Bill Bailey's Lot

by Catherine Cookson

  Sammy took it, thrust it into his pocket, then turned away without further words and walked towards the gate, Mark at his side now.

  Outside the gate Mark was somewhat surprised when Sammy, looking up at him, said, ‘Will she keep him in bed all night?’

  ‘Who? Willie?’

  ‘Aye, who else?’

  ‘No, no, he won’t be kept in bed, not all the evening anyway.’

  ‘Will she give him his tea?’

  Mark stopped himself from smiling. This kid was really funny: bossy, cheeky, as coarse and common as they come, yet he was enquiring if Willie was going to get something to eat. And so he said quietly, ‘Yes, he’ll get his tea. Mam never remains angry long; she’ll have forgotten about it by tomorrow. Willie an’ all. He’ll likely greet you like a—’ He had been about to say, brother, but that would be stretching things too far, and so he substituted, ‘Buddy.’

  ‘You a Yankee?’

  ‘Yankee? American? No; what makes you think that?’

  ‘Then why do you say buddy? Only Yankees say buddy on the films.’

  ‘Oh, I think it’s a very common word…name.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘All right. All right.’ Mark’s voice was loud now. ‘We won’t go into it. Go on, get yourself away.’

  ‘I don’t need tellin’ twice.’

  Sammy got away, but in a slow defiant manner: his hands thrust in his pockets, he strode down the street. But he had not passed Mrs Quinn’s gate when he turned and yelled, ‘I don’t like your house any road,’ before breaking into a gallop.

  Bill was still standing at the front door when Mark came running up the drive; and laughing, he called, ‘I heard that. He had to have the last word.’

  As Bill closed the door Mark said, ‘He’s a type right enough,’ and Bill answered, ‘Yes. Yes, Mark, he’s a type, but he’s got guts if nothing else. And I would say he’s got little else.’ They both turned now as the kitchen door opened and Fiona came into the hall carrying a tray, and as she passed them and made for the stairs she remarked to no-one in particular, ‘If you’re wise you’ll make no comment. You may begin your tea, Mr Bailey, it’s all ready. And you, Mark, finish your homework.’

  They both stood and watched while she mounted the stairs. Another time Bill would have taken the tray from her or told Mark to do so. What he did, however, as she disappeared from view was to push Mark in the shoulder, and Mark pushed him back. Then they both hurried from the hall, along the corridor and into Bill’s study in order that their laughter shouldn’t penetrate up the stairs.

  When Fiona entered her son’s bedroom and saw the round, tear-stained face just visible above the bedclothes, she had the desire to run to him and gather him into her arms. But she put the feeling aside, walked slowly to the bed, laid the tray on the foot of it, then said calmly, ‘Sit up and have your tea.’

  Willie did not obey her, but, his face crumpling, he whimpered, ‘Oh! Mam, Mam, I’m sorry. I…I didn’t mean it, what I said, I didn’t, I didn’t.’

  The urge overcoming her outward demeanour, she pulled the clothes back from him and drew him upwards, and when his arms went about her neck she hugged him to her, saying, ‘There, there; it’s all over.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mam. I do love you. I mean it, I didn’t.’

  ‘I know you didn’t, dear. I know you didn’t. Come on now.’ She pressed him from her and as he dried his face she said, ‘Do you know that your sparring partner has been here?’

  He nodded and gulped, then said, ‘Mark…Mark told me Dad brought him in. Did you…wallop him?’

  She pressed herself back from him, saying, ‘Wallop Sammy Love? I’m not big enough; nobody’s big enough to wallop Sammy Love.’

  ‘Oh, Mam.’ He tossed his head from side to side, sniffed again, then said, ‘He…he was all right until tonight. He…he used to wait for me at the school gate, I…I told you, because he gets out sooner than us. But he’s only ever walked with me a little way. It was the first time he came right home, and…and then I knew you wouldn’t want him to…to come in.

  She lifted up his chin by placing her finger beneath it, and, looking into his eyes, she said, ‘Did you want him to come in?’

  And shamefacedly now, he muttered, ‘Yes…well, yes, I did because he seems—’ He shook his head at this stage as Fiona urged, ‘Seems what?’

  ‘I…I don’t know, Mam, sort of’—his head was still shaking—‘I don’t know, Mam.’

  ‘Do you know that he nearly threw a brick through the window? Mister…your Dad just caught him in time.’ It was odd, she thought, how she, like the children, would at times revert to Mr Bill, harking back to the days when he had been Mr Bill the lodger. What had life been like before he had become her lodger? Oh, what was the matter with her? This was no time for reminiscing about how Bill’s arrival on her horizon had changed her life.

  She rose abruptly from the bed now and, lifting the tray, she said, ‘Come on, eat this up and then you may go into the playroom for half an hour. By the way’—she pointed down to the tray—‘that’s part of tomorrow’s tea; he ate your egg sandwiches.’

  ‘He didn’t!’

  ‘Oh yes, he did. And your cake and your jelly.’ Then putting her hands out quickly, she held her son’s face tightly between them for a moment before hurrying from the room.

  Bill was already in the dining room and had started on his meal, but at the sight of her he arose from the table while still chewing on a mouthful of food and, pulling another chair from under the table, he said, ‘I just had to start; I could eat a horse between two mats.’

  ‘Didn’t you have any lunch?’

  ‘No; I hadn’t time. I’ve had a rough day.’

  Taking his seat again, he put his elbow on the table and rested his head on it for a moment, saying, ‘I was like a bear with a sore skull when I came in that gate tonight.

  ‘I was fuming inwardly against the big boys who can scale down their margins until it’s impossible to try and compete. And then I met Mr Samuel Love and he took me back to a part of my childhood and I saw meself in him, gob, brick an’ all, because although I had decent folks I was a hell-raiser. And that little chap’s a hell-raiser because he hasn’t got decent folk, I should imagine by what he came out with.’

  ‘Never mind about Mr Samuel Love.’ She put her hand out towards him. ‘You don’t think you stand a chance to get the estate?’

  ‘Not a pigmy’s stand.’

  ‘But Sir Charles Kingdom?’

  ‘Yes, there is Sir Charles Kingdom, or there would be, but he’s out of the picture for a time; he’s in hospital having an operation; old man’s water trouble.’

  ‘Well, he’s the big noise in all this; it’s his land they are going to build on, or it was before he sold it; he should have the main say. Are the same members on the finance board as before?’

  ‘Yes, there’s Ramshaw, Riddle, and Pilby. Of the old lot there’s only Brown missing. But they are all naturally hard-headed business men, and it seems even if Sir Charles were there the score would be three to one. But there must be more; in fact, someone said there were ten; and I’m not surprised, for there’s a great deal of money at stake. By yes, I’d say there is.’

  ‘But it was Sir Charles himself who told you to put your estimate in, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, he did. But even so I couldn’t see him letting sentiment stand in his way when it means a thousand or so off each house. And there’s a hundred and ten of those, besides the two rows of town houses, one at each end, and the six shops, and the children’s play centre. It takes a lot to cover sixty acres. There’s been nothing like it around here for a long, long time; each house having its own quarter acre of garden and the designs all different. God!’ He thumped his head with the palm of his hand for a moment. ‘How me and McGilroy have worked on those plans for months. It means as much to him as it does to me.’

  ‘Who are the firms that are in for it?’

  ‘Oh’—he tossed
his head back—‘I understand there’s even a London one trying. I do know there’s one from Carlisle and another from Doncaster. Anyway, what kept me busy part of the day was I had to talk to our fellas. You know, when these two houses are finished that’ll be the finish of us around here because there’s not another thing going. And when Barney McGuire put it to me that I should lower my estimate and this would give me a better chance, I had to hold me temper and say, aye it would, and yes, I’d do it if they would all agree to me cuttin’ their wages, say by a third. Oh, the moans and groans. But you know what? After they shambled out they put their heads together and came back to me and said they’d all be willing to take a cut, twenty per cent they said. I was touched. I…I was’—he nodded towards her now—‘because most of the time they’re wantin’ a twenty per cent rise. They’re no better or no worse than the rest of ’em. But they were willin’ to stand by me to a man. Anyway—’ He smiled weakly at her, took another bite of food, then said, ‘It’s a nice bacon pie. Any more taties?’

  ‘Yes, plenty.’

  She helped him to some potatoes and peas; then she said quietly, ‘You’re not to worry about us, Bill. Do you hear? Those three went to the local junior before you came on the scene; they can go back there and then to the Comprehensive; it’s not going to hurt them in the long run.’

  ‘Like hell they will.’

  ‘Bill, listen to me.’ She gripped his hand. ‘Before you came on the scene as the lodger’—she pulled a face at him now—‘I was really up against it. We were living then from hand to mouth but we were surviving. That’s why—’ she now pursed her lips as she ended, ‘I had to lower our status in advertising a bedroom, full board, and suffer my mother’s indignation and wrath at my letting the side down.’

  He laughed and squeezed her hand. ‘Have you heard from her today?’

  ‘No; but the phone could ring any time now.’

  ‘It’s a form of torture, isn’t it, she’s putting us through? Ever since Katie blew my gaff.’

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t have pretended that you are what you’re not. You took the mickey out of her and she’ll never forget it.’

  Bill sat back in the chair and laughed. ‘Eeh! but I did enjoy meself that day,’ he said; ‘and not just from the knowledge that I could do it…to pretend to be what I was not. It was her own fault: she shouldn’t have got into that fix and asked our lot to move her on Christmas Eve. I can see her face now when I went in, talking like the County lot with marbles in their mouths. And the lads playin’ up around me, touching their forelocks, jumping to my word. Eeh! I did enjoy that. And do you remember when she came in unexpectedly at New Year, I was forced to go into me act again? And Katie had to come out with “Who you imitating, Mr Bill? You do sound funny. Doesn’t he, Mam? Anyway, Gran knows how you really talk.” Trust Katie.’

  ‘Well, as I said, you shouldn’t have taken on the part. And you know, I’ve had to suffer for it every day since. Before, I wouldn’t perhaps hear from her for a week or more.’

  ‘But she says she saw through my game. She didn’t, you know, I had her really gulled. She wasn’t sure whether I had been taking elocution lessons or you had been instructing me. Anyway, enough of her. And by God! I’ve had enough of her. You’ll never realise what I suffer because of you; you know, when she looks down her nose at me I want to spit in her eye. Last time she came in I wondered if I threw her on the couch and half raped her if that would satisfy her, because, you know, that’s what she wants; it’s a man.’

  ‘Oh! Bill.’ There was a shocked note in Fiona’s voice now. ‘How can you say such a thing? She doesn’t. She’s not—’

  ‘She does, and she is. I know her type; I ran the gauntlet of them while in digs. They might be in their fifties but they’re not past it. Oh no; you believe me.’

  Fiona sighed; then reaching over, she took his empty plate and asked, ‘Apple crumble or fruit salad?’

  ‘Why can’t I have both?’ he grinned at her, then said, ‘Apple crumble.’

  Left alone, Bill let out a long slow breath and looked about the room as if seeing it for the first time. He should feel he was in heaven: this good solid home, a wife like Fiona, and four good kids ready made. But here he was, amid all this, worried to death and really scared. Aye, at bottom he was really scared because when these two houses were finished there was just nothing in this town, unless he could pull off this gigantic deal. And if he was honest he knew there was little hope. He hadn’t told Fiona the whole of it. There were fifteen firms at least in for the job. Besides the London, Doncaster and Carlisle ones, there were the two leading ones that had been building in the North for years, and sixty acre plots were just their cup of tea. Ah well, he could always go on the dole.

  ‘Dole be damned!’ he had spoken aloud. And now he pushed his chair back and marched towards the door, only to run into Fiona, but before she could say anything he said, ‘Love, I’ll have it in the study.’

  ‘But Bill, you’ll be there all evening, in any case.’

  ‘I know, but I’ve been thinkin’ about something, something I could alter on the plans. It’s been in the back of me mind all day. Look, give it here.’ He took the tray from her. ‘I’ll do a couple of hours; and after I’ve had a bath we’ll have a natter. Then you’ll go to bed.’

  And now holding the tray in one hand, he stuck the index finger of the other hand into her chest, saying, ‘And tonight you go to bed, and you sleep.’

  ‘How can I sleep when you’re not in bed at one o’clock in the morning?’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to get used to that. But of course, there’ll be nights when I come to bed earlier when I want me rights. You’ve got to be of some use to me.’

  ‘Oh! Bill. Stop joking.’

  ‘I’m not joking, it’s a fact and you know it. Go on. By the way, get Katie downstairs to give you a hand with those dishes.’

  ‘You go about your business, Mr Bailey, and I’ll go about mine.’

  When Fiona reached the kitchen she didn’t immediately start with the washing-up, she stood at the kitchen window looking down the back garden and into the long slow twilight. It would break him if he didn’t get that job. Not only was he worried about the family but also about his men who had worked with him for years; they were part of his family too. They had been his only family until she had come onto the horizon. And oh, every day she was thankful she had. Yet she often had to smile when she thought back to her first impression of him, the thickset, middle-aged, brash, loud-mouthed egotist. That’s how she had seen him. But now she knew; in fact he hadn’t lived in the house long before she knew that behind that putting-off façade was a deep sensitivity that, in a way, he was ashamed of and did his best to hide.

  She wanted him to succeed, to get to the very top in this building business. Yet if he didn’t, she knew it wouldn’t matter to her, not really; as long as she had him and the children, they would scrape along. But it would matter to him. His pride would be dashed because he wanted to be more than just a breadwinner, a meals provider. As he himself often said, men or women like him who had pulled themselves up by their bootlaces never wanted to tie the laces at the top.

  There was a tap on the kitchen door and she turned and greeted her neighbour, Nell Paget.

  ‘Hello, Nell. Oh, that face of yours. How many this time?’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘Why didn’t you have them all out at one go and get a set in?’

  ‘I want to keep my front ones.’

  ‘Sit down. Have a cup of tea.’

  ‘No thanks; I’ve just had one.’

  ‘Anything wrong?’

  Fiona asked this because her friend always made a point of never popping in once Bill was in the house, because she believed in giving couples their privacy. The dirty deal that had been dealt her hadn’t embittered her towards the needs of others. Her husband, after thirteen years of marriage, had left her. He had deprived her of the wanted child yet had got another girl pregnant. But it had been Ne
ll’s need of a job in the first place that had drawn them together. And so she had baby-sat for her; then later taken over the running of the house when, just after Christmas, she herself had had the operation for what she had imagined was cancer, but which thankfully turned out to be merely adhesions in the colon. Nell was very dear to her. She said again, ‘Anything wrong?’

  Nell shook her head and held her swollen jaw for a moment before she answered, ‘That’s what’s brought me across. Mother’s just said there were some ructions in the garden earlier on. She would have come across, but as you know she’s full of cold. And you never get Dad interfering. Mind your own business is his motto.’

  She tried to smile.

  Fiona now laughed, saying, ‘Oh, yes, there were ructions. Our dear Willie was escorted home by a little tyke from Bog’s End who apparently wanted to see inside the house. And when Willie told him that I might object’—she pulled a face now—‘there was a battle of words, four-letter ones.’

  ‘Oh! Four-letter ones?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a wonder you didn’t hear them, they were yelling them. And of course I did my own share of yelling, but my words were a bit longer. I dragged Willie in and smacked him all the way to bed.’

  ‘Poor Willie.’

  ‘Poor Willie, indeed! And then the other one was aiming to throw a brick through the window when Bill caught him. Anyway, you know Bill and his reactions. Well, he brought him in and it was entertainment from then on; but not my kind, at least not at first, for I certainly didn’t take to Mr Samuel Love. Yes, that’s his name, Sammy for short. But as Bill, in his usual way, pointed out, there were two sides to every question, especially so to little boys whose mothers…go off at times.’