Road to Berry Edge, The (5 page)

The bedrooms were big and airy with windows to let in the light and thick curtains to keep out the draughts. The furniture was modern and the walls were bright. There were dense carpets and pretty bedcoverings.

This room was small and dark. The furniture seemed huge and ugly and made the room look even smaller and darker.

‘I hope you're feeling better,' he ventured.

‘I've been ill for most of the past year. Your mother did write several times asking you to come home.'

‘Yes, I … I know.'

‘You must have been doing something very important in Nottingham.'

They had. Vincent had been excited about the expansion of the bicycle factory and the way that sales were soaring. That spring and summer Ida had designed and built a Japanese garden. Rob had tried to pretend that his parents were not demanding he should come back to Durham.

‘Who is this young man you've brought with you?'

‘Harry is very clever. I thought he might be able to help.'

‘Really, and what is his particular field?'

‘He's an engineer, but he's good at most things.'

He had to be, living with Vincent. If you weren't good at things you soon learned to be, because Vincent wouldn't tolerate incompetence of any kind, especially from his son. If Harry had not been as good as he was he would never have survived. But Rob knew also that privately Vincent was very proud of his son, so perhaps had Harry not been precociously clever, Vincent might have behaved differently towards him. Harry was strong and bright and totally capable, and it was just as well. Since Sarah had died his parents' love might have suffocated him otherwise, even though they pretended it was not so. One of the reasons Rob had allowed Harry to come with him was that Harry needed to get away for his own sake.

‘An engineer? Really? And what kind of work are you doing to bring you into the company of an engineer?'

Rob had long imagined what it would be like if and when he ever did come home and told his parents how well he had done, that he, Vincent and Harry had bought a house with rolling acres, gardens which had fountains and waterfalls, rooms with paintings and books, and good furniture, crystal and silver, everything of the best. A house built of honeyed stone, filled with music and books and, until Sarah had died, laughter and good conversation and many friends. The place where he had spent the happiest times of his life. He had thought he would be able to tell them that he had prospered beyond anything they could imagine, that his ideas and designs were respected and sought after by people not just here but in other countries. He had imagined bringing Sarah here and letting his parents see the kind of woman who had agreed to become his wife, so that they would see how beautiful and educated she was and how much she loved him, that he was worth someone like Sarah loving him. He wanted to show them what he had done, the huge achievements, the monumental successes so
that finally they would know he was no longer the stupid, disgusting, small boy of ten who had to be beaten into submission. Only he couldn't say any of it.

‘I work in a bicycle factory,' he said.

*

Mr Berkeley did not come out of his bedroom so Harry didn't meet him. Another shock awaited him at dinner. There was no wine, nothing but water on the table, and it was the plainest dinner that he had ever seen with stark-looking vegetables unrelieved by even a teaspoon of butter. Nancy served it. There seemed to be no other servants. After dinner Harry cornered Rob in the hall.

‘I need a drink.'

‘So do I. Let's go.'

Harry thanked Mrs Berkeley for the dinner and they went out. It was a cold dark night and the wind swept through the small town. The first pub they came to was the Station Hotel.

‘We can't go in there,' Rob said, ‘the men drink there.'

‘Does it matter? This is a small place. Won't some of the workmen be in every pub?'

‘How keen are you?'

‘Keen enough,' Harry said and opened the door.

He instantly regretted it. As they walked in the hum of voices ceased. Silence fell. At least he had enough sense to let Rob order the drinks but as he listened to the sound of Rob's voice he realised something else. Rob no longer spoke as the people of Berry Edge did. His accent was flawless, he spoke like the Shaws. Harry stood close beside him at the bar. There was a very big man near them; Harry nodded towards him and then said in a low voice, ‘Christ, I hope he's on our side.'

Rob took one look at the man and was instantly transported into his childhood.

‘Mickey?' he said. The man turned to him, and Rob could see and feel and touch all those long golden wonderful
times playing games and making fires and running across the moors, hiding in the darkness on the railways and lying in the long grass being anybody but himself, being powerful and free. This man had been a boy then, had been his best friend.

He regarded Rob from cold black eyes and the illusion fell away.

‘Mr Berkeley?' he said.

Rob had never felt so foolish or unwanted because they knew who he was now. Somebody spat on the floor, cursing. Rob held the big man's gaze. Michael McFadden. They had had so much in common as children, both had brothers whom they hated and fathers whom they hated more. Michael rarely went home. His father drank and had an evil temper. There was barely enough to eat in their house because of his father's drinking. Rob remembered laughing and saying that the food had stunted Michael's growth.

And his own childhood had been hard in other ways. Rising at four, prayers at five, being made to sit still and study all the time, trying to get out like butterflies that banged against the windows, being beaten after each escape. But his memories of Michael McFadden were caught up in summer days and winding streams and laughter. Rob could not extricate himself from those precious memories. He could not help almost smiling still, and he realised then that he had held on in his mind to everything that was most important to him about Berry Edge, all those years. He thought also of the beautiful, golden haired woman in his mother's kitchen. She was called McFadden. How lucky Michael was if he was married to the delightful Nancy.

‘Is Nancy your wife?' he said, ready to be admiring, and that was when he knew he was really back in Berry Edge. Michael McFadden smiled. He was even colder when he smiled. Rob's heart dropped and all the golden memories crumbled. He had learned over the years not to back off
but his instincts shrieked at him to run. In that one sentence he had wrecked something important.

‘My wife? Do you hear that?' Michael said to the pub. ‘He wants to know if Nancy is my wife.'

‘Christ,' Harry said softly.

‘Don't you speak to her then, Mr Berkeley?' He drew out the last two words, lingered over them and Rob remembered his first name on Michael's childish lips. He was already sorry that they had come into this pub and he could feel the temper from way down inside, the temper which he had thought he had so well controlled until Sarah died. He had thought it well schooled over those years, almost buried, it had had so little cause to stir. He had seen himself calm, he had seen himself as his friends and colleagues did, he knew that his abilities brought him respect and that through the love he had received from Sarah Shaw he knew himself accepted; but since Sarah had died the peace had fallen away and now the slow burn of temper began to edge its way up from his stomach.

‘Of course I speak to her, Michael, why shouldn't I?'

The first name was insult now and Michael knew it, Rob could see.

‘Oh my God,' Harry said.

‘Well you should know then that my brother, Nancy's husband, Sean, died in your bloody works.'

‘I didn't know. I'm sorry. I only just got here—'

‘That makes you one of the lucky ones,' Michael said and there were murmurs of agreement. ‘We've been living in this bloody hole on part pay from your stinking pit because there's nowt to do.'

‘Enough for beer, though?' Rob said.

‘For God's sake,' Harry said just above a whisper. ‘He'll kill you.'

‘I'm surprised you came back, the works have finished us all off while you've been running away, Mr Bloody Berkeley.'

Rob hit him. Harry closed his eyes over it.

Rob had forgotten how good it felt to plant your fist in the middle of somebody's face. The rage in him felt like a volcano running over the top, and it wasn't just the insults or the way that the men had shown their disrespect, it was the whole of Berry Edge somehow against him all that time. He didn't see himself, he didn't really see Michael, it was white heat just like the furnace, like the steel pouring, pure and high and liquid, all that it should be, just himself and that.

The men were well backed, shocked. When he had gone in, the murmur of pub voices had felt like a caress. He could have been at home here, had thought for seconds together that he was and then he remembered. Berry Edge was always like this, it was the foundry that had belonged to him. The people didn't care what he felt like or what he thought, here it was only what they could see; and they had seen him as a coward, as weak, and in Berry Edge there was no place for the weak except on the bottom being trodden into the ground.

Michael came back at him. The pub was suddenly a great big space in the middle with only himself and Michael, the odd chair breaking like sticks, clattering across the floor, and the smell of beer and tobacco became to Rob the most wonderful memory, the smell of the steelworks, the men's clothes warm and sweated, sand and boots and all those things which he had forgotten for so long. Berry Edge smelled like nowhere else, even though he had been in factories and foundries all his life. He was a boy again with a boy's dreams, standing at the doorway of the works knowing where he belonged, the heat of the steel pouring, the cold of the snow outside, the men pausing and smiling and talking. He had loved that foundry like nothing else, it had been his like it would never ever belong to John, it was his because of the men, their company, their friendship, their skills. They would work with him and the results were clean
and solid and important. He had belonged here on the high fells where men had built the iron works because of the raw materials. He had thought it would always be his home, that he could shape and mould it like the steel, that he could create something important here but it was gone, it was all long gone and he knew it now. These men were not his friends any more, they were not his workmates. They hated him just like everybody else. They would have liked Michael McFadden to kill him, they would at least have liked Michael McFadden to leave him senseless on the floor. But Rob was clearheaded, never more so than now. Michael had been drinking.

By the time Rob could see beyond the rage, Michael McFadden was down on the floor and not about to get up. In the silence there were moments of distilled satisfaction while Rob took in the assembled men with one sweeping look.

‘Anybody else?' he offered.

The men shifted but nothing happened, and then Harry touched him on the shoulder.

‘Come on,' he said. He talked softly, persuaded Rob outside into the bitter air and then the world crashed around Rob. He stopped, leaned back against the house next to the pub.

He thought, everything he touched he spoiled, everything he went near he lost. It was Berry Edge after John died. It was his nightmare. He had sworn never to come back. Guilt swamped him, took over, sweated its way through his body in spite of the cold night. He could never belong here again and he hated it because it had spoiled his life. It got him awake in the crawling hours of the night with its knives and whisperings, gnawing away until he could see a white image in his head of the person that he had tried to be, the person inside, that he was so sure he was meant to be, injured and bloody and on the ground; and it was because of this place.

Harry waited for a few moments and then asked anxiously, ‘You hurt?'

‘No.'

‘You sure?'

‘Yes.' He looked at Harry and was glad for the first time that Harry had come with him. ‘Do you think he'll be all right?'

‘I don't think you did him any permanent damage. Of course he'd had a few drinks, otherwise he would have been more of a problem. Pity it couldn't have been outside on a nice sunny day with the whole town watching. You have to show them.'

‘I don't want to have to show them, at least not that way. He was my friend.'

‘Hell, Rob, you don't have any friends here except me.'

‘I'm glad you're here.'

‘I knew you would be.'

They walked slowly down the bank to the house and into the kitchen. Nancy clicked her tongue in the manner of one well versed in Berry Edge ways and said, ‘Fighting? Well, really, Mr Berkeley. You haven't been back two minutes.'

She sat Rob down and bathed his face and knuckles.

‘Who did this?'

‘Your brother-in-law.'

‘What, Michael?' Nancy stopped, stared. ‘He's bigger than you.'

‘I noticed,' Rob said, backing from her fingers.

‘Keep still. Drinking, was he?'

‘Yes, thank God. I didn't know about your husband, Nancy, I'm sorry.'

‘You'll be the only one then. He was a … he was the worst man I ever met and it was his own fault, he was drunk at work. They kept sending him home. Something was bound to happen. Where did you go for a drink?'

‘The Station Hotel.'

‘You should know better,' Nancy said. ‘You can't go drinking in there. Did you win?'

‘You're very interested about this, aren't you, Nancy?' Rob said.

‘Where can we go drinking?' Harry asked her.

‘Nowhere here. You'll have to go to Durham.'

‘Should you be here at this time of night?' Rob asked.

‘You don't live in?' Harry asked.

‘Me, sir? I've got two bairns.'