Isaac held up his glass. ‘L’chaim!’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Long life, to you. It’s Hebrew.’
The promise of longevity seemed superfluous to someone who assumed he was going to live forever, or as close as dammit. Nevertheless, Herbert said ‘L’chaim, then,’ and took a fiery swig.
He thought the sherry in the bottle had gone down by half an inch, but couldn’t be sure, despite the glitter of certainty in Jacko’s eyes as he packed his kit for departure. ‘I wouldn’t say she liked it, but I wish I could have seen her face. Made her look prettier, maybe.’
‘She’s a good sort.’ Herbert defended her. ‘And I’ll bet she used to be very good-looking. I like Ma.’
Jacko stared at him, unbelieving. Such an uncertain end to the Sherry Saga was hardly worth either story or letter, but Herbert noted Mrs Denman’s glare from the window as Jacko, who left the bottle behind, marched smartly away with his bag and case to the station.
Having much on her mind Mrs Denman hurried to scour the room before Ralph got back, and maybe to work off her indignation at such a vile trick, though perhaps after a sip she assumed the doctored sherry had gone sour of its own chemical will, thinking no evil of Jacko at all. Herbert saw the emptied bottle in the dustbin and, however it was, tore his tale into shreds for fear Mrs Denman would read the papers with disgust on finding them under a shirt in his room.
Ralph pushed his bike up the steps, through the house and into the shed, limping as if he had worn his arse out on the saddle. He’d probably stood up in the train all the way from Ambleside. Herbert watched him fix the padlocks on his bike with a grin he hadn’t seen before. He couldn’t make it out, but thought he’d know before long. At the welcome home tea they were shown Ralph’s map and the routes he had pedalled with Mary, a maze of pencillings and arrows and circles. Mrs Denman fussed about what a long way it was, and I’ll bet you was tired, and it’s a wonder you didn’t get lost, and I’m sure you both slept like logs at night.
Herbert’s suspicion that Ralph was keeping something back was confirmed when they were in their beds and before the light was put out. ‘She let me have it.’
‘What, yo’? I don’t believe yer.’
‘Oh yes, she did. Coming down from Helvellyn. And again near Keswick. And then near Ambleside, and then in the bushes near Langdale youth hostel — after supper.’
Herbert imagined penpusher Ralph putting a map on the wall and sticking pins in every place he’d had his oats, till it looked like the Lake District was doing to close down with a smallpox epidemic. ‘And you’re still going to marry ’er?’
‘More than ever. I told you, we’re in love.’
She’s probably in the club by now. ‘I’m dead jealous.’
He pulled off the light. ‘Knew you would be. Good night.’
There were times when Herbert thought he had landed in as compact a prison as the one at school. He was lucky, but discontented, knowing that his present state would have been less of a prison if he’d been able to write to someone and tell them about it.
The walls were made of everything well worth describing, which heightened his perceptions and rattled his nerves. He wanted to write something about it, anything. Curiosity was spoon-fed without asking, during every hour but those passed in the dead land of sleep, where too much was minced into his dreams to sort out.
He also knew that his aching to write to someone was an impulse to betray himself and make a glorious failure out of his enterprise. The scale of the fall was tempting, but a sense of self-preservation veered him from the course of Lucifer hurtling through space, or Phaeton glorying in a smash up of universal proportions.
The police raid on the pub worried him more than it had at the time. A partial blackout had been useful on getting to Nottingham, but the war was now over and the streets lit — though not as bright as pre-war, Mrs Denman said, what with rationing and call-up still going on.
The end of the war against Japan in August made him feel still more visible. He couldn’t otherwise explain his anxiety, as if a curtain was slowly lifting between him and the world he had abandoned. To be clawed back into the life of school was such a prospect that he would sooner sling himself into a vat of acid. Here was where he belonged, because he had made the place his own and was familiar with everyone. There were times when he couldn’t understand how it had been so easy. Maybe he had been to a good school after all, because what other could have trained him to fit in so well? If they caught him he would break out again, just like the chaps in Caged Birds, who had escaped time after time, and hide himself even more where they would never think to look.
All the same, in spite of his fears, he would not walk the street except openly and with the expected workman swagger. He would go into a pub if he felt like it and have it with Eileen whenever they went out together. To lessen the chances of being found and forced back to school he decided to volunteer for the army a month or two before he was eighteen so that there’d be less questions asked than enrolling under conscription. After all, he told himself with a pride not altogether trusted, he was Thurgarton-Strang, and the longer he was free the less likely was anybody to find him.
Six
From the heights above the forest a dusty mist lay like a pancake over a thousand lights trying to pierce but merely glowing through. He walked down the slope from the bus stop with Eileen, and Sheila her workmate, into the sodium atmosphere of frying and candy floss. If there was a place where nobody would be able to pick him out it was among the jam-packed crowds of the Goose Fair, yet in such pushing phalanxes he felt perilously unsafe, couldn’t explain why every glazed look seemed like a threat to his wellbeing. It was illogical, ludicrous even, and he forced a smile of protective inanity back on to his face.
Eileen on one arm, and Sheila taking the other, he guided them among the roundabouts — wondering what his school chums would say if they saw him now — and pulled them up the steps on to the slowing caterpillar. When the hood went down he’d be able to kiss them both, but would Eileen allow it? Well, she didn’t stab at his bollocks with her elbow, though maybe she was too dim to cotton on to where his hands were straying, and she laughed with the rest of them as long as he let his fingers creep in her direction now and again.
He threw a penny to a couple of kids who were begging, and bought sailor hats to amuse the girls before pulling them in for a circuit on the ghost train. On coming out, it was as if an invisible cloud of depressing gas flowed between the Saturnalian wailings of delight, and the rhythmical thump of traction engines. He had caught a fit of anxiety full blast, stood as if pinioned by the different coloured lights maggoting at his eyes, and by the people pushing around him, some malign force dividing him more than at any time since running away from school, as if a patient and eagle-eyed Inspector Javert in the crowd had been set on to get him.
Such paralysis couldn’t be explained, and fear even less. ‘Come on, come on,’ Eileen said, ‘get a move on, slow coach. What are you standing there for as if you’ve lost your way? We want to go on summat else, don’t we, Sheila?’
One moment lost beyond any hope of getting his senses back into the atmosphere of the fair, the next he felt the usual grin forcing its way on to his face, as if someone pulling strings had him under control. He lifted a wrist to sniff at flesh, as if the swarf smell of the factory might still be there, which it was, in spite of the thorough White Windsor swill he had given himself at the sink. The thrill of being at bay buoyed him all his waking hours. Even when unaware it fuelled his senses and fed his alertness.