‘He just thinks a lot of people are shirking, Billy. You’ve got to admit he’s got a point.’
‘Do you know the height requirement for the Bantam regiments? Five feet. And do you know how many men from round here fail that?’
‘Billy, sometimes you sound exactly like your father.’
He picked up the paper and pretended to read.
‘There’s a lot of talk about a strike at the munition works. Your father’s all for it. Well, he would be, wouldn’t he?’
‘What’s it about?’
‘I don’t know.’ She groped for an unfamiliar word. ‘Dilution?’
‘Sounds right.’
‘Well, you can imagine your dad. “Bits of lasses earning more than I do.” “You mark my words,” he says, “after the war they’ll bring in unskilled labour. The missus’ll be going to work, and the man’ll be sat at home minding the bairn. It’s the end of craftsmanship. This war’s the Trojan horse, only they’re all too so-and-soing daft to see it.”’
Typical, Prior thought. However determined his father might be to raise the status of the working class as a whole, he was still more determined to maintain distinctions within it.
‘Oh, and he doesn’t like false teeth. That’s another thing,’ his mother went on. ‘Mrs Thorpe’s got them, you know. “Mutton dressed up as lamb,” he says. The way he goes on about her teeth you’d think she’d bit him. And then there’s Mrs Riley’s dustbin. Lobster tins, would you believe. “They were glad of a bit of bread and scrape before the war.”’
‘He’s got a funny idea of socialism.’
She shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know. Things like women’s rights, he was never in favour of that.’
‘No.’
‘I remember him going on at Beattie Roper about that.’
A pause. ‘I went to see Beattie.’
She looked stunned. ‘In prison?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve no call to go getting yourself mixed up in that.’
Faced with this sudden blaze of anger, he said, ‘I have to. It’s my job.’
‘Oh.’ She nodded, only half believing him.
‘How’s Hettie?’
His mother froze. ‘I wouldn’t know. I never see her.’
There had been a time, when he was seventeen, when he and Hettie Roper had been ‘walking out’, and, for once, the ‘quaint expression’ had been painfully accurate. ‘Walking’ was exactly what they did. And talking too, of course: passionate, heated talk, about socialism and women’s rights, spiritualism, Edward Carpenter’s ideas on male comradeship, whether there could be such a thing as free love. He remembered one day on the beach at Formby, sitting in the dunes as the sky darkened, and the sun hung low over the sea. All day he had been wanting to touch her, and had not dared do it. The sun lingered, tense and swollen, then spilled itself on to the water. ‘Come on,’ he said, picking up his jacket. ‘We’d better be getting back.’
That night, as on so many other nights, his mother had been waiting up for him. A book was open on her knee, but she hadn’t bothered to light the gas. And then the questions started. He realized then that she hated Hettie Roper. He didn’t know why.
‘Does she still run the shop?’ he asked.
‘No point. Nobody’d buy anything off her if she did.’
‘Does she work?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘So how does she live?’
A shrug. ‘She’s still got the allotment.’
‘I thought I’d pop round and see her.’
Silence.
Reminding himself he was no longer seventeen, Prior stood up and put his cup on the draining-board. ‘I won’t be long.’
Before the war, women used to sit on their steps in the warm evenings until after dark, postponing the moment when the raging bedbug must be faced, and taking pleasure in the only social contact they could enjoy without fear of condemnation. A woman seen chatting to her neighbours during the day quickly felt the weight of public disapproval. ‘Eeh, look at that Mrs Thorpe. Eleven kids. You’d think she could find herself summat to do, wouldn’t you?’ Now, looking up and down the street, Prior saw deserted doorsteps. Women were out and about, but walking purposefully, as if they had somewhere to go.
He supposed it was Mrs Thorpe’s name that came particularly to mind because she’d been one of the worst offenders, with her lard-white breasts the size of footballs, and Georgie or Alfie or Bobby worrying away at them, breaking off now and then for a drag on a tab end. Or perhaps, subconsciously, he’d already identified her, for there she was, coming towards him, divested of the clogs and shawl he’d always seen her in and wearing not merely a coat and hat but flesh-coloured stockings and shoes. It was scarcely possible the attractive woman with her should be Mrs Riley, but he didn’t know who else it could be.
They greeted him with cries of delight, hugging, kissing, standing back, flashing their incredible smiles. There was a saying round here: for every child born a tooth lost, and certainly, before the war, Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley had advertised their fecundity every time they opened their mouths. Now, in place of gaps and blackened stumps was this even, flashing whiteness. ‘What white teeth you have, Grandma,’ he said.
‘All the better to eat you with,’ said Mrs Riley. ‘And who are you calling Grandma?’
Mrs Thorpe asked, ‘How long have you got, love?’ And then, before he had time to answer, ‘Eeh, aren’t we awful, always asking that?’
‘Two days.’
‘Well, make the most of it. Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do, mind.’
He smiled. ‘How much scope does that give me?’
‘Fair bit, these days,’ said Mrs Riley.
He remembered, suddenly, that he’d sucked the breasts of both these women. His mother had been very ill for two months after his birth, and he’d been fed on tins of condensed milk from the corner shop, the same milk adults used in their tea. Babies in these streets were regularly fed on it. Babies fed on it regularly died. Then Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley had appeared, at that time, he supposed, lively young girls each with her own first baby at her breast. They had taken it in turns to feed him and, in so doing, had probably saved his life. He had known this a long time, but somehow, when Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley had been shapeless bundles in shawls, it had not registered. Now, though not easily discomforted, he felt himself start to blush.
‘Look at that,’ said Mrs Riley. ‘He’s courting, I can always tell.’
‘Are you courting?’ Mrs Thorpe asked.
‘Yes. Her name’s Sarah. Sarah Lumb.’
‘Good strong name that,’ said Mrs Riley.
‘She’s a good strong lass.’
‘Mebbe has need to be,’ said Mrs Riley, looking him up and down, speculatively. ‘Do y’ fancy a drink?’
‘No, I’d like to, but I’ve got to see somebody.’
‘Well, if you change your mind we’ll be in the Rose and Crown.’
And off they went, cackling delightedly, two married women going out for a drink together. Unheard of. And in his father’s pub too. No wonder the old bugger thought Armageddon had arrived.
Prior walked on, noticing everywhere the signs of a new prosperity. Meat might be scarce, bread might be grey, but the area was booming for all that. Part of him was pleased, delighted even. ‘Bits of lasses earning more than I do’? Good. Lobster tins in Mrs Riley’s dustbin? Good. He would have given anything to have been simply, unequivocally, unambiguously pleased. But he passed too many houses with black-edged cards in the window, and to every name on the cards he could put a face. It seemed to him the streets were full of ghosts, grey, famished, unappeasable ghosts, jostling on the pavements, waiting outside homes that had prospered in their absence. He imagined a fire blazing up, a window shaking its frame, a door gliding open, and then somebody saying, ‘Wind’s getting up. Do you feel the draught?’ and shutting the door fast.