn’t tell Christie. They just looked at him with blank faces, or nodded and grinned and winked at one another, because They knew where Tommy Flynn was all the time, and They wouldn’t tell.

  Some of Them had tried to tell him that Tommy Flynn was dead; but Christie knew otherwise. He knew that Tommy was alive and waiting for him to find him. Tommy needed him. The last words he had ever said to him were, ‘For Christ’s sake get me out of this, Christie!’ And Christie had not been able to help. Why, he could not remember. But now he could help. Now he could help Tommy, if only he could find him.

  He had walked the mile and a half from his home, letting the lighted buses career past him down the long winding road; and on the edge of town he began to look inside the pubs he passed, sometimes startling the people there by the sudden intensity of his face, all cheekbones and jaw and dark burning eyes, as it appeared briefly in the doorway, then vanished again. And when, after more than two hours, he came to the centre of town, he was, as usual, no further in his search. He stood on a street corner and watched the faces of the people passing by. He even stood lost in contemplation of the suited dummies in the lighted window of a tailor’s shop, as though he hoped that one of them might suddenly move and reveal itself as his lost pal. And all the while the yearning, the terrible yearning despair in him grew into an agony, and he muttered hopelessly, over and over again, ‘Tommy, oh, Tommy, I can’t find you, Tommy.’

  He wandered along a line of people queuing outside a cinema for the last show, looking at every face, his own face burning so oddly that it provoked giggles from one of a pair of girls standing there; and a policeman standing a little way along looked his way, as though expecting that Christie might at any moment whip off his cap and break into an illegal song and dance.

  They laughed. They laughed because he could not find Tommy Flynn. Everybody against him: no one to help.

  Oh! If only he could find just one who would help him. He stopped and gazed at, without seeing, the ‘stills’ in the case on the wall by the cinema entrance, then turned away.

  Some time later the dim glow of light from a doorway along an alley took his attention. It occurred to him that this was a pub he had never been in before. A new place to search. He went down the alley, pushed open the door, and stepped along a short corridor, past the door marked ‘Ladies’, and into the single low-ceilinged L-shaped room of the pub. It was quiet, with only a very few people drinking there. Two men stood drinking from pint glasses and talking quietly. The landlord had stepped out for a moment and there was no one behind the bar. One of the two men knew Christie and greeted him.

  ‘Now then, Christie lad.’

  And almost at once he saw that Christie was not himself.

  ‘Have you seen Tommy Flynn?’ Christie asked him.

  ‘Can’t say as I have, lad,’ the man said, and his right eyelid fluttered in a wink at his companion, who now turned and looked at Christie also.

  ‘Tommy Flynn?’ the second man said. ‘Name sounds familiar.’

  ‘You don’t know him,’ the first man said. ‘He’s a pal of Christie’s. Isn’t he, Christie?’

  ‘A pal,’ Christie said.

  ‘Well, he hasn’t been in here tonight. Has he, Walt?’

  ‘That’s right. We haven’t seen him.’

  ‘How long is it since you’ve seen him, Christie?’

  ‘A long time,’ Christie mumbled. ‘A long time ago.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you what,’ the man said: ‘you go on home, and we’ll keep an eye open for Tommy Flynn. And if we see him we’ll tell him you were looking for him. How’s that?’

  ‘What about a drink afore you go?’ the man called Walt said good-naturedly.

  ‘He doesn’t drink, Walt,’ the first man said.

  ‘Don’t you smoke, either?’ Walt asked.

  Christie shook his head. He was beginning to feel confused and he looked from one to the other of them.

  ‘But I’ll bet you’re a devil with the women.’

  The first man laid a hand on his companion’s arm. ‘Easy, Walt.’

  ‘Oh, I’m on’y kiddin’,’ Walt said. ‘He doesn’t mind, do you, lad? Take a bit o’ kid, can’t you, eh?’

  But the film of incomprehension had come down over Christie’s eyes and he just stood and looked at each of them in turn.

  ‘I’ve got to go now,’ he said in a moment.

  ‘Aye, that’s right, Christie lad. Off you go home; an’ if we see Tommy Flynn we’ll tell him. Won’t we, Walt?’

  ‘Course we will,’ Walt said.

  Christie had turned away from them before he remembered about the money, and he wondered if he should tell them so that they could tell Tommy Flynn. Tommy had always been so short of money. He put his hand into his pocket and took out some of the notes. Then, at once, he changed his mind and went out without saying anything.

  The two men had already turned back to their glasses and only one person in the bar saw the money in Christie’s hand: a middle-aged tart with greying hair dyed a copper red, a thin, heavily powdered face and pendant ear-rings, sitting at a corner table with a tall West Indian, his lean handsome features the colour of milk chocolate, wearing a powder-blue felt hat with the brim turned up all round. As Christie went out she got up, saying something about powdering her nose, and left the bar.

  Outside the alley Christie walked away from the pub, then stopped after a few paces, to stand indecisively on the cobbles. Always he came to this same point, the dead end, when there was no sign of Tommy Flynn, and nowhere else to look. He bowed his head and furrowed his brow in thought as his mind wrestled heavily with the problem.

  Light sliced across the alley as the door of the pub opened, then banged shut again. The woman paused on the step, looking both ways, before stepping down and clicking across the cobbles to Christie.

  He took no notice of her till she spoke at his side.

  ‘Did you say you were looking for somebody?’

  And then Christie’s head jerked
up and his eyes, level with the woman’s, blazed.

  ‘Tommy Flynn,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for Tommy Flynn. Have you seen Tommy Flynn?’ he asked with breathless eagerness in his voice.

  ‘What’s he look like?’ the woman asked, playing for time.

  But Christie only mumbled something she did not catch and then, the light gone from his eyes, ‘I’m looking for Tommy Flynn.’

  A man entered the alley from the far end and walked along towards the pub. The woman took one step back into shadow. When the door of the pub had closed behind him the woman said: ‘I know a Tommy Flynn.’

  And Christie came alive again as though a current of power had been passed through him.

  ‘You do? You know Tommy Flynn? Where is he?

  Where’s Tommy Flynn?’ His hand gripped her arm.

  ‘I think I know where to find him,’ the woman said. ‘Only… you’d have to make it worth my trouble like. I mean, I’ve left my friend an’ everythin’…’ She stopped, realising that Christie was not taking in what she said. ‘Money, dear,’ she said, with a kind of coarse delicacy.

  ‘Money? I’ve got money. Lots of money.’ He thrust his hand into his pocket and dragged out a fistful of notes. ‘Look – lots of money.’

  Startled, the woman covered Christie’s hand with her own and looked quickly right and left along the alley.

  ‘Just keep it in your pocket, dear, for the time being.’

  She put her arm through his and turned him towards the mouth of the alley.

  ‘C’mon, then,’ she said. ‘Let’s go find Tommy Flynn.’

  Once across the lighted thoroughfare beyond the alley the woman led Christie into the gloom of back streets, hurrying him under the sheer dark walls of mills; and he followed with mute eagerness, sometimes doing more than follow as in his excited haste he pulled away so that he was leading, the woman occasionally having to break into a trot to keep pace with him.

  ‘Not so fast, dear,’ she said several times as Christie outpaced her. She was breathless. ‘Take it easy. We’ve plenty of time.’