‘Yeh, but I can’t see yo’ ever doing it.’
He’s right. I’m as grown-up as I ever will be, Herbert thought, or will ever want to be, or will ever need to be for what I want to do. I was a grown-up me from the day I was born, and growing up’s got nothing to do with it, in any case. I don’t have any wish to kill myself in that way, and never will have. Growing up is for the others, for those who can’t do anything else but live dead, or for those who go on living for people who write to show the living dead that they might not be as dead as they feel. ‘Yer can’t?’
‘Well, yer don’t show any sign of it. You’re a funny bogger, though. I never could mek yo’ out. Ye’re just like one of the lads, but sometimes there’s a posh bogger trying to scramble out. I’ve allus known it, but I’ve never said owt. A bloke can be what he likes for all I care, as long as he don’t think he’s better than me, and I know you’ve never thought that.’
‘You’re right there, Archie.’
The pink of the setting sun deepened against the window, and the steady expression in Archie’s grey eyes seemed to need the kind of answer which would soothe them both, and fuse them together into one brotherly flame, or at least find an explanation for the intolerable burdens that had bothered them since birth. ‘You’re not the only one who’s puzzled,’ Herbert said. ‘Sometimes I can’t even mek mysenn out.’
‘For instance,’ Archie said, ‘you could have bin a chargehand at work, but yer’ve never wanted to get on. Another thing is, yer’ve met some nice women, but you’ve never said owt about getting married.’
Bert banged him on the shoulder. ‘Come on. Let’s slop another one down, then we can get back. I’m beginning to feel knackered.’
A pall of dusk lay over the fields, films of mist permeating the greens and browns till next morning. He knew Archie too well to judge him, which may have been a limitation when writing about such people, but the fact was that Archie’s sins were also his, otherwise he couldn’t have written Royal Ordnance at all. Under a microscope rather than a magnifying glass, he recognized the eternal turmoil of unrest, indicated by lines across Archie’s forehead, the down-curving lips, and the occasionally twitching fists when speaking of real or imagined injustice. Perhaps it was only a phase in life which he, as well as those written about, would one day leave behind. Such feelings had become his own, which neither he nor Archie were ever likely to relinquish.
They leaned on a gate, staring at a dim light from a farm across the dip, and a cluster from the village like white spots surrounding a mysterious rural rite they could never be part of. Archie’s voice startled him. ‘Work tomorrow. Never stops, does it?’
Archie knew nothing of his novel. No one did. Maybe they would one day. He wanted to tell him, but didn’t in case the confession broke their notion of equality and trust. Whatever happened, he needed the friendship of his life to be safe, though the test would come later, which Archie would pass as easily as he had that for his driving licence.
‘Tek the wheel on the way back as well,’ Archie said, ‘to mek sure you get over that near miss’ — his first reference to it.
Herbert decided that his work in the factory must come to a stop. It would be too easy to stand rooted to the same spot forever, and go on till his life was washed away like milky suds flowing over shaved steel. ‘I’m packing it in,’ he said, when they were going over Trent Bridge. ‘The firm, I mean.’
Archie handled the window down to bawl at an old man in a new Ford Popular who was too slow getting away from the lights. ‘I’ve been expecting it,’ he said. ‘You should ’ave done it years ago. What shall yer do, though?’
He stopped for a Belisha beacon, so enclosed in himself, so dead selfish all his days that he hadn’t realized how intensely Archie must always have thought about him — even though such thoughts had been made plain enough in his book. ‘I’ll go down to London, be on the loose for a while. I’ll have to get a job sooner or later, I suppose, but I’ve got enough dough for a month or two. Give me time to look around.’
‘Good luck to you, is all I can say. Let’s not lose touch, though.’
Bert turned into Waterway Street. ‘We’ll never do that.’
He wiped his hands on the sud rag, and walked along the gangway to the plate-glass office. A week’s notice was the formality. ‘That’s a shame,’ the foreman said. ‘We thought you’d be with us forever. You’re the sort of bloke we can’t afford to lose, with these new export orders coming in.’
Good of him to say so, but all he could feel was a sadness that had no sorrow in it, because the world he half knew already was dominating his expectations. ‘I’ll miss the old place.’
‘If it’s the wages, I can put you in for a bit more.’
‘I’ve got a job in London.’
‘Ah, I wondered if it worn’t summat like that.’
On the last afternoon he wiped his hands, looking around as machinery fell silent and sweepers came in to clear up. Overhead belts squeaked to a stop, dynamos whined into their weekend rest, and men reached for jackets and knapsacks, put on caps, fastened bike clips, and set out on a quicker walk than most had shown coming in. Waiting in groups, they clocked off, the ding of each buff card pushed down into the available slots making a monotone song of release that set Bert whistling as he made for the gate.
He pushed his card down and bent it — Gedling, Bert — not sorry to walk away from a part of his life he could now afford to let go of. Men began running for the exits to be first at the bike sheds, and some who had cars were already revving up along the street. Archie waved, and offered to drop him off at his digs.
‘It’s all right. I feel like walking. See yer in the Eight Bells though later on.’
Archie wound down the window. ‘I’ll be there.’
The flowered dress, as she stepped from the ambulance that had brought her from the hospital, draped the stones in weight that had been taken away by her illness. ‘There’s nothing more they can do for her,’ Frank wept in Herbert’s room, handing him the clean towel brought up as an excuse. ‘If God would take me instead of her I’d be the happiest man in the world.’
‘It’s never like that, though, is it?’ was all Herbert could say.
‘I’ve never believed till now, but you’ve got to have Somebody you can pray to in a case like this.’ He straightened Herbert’s pillow, as if caring for him also might bring a miraculous recovery for Mrs Denman. ‘Tell her you’ll come back and see her, though, won’t you, Bert? You see, she still thinks she’s going to get better.’
Another week and he would be gone. He couldn’t wait, though wanted to see as much of her as possible. ‘I hope so, too. But we’d better go down. I don’t think she ought to be left alone for long.’
‘I shall miss yer, Bert.’ The snuffle in her voice embarrassed him into feeling pity, contemptuous of himself at not being able to help her. One of the last people he cared to see waste away and die, she would turn into a memory like all the others he would say goodbye to, and while she went on living she would turn him into a memory as well, which he hoped for so as to get the weight of the intolerable past off his back. Something would fill the space, but he was too weary of the present to wonder what it might be.
Despite her frailty and pain she stood up to set out his tea. Frank signalled with his eyes that they weren’t to stop her. ‘Will you be going home to your folks?’
Some were afraid to go home again because they dreaded the womb of milk and comfort, and would face anything rather than risk annihilation, but the stronger the fundamental tug, the more energy was generated in resisting it. ‘I don’t think so.’