Key to the Door (25 page)

But Ada said it should stay on: “When he comes for money Dave can go to the door and tell 'im we're not in. I'm not goin' ter sit 'ere wi'out any light.” Brian ate bacon and tomatoes, dipped his bread in juice and fat, uneasy at eating with Doddoe in the room, though so hungry he couldn't but enjoy the meal.

Johnny finished the net, rolled it up for his father. “Thanks, Johnny. You're a good lad. I'll gi' yer tuppence in the mornin' when I've sold the rabbits.” Doddoe swung his bare feet from the range, dragged boots from beneath the table, and pulled them on without socks, tugging each lace tight through faded eye-holes. He went into the kitchen, and they heard him slinging cold water around his face. As he was donning his topcoat, a sharp knock sounded at the door and everyone stopped talking, eating, dressing, playing. “That'll be the radiogram man,” Ada hissed. “Go and see 'im. You know what to tell 'im.”

Dave stood up: “I should. I've 'ad enough practice”—strode to the hallway. Doddoe was both into and out of his topcoat, like a half-draped statue, and Ada held the teapot, about to pour a last cup of tea before he left for the night's poaching. Brian's mouth was full, stayed that way until the crisis was over. The two children stopped playing on the rug, as if they had been trained like seals to be silent at such times. Only the fire flickered in the grate, and that was all right because it made no noise.

Dave opened the door—was greeted by a polite brisk voice saying: “Good evening.”

“Evenin',” Dave slurred, towering over him.

“I'm from Norris's,” the man explained. “Is your mother in?”

“She's gone out.”

“Do you know when she'll be back?” He stood in the rain, trying not to get his boots wet. “She wain't be in tonight,” Dave said, into his stride. “She's gone to her sister's at Leicester.”

“Will she be back in the morning?” he probed. “I can call around then.” The briskness was leaving his voice, as though he knew it was a hopeless task.

“She might be away a week. Her sister's badly in hospital and mam might 'ave ter wait till she dies.”

“Oh dear,” the man said consolingly, “that is bad.” He had a certain technique as well, but it could never succeed. “You can't get blood out of a bleeding stone,” Doddoe had often said.

“It is, an' all,” Dave agreed.

“Did she leave any money for Norris's man?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? It might be behind the clock.”

“I've looked everywhere for money,” Dave shook his head, “but there ain't a tanner in the 'ouse.”

The man was on his track: “Surely she wouldn't go to Leicester for a week and not leave any money to feed the family?”

“Well, she don't know 'ow long she'll be away,” Dave went on, “an' she said if she's away a long while she'll borrow summat in Leicester and send us a little postal order.”

“I see,” the man said, “but what about your father? Is
he
in?”

Dave shook his head sadly. “I don't know where '
e
is. We ain't seen 'im for three days. I 'ope nowt's 'appened to 'im.” Had it not been raining, the man might have stood long enough to be fobbed off with a shilling. “All right,” he said, putting the books into his mac pocket. “I'll call in three days, on Tuesday say, to see if your mother's in. Tell her if she doesn't pay something soon our men will come to fetch the radiogram back.”

“I'll tell 'er.” Dave shut the door in his face, for he always knew when victory was at hand. The tableau inside dissolved at hearing the man walk up the street. “Poor bogger,” Ada said with genuine sympathy, “he's come all that way for nowt.”

“If 'e'd stayed much longer arguin',” Doddoe said, swinging into the other half of his topcoat, “I'd a knocked 'im across the 'ead wi' this cosh.” Brian went on eating, and Ada finished pouring tea for Doddoe. Having milked and sugared it, she turned the radiogram on softly, saying: “I expect we shan't 'ave it much longer.”

“Not if I know it,” Doddoe said, between gulps of tea. “It'll be in the pawnshop soon.”

“Yo'll get six months for that,” Ada said.

“I'll get no ale if it ain't,” he laughed. “The dirty rotten bastards wouldn't let a bloke live these days. I allus work when there's work to be had, yo' know that. I'm not going to see my kids fucking-well starve.”

“Yo'll get drowned tonight,” Ada moaned, “goin' poachin' in this rain.”

“Well,” Doddoe said with finality, crashing the cup down on its saucer, “we've got ter live, and that's a fact, so there's nowt else for it. I'd rather sit in the Crown all night wi' a jar of ale, but yer'd soon start bleedin'-well moaning if there was nowt on t' table tomorrer.” They listened to the rain a few seconds: “Anyway, it keeps the gamekeepers quiet.” He took a lamp from the dresser, walked to the back door. “See yer tomorrer”—and they heard him drag his bike from the shed, then the rickety clack-to of the gate before he rode off in the pouring rain.

The only verdict was Ada's: “Poor bleeder.”

“P'raps it'll stop,” said Dave.

Brian stayed to hear a thriller on the wireless, against the background of Johnny in the kitchen sawing wood to make a stool. Dave was right: the world never stayed black and wet for ever; it dried now and again to let Doddoe do his poaching and Brian make his way home to bed. Stars ran between clouds, and children played within circles of beneficent gaslight as he looked back from the railway fence. One heave took him over, and he went up the embankment with bent back in case he should be silhouetted and attract attention from cops or shunters. A light twinkled far off across the field, then went out as if someone had lit a cigarette. Signals clanked up on another branch of the line and, wanting to beat the train, he leapt wildly from one steel band to another. Stones skidded underfoot and he slipped, scabbing his kneecap when his hand went forward and didn't hold. This unexpected let-down of his limbs filled him with panic, increased by the sound of a locomotive gathering strength from the station, and a low far-off whistle from another train on this jungle network. Gasping and crying out, he reached the end rail, and saw the dim expanse of safe and marshy fields in front.

He sat in the nearest grass to get his breath back, as the train charged innocuously by along the embankment above. A horse moved and neighed by a bush. Two people approached, merging like shadows and talking softly: a courting couple. He counted the concrete steps mounting to the bridge: thirty-two. Lights shone from the colliery below, but it was so dark walking down the lane that he imagined daylight would never come, and fear didn't leave him until he entered the kitchen at home and sat before the fire with a cup of tea and a slice of bread and cheese.

True to his promise, Dave donated the final threepence. Saturday afternoon was warm and dusty, and he walked to Canning Circus, past old houses being knocked down, lorries lining up to transport rammel to the Sann-eye tips. Crossing the complicated junction, he descended via Derby Road, looking into each shop, wondering as he skirted Slab Square what his mother and father would say when they saw him come into the house holding a thick and fabulous book.

A large atlas was opened at a map of the world, surrounded by dictionaires and foreign-language books—the only section of the shop that interested him. He went in, and told a brown-dressed girl by the cash-desk that he wanted to buy
The Count of Monte Cristo
, started to explain the simple financial system into which he had entered.

She left him standing with four pink receipts and the final sixpence, and came back with the manager. “I know him,” he said. “He's a customer of ours.” He turned to Brian, took the receipts and money, and spread them on the cash-desk.
“The Count of Monte Cristo
, wasn't it? Go and get it for him, will you?”

The book came, and he had only time to glimpse the picture-cover of a man holding a sword before it was taken away and wrapped up.

He opened the packet outside, flipped the hundreds of pages through his fingers, from cover to cover and back again. A posh woman's voice said from behind: “You're going to be busy, aren't you?” He turned and said yes, ran his eyes up and down the formidable list of chapter titles.

No one was at home, and he sat by the fire to read. The room had been scrubbed and the table cleared, and in the congenial emptiness he sped on through the easy prose of the story, had reached Edmond Dantès's betrothal ceremony before his parents came in. They took off their coats. “That looks a nice book,” his mother said. “Where did you get it from?”

“I bought it from down town.”

“Who gen you all
that
money?” his father put in.

“It must 'ave cost a pretty penny,” his mother said, spreading the cloth for tea.

“Nobody gen me the money,” Brian told them, closing the book carefully. “I saved it up.”

Irritation came into his mother's voice: “How much was it?”

“Half a crown.”

“Yer've wasted 'alf a crown on a book?” his father exclaimed.

He'd imagined they'd be pleased at his cleverness in bringing such a thing into the house, but it was the opposite. It was as though he'd been split in half and was bleeding to death. All for a book. “It was
my
money,” he cried, anguished and bitter, because instead of buying the book he should have given the money to them.

“You're bloody-well silly about books,” his father said, a definite threat in his voice. “You read till you're bloody-well daft.” His mother came back from the kitchen: “You stand need to spend half a crown on books when you ain't got a bit o' shoe to your feet. And you're a sly little swine to 'ave money in the 'ouse all that time when I've often bin wi'out a shillin' ter buy some snap.”

“I didn't have the money here,” he explained. “I took it bit by bit to the book shop, like a Christmas club.” This was even worse, because he'd made sure that, starving or not, they hadn't been able to get their hands on it.

“You'd 'ave 'ad more sense to a got yoursen a pair o' shoes,” Seaton cried. “I've a good mind to throw it on the bleddy fire.”

“'E's got no more sense than 'e was born with,” his mother said. Brian was horrified at his father's threat, saw flames already at their work. “It's
my
book,” he shouted.

“Don't cheek me,” Seaton said, “or you'll be for it, my lad.”

Brian's tears were open, and they saw it. “I hope there's a war on soon so's we're all killed,” he raved.

“What a thing to say,” his mother said. “I don't know where he gets it from.”

A smack across the head from his father. “Say one more word, and I'll show yer what I'll do wi' yer.”

“Wait till I grow up,” Brian cried.

But Seaton only said: “He'll be a lunatic one day wi' reading so many books.”

He sat by the fire while they drank tea, trying to force back the sobs, difficult because he saw too easily how he had done wrong. But hatred and pity for himself surmounted this, and so he couldn't stop. Vera passed him some tea: “Come on, it ain't the end o' the world.” His eyes were drawn to the book cover, where a brave man held a rapier as if he didn't care for anyone in the world, as though nothing could ever trouble him. And if it did, the face and sword said, it would be an easy matter to fight a duel and dispose of whatever it was.

He ate bread and jam, and went on reading. The story grafted itself to him, slowly becoming him and he becoming it, and he left behind with each second the light and noise in the house and went on wondering footsteps down into the dungeons of the Château d'lf with Edmond Dantès, following the guards and slipping invisibly into the cell, and all night long he listened to the tapping and whispers that came from the granite floor, heard the patient scraping and scratching of freedom, was shown that even dungeons and giant prisons were unable to keep men in for ever, though fourteen years was longer by four than he had so far lived: he listened to the chipping of homemade tools, and voices whispering as if from the dead, which talked of knowledge and freedom and hidden treasure on the Island of Monte Cristo.

CHAPTER 13

Mr. Bates was powerless to stem the tide of commotion in the classroom. With good reason the boys were excited, everyone talking to everyone else. The regular timetable dissolved as if by magic, and the map of South America—in white chalk for the coastline and brown for the long curving rib of the Andes—was being rubbed out by the prefect, who even forgot himself and shook the chalk rag in the classroom, so that brown and white dust-clouds penetrated layers of light slanting in through the windows.

Assembly and prayers had gone by and, to the intense joy of the class, Mr. Bates stayed writing at his desk. Brian was close enough to hear the reedy turmoil of his pen and the rustle of overturned paper. What was he writing on a day like this? For whom could he be using these unique minutes? Maybe it was the best he could do while waiting to see what happened, because had he ordered the class into the hall and set them to singing hymns, they would possibly have mutinied, or acquiesced so truculently that hall-discipline would have been impossible.

“Bosworth!” Mr. Bates cried, glancing icily at the prefect when dust settled on his coatsleeve and notepaper. “How many more times do I have to tell you to shake that thing outside?”

But Bosworth recognized his words as a protest, not a threat. “Sorry, sir,” he said, hung the duster over the easel-lath, and went back to his seat after seeing his apology met only by a bent preoccupied head and the sound of a pen scratching across foolscap like the exploring claws of a badger.

Anybody'd think he was writing a book. The noise rose to a climax, a sea beating against the sound-barrier of Mr. Bates's pen, until suddenly the stream of his thought was taken in the flank: “Quiet!” he shouted. The sea didn't fall back, for only those closest, always careful not to make much noise anyway, heard him. “
WILL YOU BE QUIET
!” he bawled.