England's Lane (42 page)

My inner pain, the flood of it … now, at this moment, it has chosen quite violently to visit me again. I am trying my best not to show it.

“I will, Stan. When I've done all that, that's what I'll do: I shall come straight back to you.”

That night what just gone by—that night, I am not joking, it were just the last bloody straw, far's I'm concerned. I mean blimey—there's a limit, ain't there? Ay? Got to be a limit. Man can only be expected to take just so much and no more. And I reckon I been doing that, when it come to Mill—taking it. Yeh—I've took it square on the chin for just about as long as I can bloody stand it. I weren't happy before—no I weren't. But last night, well—that's just been and gone and done it. I mean it—I bleeding had it, now. What she reckon she up to, Gawd in bloody heaven? Ay? I come home from the pub—whole place in darkness. Funny, I thought—I ain't that late. Mill, fancied she'd be doing her knitting, or something—listening to the wireless, watching the box. Little bit of dusting, maybe—whatever she get up to. But no—she must've got an early night in then, looks like. So I'm tiptoeing about like a bleeding fairy—and I ain't too much cop at that at the best of times: it's my boots when I kicks them off, always makes one hell of a clunking noise on the linoleum, there—and then I thinks to myself … nah, ain't right, this. Something ain't right. She not here—I can feel it. So I'm thinking I hope the boy ain't been took poorly—she maybe had to get him up the hospital a bit sharpish. Looking about
the place for a scrap of paper … maybe she's wrote to me what's going on. But there ain't nothing about, nothing I can see. So I sticks my head into Pauly's room, and there he are, look—dead to the world, all lost in dreamland, little lad. His candlewick wossname's slid off on to the floor, so I sees to all of that.

Then I sits myself down on the settee, lights up a fag, wonders if I can go another bottle of Bass, and I gets to putting my mind to it. Because it ain't never happened before. Well of course it ain't never bloody happened before: you come in of a night time, you expect your missus to bleeding be there, don't you? Ay? Course you do. Not out gallivanting, not this time of the night. And what time were it …? Yeh—gone eleven. Blimey. Don't believe it. And she gone off and left Pauly, that's the bloody amazing part of it. She ain't never done that. Not never once in the whole of his life. Yeh … but things ain't normal. See? Between the two of them, like. Because this morning, after I had my tea and a slice, I goes down the shop like I always does—thought I'd have a fag, little chat with Cyril, before I heaves out all of the gubbins on to the pavement—and then I'm thinking oh bugger me, I only gone and left them on the kitchen table, ain't I? My fags. So I goes back up, and that's when I'm hearing the pair of them talking. Don't pay it no mind, not at first I don't—because I knows it, don't I? Soon as I'm out the way they's both going Phew Thank Gawd—now we can have ourselves a nice little chinwag like we's Sir Lancelot or somebody and Lady Whatsername, once the fucking dragon's out the road. Yeh but it were different, this. They was upset, the two of them. Tell that. And Pauly, he were going to Mill that she don't love him no more. Well me, I were just behind the door there, and it were all I could do not to give out one hell of a big fat laugh when I'm hearing that lot, I'm telling you. Because if Mill don't love Pauly, well then my name's Stirling bloody Moss, that's all I can say. But
see—he weren't really sort of saying what he's meaning, like. Only a lad—he don't got the words. Can't sort of think it out like what a grown-up do. But what he were getting at—well I knows full well what he were getting at, don't I? Because me, I been feeling it and all. Mill … she ain't got her mind on the job no more, is what it is. I mean yeh—she still seeing to all of the doings, I ain't saying that. Always got the tea on the table, house all nice and tidy, making sure I got a clean hanky … but all the time it like she, I don't know … like she sort of sleepwalking, or something. Always somewhere else in her mind, like. Yeh. Well so what am I supposed to do then, ay? What am I supposed to think?

Well I know what I'm thinking. Been trying not to. Been trying to stick two fingers up at it for—blimey, bleeding ages now. First there were that perfume what she got on: weren't lavender, were it? Ay? No—and it weren't no Lily of the Valley neither. Then she got a mauve sort of a brooch thing, what I ain't never seed before. Well: said nothing. Trying not to notice, weren't I? Yeh but I can't no more. Not after all of last night. Writing on the wall. Got to be faced, son: got to be faced. Because yeh—I knows I don't get sort of social with people in the Lane. Keeps myself to myself. Always done that. What's my business ain't no one's else's—and so far as their business go, well: couldn't give a bugger. Other people, though—they ain't like that. So I'm going to be hearing things, ain't I? Bound to. And then the way what they looks at you. Some of them, it ain't just looks what they give you—they don't care what they saying. Like that poxy Mrs. Goodrich, for one. She come in the shop the other day for her Bryant & May long matches what she get for her stove. I says to her how many times in the past: Ever Ready, they doing a nice little igniter, look—battery last a good long time: telling you—saving, in the long run. But nah—she won't have it: Bryant & May long matches is what she's wanting, so I flogs them
to her: no skin off of my wossname. And then she going in that ladi-da bloody voice she got—all bloody hoity-toity, she is—oh you are looking so terribly terribly well I must say, Mr. Stammer. Blah blah blah. And I says to her, come again, missus? Your cheeks, she says—so healthy-looking: must be all that good red meat Mrs. Stammer's always cooking for you. Forever seems to be in the butcher's, doesn't she? She does seem to love her pound of flesh. Sometimes, Mr. Stammer, she honestly does appear to spend more time with Mr. Barton than she does with you …! Yes—and then she laughs, like. Making it so it's all a bloody little joke, ho fucking ho. I could've hit her with a spade: had one, just handy. Yeh, I says to her—I do like my bit of meat. Oh I'm sure, she says to me—something you have in common with your perfectly delightful wife …! And other stuff I heard and all—don't want to get into it. It's only when I found that fag end that I started proper thinking about it. That time she gone and shut my shop, and it weren't nothing to do with having to get a Beechams Powder down her or splashing water on her face or whatever she said it were. She were in my back room with him, maybe getting up to all sorts … and him smoking one of them posh bloody black fags of his, bold as you bloody like—because I got it off of Stan later on: he only get them in for him, that Barton bastard. Well yeh: who else round here is going to shell out twice what it cost for twenty Senior Service just on account of the bleeding fags is black? I ask you. And she shut my shop—and I don't never do that. I never done that. And Cyril there … don't know what he must've thought about it all. Yeh—so she lied to me. Barefaced, it were. Now fair enough—I'd lied to her about the dentist, yeh fair enough. But it's only because I just had to see my Daisy, weren't it? Been ages. And it's different, anyway—I'm a bloke, aren't I? Different for blokes—everybody knows that. Women … they just don't do that sort of thing. Not
proper sort of ladies, they don't. It's disgusting, that's what it is. I can't hardly think of it … my Mill, doing it. I can't hardly think of it. It's disgusting. Oh blimey. All I know is, she never do it with me …

My first idea were I goes round there and I kills him. Leave Mill right out of it—don't say nothing to Mill, because I don't want no upset. Not at home, like. Ain't right for the boy. After that I'm thinking, I'll just go and duff him up, warn him off, sort of style. And then I thought but blimey—he's a fucking giant, that geezer. I'm round his gaff … he got knives, and that. Could get nasty. Yeh and after a bit—and by this time I were well into the Scotch, I don't mind telling you—I were blaming myself. No I were. Because I said it before, ain't I? Look at me. Go on. Just look at me. Yeh? And now look at Mill. You see what I mean? Course you bloody do—everybody do. Can't rightly blame the old mare, can you? It's someone like that toffee-nosed bastard what she should have been with from the off. Stands to reason. Woman like that. Her education. The way what she talk, and all. Well—she talk like him, don't she? Yeh. She talk like him. Still and all though, my Mill … if she thinking of jacking me in, giving me the old elbow sort of style, well then she could do a whole lot better for herself than a bleeding butcher. Because let's not go forgetting it: for all his poncing about, that's all the bugger is—he's only a bleeding butcher.

It hurt me, mind—I ain't saying it don't hurt me, nor nothing. But I maybe deserve it, you know? All that hurt. On account of I's common as muck, and she a lady. Sooner or later, it going to come out. Got to. Like chalk and wossname. And then I thought, well look—can't last forever, can it? Ay? I mean it ain't like it's something in a book or out the cinema: ain't no bloody fairy tale. She'll get fed up of him, maybe. Yeh, she will. And then it'll be all right.
She'll be my Mill again and we can forget all about it. So best for now I says nothing. And like I say—I weren't happy, I weren't happy about it, course I bloody weren't … but that's where we was with it. Yeh but after last night … well, all that's right out the window: it's changed now. Everything—it's all different now. Because when she come in … when at last she come up the stairs, and it weren't much off of midnight—she got a shiner on her like what you ain't going to believe … her stocking is all torn and there's a bit of blood there—and she holding her stomach like it been cut in half. And yeh—when I hear her come in the door, I were well ready to give her all sorts of merry bloody hell. Yeh … but when I seed her like that … I just says to her: you get up to your bed, girl. Getting the doctor round.

“Don't be ridiculous, Jim. You'll do nothing of the sort. Waking him at this hour … I'm perfectly all right. I'll just bathe my eye and … an Elastoplast for the shin, possibly. Right as rain. Is Paul all right? Have you looked in on him?”

“What sort of a bloody man is it, ay? Ay? Does this to a woman …”

“Oh heaven's sake, Jim! He didn't do this to me! Of course he didn't. It was an accident, that's all. I was careless.”

“An accident, oh yeh I see. So what—you walk into a door, did you?”

“No I didn't walk into a door, as it happens. I fell down a few stairs, and then I somehow very stupidly managed to hit my head, my face, on the newel post. It's nothing. I expect it looks far worse than it is.”

“The newel post? You hit your face on the newel post? What's a bloody newel post …?”

“Thing at the end of the banister, Jim. I'll just go and clean myself up a little bit now, if that's quite all right with you. And yes I'm absolutely sure you have questions Jim, many questions, but I should
be truly grateful if possibly you could contain them until morning. I really am most dreadfully tired. Is Paul all right? You didn't answer me. I'll just quickly go in and see him …”

“He fine. I seed him. And why you got hold of yourself like that …? That weren't done by no mule post.”

“Newel, Jim. Indigestion. Just a touch. I'm going now.”

“Baloney, that is. I'm getting the doctor. What he paid for.”

“Oh Lord—how many times! I don't need a doctor. I just took a little tumble, that's all.”

Yes I did. And I would happily kick myself for having done so, although I do seem to be supporting quite sufficient injury as it is. It was stupid of me, hurrying in the dark, but by that time I felt quite simply desperate to be away from him—finally to be gone from this dreadful house and back out into the cold sweet peace of England's Lane. Though before all that—while Stan's most recent and perfectly extraordinary behavior had momentarily thrown me, I freely admit it—still by the time I had carefully negotiated my perilous journey back down the staircase and into the murky hallway, I was reasonably content to attribute it to shock and a temporary confusion. He had, after all, and only hours previously, happened upon the dead and horribly bright-eyed body of his wife: his mind very surely just had to be disturbed. I felt confident that simple common sense would soon be reasserted within his clearly fevered brain.

At what I imagined could probably by now be the foot of the stairs, I sent out exploratory and waggling toes to make certain, and then was feeling my way along the wall before opening the door to what I remembered was the stockroom—then groping about for the switch, and delighted to discover that it worked. And from amid the triangle of still barely ochre illumination that the now ajar door was grudgingly shedding, I bent to the telephone—perched as it
was atop a pair of seemingly pristine directories, A–D and E–K, on the small hall table with its feathery bloom of dust—and then, very purposefully, set about my task.

Now it is the police I have to deal with. They answered straight away—which, on reflection, I suppose I cannot wholly have been expecting, for I found myself stuttering, and really quite badly, when all the time I had determined to be forthright. Eventually I managed to stammer my preference for “police” from the proffered options, while adding on quickly that we might easily be requiring also an ambulance, though definitely no fire engine (and yes—even as I said it, I was shuddering from a flush of embarrassment). The switchboard lady's serene detachment was quite thoroughly admirable, but then I suppose they must be dealing daily, and more especially nightly, with every manner of very terrible events. I then explained as best I could to whomever else I was immediately connected the specific circumstance of this particular death—that here was a suicide, that there existed a note and so on—and then was required to confirm that the person in question was indeed dead, and this I straight away did (and on being further asked how I came to speak with such unswerving certitude, all I could say was, well—no breath, you see: Jane, she's no longer breathing). Anyway, within an alarmingly short time, the house seemed to be positively infested with this rather intimidating bustle of people who had brought with them the whip of cold from outside—and each of whom, I observed with approval, had very sensibly come equipped with large black torches which threw out a strong white beam—though I am quite sure that here was standard nighttime issue, and that they could not possibly have been aware of Stan's exceedingly parsimonious attitude when it comes to the replacement of lightbulbs. There was an older man with a neat white clipped mustache who busied himself with
Jane—though whether doctor or coroner I did not care to ask—and as two, or actually it's three, young constables simply and very self-consciously stood about, a detective of some sort was putting to Stan a series of questions, fortunately of the most basic nature, each of which he fielded with surprising and almost masterful ease, though I did think that he might be appearing to be rather too cavalier (and I can't quite explain that). There were forms and signatures which I helped him to deal with, and then came the information that during the morning at a mutually convenient hour some other people would briefly be calling, and that private arrangements ought meanwhile to be made with a local firm of undertakers. Muttered consolation then was bashfully bestowed upon all bereaved parties, present or absent, and as suddenly as they had arrived, all of them were gone.