George would have liked him to be wearing overalls, and manipulating the knobs and levers of a lathe in his workshop. He wanted to be showing him, teaching him, watching him respond with utter fascination to his dexterity and knowledge. George would then have seen his own earlier self, and pictured exactly how he had been at that age, which he could not otherwise recall, in such detail as would have been possible by putting his son through a first-class apprenticeship devised by himself. It would be sensible, he said, when they talked about it, though Pam did not want Edward to go into a factory.
Edward refused the possibility of such training because he knew it would have to be done in his father’s workshop. George’s vision of the ideal father for the perfect son was scorned by Ted, as Pam had known it would be. George reproached her for not agreeing to his plans for Edward: ‘He’s got to make a living for himself, just like we had to when we was fifteen.’
She wanted him to go to university, though George said that, judging by the way he was struggling for his ‘O’ Levels, there wasn’t much chance of that. He was probably right, but she disliked his pessimism. He gets his cleverness from you, he said, mildly ironic, but it might not be worth all that much when it comes to finding a job. She argued that it was still too early to tell.
When George said they should put him into a technical college to do engineering she backed him up, and George was grateful for that at least, and consoled her for any disappointment by saying that ‘you can’t have everything’ – which was a typical response from, someone who expected everything to happen in the way he wanted. She had given him a little consideration, but in return he sought to rob her blind. At such times she caught herself using these apt expressions of her in-laws, phrases she loathed while acknowledging the thrill that ran through her when she spoke them thoughtlessly in occasional talks with George.
She had done her best to save Edward the noise of their arguments, and the density of their matrimonial silences, and right from the time when he had been put into her arms at the hospital, the day when he wouldn’t be under her direct protection regarding all other perils was unimaginable. But at sixteen he saved enough of his pocket money to buy hobnailed boots, and clattered in wearing them one Saturday afternoon. He let his hair grow long, joined a gang, and looked like Alf. While making his bed one day she found an ear-ring under his pillow.
At seventeen he said he’d had enough and wanted to leave, and though she had been expecting it, she was too alarmed to reply. After a shouting match in which Pam thought he and his father would end by knocking each other down, they decided that after getting sufficient ‘O’ and ‘A’ Levels he would go to a college in Manchester, and be given enough of an allowance for lodgings and spending money.
From imagining she wouldn’t be able to breathe if he were out of her sight for more than a few hours, she found the separation easy to accept, reflecting that it hadn’t seemed so long a time from the patter of little feet to the clatter of hobnailed boots. Now that she had left, she might never see him again. He was in Manchester. She had departed without thought, and still couldn’t fully know what she had done. She was more incomplete than before having Edward – for who had children over forty? – though by the time he became adolescent the golden age of mother and son had finished. He had stopped relying on her, or confiding in her. As long as there was food, money and clothes she hardly mattered, and even George’s influence was at an end.
Edward and his father had demanded total devotion so that they could pursue the perfect relationship that George at least must have thought possible. It had certainly looked like that for a while. Now she was out of it, and glad, yet felt an ache and an undeniable panic at having parted from Edward for ever. But losing Edward made it easier to leave George. Sending him to college prised loose the vital brick of a wall that hemmed her in.
It would be possible to see him again. She went by circuitous reasoning to decide that she was not an outlaw or murderess. She could write and tell him where she was. He’d be sure to understand. He would come to London. They’d find a nice place to eat, and laugh at their past life that would never return, and talk about the state of the world like old friends more than mother and son.
They wouldn’t. The picture wasn’t real. She hadn’t left George in order to indulge in dreams. She would stay on her own. She was settled into her proper sphere at last. Yet it was easy to think that her vision wasn’t fatally distorted, because Edward was also away from home, an amiable young man now managing in his Manchester digs with a couple of friends. He was a person with firm views, and rules for living his own life. Away from her and George he was doing well in his course. At the end of the first year he had got top marks in technical drawing, proving that it had been the best thing for him to leave home.
The lock that held all three together had burst. Edward had known exactly what to do. His spirit had been fought over till he could stand the strain no longer, and his decisive departure proved that he was neither like her nor George – much better for him in the long run if this were true. She was therefore not unhappy at having fragmented the base which Edward had always looked on as home.
The three-way split had completed itself. She had gone into marriage without thought, and had not been a success. The different places where they now lived marked the triangle in which all such threesomes sooner or later found themselves, and to try and get back to the false life of the past would be like attempting to repair the dam while drowning in the floodwater.
21
Such well-being was too good to waste in sleep, but if she savoured her enjoyment overlong sleep wouldn’t come at all when she got into bed. She would stay vividly alert until feverish dreams at dawn eliminated her memory of the calm evening.
Her hope during the day was to end the evening in peace, for if by dawn she could no longer endure the nightmare responsibility of having left George and Edward she would get her clothes on and run to the nearest telephone box in Ladbroke Grove, and while wind beat icily through glassless frames dial the home digits and wait for the bleeps before pressing down on what coins she had. George would ask who is it, and she would say it’s me, and feel her spirit die in a silence too long to bear. George was a real man who would make her wait a second for every day she had been away, refusing to say hello how are you? because he wanted her to break and say I’m sorry, and sob and say I’ve had enough, and can I come back and I haven’t slept properly for a week because you and Edward are haunting my life.
Before going downstairs she would take every coin from the shelf above the gas fire. He would be home from work. The coins grew big, and fell on her like circular tokens of hot steel.
‘What do you want?’ he’d ask.
‘Send the rest of my clothes.’
‘I don’t need those rags around here any more,’ he’d say. ‘Teddy and me was going to burn ’em tomorrow in the garden, soak ’em in paraffin and have a sing-song around the blaze. They only clutter the wardrobe. Where shall I send ’em?’ She would put the phone on top of the box, or let it swing by the cable before walking down the road towards home.
The long evening was to be enjoyed. After closing the door at dusk there were hours to go before the desire for sleep became so strong that she was snared into making the attempt. The fact that she would be punished by insomniac half-dreams after hours free of all problems did not spoil the ease she felt, and she wouldn’t give up her enjoyment in the hope that sleep would come as a reward. That would be as craven as packing up and going back to George. Perhaps there was no such connection between the two states, but it was a risk she would have to take. Life was full of such risks. Every choice made created another, more so when you lived alone than when you were cooped up in a family that demanded to be looked after.