The Broken Chariot (20 page)

‘There's a little job I want yer ter gi' me a hand with first,' Bert said.

Archie stopped the jar halfway to his mouth. ‘Anything, my owd, except I draw the line at robbin' a bank.'

‘No, it ain't that yet,' though the adventure of a big snatch and well-managed getaway, all planned to the off-chance of a dropped pin, and no violence unless called for, went through Herbert's mind as a good scheme for a stood-down infantryman, except it would be like the pictures where everything went wrong. He told him about Isaac's trouble with the rent man's bullies. ‘All we have to do is be there when they call, and frighten them off, or kick the shit out of them if they don't get the message.'

Archie laughed. ‘Yer don't need me. Just show 'em that scar on yer clock, and they'll run away screamin'. Only don't let my new woman see it, or she'll want me to buy one as well. I was frightened to death when I saw it in Cyprus, but I didn't say owt. All yer need now is an eye-patch and a wooden leg. Yer look as if somebody's comin' through that door to get yer, and ye're wonderin' whether to knife 'em or strangle 'em.'

‘These are hard men, from what I've heard. It might not be easy.'

‘All the better,' Archie said. ‘It's at least a month since I 'ad a set-to. I've got itchy knuckles. Is the old man a relation o' yourn?'

‘A sort of uncle.'

‘That settles it. I'll get bullshitted up for the fray.'

‘We'll have another,' Bert said. ‘Then we'll do a recce and plan it all out.'

Archie would be posted across the street, and stalk the men two minutes after they'd entered the building. Bert, already in, and waiting at the top of the turning stairs, would have the advantage of height and be hidden from Isaac's door. He and Archie decided to wear their uniforms, on the assumption that a couple of tall swaddies couldn't but seem more threatening to a pair of bastards who had no doubt been deserters all through the war.

‘A pincer movement', Archie said, ‘by the First Battalion Stalks and Wanks. When's the day?'

‘Next Monday, I hear, after the landlord's been for his rent. We'll just go over it again, to mek sure we know our stuff. We won't disturb the old man, though.'

Archie stood to empty his jar. ‘I'll be off to see my woman, after that. Her husband's on nights, and I've got to mek hay while the sun shines, though it looks as if it's going to chuck it down in ten minutes.'

Green double-decker buses circled Slab Square, the biggest market place in the country, or so Archie had informed him, as if he had designed and built it himself, or was glad to tell Herbert something he didn't know. Cement block borders lined the pavements and flowerbeds which in springtime blossomed with comic book colours. Archie also told him that if you stood between the lions in front of the Council House for an hour a week everybody who lived in the town would sooner or later pass by.

Not that Herbert wanted to see anyone at all, why he was idling there was hard to say, unless wondering whether to go back to his room, or spend an hour in the library before closing time. He lit a cigarette, envious of people who knew without thinking what to do and where to go. A woman togged up with wire glasses and false teeth, flaunting a gaudy headscarf and puffing a cigarette, dragged a grizzling kid with one hand and bent towards a baby reined into a pushcot with the other. A few paces by, she stopped and backtracked till level with Herbert.

‘Oh, so yer've come back, 'ave yer?' She jutted her face at him, speaking with such venom he almost lost balance. ‘I'm surprised yo' 'ad the cheek, after all that. I thought I'd seen the last o' yo'. I don't know how you could show your face in this town agen, after the trouble yo' caused.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘What do you mean what do I mean? I suppose you thought you'd changed so much in three years nobody 'ud reckernize yer? Some bleddy 'opes, mate. I'd know yo' any time, even with that scar down your fancy clock. I expect some 'usband slashed yer. Serves yer right, if he did. He shoulda bleddy killed yer!'

He could only smile, and wonder what villainous sod she had mistaken him for. Maybe she was a bit off her head, or came out every day to pick on someone at random for a bit of fun, and she had fixed on him because he happened to be standing there. Quite an adventure, really. But look affronted, he told himself. Look shocked. Look as if ready to do her in if she doesn't stop her senseless ranting. Look as mortally insulted as you're beginning to feel.

Yet her misery was real, and cut through both the Bert and Herbert layers of who he was. The voice behind the diatribe locked into harmony with her raddled but still young face, and he leaned half fainting against the stone lion. ‘Eileen!'

‘Oh, so yer know me, do yer? Yer've got my name wrong though, that's all. I'm not Eileen, but I suppose she was just another of the women you took down. I'm Betty, and yer bleddy well know it. Don't even remember my name! That's the bloody limit.'

Thank God for that. She wasn't Eileen. A middle-aged man and woman stopped to enjoy the entertainment. The child in its pushcot tugged and screamed. ‘I've no idea who you are,' Herbert said.

‘Look at
him
, then' – she jabbed a finger at the kid. ‘Go on, look, because he's yourn. I was pregnant when you went off in the army and left me all on my own.'

Unless Eileen's middle name was Betty she was barmy, she had a screw loose, was all he could think. He'd used the best frenchies, and three months had gone by between fucking her and getting on the boat, and she hadn't blabbed a word. If she was Eileen the kid was obviously somebody else's. Even though it couldn't be his he considered taking a quid out of his wallet and pushing it into the child's hand as a gift, but resisted because that would be admitting responsibility. She knew very well it wasn't his, and shouting was her idea of getting a bit of her own back on the world. It was sometimes hard to remember who he had fucked during those heady days when he was seventeen.

He hurried away, and the extra decibels of abuse weren't even muffled by a downburst of rain. The stiff upper lip came in useful, yet he regretted not cursing back even louder. Not to have done so was out of character, or was it? It was always best to give jeeringly better than you got. In the face of injustice you carpet-bombed. If not, you betrayed yourself, and might be sniffed out for who you really were, which might not be altogether a bad thing because then you'd know who you were yourself.

The disturbance brought on hunger, and he sat on a high stool in a milk bar looking at his scarred phizog in the wall mirror while eating a cheese cob. Scarface – no use not liking what he saw. He was lumbered with it. It was totally him, scarred outside and blemished within as well, which he had always known. No hardship living with both as long as he grew to forget them. What's more the face was worth a smile, being accused in no uncertain terms of fathering a bastard. He finished quickly and, back on the road, cut through to the library, hoping to find a seat in the reference section.

He took down a gazetteer with an atlas at the back, but soon got bored thinking of places he would never see. The woman who had assailed him by the lions needed writing about. The incident wouldn't leave him alone, so he unscrewed his pen, opened his notebook to find pages not damp from the rain. She wasn't Eileen, but he made her Eileen so as to see her as more human than the drab with the kid. He wrote until the usher came round at kicking-out time, page after page recording what thoughts she must have had behind the wails of distress. He outlined her appearance, where she lived, and had once worked, and by the time he walked back to his digs she was so real in all dimensions that he no longer needed to feel guilty about her.

Two tall soldiers, buck swaddies bulled up smartly, polished and blancoed and in top fettle, met by the closed door of the Eight Bells. ‘Shame it's too early for a pint o' jollop,' Archie said, adjusting his beret.

‘Time for one or two when we get back. The place'll be jumping by then.' Bert led the way up Wheeler Gate and by Slab Square, his scar drumming with an ache that had been with him all day, the world on his back seeming a weight too hard to bear even with a grin. Why such a coal-heavy burden he didn't know, though it was a fact that the grub at his digs was worse than in the army, that the backyards stank like shit when people boiled their sprouts, and that he'd seen too many stone-age faces walking the town.

Archie fell into step. ‘I didn't get it in last night. You'll never believe this, but Janice's husband – or is she called Janet, I get mixed up sometime – forgot his sandwiches, and the starvo-fuckpig came back for 'em. I just had time to skedaddle out of the front door when we heard the latch go click. Bang went my hearthrug pie. If he'd caught me I'd have slung my boots at him – they were still in my hand. It's left me with a very nasty ache in my fists.'

He positioned himself in a doorway across the street as arranged, while Herbert, back in the mood of a Thurgarton-Strang, and mind emptied but for the prospect of a justified set-to, went quietly up to his place at the top of the stairs. He was concealed, but able to observe Isaac's door through the dusty wooden slats of the banister. He sat on the top step, head almost touching the skylight, though he would make no sound getting to his feet when the time came. He felt as if hidden by a fold in the ground, two people in one body, the mutual antagonism producing a high tension of electricity, so much enclosed force that he was able to wait patiently, calmly, and without regard to time.

A bird hit the grimy glass and went like a falling aeroplane across the street to make an emergency landing on the opposite ledge. He smiled when the two men began to climb the stairs, their laughter sufficient to cover the sound of his standing up.

The tall thin man in front wore a raglan overcoat, open to show a three-piece suit. A close-eyed expression of anxiety could look menacing to anyone he wanted to frighten. I'll call him Dandyman, Herbert decided. ‘It's time we chucked a few of his things out o' the winder.'

They didn't care who heard. ‘I'm game. One bash and the door's in. The gaffer wain't pay us if we don't do it this time.' Herbert dubbed him as Beer-barrel, middle height and stocky, looking feckless but confident at the job in hand. First across the landing, he sent a solid kick at the door. ‘Come out then, Dad. We know you're in there.'

‘You've no right to come here,' Isaac called through the door. ‘I pay my rent.'

‘No right!' They laughed at that. ‘We'll show you what rights are.'

‘I've got a butcher's knife,' Isaac shouted, in the voice of a much younger man. ‘The first one through that door gets it in the stomach.'

Herbert almost laughed. Isaac was too peaceable even to think of such a weapon, so his bluff would be no good. The others thought so even more.

‘He's bluffin',' Beer-barrel said, loud enough for Isaac to hear behind his door.

‘You just try. I'll cut you to pieces.'

Bert, recalling his purpose on being there, clattered down the stairs and shouted in his roughest voice to Isaac, heightened by as much as could be mustered of a sergeant-major's parade-ground bellow: ‘Yer don't need to do that. I'll tek care on 'em.'

He stood two steps above, outlined against the skylight. He was tempted to laugh, but that would mean ruination of the scheme, so kept a sharp rein on Dandy the hard man, fixing them. The beret folded into the shoulder strap of his battledress might have told them he was out for business, as should the long scar turning more livid at his face. ‘Get back to where you come from, and leave him alone. He's my uncle. We aren't looking for trouble, but if you don't clear off I'll put your arses where yer fuckin' 'eads should be, and yer'll never know what kicked 'em,' a threat heard from one man to another at the factory gate.

‘It's like that then, is it?' Dandyman turned to Beer-barrel. ‘Come on, Charlie.' They turned to go, but it was the oldest ruse in the world. Any actor could spot that retreat wasn't in their faces. Charlie Beer-barrel turned, and came on like a cannonball in a hurry. Bert's shining boot caught him full smack at the shoulder, while his fist at the face of Dandyman was dodged. Then Bert had something to avoid but didn't.

Dandyman came forward, and lightning was only just good enough. There were no rules as in boxing at school. This was behind-the-garden-shed stuff. Fighting dirty, filling the gap between Herbert and Bert, he used his soul's venom to smash father, mother, schoolmasters, shitbag officers and gaffers, even the old clergyman who had given him money.

Dandyman was no fool, and Herbert felt a blow, staggered, then Dandyman was pulled from behind by gleeful Archie and belly thumped, doubled up and breathless, to the landing below.

‘We know who yer are now.' Bert drove Beer-barrel with a few aimed punches at the chest to join Dandyman. ‘Cum 'ere again, and yer number's up. We know where you live, and what pubs yer get pissed in.'

‘I ain't had enough yet.' Archie stroked one fist with another, but they gave no reason for him to have more, and his face looked even uglier, a self-defeating expression he could do nothing about. All in all it was still only a scrap rather than a real fight. ‘I'd know 'em anywhere, though. Two ragbags from Sneinton.'

Isaac, sensing the fracas was finished, opened his door and came on to the stairs holding a large black-handled two-foot butcher's knife. ‘I appreciate what you've done, but they would have got this if they'd come in and I'd been on my own. Nobody persecutes me and gets away with it.'

Archie laughed. ‘Nar, Dad, yer can put that away. It's only fists they appreciate. Next time they'll gerra real pastin'!'

‘Now you know the score,' Bert told them. ‘So fuck off, and pick on somebody else.'