The Tenement (16 page)

“I remember,” he said, “the little boys would scramble for pennies outside the church. The bride would throw them out of the car when she was leaving. Diana wanted to be married in a registry office. ‘Why should we spend money on a church wedding', she said, ‘when we could buy a car with it?' But mother said, ‘What nonsense. Of course you'll have a church wedding. Greed', she said, ‘nothing but greed. You won't feel properly married in a registry office'.”

Linda herself had been married in white. She thought her heart would break with happiness. She was frightened and nervous and was ten minutes late arriving at the church on her father's arm. When she answered the minister her voice was very low, so that people could hardly hear her. But she danced all night at the reception, and then they left to go on their honeymoon. John was handsome, assured, he knew everything. The way he talked to the manager of the hotel! Where had he learnt to do that? She had never been out of her home town in her whole life.

The man wandered over to the window. “You've changed them,” he said. “When I was here you had to pull on a rope. It was very complicated. The window opened out like a door. Mother used to clean them. Sometimes I would clean them too. I remember the spring when we used to clean them. The days were so breezy and everything sparkled.” His pain-filled eyes regarded her from a gaunt face: he was unshaven. He looked as if he hadn't slept for days. Now and again he would put his hand to his breast pocket as if checking that his wallet was there.

“What happened to Diana?” said Linda.

“I don't know, maybe she ran away with someone. She took some of the money that I had in a drawer. She left an IOU but I'll never see the money again. I know that.”

Suddenly Linda felt sick. She rushed into the bathroom, pulled the door behind her and threw up. Bent over, she stared into the lavatory bowl. She clutched the side of the bath and spewed, kneeling on the floor in front of the mock stained-glass window. Finally she staggered to her feet and gazed into the mirror. Her face was very white. Oh God, she thought, I must run out of here, I must go for help. I mustn't lose my baby, whatever happens. She thought, I can leave him in the house, he's like a zombie, he won't do any harm. On the other hand, he might lock herself and John out. He was mad, not violently mad, but queer. His eyes were funny, she had never seen eyes like that before. They were perfectly dead as if they had seen all there was to see and had finally turned away from the world.

She wiped her mouth on the towel. And she leaned against the door for a moment. She had responsibility to her child. It was hers and also John's. She must think what was best. She was frightened; of that there was no doubt. She would make a dash for the door. She opened the bathroom quietly. She ran for the front door and then for some reason looked back. The living room was empty. She walked back into the room. There was no one there. It was perfectly blank. She flinched and then she ran out of the house as if chasing her vision: he must just have gone. He had said he had left his car at the side of the tenement behind a lorry. She passed a big lorry parked below the side window. But there was no car behind it. She asked the lorry driver if he had seen a car driving out.

“No,” he said.

“Did you see a car pull in about half an hour ago?” she said.

“No,” he said, looking at her queerly.

“A friend of mine,” she said. “I was expecting her but she hasn't come.”

She walked back to the flat. The house was empty, quiet. The sofa showed no imprint of anyone's body. The sun shone in through the window. Her heart began to slow down. She sat on the sofa. She tried to think. Of course there was the photograph she had taken. The camera was lying on a chair opposite the sofa. She would take the spool down to the chemist's when she did her shopping.

She and John must leave this place, she didn't like it. They must try and get a council house, a new house, one that hadn't been lived in before.

“You're not like Diana,” the voice had said. Of course she knew that. She looked in the mirror for a long while. Then she made herself a cup of coffee. The cup trembled in her hand. The walls of the house seemed to be moving in and out like plasticine. The coffee, however, helped her. Of course he had been there. He had left when she had gone to the bathroom, it was as simple as that. He didn't look the type who would drive a car: about that he had been fantasizing. And of course he probably wasn't married at all. That too was fantasy. What tall, golden haired woman would marry a man like him? His story was a web of lies, a rigmarole. How could she have been taken in by it. And then again, she would find out if there had been a Grant here in the past. He would have come by bus, or perhaps by train. He would have seen the flat from the top window of a bus.

I must get out of here, she thought. I must go for the messages. I must talk to someone. The typewriter was now tapping. She could hear it quite clearly like a woodpecker. Funny she hadn't heard it before. What a poor life that man had, what a dreadful life. Between his mother and Diana. Suddenly she had a terrible thought. She went into the bathroom. There was a
Daily Record
lying on the side of the bath where John had left it that morning. There was a headline. It said, ‘Diana expecting her second child'. She stared at it for a long time. No, it wasn't false, he had been there. The photograph would show that. And surely, he hadn't made up all that stuff about his mother. And he had said ‘Grant'. She could remember that quite clearly. She took out her straw message bag, shut the door behind her, and set off to the Co-op. ‘Savings on beans', it said in the window. She walked in. There was a young girl with a gun pasting prices on tins. She smiled at her and the girl smiled back. The manager was standing at the far end of the shop watching what was going on.

“Morning, Mrs Mason,” he said.

“Good morning,” she said.

Music was playing gently. She bent down to take two pints of milk. She must also remember the cereal. She pushed the trolley ahead of her like a pram. The baby stirred in her belly. She placed the pints of milk in the trolley and wheeled it forward.

The ashtray, she thought. He smoked a cigarette. I remember that. She left the trolley where it was. She walked briskly out of the shop. Her heels clicked on the pavement as she hurried back to the flat. He had definitely smoked. There was ash on the tray: she could remember seeing it. There must be.

H
UGH
C
AMERON WAS
a big heavy man. In previous years he had been a long-distance lorry driver: now however he was a labourer. He had, in fact, been sacked as a long-distance lorry driver because of his heavy drinking. He still drank heavily, and much more aggressively. His aggression which ate him up couldn't be contained for long. He often thought that if he had had a family this aggression would not be simmering so persistently inside him. There had been times when he had been taunted by his workmates with being impotent till they had learned the viciousness of his temper.

When he was a long-distance lorry driver he had had enough casual sex from students, for example, thumbing lifts, and it was understood that they would pay in the only currency they had. If sex was not freely forthcoming, then he would threaten physical violence. Thus he compensated for his wife's fastidiousness, as he had done when serving in France during the war. He remembered those days with nostalgia; when there was terror, destruction, elation everywhere, and cigarettes could buy whatever one wanted. A good man could survive among those ruins, that wilderness.

He had actually been brought up by a stepfather, his mother having married twice. He hated his stepfather, thought him a scholastic poof. One day he had hit him and knocked him down. Then he had walked out of the house. His stepfather had said he must not communicate with them again. He had actually threatened to burn down the house, but his stepfather said that he would have no hesitation in calling the police. At that time he drank heavily. He thought himself unloved, unwanted. He felt that his stepfather had influenced his mother against him. Twice he was picked up by the police for brawling, once at a football match and once in a pub when he was demanding drink after hours.

He was a fanatical Rangers' supporter, had worn the honourable blue scarf and carried the blue banner. He thought Catholics, Fenians, were the scum of the earth: they should not be allowed to live. At a Rangers-Hibernian match he had tried to jump on the bonnet of a car of a Hibs supporter, banging on the windscreen. The police had picked him up and bundled him into the van, where he had fought ferociously till he had been punched in the stomach and sat on.

“Would you say this gentleman was a Catholic?” one of the policemen said in the posh Edinburgh voice.

“I would say that,” said the other policeman. “Next thing you know he'll be complaining about police brutality.” They stripped him down in the station and threw him into a cell where he sang Rangers' songs.

“Not a nice voice,” said the first policeman, who wore spectacles.

“Not classical,” said the other one sadly.

He was fined fifty pounds. After that he hated policemen. In spite of the fact that he supported the Queen, he didn't like the law, which was a paradox that he didn't investigate.

The second time he was picked up he was demanding drink in a pub after he had lost his job as a long-distance lorry driver. Again he had been stripped and thrown into a cell. He called the policemen fat pigs: he shivered in his cell, but still continued to sing.

He was fifty-nine years old, but still strong physically. When drunk he sang hymns but with words like ‘Hang the Pope on an Orange Rope'. He had always wanted to go to Northern Ireland, but had never been. One day, however, he would go there. He talked a great deal about King William and the Boyne and the Derry boys. He imagined himself as a hero on a white horse.

The aggression simmered and seethed inside him. He knew that he had made a mess of his life. Working as a labourer on the roads was not an achievement for any man. He believed that his wife was to blame for what had happened to him: she was always so pale, so insignificant, and she would never go to the pub with him. Once she had thought of saving up for a boarding house, but he didn't want that. In any case they didn't have the capital unless they borrowed it. Working with his spade on a frosty autumn day he would look around him at the leaves, which were losing their lustre, and feel unaccountably sad. He also thought that he was not quite as strong as he had been, though he did exercises. How long could one last as a labourer? And there was no possibility of any other job. He watched the beautiful cars speeding past and envied their drivers. He wished that he was still driving a long-distance lorry through the night. It had given him a sense of power with its hugeness. He could manoeuvre a very large lorry within a very tiny area.

Friday and Saturday nights, he was usually drunk. When he came home at night he couldn't stand the sight of his wife who looked so vulnerable and frightened. No matter how much and how often he beat her up she wouldn't send for the police. Another thing he liked was tormenting Porter, who reminded him of his stepfather: he had the same cool distant remote look as if he thought you were dirt. He would deliberately stamp on the ceiling with his heavy boots, shift wardrobes and sideboards about.

His wife sat and waited for him to come in drunk. His aggression was an uncontrollable force. It ate into him, devoured him. There was hardly any moment when it would leave him alone. Nor could he explain this aggression to anyone else. It arose from his powerlessness in the world. His force, therefore, was directed against his wife: it was the only power he had. And her very vulnerability, her very pallor, was an invitation for him to hit her. Sometimes he thought that she enjoyed being hit. He savoured the idea that the police could do nothing about his violence unless she charged him. He remembered those nights of late driving, anticipating what would happen later. Such sweet young flesh. Now there was none of that. His wife had complained of his absences from home in those days: and he blamed her for the loss of his job. If she had left him alone he would not have become drunk so often: he hated anyone trying to run his life.

He had married her when they were both twenty-four. This was at the time he had left his stepfather's house: he had met her at a dance. She came from a village about a hundred miles to the north, and had been brought up in a religious home. It was this martyred air about her that annoyed him more than anything else, her long suffering. She was afraid that if she sent for the police people would talk about her, and this in spite of the fact that they were doing so anyway, since she ran out screaming into the road at weekends, and she had black eyes continually, for whose existence she invented the most ingenious reasons. He wanted to laugh at the police, to show them that he wasn't afraid of them, but they left him alone, they wouldn't allow him that satisfaction. No matter how much she feared him, she didn't want to see him in prison.

Sometimes he thought, when he was hitting her, that it was his mother he was hitting. She had married a stepfather whom he hated; and had surrendered to his cold loveless nature. It was he who would say to her, “That boy is a lout, he has no sense of gentleness, tenderness: he is completely selfish, he won't wash any dishes, he comes in at night drunk, he sings his barbaric songs and tells his barbaric jokes.”

By becoming a Rangers' supporter, he had been in fact searching for love, security. Among these people he had felt at home, felt wanted. His blue scarf was a badge of togetherness. He had an aim in life, to drive his team towards victory: it would be a victory of his own by proxy. He sometimes imagined that he was back in the army wearing a uniform. But his stepfather hadn't been interested in football: he had never played games in his life. He imagined him as cowering, bespectacled, in a toilet while the other boys were playing football: a winner of prizes, a poof. There was a complete and total lack of communication between the two of them. His stepfather didn't drink.