The Likes of Us

by Stan Barstow

  And all the while she was thinking how to get the money away from Christie. He was simple, there was no doubt about that. But often simple people were stubborn and stupid and untrusting. She would have taken him into a pub on the pretext of waiting for this Tommy Flynn and got him to drink; only she did not want to be remembered afterwards as having been seen with him. So she led him on, her mind working, until they came to a bridge over the dark river. She pulled at his arm then and turned him onto a path leading down the river bank.

  ‘This way, dear.’

  To the right the river ran between the mills and warehouses of the town; and to the left the footpath led under the bridge and beyond, where the river slid over dam stakes and flowed on through open fields. In the darkness under the bridge the woman stopped and made a pretence of looking at a watch.

  ‘It’s early yet,’ she said. ‘Tommy Flynn won’t be home yet. Let’s wait here a while.’

  She kept hold of Christie’s arm as she stood with her back to the stonework of the bridge.

  ‘What d’you want Tommy Flynn for?’

  ‘He’s my pal,’ Christie said, stirring restlessly beside her.

  ‘And haven’t you seen him lately?’

  ‘No... I can’t find him. Nobody’ll ever tell me where he is... We were on a ship together… an’…’ His voice tailed off. Then he said with a groan. ‘I’ve got to find him. I’ve got to.’

  ‘We’ll find him,’ the woman said, ‘in a little while.’ And she looked at Christie in the darkness under the bridge.

  For a moment then she stood away from him and fumbled with her clothes. ‘Why don’t you an’ me have a nice time while we’re waiting?’ She took him and drew him to her, pressing his hand down between her warm thighs. ‘You like a nice time, don’t you?’ she said into his ear.

  ‘What about Tommy?’ Christie said. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I know where Tommy is,’ the woman said, her free hand exploring Christie’s pocket, where the money was.

  ‘Why aren’t we going to him, then?’

  ‘Because he’s not at home yet.’ The woman kept patience in her voice. ‘I’ll tell you when it’s time to go.’

  The thought had already come to her that he might be dangerous, and she recalled newspaper reports, which she read avidly, of women like herself being found strangled or knifed in lonely places. But there was always an element of risk in a life such as hers, and Christie seemed to her harmless enough. There was, too, the feel of all that money in her fingers, and greed was stronger than any timidity that might have troubled her. So she played for time in the only way she knew how.

  ‘Why don’t you do something?’ she said, moving her body against his. ‘You know what to do, don’t you? You like it, don’t you?’

  The feel of her thighs moving soft and warm against his fingers roused momentary excitement in Christie, causing him to giggle suddenly.

  ‘I know what you want,’ he said. ‘You want me to –’ and he whispered the obscenity in her ear.

  ‘That’s right,’ the woman said. ‘You like it, don’t you? You’ve done it before, haven’t you?’

  ‘Me an’ Tommy,’ Christie said. ‘We used to go with women. All over the world. All sorts of women.’

  ‘That’s right. You and Tommy.’

  ‘Tommy,’ Christie said, and, his excitement with the woman broken, tore his hand free. ‘Tommy,’ he said again, and looked away along the path.

  He stepped away from her and her hand, pulling free of his pocket, retained its hold on the notes. She hastily adjusted her clothes as he moved away along the path.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘It’s early yet. It’s no good going yet.’

  ‘I’m going now,’ Christie said, walking away. ‘I’m going to find Tommy.’

  Stepping out of the shadow of the bridge into moonlight, he stopped and threw up his arms, uttering a cry. Beside him now, the woman said, ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Tommy,’ Christie said, trembling violently. ‘Look, look, look.’

  And following the wild fling of his arm the woman saw something dark bobbing in the greasy water by the dam stakes.

  ‘Tommy!’ Christie shouted, and the woman said, ‘Quiet, quiet,’ and looked anxiously all about her.

  ‘It’s Tommy,’ Christie said, and the next instant he was free of her and bounding down the rough grass bank of the water’s edge.

  ‘Come back,’ the woman said. ‘Don’t be a fool. Come back.’

  ‘I’m coming, Tommy,’ Christie bawled.

  For a few seconds the woman hesitated there on the bank then she turned and fled along the path, away from the bridge, stuffing banknotes into her bag as she went. Behind her she heard the deep splash as Christie plunged into the river, and she quickened her pace to a stumbling run.

  Standing in the middle of the room, his shoulders hunched, Christie said, ‘I found him, Mam. I found Tommy Flynn, an’ he’s drowned, all wet an’ drowned. I couldn’t get to him…’

  There was something of resignation in his mother’s dismay. She looked past him to the police sergeant who had brought him home.

  ‘Where…?’ she said, in a voice that was little more than a movement of the lips.

  ‘The river.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Christie said. ‘All wet an’ drowned.’

  ‘Well then, Christie lad, don’t take on so. He’s happy, I’m sure he is.’

  But as she spoke Christie began to cry helplessly, collapsing against her. She held him for the second of time it took the sergeant to spring across the room and get his hands under Christie’s armpits.

  ‘We’d best get him upstairs,’ the mother said, and the sergeant nodded. He swung Christie up like a child into his arms, and Christie wept against his chest as he was carried up the stairs to his bedroom.

  The sergeant laid Christie on the bed and stood aside in silence while the widow swiftly stripped her son and set to work on his cold body with a rough towel. There was admiration in the sergeant’s eyes by the time the woman had pulled the sheets over Christie and tucked him firmly in. She struck a match then and lit a night-light standing in a saucer of water on the chest of drawers. Christie was weeping softly now.

  ‘He doesn’t like the dark,’ she explained as she picked up the wet clothes and ushered the sergeant out of the room. ‘I think he’ll go to sleep now.’

  In the living-room once more, the sergeant remembered to take off his helmet, and he mopped his brow at the same time.

  ‘Wet through,’ the woman said, feeling her son’s clothes. ‘Absolutely sodden. Whatever happened?’

  ‘He must have been in the river,’ the sergeant said. ‘My constable said he’d run up to him, dripping wet, and shouting that this Tommy Flynn was in the water; but when Johnson went with him all he could see was a dead dog. Seems that was what your son had taken for his Tommy Flynn.’

  The woman bowed her head and put her hand to her face.

  ‘Anyway, the constable didn’t take much more notice of it. He said he’d often seen your son about the town, and he knew…’ The sergeant stopped and grimaced.

  ‘He knew that Christie wasn’t quite right in the head.’ the widow said.

  ‘That’s about it, Missis.’ The sergeant shifted his weight from one foot to the other; then, as though he had only just thought of it, he took out his notebook.

  ‘I know it’s upsetting,’ he said, ‘but I shall have to put in a report. I wondered if you’d give me a bit of information on your son...’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Well, where this Tommy Flynn comes into it; and what makes your boy go off looking for him.’

  ‘During the war, it was, when he met him,’ the widow said, raising her head and looking somewhere past the sergeant. ‘He was i
n the Merchant Navy. He was all right till then: as normal as anybody. This Tommy Flynn was his special pal. He used to write home about him. He hardly mentioned anything else. His letters were full of him. It was all Tommy Flynn had said this, or done that. And what they were going to do after the war. They were going to start a window-cleaning business. Tommy Flynn said there’d be a shortage of window cleaners, and all they needed was a couple of ladders and a cart and they could make money hand over fist. I don’t know whether there was anything in it or not... Anyway, Christie had it all planned for Tommy Flynn to come and live here. He was an orphan. I didn’t mind: he seemed a nice enough lad, and he looked after Christie, showing him the ropes…’

  ‘You never met him?’ the sergeant asked.

  The widow shook her head. ‘I never saw him, but Christie thought the world of him. He could hardly remember his father, y’know, and this Tommy was a bit older than him. He sort of took him in hand.

  ‘Then towards the end of the war their ship was hit by one o’ them Japanese suicide planes and got on fire. Christie was on a raft by himself for ages and ages. He was near out of his mind by the time they found him, and all he could talk about was Tommy Flynn. They reckoned Tommy must have gone down with the ship, but Christie wouldn’t have that. He raved at them and called them liars.’

  ‘But they’d treat him?’

  ‘Oh aye, they treated him. They said he’d never be quite the same again; but of course you can’t hardly tell unless he’s in one of his do’s, and he didn’t start with them till he’d been home a while.’

  ‘How often does he have these... er – attacks?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘Oh, not often. He’s all right for months on end. Anybody ’ud just take him as being a bit slow, y’know. An’ he was such a bright lad…’

  ‘Why don’t you try and get some more advice?’ the sergeant suggested. ‘Y’know he might do himself some damage one of these times.’

  ‘I did ask the doctor,’ the widow said; ‘and I mentioned it to Christie – when he was his usual self, I mean. He begged and prayed of me not to let them take him away. He broke down and cried. He said he’d die if they shut him up anywhere... It wouldn’t be so bad, y’see, if he was one way or the other; then I’d know what to do…’

  She swallowed and her lips quivered, then stilled again as she compressed them before looking straight it the sergeant.

  ‘You’ll look out for him if you see him about, Sergeant, won’t you?’ she said.

  ‘I’ll look out for him,’ he assured her, frowning a little. ‘But I’d get some more treatment for him, if I were you, Missis.’

  ‘I’ll see,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to think about it again now.

  The sergeant picked up his helmet.

  ‘It’ll be all right about tonight?’ she asked. ‘There’ll be no trouble?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. I shall have to report it, o’ course; but it’ll be all right. He hasn’t broken the law.’

  Not yet, he thought, and put his hand into his tunic pocket. ‘By the way, you’d better have this. It came out of his pocket.’ He put the wet notes on the table. ‘Four quid.’

  He caught the startled look fleetingly in her eyes before she hid it.

  ‘Do you let him have as much money as he likes?’ he asked, watching him.

  ‘Well, not as a rule... I like him to have a bit in his pocket, though, and then he’s all right... If anything happens I mean.’

  The sergeant nodded, his eyes remaining on her face a moment longer before he reached for the latch.

  ‘Well. I’ll get along.’

  The widow seemed to stir from thought. ‘Yes, yes... all right. And thanks for taking so much trouble.’

  ‘Just doing me job, Missis.’ The sergeant bade her good night as he opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement.

  When the door had closed behind him the widow looked at the money on the table. She picked up the notes and fingered them, the thoughts tumbling over in her mind, before going to the dresser and taking her purse from the drawer. She examined its contents and then put it away, closing the drawer, and went quietly upstairs to her room.

  She took a chair and stood on it to reach into the cupboard over the built-in wardrobe for the shoe-box in which she kept all her and Christie’s savings. She knew almost at once by its lightness that it was empty, but she removed the lid just the same. Her heart hammered and she swayed on the chair. Nearly a hundred pounds had been in the box, and it was gone. All the money they had in the world.

  She put the box back in the cupboard and stepped down, replacing the chair by the bed. She put her hand to her brow and thought furiously, pointlessly. Christie was quiet in his room. She went out and stood for a few moments outside his door. Then she went downstairs and felt in every pocket of the wet clothing on the hearth. Nothing. She sank into a chair and put her head in her hands and began to sob silently.

  When Christie woke next morning she was at his bedside.

  ‘What did you do with the money you took out of the box, Christie?’ she said. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘He’s drowned,’ Christie said. ‘Tommy’s drowned. All wet and dead.’

  She could get no other response from him and in a little while she went away. He showed no sign of wanting to get up and at intervals during the day she returned, hoping he had recovered from the shock of last evening, and asked him, speaking slowly and carefully, as to a child, enunciating the words with urgent clarity, ‘The money, Christie, remember? What did you do with the money?’

  But he stared at the ceiling with dark haunted eyes and told her nothing.

  He never told her anything again. The search for Tommy Flynn was ended; and shortly after she let them come and take him away.

  The Little Palace

  We both knew at once when the removal van arrived, at ten o’clock, on the Saturday morning because there were no curtains at the windows and it was so big that it shut out almost all the light as it stopped on the damp cobbles outside the house. I said, ‘Here they are, Tom,’ and got up from my knees beside the tea-chest into which I’d been carefully packing the most fragile of our crockery.

  Tom looked down from where, standing on a chair, he was dismantling the cupboards over the sink: the cupboards he had intended leaving behind had the new tenants not turned out to be the sort of people they were. The first thing anyone noticed about Tom, I suppose, was his size. He wore his fair hair cut short and he had blue eyes in a guileless, pug-nosed face. The numerous mishaps, small, thank God, sustained in his work as a coal miner were recorded in the faint blue scars on the backs of his hands: hands that were big and calloused and rough to the touch: hands that could be so unbelievably gentle and tender when touching me.

  ‘I reckon everything else is ready, Janie,’ he said now.

  ‘I’ll be done here in a jiffy.’

  I often wondered when people glanced at us when we were out together what they made of Tom and me. Tom so big and so obviously a man of toil and sweat, and me so petite, with looks that Tom thought so pretty and lady-like and I’d always considered insipid; Tom with his voice heavy with the West Riding, and mine from which my mother and the elocution teacher she had sent me to had coaxed all trace of locality in my childhood. I’d heard one of Tom’s sisters refer to me as ‘The Duchess’ when I wasn’t supposed to hear, but I’d learned to hold my own with them, and Tom, when I told him about it, said it was a compliment, and if I wasn’t proud of it, he was.

  I opened the door as one of the men knocked.

  ‘Manage it in one trip easy,’ Tom said as the two men stepped over the threshold and looked around with experienced eyes. There wasn’t a lot. We had been married only a year, and the house was very small: one room up, one down.

  As the men started to carry out the furniture I slipped on a coat an
d went outside; partly to be out of their way, and partly to watch that they did not mishandle anything as they packed it into the gaping interior of the van. And as I stood out there on the pavement I felt a hidden audience watching from the cover of lace curtains. I knew I had disappointed and antagonised some of our neighbours by not encouraging them to run in and out of my house as they did one another’s; and now the more inquisitive would be snatching a last look at what they had merely glimpsed as it came into the house a year ago. Mrs Wilde from the next house below came out onto the step. Her face was unwashed; her hair uncombed. She stood with her arms folded across her grubby pinafore, her bare toes poking out of worn felt slippers. When I thought about it I could not remember ever having seen her in a pair of shoes.

  ‘Well, off you go to leave us, Mrs Green,’ she said amiably.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘off we go, Mrs Wilde.’ She had been into the house several times, and there was little strange for her to see.

  ‘Don’t seem hardly two minutes sin’ ye got here,’ she said, relaxing into her favourite stance against the door jamb.

  ‘No, time flies.’

  ‘It does that,’ she said. ‘It does that! You’ll know a bit more about that when you get to my age... Aye. Thirty year I’ve lived in Bridge Street. Sort o’ settled down, y’know. Nivver wanted to go nowhere else, somehow. Brought six kids up in this house an’ all, little as it is. Course, young fowk nowadays wants summat better. Got bigger ideas na we hid in our young days... Bought your own place over t’new part o’ town, so I hear?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, Mrs Wilde. A semi-detached on Laburnum Rise.’

  She nodded. ‘Aye, aye. I reckon that’ll be more your quarter like than over here. I mean, this is nowt new to yer husband. I’ve known his fam’ly for years, an’ they’ve allus been collier-fowk. But I knew straightaway ’at you were used to summat better. You can tell fowk ’at’s had good bringins up. Leastways, I allus can.’