by Stan Barstow
‘Good heavens, it’s you, Brian. I thought you were in bed and asleep hours since. Have you been out there all this time?’
‘It took longer than I expected.’
‘I should think so. And me lying up there half the night with the door unlocked for anybody to walk in that fancied.’
‘I was only across the street.’
‘With your head stuck in that engine and taking no notice of anything else.’
She came down and passed him to go into the kitchen. He followed and watched her move the draught regulator on the coke-burning stove in the fireplace.
‘I shouldn’t ha’ thought you’d be so timid,’ he said. ‘I mean, all the fellers ’at sleep here…’
‘I can size them up before I let ’em in,’ Mrs Sugden said. ‘But I can’t do owt about somebody who walks in off the street in the middle of the night.’
Brian’s lips moved in a faint smile. He didn’t take her complaint seriously. He knew she was more concerned that he should have spent all that time across there in the cold when he could have been in a warm bed. She was like that with him; she thought that his nature saddled him with more inconvenience and discomfort than was necessary.
‘Sit yourself down and get warm. I’ll cook you some breakfast as soon as I’ve got dressed.’
He moved across the room and sank into a fireside chair, which had a loosely draped shroud-like cover over it to protect the upholstery from greasy overalls, and stretched out his legs towards the stove as Mrs Sugden left the room and went back upstairs. His presence in the kitchen made him the privileged of the privileged; for Mrs Sugden gave food and shelter with care, selecting only those she liked the look of, and most of the men she took in ate in the bare dining-room across the hall, with its formica-topped tables and easily scrubbed lino-covered floor. She had to be careful: he understood that. There were loudmouths in any pull-in, ready to brag about the extra comforts to be found along the road, and as a widow still, in her forties, handsome and well set-up, her motive in offering beds to men here today and gone tomorrow would, to some of them, appear more than the simple one of augmenting the living she made from the little general shop next door.
You had, indeed, Brian found, to be careful yourself as you moved about the country. Some men courted trouble in their readiness to accept casual pleasure. There was the place in Liverpool where that simple-faced teenaged girl rubbed her breasts against any man she could get close to, going with some of them behind the vehicles in the lorry park when she had a few minutes free from waiting on tables. He’d an idea she was younger than her well-developed body and the sly carnality of her glance suggested. Sooner or later somebody would knock her up, or the police move in and start asking questions. So Brian had taken warning and not gone back. Then there were the birds you met along the road, hanging about the cafés waiting for lifts. Brian left them to the men who liked the possibility of a bit on the side in exchange for a ride, or the others whose only motive in helping them on their way was good nature. Singly or two together, they were all potential trouble and he kept clear of them.
His eyelids drooped in the rising heat from the stove and he woke some time later to the sizzle and smell of bacon frying on the cooker. Mrs Sugden was looking at him.
‘Now then. You’ve just saved me from having to wake you. Your breakfast’s nearly ready.’
‘How long have I been asleep?’
‘Oh, three-quarters of an hour, maybe. I did think at one time of leaving you; but when you’ve got some breakfast into you you can get off up into a comfortable bed.’
He sat up and knuckled his eyelids.
‘I’ve just been thinking. I’ll have me breakfast and get on me way.’
She stared at him. ‘But you’ve had no sleep, man.’
‘It’s all right. I’ll make it up later.’
‘They’re poor employers ’at won’t allow a man some leeway when he’s had a breakdown. It’s not your fault you had trouble with your lorry, is it? Now you’re going to drive all that way with no more than a cat-nap. You’re not safe on the road, man.’
‘I shall be all right. I was thinking, y’see. It just occurred to me, if I set off now I can cut across and drop me load in Carlisle and get back down home before Joyce goes out tonight. Then Gloria won’t have to go next door to Mrs Miles’s.’
Mrs Sugden’s head tilted back so that she seemed to aim the disapproval of her glance along her nose.
‘Oh, that’s it. She’s still messing about with the Houdini feller, is she?’
‘Leonardo, he calls himself,’ Brian said. ‘That’s his stage name. His real name’s Leonard. Leonard Draper.’
Mrs Sugden turned to the cooker and spoke over her shoulder: ‘Leonardo, Houdini, or Uncle Tom Cobleigh. I don’t know as his name makes any difference.’
‘She enjoys it. It gets her out and meeting people. What with me being away so much.’
‘Aye, with that bairn pushed from pillar to post, and when you are at home you’ve got to sit on your own while she’s out cavorting on a stage with a conjuror... You’d better get your hands washed. It’s ready.’
He got up and went to the sink, standing next to her as he ran water, and fingered grease-remover out of the tin she kept there. ‘He’s a hypnotist mainly. That’s his big thing.’
‘He seems to have hypnotized your wife all right. All I can say is, some women are lucky to have husbands ’at’ll stand for it. My Norman wouldn’t have had it. He thought a woman’s place was in the home and I was content to abide by that. We were never lucky enough to have any kiddies, and I didn’t take boarders in in them days, either; but I’d plenty to keep me occupied in making a nice home for him.’
He moved his shoulders in embarrassment. He regretted having told her about Joyce and Draper in that quiet conversation some months ago. It was from this that she had made her quick summing-up of him, fixing him immediately as a man who could be put upon. And, that lesson learned, he should have held his tongue just now and left without giving her more ammunition to fire at the wife she’d never met in her self-appointed role of defender of him, who was too soft for his own good. For she didn’t understand, couldn’t know. She was, in her own way, like some of the drivers he heard talking, men who were always bragging about some point scored, some small victory won over the missus; as though marriage were a never-ending battle in which any concession was a weakness to be exploited. It wasn’t like that with him and Joyce.
‘Anyway,’ Mrs Sugden said, ‘I’d ’ve thought she’d see enough people working in the shop all day.’
‘That’s not the same thing. She likes being on the stage. It’s... it’s glamorous to her.’
‘I’d give her glamorous. Showing herself off in front of all manner of folk. Her with a husband and a growing bairn.’
‘Aw, you’re old fashioned, Mrs Sugden. You think everybody should be like you.’
‘Aye, I talk like your mother might, don’t I? When there’s less than ten years between us.’ She put the plate of bacon and eggs on the table and clamped the fingers of one hand onto a loaf of bread, the knife poised in the other. ‘Still, I like to think I’ve picked up a bit of sense over the years.’
‘I suppose you’d have me stop her going out to work as well wouldn’t you?’
‘Why not? It’d make sense. Working for that feller during the day and going all manner of places with him at night. She must see ten times more of him than she does you.’
‘It’s not every night. And you can’t be suggesting there’s–’
‘I’m suggesting nothing. I’m just seeing a carry-on that isn’t all it should be. Come on, get it down before it goes cold.’
‘Maybe I’m not all I should be,’ Brian said.
‘You what?’ Her gaze came directly onto him again, the knife arrested this tim
e halfway in its cut through the bread.
‘Well, if I can’t earn enough to keep us in all we want, and I’m only at home half the time, can you wonder she has to go out to work and wants a bit of... of excitement in her life?’
‘Why, there’s many a woman ’ud…’ She stopped, as though on the verge of saying too much, and severed the slice from the loaf with two heavy strokes of the knife. ‘What are you always underselling yourself for, you big daft lump?’ Her voice fell as she turned away, and what she said came in a dismissive mutter, as if to end the conversation: ‘You must be a daft lump or you’d have told me to mind my own business by now.’
Yes, he would have to do that – or stop coming here. Which would be a pity, because it was a fine place, the best he knew. He glanced at her back briefly but she said nothing more. He took the slice of bread and dipped a corner of it into the soft yolk of the egg on his plate and began to eat.
‘You’ll be all right, then, Gloria, now your daddy’s here.’
The little girl sat up close to Brian on the sofa, her eyes fixed on the bluish square of the television screen. A sudden loud burst of music made the picture tremble, the figures on it wavering as though seen through disturbed water.
‘Oh, it’s always doing that,’ Gloria said. ‘It spoils all the best parts. Can’t you twiddle a knob or something, Daddy?’
‘I’ve adjusted it all I can,’ Brian said. ‘It must be the aerial.’
‘It’s the set that’s clapped out,’ Joyce put in. ‘It’s time we had a new one.’ She was looking distractedly round the room. ‘Where did I put my hairbrush? You haven’t had it, have you, Gloria? I’m talking to you, Gloria.’
‘No, Mummy.’
Joyce began moving cushions. ‘Here it is.’ She stood on the hearthrug and brushed her hair in the glass over the fireplace. Among the pale gold were some strands that shone like silver as the light caught them. They were the lingering tints of childhood, not a sign of advancing years, but she was self-conscious about them and sometimes spoke of dyeing the whole to a uniform blonde. Brian was against it.
‘I can’t see, Mummy.’
‘You’ll have to do without for a minute. I’m late as it is.’
‘Where is it tonight?’ Brian asked.
‘Forest Green Club.’
‘Have they a good audience?’
‘I don’t know. If it’s like most of the other workingmen’s clubs all they want is singers and comedians.’
‘Can I look at your costume, Mummy?’ Gloria said.
‘Oh, Gloria. It’s every time I go out. You’ve seen it many a time, and I’m late, love.’
‘Oh, come on, Mummy, just let me see it.’
‘Well, if I do you’ll promise to be good and not give your daddy any trouble about going to bed?’
‘She’s never any trouble. Are you, poppet?’
Joyce slipped off her skirt to reveal the glitter-finish stage costume, cut high up each groin to display the full length of her splendid legs in nylon mesh tights. She put one hand on her hip, throwing up the other one and turning slightly on one foot. ‘Ta-rah!’ At the same time she shot a quick sideways glance at Brian’s face as though to detect any sign of disapproval. It was odd how the costume always seemed more excessive here in the confines of the house than it ever did on stage, making her self-conscious about this private display of limbs which, later, she would show without qualms to an audience of strangers.
‘You do look lovely, Mummy.’
‘Yes, I’m not wearing too badly, love. I can still make their heads turn.’ She glanced down at her legs. ‘A few pints and a look at them and Leonard can get away with murder.’
The flippancy of her remark compensated for that silly twinge of guilt. There was nothing brazen in what she did. And Brian didn’t care, anyway. His face was impassive as his gaze ran briefly over her then switched back to the television screen. She reached for her skirt and finished getting ready to go.
By nine-thirty ‘Leonardo’ had run through the first part of his act – the routine with coloured silks and steel rings which mysteriously linked themselves and came apart again – and, timing the audience’s patience for this run-of-the-mill conjuring to a nicety, culminated in producing Joyce from the interior of a dolls’ house which he had just demonstrated as being empty. Now he came to his speciality, in which the audience would participate through identification with one or more of its members. Occasionally people quizzed Joyce about the secrets of Leonardo’s act, ending, when she refused to be drawn, with the exclamation: ‘Oh, well, we know they’re all tricks’. Of course they were tricks! It was the skill with which he hid the trickery which made the routine. All that was, except the hypnotism. That was proved to be genuine every time he did it. Joyce had seen him put half the people in a room under, their fingers locked foolishly behind their necks until he released them. She herself had never seen her part of the routine they did together and could only believe it when, during their first rehearsals, he had taken a photograph and shown it to her afterwards. She’d not been able to suppress all feeling of uneasiness, but tried to cover it with a little laugh. ‘There’s no knowing what you could get me doing when I’m under,’ she said. ‘Oh, basically the subject won’t do anything against his nature,’ Leonard explained. ‘On the other hand, who knows what urges are bottled up inside people? I once had a young woman on stage who showed an irresistible desire to take all her clothes off. I had to snap her out of that pretty quickly, or we’d have all been in trouble.’
‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, for the next part of our performance, which is a demonstration of the power of mind over matter, I need the assistance of a volunteer from the audience. A muscular young man... Have we a handsome specimen of British manhood who is willing to come forward and help me?’
There was a stir in the audience as people looked at their neighbours. Joyce picked out a table down front at which a young woman was nudging her companion with her elbow while he made grimaces of resistance. Leonard had spotted them too.
‘Do I see someone down there trying to make up his mind? Come along, sir. Don’t be shy.’
He turned his head and nodded to Joyce, who went down off stage to a greeting of shouts and whistles and held out her hand with a smile to the young man. The girl put both hands on his back and pushed. ‘Go on with yer. What yer scared of?’
The boy shrugged in an elaborate attempt at casualness and let Joyce lead him up off the floor of the hall, Leonard starting a round of applause as, still held by Joyce’s hand, he followed her onto the stage. She eyed him discreetly as he faced Leonard; not tall, but broad-shouldered and deep-chested: no waster.
‘Now, sir,’ Leonard began, ‘let me first of all assure you that you’ll be perfectly safe up here with us. Tell me, have you ever been hypnotised?’
‘Not by a feller,’ the boy said, and Leonard responded with his quick stage grin.
‘Quite so. But have you any objection to my hypnotising you now?’
‘Not if you can.’
‘You don’t think I can? By the way, will you tell me your name?’
‘Ted.’
‘Right, Ted. You say you don’t think I can put you under hypnosis.’
‘Yes. I mean, no.’
‘That’s a pity. Hypnotism, you know, does rely a great deal on the willing cooperation of the subject. However, we’ll do our best.’ Leonard raised his right hand, the forefinger extended. There was a thimble on the end of it which flashed brilliantly in the lights. ‘Would you keep your eyes fixed on the charm, Ted. I shall count to six. On the count of six I want you to close your eyes. I shall continue counting to twelve. On the count of twelve you will be under my influence. You will be able to hear what I say and acknowledge by nodding your head. Keep your eye on the charm...’
Ted’s eyes closed on six
and at twelve, when Leonard asked him if he could hear what he said, his head dutifully nodded.
‘I want you to put your hands on top of your head and link your fingers.’ As Ted obeyed Leonard turned away from him. ‘I think he’ll be quiet till we need him again.’
He waited till the laughter subsided. ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, to demonstrate further the marvellous power of mind over matter I am going to put my assistant, the charming Joyce, into a trance…’
She went under easily and, at Leonard’s bidding, walked to where three straight chairs stood in a row and lay down across them. Leonard made sure that her head and heels were in position.
‘I am now going to remove the middle chair but you will remain supported in the same position.’
There was applause as Leonard took out the middle chair, leaving Joyce stretched rigid, supported only by her heels and the back of her head.
‘We can leave her for a moment, ladies and gentlemen. I assure you she is quite comfortable and can rest
like that indefinitely. Now back to our young friend.’ He stood before Ted. ‘On the count of three you will wake up but you will not be able to unlock your hands. One – two – three.’
Ted blinked as he came awake. He tried to lower his arms, but he couldn’t. ‘Here, what you done?’
‘Can’t you unlock your fingers?’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘When I snap my fingers twice you will be able to.’
The girl Ted had left at the table laughed delightedly as he was released.
‘Now,’ Leonard said, ‘I want you to observe my assistant.’
‘Any time.’
‘Yes, I know what you mean. Observe her, balanced between those chairs, supported only by her head and her heels. Do you think you could rest like that?’
‘I expect you could make me.’