The final draw-back, then a masterly satisfying swing of the stone-bellied straw corpse into the air and over the welcoming water. Labour was the best thing — and if Brian ever felt distrust for that sympathetic organization it was only because all big names seemed like devil’s threats to hold his soul in thrall — and he wasn’t sure enough of his soul yet to trust it with such things.
It was late enough for a traffic lull along the nearby big road; a rough silence reigned between the corridor of its lights, and among the distant railway yards. The Guy, leaving their lunging arms, spent a glorious moment of freedom suspended in black harmless air, then, a straw-emasculated monster, it descended while Bert and Brian held their breath with anticipated delight.
It hit the water with a justified explosion, a reverberating thump creating havocs of sound in the canyon of the deep lock, while Bert and Brian embraced with roars of delight — and then set to pushing the now empty pram back along the towpath, their newly bought flash-lamps making spaces of clear light before them.
On rainy days clothes steamed in the classroom, emitting invisible yet olfactory vapours from waterlogged shoes and soaked jackets. Hot pipes were a December godsend, to be sat on before lessons began, stayed close to during them so that the hand could stretch slyly out and touch their luxurious warmth. At home, when he and Arthur and Fred ran in crying from the bitter cold of hot-aches, Seaton would pull them to the hearth one by one and press his fire-warmed hands over them: “Have a bit o’ fire. There’s plenty more where that came from”—making Brian’s bones ache from the pressure of strong maulers.
In winter he saw the Nook as a snowbound igloo set in the desolation of stark countryside, Merton and the rest plodding in or out for wood and beer and groceries. If there was no snow, then the fields were dull and wet under a grey sky, and there was no comfort in crossing fields and mud like a fugitive walking beyond the world of sound. Silence and rain surrounded it — not even a horse or lightning. Streets were better.
To subscribe penny by penny at the corner shop for some toy to Selection Box of chocolates ravaged his deep-seated natural inclinations. But it had to be done if Christmas was to mean anything at all, it being better to spend two shillings straight off than twenty-four pennies bit by bit. A concentration of resources left a more solid memory of having been rich for a day instead of stingily solvent for many.
“Who’ll join the Christmas Club?”
“I wouldn’t join two pieces o’ string,” Seaton said, “except to ’ang myself, ’appen.” But he laughed as he said it.
Trimmings and Christmas trees and toys were in every shop window, aquariums of light and colour, impossible to buy but good to look at. Seaton was still on the dole, with money harder to come by than it had ever been, though food and presents usually landed from somewhere at Christmas. Vera’s mother sent a Christmas pudding, boiled in the outhouse copper of the Nook six weeks before; Ernest sent a parcel of discarded toys from last year; a sister sent clothes and gave Seaton a few shillings when he walked to Carlton for them.
A Christmas tree came into the house. Seaton trimmed the hagged rim of a two-pound tomato tin, filled it with soil, laminated it with blue crêpe paper. It stood, like a god with multiple green arms, on the dresser. Out came the box of decorations, saved like gold from previous years in beds of tissue paper. A delicate yellow pear was held aloft: “Where shall I put this one?”
Arthur stood at tiptoe on a chair to point out a branch halfway up the stem, shaking the sideboard in his eagerness. Margaret bawled at him not to knock owt over. “Just there,” he said firmly.
Vera put down her cup of tea. “Come off that chair, then, our Arthur; you’ll fall.”
“And where’ll I put this one?” Seaton asked, holding up a coloured model of Santa Claus. Brian had seen enough Christmases to lead the chorus of: “Right on top! He’s the chief! Up top, our dad.”
“Ah,” Seaton responded, high on the chair, “you’ll be ’earing ’im on Christmas Eve if you listen ’ard enough. You’ll ’ear ’is reindeers trotting across the chimney-pots, wain’t they, Vera?”
“Santa Claus i’n’t real,” Margaret scoffed.
“That’s what yo’ think,” Brian countered.
“He i’n’t,” Arthur said, and his baited breath settled it.
“Our dad hides our toys in the pantry, don’t yer, dad?” Fred said.
He looked at Vera. “Ain’t he a sharp little bogger? You can’t tell these kids owt, can yer?”
“Yer can’t,” Vera said, pulling Arthur’s shoes and socks off. “Not like when we was kids. Believed owt, we did. When I was ten, only a little gel, our Oliver towd me to go up Canning Circus to gerrim some orange peel. When I asked him what he wanted it for, he said he’d bat my tab if I didn’t goo. He said he wanted it because he’d got an ’eadache, though. So I went. Silly bogger I was. It was miles away, and I was terrified coming back in the dark, under them bridges. I thought an owd man was going to run me. And when I got back wi’ me pina full of orange peel our Oliver just laughed. All on ’em did. I said: ‘Yer rotten bogger’—and chucked it in ’is face. Then me dad gen me a penny, and said it served ’im right. He was a bogger, though, our Oliver was. But he was good as well, though, a proper card. Everybody liked ’im. My dad cried like a baby when he got killed in the war.”
Brian had heard it before, yet always found it hard to believe in grandad Merton crying. He pictured someone bringing a telegram to the Nook: YOUR SON KILLED FOR HIS KING AND COUNTRY it would have said. Kicked to death by a drunken mule; Oliver’s pals had given it rum to drink before he led it across a moor — being a blacksmith like his dad and on his way to shoe it. Maybe they did it for a joke on him because he was having ’em on like he had his mam on. But everybody says he was a good bloke, though, so Brian was sorry Oliver’d got killed because that was one uncle less. A sprig of mistletoe was tied under the light. “Come on, Vera, let’s ’ave the first kiss of Christmas,” Seaton said.
“Stop it, ’Arold”—struggling, aware of four kids looking on. “Don’t be so bleddy daft.” But she was kissed.
The weekend before Christmas, Brian went to the Nook, stayed overnight, and the next day felt sick as he was about to start back. He stood by the door with a stick in his hand, ready to walk out and home under the black sky that looked like sending fists of rain at the hedges before he got far. He couldn’t move, and Lydia turned from her making-up at the mirror. “Look at ’im,” she said to her mother, “he’s badly, the poor little bogger. Come on to the fire, Brian. He’s as white as a sheet.” He leaned his stick in the corner and walked back. She undressed him and walked him up the stairs in his shirt, the smell of her newly applied powder and rouge bringing the sickness into his mouth so that she just got him to the pot in time. “How is he then?” Mary asked when she came down.
Lydia took two lemons and filled a jug with warm water. “He was as sick as a dog. I’m teking him some o’ this up.”
“He’d better stay ’ere over Christmas, if you ask me. Shall we get a doctor?”