New and Collected Stories (76 page)

She'd tricked him squarely, by hinting that some disease like worms was gnawing at his insides.

‘I'm not mental, if that's what you mean.' Since he didn't know from her voice whether she was friendly or not, he looked at her more closely, smiling that she had to scoff at his nerves before his eyes became interested in her.

The dog came back from its crisp. ‘Gerrunder!' he told it harshly, to prove that his nerves were as strong as the next person's.

Her homely laugh let him know that such a thing as strong nerves might certainly be possible with him, after all. She had a short drink of gin or vodka in front of her, and a large flat white handbag. There was also an ashtray on the table at which she flicked ash from her cigarette, even when there seemed to be none on its feeble glow, as if trying to throw the large ring on her finger into that place as well. Her opened brown fur coat showed a violet blouse underneath. He'd always found it hard to tell a woman's age, but in this case thought that, with such short greying hair fluffed up over her head, she must be about fifty.

‘Let him know who's boss,' she said.

He felt the golf balls in his overcoat pocket. ‘I expect he wants his supper. I'll be getting him home soon.'

Her hard jaw was less noticeable when she spoke. ‘Don't let him run your life.'

‘He don't do that. But he's fussy.'

He observed that she had mischief in her eyes as well as in her words. ‘
I'll
say it is. Are you a local man?'

‘Have been all my life,' he told her.

She stood up. ‘I'll have another gin before I go. Keeps me warm when I get to bed.'

He watched her stop at the one-armed bandit, stare at the fruit signs as if to read her fortune there, then put a couple of shillings through the mill. Losing, she jerked her head, and ordered the drinks, then said something to the men at the bar that made them laugh.

‘You needn't a done that,' Albert said, when she set a pint of best bitter down for him. ‘I never have more than half a jar.'

He needed it, by the look of him, this funny-seeming bloke whom she couldn't quite fathom – which was rare for her when it came to men. She was intrigued by the reason for him being set apart from the rest of them in the pub. It was obvious a mile off that he lived alone, but he tried to keep himself smart, all the same, and that was rare.

She pushed the jar an inch closer. ‘It'll do you good. Didn't you ever get away in the army?'

‘No.'

‘Most men did.'

The dog nudged his leg, but he ignored it. Piss on the floor if you've got to. He'd go home when he was ready. ‘I was a collier, and missed all that.'

She drank her gin in one quick flush. ‘No use nursing it. I only have a couple, though. I kept a boarding house in Yarmouth for twenty years. Now I'm back in Nottingham. I sometimes wonder why I came back.'

‘You must like it,' he suggested.

‘I do. And I don't.' She saw the dog nudge him this time. ‘Has it got worms, or something?'

‘Not on the hasty-pudding he gets from me. He's a bit nervous, though. I expect that's why he gets on my nerves.'

He hadn't touched his pint.

‘Are you going to have that?'

‘I can't sup all of it.'

She thought he was only joking. ‘I'll bet you did at one time.'

When his face came alive it took ten years off his age, she noticed.

He laughed. ‘I did, an' all!'

‘I'll drink it, if you don't.'

‘You're welcome.' He smiled at the way she was bossing him, and picked up the jar of ale to drink.

Sometimes, when it was too wet and dreary to go to the golf course he'd sit for hours in the dark, the dog by his side to be conveniently cursed for grating his nerves whenever it scratched or shifted. At such times he might not know whether to go across the yard for a piss or get up and make a cup of tea. But occasionally he'd put the light on for a moment and take twenty pence from under the tea-caddy on the scullery shelf, and go to the pub for a drink before closing time.

If he'd cashed his Social Security cheque that day and he saw Alice there, he'd offer to get her a drink. Once, when she accepted, she said to him afterwards: ‘Why don't we live together?'

He didn't answer, not knowing whether he was more surprised at being asked by her, or at the idea of it at all. But he walked her home that night. In the autumn when she went back to his place she said: ‘You've got to live in my house. It's bigger than yours.' You couldn't expect her to sound much different after donkey's years landladying in Yarmouth.

‘My mother died here.' He poured her another cup of tea. ‘I've lived all my life at 28 Hinks Street!'

‘All the more reason to get shut on it.'

That was as maybe. He loved the house, and the thought of having to leave it was real pain. He'd be even less of a man without the house. Yet he felt an urge to get out of it, all the same.

‘So if you want to come,' she said, not taking sugar because it spoiled the taste of her cigarette, ‘you can. I mean what I say. I'm not flighty Fanny Fernackerpan!'

He looked doubtful, and asked himself exactly who the hell she might be. ‘I didn't say you was.'

She wondered when he was going to put the light on, whether or no he was saving on the electricity. He hadn't got a telly, and the old wireless on the sideboard had a hole in its face. A dead valve had dust on it. Dust on all of us. She'd picked a winner all right, but didn't she always? The place looked clean enough, except it stank of the dog a bit. ‘Not me, I'm not.'

‘There's not only me, though,' he said. ‘There's two of us.'

She took another Craven ‘A' from her handbag, and dropped the match in her saucer, since it seemed he didn't use ashtrays. ‘You mean your dog?'

He nodded.

Smoke went towards the mantelshelf. ‘There's two of
us,
as well.'

Here was a surprise. If she'd got a dog they'd have to call it off. He was almost glad to hear it. Or perhaps it was a cat. ‘Who's that, then?'

‘My son, Raymond. He's twenty-two, and not carat-gold, either. He's a rough diamond, you might say, but a good lad – at heart.'

She saw she'd frightened him, but it was better now than later. ‘He's the apple of my eye,' she went on, ‘but not so much that
you
can't come in and make a go of it with me. With your dog as well, if you like.'

If I like! What sort of language was that? He was glad he'd asked her to come to his house after the pub, otherwise he wouldn't know where to put his face, the way she was talking. ‘The dog's only a bit o' summat I picked off the street, but I wouldn't part with him. He's been company, I suppose.'

‘Bring him. There's room. But I've always wanted a man about the house, and I've never had one.' Not for long enough, anyway. She told him she might not be much to look at (though he hadn't properly considered that, yet) but that she
had
been at one time, when she'd worked as a typist at the stocking factory. It hadn't done her much good because the gaffer had got her pregnant. O yes, she'd known he was married, and that he was only playing about, and why not? It was good to get a bit of fun out of life, and was nice while it lasted.

He'd been generous, in the circumstances. A lot of men would have slived off, but not him. He'd paid for everything and bought her a house at Yarmouth (where he'd taken her the first weekend they'd slept together: she didn't hide what she meant) so that she could run it as a boarding house and support herself. The money for Raymond came separate, monthly till he was sixteen. She saved and scraped and invested for twenty years, and had a tidy bit put by, though she'd got a job again now, because she didn't have enough to be a lady of leisure, and in any case everybody should earn their keep, so worked as a receptionist at a motoring school. I like having a job, I mean, I wouldn't be very interesting without a job, would I? Raymond works at the Argus Factory on a centre lathe – not a capstan lathe, because anybody can work one of them after an hour – but a proper big centre lathe. She'd seen it when she went in one day to tell the foreman he'd be off for a while with bronchitis – and to collect his wages. He was a clever lad at mechanics and engineering, even if he had left school at sixteen. He made fag lighters and candle-sticks and doorknobs on the QT.

He could see that she liked to talk, to say what she wanted out of life, and to tell how she'd got where she was – wherever
that
was. But he liked her, so it must have been somewhere. When she talked she seemed to be in some other world, but he knew she wouldn't be feeling so free and enjoying it so much if he hadn't been sitting in front to take most of it in. She'd had a busy life, but wanted somebody to listen to her, and to look as if what she was saying meant something to them both. He could do that right enough, because hadn't he been listening to himself all his life? Be a change hearing somebody else, instead of his own old record.

‘There's a garden for your dog, as well, at my place. He won't get run over there. And a bathroom in the house, so you won't have to cross the yard when you want to piddle, like you do here.'

He'd guessed as much, looking at it from the outside when he'd walked her home but hadn't gone in. It was a bay-windowed house at Hucknall with a gate and some palings along the front.

‘It's all settled then, duck?'

‘I'll say yes.' It felt like jumping down a well you couldn't see the bottom of. He couldn't understand why he felt so glad at doing it.

She reached across to him. He had such rough strong hands for a man who took all night to make up his mind. Still, as long as there was somebody else to make it up for him there'd be no harm done.

‘Every old sock finds an old shoe!' she laughed.

‘A damned fine way of putting it!'

‘It's what a friend at work said when I told her about us.'

He grunted.

‘Cheer up! She was only joking. As far as I'm concerned we're as young as the next lot, and we're as old as we feel. I always feel about twenty, if you want to know the truth. I often think I've not started to live yet.'

He smiled. ‘I feel that, as well. Funny, in't it?'

She liked how easy it was to cheer him up, which was something else you couldn't say for every chap.

He polished his black boots by first spreading a dab of Kiwi with finger and rag: front, back, sides and laces; then by plying the stiff-bristled brush till his arms ached, which gave them a dullish black-lead look. He put them on for a final shine, lifting each foot in turn to the chair for a five-minute energetic duffing so that he could see his face in them. You couldn't change a phase of your life without giving your boots an all-round clean; and in any case, his face looked more interesting to him reflected in the leather rather than staring back from the mirror over the fireplace.

A large van arrived at half past eight from the best removal firm in town. She knew how to do things, he'd say that for her. Your breakfast's ready, she would call, but he might not want to get up, and then where would they be? Dig the garden, she'd say, and he'd have no energy. What about getting a job? she'd ask. Me and Raymond's got one, and you're no different to be without. I'm having a bit of a rest, he'd say. I worked thirty years at the pit face before I knocked off. Let others have a turn. I've done my share – till I'm good and ready to get set on again. She was the sort who could buy him a new tie and expect him to wear it whether he liked it or not. Still, he wouldn't be pleased if he took her a bunch of flowers and she complained about the colour. You didn't have to wear flowers, though.

He stood on the doorstep and watched the van come up the street. There was no doubt that it was for him. With thinning hair well parted, and bowler hat held on his forearm, he hoped it would go by, but realized that such a thing at this moment was impossible. He didn't want it to, either, for after a night of thick dreams that he couldn't remember he'd been up since six, packing a suitcase and cardboard boxes with things he didn't want the removal men to break or rip. He'd been as active as a bluebottle that spins crazily to try and stop itself dying after the summer's gone.

When you've moved in with me we'll have a honeymoon, she'd joked. Our room's ready for us, though we'll have to be a bit discreet as far as our Raymond's concerned. They would, as well. He'd only kissed her in fun the other night, but it had knocked Raymond all of a heap for the rest of his short stay there. He'd seen that she was a well-made woman, and that she'd be a treat to sleep with. He hadn't been with anyone since before his mother died, but he felt in need of a change now. I'll have to start living again, he told himself, and the thought made him feel good.

The dog's whole body and all paws touched the slab of the pavement as if for greater security on this weird and insecure morning. ‘Now don't
you
start getting on my bleddy nerves,' he said as the van pulled up and the alerted animal ran into the house, then altered its mind and came out again. ‘That's the last thing I want.'

He wondered if it would rain. Trust it to rain on a day like this. It didn't look like rain, though wasn't it supposed to be a good sign if it did? What was he doing, going off to live in a woman's house at his age? He didn't know her from Adam, though he'd known people get together in less than the three months they'd known each other. Yet he had never wanted to do anything so much in his life before as what he was doing now, and couldn't stop himself even if he wanted to. It was as if he had woken up from a dream of painful storms, into a day where, whatever the weather, the sun shone and he could breathe again. He smiled at the clouds, and put his hat on.