After school I would usually be there, too, swinging my legs from a chair, drawing pictures instead of doing my homework. I dreaded the shop bell. They came in pairs. They ignored me; because my grandmother could not see me any more than she could see them, it seemed I was invisible to them, too. They would fix upon me eyes as apparently sightless and flat with tacit challenge as hers, and in front of me they stole from her with impunity, knowing I would say nothing. One would go for the sweets while the other would spend a halfpenny on something or other, talking in a voice loud enough to cover any rustling of the waxed paper lining the boxes. “I’ll have a sherbet fountain, please, missus. All right, kiddo? What’re you up to there, then? Oh, that’s a nice picture, look, i’n’t she doin’ a nice picture?”
And before they left they would sometimes, and always unsmilingly, select a liquorice stick or a couple of toffees from their haul and push them into my waiting hands. I was afraid of them, I suppose, but I also despised them, the sniggering amateurs. The pilfering of a few sweets was a villainy almost laughably inferior to that of letting my great-great uncle vanish forever into a freezing cloud of snow.
Dear Ruth
All this writing letters and not getting any replies is no good. I shouldn’t even be up reading that story of yours, it’s the middle of the night and I need my sleep. You should know that. I catch up in the day but I need my sleep NOW and you don’t seem to understand.
I get the impression I’ve made you angry and now you’re not speaking. You used to do that. I brought you in a bunch of flowers from the garden to say sorry. I used to do that.
But it’s you that gets them in water, I’m no good with that sort of thing, flower arranging. They’re in the conservatory.
A funny thing to do, not speaking-funny for you, I mean. You of all people. It was me you were trying to punish when you were not speaking, but it was you it hurt. You hated not talking, you talked about every little thing. There’s a story in every minute of every hour of every day, you said. You had all the words for everything, and if you didn’t, you knew some poet who did and you’d know where to find them.
The point is, when you withheld words and went around with your mouth locked, I didn’t mind. I quite liked it, the quiet. I just never told you that.
This time I do mind. I don’t like all the quiet. When it’s quiet I get a notion I’m not really alone. The quiet is in the room with me, somehow, and it’s not a nice, settled thing, it’s an angry kind of quiet. A quiet waiting to explode. I feel like shouting into it but who’s to hear? And what would I say?
Because what they don’t grasp, all these people who troop through this place asking how I am-is how on earth should I know, since you’re not telling me anymore?
Arthur
PS Egg sandwiches do NOT freeze. Or they do but they’re not egg sandwiches when they come out again. They mashed up all right though. I managed to eat them.
THE COLD AND THE BEAUTY AND THE DARK
Chapter 6: The Ashworths at Bank Street
Evelyn took her coat off quietly and paused in the passage outside the kitchen. She could hear Stan’s complaining voice clearly and it was she, as she fully expected, who was the subject of his complaint.
“She’s switched off. Half the time she don’t even know when I’ve come in the room,” he said. His mother said something Evelyn couldn’t hear.
“And she’s that bad-tempered,” he went on. “Told me she didn’t care for my friends and I wasn’t to go to any more meetings.”
Stan’s mother gave a short snort.“Hasn’t wasted her time, has she? Six weeks wed and laying down the law. I never liked them Leighs.You have to stand up to her, Stan.”
“I did! I says to her I’m not having that, I’ll do what I like when I like with who I like. I says to her, what’s the ruddy point of sticking round here, anyway? I says, you’re as switched off as your ruddy lightbulbs, you. I told her.”
Evelyn heard a sharp laugh from her mother-in-law. “Fact is, Stan, you’re too soft. Aye, and you’re a daft beggar an’ all. You let her lead you on, didn’t yer? Don’t tell me that baby’s an accident, she’s made a fool out of you. Got you just where she wanted you, up the ruddy aisle. You’ve only yourself to blame, Stanley Ashworth.”
Evelyn set down her parcel of sausages on the floor of the passage, her eyes stinging with tears. She smoothed her hands over her stomach and tried to breathe evenly. She wouldn’t raise her voice in this house, she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. But she couldn’t just walk in now and cook Stan’s tea as if nothing had happened. His mother had probably given him his tea, anyway. She always did if Evelyn’s shift hours meant Evelyn didn’t get back until after him. A man’s tea should be on the table as soon as he got home, according to Mrs. Ashworth. The same rule didn’t apply to her tea, of course, so once Stan was off for the evening and Mrs. Ashworth was listening to the wireless, Evelyn would get herself something to eat alone, a cheese and pickle sandwich, maybe an egg. More often than not she would eat her lonely tea standing in the kitchen, and then wash up and go to bed.
She tiptoed away upstairs. She had to get herself under a blanket to cry so they wouldn’t hear.
Later, lying curled in bed, she reflected that she probably did seem to be what Stan had called switched off. She either had too much on her mind or she was thinking of nothing at all, and whichever it was, she was just keeping quiet so she could concentrate. If she’d been a big talker he’d have been the first to complain, wouldn’t he? If she talked all the time she’d miss all the little noises that kept her in the picture. Her eyes were so tired from the bulb testing work these days, she relied on sounds, and on smells, too, to keep herself from making mistakes. She hadn’t noticed it so much at home at Roper Street, it being so familiar to her, how fuzzy things had got. But here in a different house, even though it was just a mile away and practically the same layout as her Mam’s, it was taking a bit of time to get the hang of things. She already knew when the kettle was ready or the fire needed coal. She knew who’d come in, Stan or his Mam, before she heard a voice; it was all in the feet. She had also worked out their different smells. Lucky Strikes and Brilliantine was Stan, a sweetness like very old jam mixed with mothballs, Mrs. Ashworth. Even without those signs, their breath was enough to go on. Most days, Stan’s was beery. Mrs. Ashworth had taken the pledge years ago and never touched a drop, but she was wheezy and dyspeptic. Evelyn could track her whereabouts easily from the traces of her frequent peppermint belches.