The Broken Chariot (35 page)

He pushed his card down and bent it – Gedling, Bert – not sorry to walk away from a part of his life he could now afford to let go of. Men began running for the exits to be first at the bike sheds, and some who had cars were already revving up along the street. Archie waved, and offered to drop him off at his digs.

‘It's all right. I feel like walking. See yer in the Eight Bells though later on.'

Archie wound down the window. ‘I'll be there.'

The flowered dress, as she stepped from the ambulance that had brought her from the hospital, draped the stones in weight that had been taken away by her illness. ‘There's nothing more they can do for her,' Frank wept in Herbert's room, handing him the clean towel brought up as an excuse. ‘If God would take me instead of her I'd be the happiest man in the world.'

‘It's never like that, though, is it?' was all Herbert could say.

‘I've never believed till now, but you've got to have Somebody you can pray to in a case like this.' He straightened Herbert's pillow, as if caring for him also might bring a miraculous recovery for Mrs Denman. ‘Tell her you'll come back and see her, though, won't you, Bert? You see, she still thinks she's going to get better.'

Another week and he would be gone. He couldn't wait, though wanted to see as much of her as possible. ‘I hope so, too. But we'd better go down. I don't think she ought to be left alone for long.'

‘I shall miss yer, Bert.' The snuffle in her voice embarrassed him into feeling pity, contemptuous of himself at not being able to help her. One of the last people he cared to see waste away and die, she would turn into a memory like all the others he would say goodbye to, and while she went on living she would turn him into a memory as well, which he hoped for so as to get the weight of the intolerable past off his back. Something would fill the space, but he was too weary of the present to wonder what it might be.

Despite her frailty and pain she stood up to set out his tea. Frank signalled with his eyes that they weren't to stop her. ‘Will you be going home to your folks?'

Some were afraid to go home again because they dreaded the womb of milk and comfort, and would face anything rather than risk annihilation, but the stronger the fundamental tug, the more energy was generated in resisting it. ‘I don't think so.'

‘I'm sure you've got a lovely home to go back to,' she said, ‘if you want to.'

A decent response, in words of Archie's calibre, would be humane, but no lightning bolt of emotion came to melt his rigid control. ‘No, Ma, I'm off to live in London,' was the best he could say.

‘I don't know why you want to leave here at all.'

‘It's only that I think my life's got to change.'

She sighed. ‘It must be marvellous to be young, and hope for summat like that. Are you going to get that book published?'

He hated to see tears in her eyes. ‘If I do you'll be the first person to get a copy.' His tone was such as to stop her asking more, because a proper explanation of his departure would take years to write, a job to be set aside for some later date, and from a different person. ‘I'll be back as often as I can to see you.' He wasn't sure how he could. ‘You can rely on that.'

The factory had taught him to waste nothing, a place wherein energy was sweat which you couldn't afford to lose, where you needed to conserve if your backbone wasn't sooner or later to melt. Economy of effort had been the order of all days, and time meant money in your pocket to pay for booze, or to treat a woman, and to live as well as you could.

He had learned a lot, the long way and hard, much that was impossible to quantify, though with little awareness of the struggle because he had been young. To slough off the invisible skin of overalls would need long exposure to different qualities of air. Certainly it would take time for his body and the roots of his hair to discard more than a decade of imbibing disinfectant and the atmosphere of iron and steel. From having been a workman for so long he felt a
frisson
of excitement at the prospect of change.

Nineteen

Not quick enough to count the girders, he worried at losing his speed of perception, a bad sign when heading for London. Thirty years old was over the hump, the highway to decrepitude – if you didn't watch it. A green and sluggish Trent slurried the past away, not forgetting to take his guilt at deserting Mrs Denman, though he supposed such a feeling to be on the plus side, having admitted it, and left a suitcase to signal he'd be going back. Abandoned as well were oil-soaked overalls, dulled boots, cap and knapsack, for slinging in the dustbin, or handing to any ragman who would take them.

‘I understand how you feel,' Isaac had said. ‘Fate likes to work its little coincidences. Doesn't it just? Anyway, she might live longer than you think, or longer than either of us, for that matter.'

‘All the same, I'm a real shit.' Herbert stacked the books he had borrowed on the table. ‘She's been absolutely first rate, right from the beginning. You could say she's made me halfway human.'

A doubting smile formed on Isaac's thin lips. ‘Send her a copy of the book.'

‘Oh, I shall do that. There'll be one for you, as well, someone else I don't like leaving.'

The sentiment was waved aside. ‘You mustn't worry about that. I'll live forever. Or until God says so, which has to be the same. Just come back and say hello when you can spare a moment from the fleshpots of London. There's no place like it in the world. I loved it in my youth. What happy days!'

A first-class seat had never before been indulged in, but his status as a possibly successful writer while standing in the queue brought out the demand – from what part of himself he preferred not to know – for which he got a ‘sir' with his change. Two suitcases snug on the rack were as heavy as if packed with stones, one more piece of luggage than he had gone with, yet they were mostly books and papers, and hardly equal to the sum-tonnage of experience gained.

Despite strong arms the pull was hard, lugging them into the streets of St Pancras. He crossed at a light on red, and a gravel lorry hogging by splashed his turn-ups. The anonymity of London to bask in buoyed him on to a spring-heeled track, but when rain drummed on his mackintosh he went into the first bed-and-breakfast place and paid fifteen bob for a night in advance. The man spoke Greek to his wife as to which room was empty, and Herbert supposed they were from Cyprus but, because of the present troubles, thought he'd better not tell them of his time there with the army. A subtle smell of olives and resinated wine followed upstairs when the man showed him into a room with immaculate sheets. The curtains wouldn't keep out much light. Or dull the noise: traffic was continuous. He left his cases and went to find somewhere for lunch.

Three days at the hotel would rush him as much as a week's board in Nottingham. Real life had jumped him at last, economy with money helping him to become more of a man of the world. In the coffee bar he smoked a cigarette while culling the
Evening Standard
for advertisements of furnished rooms. A quick move was necessary, even if only to escape the squeals and moans of the middle-aged couple next door, who jumped around at night to make the best of their clandestine tryst. At breakfast the man, obviously from the North, called to Herbert: ‘Do you make model aeroplanes, chum?'

Herbert smiled at such a strange idea. He didn't.

‘What a shame!' The man, only trying to be friendly, went back to his plate of kippers. ‘Just wondered if you might.' His wife (or whatever) a fragile woman, sat with one big blush on her face, avoiding all eyes.

Isaac had mentioned an area of cheap rooms south of the Elephant and Castle. He spread the town plan, pencilled streets on which vacancies were indicated, and found a box on the main road to make phone calls. London air is different, he had been told. Wind never came from where you expected because of so many buildings. Multiple winds, some more subtle than others, brought grit rather than homely smoke, making him feel scruffy instead of plain worn out by work. He came up from the underground and back into the air, a coating on the skin that would wash off at night and leave no trace in the morning.

Mr Glenny the landlord sat outside the address in a Rolls Royce, and came on to the pavement to shake hands. He wore a boiler suit and was hard to place, though Herbert didn't think such a rig was meant for labouring. His tie and pin were precisely fixed, and gold cufflinks shone from the sleeves of a laundered purple shirt with a white collar. Maybe it was the closest he could get to a de luxe prison garb, which he'd one time been used to. On the other hand a squashed snout suggested experience at prize fighting, while his accent seemed local enough. ‘What's your line of work?'

Herbert felt he could be as direct as to tell only half a lie. ‘Publisher's office.'

Glenny didn't believe him, but because he distrusted everyone it made little difference. ‘Want it long?'

‘As long as I stay.'

‘Have a look, then. You might not like it.'

‘Who else lives here?'

‘Riffraff. But they pay me.' He pushed the door open against a wedge of letters. ‘They're all right, though. As I said, you might not want it.'

Meaning it might not be good enough for him. It was. Preference had nothing to do with the matter. Any simple billet that stopped rain splashing on to his head would do, and no fortnight's rent passed more willingly from his hands. The room was larger than Mrs Denman's, two windows instead of one looking on to the street. The ghastly shit-coloured wallpaper could be ignored. Compared to Isaac's cramped accommodation it was a clover field, furnished with a hot plate and small sink, lavatory and bathroom down a few stairs, all for fifty bob a week. A stink of beer and sweat lingered like poison gas from the last labouring occupant, but by keeping both windows open the place soon freshened into the faintest mixture of train smoke, car fumes, and skirting-board dust.

When the hunger clock struck he burnt offerings of sausages, in a pan bought from a junk market for sixpence. An orange, or a banana sandwich, satisfied for dessert. There was ample cash for food, and though the shopfronts of London were lavish with temptations, especially to someone living alone, he didn't eat more than was needed, or snack between meals. Walking everywhere kept him thin.

An hour passed, blank, musing, contented, pleasurable to be on his own, footsteps along the street not even causing him to wonder where they were heading, nor care, since they could have no connection with him. Laughing to break the spell, he cleared the table except for the red enamelled mug of scalding tea, whose handle was bound with post office string, otherwise it was too hot to lift with softening fingers.

Two hundred pounds in his account was enough for idling away without anxiety. When down to his last fifty he would scout for work, as if the novel was already dead and buried. A month was to elapse before copies could be in the shops, and he refused to rely on earning more. The ever wise Isaac had told him there were always jobs going in London, but Herbert decided that if nothing interested him he would go back in the army and do some work or other. Standing at the window, mug in hand, fag in the other, he optimistically felt that the more uncertain the future the more promising it would be. In no way would he take on work that dirtied his hands.

Hungerford footbridge was his favourite way into the West End. Clouds lifted from the wide expanse of water, a long way up the sky above the City and St Paul's. Excursion boats of late summer tracked in and out from Charing Cross pier. Responsible for no one but himself, he felt as rich as if all he could see belonged to him, as if he had rented it out and was waiting for the leases to fall due. If he stood on the balustrade and opened his arms to fly he wouldn't have to fight against the crowds to get from point to point, though among the mob he felt both his personalities merging into one. More people looked at him than they ever had in the runnels of Nottingham, as if by some magic he had become unique enough to be noticed.

In a fortnight he would have to pass himself off as the unregenerate Bert Gedling, so had better get even more firmly back into the old pit-prop guise or it would be a case of the impostor of the age being out on his arse. Meanwhile he could give in to the luxury of being Herbert Thurgarton-Strang, the only way to tolerate anonymity in a conurbation of eight million.

Dusk was the time of doubt and loneliness. Gedling told him not to be mardy, while Thurgarton-Strang scorned to be influenced by such failings. He wrapped up complimentary copies of
Royal Ordnance
to Isaac and Mrs Denman, as well as one to Archie (not forgetting another to his parents) as careful with each bundle as if they were packets of sugar in the days of rationing.

The Jaffa-orange of the landlord's bulb gave little light, so he changed the wattage for a hundred, which spread a satisfactory whiteness over the table and outlined every inked word of his letters. Glenny called in to collect the rent at half past nine on Thursday evening, as if he had a girlfriend in the neighbourhood, or was trying to dodge the income tax man. ‘Settling in, Mr Gedling?'

‘Yes. Suits me fine here.' Glenny sat in the best chair of the two, so there was no option but to ask: ‘Would you like coffee?' To Herbert's surprise he said yes, as if raking in rents was his only social activity. He dashed some Nescafe into a glass. ‘Do you have many properties to call at?'

Glenny seemed to like the question. ‘Half a dozen round here. It keeps me going. What would I do otherwise? I started my life as a porter in the markets.'

‘Milk and sugar?'

He did.

‘You're a bit of a dark horse, aren't you?'

Herbert couldn't fault the man's direct style. ‘I worked in a factory up North for ten years.'