Isaac, sensing the fracas was finished, opened his door and came on to the stairs holding a large black-handled two-foot butcher’s knife. ‘I appreciate what you’ve done, but they would have got this if they’d come in and I’d been on my own. Nobody persecutes me and gets away with it.’
Archie laughed. ‘Nar, Dad, yer can put that away. It’s only fists they appreciate. Next time they’ll gerra real pastin’!’
‘Now you know the score,’ Bert told them. ‘So fuck off, and pick on somebody else.’
Beer-barrel had given up, but Dandyman, an eye bruised and his overcoat torn, was about to say something. He caught sight of Archie’s moiling fist and thought better of it. They weren’t in the game for a fight to the finish.
Bert and Archie followed them to Slab Square, then turned downwind for the Eight Bells. ‘Are you all right, then?’
‘One of ’em got me in the ribs,’ Bert said, ‘but all I need is a drop o’ Shippoe’s oil. Then I’ve got summat to tell yer.’
When they were seated by their drinks Archie asked what it was. ‘But let me sink this pint, and then I’ll listen.’
‘I was standing by the lions the other day and this tart I thought was Eileen started yammering at me. At least I think it was Eileen. I couldn’t be sure. She said one of the kids she’d got with her was mine.’
Archie leaned back, laughing. ‘Yer’ll have to get used to things like that. It ’appens all the time. If it was Eileen, though, she must a bin having yer on. Our Janet says it was Pete Scrimthorpe who knocked her up. Then Jack Wiley married her. He’s as happy as a pig in shit, Jack is. Thinks the kid’s ’is. Everybody knows except ’im, the dozy bleeder. I expect somebody’ll tell ’im one of these days, and then he’ll cut ’is throat. Or he’ll ’ang issen in the shed to save shittin’ on the carpet.’ He blew smoke rings towards the bar, unable to hold down his merriment. ‘On the other ’and, the kid could be yourn.’
‘’Ow do yer mek that out?’ he asked, putting on as near a smirk as he could manage. He wondered what went on in Archie’s mind: only what you heard and what you saw gave any clue. No cunning, subterfuge, or power of ratiocination, that’s what he loved about him. But Archie leaned close. ‘Well, you know them frenchies our Raymond lets me have? A couple of his pals at the cleaning factory got their tarts in the family way, so one day a chap blew one of ’em up, and saw pin-holes all over the place. Nearly killed our poor fucking Raymond. Some wicked bastard must have known what was going on, but fancy playing a trick like that. You was in the army by then, but you might ’ave ’ad one o’ the early models. It’s like that old joke, about a scaffolder putting up some big name, letter by letter at the top of a building. Well, ’e slips, don’t ’e? And falls through the big letter O and gets killed. There was a joke and it ended summat like: “He went as he came, through the ’ole in a letter!” So let’s drink to it, Dad!’
Bert laughed, to show that such humour was right up his street. The publican looked up at the noise of two local swaddies of the same tribal family on a night out that promised to be very good for trade.
Eleven
Drills, milling machines and lathes buggered the hands back to what could only be regarded as normaclass="underline" calloused, scarred, yet each day becoming more flexible for work. In cap, jacket and overalls he jinked his way along cobbled streets, or swerved around corners on his bike, to gaol himself at his appointed spot and be lost in nobody’s aura but his own, except at tea break and dinner hour. Bashing out energetically on piece rate, his earnings climbed in a few weeks to give a Friday pay packet nicely padded with a dozen pound notes and a few bits of change.
Sweat was cheap at the price but he worked with dogged contentment, no truck nowadays with the darts or any other team. He could laughingly tell people to all but piss off without fear any more of giving himself away or being thought stand-offish. He was an old hand again.
In the evening after a wash and his sit-down tea he went upstairs and beamed light on to the mirror. With scrubbed fingernails, a fresh handkerchief and bottle of TCP he cleared whatever blackheads had formed on cheeks and temples from too long standing in an atmosphere of suds and metal dust. The fight against spotted skin was never-ending.
As a pastime it amused him to scribble whatever came to mind about people at the work place, easier when feeling clean. He unscrewed his pen and hovered it over lined paper, never able to decide on the exact moment it started to move, nor why. A few pages took on the shape of a story, till he felt like a spy in wartime France collating reports on resistance and the moral state of the inhabitants, certainly fancied himself at this early stage as an observer, perhaps the smaller part of himself, looking on the world from the outside. It was the ideal viewpoint from which to write, and if he didn’t sit down every night or two with his pen the factory existence would become so intolerable he would have to flee from it.
The effort of staying in a situation he didn’t altogether want (only to avoid one even worse — though he couldn’t imagine what that might be) led him to try thinking clearly in the hope of finding an answer as to why he must ask the question at all. The result was that there were no answers, only thoughts that chased each other around in the same circle. The inner strength of his upbringing sustained him in the way of life he had chosen, so he must resist abandoning the factory for fear of turning into a faceless deadbeat shambling from place to place for the rest of his life. Happy or not, it didn’t matter, as long as he could tolerate the present, live from day to day, become stable and content, and carry on as if working in the factory and living at Mrs Denman’s was half his natural state, the other part putting up with what he had become, looking on it with tolerance and, when necessary, keeping an excess in check.
Existence was easy when such brooding spared him. At dinnertime he would finish his sandwiches and guzzle off his tea in ten minutes and, if the pavement was dry, spread a Daily Mirror to sit on, and lean against the factory wall with the latest Penguin or Everyman classic. Cap low over his eyes, a posture in no way strange for a workman, he opened the book so as to hold it in one hand, and read till the hooter called him in at two to continue the day’s stint.
Wood from packing cases splintered in the factory yard was sometimes thrown aside as scrap, so he tied up a bundle and took it home as kindling for Mrs Denman. Another time he humped a load through town for Isaac, and on his way a man asked where he’d got it, wanting to buy some himself, for the air was icy, and fuel of any sort hard to find.
Isaac wore leather gloves, a trilby hat, and a heavy woollen scarf inside his overcoat. ‘My last lumps o’ coal went yesterday, but it’s not the end of the world, to be without a bit of fire.’
‘Gorra chopper?’ Bert split the wood into smaller pieces on the landing. The room was cubby enough to warm quickly, and with cigarettes on the go as well he asked if there’d been any more bother from the landlord’s men.
‘I ain’t heard a dicky-bird. Seems you and your friend discouraged them. In fact a woman from the Council was here yesterday, and said there’s a chance of me getting a small flat, with central heating. It might not happen for ten years or so because of the housing list. But I appreciate her giving me something to look forward to.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘Doesn’t it? I might even be sorry to leave the old den.’
Bert slung his nub end into the embers, and split more wood for another transitory blaze. ‘I’ve got to scram, or I’ll be late for my tea. Mrs Denman don’t like to be kept waiting with her burnt offerings.’