The Lily Hand and Other Stories (7 page)

Because I'm going back there. I'm going to do what I wish I'd had the courage to do then; find her and ask her for my own again. Maybe I shall be too late, maybe in daylight and without the terror her eyes won't be so blue or her hair so golden. Maybe I shall seem so insignificant to her on a second view that she'll laugh at me, as she didn't laugh then. But I've got to try. I've got to know.

Somewhere in Germany Willy Isserstedt's Circus must still be wandering, and if I search long enough I shall find it. In fairy tales every search ends in finding. And this time not her six-foot-six-inch father nor all his three-foot midgets are going to frighten me away from her.

Trump of Doom

After old Eb Langley had his first stroke, he had to loose the hold he'd had on the Worbridge Town Band, and I came in for the job of conducting them for the Sunday School Parade at Whitsun.

If Eb hadn't been flat on his back, nobody else would ever have been allowed to lead that march, and we heard afterwards that when they told him I'd been picked to take over he relaxed in a minute, and let out that baritone cackle of his, and said: ‘Wait'll they see what a mess young Les Parkes makes of it, they'll be sitting on the doorstep imploring me to get up off me deathbed.' So it set him back badly when we got through the day in fine style, and I reckon old Lije Weatherly going and comforting him that night didn't help his convalescence much. ‘Don't worry about us,' says Lije, ‘you lie easy, son! Best performance we ever put up, that's what they're all saying. As if we'd let you down,' says Lije, rolling up his eyes like a lay reader, ‘after all you done for us!'

Nearly had another stroke on the spot, they say, and his poor little meek wife, stone-deaf as she is and him too mean to buy her a hearing-aid, watched their faces and tried to make out what it was all about, and how soon she'd better start shooing Lije out of the room, before the old man burst.

He was by way of being our town philanthropist, was old Eb. For one thing, he was the only one around, barring the doctor and a few elderly survivors from the last industrial boom, who had any money to be philanthropic with, and if he wanted a brass band, and a horticultural society, and a few other local activities to lord it over, he had to provide the money for 'em.

The band was his favourite good work, it gave him more scope than the other groups. Plenty of kids used to come along at one time, keen as mustard to follow in father's footsteps, because ours is a district with a band tradition. Broke their innocent hearts, Eb Langley did. I'm not saying he wasn't a good musician, he was, but he liked nothing better than tyrannizing over all the lot of us, letting fly like a wild man if we made a bit of a mistake in practice, and sarcastic – you wouldn't believe! Had all the youngsters scared to blow at all, and all of a shiver if he looked at 'em. I should never had stuck it myself, those few months after I started, if it hadn't been for Nora Weatherly. She was only seventeen, and so was I, but we knew our own minds before we left school, and I was set on getting in with her old man, so I put up with Eb's bullying better than most. But if you hadn't got a reason as good as mine, you broke down and slunk out after a few weeks of it.

Lije was the only one who used to treat his lordship with disrespect. After Eb's worst outbursts there'd be a sudden blast from Lije's double-B, right out of the cellar, and even the kid who'd just been chewed to pulp would venture a feeble grin, and begin to get his colour back.

But there wasn't much we could do about Eb, really. He'd had twenty years to get everything well into his own hands. We used to meet in the clubroom at the Black Horse, which was the pub he'd bought after he sold out his dog-hole collieries to the National Coal Board. There wasn't another suitable room in the place, and he'd never charged the band rent for using it – I reckon he got value for his money making us that much more beholden to him. And then there were the instruments. Only a few of the old ones had turned up again after the ten-year interval caused by the war, and the rest he'd provided out of his own pocket; times without number, when we were in funds, someone would suggest that we pay off the debt, and he'd never take it. Oh, dear me, no, a pity if he couldn't help us to a few instruments, and the band his only pleasure! It suited him fine to have us obliged to him still. We should have known! As if he ever gave anything away without being sure he could get back ten times the value some other way! Why, his poor wife hadn't had a new coat for years, and he grudged his lorry drivers a ten-minute break on the road in a four-hour journey!

He got worse as he grew older. They do. We didn't all say it, like Lije, but we were all mighty relieved when he took to his bed, especially when weeks went on with me deputizing, and it began to look as though he wouldn't be coming back. He was better, he'd reached the stage of getting up and thumping about his front bedroom at the Black Horse, and you could hear him roaring at his wife halfway down the High Street. But he'd grown monstrously fat and heavy during the time he was lying up, and his heart wouldn't be responsible for the consequences if he started running about the town again, and finally he had to resign.

Then he comforted himself with thinking how we should go to pieces without him, and if we had he'd have been happy. I didn't know as much about conducting as he did, but I knew more about how to get on with folks, and I was learning the rest as fast as I could. When he heard we were doing well, his bile rose so there was no living with him. He used to spend his days lying in the window of his front bedroom, keeping an eye on everything that went on in the street, and interfering as much as he could with all of it. Looked like a great fat toad, only without the mild expression.

First time we marched up the street to play by the war memorial in the new uniforms we'd been saving up for, I thought he'd blow up. And Lije cocks up the bell of his double-B towards the window, special, and gives him a sour one, deliberate, as he goes by. Nora told him off for it afterwards. Told me off, too, for not stopping him, as if anybody could stop that old devil doing anything, once he took it into his head. If anybody knew that, it was Nora. But it was always me that was supposed to look after Lije, steer him off his monkey-tricks during the Sunday night open-air concerts, keep him sober when we went off to play in contests. That was what I was in the band for, according to Nora.

We started winning a few little local events that summer, and the barman from the Black Horse told us Eb's missus was having a hell of a life with him. Only comfort the poor woman had was that she couldn't hear one word in ten he yelled at her. Then we decided to enter for the county championship in August, and the way we'd been improving I thought we had a good chance of winning it. It got around to him, of course. If he'd been sure we'd go along and make an exhibition of ourselves he'd have done everything in his power to help us – that was the only way he could ever have felt reconciled to having to loose his grip on anything he'd once been running. But he'd heard us play, he knew we were doing all right.

Middle of the next practice he sent his missus down with a note. He was very sorry, but would we mind shifting all our stuff out of the clubroom by the end of the week, because he'd got an offer to rent the place to the auction bloke from the market as a storeroom, and as he hadn't got any regular bookings for it as a clubroom, except ours, which didn't bring him in anything, we would see he couldn't afford to turn down the offer. He was sure we should find another room without any trouble. He was sure! He'd lived in the town all his life, he knew there wasn't a decent room to be booked in the whole place. The old hands argued, and the kids exploded, but there was nothing we could do about it, out we had to go, instruments and all. We stacked them in our back parlour for the time being, and lost a whole week's practice while I ran round the town trying to find a place for us to meet.

We ended up in Alf Parkinson's derelict garage, up on the pit mounds. It was summer, and it didn't matter so much that all the windows were out, and some of the end boards coming loose into the bargain; but it was a long walk out of town for the lads who lived up the other side, and we had to carry the instruments back and forth because there was no proper lock on the door up there. Still, it was a private place, and a roof over us when it rained. We'd have played in the mortuary, by that time, sooner than let Eb Langley beat us.

‘You watch,' said Nora ‘this won't be the end of it. If the old buzzard's feeling as mean as that, he'll stick at nothing to bring us to heel.' She said ‘us' because of her old man and me; if anybody was taking us on, he was taking on Nora, too. ‘I wonder,' she said, gnawing her lip, ‘what the next move'll be!'

We didn't have to wonder long, because a week or so later he wrote me a letter to say that he was forced, owing to temporary difficulties, to dispose of some of his surplus effects, and as it seemed unlikely that he'd ever be able to take an active part in the band's activities again, he wanted to realize on the instruments which were his property. We were welcome to take them over, of course, if we could do so at once, because he'd had a lot of expenses with his illness, and business being so bad, and all, and if we decided against buying he was obliged to part with the things in next week's regular auction sale at Windlesham. And could he have our decision by the end of the week, please. And he named his price, too. I hadn't got anything to prove it, but I'll swear it was more than he'd paid for 'em when they were new. And anyhow, he knew damned well we'd lashed out on those new uniforms, and hadn't got above a pound or two in hand. All the times we'd tried to pay him for those instruments, and he wouldn't let us!

I went to see him before I dared tell the lads what he'd done. I did everything but go on my knees to him; I begged him to wait till the end of the month, to give us a bit of time to raise the money. He all but wept down my neck with sympathy, juggled with papers and figures to prove to me that he was as good as bankrupt, and for his poor wife's sake he couldn't wait even a week longer. I've never been more meek and humble to anybody in my life, but at the end of it all he still owned the instruments, and still wanted his price for 'em, or else! And we still hadn't got it to give. So I had to tell the boys that night, and a fine row there was.

‘Let me go and negotiate for you,' says Lije, blowing gently down his double-B, which was his own, and safe as houses. ‘I won't make no trouble, I'll just quietly be the death of him. Eb and me,' he says, ‘we understand each other.'

‘You keep out of it,' I said, thinking of Nora. ‘I'm conducting this band, and it's up to me to think of a way round this. What's more,' I said, ‘we'll get our instruments for a lot less than that out of the old robber, or my name's not Les Parkes.'

I talked it over with Nora afterwards, and she went with me to Maddingley to see Tom Lowther, who conducted the Maddingley Colliery Band. They'd been our rivals ever since we started up again after the war, and there was supposed to be pretty high feeling between us over the county championship, but it was all part of the game, as you might say, and anyhow Tom Lowther was a good sort, and wouldn't stand for us being frozen out of the contest that way, it would have spoiled his fun. So we told him all about it. He said it was a dirty trick, all right, but what was he supposed to do about it?

‘Tom,' I said, ‘if
you
was to go to him, and say as you'd heard he'd got these instruments for sale, and put it up to him that you'd be glad to have 'em if the price was right, I believe he'd jump at it. He'd be so pleased to think he was putting us out of the running and giving our chief rivals a leg up, that I believe you could even knock the price down considerable. If you let on to hate us enough, he'll almost give 'em to you. Nora here and me, we've put together as much as we can raise,' I said. ‘I'm betting that from
you
it'll be enough. From us he wouldn't touch it if it was three times as much, he'd have some tale to put us off with. We'll get it back from the band after we've won the trophy.'

That started him grinning. ‘You'll never see your money again,' he says, ‘if you're relying on getting it back that way. But just to show we ain't afraid to meet you on equal terms, I'll see what I can do for you.'

It's my belief he enjoyed that job. We didn't hear any more until the Friday, and then it was another letter to say that Eb Langley had had an offer for the instruments, and much as he regretted it, he couldn't afford to turn it down unless we were able to say at once that we'd take them off his hands at the terms agreed. If we couldn't see our way to doing that, would we please deliver them at the Black Horse after the practice, because the prospective purchaser wanted to see them and collect them, if satisfactory, next Monday evening. And we did, looking as down-in-the-mouth as we knew how, for fear he should smell a rat, and I could see him peering over the windowsill at us when we left, fairly quaking with glee. He thought he'd done us good and proper this time. He wouldn't have been so pleased with himself if he'd known that the little van that fetched the instruments away on the Monday didn't take 'em any farther than our house.

Tom Lowther was grinning all over. ‘I've brought you five quid back, and all,' he says, ‘it worked like a charm. And I'll give you the cost of my petrol, I was going up to our Win's, anyhow, so I've hardly come out of my way. My word, I wouldn't like to be within a hundred yards of the Black Horse when Langley gets to hear about this deal! He'll have another stroke, I shouldn't wonder.'

‘Come out and have a drink,' I says, beaming at all that nice brass lying about our parlour again. ‘We certainly owe you one.'