Nor was that entirely the case, for in his dark thoughts he knew to the marrow and back again who he was, certainly in a more complicated way than anything she could mean. He was two people instead of one, and knew them both intimately, even if only because they were so widely separated and he could see them from every angle. You couldn’t be more deeply aware of yourself than that.
The advantage of such thoughts was that before knowing what part of the town he strode through he was almost home, having hardly noticed his part in the real world at all.
The word love came up all too often in their encounters, especially after they had been together in his room, which she liked even less than the district roundabout. She sat on the bed fixing her suspenders. ‘Where do you think all this is going to lead?’
His mood hardened. Not another discussion about that. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, are we just going to go on like this forever?’
He opened the curtains and looked out over the dismal backs, not a good sight for his morale. ‘What would you like us to do?’
‘If you don’t know, how can I?’
She was proposing to him, but wouldn’t come right out with it. He put on his jacket, fastened the top button. ‘I like things as they are.’
‘Oh, like, like, like,’ she cried out. ‘I don’t care what you like. That’s not what I mean.’
He passed the ever clean handkerchief from his lapel pocket, in case tears were close. ‘I love you so much I want it to go on like this forever.’
‘Well, I don’t know.’ She sniffed into his linen. ‘I don’t, I really don’t.’ And threw the handkerchief on the bed. ‘You can see me home now.’
Her kisses were just as passionate at the gate, and he was more than in the mood to match them. Quarrels were meaningless when they were finished. Let things go on forever, until for some reason they stopped. Marriage to her or anyone would be a loss of freedom, and as serious as suicide.
They said they loved each other, genuine sentiments on either side, though at times he thought guiltily that they couldn’t altogether be so on his, otherwise he would indeed have known there was somewhere to go from where they were now. To latch himself on to her style of life would mean climbing the ladder to where he came from, which was unthinkable. Maybe their love in bed was only so satisfying because they disagreed on almost every issue, the one pleasure that stopped them running a mile from each other.
Having written down his thoughts on the matter, and put the papers into a folder for possible use in the future, he yawned and got into bed.
Fifteen
Herbert was happy to see steam coiling from the chimney of Wilford pit, and hear the jangle of laden coal trucks in the shunting yards. ‘Work, you bastards, work!’ he made Bert shout. ‘Flat out, day and night! Work! Keep at it!’ — then pulled him to rein but not before he had pictured a cartwheel, and a maniacal laugh with a thumb at his nose.
He passed through the area to reach his favourite strolling ground by the sluggish but insidious Trent, under towers of humming transmission lines, where surveyors were checking levels and mapping the alluvium to make roads and lay out factories.
The city spread its buildings for people to enjoy, better dwelling places than those on the crummy acres of the Meadows where Archie lived. The new estate across the river caused arguments when Cecilia said what a shame it was there’d soon be no countryside left. Her complaint reminded Herbert of tedious belly-aching books by D. H. Lawrence and others, who wanted people to live in cottages without bathrooms but with the Greenwood Tree at hand to dance around at the weekend; while at night they would read those same writers’ books by oil and candlelight. He erased the picture, and walked more quickly, glad when he was beyond all sight of the city.
A notebook on his knee, he sat by the weir at Beeston, green water sliding over the lip as smooth as paint. In the warm sun, when the breeze slackened, smoke from his cigarette kept off the midges. Instead of stories and sketches he thought he would use his experience of the last seven years and write a novel. People on the street and at work, and his digs, led intense and unique lives. They did everywhere, but few seemed to realize that they did here as well. Everyone he knew thought themselves the centre of the world, as far as they were concerned. Burdened in the morning with fatigue, headaches and unresolved dreams on their way to the factory, they were quick to be offended if anything unexpected was put in the way of routine, not wanting to work but knowing they must to earn a living. Only when fully awake in the middle of the day, and aware that all they had to do was endure until evening, could they afford to be cheerful. They slogged home at half past five, as if having stood so long at a machine had solidified legs and feet into lead. Yet when a sluice of water had gone over chest and face, and they’d eaten a tea of the cheapest food, the daze cleared from before their eyes, and what seemed like the length of another day opened for them to do what they liked in. Eight hours of sweat had been traded for eight hours of freedom, and everyone was different in the use they put it to. Likewise with Bert, who Herbert at times knew better than himself. The permutations of stories from such existences were endless, and even incidents out of his imagination could be described in sufficient detail to seem credible. He mulled until clouds darkened over the eddying water, giving reason to hurry home and make a beginning.
The typed sheets lay on his table under a folded shirt, a secure enough hiding place, he had thought, until Mrs Denman said one day at supper: ‘I didn’t realize you were writing a book, Bert.’
He cut a sausage in two, dipped one half in a pool of sauce. ‘What meks yer think that?’
She let the newspaper fall. ‘I can’t see as Archie will like what you say about him, true or not.’
‘It ain’t Archie,’ he said gruffly, reaching for the bread. ‘And if it was he wouldn’t mind.’
‘I only found it because I wanted to wash your shirt’ — not caring, he assumed, to be accused of snooping. ‘As for that woman you write such things about, well! I suppose she’s that nice dark one you tek to your room.’
‘No.’ He didn’t see why she should feel like a criminal or, worse, a sneak. ‘It’s completely made up.’
‘So you say. But there’s me in it, as well. I’ve got black hair, though, not ginger.’
‘It’s all right, Ma.’ He could only laugh, and touch her arm. ‘I’ll alter it before it’s finished. You won’t know yourself when I’ve done with you.’
‘That’s a fine thing to say!’ Which remark he couldn’t decide how to take. Perhaps she was amused at the description, and wanted him to leave it be, for she smiled: ‘I allus thought there was more to you than met the eye.’
Within three months he had written the novel again, sucking so much ink into the rubber sack of his fountain pen that he wondered if for the rest of his life he would use sufficient of the blue-black liquid to drown himself. Changing people so that they couldn’t be recognized, yet not distort the sense of their reality, or their appearance to the world, seemed hardly possible. The best he could hope was that — if by a far off chance anyone in the district read it — few but scattered qualities of various people they knew would be detectable. He wanted to make the book readable and convincing mainly for himself and for whoever didn’t know how industrial workers lived.