New and Collected Stories (77 page)

But if that was so, why had he got a scab on his lip? He'd been running the gamut of a cold a week ago, and had expected it to be all over by now. Maybe the cold had been operating at his innards even a week before that, and had twisted his senses so much that only it and not his real self was responsible for leading him into this predicament. He was disturbed by the possibility of thinking so. Yet because he wasn't put out by the impending split-up and change he'd rather think it than worry that he'd been taken over by something outside his control. You couldn't have everything, and so had to be grateful for the bit of good to be got out of any situation, whether you'd done it all on your own, or whether it was the work of God or the Devil.

‘This is it, George,' the driver called to his mate's ear only a foot away in the cab. ‘I'll pull onto the pavement a bit. Less distance then to carry his bits of rammel.'

He heard that remark, but supposed they'd say it about every house unless it was some posh place up Mapperley or West Bridgford. Maybe the dog caught it as well, for it stood stiffly as the cab door banged and they came towards the house.

‘Get down, you bleddy ha'porth, or you'll get on my nerves!'

The dog, with the true aerials of its ears, detected the trouble and uncertainty of Albert's soul, something which Albert couldn't acknowledge because it was too much hidden from him at this moment, and would stay so till some days had passed and the peril it represented had gone. The dog's whine, as it stood up with all sensitivities bristling, seemed to be in full contact with what might well have troubled Albert if he'd had the same equipment. Albert knew it was there, though, and realized also that the dog had ferreted it out, as usual, which lent some truth to his forceful assertion that it was already beginning to get on his bleddy nerves.

The dog went one way, then spun the other. All nerves and no breeding, Albert thought, watching the two men stow his belongings in the van. It didn't take long. They didn't even pull their jackets off when they came in for the preliminary survey. It was a vast contraption they'd brought to shift him to Hucknall, and had clearly expected more than two chairs, a table, wardrobe and bed. There'd been more when his mother was alive, but he'd sold the surplus little by little to the junk shop for a bob or two at a time. It was as if he'd broken off bits of himself like brittle toffee and got rid of it till there was only the framework of a midget left. That was it. His dream had been about that last night. He remembered being in a market place, standing on a stage before a crowd of people. He had a metal hammer with which he hit at his fingers and hand till the bits flew, and people on the edge of the crowd leapt around to grab them stuffing them into their mouths and clamouring for more. This pleased him so much that he continued to hammer at his toes and arms and legs and – finally – his head.

Bloody fine thing to dream about. All his belongings were stowed aboard, but the terrified dog had slid to the back of the gas stove and wouldn't come out. ‘You get on my
bleddy
nerves, you do,' he called. ‘Come on, come away from there.'

It was dim, and in the glow of a match he saw the shivering flank of the dog pressed against the greasy skirting board. He looked for an old newspaper to lie on, and drag it out, not wanting to get his overcoat grimy. It was damned amazing, the grit that collected once you took your trappings away, not to mention nails coming through the lino that he hadn't noticed before.

‘Come on, mate,' the van driver called, ‘we've got to get cracking. Another job at eleven.'

There wasn't any newspaper, so he lay in his overcoat, and spoke to it gently, ignoring the hard bump of something in his pocket: ‘Come on, my old duck, don't let me down. There's a garden to run in where you're going. Mutton bones as well, if I know owt. They'll be as soft as steak! Be a good lad, and don't get on my nerves at a time like this.'

The men in the van shouted again, but he took no notice, his eyes squinting at the dim shape of the dog at the back of the stove. It looked so settled, so finally fixed, so comfortable that he almost envied it. He wanted to diminish in size, and crawl in to join it, to stay there in that homely place for ever. We'd eat woodlice and blackclocks and the scrapings of stale grease till we got old together and pegged out, or till the knockdown gangs broke up the street and we got buried and killed. Make space for me and let me come in. I won't get on
your
nerves. I'll lay quiet as a mouse, and sleep most of the time.

His hand shot out to grab it, as he'd pulled it many a time through a hedge by the golf course: ‘Come out, you bleddy tike. You get on my nerves!'

A sudden searing rip at his knuckles threw them back against his chest.

‘Leave it, mate,' the man in the doorway laughed. ‘You can come back for it. We ain't got all day.'

Standing up in case the dog leapt at his throat, he banged his head on the gas stove. He belonged in daylight, on two feet, with blood dripping from his hand, and a bruise already blotching his forehead.

‘Smoke the bogger out,' the driver advised. ‘That'll settle its 'ash.'

He'd thought of it, and considered it, but it would smoke
him
out as well. Whatever he did to the dog he did to himself. It seemed to be a problem no one could solve, him least of all.

‘It's obstinate, in't it?' the younger one observed.

‘Go on, fume it out,' urged the driver. ‘I'd bleddy kill it if it was mine. I'd bleddy drown it, I would.'

Albert leaned against the opposite wall. ‘It ain't yourn, though. It's got a mind of its own.' It was an effort to speak. I'll wring its neck.

‘Some bleddy mind,' remarked the driver, cupping his hand to light a cigarette, as if he were still in the open air.

‘I can't leave it,' Albert told them.

‘What we'll do, mate,' the driver went on, ‘is get your stuff to Hucknall, and unload it. You can come on later when you've got your dog out. And if I was you, I'd call in at a chemist's and get summat put on that bite while you're about it. Or else you'll get scabies.'

‘Rabies,' his mate said. ‘Not fucking scabies.'

‘Scabies or rabies or fucking babies, I don't care. But he'd better get summat purronit, I know that fucking much!'

Albert's predicament enraged them more than it did him, and certainly more than the dog. The only consolation came at being glad the dog wasn't doing to them what it was to him. He heard the tailgate slam during their argument, the lynchpins slot in, the cab door bang, and all he owned driven away down the street. There wasn't even a chair to sit on, not a stick, nothing on the walls, nothing, only himself and the dog, and that crumbling decrepit gas stove that she'd said could be left behind because it wasn't worth a light.

He sat on the floor against the opposite wall, feeling sleepy and waiting for the dog to emerge. ‘Come on, you daft bogger, show yourself. You get on my nerves, behaving like this.' But there was no hurry. It could stay till it got dark for all he cared. He'd sat out worse things with similar patience. No, it wasn't true that he had, because the ten hours by the body of his mother had passed like half a minute. That was three years ago. He felt as if he had no memory any more. He didn't need one. If everything that had happened seemed as if it had happened only yesterday you didn't need to dwell too much on the past. It didn't do you any good, and in any case it was just as well not to because as you got older, things got worse.

It was daylight, but it felt as if he were sitting in the dark. The dog hadn't stirred. Maybe it was dead, and yet what had it got to die for? He'd fed it and housed it, and now it was playing this dirty trick on him. It didn't want to leave. Well, nobody did, did they?
He
didn't want to leave, and that was a fact, but a time came when you had to. You had to leave or you had to sink into the ground and die. And he didn't want to die. He wanted to live. He knew that, now. He wanted to live with this nice woman who had taken a fancy to him. He felt young again because he wanted to leave. If he'd known earlier that wanting to change your life made you feel young he'd have wanted to leave long before now. Anybody with any sense would, but he hadn't been able to. The time hadn't come, but now it had, the chance to get out of the tunnel he'd been lost in since birth.

But the dog was having none of it. After all he'd done for it – to turn on him like this! Would you credit it? Would you just! You had to be careful what you took in off the street.

‘Come on out, you daft bogger!' When it did he'd be half-minded to kick its arse for biting him like that. He wrapped his clean handkerchief around the throbbing wound, spoiling the white linen with the blood. She'd asked if it was faithful when they'd first met in the pub: ‘It'll be obedient all right, as long as it's faithful,' she had said. Like hell it was. If you don't come from under that stove I'll turn the gas on. Then we'll see who's boss.

No, I won't, so don't worry, my owd duck. He lay down again near the stove, and extended his leg underneath to try and push it sideways. He felt its ribs against the sole. What a damned fine thing! It whined, and then growled. He drew his boot away, not wanting the trousers of his suit ripped. He sat again by the opposite wall, as if to get a better view of his downfall. The world was coming to an end. It's
my
head I'll put in the gas oven, not the dog's. Be a way to get free of everything.

The idea of shutting all doors and windows, and slowly turning on each brass tap, and lying down never to wake up, enraged him with its meaningless finality. If he died who would regret that he had disappeared? Especially, if, as was likely, he and the dog went together. His heart bumped with anger, as if he'd just run half a mile. He wanted to stand up and take the house apart brick by brick and beam by rotten beam, to smash his fist at doors and floors and windows, and fireplaces in which the soot stank now that the furniture had gone.

‘I'll kill you!' He leapt to his feet: ‘I'll kill yer! I'll spiflicate yer!' – looking for some loose object to hurl at the obstinate dog because it was set on spoiling his plans, rending his desires to shreds. He saw himself here all day, and all night, and all next week, unable to lock the door and leave the dog to starve to death as it deserved.

His hat was placed carefully on the least gritty part of the floor, and he drew his hand back from it on realizing that if he put it on he would walk out and leave the dog to die. It's either him or me, he thought, baffled as to why life should be that way. But it was, and he had really pulled back the hand to wipe his wet face, his tears in tune with the insoluble problem.

He leapt to his feet, full of wild energy, not knowing whether he would smash his toffee head to pieces at the stationary hammer of the stove or flee into the daylight. He spun, almost dancing with rage. Feeling deep into his pocket, he took out something that he hadn't known was there because it had slipped through a hole into the lining. He dropped onto his haunches and hurled it at the dog under the stove with all his strength: ‘I'll kill you, you bleeder!'

It missed, and must have hit the skirting board about the dog's head. It ricocheted, shooting back at an angle to the wall near the door. He couldn't believe it, but the dog leapt for it with tremendous force, propelled like a torpedo after the golf ball that he'd unthinkingly slung at it.

Albert, his senses shattered, stood aside for a good view, to find out what was really going on on this mad day. The dog's four paws skidded on the lino as the ball clattered away from the wall and made a line under its belly. Turning nimbly, it chased it across the room in another direction, trying to corner it as if it were a live thing. Its feet again sent the ball rattling out of range.

There'd be no more visits to the golf course tatting for stray balls. The dog didn't know it, but he did, that he'd as like as not be saying goodbye to his tears and getting a job somewhere. After his few dead years without one, he'd be all the better for the continual pull at his legs and muscles. Maybe the dog knew even more than he did, and if it did, there was nothing either of them could do about it.

The dog got the ball gently in its teeth, realizing from long experience that it must leave no marks there if the object was to make Albert appreciate its efforts. It came back to him, nudging his legs to show what it had got.

His boot itched to take a running kick at the lousy pest. ‘That's the last time you get on my bleddy nerves, and that's straight.'

It was, he thought, the last time I get on my own. It wasn't a case any more of a man and his dog, but of a man and the woman he was going to. He bent down to take the gift of the ball from its mouth, but then stopped as if the shaft of cunning had at last gone into him. No, don't get it out, he told himself. You don't know what antics it'll spring on you if you do. Without the familiar golf ball in its trap the bleddy thing will scoot back to its hide-away. Maybe he'd learned a thing or two. He'd certainly need to be sharper in the situation he was going into than he'd been for the last few years.

He straightened up, and walked to the door. ‘Let's get after that van. It's got all our stuff on board.' He raised his voice to its usual pitch: ‘Come on, make your bleddy heels crack, or we'll never get anything done.'

With the golf ball still in its mouth there was no telling where it would follow him. To the ends of the earth, he didn't wonder, though the earth had suddenly got small enough for him not to be afraid of it any more, and to follow himself there as well.

The Meeting

She came through from the lounge, passing between two tables in the bar, and asked the waiter to get her a drink.

He noted everything about her: dark hair, pale face, red sweater, big bosom, black slacks and high heels. But there was too much shadow to see more than the barest details of her face.