Flood (23 page)

'Well?' said the man. Sandy was purple-faced and hoped the polish would disguise the fact. 'Well?' Two mugs of coffee were steaming on a small telephone stool behind the man, and on the wall next to them hung an ornate mirror in which Sandy caught glimpses of himself. He looked like a tinker.

'Well?'

'Penny for the Guy,' he stammered. The man stretched to look outside.

'What Guy exactly?' he asked. Sandy stared stupidly towards where the man was looking. He began to remember his story.

'I've not built it yet,' he said. 'That's why I need the money.' Need the money for Rian. 'It's going to be the biggest Guy in the village. I'm having to start it early, you see. It's for charity.' The final lie made him lower his eyes guiltily to the doorstep. He had been talking too quickly, he realised.

The man chuckled.

'That's fly,' he said. Then: 'Margaret! Come out here for a minute!'

There was a tortured, smiling silence until a fat woman, knitting in hand, came to the door. Her husband made room for her. Between them hung the mirror.

'Well,' she said, 'someone to see us.' Her voice and her face were ripples of condescension.

'He's a guiser,' explained her husband, 'but he doesn't have a Guy. That's why he needs the money. That's why he's more than a month early in calling. It's for charity, he says.'

Sandy hoped that his own silence would force the money from them. He wanted to run from their doorstep, and was prevented from doing so only by the thought of their laughter.

'And will we see this Guy when it's finished?' said the woman.

'Oh yes,' said Sandy. He watched himself in the mirror. He looked a bit like Robbie, though dirtier. The comparison attracted him for a moment until he realised that the woman had spoken again. 'Pardon?' he said.

'I said can you do something?'

'Do something?'

'Aye,' said the woman. 'Sing something.'

'Sing something?' he echoed, looking to the man. _

'Is it a boy we've got here, Margaret, or is it a bloody parrot?'

They both had a good laugh at that, bending over slightly.

Yes, he looked a little like Robbie, hard and unmoving.

'I can't sing,' he said.

'Well,' said the woman, 'tell a joke then.'

"You're a bit old for this, son, aren't you?' said the man.

*You must be able to do a dance at least,' said the woman, shaking her fleshy bulk like an aunt at a wedding reception.

'Go on.'

Sandy stared at his feet. They were monsters, infected with elephantiasis. He moved one of them out of curiosity, then began to do a little shuffle. He gazed at himself in the mirror. He saw a scruffy adolescent with jet-black hair and his coat inside out doing a stupid jerking dance on a strange doorstep. He forced himself to think of Rian, but it did not work. A solidity was gathering in his throat. He thought again of running, of turning on his heels and flying up into that beautifully clear night air. His audience smiled and clapped their hands in time to his movements, standing back a little into their doorway for a better view. The man began to whistle. The woman hummed in a broken-down voice, her hips moving obscenely. Sandy was appalled. He stared at them like a bear on a chain, and they were clapping and whistling and tapping their feet and humming along with the rhythm. He came to a furious stop. They stopped clapping.

The man examined Sandy with sudden depth.

Tou're not much good at this, are you?' he said. Tou're not much good.' He chuckled. It was not a kind sound at all, Sandy realised. Children could be heard in the distance. The thought of money was all that held Sandy there, and he wanted to blurt out the truth to these stupid people, these warm, happy, stupid people. He bit his lip thoughtfully, hoping it would be interpreted as a sign of stubbornness.

When he looked into the mirror now he saw a resolute face, a face anonymous and to be feared. He liked this look. He stared hard at the man. The woman had stopped humming.

She took her coffee uninterestedly from the stool. She clutched her knitting to her bosom.

'How much will we give him?' asked the man, turning to his wife. She shrugged, then looked for a second at Sandy.

'He wasn't worth much,' she said icily. Then: 'The programme's back on.'

'I was worth much!' Sandy called to her retreating back.

The man attempted a more open chuckle.

'Aye, you don't do much these days for your money, do you? That's the trouble with this country. As little as possible for as much money, that's the way of it. You're learning the ropes fast, son. Not too fast, I hope.' He was digging into his pocket. His hand came out in the shape of a small fist and extended towards Sandy, who opened his own palm and received the chinking money without looking at it.

You don't half talk a lot of shite, mister,' he said, turning to go.

The man chuckled again. The sound of bats against a window pane, of candles being snuffed.

'Don't go casting spells now,' he called bitterly as he closed the door. Sandy's stomach did a single somersault, no more, and then he grinned at having forced the feeble old man into saying that. He took off his jacket and reversed it as he walked. He felt stronger now, different. But he could not go through that again, not for anything, not even for Rian, his Rian. He moved further up the hill, away from the noises of the children. He lifted some newspaper from the ground and spat on it, scrubbing it against his face. He opened his warm, grubby hand and counted nearly fifty pence. Fifty pennies only. But he had gained something else, something that oozed from him as he rubbed harder and harder at his cheeks, enjoying the harsh, bright pain. Fifty bright pennies for Rian, his Rian.

So he had twenty-four pounds and eighty pence with which to tempt the gypsy.

There seemed to Darroch something religious about Mahler's Fifth. He listened to it while sipping dry sherry, the glass absurdly small between his fingers -- strong, hair glazed fingers. He had finished Sunday's sermon. His sermons - full of disguised morals, and some not so disguised - had been warmly received by the congregation, none of whom, however, sought to put them into practice. He felt frustrated. What else could he do? He scribbled in the margin of the sermon, which was balanced on his knees. If only he could summon up the courage to speak with the woman in some depth, then he could fathom the extent of the town's feelings towards her. Yet each time he spoke to her he felt himself choking back the words and the feelings.

It was absurd. Her eyes made him totally unable to say aloud what he felt so intensely. He was becoming obsessed by her. He did not want to think of it as love, and decided instead that it would only be cured if he were able to make himself talk with her about her life in the town. That, however, only led him back to his initial dilemma. There was emotion in Mahler's piece too, and emotion in the warming sherry. He felt them acting on him like chiding, agreeable friends. They put their arms around his shoulders and whispered, snake-like, in his ears. The room surrounded him like mortality itself: oppressive and inescapable. He shook himself free of these growing abstractions. It was time to be rational and clear-headed. He thought of the long walk to Mary Miller's house, and decided to take his car. The flooding between St Cuthbert's and Cardell was not too bad.

He would manage to get his car through, God willing.

She wept for the first time in a week. She had resigned herself to the gulf which had opened out of nowhere between Sandy and herself. She had watched Andy as he had explained the reasons why he felt it best that they separate for a while. She had watched him make his apologies and leave her house, the house of her parents and of her grandparents. She had felt the world collapsing in on her.

She had walked in a dream to the telephone box, but had not been able to get through to Canada. Now she was in the dreary graveyard, and, the grass being too wet to sit on - no, that was not the reason - she stood by the grave of her parents. She formed words in her head. She opened her mouth once or twice but produced only a dry clucking sound.

Then she wept. She wept and she sniffed back the tears into her eyes, not wanting to waste a drop, and she wept again.

She stared through the blur at the engravings on the headstone. She read her father's name. His age at death.

The tiny sentiment at the bottom. Then she started to speak.

She spoke to her mother alone, and the story she told would make her father disappear from everything for ever.

'I've lost him, Mum. He's decided that we should not see each other for a while. You know what that means. The coward's brush-off. It wasn't his fault though, Mum. No, he tried. It was me. I wouldn't have sex with him. That was the problem. It's a big problem with me, Mum, but I've never told you about it, have I? It's embarrassing, isn't it? But shall I tell you why? Shall I tell you what I could not bring myself to tell Andy? Dear Andy. You'll hate me, Mum. You'll hate me for eternity.' She blew her nose. The sky around her was darkening. Streetlamps suddenly came on outside the cemetery. *You always thought that it was Tom, didn't you, Mum? It wasn't. People here believe that it was Tom too; I think even Sandy believes it. You know that he has never asked me seriously who his father was. I would never have told him anyway. But I'm going to tell you, Mum. Lord knows I've kept it bottled up for too long.'

She paused again and pulled her coat around her, though the evening was milder than the day had been. Sandy had given one of the shawls away, one of her mother's shawls.

She could never forgive him for that. He had given it to that bitch of a tinker. And after all she had done for him . . .

'Sandy,' she said. 'Sandy.' Then she collected herself. She was here to speak with her mother.

*You remember that day, Mum. It was Boxing Day. You were going to Auntie Beth's in Leven. I said that I wasn't feeling well. Tom and Dad had arranged to meet with friends in the evening. So you went by yourself. I really thought that you were leaving us then, I mean leaving us for good. But you came back. I thought that Dad's drinking and his depressions were becoming too much for you. I know, he wasn't really to blame. The pits were all closed or closing and he didn't have much money left, or much of his pride. It was hard for everyone, wasn't it?

There were always excuses. But when you came back, and when I told you laittt that I was pregnant, you thought it had happened

You were right.'

A car passed on the road outside. It was a!

was driving on a night like this.

'Tom was out most of the night at a d 獶 M|| with that girl he sometimes saw in her upstairs lying in bed, but dressed. I heard?Patterson come in. You remember, Mum, very friendly. George Patterson was with died. It was suicide, you know.

I figured that It was suicide that night, and George Patterson!\guilt all on his own shoulders ever since. I've done remove it. I hope his life's been hell!' Her voice, uncannily calm, had now built towards minor hysteria.;tugged at her coat, staring over the wall of the graveyard at the clouds beyond. 'They were drunk and noisy downstairs. I could hear glasses falling, and then a bottle rolled across the kitchen floor. It's funny how those details stick in my mind, but they do. I can remember some of what they were shouting, too. All about the death of the town and the death of the workers and the death of pride. High-blown stuff. Self pity mostly. They shouted and laughed and grew angry.

They cursed the system and the bureaucrats. They cursed the NCB. They cursed just about everything but themselves.

Dad did most of the shouting, didn't you, Dad? George was just backing you up. He had little enough to worry about.

His shop was doing nicely. He was like a tiny fat king in a sugar palace.

But he grew angry with you anyway. I couldn't stand it. By that time I really did have a headache. I crept downstairs.

'When I entered the living room it was like walking into somewhere for the first time. It seemed to have changed utterly. The chairs had been moved, and the settee. Some glasses were on the table, some others were on the sideboard, and two were on their sides in the middle of the room.

A cardboard box half filled with cans and bottles of beer was on the floor. I remember it all so clearly. And a bottle of dark rum stood beside another of whisky on the mantelpiece. Dad had his arm round George Patterson. They were swaying in the middle of the floor, circling round the box. Dad saw me first. His hair was plastered down over his forehead. Sweat was hanging in the folds of his throat, or it might have been tears. His shirt-tail hung out over his trousers. I'd heard him that drunk before, when I was lying in bed sometimes, but I'd never seen him that drunk. Although I was looking at my father, I knew that I was dealing with someone else, someone with a different voice from the person I knew and with a different look in his eye. He came up to me and put an arm around my waist, but it wasn't funny, Mum. I slipped away from him and went and sat on the settee, arms folded.

I was scared, yet I wanted to be in on it, do you see? I wanted to be part of their grown-up, men's world. I was fifteen, remember. I was already on the edge of that world. So I acted like a grown-up woman. Stupid of me. I sat on the settee and scowled. And Dad slumped down beside me and asked for a kiss from his daughter. He brought his face near mine and kissed me on the lips. It felt obscene. His face was bristly, and it scratched me. But he held me there for a few seconds. Then he pulled me to him again and kissed me again, not a dad's kisses this time but adult things. He was talking too, talking about the waste he had made of his life, and how I was the only thing he really lived for, how he had always cared more for me than Tom. He was stroking my back, and his breath was rancid. I thought he was all I had. I thought you'd run away. I suppose I was a bit sorry for him, but not much. I was sorrier for myself. He grasped me hard, pulling me towards him all the time. His grip was tight, a real miner's grip, and I fell against him. Oh, Mum, that was it, you see. It all happened then, and Patterson was there too. But Dad was half-hearted. No, I'm not telling it right.'