New and Collected Stories (16 page)

The laugh and wink were intended for Lennox, who was still in the backwater of his personal defeat. ‘I suppose that's all you think on these days,' he said wryly.

‘'Appen I do, but I don't get all that much of it, I can tell you.' It was obvious though that he got enough to keep him in good spirits at a cold and disappointing football match.

‘Well,' Lennox pronounced, ‘all that'll alter in a bit. You can bet on that.'

‘Not if I know it,' Fred said with a broad smile. ‘And I reckon it's better after a bad match than if I didn't come to one.'

‘You never said a truer word about bad,' Lennox said. He bit his lip with anger. ‘Bloody team. They'd even lose at blow football.' A woman behind, swathed in a thick woollen scarf coloured white and black like the Notts players, who had been screaming herself hoarse in support of the home team all the afternoon was almost in tears at the adverse goal. ‘Foul! foul! Get the dirty lot off the field. Send 'em back to Bristol where they came from. Foul! Foul! I tell yer.'

People all round were stamping feet dead from the cold, having for more than an hour staved off its encroachment into their limbs by the hope of at least one home-team win before Christmas. Lennox could hardly feel his, hadn't the will to help them back to life, especially in face of an added force to the bitter wind, and a goal that had been given away so easily. Movement on the pitch was now desultory, for there were only ten minutes of play left to go. The two teams knotted up towards one goal, then spread out around an invisible ball, and moved down the field again, back to the other with no decisive result. It seemed that both teams had accepted the present score to be the final state of the game, as though all effort had deserted their limbs and lungs.

‘They're done for,' Lennox observed to Fred. People began leaving the ground, making a way between those who were determined to see the game out to its bitter end. Right up to the dull warbling blast of the final whistle the hard core of optimists hoped for a miraculous revival in the worn-out players.

‘I'm ready when yo' are,' Fred said.

‘Suits me.' He threw his cigarette-end to the floor and, with a grimace of disappointment and disgust, made his way up the steps. At the highest point he turned a last glance over the field, saw two players running and the rest standing around in deepening mist – nothing doing – so went on down towards the barriers. When they were on the road a great cheer rose behind, as a whistle blew the signal for a mass rush to follow.

Lamps were already lit along the road, and bus queues grew quickly in semi-darkness. Fastening up his mac Lennox hurried across the road. Fred lagged behind, dodged a trolley-bus that sloped up to the pavement edge like a man-eating monster and carried off a crowd of people to the city-centre with blue lights flickering from overhead wires. ‘Well,' Lennox said when they came close, ‘after that little lot I only hope the wife's got summat nice for my tea.'

‘I can think of more than that to hope for,' Fred said. ‘I'm not one to grumble about my grub.'

‘'Course,' Lennox sneered, ‘you're living on love. If you had Kit-E-Kat shoved in front of you you'd say it was a good dinner.' They turned off by the recruiting centre into the heart of the Meadows, an ageing suburb of black houses and small factories. ‘That's what yo' think,' Fred retorted, slightly offended yet too full of hope to really mind. ‘I'm just not one to grumble a lot about my snap, that's all.'

‘It wouldn't be any good if you was,' Lennox rejoined, ‘but the grub's rotten these days, that's the trouble. Either frozen, or in tins. Nowt natural. The bread's enough to choke yer.' And so was the fog: weighed down by frost it lingered and thickened, causing Fred to pull up his rain-mac collar. A man who came level with them on the same side called out derisively: ‘Did you ever see such a game?'

‘Never in all my born days,' Fred replied.

‘It's always the same though,' Lennox was glad to comment, ‘the best players are never on the field. I don't know what they pay 'em for.'

The man laughed at this sound logic. ‘They'll ‘appen get 'em on nex' wik. That'll show 'em.'

‘Let's hope so,' Lennox called out as the man was lost in the fog. ‘It ain't a bad team,' he added to Fred. But that wasn't what he was thinking. He remembered how he had been up before the gaffer yesterday at the garage for clouting the mash-lad who had called him Cock-eye in front of the office-girl, and the manager had said that if it happened again he would get his cards. And now he wasn't sure that he wouldn't ask for them anyway. He'd never lack a job, he told himself, knowing his own worth and the sureness of his instinct when dissecting piston from cylinder, camshaft and connecting-rod and searching among a thousand-and-one possible faults before setting an engine bursting once more with life. A small boy called from the doorway of a house: ‘What's the score, mate?'

‘They lost, two-one,' he said curtly, and heard a loud clear-sounding doorslam as the boy ran in with the news. He walked with hands in pockets, and a cigarette at the corner of his mouth so that ash occasionally fell on to his mac. The smell of fish-and-chips came from a well-lit shop, making him feel hungry.

‘No pictures for me tonight,' Fred was saying. ‘I know the best place in weather like this.' The Meadows were hollow with the clatter of boots behind them, the muttering of voices hot in discussion about the lost match. Groups gathered at each corner, arguing and teasing any girl that passed, lighted gas-lamps a weakening ally in the fog. Lennox turned into an entry, where the cold damp smell of backyards mingled with that of dustbins. They pushed open gates to their separate houses.

‘So long. See you tomorrow at the pub maybe.'

‘Not tomorrow,' Fred answered, already at his back door. ‘I'll have a job on mending my bike. I'm going to gi' it a coat of enamel and fix in some new brake blocks. I nearly got flattened by a bus the other day when they didn't work.'

The gate-latch clattered. ‘All right then,' Lennox said, ‘see you soon' – opening the back door and going into his house.

He walked through the small living-room without speaking, took off his mac in the parlour. ‘You should mek a fire in there,' he said, coming out. ‘It smells musty. No wonder the clo'es go to pieces inside six months.' His wife sat by the fire knitting from two balls of electric-blue wool in her lap. She was forty, the same age as Lennox, but gone to a plainness and discontented fat, while he stayed thin and wiry from the same reason. Three children, the eldest a girl of fourteen, were at the table finishing tea.

Mrs Lennox went on knitting. ‘I was going to make one today but I didn't have time.'

‘Iris can mek one,' Lennox said, sitting down at the table.

The girl looked up. ‘I haven't finished my tea yet, our dad.' The wheedling tone of her voice made him angry. ‘Finish it later,' he said with a threatening look. ‘The fire needs making now, so come on, look sharp and get some coal from the cellar.'

She didn't move, sat there with the obstinacy of the young spoiled by a mother. Lennox stood up. ‘Don't let me have to tell you again.' Tears came into her eyes. ‘Go on,' he shouted. ‘Do as you are told.' He ignored his wife's plea to stop picking on her and lifted his hand to settle her with a blow.

‘All right, I'm going. Look' – she got up and went to the cellar door. So he sat down again, his eyes roaming over the well-set table before him, holding his hands tightly clenched beneath the cloth. ‘What's for tea, then?'

His wife looked up again from her knitting. ‘There's two kippers in the oven.'

He did not move, sat morosely fingering a knife and fork. ‘Well?' he demanded. ‘Do I have to wait all night for a bit o' summat t'eat?'

Quietly she took a plate from the oven and put it before him. Two brown kippers lay steaming across it. ‘One of these days,' he said, pulling a long strip of white flesh from the bone, ‘we'll have a change.'

‘That's the best I can do,' she said, her deliberate patience no way to stop his grumbling – though she didn't know what else would. And the fact that he detected it made things worse.

‘I'm sure it is,' he retorted. The coal bucket clattered from the parlour where the girl was making a fire. Slowly, he picked his kippers to pieces without eating any. The other two children sat on the sofa watching him, not daring to talk. On one side of the plate he laid bones; on the other, flesh. When the cat rubbed against his leg he dropped pieces of fish for it on to the lino, and when he considered that it had eaten enough he kicked it away with such force that its head knocked against the sideboard. It leapt on to a chair and began to lick itself, looking at him with green surprised eyes.

He gave one of the boys sixpence to fetch a
Football Guardian
. ‘And be quick about it,' he called after him. He pushed his plate away, and nodded towards the mauled kippers. ‘I don't want this. You'd better send somebody out for some pastries. And mash some fresh tea,' he added as an afterthought, ‘that pot's stewed.'

He had gone too far. Why did he make Saturday afternoons such hell on earth? Anger throbbed violently in her temples. Through the furious beating of her heart she cried out: ‘If you want some pastries you'll fetch 'em yourself. And you'll mash your own tea as well.'

‘When a man goes to wok all week he wants some tea,' he said, glaring at her. Nodding at the boy: ‘Send him out for some cakes.'

The boy already stood up. ‘Don't go. Sit down,' she said to him. ‘Get 'em yourself,' she retorted to her husband. ‘The tea I've already put on the table's good enough for anybody. There's nowt wrong wi' it at all, and then you carry on like this. I suppose they lost at the match, because I can't think of any other reason why you should have such a long face.'

He was shocked by such a sustained tirade, stood up to subdue her. ‘You what?' he shouted. ‘What do you think you're on wi'?'

Her face turned a deep pink. ‘You heard,' she called back. ‘A few home truths might do you a bit of good.'

He picked up the plate of fish and, with exaggerated deliberation, threw it to the floor. ‘There,' he roared. ‘That's what you can do with your bleeding tea.'

‘You're a lunatic,' she screamed. ‘You're mental.'

He hit her once, twice, three times across the head, and knocked her to the ground. The little boy wailed, and his sister came running in from the parlour …

Fred and his young wife in the house next door heard a commotion through the thin walls. They caught the cadence of voices and shifting chairs, but didn't really think anything amiss until the shriller climax was reached. ‘Would you believe it?' Ruby said, slipping off Fred's knee and straightening her skirt. ‘Just because Notts have lost again. I'm glad yo' aren't like that.'

Ruby was nineteen, plump like a pear not round like a pudding, already pregnant though they'd only been married a month. Fred held her back by the waist. ‘I'm not so daft as to let owt like that bother me.'

She wrenched herself free. ‘It's a good job you're not; because if you was I'd bosh you one.'

Fred sat by the fire with a bemused, Cheshire-cat grin on his face while Ruby was in the scullery getting them something to eat. The noise in the next house had died down. After a slamming of doors and much walking to and fro outside Lennox's wife had taken the children, and left him for the last time.

The Disgrace of Jim Scarfedale

I'm easily led and swung, my mind like a weather-vane when somebody wants to change it for me, but there's one sure rule I'll stick to for good, and I don't mind driving a nail head-first into a bloody long rigmarole of a story to tell you what I mean.

Jim Scarfedale.

I'll never let anybody try and tell me that you don't have to sling your hook as soon as you get to the age of fifteen. You ought to be able to do it earlier, only it's against the law, like everything else in this poxetten land of hope and glory.

You see, you can't hang on to your mam's apron strings for ever, though it's a dead cert there's many a bloke as would like to. Jim Scarfedale was one of these. He hung on so long that in the end he couldn't get used to anything else, and when he tried to change I swear blind he didn't know the difference between an apron string and a pair of garters, though I'm sure his brand-new almost-beautiful wife must have tried to drum it into his skull before she sent him whining back to his mother.

Well, I'm not going to be one of that sort. As soon as I see a way of making-off – even if I have to rob meters to feed myself – I'll take it. Instead of doing arithmetic lessons at school I glue my eyes to the atlas under my desk, planning the way I'm going to take when the time comes (with the ripped-out map folded-up in my back pocket): bike to Derby, bus to Manchester, train to Glasgow, nicked car to Edinburgh, and hitch-hiking down to London. I can never stop looking at these maps, with their red roads and brown hills and marvellous other cities – so it's no wonder I can't add up for toffee. (Yes, I know every city's the same when you come to weigh it up: the same hostels full of thieves all out to snatch your last bob if you give them half the chance; the same factories full of work, if you're lucky; the same mildewed backyards and houses full of silverfish and black-clocks when you suddenly switch on the light at night; but nevertheless, even though they're all the same they're different as well in dozens of ways, and nobody can deny it.)

Jim Scarfedale lived in our terrace, with his mam, in a house like our own, only it was a lot nearer the bike factory, smack next to it in fact, so that it was a marvel to me how they stuck it with all the noise you could hear. They might just as well have been inside the factory, because the racket it kicked up was killing. I went in the house once to tell Mrs Scarfedale that Mr Taylor at the shop wanted to see her about her week's grub order, and while I was telling her this I could hear the engines and pulleys next door in the factory thumping away, and iron-presses slamming as if they were trying to burst through the wall and set up another department at the Scarfedales'. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if it was this noise, as much as Jim's mam, that made him go the way he did.