Breaktime (5 page)

I’ll phone twice a day. See she’s all right. And that you’re okay.

Doesn’t matter about me. It’s your mother I’m thinking of. On her own, in that empty house, worrying
.

She’ll be perfectly all right, Dad, and I’ll be back before she’s felt the miss of me.

I don’t like it
.

I’m sorry, Dad, but I have to go.

Are you doing all right at school?

Smashing, Dad. Very well.

Working hard?

I think so.

How’s that dead woman?

Jane Austen?

Aye, her. All right, is she?

Fit as a fiddle!

Better off dead than alive, then, isn’t she
.

Wouldn’t say that.

No, maybe not
.

I’ll have to be off, Dad.

Aye, right-o, son
.

Good to see you.

Thanks for coming in
.

Take care.

I’ll try
.

And mind them nurses.

Can hardly raise me arm never mind owt else
.

See you, Dad.

So long. And here
. . .

What?

Mind you get back from yon jaunt as soon as you can. You don’t fool me, you know
.

Tarra then.

Aye
.

JOURNEY OUT

View from the “27”

IF THIS WERE
an old-fashioned story—the kind you, Morgan, so anathematize—this could be the beginning. The foregoing would be excoriated by the inventor’s pen and omitted finally, or be revamped as flashback, that worn device of the suspense mongers. But this is not one of those old-fashioned stories, is it? Though it is, for me, a kind of beginning. Journeys always are, aren’t they?

The bridge out of town, across the river, allowing passage from County Durham to Yorkshire, humps beneath us, a pleasant undulation, providing glimpse over its grey stone parapet of ling brown Tees, in swirls, urgent, full-bedded, passing beneath
.

The Tees is diarrhoeic today: a consequence of spring rains elutriating Pennine bogs and peat. I digress, Morgan, only to entertain your anti-dithyrambic turn of mind.

Why is it I wish Morgan were here now?

To return to the matter in hand. The tantalizing vision not just of a willing but of a lusting Helen. And of a harassed mother and a stricken-prone father. The pursuit of the one inflames in me guilty feelings at my desertion of the others. But without feeling there is no guilt. So my guilty feelings provide proof of my filial affections for those from whom I seek escape.

Ha.

Maybe that is what this journey is really all about? Ineluctable
evolution.
Proving myself to myself, if to no one else. The strivings of my independent spirit.

Getouthereladandshowthemyoucanstandonyourowntwofeet.

Ffossip.

‘She should have had more sense,’ said the ageing driver-conductor to a rotund passenger of the female gender standing by the open bay of the driver’s cab in flagrant disregard of the bus company’s rule published in a notice posted above her head.

DO NOT STAND ON PLATFORM

WHILE BUS IN MOTION

‘Well,’ said the passenger, ‘there’s many a slip.’

‘Aye,’ said the driver, ‘nor but it’s happened before.’

‘And happen it’ll happen again,’ said the passenger.

‘What ’tis to be young,’ said the driver.

‘Nay,’ said the passenger, ‘nowt like it, is there!’

They laughed; knowing.

LIMBSOME . . . LITHESOME . . . LOVESOME
said a neon-glowing advertising panel above a window.

Picture accompanying words:
a pair of dismembered legs of the female gender, arranged like pretty boomerangs, dressed in tan-coloured tights.

Intention of advertisement:
to sell women’s stocking tights by suggesting that they will transform every wearer’s legs into limbs of the sort pictured. Mine too?

Ha.

He took from his wallet, where he had carefully placed it, Helen’s previously provocative picture, and smiled. She needed no tights.

There was that time when I was about eight when we still lived in the country at One Row, seven or eight anyway, before you really know what it’s all about, Mickey and me were wandering back home down the path through the wood when we saw a
gang
of older kids ten of them maybe all about ten or eleven as well and all of them crowding round looking at something in the middle of them and they were grinning and nudging and excited but keeping it quiet because, you could tell, they didn’t want to attract the attention of grownups who might be nearby but they didn’t pay Mickey and me any bother and we went up to them and edged our way to the centre and they had a girl there who wasn’t much older than eight herself maybe nine and they’d made her lift her skirt and drop her pants and show them herself . . . None of them touched her they just looked as they would at a new kind of toy in a shop window everybody taking a turn in front of the girl to bend down and look closely so that the crowd was circling slowly and bending and rising like a slow circling wave or an endless queue of courtiers processing round a queen and bowing to her . . . We had a look Mickey and me then went off back into the wood again and sat on a log side by side not saying anything at all just shivering, trembling, giggling at each other . . . When we recovered we wandered down the path home and the crowd had gone and the girl had gone and we had not seen the girl’s face because her skirt had been held up in front of her all the time we were there. And when we got back to our street there was Mickey’s mother and mine standing outside our back gate in their aprons with their arms akimbo watching us come and muttering to each other frosty faced so we knew we were in trouble. We know where you two have been Mickey’s mother said when we got up to them. You nasty little beasts. You get home my lad and don’t you dare do anything like that again. But my mother just looked at me not speaking till after she had given me my tea when she looked at me again for a minute before she said You know they could have crippled that poor girl for life . . . I puzzled over that for days afterwards but couldn’t understand how she could have been crippled just from us looking at her but no one said . . . When Dad was told he just grinned at me when Mother wasn’t looking. And winked.

Ditto beat a retreat from his memory, replacing Helen’s photograph
in
his pocketed wallet. Richmond was in view.

On Richmond hill there lived a lass

More bright than May day morn

Ho ho

RICHMOND, Yorks. Pop. 46,500. Ec Wed. Md Sat. Situated on hill-top dominated by 11th Cent. castle, now ruined, built cl075, commanding superb view across R. Swale. Walls 11th Cent. but most surviving military structure 12th Cent. Castle originally entered from town through gate-tower, converted late 12th Cent. into base for 100ft high stone keep, still standing. At S.W. corner remains of original hall containing domestic quarters. Legend claims Robin Hood held captive in Robin Hood Tower in N.E. wall; also that King Arthur’s Knights lie sleeping beneath the castle, waiting for the time when a brave man awakens them to save the world from disaster.

Town built round one of the largest and finest market squares in Britain, continental European in feeling. Narrow alleyways lead off; locally called ‘Wynds’. Also: Georgian theatre, in use, dating from 1788. Green Howards’ Regimental Museum in crypt of Holy Trinity Church standing in centre of market square, unique example of church with shops beneath. Baden-Powell, founder of Boy Scouts, once lived in tower in S.W. corner of castle.

Apart from historical and legendary associations, this attractive little town possesses considerable architectural beauty and great scenic beauty. Visit recommended.

Bus Stop

Ditto descended into the market square. The bus journey had been an experience. Insignificant, commonplace, undramatic perhaps, but an experience: his reason for journeying.

And what was the nature of this experience, this bus journey? He contemplated the question quarter-mindedly as, hitching his pack on to his shoulders, arranging straps and frame comfortably, he plodded off, boots cobblestone-ringing, into Walter
Willson’s,
there to buy a can of McEwan’s Export pale ale, before making for the castle, where he proposed finding a sunny, sheltered corner which offered a view up the river. There he could sit and enjoy his meal.

Nature of bus experience
¹
: consoling, comforting, contenting. Vehicle warm. Motion tranquillizing. Moving view—seen from his snug seat—of passingly pretty interest despite having seen it many times before. The whole provocative of piquant thoughts and sensational images. Unhurried, unworried. Cocooned irresponsibility.

Is that why so many people like travelling?

Maybe, he supposed, his mind turning to thought of his mother’s always perfectly made (just moistly right) tomato and egg sandwiches and wedge of apple pie. And the McEwan’s, for which his thirsting tastebuds goosepimpled. One thing about a bus trip, it coated your mouth with dehydrated diesel oil.

He sought out his favourite spot in the castle, where the southwest wall breaks from Scolland’s Hall into a tumbling defile, a rift in the defences that slips dizzily to the road and river a hundred feet and maybe more below. There is a ledge wide enough to sit on and stick out your feet, where you are hidden from treading tourists unless they brave the edge. There today the sun shone uncooled by a breeze, and from there the broad sweep of the river and its vee-shaped valley can be seen stretching away up the dale. So there he sat, bum cushioned on folloped groundsheet, back pillowed by pack placed against Scotland’s ruined stones.

Sandwiches, pie and beer he set safely firm on the ground, in reach of his right hand.

Quiet.

But a quiet made of surging Swale, fast, full from rain in the hills; a lark ascended, singing; wind soughing in trees furring valley sides, new green blinking in the breeze, sun-flashed. Blue sky. White flock clouds islanded. Grey stone.

An active peace.

Suntillating

No sooner had I enjoyed my small repast and had settled myself to a sunbathed repose than I was discovered by a youth perhaps a year or maybe two older than myself.

Description of intruder:
Tall, well-built, mongrel-handsome. Dressed in regulation jeans, dungaree shirt washed to faded pale blue, open to fourth button, revealing hairless tanned chest, muscled. Hair brown, thick, long, tending to curls, casually (but carefully) arranged. Eyes blue, alert; nose narrow, straight; mouth thick-lipped, wide, smiling. Teeth white, sound, attractively irregular. Donkey jacket slung over shoulder perhaps a touch too self-consciously nonchalant. No other portables.

‘Watcher,’ he said, sitting himself crosslegged at my in-castle side with athletic, look-no-hands smoothness.

Nature of remark:
Friendly, inviting conversation, in Geordie (i.e. Tyneside) accent.

For an irritated moment, I resented this disruption of my cosy, somnolent pleasure. But I reminded myself of my resolve, of the very purpose of my adventure. Here was an opportunity of precisely the kind I wanted, an opportunity for new experience,
for
something to happen, and it was being offered to me unlooked for.

I shifted my slumping torso into a more welcomingly attentive, upsitting posture.

‘Watcher,’ I replied, assuming as nearly as I could my new companion’s tone and inflexion, as a deliberate means of ingratiation.

‘You haven’t seen my mate, have you?’ he said. His eyes were searching me out.

‘Who’s your mate?’ I asked.

‘You don’t know my mate?’ he said, surprised. ‘I thowt everybody knew my mate.’

‘I’m not from Richmond,’ I said, apologetic.

He regarded my cushioning backpack. ‘No, ’course. Sorry,’ he said without sorrow.

(I remarked to myself again how not knowing what people without reason expect you to know at once lowers your stature in their eyes. Lowers their interest in you anyway.)

‘Mind you,’ I said, unable to prevent myself attempting further ingratiation, ‘I can’t see much from here and there’s been nobody in sight while I’ve been here. And I’ve been here about half an hour.’

‘He’s not been then,’ said my companion. ‘Just like him. “Meet me in the Castle about twelve,” he says when I saw him this morning. “We’ll go for a drink.” We never go into the Castle for a drink so naturally I come here. But he’ll be there already, propping up the bar. Impatient swine.’

He laughed.

Nature of laugh:
Indulgent chortle, not irritated.

Comment seemed inappropriate; I smiled to show willing.

‘I don’t know why I bother with him,’ he went on. ‘Take last night for instance. Meet him half-seven at the billiards, he tells me. “We’ll have a bit of a game and a bit of a giggle with the lads,” he says. I get there at quarter to eight—I knew he wouldn’t be there before then no matter what—and I wait around like a spare part till nine. Then he strolls in, grinning like a ninny, and
I
can see straightaway that the smile is all show. Really he’s got a right beat on, so I don’t say owt to upset him, and he just picks up a cue and knocks hell out of the balls for twenty minutes before he says a word. And then he doesn’t say much more than “Buy us a pint, kiddo.” I could have thumped him.’