The Likes of Us

by Stan Barstow

  He put the note and Sarah’s letter to him together in an envelope, and walking along to the corner by the hotel, he posted them in the pillar box there.

  In the fine warm afternoon of the following Sunday Morgan visited Sarah for the first time in several months. There was a short pause before she answered his knock, and they regarded each other in silence for a long moment as she stood in her doorway.

  ‘Well, Sarah,’ Morgan said at last. ‘I thought it was a nice day for a drive out.’

  Her eyes were unfathomable as she said, ‘I’ll get a coat.’

  He followed her into the house and was instantly drawn to the sideboard and the photograph of the young officer, Sarah’s son. She returned suddenly to the room and her glance flickered briefly on his face as he stood there with the photograph in his hand.

  ‘I’m ready.’

  ‘Righto.’ He replaced the picture on the sideboard and preceded her out of the house. Once clear of the narrow main street of the village, Morgan put on speed, heading straight for Greystone Cottage on which the work of conversion was now progressing. The hillside here was drenched in fresh green that was still untouched by the grimy smoke-fingers of industry which curled up out of the valley. In the orchard behind the house blossom sprang pink and white among the neglected trees. They walked in silence up the path and Morgan unlocked the door and stood aside for Sarah to enter. There was a new strangeness in their manner together now and they had spoken little in the car. From the cardboard tube he carried Morgan took out a copy of the architect’s plan for the conversion. As they walked from room to room, striding over rubble and builders’ materials, he explained to her all that was being done. She listened to him, nodding now and then, but making little comment. They came to the kitchen last of all and Morgan pointed to the tall cast-iron range and fireplace.

  ‘That’s going, Sarah. I’m knocking this wall right out and extending four feet back. There’ll be all built-in units along that wall there. It’s wonderful the things they make for kitchens nowadays.’ He talked on, flourishing catalogues with shiny illustrations of gleaming kitchen equipment. ‘It’ll be fair dinkum when it’s done.’

  ‘Fair dinkum?’

  ‘Australian for proper champion.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked about her. ‘Well, it sounds very nice.’

  He watched her face with eagerness. ‘Aye, it’ll be labour-saving; and I reckon just enough for one woman to manage – with a bit of help for the heavy work, y’know.’

  Sarah did not meet his eyes. ‘You’ve got somebody in mind to look after it all for you, then?’

  He gazed steadily at her. ‘I think so, Sarah,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m thinking of getting married again. I know just the lass. She needs somebody to look after her.’

  ‘Well, don’t you think you should talk it over with her before you get it all settled? Especially the kitchen. Every woman has her ideas about kitchens.’

  ‘Well, Sarah,’ he said, ‘let’s have your ideas, then.’

  ‘My ideas?’

  ‘Whose ideas do you think they should be?’

  She turned away from him, hiding her face and walking to the window which looked out on to the unkempt stretch of orchard.

  ‘You know – you don’t owe me anything, Morgan.’

  ‘But look, Sarah –’

  ‘He isn’t yours, y’know.’

  He was baffled now. He looked back at her with puzzlement in his eyes. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘John, I mean,’ Sarah said. She stood quite still, looking out of the window, both hands clasping her bag. ‘He’s not your boy, Morgan.’

  ‘I... I don’t understand, Sarah,’ he said again. ‘The letter…’

  ‘Oh, that was true enough.’ She turned and walked aimlessly across the gritty floorboards, not looking at him. He watched her, his eyes never leaving her as she said, ‘It never came to anything. I was mistaken. John is Mark’s boy, Morgan, not yours.’ She looked at him now, watching for his reaction as he lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  ‘I don’t know what to think now, Sarah. For a week I’ve believed I had a son.’ He smiled wanly. ‘It wasn’t a bad feeling.’

  ‘And what about Mark? You married him just the same.

  ‘I was panic-stricken,’ Sarah said. She gazed past his shoulder with the look of one who sees not great distances but over the long passage of years. ‘I didn’t know which way to turn. I thought you’d let me down. I told Mark. He’d always wanted me.’

  Morgan nodded. ‘I know.’

  ‘And he still wanted me after I’d told him. I was afraid and lost. I didn’t know what to do. Mark seemed the only way out.’

  ‘But you found you were mistaken?’

  ‘Yes, soon enough. But I couldn’t give Mark up then, not after he’d stood by me. So we were married. I didn’t love him – not the way I’d loved you – but I respected him. He was such a good man, such a kind and gentle man that I couldn’t help but come to love him in time. We had a good life together: a good marriage. And we had John.’

  ‘And all these years you’ve been thinking that I’d let you down?’ Morgan said.

  She smiled dryly. ‘And you’ve been thinking the same of me.’

  ‘Oh, what a waste,’ he burst out. ‘What a wicked, wicked waste!’

  ‘No, Morgan, not a waste. We both brought happiness to someone else. It wasn’t a waste.’

  He rolled the plans in his hands. ‘No, you’re right.’

  She straightened her back and strolled across the room again. ‘So you’re not obliged to me after all, Morgan. You don’t owe me anything.’

  ‘No, we’re quits,’ Morgan said. ‘We’re back where we started.’

  ‘Except we’re both thirty years older,’ Sarah pointed out; and we’ve both been married.’

  ‘Which is no reason for not having another go.’

  ‘It’s not everybody that wants another go,’ she said. ‘Some people are satisfied with what they’ve had.’ She turned to face him. ‘I don’t have to get married. I’m quite comfortable as I am. I have my pension and my sewing and John sends me money. I’m self-sufficient, y’know.’

  Morgan nodded. ‘Aye, it’d take more than being widowed to get you down.’

  ‘But it’s not that nobody wants me. I’m young enough, y’know, and not bad looking. I’ve had my chances.’

  Morgan began to smile. ‘I don’t doubt it lass. But don’t you think it was a happy providence that kept you till I’d come right round the world for you?’

  ‘Right round the world for me? To your old Yorkshire, you mean!’

  ‘But only a Yorkshire with you in it, Sarah. If I hadn’t known you were a widow I don’t think I’d have come at all.’

  She tossed her head suddenly and in the coquettish gesture he saw quite clearly the girl he had loved and lost so long ago.

  ‘Nay,’ she said, ‘you’ll have to convince me of that.’

  He slapped the cardboard tube down in his hands, laughing out loud. His heart sang. ‘I will, lass,’ he said. ‘By God, but I will!’

  And he did.

  The Desperadoes

  What started it that night was the row Vince had with his father. He couldn’t remember just what began the row itself, but something like it seemed to blow up every time the Old Man saw him, and started using expressions like ‘idle layabout’, ‘lazy good-for-nothing’ and ‘no-good little teddy boy’. The Old Man never talked to you – he talked at you: he didn’t carry on a conversation – he told you things. When Vince stormed out of the house he hardly knew where he was going he was so full of bottled-up fury. Violence writhed in him like a trapped and vicious snake. He felt like kicking in the teeth of the first person who might glance twice at him and he thought that perhaps the easiest way
of relieving his feeling would be to find the boys and go smash up a few chairs at the Youth Club. Except that that might bring a copper to the door and he got on the wrong side of the Old Man easily enough without having the police to help along.

  He had no trouble in finding the gang: they were obstructing the pavement at the end of Chapel Street, making the occasional passer-by get off into the road. He watched them sourly as he descended the hill – stocky Sam, little Finch, and big surly Bob – and his mouth twisted peevishly as he heard one of them laugh. They were watching something across the road that he could not see and they did not notice his approach till he was upon them.

  ‘Now then.’

  ‘What ho!’

  ‘How do, Vince.’

  Sam said, ‘Get a load of that,’ nodding across the junction.

  Vince looked. He might have known. It was a girl. She was straddling a drop-handlebar bicycle by the kerb and talking to a thin youth who stood on the edge of the pavement. She was a dark blonde. She wore very brief scarlet shorts which displayed her long, handsome thighs, and a white high-necked sweater stretched tight over her large shapely breasts.

  Finch was hopping about as though taken bad for a leak and making little growling noises in his throat.

  ‘D’you know her?’ Vince asked.

  ‘Never seen her before.’

  ‘Who’s that Sunday-school teacher with her?’

  ‘Don’t know him either.’

  Vince felt a spasm of gratuitous hatred for the youth. There was no one about; the street was quiet in the early evening. He said, ‘Well, what we waitin’ for? Let’s see him off, eh?’

  ‘An’ what then?’ Bob said.

  Vince looked at him where he lounged against the lamp-post, his hands deep in the pockets of his black jeans. He was becoming more and more irritated by Bob’s habit of making objections to everything he suggested. He had a strong idea that Bob fancied taking over leadership of the gang but lacked the guts to force the issue.

  ‘What d’you mean “what then?”?’ he said.

  There was no expression on Bob’s long sullen face. ‘When we’ve seen him off?’

  ‘We’ll take her pants off an’ make her ride home bare-back,’ Finch giggled.

  ‘Aye,’ Vince said; ‘’an if laughing boy has any objections we’ll carve his initials round his belly button.’

  He brought his hand out of his pocket and pushed the handle of his knife against Bob’s shirt front just above the buckle of his belt. He pressed the catch and let his relaxed wrist take the spring of the blade. He wondered if anyone had ever made a knife with a spring strong enough to drive the blade straight into a man’s belly.

  ‘You want to be careful wi’ that bloody thing,’ Bob said, eyeing the six inches of razor-sharp steel, its point pricking one of the pearl buttons on his black shirt. ‘Don’t you know there’s a law against ’em?’

  ‘I’ll have to be careful who sees me with it, then, won’t I?’ Vince said. Looking Bob in the eye he inclined his head across the street. ‘Comin’?’ he said.

  Bob shrugged with exaggerated casualness and eased his shoulders away from the lamp-post as Vince retreated the blade of the knife. ‘Okay, may as well.’

  They crossed the road in a tight group, fanning out as they neared the opposite side to approach the girl and the youth from two sides. The youth looked more startled than the girl to see them coming.

  ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ Vince said. ‘Been for a ride in the country?’

  Finch rang the bell on the bike’s handlebars. ‘Your mam’s ringing for you,’ he said to the youth. ‘Time you were off home.’

  The youth looked confused and startled. His smooth, unshaven cheeks flared with a brilliant flush of red as he looked at the faces of the gang.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ the girl said, and the youth, finding voice, said, ‘Why don’t you go away and leave people alone?’

  ‘Why don’t you go away an’ leave us alone?’ Vince said. He waved his hand at the youth. ‘Go on, sonny, get lost. Beat it.’

  Sam, Finch and Bob closed round the youth and began to hustle him away along the street. ‘Let me alone. Who d’you think you are?’ he said as they moved him along. They turned a corner with him into a side street and his voice died away. Vince held the handlebars of the bicycle with one hand to prevent the girl from leaving.

  She flashed blue eyes at him. ‘Who d’you think you are?’ she said, echoing the youth, ‘pushing people around like this?’

  ‘Vice squad,’ Vince said. ‘Cleaning the streets up.’

  ‘Well, you want to start by staying at home yourselves.’

  ‘Now that’s not nice, is it?’ Vince said. ‘After we’ve protected you from that creep.’

  ‘He’s not a creep.’ The girl’s eyes flashed over him, taking in the long pepper-and-salt jacket, the exaggeratedly narrow black trousers, the black shirt, open-necked, with stand-up collar, and the white triangle of sweat shirt at the throat. Vince in his turn was examining her with appreciation: the spirited blue eyes in a lightly tanned face, the shapely breasts taut under the sweater, the long bare legs.

  ‘He’s a creep,’ he said. ‘You’re the best-looking piece of crackling I’ve seen in a fortnight. What you want to waste your time with a drip like that for?’

  ‘It’s a question of taste,’ the girl said coldly. She looked back over her shoulder at the empty street. ‘What are they doing to him? I’m warning you, if they hurt him I’ll report you all to the police. Don’t think you can frighten me.’

  ‘Oh, they won’t hurt him,’ Vince said. ‘They’ll just see him on his way.’

  As he spoke, Sam and Finch and Bob reappeared round the corner. Finch was laughing and saying something to the others.

  ‘Where is he?’ the girl said. ‘What have you done to him?’

  ‘We didn’t lay a finger on him,’ Sam said. ‘All done by kindness.’

  ‘He’s remembered he’s got to do an errand for his mother,’ Finch said with a snigger.

  ‘And I’ve got to go as well,’ the girl said. ‘Would you mind taking your hand off the handlebars?’

  ‘What’s the hurry,’ Vince said, ‘just when we’re gettin’ friendly?’

  Finch was prowling round the bike, pretending to examine it. He crouched beside the front wheel and fingered the tyre valve.

  ‘Is this where the air goes in an’ out?’

  ‘Don’t you touch that!’ the girl said.

  ‘No, leave it alone, Finch,’ said Vince.

  ‘Thank you for nothing.’

  ‘Isn’t she polite?’ Vince asked the others. ‘She must have been to a good school.’

  ‘Where d’you live, love?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Not far from here. And you’d better let me go if you know what’s good for you. My father’s a sergeant in the police force.’

  ‘An’ my old man’s the chief constable,’ Vince said; ‘so they’ll know one another. What’s your name?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘That’s a funny name,’ said Finch, and the gang hooted with laughter that was mostly forced.

  Vince was wishing the others had stayed away longer, because he was sure he could have made some progress with her, given more time. All this defiance – it was mostly show. She was just keeping her end up and he wondered what she was like behind it, when you got to know her.

  ‘P’raps we’d better introduce ourselves,’ he said with a little bow. He pointed to Sam: ‘That’s Sir Walter Raleigh’; to Finch: ‘Field Marshal Montgomery’; to Bob: ‘Marilyn Monroe in disguise; an’ I’m Sammy Davis, junior.’

  ‘Very funny,’ the girl said. ‘Now I’ll thank you to let me go.’

  ‘Tell us your name an’ then we’ll see.’

 
; ‘I’ve told you, it’s none of your business.’

  ‘I used to know a lad called nobody’s business,’ Finch said, pursuing his joke. ‘Was he your brother? Then there was one called dirty business – the black sheep of the family.’

  Vince was watching the girl’s face closely. Was that really the faintest flicker of humour in the depths of her eyes, or was he imagining things?

  ‘Well, if you won’t tell us, we’ll have to keep you a bit longer. Can’t let you go when you’re feeling so unfriendly.’

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘if you don’t let me go I’ll call out to that man over there.’

  Vince smiled. ‘He’d probably run like hell the other way. You read every day in the papers about people gettin’ hurt through not minding their own business.’

  ‘Proper young gentlemen, all of you,’ the girl said. She gave a quick backward look over her shoulder. ‘Well, I don’t think you’ll scare two policemen.’

  They all fell for it. Vince said, ‘What...?’ and as he momentarily relaxed his grip on the handlebars she sent Finch reeling from a swift push in the chest and pressing down on the pedals, was away.

  She swayed uncertainly for a moment as she forced the speed, and then she was gone, head down, scarlet shorts brilliant in the drab street.

  ‘Fancy fallin’ for that one,’ said Sam.

  Vince watched until she turned the bend and disappeared from sight. ‘She’s a real smart piece,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to give her that... A real smart piece.’ He found himself hoping he would meet her again in more favourable circumstances and he let his mind dwell briefly on her remembered charms.

  ‘I could shag it from supper to breakfast-time,’ said little Finch, and Sam laughed and punched him tauntingly on the shoulder.

  ‘Aagh, she’d make mincemeat o’ two your size,’ he scoffed. ‘It takes a man, mate, a man.’