He glanced at the window, thinking she meant with his life, and that this was the reason for his excursion from the orphanage. ‘I’d like to go to sea, and be a sailor.’
‘Yes, you would. Just wouldn’t you?’ Her voice was so angry that he felt crippled by his mistake. She saw it, and smiled for the first time. ‘I meant that we shall have to do something with you after tea. There’s a concert on the pier. Would you like to go?’
He didn’t care, but knew he must say yes, which was what she wanted him to say. Therefore, he wanted to say it. The maid brought in tea, with biscuits and chocolate cake, and fish-paste and cucumber sandwiches.
‘Don’t gobble,’ Aunt Clara said. Her most stinging words came quietly and in a nice voice. ‘You’re not a turkey. Gobble like that, and I’ll call you Graham Gobble!’
When he smiled, sternness replaced her amusement. He had eaten porridge and bacon at breakfast, but wouldn’t say he’d had nothing since, first because he daren’t, and then because he couldn’t, and lastly because he wouldn’t. But he stopped gobbling. He had been hungry, and you had to do something when there was nothing to talk about. He glanced again at the window, as if the only safety lay beyond, thinking he’d like to smash his way out. It was better at the orphanage, which he liked because he was used to things there.
‘So you want to go to sea?’ Her anger was not yet gone.
He felt like a wall that would never be pushed down. ‘Yes, Aunt Clara.’
The boys would say: What’s she like? Does she have big tits? She’s an old woman, he would tell them, but the scoff was good.
‘I suppose it makes sense.’ She called for the maid: ‘Eunice!’
He tried not to laugh at her name when she came in, but knew even so that he’d reddened.
‘You’d better take that cake away or he’ll eat it all, and make himself disgustingly sick.’
Sarcasm ran off him like water. He didn’t care what she said. They had already eaten it but for a few crumbs, which she picked up between her fingers, rolled into a ball, and pressed into the birdcage. He decided she must be having a joke in telling the maid to take the cake away or he’d be sick. ‘What makes sense, Aunt Clara?’
The maid, nearer his own age, had bobbed fair hair, and he could tell the boys about how, as she came to the table, she winked at him, and that when she was close he could smell her scent.
‘Your father was a cook on a transatlantic liner, as far as we could make out. But there was nothing we could do about it. Not that we would have wanted to. Father tried to find out, but it was a big liner.’
She must hate him, but he would take no notice. Instead of puzzling out why she forever said such things he wondered whether the maid’s room was close to his. He’d have to tell the boys something when he got back. She came into my bed. She did, I tell you. He thought his parents had died when he was born. That’s what he’d told himself. He hadn’t known anything except that he had no parents. Now he knew that his father had been a cook on a liner. He must have been a chef wearing a white hat and an apron. His mother was the sister of this woman who was his aunt.
She pointed to a large photograph on the flat-topped piano. ‘I thought I’d better get it out for when you came.’
He walked over to see. She was certainly better-looking than the maid, or his aunt.
‘You feature her,’ she said, ‘that’s one good thing, except for the hair, and the nose. Ugh!’
Good or not, he didn’t care. The woman was thinner than his aunt, as she looked across at some horses in a field. The maid had eyes that were almost closed, and a narrow mouth that couldn’t open. Even when she smiled its size didn’t alter, though he thought she liked him.
‘In any case, by the time you were born half the cooks had gone to other ships. She died in a hotel.’
He thought she was going to cry because her voice went low and her lips shook, so he hoped the maid would come back because he wouldn’t know what to do. ‘How did she die?’
‘Of natural causes.’
She lied. ‘Why did I get sent to the orphanage?’
She would never tell the truth, but one day he’d find out. ‘Ask your grandfather,’ she snapped.
‘Isn’t he dead?’
‘Yes. There was no one to bring you up. Your uncle was killed in the Great War, and we couldn’t be doing with you. Father died soon after. The whole business broke his heart.’
The idea was laughable, but he kept his lips firm. He didn’t care what happened, or who he was. He was himself, and that was all that mattered. An oil painting hung above the mantelshelf, of an officer in smart khaki, the grey barrel of a howitzer behind. The face looked unreal, as dead as the man was dead, with dark hair and full lips and slightly protruding eyes. The oftener Tom glanced the more artificial it looked, as if he wasn’t absolutely dead but only waiting for one good reason to come back to life. He would jump out of a Christmas stocking, and kill everybody with a revolver.
The teachers had been in the Great War. Cranky Dick had a wooden leg. Old Pepper-pot had half an arm gone, though he was good at throwing the stick with the other if he thought you weren’t listening. The matron had her husband blown to bits and no known grave, but it was more than twenty forever-years ago. Passion Dale, they called it. Or Mons, Arrers, Wipers. Poppy Day came round and they had to stand still for two minutes. A poppy in every hat, and he always had a sixpenny big one to wear, for his uncle, he now supposed, the money every year being specially sent. And nobody had told him, but now he knew.
‘Your grandfather said he would never recover from losing John, but he did. He said the same about your mother, and he didn’t.’
You’ve got to die some time. Everybody had. He must have died because he was old enough to die. The maid smiled from the doorway. Then she winked. He liked her for that. She put her tongue out at his aunt. That was even better.
‘And I stayed single to look after him. There’s no other way in life.’ Her voice was suddenly shrilclass="underline" ‘If you do that again, Eunice, I’ll send you away.’
Tom felt his cheeks redden, as if he had connived in the maid’s prank. Clara had seen her reflection in the bulge of a shiny vase. ‘And stop your winking. There’s nothing wrong with your eyes. Unless you have conjunctivitis as well as St Vitus’ Dance! Go and wash the tea things.’ She turned to him: ‘Can you swim?’
Those over thirteen had gone to Dovercourt for a week last summer. He had learned, with a lifebelt. ‘Yes.’
‘That’s a blessing.’ She stood. ‘Now wash your hands and face, then we’ll get our coats and go to the pier. We shall be late if we don’t hurry.’
She made him wash with scented soap. She couldn’t put up with carbolic, she said. But it was all he’d ever used.
The water was pink, and seemed still to have the same ships on it as before. As if unmoving, their spring-coils of smoke were fixed for ever. There was a calmness out there, but he couldn’t go yet. While laughing at the jokes, with the tide rushing in under the pier supports, and huge banks of white water flooding across the darkening shingle, one part of him pictured ships over the water of a wide ocean, with no land to be seen. His Aunt Clara would write to the orphanage and say that he should go to sea. The promise wasn’t yet made, but he knew she would see it done. If not, he’d run away.
He thought she hated him, but half-way through the concert she held his hand hard while laughing at the jokes. Perhaps she didn’t hate him after all, not at the moment anyway. Nothing was certain except at sea. The water might drown you, but it didn’t hate you, though if it drowned you whether you could swim or not maybe it did.