‘They haven’t called for some time,’ Isaac said, suggesting that his tormentors were either on holiday or occupied with some other elderly tenant. ‘Which means, I suppose, that I can expect them any day. I’m ready for them, though.’
Herbert held up his sack.
‘What’s this, then?’
‘I owe yer summat.’ More than anyone else, he thought, untwisting the strand of wire from a bundle of sticks and laying them on crumpled paper in the fireplace.
‘You don’t have to speak the local lingo to me,’ Isaac said, holding his hands to flames that waved in the grate.
‘I’m practising the accent for when I get a job next week.’
Isaac took books from the table and slotted them in the shelves, then washed his hands at the sink. ‘I always thought you were a funny chap.’ He pushed his false teeth back to the roof of his mouth. ‘I can’t think what you’ll end up doing with your life.’
‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, and if I never do, it’ll be all right by me.’
‘Aren’t you going to stop for some tea?’
‘No, I’m off to the library for an hour. I’ll call in a couple o’ days.’
Archie beat a man and his fancywoman to a table, the Peach Tree was crowded as usual. The army diet had thinned him down to a well-toned six-footer, made him healthier than when he’d gone in. His demob leave had started but he was still in uniform. ‘There was talk of us staying on because of the Russians trying to grab Berlin. They wouldn’t have kept me, though. Not that I hated it any more, but I’d had enough. I spent half my fucking time on jankers this last month. Sometimes I thought I’d ram one up the spout and tek the sergeant-major with me. Even the officers got my number. So no more army for me, unless it’s two years on guard outside the Eight Bells with an allowance of ten pints a day and all found. I start back at the factory next week. I’ve got a nice married woman on the go, so I need to earn some money.’
‘There’s a little job I want yer ter gi’ me a hand with first,’ Bert said.
Archie stopped the jar halfway to his mouth. ‘Anything, my owd, except I draw the line at robbin’ a bank.’
‘No, it ain’t that yet,’ though the adventure of a big snatch and well-managed getaway, all planned to the off-chance of a dropped pin, and no violence unless called for, went through Herbert’s mind as a good scheme for a stood-down infantryman, except it would be like the pictures where everything went wrong. He told him about Isaac’s trouble with the rent man’s bullies. ‘All we have to do is be there when they call, and frighten them off, or kick the shit out of them if they don’t get the message.’
Archie laughed. ‘Yer don’t need me. Just show ’em that scar on yer clock, and they’ll run away screamin’. Only don’t let my new woman see it, or she’ll want me to buy one as well. I was frightened to death when I saw it in Cyprus, but I didn’t say owt. All yer need now is an eye-patch and a wooden leg. Yer look as if somebody’s comin’ through that door to get yer, and ye’re wonderin’ whether to knife ’em or strangle ’em.’
‘These are hard men, from what I’ve heard. It might not be easy.’
‘All the better,’ Archie said. ‘It’s at least a month since I ’ad a set-to. I’ve got itchy knuckles. Is the old man a relation o’ yourn?’
‘A sort of uncle.’
‘That settles it. I’ll get bullshitted up for the fray.’
‘We’ll have another,’ Bert said. ‘Then we’ll do a recce and plan it all out.’
Archie would be posted across the street, and stalk the men two minutes after they’d entered the building. Bert, already in, and waiting at the top of the turning stairs, would have the advantage of height and be hidden from Isaac’s door. He and Archie decided to wear their uniforms, on the assumption that a couple of tall swaddies couldn’t but seem more threatening to a pair of bastards who had no doubt been deserters all through the war.
‘A pincer movement’, Archie said, ‘by the First Battalion Stalks and Wanks. When’s the day?’
‘Next Monday, I hear, after the landlord’s been for his rent. We’ll just go over it again, to mek sure we know our stuff. We won’t disturb the old man, though.’
Archie stood to empty his jar. ‘I’ll be off to see my woman, after that. Her husband’s on nights, and I’ve got to mek hay while the sun shines, though it looks as if it’s going to chuck it down in ten minutes.’
Green double-decker buses circled Slab Square, the biggest market place in the country, or so Archie had informed him, as if he had designed and built it himself, or was glad to tell Herbert something he didn’t know. Cement block borders lined the pavements and flowerbeds which in springtime blossomed with comic book colours. Archie also told him that if you stood between the lions in front of the Council House for an hour a week everybody who lived in the town would sooner or later pass by.
Not that Herbert wanted to see anyone at all, why he was idling there was hard to say, unless wondering whether to go back to his room, or spend an hour in the library before closing time. He lit a cigarette, envious of people who knew without thinking what to do and where to go. A woman togged up with wire glasses and false teeth, flaunting a gaudy headscarf and puffing a cigarette, dragged a grizzling kid with one hand and bent towards a baby reined into a pushcot with the other. A few paces by, she stopped and backtracked till level with Herbert.
‘Oh, so yer’ve come back, ’ave yer?’ She jutted her face at him, speaking with such venom he almost lost balance. ‘I’m surprised yo’ ’ad the cheek, after all that. I thought I’d seen the last o’ yo’. I don’t know how you could show your face in this town agen, after the trouble yo’ caused.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What do you mean what do I mean? I suppose you thought you’d changed so much in three years nobody ’ud reckernize yer? Some bleddy ’opes, mate. I’d know yo’ any time, even with that scar down your fancy clock. I expect some ’usband slashed yer. Serves yer right, if he did. He shoulda bleddy killed yer!’
He could only smile, and wonder what villainous sod she had mistaken him for. Maybe she was a bit off her head, or came out every day to pick on someone at random for a bit of fun, and she had fixed on him because he happened to be standing there. Quite an adventure, really. But look affronted, he told himself. Look shocked. Look as if ready to do her in if she doesn’t stop her senseless ranting. Look as mortally insulted as you’re beginning to feel.
Yet her misery was real, and cut through both the Bert and Herbert layers of who he was. The voice behind the diatribe locked into harmony with her raddled but still young face, and he leaned half fainting against the stone lion. ‘Eileen!’
‘Oh, so yer know me, do yer? Yer’ve got my name wrong though, that’s all. I’m not Eileen, but I suppose she was just another of the women you took down. I’m Betty, and yer bleddy well know it. Don’t even remember my name! That’s the bloody limit.’
Thank God for that. She wasn’t Eileen. A middle-aged man and woman stopped to enjoy the entertainment. The child in its pushcot tugged and screamed. ‘I’ve no idea who you are,’ Herbert said.
‘Look at him, then’ — she jabbed a finger at the kid. ‘Go on, look, because he’s yourn. I was pregnant when you went off in the army and left me all on my own.’
Unless Eileen’s middle name was Betty she was barmy, she had a screw loose, was all he could think. He’d used the best frenchies, and three months had gone by between fucking her and getting on the boat, and she hadn’t blabbed a word. If she was Eileen the kid was obviously somebody else’s. Even though it couldn’t be his he considered taking a quid out of his wallet and pushing it into the child’s hand as a gift, but resisted because that would be admitting responsibility. She knew very well it wasn’t his, and shouting was her idea of getting a bit of her own back on the world. It was sometimes hard to remember who he had fucked during those heady days when he was seventeen.