New and Collected Stories (32 page)

The sea calmed for its mundane messages of arrival and departure, of love and happy birthday and grandma died and I bought presents in Bombay, and from this festive liner – white, sleek and grandiose – once more seen between clear sky and otherwise desolate flat sea – signals were emitted saying that a son had been (or was it would be?) born with love from Nancy in a place where both were doing well.

He slung the pencil down and stared at the accidental words, grew a smile at the irony of the message. He frowned, as if a best friend taunted him. The calm boat flowed on and a voice spoke over his shoulder: ‘What have you got there, Fred?'

‘A message,' he answered, not looking round, sliding his hand over so that she wouldn't see it. ‘I take them down from ships at sea.'

‘I know you do.'

‘All sorts of things,' he added, sociable without knowing why. The earphones fell to his neck and he needle-spun the wavelength, a noise that reminded Nancy of running by the huge arboretum birdcages as a kid: ‘What though?'

‘Telegrams and things. Ordinary stuff. Listen to what this funny one says' – sliding his hand away –
“FRED HARGREAVES LEFT HOME AT ONE O'CLOCK THURSDAY AFTERNOON.”

She turned: ‘You're not going, Fred, are you? I don't believe it.'

‘That's what the telegram said. Everyone I take down says the same thing. I can't get over it.'

‘Talk proper,' she cried. ‘It's not right to go off like this.'

He laughed, a grinding of heart and soul. ‘In't it?'

‘What about your job?'

‘There's plenty more where that came from.'

‘What about me?'

He laid his earphones down, and spoke with exaggerated awful quietness. ‘You should a thought of that before you trolloped off and got a bastard in you.'

‘It's all finished now. Didn't I tell you? It's about time you believed me.'

‘You told me a lot of things.' It was more of a grouse than a reproach. ‘All on 'em lies.'

‘I thought it was better that way.'

‘And going with that bloke? Was that better as well?' His shout startled her, brown eyes, glittering under darkening shadows, as if his exhaustion had never been lifted by a sojourn at the hospital. Neighbours from next door and out in the yard could hear them shouting. Don't tell me he's found out already. Well, well!

She was still in the new dress worn to fetch him home, and it showed already a slight thickness at the waist. ‘I couldn't help it,' she cried, able to add, in spite of tears on her face: ‘Anyway, what did you expect? We'd had no life between us since Ivor died. I was fed up on it. I had to let myself go.'

‘It was too bad though, worn't it?'

‘I'm not saying it wasn't. But I'm not going to go on bended knees and ask you to stay. I'm not an' all.' She stiffened, looked at him with hatred: ‘It's as much your fault as mine.'

‘I'm leaving,' he said, ‘I'm off.'

‘Go on, then.' Her face turned, the tone mechanical and meant, the quiet resignation of it a hot poker burning through his eyes. It was a final torment he could not take. Dazed by the grief of her decision she didn't see his hand coming. A huge blow, like a boulder flying at top speed in a gale, hit the side of her face, threw her back, feet collapsing. Another fist caught her, and another. She crashed on to the bed, a cry of shock beating her to it there. As she was to tell her mother: ‘He hadn't hit me before then, and he wain't hit me again, either. Maybe I deserved it, though.'

He tore the message off and screwed it tight, flung it to the far corner of the room. Then he went to Nan and tried to comfort her, the iron hooves of desperate love trampling them back into the proportions of matrimonial strife.

The Bike

The Easter I was fifteen I sat at the table for supper and Mam said to me: ‘I'm glad you've left school. Now you can go to work.'

‘I don't want to go to wok,' I said in a big voice.

‘Well, you've got to,' she said. ‘I can't afford to keep a pit-prop like yo' on nowt.'

I sulked, pushed my toasted cheese away as if it was the worst kind of slop. ‘I thought I could have a break before starting.'

‘Well you thought wrong. You'll be out of harm's way at work.' She took my plate and emptied it on John's, my younger brother's, knowing the right way to get me mad. That's the trouble with me: I'm not clever. I could have bashed our John's face in and snatched it back, except the little bastard had gobbled it up, and Dad was sitting by the fire, behind his paper with one tab lifted. ‘You can't get me out to wok quick enough, can you?' was all I could say at Mam.

Dad chipped in, put down his paper. ‘Listen: no wok, no grub. So get out and look for a job tomorrow, and don't come back till you've got one.'

Going to the bike factory to ask for a job meant getting up early, just as if I was back at school; there didn't seem any point in getting older. My old man was a good worker though, and I knew in my bones and brain that I took after him. At the school garden the teacher used to say: ‘Colin, you're the best worker I've got, and you'll get on when you leave' – after I'd spent a couple of hours digging spuds while all the others had been larking about trying to run each other over with the lawn-rollers. Then the teacher would sell the spuds off at threepence a pound and what did I get out of it? Bogger-all. Yet I liked the work because it wore me out; and I always feel pretty good when I'm worn out.

I knew you had to go to work though, and that rough work was best. I saw a picture once about a revolution in Russia, about the workers taking over and everything (like Dad wants to) and they lined everybody up and made them hold their hands out and the working blokes went up and down looking at them. Anybody whose hands was lily-white was taken away and shot. The others was OK. Well, if ever that happened in this country, I'd be OK, and that made me feel better when a few days later I was walking down the street in overalls at half-past seven in the morning with the rest of them. One side of my face felt lively and interested in what I was in for, but the other side was crooked and sorry for itself, so that a neighbour got a front view of my whole clock and called with a wide laugh, a gap I'd like to have seen a few inches lower down – in her neck: ‘Never mind, Colin, it ain't all that bad.'

The man on the gate took me to the turnery. The noise hit me like a boxing-glove as I went in, but I kept on walking straight into it without flinching, feeling it reach right into my guts as if to wrench them out and use them as garters. I was handed over to the foreman; then the foreman passed me on to the toolsetter; and the toolsetter took me to another youth – so that I began to feel like a hot wallet.

The youth led me to a cupboard, opened it, and gave me a sweeping brush. ‘Yo' do that gangway,' he said, ‘and I'll do this one.' My gangway was wider, but I didn't bother to mention it. ‘Bernard,' he said, holding out his hand, ‘that's me. I go on a machine next week, a drill.'

‘How long you been on this sweeping?' I wanted to know, bored with it already.

‘Three months. Every lad gets put on sweeping first, just to get 'em used to the place.' Bernard was small and thin, older than me. We took to each other. He had round bright eyes and dark wavy hair, and spoke in a quick way as if he'd stayed at school longer than he had. He was idle, and I thought him sharp and clever, maybe because his mam and dad died when he was three. He'd been brought up by an asthmatic auntie who'd not only spoiled him but let him run wild as well, he told me later when we sat supping from our tea mugs. He'd quietened down now though, and butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, he said with a wink. I couldn't think why this was, after all his stories about him being a mad-head – which put me off him at first, though after a bit he was my mate, and that was that.

We was talking one day, and Bernard said the thing he wanted to buy most in the world was a gram and lots of jazz records – New Orleans style. He was saving up and had already got ten quid.

‘Me,' I said, ‘I want a bike, to get out at week-ends up Trent. A shop on Arkwright Street sells good 'uns second hand.'

I went back to my sweeping. It was a fact I've always wanted a bike. Speed gave me a thrill. Malcolm Campbell was my bigshot – but I'd settle for a two-wheeled pushbike. I'd once borrowed my cousin's and gone down Balloon House Hill so quick I passed a bus. I'd often thought how easy it would be to pinch a bike: look in a shop window until a bloke leaves his bike to go into the same shop, then nip in just before him and ask for something you knew they hadn't got; then walk out whistling to the bike at the kerb and ride off as if it's yours while the bloke's still in the shop. I'd brood for hours: fly home on it, enamel it, file off the numbers, turn the handlebars round, change the pedals, take lamps off or put them on … only, no, I thought, I'll be honest and save up for one when I get forced out to work, worse luck.

But work turned out to be a better life than school. I kept as hard at it as I could, and got on well with the blokes because I used to spout about how rotten the wages was and how hard the bosses slaved us – which made me popular you can bet. Like my old man always says, I told them: ‘At home when you've got a headache, mash a pot of tea. At work, when you've got a headache, strike.' Which brought a few laughs.

Bernard was put on his drill, and one Friday while he was cleaning it down I stood waiting to cart his rammel off. ‘Are you still saving up for that bike, then?' he asked, pushing steel dust away with a handbrush.

‘Course I am. But I'm a way off getting one yet. They rush you a fiver at that shop. Guaranteed, though.'

He worked on for a minute or two then, as if he'd got a birthday present or was trying to spring a good surprise on me, said without turning round: ‘I've made up my mind to sell my bike.'

‘I didn't know you'd got one.'

‘Well' – a look on his face as if there was a few things I didn't know – ‘I bus it to work: it's easier.' Then in a pallier voice: ‘I got it last Christmas, from my auntie. But I want a record player now.'

My heart was thumping. I knew I hadn't got enough, but: ‘How much do you want for it?'

He smiled. ‘It ain't how much I want for the bike, it's how much more dough I need to get the gram and a couple of discs.'

I saw Trent Valley spread out below me from the top of Carlton Hill – fields and villages, and the river like a white scarf dropped from a giant's neck. ‘How much do you need, then?'

He took his time about it, as if still having to reckon it up. ‘Fifty bob.' I'd only got two quid – so the giant snatched his scarf away and vanished. Then Bernard seemed in a hurry to finish the deal: ‘Look, I don't want to mess about, I'll let it go for two pounds five. You can borrow the other five bob.'

‘I'll do it then,' I said, and Bernard shook my hand like he was going away in the army. ‘It's a deal. Bring the dough in the morning, and I'll bike it to wok.'

Dad was already in when I got home, filling the kettle at the scullery tap. I don't think he felt safe without there was a kettle on the gas. ‘What would you do if the world suddenly ended, Dad?' I once asked when he was in a good mood. ‘Mash some tea and watch it,' he said. He poured me a cup.

‘Lend's five bob, Dad, till Friday.'

He slipped the cosy on. ‘What do you want to borrow money for?' I told him. ‘Who from?' he asked.

‘My mate at wok.'

He passed me the money. ‘Is it a good 'un?'

‘I ain't seen it yet. He's bringing it in the morning.'

‘Make sure the brakes is safe.'

Bernard came in half an hour late, so I wasn't able to see the bike till dinner-time. I kept thinking he'd took bad and wouldn't come at all, but suddenly he was stooping at the door to take his clips off – so's I'd know he'd got his – my – bike. He looked paler than usual, as if he'd been up the canal-bank all night with a piece of skirt and caught a bilious-bout. I paid him at dinner-time. ‘Do you want a receipt for it?' he laughed. It was no time to lark about. I gave it a short test around the factory, then rode it home.

The next three evenings, for it was well in to summer, I rode a dozen miles out into the country, where fresh air smelt like cowshit and the land was coloured different, was wide open and windier than in streets. Marvellous. It was like a new life starting up, as if till then I'd been tied by a mile-long rope around the ankle to home. Whistling along lanes I planned trips to Skegness, wondering how many miles I could make in a whole day. If I pedalled like mad, bursting my lungs for fifteen hours I'd reach London where I'd never been. It was like sawing through the bars in clink. It was a good bike as well, a few years old, but a smart racer with lamps and saddlebag and a pump that went. I thought Bernard was a bit loony parting with it at that price, but I supposed that that's how blokes are when they get dead set on a gram and discs. They'd sell their own mother, I thought, enjoying a mad dash down from Canning Circus, weaving between the cars for kicks.

‘What's it like, having a bike?' Bernard asked, stopping to slap me on the back – as jolly as I'd ever seen him, yet in a kind of way that don't happen between pals.

‘You should know,' I said: ‘Why? It's all right, ain't it? The wheels are good, aren't they?'

An insulted look came into his eyes. ‘You can give it back if you like. I'll give you your money.'

‘I don't want it,' I said. I could no more part with it than my right arm, and he knew it. ‘Got the gram yet?' And he told me about it for the next half-hour. It had got so many dials for this and that he made it sound like a space ship. We was both satisfied, which was the main thing.