New and Collected Stories (60 page)

It took a long time to get clear of traffic at Canning Circus, and he wished he'd packed up some bread and cheese before leaving the house. Men were smoking foul fags all around, and a gang of boys going to People's College made a big noise until the conductor told them to stop it or he'd put them off.

He knew the name of his grandmother's street, but not how to get there from the bus stop. A postman pointed the direction for him. Netherfield was on the edge of Nottingham, and huge black cauliflower clouds with the sun locked inside came over on the wind from Colwick Woods.

When his grandmother opened the back door he was turning the handle of the old mangle outside. She told him to stop it, and then asked in a tone of surprise what had brought him there at that time of the morning.

‘Dad and mam have gone,' he said.

‘Gone?' she cried, pulling him into the scullery. ‘What do you mean?' He saw the big coal fire, and smelled the remains of bacon that she must have done for Tom's breakfast – the last of her sons living there. His face was distorted with pain. ‘No,' she said, ‘nay, you mustn't cry. Whatever's the matter for you to cry like that?'

The tea she poured was hot, strong, and sweet, and he was sorry at having cried in front of her. ‘All right, now?' she said, drawing back to watch him and see if it was.

He nodded. ‘I slept on the couch.'

‘The whole night! And where can they be?'

He saw she was worried. ‘They had an accident,' he told her, pouring his tea into the saucer to cool it. She fried him an egg, and gave him some bread and butter.

‘Our Jack's never had an accident,' she said grimly.

‘If they're dead, grandma, can I live with you?'

‘Aye, you can. But they're not, so you needn't worry your little eyes.'

‘They must be,' he told her, feeling certain about it.

‘We'll see,' she said. ‘When I've cleaned up a bit, we'll go and find out what got into 'em.' He watched her sweeping the room, then stood in the doorway as she knelt down to scrub the scullery floor, a smell of cold water and pumice when she reached the doorstep. ‘I've got to keep the place spotless,' she said with a laugh, standing up, ‘or your Uncle Tom would leave home. He's bound to get married one day though, and that's a fact. His three brothers did, one of 'em being your daft father.'

She held his hand back to the bus stop. If Uncle Tom does clear off it looks like she'll have me to look after. It seemed years already since he'd last seen his mother and father, and he was growing to like the adventure of it, provided they didn't stay away too long. It was rare going twice across town in one day.

It started to rain, so they stood in a shop doorway to wait for the bus. There wasn't so many people on it this time, and they sat on the bottom deck because his grandma didn't feel like climbing all them steps. ‘Did you lock the door behind you?'

‘I forgot.'

‘Let's hope nobody goes in.'

‘There was no light left,' he said. ‘Nor any gas. I was cold when I woke up.'

‘I'm sure you was,' she said. ‘But you're a big lad now. You should have gone to a neighbour's house. They'd have given you some tea. Mrs Upton would, I'm sure. Or Mrs Mackley.'

‘I kept thinking
they'd
be back any minute.'

‘You always have to go to the neighbours,' she told him, when they got off the bus and walked across Ilkeston Road. Her hand had warmed up now from the pumice and cold water. ‘Don't kick your feet like that.'

If it happened again, he would take her advice. He hoped it wouldn't, though next time he'd sleep in his bed and not be frightened.

They walked down the yard, and in by the back door. Nothing was missing, he could have told anybody that, though he didn't speak. The empty house seemed dead, and he didn't like that. He couldn't stay on his own, so followed his grandmother upstairs and into every room, half expecting her to find them in some secret place he'd never known of.

The beds were made, and wardrobe doors closed. One of the windows was open a few inches, so she slammed it shut and locked it. ‘Come on down. There's nowt up here.'

She put a shilling in the gas meter, and set a kettle on the stove. ‘Might as well have a cup of tea while I think this one out. A bloody big one it is, as well.'

It was the first time he'd heard her swear, but then, he'd never seen her worried, either. It made him feel better. She thought about the front room, and he followed her.

‘They kept the house clean, any road up,' she said, touching the curtains and chair covers. ‘That's summat to be said for 'em. But it ain't everything.'

‘It ain't,' he agreed, and saw two letters lying on the mat just inside the front door. He watched her broad back as she bent to pick them up, thinking now that they were both dead for sure.

A Trip to Southwell

Alec leaned from the window of the empty compartment to fix the time by the platform clock.

Even if she ran down the stone stairs in her click-heelers shouting for him to stop he'd shrug and turn away with a slit-grin that would grip the heart painfully – knowing there was no chance of her coming whatever he felt or hoped.

At the age of seventeen, if you fall in love with a girl younger than yourself, you don't know what you're letting yourself in for. It pulled you to the middle of the earth and was hard to get out of once you were that far down. There was so much honey you got stuck like any black and orange bee. When you weren't gassed with sweetness your feet got burned.

To begin with he hadn't even known he was in love, and she was still fifteen, what's more. Things shifted under you like on the cakewalk at Goose Fair, but it had always been like that with him, and he expected it never to alter. If he hadn't lived in Nottingham he wouldn't have met her, which might have been for the best. When things went wrong what could you do except wish they hadn't happened?

Then his old man got a better-paid job managing a butcher's shop in Leicester instead of cutting up chops and joints under somebody else down Radford. But you couldn't blame him for the break-up no more than you could for getting me in the world in the first place. So they moved, and there he was as well, or would be (and for good) when the train got there in forty minutes – time enough to go back over the whole tormenting issue.

Everybody was het-up after spilling from the late-night pictures, and the distant smell of a fish-and-chip shop came through the thick and icy fog. Alec saw her standing apart from her sister and saying nothing, while noise from the rest of them clattered around the lamp post.

The best compliment you could make in those days was that somebody was ‘quiet'. He once heard Doris Mackin say a boy named Bernard was smashing because he talked so quiet. Well, when he saw Mavis Hallam, and heard her reply to her sister who called out to come and join the gang, he thought how marvellous that her voice was soft.

Even though it was quiet he heard her say: ‘I don't want to, our Helen. We'll have to be going soon, or dad'll shout at us when he sees us coming in late' – as if shouting was the worst punishment anybody could have, and that they should do anything to avoid it.

‘Don't be daft,' Helen called, punching Bill Cotgrave who tried to get too much out of her: ‘We aren't even courting,' she bawled at him, ‘so get your scabby 'ands off of me.'

Mavis turned without answering, and sensed Alec looking at her. While he thought of what to say, in an equally low voice if he could manage it, he remembered that her softened tone was nevertheless a bit sarcastic. Though not lost on him, it didn't matter at a time when he'd give his right arm to know more about her.

Joshing and laughing the whole gang turned from the lamp post and straggled up Berridge Road. The world had divided into moving through the dark mist, and the quiet presence of Mavis who came on not far behind.

Between the two, Alec surmised that even though she lagged out of sight, and in spite of her soft voice and sarky tone, she still wanted to mill in with the rest. There was much of that in him too. Larking about bored him, and he didn't go for the dirty jokes and swinging hands (though he thought he could hold his own with both), yet he was glad to put up with it for the palliness and warmth. Bill Cotgrave and Alf Meggison worked at the same electrical firm, and with them Alec went twice a week to the youth club, completing a triangle of home, work, and leisure.

He waited for her. ‘Why don't you catch up?'

‘Why don't
you
?' she asked, quiet and unhurried, and close enough for him to see her smile.

‘I wanted to drop back a bit and talk.'

‘Talk, then.'

He tried to hold her hand, but she pulled it away.

‘If that's how it is,' he said.

‘I said talk, not grab. I don't know you that well.'

She didn't raise her voice through this, or even sound harsh, which made him want all the more to hold her. He saw it was going to be a long job, especially after this rebuff, and what he thought of as his first mistake.

He'd only seen her a couple of times, because Helen, her elder sister, didn't consider her old enough to mix with the rough and tumble she herself kept. A couple of the lads had already ‘had it' with Helen, but he couldn't ever see himself getting on the same track with Mavis – though you never know how things might turn out. He felt something more than that towards her, and didn't know what it was, unable to put it down to her soft voice, which would be too easy.

‘Anyway,' she said, pushing the silence away, ‘I don't know whether I like people with ginger hair.'

She was the first who'd ever objected to it, which he supposed was something else that made her different. ‘I've got blue eyes,' he said. ‘I expect they put your back up as well. I'll dye 'em if you like. If I'm too tall for you I'll take a correspondence course in shrinking. Maybe I could even do it at night school.'

Her laugh was more an attempt at one, though he liked her for it because it showed he was on the right track. He'd never seen her properly in broad day or electric light, always in the shifting flicker of a street lamp or the dim colours outside a cinema, and he longed now, searching for the wit to make her laugh properly, to see her clearly.

He had a fair idea of what she looked like, but being unsure of himself he wondered, if he met her in the possible sunlight of tomorrow's mid-day walking along the street and wearing a different coat, whether he'd be able to tell her well enough to risk saying hello Mavis and how are you?

Going to the pictures once, on his own, he got talking to a girl inside, and before the end they were kissing as if they'd known each other six weeks. Afterwards, her mother was outside to see her home, but they'd already arranged another meeting. In the following days he forgot what she looked like, not knowing whether she was tall or short or fair or dark – or anything whatever about her appearance. It might even have been a matter of conjecture whether or not she had a wooden leg, for all he noticed.

When the time came he approached the only other girl outside the cinema, and almost got into a fight because her boyfriend who had just dropped off a bus thought he was bothering her. He went up to several girls in the next half hour, none of whom was the dated one, though he would have gone in with any who said they were. He thought he was going off his head, but told himself that life was like that. When the right girl turned up he spotted her straight away.

He would know Mavis, however, not so much from her distinct features as from a feeling of her presence that would bring instant recognition. He felt more than saw her slightly plump figure and long coat, her head held back, and short black curly hair, her small curved mouth and full cheeks, shapely ears and pale skin. She wore no make-up, as if to emphasize the fact of not mixing in. There was no taint or smell to disguise any part of her, which he supposed was due to her being only fifteen (though sixteen in a fortnight, she said) and made him think that if he got off with her he'd hear his pals yelling he was a cradle-snatcher, since he himself was already seventeen.

‘I've known you long enough,' he answered, which sounded too much like a jocular complaint that one of his mates might use, and one he'd often put on with other girls. Since her voice was softly controlled he imagined she was repeating this in her mind and laughing at him, so he went on to make it worse – trying to forget what an older man at work once said: that ginger-nuts often thought people were laughing at them when they weren't. ‘I'll meet you Sunday afternoon if you like, and we can go to Sunday School together.'

She missed his clumsy joke, and said: ‘I've never been to such a place. In any case I wouldn't go with you. People'd know your sort a mile off– two miles, in fact.'

He felt better that she'd already gone to the trouble of putting him into a ‘sort', though he realized this couldn't have been very difficult. ‘What is my sort, anyway?' He managed to keep his voice as soft as hers, but only when asking questions.

‘Always after the girls,' she scorned. ‘Johnny Wiley told me about you.'

He wondered how Johnny Wiley had ever got close enough to tell her anything she'd listen to from a bastard like him. ‘The world's full of big mouths,' he answered, gritting his teeth at being jealous so early on. ‘People have dirty minds, that's all I can say.'

‘He knows a thing or two, though, Johnny Wiley.'

‘I'm not going out with anybody,' he told her. They walked side by side, and she didn't seem to mind. To make an impression he had to spill an interesting piece of news or gossip, as Johnny Wiley had done. Then maybe she'd remember it, and repeat that too. It would be one sort of step forward at least. ‘I went out with Doreen Buckle, but we got fed up with each other. Her old man came back early from the pub and caught us in the house alone. We was only watching the box. But he put a stop to it. You know how it is.'