“New York, unique, unique New York,” said Arthur. That was one of the exercises Miss Bose used to have him say, walking from one end of her lounge to the other with an encyclopaedia balanced on his head.
“Red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry.”
That was another.
He’d hated her lessons at the time. Now he enjoyed thinking about them. He liked to think of Miss Bose. The plastic headscarf she wore, her rouge, the way she scrubbed soot from her front step with a donkey stone and swept the dust from the pavement, feathered her ornaments. With her potted aspidistra and her rose petal perfume, the old lady was a throwback to the energy of the past, to having a future laid out for you, to a time when you didn’t have to work in the noise and the hot dark, spending your spare moments at the pub, the library or the moor, thinking often of that Larkin poem from your mam’s copy of The Less Deceived: ‘Spring’. The lines about those the female season has the least use for, seeing her the best of all.
On the wall was a photo collage, a boy and a girl in most of the pictures. The boy was a pretty thing, effeminate. The girl always wore sunglasses, had a face you could never truly make out. This must be the Swarsby children. There they were holding a Labrador puppy. There they were by a sports car and there again in a picture with a pretty woman with hair like pasta twirls, a satisfied man in his forties. Clive Swarsby was in only one of the photos. His arm was around another man, a handsome man, severe hair parted, prissy-looking. Swarsby and this man wore waistcoats, bow-ties, cummerbunds. They were surrounded by mist, or was it rug smoke? Each tilted a conceited face towards the camera.
Blink and you’re the wrong side of thirty. Never travelled, soft as shit and one day to be deader than driftwood. There was no point in bloody anything, not even your next breath. Arthur punched the photo collage, breaking the glass, then climbed the staircase of Threndle House. As he went, his hand dripped blood into the port spillage. Not that he noticed. He wouldn’t really much have cared if he had.
The upstairs was exactly like the downstairs. Dusty, sparsely decorated, Threndle’s rooms were either devoid of furniture, character or both. You had to laugh, so Arthur did. He laughed drunkenly through this grand old house.
Eventually he reached the master bedroom, which was as blue as the living room and just as furnished. More boxes were stacked against the walls, three wide, four high. There was a bed, king-sized, and the armchair and linen chest were fancily lined. Velvety drapes, a Juliet balcony, a compact dresser, a set of drawers and more boxes. Fuck me, a bathroom. Arthur had grown up using an outdoor bog.
Standing out on the balcony he smoked a roll-up and disposed of the dog-end, watching the ember nicker away in the wind. Swarsby’s bedroom looked like an unpacked set from one of those melodramas his mam used to drag him and Sam to. Aged seven and eight at the Odeon in Rotherham, Sam sitting transfixed, fingers belly-clasped, Arthur tugging the loose threads on the armrests and kicking the backs of the seats in front.
He sat on the bed where Swarsby slept: a father whose family weren’t forever looking at him like he was a meal that had gone wrong. When you thought about it, a big house was as good as it got, and it wasn’t even that good.
He gripped his knees until he’d composed himself, then went to the dresser, rifling through the drawers for something, anything, that he could sell that might make enough money to see out this strike. It wasn’t like the Swarsbys didn’t have plenty already. And if Shell already thought him a thief, why disappoint her expectations?
A jewellery box was in the top drawer, hidden at the back. It was made of sandalwood, uncarved but well-varnished, and had a copper clasp and a vacant keyhole. Arthur had just stuffed the box up his sweater when two channels of light flashed up the driveway and swept the bedroom. He ducked, swearing, feeling as hollow yet constricted as he did whenever he and Asa descended into the airlock at Brantford, speeding in the cage towards the drift tunnel. He tucked the sweater into the waist of his jeans to trap the box, then crawled out of the room, cursing every light as he made his way towards the stairs. He’d had to turn on, hadn’t he? Now the house was lit up like a bloody Christmas tree.
The stairs he took two at a time, pain in his toe forgotten. There wouldn’t be much Arthur could say to Shell if he was caught. On the other hand it might give him the chance to tell her that he loved her.
He burst outside and saw another vivid moon. The temperature had dropped and the car’s brisk light dominated everything, fog light penetrating the March air.
Too many roll-ups: Arthur had to catch his breath. He could see the lawn stretching beyond him like a great woollen pinafore. He felt oddly weightless, had a mind to walk towards the car now that it had finished parking, actually, both hands held out, ready for the cuffs. He might as well, seeing as between the coal board, the government and his family, the whole world wanted to gut him and part of him wished more than anything that it would get a move on.
“Arthur!”
A figure was standing on the garden wall, hands on its hips. Arthur shrank from it, but in doing so was obliged to edge closer to the car, which had just killed its engine. People were climbing out. “Why are the lights on?” said a girl. She wasn’t from around here.
“Daddy, look,” said a boy.
Nor him.
“Someone’s been inside. You two stay in the car while I go check.”
Swarsbys.
Arthur crept over the lawn to where the figure on the wall had been. There was no longer anyone there. He knew it was the only exit point, the same spot he and Lawrence had hopped over the night of the moth rug. He was about to make a break for it when a hand slipped over his mouth. He squirmed. Tried to cry out. Driving an elbow into his captor’s torso, he was rewarded with a grunt.
Still he was held fast.
Arthur kicked the man’s legs but another arm slid around his belly, somehow missing the jewellery box. He was forced upon the grass and pinned. Lips retreated across teeth. The world was soaking and a strange, cushioned piece of flesh was pressing against his shaven head. A weighted mass dug upon his back.
Arthur knew then who had him: whose hand was exerting the pressure. It was the same hand that had held him when he was a boy, the same hand that had stopped him from setting fire to the old tenterhouse on the hill that time. It was the same hand that had clamped to its howling owner’s neck all those years ago.
“Get off, Het. Let us go!”
Then came another voice.
“Dad.”
Arthur stopped struggling immediately.
“All right, kid.”
“What you doing?”
Het let go. Arthur climbed to his feet, and, seeing that his son and brother had come for him, had never felt so ashamed in all his life. He was going to cry. He couldn’t stop himself.
A sob came out.
Het shoved Arthur with both hands. “What the flaming hell!”
Arthur tried to speak. Het had him by the lapels now and he supposed he was in for a right pasting when the car’s horn sounded from over the way.
“Dad,” the girl called, “they’re still out here!”
Arthur pulled himself together and led the others into the shadows as Clive Swarsby appeared in the doorway of Threndle House. A squat man, Swarsby moved nimbly enough back to the car, ordering his son out of the way.