The Flyer (8 page)

During the lulls, the younger man, Carter, kept up a continuous account of his day, even though the others seemed largely disinterested. He was a travelling salesman for a firm of ironmongers whose job took him all over the county. He explained to William that since he travelled so much, it was convenient for him to reside at Mrs Hall’s whenever he was in his home-town.

‘I like to stay in ‘omely sort of lodgings when I’m travelling,’ he said with a wink. ‘Though there’s none to compare with Mrs Hall’s ‘ospitality. And bein’ a regular I can count on getting looked after, isn’t that true Mrs Hall?’

‘I daresay it is,’ she agreed.

Carter was drinking wine from a bottle that was brought to the table half full, though everyone else drank water. He offered some to William, and before William could respond, poured him half a glass.

‘I always like a bit of wine with my supper, I do. The French ‘ave wine with their meals, you know. I travel to the continent sometimes you see, with my work. I expect you know about all that sort of thing anyway, William. I can see you’re a young man of refinement, like myself.’

He winked and glanced at Johnson and Hodges, who were both concentrating on their meals and pretending not to listen.

‘Yes, I ‘ad a very good day,’ Carter went on as if somebody had asked him. ‘I always do well around Northampton, I ‘ave to say. Why, I expect my commission was at least twenty five bob if I worked it out. Not bad for a day’s work eh, William?’

Johnson cleared his throat. ‘I’m always surprised you don’t stay at The Grand, Carter, since you’re doing so well,’ he said acidly.

‘What, and miss Mrs Hall’s ‘ospitality? I shouldn’t think so. I think of this place as like my own ‘ome, in a way.’

He winked at Mrs Hall, who pretended not to notice though the faintest trace of colour touched her cheeks.

‘One of these days I might just stay here permanent, like. Get myself a position in a local firm,’ Carter added.

This remark was greeted with pained silence by Hodges and Johnson. After supper was finally over, Carter went outside to smoke in the evening air and invited William to join him. They stood on the step by the front door.

‘What are you doin’ here then, William, if you don’t mind me asking?’

William found himself telling Carter about his father’s death, and how before that he’d been at Oundle. ‘Now I’m looking for some sort of work.’ He told him about the interview at the brewery. ‘The man I saw said it was because I didn’t have experience, but I’m sure I could have done the work easily enough. He just didn’t seem to like me for some reason.’

‘Course you could do the work,’ Carter said. ‘That’s what he was worried about. A young man like yourself, with a proper education and manners like a gentlemen, he’d have been scared that if he took you on you’d ‘ave your eye on his job before he knew it.’

Carter advised him to try and make himself look a bit more ordinary. ‘Look at that suit your wearin’ for instance. I’ll wager you didn’t get that off the rack. Anyway, you don’t want to get yourself stuck in some office like that. A salesman, now that’s the life for a young feller,’ he said. ‘Look at me. I do very well thank you very much, and I’m not stuck in one place with a boss lookin’ over my shoulder all the time like Johnson and Hodges in there. They’ve been ‘ere for years, you know. Both of them think one day they’re going to marry Mrs Hall.’ He laughed cynically. ‘That’s why I come ‘ere to tell the truth, just to butter her up a bit. It gives me a laugh to see their faces.’

‘Do you think I could get a job as a salesman somewhere?’ William asked.

‘Course you could,’ Carter said. ‘I’ll tell you what, I’m off again in the morning, but I’ll see if there’s anything going in my firm and I’ll drop you a line. You’d ‘ave to start at the bottom of course, but you’d soon work yourself up.’

William thanked him, his spirits suddenly rising after the day he’d had.

‘Don’t mention it,’ Carter said. ‘I always like to give an ‘elping hand if I can, me.’

For the next two weeks William went out every day to look for work. He took Carter’s advice and spent some of his money buying a cheap suit that made him look more ordinary, and whenever he got an interview he didn’t mention that he’d been to Oundle. There wasn’t much he could do about the way he spoke, however. It struck him as deeply ironic that he had spent years learning how to behave and sound like a gentlemen, and yet now it worked against him.

His efforts however, were to no avail. Jobs were hard to find, and without experience, it seemed almost impossible. Wherever he went there was always a queue of men applying for the same position. He came to recognise people he saw at various places, but though he’d nod and say hello he avoided any closer relationship, aware that they were his competitors. Each evening when he returned to his lodgings, he asked Mrs Hall if there was a letter for him. He kept hoping that Carter would write to say that he’d arranged a position in his firm, but when nothing came he realised that Carter probably exaggerated everything he said. When he thought about it, the fact that Carter lodged at Mrs Hall’s made no sense really if he could afford somewhere better. The food was awful, and everything about the way Mrs Hall ran her house was designed to squeeze the last penny she could from her lodgers. There was often only a sliver of soap in the bathroom, and she complained constantly about the cost of employing people to wash and cook and clean.

‘I really ought to put my rates up to cover it all,’ she would say. ‘I’m too generous for my own good, that’s my trouble.’ At these times Hodges and Johnson would remain uncharacteristically silent.

As the end of his third week at Mrs Hall’s approached, William worried constantly. Though he never ate supper there, and lived as frugally as he possibly could, he only had fifteen shillings left. He contemplated asking Mrs Hall to allow him to stay until he found a job, on the understanding that he would then repay his debt, but most of the jobs he applied for paid less than thirty shillings a week anyway. He hated going back to the house each evening. Though there was a sitting room for the guests, Johnson and Hodges made it clear they resented William’s presence when he went there. They hardly ever spoke a word to him unless it was to ask if he’d found a position yet, and when he said he hadn’t, they exchanged looks that seemed to indicate that the fault somehow lay with him.

Instead he’d taken to spending his evenings in the café where he ate his meals. He would linger over cups of tea until eight or nine at night when the café closed, and then he would return to his lodgings and slip quietly inside in the hope of avoiding Mrs Hall. Whenever he ran into her she asked if he had found a position, and then made a point of reminding him that she needed advance warning of his intentions regarding his room.

‘In case somebody should enquire whether there is a vacancy’.

He resented her constant badgering, especially as Carter’s room had remained empty since he left, and William doubted that there were people clamouring for his own tiny room. Worry made him irritable, and he became short with her and told her he would let her know in plenty of time. He did his best to avoid her completely, and in the mornings he left without breakfast, even though he was hungry.

The optimism with which William had faced his first day looking for work was gone. With every penny he spent and every position he was turned down for he became increasingly depressed. The loneliness of his existence began to eat at him. He was used to being alone, but to be faced with such uncertainty over his future and to have nobody to turn to made it much worse. Sometimes he dreamed of his father and the cottage. At other times he thought of Emmaline and the anguish and pain of loving her came back in full force.

Eventually the day came when he was due to either pay for another week at Mrs Hall’s, or give notice. He left the house early and went out to look for work, though as usual he was unsuccessful. That evening he ate supper at the café he frequented. The special meal for the day was liver and onions with potato for ninepence. It was warm inside and the food was plentiful. He was a regular by then, and the woman who ran the place always put a bit extra on his plate because she said he needed some meat on his bones. He only ate this one meal each day, other than a bun and a cup of tea in the mornings, and he had lost weight over the past few weeks. The café was busy. There were always people like himself who wanted somewhere cheap they could eat. A young woman, a girl really, who he thought couldn’t be older than seventeen caught his eye. She was thin, but pretty in a washed-out kind of way. He looked away, and when he saw her again she was leaving with an older man who put his arm around her and said something quietly in her ear, and then laughed out loud.

William stayed until the café closed. He was dreading going back to Mrs Hall’s. When he arrived, Mrs Hall came out of the sitting room. He had the feeling she had been listening for him.

‘There you are, Mister Reynolds,’ she said feigning surprise.

‘Good evening, Mrs Hall.’

‘Since I’ve bumped into you, I might as well ask if you intend staying another week. Only you haven’t said, and I must know for when people come asking for a room.’

‘Actually I was going to come and see you,’ he said. During the walk from town he had been rehearsing what he would say to her. He’d decided to swallow his pride and throw himself on her mercy to stay another week. If he had to, he was going to tell her that he was expecting some money from a relative which he thought she would probably believe, but suddenly he knew he couldn’t do it. If all he had left was his pride he would at least hang on to that.

‘The thing is I’ve managed to get myself quite a good position,’ he told her. ‘They want me to start straight away, but I’m afraid it’s on the other side of town so I’ve decided to find lodgings somewhere a bit closer.’

‘You must do as you like, of course,’ she said tersely.

‘It’s a question of expense, you see. There’s the cost of catching a tram every morning, and then there’s the extra time.’

‘I daresay that’s all very well, but I would have thought you would give me more notice of your intentions,’ she said. ‘If I had known I could have let your room.’

Though he doubted that was true, William wondered if he might get her to give him a cheaper rate. Even if he could stay a few more days it would be something. ‘I could always stay on for a little while if it would help,’ he offered. ‘Perhaps you could give me a reduction for being a regular.’

Though William was sure Hodges and Johnson didn’t pay as much as he did for their lodgings, Mrs Hall seemed annoyed by his request, however she appeared to reconsider.

‘Well, since you are a regular I suppose I could let you have five shillings off the usual price. Though I don’t know how I’ll make anything out of it if I do, and I have to live.’

William’s heart sank. Five shillings wasn’t enough. ‘I was hoping you could let me stay for ten shillings,’ he said. ‘The thing is, I won’t get paid straight away, and I’m a bit short of money.’

‘I couldn’t possibly let a room for that amount,’ Mrs Hall said flatly. ‘It simply wouldn’t be worth it.’

‘Then I’m afraid I’ll have to leave tomorrow,’ William said, angry that she should reject him out of hand and sound so offended when he’d paid over the odds for three weeks.

‘I expect rooms to be vacated first thing in the morning so they can be cleaned,’ Mrs Hall snapped.

He turned on his heel. He would have said something, except that he realised that he couldn’t take his trunk with him and would have to ask her to look after it. That night he hardly slept. His leg ached as it often did after walking for miles around the town every day, but it seemed worse than usual. His future seemed bleak. He thought of his years at Oundle and everything he’d endured there, and asked himself what had it all been for? He had seen the poorest parts of the town where people lived in squalor and poverty.

Without money or position, people lived miserable lives, and he had neither.

CHAPTER 6

By the time morning came, William knew he had to stop feeling sorry for himself. He was worn down by the constant failure and rejection, but he reminded himself that during his time at Oundle he’d learned something other than the classics and how to behave like a gentleman. He had learned to overcome whatever difficulties were placed in his path by drawing on nothing more than what was inside him, and with that in mind he went downstairs to find Mrs Hall and asked to leave his trunk.

‘I’ll send for it when I can,’ he said, ignoring the look in her eye when she realised he had made up his story of having found a position.

Later that day, after he’d tried unsuccessfully for a position at a firm of accountants, William began to think about the night ahead. He remembered seeing some signs stuck onto walls and lamp-posts in Criterion Street that advertised beds for sixpence a night. It was one of the worst parts of the town, a maze of cramped houses and alleys near the canal, where sweated workers eked out a living of sorts. The entrance to the house was through an alley that led to a tiny yard hemmed in by the buildings that rose oppressively all around. The revolting stench from an outhouse was enough to persuade William not to go any further, but before he could leave, a fat old woman with greasy grey hair and rotten teeth came out of a door and asked if he was looking for a bed.

‘Come an’ ‘ave a look if yer want,’ she said.

Unwillingly, he followed her into a gloomy passage and up a set of stairs. On a landing he passed an open door leading to a room where several mattresses that were stained and filthy beyond belief were stacked against a wall. Otherwise, every inch of floor space was completely covered in piles of paper cut into squares, and amidst them sat a woman and four children, all of them busy in a sort of production line of pasting and sticking together the edges of the paper to form bags. One child was mixing the paste while another applied it, and the woman and the other two children made the folds and arranged the finished bags to dry. One of the girls looked at William as he passed. She must have been about eight or nine years old. She was pale, with lank hair and bad skin, and her arms were as thin as sticks. The filthy window was firmly closed and the air inside was stuffy and fetid.

He hurried after the fat woman, who showed him another equally filthy room containing eight narrow cots all squeezed together. A man lay sprawled on one of them snoring drunkenly.

‘Don’t mind ‘im,’ the woman said. ‘Soon as he wakes up ‘e’ll be off out again to the boozer.’

William mumbled some excuse and hurried out as quickly as he could. That night he went to the café where he usually had his supper, and stayed there until it closed at nine. He saw the thin girl there again, and when he left she appeared from the dark shadows of an alley.

‘D’you want a bit of fun?’ she said to him. Though she smiled, her grey eyes were hard.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ he said.

She turned away without a word, looking for somebody else to approach.

For the rest of the night William walked the streets of the town. He wasn’t alone, there were others like himself with nowhere to go. He saw dozens of people moving like aimless shadows. He would have gone to the park and found somewhere to sleep, but the gates were locked and he was afraid that if he was caught trying to climb the fence he’d end up in prison.

Down by the canal he saw a group of people gathered around a fire. He heard voices arguing. They sounded drunk. After watching them for a little while he turned away, and as he went back along the path he passed a man who looked at him with sharp, narrowed eyes. When he looked back, William saw the man had turned around and was following him. He walked faster, and when he turned a corner ran to an alley where he hid until the man gave up looking for him. After that he kept away from the area by the canal.

For the rest of the night he wandered the streets near the centre of town alone. The night seemed interminably long, and in the early morning it was cold even though it was summer. It made William wonder what would happen if he still had nowhere to go by the time winter came. He went back to his usual café, and when it opened he brought a mug of hot tea and a bun and sat at a table, grateful to rest his aching leg while he read the advertisements in the paper to decide which position he would apply for first.

*****

After six nights without a place to sleep, William was constantly hungry. Each morning he would go to the public lavatories in Gold Street to wash and make himself look as respectable as possible. Later, when he had applied for all the jobs he could, he would go to the park and find a place to sit where he could sleep for an hour or two. He felt light headed and disoriented half the time. It was worse in the early hours of the morning, when he could barely drag his feet to keep moving. When it rained one night he felt so miserable that he wasn’t sure he could keep going.

One morning in the newspaper he read about a man who’d been found dead by the railway siding. The article said he’d fallen from a bridge in an accident, but he had no home and no work, and William wondered if it was true that he’d fallen. There were times when the idea of a fall and then sudden and final oblivion appealed to him. The only thing that kept him going was a promise that he made himself, that one day he would make something of himself by his own means, and when he did he would never allow anybody to have control over his life again.

That evening he walked past a church. The door was open and there was a welcoming light inside, though there appeared to be nobody around. He went inside to sit down for a few minutes and looked up at a stained glass window behind the altar. The scene depicted Jesus, and presumably some of the disciples gathered underneath a leafy tree on a grassy bank beside a stream. There was something distinctly pastoral and familiar about it, as if the artist who created it had exchanged the landscape of Palestine for that of England, and it reminded William of Blake’s poem taken from the preface to Milton.

And did the Countenance Divine
 

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
 

And was Jerusalem builded here
 

Among these dark Satanic Mills?
 

A voice startled him, and William realised he must have nodded off for a few seconds.

‘What are you doing here? The church is closed.’ A man wearing an ecclesiastical collar regarded him indignantly. He took in William’s dishevelled appearance.

‘I’m sorry, I must have closed my eyes for a moment.’

The clergyman seemed surprised at the way he spoke. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

‘The door was open,’ William said. ‘I just wanted to sit down for a little while.’ He looked at the window again where Jesus wore an expression of serene benevolence. He felt dizzy from hunger and tiredness, and couldn’t collect his thoughts.

‘You must leave at once,’ the clergyman said, becoming vexed again. ‘If you don’t I will have to fetch the police.’

William stared at the small gold crucifix the man wore, and then when he got up the clergyman quickly stepped back as if he was afraid William intended to steal it.

He reached into his pocket. ‘Take this and leave,’ the clergyman said in a high voice, holding out two pennies in his hand.

William ignored him and began to walk back along the nave towards the door. As he went along the path outside to the street, the man came to the door and called out to him.

‘If you pray to God he will help you.’ Then he closed the door firmly and turned a key in the heavy lock.

Without knowing where he was going, William walked back towards the town. Across the road he saw a girl approach a man who was passing by, but the man spoke to her brusquely and shoved her aside so that she stumbled and fell. She shouted after him.

‘Piss off then, you bastard!’

He recognised the girl from the café, and went over to help her up.

‘What about you, luv? D’you want to have a bit of fun?’ she said.

‘I just wanted to make sure you’re alright.’

She peered at him closely. ‘I know you, don’t I? I know! You was the one in the café.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

She came closer and pressed her body against him. ‘Since it’s you, and you was nice to me, I’ll do yer for sixpence if you like.’

He shook his head. She was younger than he’d thought. Perhaps as young as fifteen. ‘Sorry.’

She shrugged. ‘Suit yerself.’

They heard the sound of footsteps as somebody came towards them. The girl frowned when she recognised who it was. ‘It’s only you,’ she said disappointed.

‘That’s right, only me, luv.’

William recognised the voice straight away. It was Carter, the salesman he’d met at Mrs Hall’s.

‘Hello there, it’s young William isn’t it?’ Carter said sounding surprised. ‘What are you doing ‘ere? After a bit of sport with Lucy are you?’ He winked lewdly.

‘He just ‘elped me up after some bloke pushed me down,’ the girl said. ‘I don’t think ‘e’s got any money.’

‘Are you staying at Mrs Hall’s again?’ William asked, though even as he spoke he noticed that Carter’s suit was stained and his shoes were scuffed.

‘Lost me position,’ Carter said. ‘Some business about expenses, or some such thing.’

‘I wondered why you never wrote to me,’ William said, though from Carter’s blank look it was obvious he didn’t know what William meant.

‘What’s this about not ‘aving any money then, William?’ Carter said.

‘All I’ve got is five shillings,’ William said. ‘I had to leave Mrs Hall’s because I couldn’t find a job.’

‘Five shillings is it?’ Carter said. ‘You’d better let me look after that for you. You don’t know what sorts you might run into out ‘ere.’

‘It’s alright,’ William said, suddenly not liking Carter’s menacing undertone. ‘Actually I ought to be getting on.’ He started to turn away, but Carter produced a knife from his pocket; the blade a dull flash of steel.

‘You’d better give it to me, William,’ Carter said again, all the cheerfulness gone from his voice. He stepped closer with his hand outstretched, but William knocked it away and stood back warily. Eyeing the blade of the knife he took a few coppers from his pocket and dropped them on the ground.

‘Take that,’ he said. ‘But I warn you, I won’t give you anymore.’ As the coins hit the pavement he began to walk away, looking back over his shoulder as he went. For a moment Carter hesitated, then the girl pushed past him to pick up the money and he grabbed her by the arm.

‘What do you think you’re doin’ then?’ he demanded.

William hurried on, and left them to argue between themselves.

In the morning he read of a position in the stock department of Ballantynes, which was the largest shop in Northampton. When he arrived he was directed to the goods yard at the back, where as usual a line of men were waiting. He took his place and waited to be called.

Some men were loading furniture into the back of a lorry that was painted green and had the name of the shop written on the side in gold lettering. One of the men went to crank the starter handle, but after several unsuccessful attempts he leaned against the radiator breathing heavily, his face red and sweating.

‘You’d better tell Mister Wilkins the bloody thing won’t start again,’ he said to his younger helper.

‘Let me ‘ave a go,’ the young one said, and took over cranking the handle until he too was sweating and breathing hard. He gave up and gave the wheel a savage kick. ‘Bloody thing,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘You can tell Wilkins,’ he said to the older man. ‘He’s in a right mood already, and if we don’t get this lot out he’s going to get a right earful from upstairs.’

The older man glanced toward the open doors, clearly reluctant to be the bearer of bad news. ‘Let’s ‘ave another go first.’

As he bent to the handle again, William spoke up. ‘You ought to check the contact breakers, that’s often what the problem is.’

Both men looked at him in surprise. ‘What’s that when it’s at ‘ome then?’ asked the younger man.

‘I’ll show you if you like,’ William offered. ‘Open the bonnet.’

The two men glanced at one another, and the older one shrugged. ‘Can’t ‘urt to let him ‘ave a look.’

The younger one lifted the bonnet and fetched some tools. William took the distributor cap off and saw the problem at once. ‘It’s this here, you see, it’s dirty. Have you got a rag or something to clean it?’

Within a few minutes he’d cleaned and re-set the gap which looked too big. ‘Try it now,’ he said, and this time when the older man cranked the handle the engine started straight away. ‘You ought to do that regularly,’ William said as he closed the bonnet. ‘And the plugs could do with a clean to by the sound of it.’

‘Lucky you was ‘ere,’ the younger man said. ‘You come about the position then?’

‘Yes,’ William replied.

‘You’ll be seeing Mister Wilkins then. That’s ‘im now.’

A man in his fifties wearing a dark brown suit came out the door. He wore a harassed expression when he saw how many men were still waiting to be seen. ‘I ‘aven’t got time to see all of you,’ he said. ‘So anyone who ‘asn’t worked in a stock room before might as well not wait.’

About three quarters of the men turned away with disconsolate expressions, and William began to follow them.

‘Where’re you off to?’ the young man asked.

‘I’ve never worked in a stock room,’ William explained.

The young man looked at the older one. ‘We should tell Mister Wilkins he fixed the lorry.’ Without waiting for the other man’s opinion, he went inside while William lingered, unsure what to do. A few moments later the man in the brown suit reappeared and gestured for William to come over.

‘I ‘ear you mended the lorry,’ he said.

Though he was about to say that it was only a matter of cleaning a dirty contact breaker, William changed his mind. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said instead.

‘What’s your name then?’

‘Reynolds, sir. William Reynolds.’

‘You know about engines and mechanics, do you, Reynolds?’