Another mile. The autumnal grass smelled sweet. A pigeon on a gate post rattled away as if aware of his murderous thoughts. Beyond the last house of the village, forking left between the fields, the east wind drove at his face. An isolated cloud was flying by, tatterdemalion white against surrounding blue, heading for companionship towards a more solid bank in the west.
Blue vetch half hidden in the hedge. No other person in sight, his freedom was threatening, too much like isolation, no compensation for the effort of going forward. He thought of his room at Mrs Denman’s, and peace when sitting at his table to read or write, wondering why he had put himself beyond its range. The factory, even more protective, was pushed out of mind to avoid sprinting back for the train on hearing its whistle.
The words ‘Old Hall’ on the five-barred gate at the end of the gravelled drive had once been white but were now half-covered with mildew. Getting too old to keep the place in order. He lifted the latch and jammed the gate back against the bayleaf bush, leaving it wide open for a quick escape. A few sheep ran from the fence on either side, and in the garden area before the house his father poked a hoe into a flowerbed. He must have heard my footsteps. Or maybe the man at the pub had phoned to say I was on my way. Or the man on the train had called from the crackers hospital in Cromer.
‘Herbert!’
‘Hello, Father.’ He put out a hand, but Hugh pulled him forward. ‘I’m glad to see you, my boy, very glad.’ He was strong, and bony, and reeked of the tobacco he began loading into his curved pipe. ‘We did hope you’d get here for lunch. Couldn’t wait, though, or it would have gone cold. It was a leg of best lamb — mint sauce and all the trimmings. Your mother had Mrs Sewell cook it. Still, there’s plenty left. We even put out a bottle of wine, though there’s beer if you want it.’
Hugh changed from boots to shoes in the conservatory. ‘I wanted to visit you in Nottingham but your mother said you wouldn’t like that, though she needed to see you more than I did. She seems to know you better.’
Herbert felt horror at the notion of such a visit: ‘This is my landlady, Mrs Denman. She mothers me a bit too much, I’m afraid. And this is Frank, her fancyman. Yes, it is a small room, but it’s all I need to sleep in, and when I come back from the factory, or totter up to bed half-drunk on a Saturday night. I’m sorry, Mother, but for that you’ll have to go downstairs and across the yard.’ ‘It wouldn’t have been a good idea.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘I only have one room, and it’s hardly the place to entertain anyone, believe me.’
‘That’s nonsense, and you know it. I wouldn’t have cared if you were living in a cave. You should have seen some of the mud holes I had to live in for weeks at a time in Burma. If my mother had been able to call on me I’d have welcomed her with open arms! You’re a grown responsible man from a good family, and you know perfectly well how to go on.’
The row had started earlier than expected, his father wanting to bluster him into the ground. Herbert felt awe, even a shameless fear, stepping back to knock against a column of telescoped plant pots. He straightened them. Bert gave Herbert a nudge, stiffened him not to be afraid of the old bastard, told him he could even be conciliatory. He envied Archie having a father who didn’t know when he was coming out of the army. ‘I’ll get a flat soon, then it’ll be marvellous for both of you to come and see me.’
‘That’ll be a move in the right direction.’
Herbert looked at him, getting towards seventy, frailer perhaps than he thought himself to be. It wouldn’t do to feel pity, though a tinge went through him, and straight out again. Better if they were to go into the house where his mother might soften their talk, but Hugh stood upright among the potted plants and puffed away as if to gas them both with his smoke. ‘We don’t see you from one year’s end to another, and I know your mother suffers from it. She doesn’t say so, but when she suffers so do I, which is totally unnecessary.’
A knife for cutting string lay on the slatted table, and Herbert turned his eyes away, disturbed at such a murderous thought. His father only missed him because his mother did. If she wanted to call on him alone in Nottingham it would be all right, though the thought of them walking up Mrs Denman’s staircase was intolerable. He re-harnessed his self-control. ‘I’m sorry about that.’
‘Well, never mind. Let’s go in. You didn’t come here to cross swords with me.’
He should have expected they would be more concerned about him in their retirement, been old enough to realize their cloying wishes for his wellbeing, but if guilt was all they could make him feel they could get stuffed, especially when Maud showed him to a large room on the first floor looking across the paddock and orchard, a vague hint of metallic sea in the distance.
He took in the commodious luxury, the perfect appointments of a double bed, a wardrobe, two tables, an armchair, a large sink with steel taps, and heavy pelmetted drapes to close off the world, as well as a bathroom for himself alone next door. ‘It’s yours, whenever you come to see us, though we’d like you to live in it all the time, no questions asked. Me and your father have talked about it. We’d make you an allowance. And if you want to cut yourself off I can get an electrician to put in a kettle. You’d be quite cosy in here. I know you would be.’
It was the ideal refuge, perfect and long wanted. ‘Thank you, Mother.’ He could sit in peace and write, totally cared for while heaping up the pages of a novel. ‘Scribbled much today, you dark horse?’ one of them would enquire, not knowing that the other had said the same an hour ago. He would be an infant again, till they arranged for men in white coats to come one morning and cart him off. You only went home again when you died, not at twenty-five. So the room wasn’t for him. Nor could it ever be, with his parents so close. Would Isaac have called him a fool to refuse? No doubt about it, but a fool was always the master of two imperfect worlds, saw neither clearly but survived the perils of both. ‘I’ll be going back tomorrow.’
She sat on the bed. ‘Oh, Herbert, so soon?’
‘I must be at work on Monday morning.’ He hardened himself against her wanting to make him cry tears of chagrin for the way the trap was closing. If he stayed an extra twenty-four hours he might hang on forever, and the thought made him so blindingly angry that he had to fight off his berserker mood. Easy. Huge efforts were no efforts at all, but the minor annoyances were dangerous.
‘But why do you work in a factory, Herbert? I don’t understand it.’
He preferred to pity her rather than shout, which made him say, the first time loud and clear to anyone but himself: ‘I’m thinking of writing a novel about it.’
‘Ah! I see.’ The knowing smile told him he’d said exactly what would satisfy her. A report of it might even mollify his father, which made him regret having spoken, since he didn’t know whether he would ever be able to make the claim good. Lying to make someone happy was a crude ploy, and he wished it unsaid. If he didn’t want it to be a lie he would have to write the bloody book, which would give them some control over his future. He wouldn’t put up with that. Only if they were dead could he follow his path with a quiet mind, but they seemed so full of life he was sure they would live forever.
‘And after you’ve written it?’
He laughed, glad now that the idea had shot up from more or less nowhere, while knowing there could be no such place. ‘No use thinking about that. It takes years to write a book. A good one, anyway. Another thing’, he went on, ’is that I’m working in a factory because I feel easy being among machines. It’s my métier, it seems.’