Her Victory (16 page)

She was under the authority of her selfishness, that great motivator of the meek after they have gained their independence. In order not to be dead she had to become selfish, and stay that way for as long as it took her to hear what her voice sounded like. The argument went this way, and then that. If you aren't selfish you're dead, but if you're dead you can't be anything, not even selfish. To be too busy among the considerations of yourself taught nothing except that you were coming slowly back to a normal relationship with the world.

It was necessary to know that you were selfish in order not to let anyone steamroll over you with their petty desires and ignorant opinions, often only given so as to hear the sound of their own voice. The new bud on the tree selfishly gets sap and sustenance out of the twig-branch-trunk-and-soil, but later the tree selfishly discards all its leaves. The will to live and survive is paramount in everything. Unless you are selfish you do not survive, and by surviving you may at least one day get to know a little of what you are.

The only contact she had with the outside world was to walk its streets like a person just out of prison, or go shopping for her daily food as thriftily as someone loath to over-consume in case she was thought too greedy by those who might be her judges as to whether or not she deserved such freedom.

She also wondered whether a continual striving after freedom wasn't a mere indulgence that could lead only to the greatest state of selfishness of all, which was self-destruction, and worse than the drudgery of non-freedom. Life – and she had never thought otherwise – was the discipline of having to abide by the choices you made, but if after years of trying to make a particular one work, both for yourself and whoever else it involved, you found that the decision you had made was no longer feasible, then you surely had the right to make another choice.

But having done so, and being where she was, she hated the uncertainty and isolation that often seemed more of a burden than the narrow life she had abandoned. There was no gainsaying that everything was hard to bear, no matter how many choices you made. She had settled for only two in her life, one being to get married, and the other to desert her son and husband, and both decisions had affected her so profoundly that all she had ever learned had come out of them.

She pulled the opener, beer squirted over hand, wrist and up the sleeve of her jumper. She wiped the mess with a cloth, and when she washed her hands at the sink the icy water made her veins ache. She pulled off her sweater, and blouse. It was not so easy to see her ribs any more, for she had put on a few pounds, and didn't mind because she liked to see herself in the mirror, and would have stared longer at the shape of her covered breasts if it hadn't been so chilly. She took clean things from her suitcase under the bed.

She would have felt a fool, and made some self-hurting comment to hide her embarrassment, if George had seen her spill the beer. He would have agreed, always keen to back her up at such times. Or he would have smiled and said: ‘Them tins are often faulty, you should know that. They seal 'em with air still inside just to make you believe the beer's fresh. Happens to the lads at work. Goes all over the lathes, but
they
don't care. The suds wash it off.' And so on. Which made her feel even clumsier, and worse than if he had called her something he really felt like saying.

The poor bloke couldn't win. But then, neither could she. Wasn't his fault. Nor hers. Why did you have to be either selfish or not selfish when there was so much interesting space in between? You didn't. By yourself you had the freedom to be neither one nor the other, which was the best of all reasons for liking it here.

She put tea in front of him. After he'd drunk it he pushed the cup to the middle of the table. He did the same with his dinner plate after eating. He always needed space before him, and she had often wondered whether he didn't want to clear her out of the way as well, remove her to beyond arm's length but only so that she could be called back whenever he wanted to make sure she wasn't doing anything of which he disapproved, or when he needed her to supply him with another full plate or cup.

To be selfish was to be happy, but as soon as you knew it with any sort of conviction things were changing, or ought to be. George's three brothers were selfish, a moderate word to label a condition so extreme. Yet who could blame them? They were generally happy. They survived because selfishness was their way of life. They were so absorbed by their business manipulations under the umbrella of selfishness that it would have been pure mischief on her part to try and disillusion them, an attempt which in any case would certainly have failed.

Bert's close-handed resolution was backed by the assurance that if he didn't get money from you at a particular time then he would find some other way of robbing you sooner or later, as had happened when he and his brothers had bullied George into letting them paint his workshop.

He had given a cheque for a hundred and fifty pounds, but even a week later they hadn't begun their work. George went to Bert's house to find out why. Mavis said she didn't know where Bert was, but thought he might be in a pub somewhere, ‘unless,' she went on, ‘they're out on a job, which I doubt, because as far as I know they ain't had any orders for a week. I wonder how we're going to live if things go on like this, although they have been drawing the dole, so at least we ain't starving, yet. It's a tussle to get money out of Bert for grub, because he prefers boozing to providing for the kids, who'll be soon needing some new shoes. What with this wet weather, they'll have to have them, though you wouldn't think so to hear Bert talking about how he went barefoot when he was a kid, saying what's been good enough for me's good enough for them. So you see the way things are, George? We're on our uppers, though it's nice at times like these to know there's somebody who'll stand by us when things get so bad you think there's nowt else to do but stick your 'ead in the gas oven. It makes us feel safer, George, to think you're lucky enough to have your own factory. I know you would spare us a bit to tide us through hard times.'

Mavis didn't ask him into the house, he told Pam, but kept him on the doorstep in the screeching wind, causing him to wonder if Bert and his brothers weren't inside, frozen in their silence till he went, when they would resume their game of pontoon or brag. Mavis was capable of playing the part, though on the other hand maybe the brothers weren't at home, because their van wasn't parked along the council-house street. He'd even looked around the corners.

Mavis stopped her pleading, and George said: ‘Last week, I gave them a hundred and fifty quid to start painting my workshop, and they haven't done anything yet. So I expect them to make a start tomorrow. As soon as they finish, they'll have another hundred and fifty pounds, and that should buy the kids plenty of shoes.'

When Mavis's mouth closed, her lips went back to their former position no matter what alteration had taken place in her state of mind. Even if George gave her a hundred pounds her expression would have stayed the same. She put on a grim face whenever she saw him, as a matter of policy, but he had heard her laughing loudly enough, from a distance, with a brassy kind of gaiety. There was nothing more intimidating than to be talked at by Mavis, and then to see the uncompromising hard-weather shape of her closed and colourless lips when she had finished.

‘Tell 'em,' he said, ‘will you?'

He remembered before Bert married her, a highly made-up, round-faced nineteen-year-old wearing a tight skirt and high heels. She laughed loud at any dirty joke, and even in those days was never seen to smile. George was sorry for her. ‘She's been with Bert long enough,' he told Pam, ‘to have too much of him in her to be trusted, though I don't suppose she would have been a very agreeable customer no matter who she married.'

The men were more easygoing. Pam had seen them so full of fun that even she had to laugh. It was their women who bore the cost of their juvenile ways, no matter what George thought. She hated what they did to their wives and, though with lesser intensity, what the women allowed to be done to themselves.

George stood on the doorstep. ‘Just tell 'em I called. I'd like to know when they can start the painting they promised.'

Mavis glared. ‘I've got to go out shopping. I shall have to see what I can get on tick.'

‘Tell 'em what I said.' He walked down the pot-holed garden path, back to his car by the kerb.

19

They came to the workshop a week later, at half-past three in the afternoon. George was walking across the yard towards the office with a blueprint under his arm, and saw Bert smiling from the gate, Alf and Harry trying to get in behind.

George wanted to sound amiable. ‘You aren't going to start today, are you? Be bloody dark soon.'

‘We had a few jobs to finish,' Bert told him. ‘That's why we had to put it off for a fortnight.'

They unloaded ladders from the van and carried them into the yard. ‘We'll get half a wall done before we knock off,' Alf shouted, as if an audience was present to cheer this announcement.

They reeked of ale. ‘You know your business.' George continued his way to the office. They did: he had passed a newly painted house which they told him was their work, and though it wasn't top class it proved that they could do a job well enough when they tried.

He was pleasantly surprised when they arrived at eight next morning. Even a grey sky and drizzle didn't discourage them. On the other hand he disliked the fact that whenever he walked outside to the toilet one of them would call, urged by guffaws from the others: ‘What's this, then? Got the shits?' Or, if he were going across the yard to the cubby-hole of an office: ‘Hey up, George! Going to cook the books?'

It was as if three malevolently mouthed parrots were half-concealed at different points of his premises to taunt him for his two basic weaknesses. He didn't even look up. They had always needed their bit of fun, though he didn't like them using his first name so blatantly. The dozen workmen addressed him as Mister Hargreaves, but if he asked his brothers to do so, the ensuing ructions would diminish his status even further in the esteem of his employees. It was plain that his brothers knew it, and he should have realized the folly of allowing them to carry out any part of their trade on his property. They were well aware that he regretted his mistake in this respect, and so were determined to make him pay in case he had entertained any hope of them not taking advantage of it.

Their way of working seemed illogical, but they had laboured as a team for nearly a year, so obviously knew what they were doing. George had learned from experience that within reason you must let your workmen do things according to the method suggested by their own temperament, otherwise you were asking for trouble.

But what puzzled him was the way his brothers started work from three of the most widely separated points. While Bert began at the gate, Harry was on a high ladder painting the guttering just under the roof that overlooked the canal, and Alf laboured on window frames at the far end of the yard. No doubt they would eventually come together somewhere in the middle, providing, George thought, that sufficient standing room was left for them to apply the finishing flourishes.

On the second day George was shaping a complicated tool at his lathe when he felt a tap at the shoulder. He was irritated at the interruption, for none of the men would disturb him in his work, unless Edward had been injured when the school bus had crashed, or he had been kidnapped, or Pam had been taken ill, or his house had burned to a cinder. He switched off the motor and sud-tap, then turned to see what was the matter.

‘Would you come outside for a minute?' Bert said. ‘We'd like a couple of words with you.'

He wiped his hands on a rag, and followed him into the yard where the others were waiting. Three newly painted patches shimmered at different corners of his eyes.

‘It's like this,' Bert said.

‘Like what?' George snapped. ‘I'm busy this morning.'

‘We've run out of paint.'

‘And you stopped me at my work to tell me that? Get some more, then, can't you?'

‘We've got no money.'

If he struck one, all three would surely hit him back. Even to shout would lead to his destruction. ‘No money?'

Bert looked grave, as if concerned for the reputation of their old-established firm. ‘Not a cent. Not even enough for a pint of ale, let alone paint. Even the petrol tank in the van's nearly empty.'

‘And what are you planning to do about it?'

‘Not much we can do,' Alf said.

Bert was more reasonable. ‘There's a job we can start, up Mapperley. The bloke'll give us fifty on account, and when we finish we can buy more paint and come back here. That's the only way I can see out of it. It's just a little difficulty, George. There's no need to look so upset.'

He had been aware for a long time how much Pam disliked them and their stunts, but she could never know the depth of his loathing. ‘How much time will you need then to finish that other job?'

‘A couple of weeks,' Bert said, ‘if we get a move on, and we
can
hurry, when we set our minds to it. This sort of upset happens all the time, George. Other small firms like ours have troubles as well. I know for a fact that one bloke's been waiting eighteen months for some chaps to finish his house. He had terrible arthritis, and had to sleep in a garden shed all winter. It's shameful what some of 'em are allowed to get away with. But we're not like that, George, so don't look so down in the mouth.'

He should have sent them away, then called in the biggest firm, no matter how high the cost, to finish what they had barely started. In other areas of business he acted with shrewdness and decision, but in anything involving his brothers he was totally unable to follow his intuition.