The Broken Chariot (39 page)

Why and when she had decided to be intimate with him he couldn't say, but if it didn't happen now it never would, so he was more than ready.

She felt unsteady, after his topping up of her glass in the restaurant, and fumbled at her skirt, though it soon dropped. She nudged her shoes off.

He noted that her way of getting her underwear off was balletic, not only as if she had done it more than a few times before (he may be misjudging her, and yet who hadn't when you thought about it?) but that she believed, as a smart and experienced Home Counties girl would, in the no-nonsense utility of effort to get sooner to the point where pleasure could begin.

On the other hand you could say there was something puritanical in undressing so quickly, for he preferred to take his time, ploughing through fancy underwear, silk, cotton, or nylon, it didn't matter which, as long as, phase by phase, he reached what was inside and found it ready.

He kissed the closed lids of her eyes, and her delicious lips on which the taste of fruit and wine and coffee lingered, as if he wanted no more of her than that, stifling the crude language of Bert so as to spoil nothing and please both. The only way he could give his lust a patina of love and affection, and bring it to the level of romance which he assumed all women wanted – at least the women he had so far had – was to imagine her as a version of someone else. He worked his way backwards and forwards through every intimacy with other women, savouring the lechery, till he returned to the here and now of Deborah, the freshest of them all, whose love he was intent on winning till it matched his own.

The line of her naked back when she turned to pull down the bedclothes made him fully stiff, as he held her breasts and embraced her gently from behind. Resisting the force of passion that threatened to overwhelm him, he proceeded subtly, even at the risk of her wondering how a man of his sort had acquired such tact.

Her lips voiced the usual request as to whether he had ‘coped'. Nothing in the world would have been better than going in without, but the ultimate raw love of conception was only to happen after marriage. ‘You know I love you, Bert. I can't hold myself back, but we have to take care.'

He stroked her hair and held her closer. ‘I know, darling, and I love you too much not to.'

‘When I can't resist,' she murmured, ‘you'll know what it means, won't you?'

He saw it, at the moment, as a promise he could hardly wait to keep. It was better with her than with all the others put together, certainly better than it could ever have been with Cecilia. But then, the fucking you were doing at the moment was bound to be the best, and he was more than satisfied, after making her come for the first time.

The letter lay on the floor between trousers and vest. Frank said Mrs Denman was ‘about to pass away, and is asking for you, Bert, and wondering how you're getting on. It's a crying shame she's having to go through so much. Ralph isn't any help at all, even though he is her son. He hardly shows his face, as if he's frightened of what's happening. He said he's got a lot of work on, would you believe it? And he's got to look after Mary, he says, because she's got varicose veins. After all his mam's done for him. That's what happens though when you pamper your kids.'

And so on. His unremembered dreams had not been of the sort to set him up for agreeable social intercourse but, even so, it was a matter of a shave, shower, coffee, and putting on a second-best suit so that she would neither think he had come down in the world, nor was making a show because she was about to die.

The drive through Watford was tedious. Maybe it was market day in St Albans. Luton and Bedford went fairly easily, and so did Kettering, but then came the final killpig of threading through Leicester, only useful for stopping to buy the best of flowers. He pulled in once for petrol and coffee, and twice to make notes on his impressions of the route.

Mrs Denman never left his mind, the cause of his tedious slog to the north, an obstacle race turning the hundred and thirty miles into a thousand. There was talk of a motorway opening soon, which would cut a chunk off the four hours – when it came – yet he thought it fitting that the expedition to see Ma should be anything but an easy option.

Nottingham looked livelier and brighter than six months ago, and on a midweek morning as well. Maybe coming in by road at the wheel of his own car, and knowing the place no longer meant hard labour, put him in a mood that overawed the reason for his visit. More traffic ran to and fro over Trent Bridge and, in spite of half a sky of cloud, sunlight found a way on to the tarmac as he passed the school where he'd enlisted, and turned off towards Wilford Road.

Frank opened the door. ‘Thank God you've come. I knew it was you as soon as the car stopped.' His hand was dry and bony. ‘You're a good lad, Bert, is all I can say.' Why was it that those who nursed the dying looked old and as if near death themselves? ‘The doctor's just gone. He gave her enough painkillers to put a regiment down, but she's hanging on, bless her.'

Bert also felt himself ageing as he went up the stairs. ‘Look who we've got here, my love,' Frank called. ‘All the way from London. A real Prodigal!'

‘I just happened to be passing.' So frail, it seemed as if she would sink through the bedclothes, a rag of her former self, soon to melt into the earth. But a hand came towards him, and he took it, turning back into the old Bert without effort. ‘Hey up, Ma, what's all this, then?'

Her eyes opened. ‘Hello, Bert.'

Tears were floating in his head, unable to find a way out, which was how it should be. As long as the stalactites were dripping somewhere inside. ‘Thought I'd call and say hello. I'm on my way through.'

She smiled. ‘Going to the moon, are yer?'

‘And back,' he said.

‘When I lit the fire last week …'

‘I tried to stop her,' Frank said, ‘the silly sausage!'

‘Well,' she said, ‘there was a bit o' burnt paper fluttering against the bars, like a moth it was, a black moth.' Her words came out one by one, as if torn by the teeth from a telegram. ‘You know what that meant, Bert?'

‘No,' he said.

‘It meant a stranger was on his way to see me. And here you are. I thought it might be you.'

‘That's right, Ma, and it was.' She was mistaken. A more important visitor was on his way.

Frank must have thought so too. ‘I'll get a jug, and put these flowers in some water.' He hoped she'd noticed them. Her eyes closed, opened again. ‘They're lovely. Thank you, Bert.'

‘That's all right. I was walking past an allotment near Leicester, and went over the fence to nick 'em. I left a few bob on a stone, though, outside the hut door, so's the man could have a pint or two while he wondered what had happened to his blooms.'

She was away again, so he stayed silent, and hoped she would live, but knew she couldn't because the frayed piece of string she was hanging on to was about to give. Her voice came, weak but clear. ‘Frank read me your book. You got it right.'

Wiping his face was the nearest to a waterfall of tears. He was in the house, so couldn't say it was the rain, hadn't been to work, so couldn't claim it was sweat, had Al vision so couldn't laugh that his eyes had gone for a burton. ‘Thanks, Ma.' His impulse of dedicating the book to her was the only good deed he could remember. ‘I'm glad you liked it.'

‘Write me another.'

He kissed her luminous forehead now so narrow, and then the cool damp lips. ‘I am doin'. It'll be done soon. I'll write you lots.'

‘I'll stay alive to read 'em. I'll get better now.'

‘I know you will.'

She slept, crying in her sleep as if to get breath, or maybe down there was where she fought her pain, alone in the dark, sorting out memories and dreams. The usual sound of kids playing came from beyond the window, a little girl squealing every few seconds like a stuck pig. He'd done the right thing in coming to see her, but wanted to leave, go back to Deborah, who might wonder where he had gone. She wouldn't let go of his hand, though the grip grew more and more feeble. ‘You can come down now for a cup o' tea, and summat to eat,' Frank whispered.

He didn't want to sleep in his old room, told Frank he would be staying with somebody in town. He put up at the George Hotel behind the Council House, then walked across Slab Square to call on Isaac. The front door was locked and bolted, windows boarded up. He went into a shop lower down the street to buy cigarettes, and asked about it.

‘It's being redeveloped, duck, as far as I know.'

‘An old man lived there. Do you happen to know anything about him?'

‘Couldn't say. I expect they rehoused him. They don't chuck anybody on the streets, not now they don't.'

Which was a comforting thought. Yates's was crowded, and he positioned himself by the door in case Isaac shuffled in. It wasn't his night, and Herbert was irritated by the noise, so after his second pint he walked up the street to have dinner at the hotel.

The morning weather poured a deluge into the gloom, and he regretted having no workman's cap for his head. He took the two bags of groceries bought for Isaac to Mrs Denman's.

‘You needn't have done this,' Frank said.

‘Just a contribution to the household. How is she?'

Frank's face was wet with tears, a phenomenon in that Herbert hadn't noticed them begin. They were suddenly there. ‘She's fighting, is all I can say. You know, Bert, I know I shouldn't say this, but it'll be a blessing when it's over.'

Herbert thought so, too. A faint untidiness made the house seem dead already. ‘I shan't disturb her, then.'

‘No, that's right. Come back this afternoon. She might be a bit better by then. Forget what I said just now. The only thing that's left of me is hope.' He sat in the armchair, almost fell into it, as if his legs had lost the strength to hold him up. ‘It's funny, though. I told her to see a doctor last year, but she said it was only a cold that wouldn't go. Maybe every complaint that's going to carry you off starts with thinking you've got a cold. I shouldn't have believed her.'

‘There wasn't much you could do,' Bert said.

After the funeral he avoided the main route out of the city by paying the fourpenny toll over Wilford Bridge to Clifton, practising the indirect approach for getting back to London. To his right were the dark trees of the Grove he had walked along with Cecilia, and he smiled at no longer regretting his lost love.

In the few days between death and burial he had called at various council offices, and put on his haughty Thurgarton-Strang voice to get Isaac's address out of a snotty-faced penpusher. The old folks' ground-floor flat was spacious and newly furnished, a living room flanked by kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. ‘There's so little else I want', Isaac smiled, ‘that I'm beginning to think my time's almost up. I've even got good neighbours.'

‘You deserved this years ago.'

‘No, I'm happy enough.'

Only the scattered books made it halfway familiar, and Herbert took a few off the settee so that he could sit down and unload his misery on to someone who had suffered more, and knew how to listen.

Working his way across country to intercept Watling Street, he thought maybe he should have stayed on a couple of days to console Frank. But Frank was strangely calm, icy almost, fully in control. The agony was over for Beryl so it was finished for him too, and he would grieve in his own way, for as long as it took, Herbert supposed, to get back to being only himself, when he'd maybe meet someone and marry again. His era of tears had ended, and Herbert was glad. In the past he'd been scornful of whoever shed them, cruel even – let the dead bury the dead – but the black dog of experience was firmly latched on to his shoulders, and the illumination of being a writer was always before his eyes – or mostly so – though in spite of his new tolerance he was inclined to scoff at such thoughts, unless impelled to pick up his pen and get them into a notebook.

By the aerials of Rugby and Daventry he was on the Roman road, and well on his way to London, beamed towards Deborah. She pulled him south, tarmac rolling under his car, distance lessened at every signpost. Wanting her nakedness to cling to, he cut his speed in case he never got there, despair vanishing now that Mrs Denman was dead and out of pain.

Twenty-Two

Awake, yet not awake, alert in the needle-grey dark but unable to open his eyes, the misty palisades closed in. Beryl haunted him through the deepest oceans of memory, till she had tracked him back to her lair. He must get out of bed on Monday morning, and reach for clean overalls, cram in his kitchen breakfast and, after as sociable a good morning as could be dredged up, bike his way through cold murk to the factory.

Such terror had its consolations when the limits of despair and indignation pulled away, and he felt the purest happiness to know that the factory had no more call on him, and that Deborah was in the kitchen pressing orange juice and brewing coffee.

To disperse the final wisps of nightmare he gloated, no less, on how the new year had brought more money from Humphries, and a thousand pounds advance for film rights which promised another fee on writing the script. There was much to be said for riches that fell so easily into your hands. ‘It's as if I've inherited a coal mine.'

Deborah set the tray down, passed the Sunday papers, and put an arm around him. ‘Darling, they nationalized them years ago. In any case, whatever you get, you've earned.'

He supposed he had, if it counted as back pay at so much a year. Such money didn't tempt him to waste time on the pleasures of London, a night or two each week at Deborah's taking care of that. Otherwise he stayed in his room to finish
The Wrong Side of the Tracks
, not as easy as writing
Royal Ordnance
, which had been put together as if time had no importance. On the other hand he couldn't afford to let
The Wrong Side of the Tracks
take nearly as long, not drawing a regular wage from the factory for his support. Since most of it had been done, or at least thought about before coming to London, he forced the pace through revision after revision till it was finished.