Читать книгу Mr Alfred, M.A. - James Kennaway - Страница 8

CHAPTER ONE

She passed for a widow when she went to Tordoch. She flitted across the river thinking nobody there would know her husband had left her. He was a longdistance lorrydriver, always coming or going and never saying much the few hours he was at home. He went to Manchester one day with a load of castings and vanished, lost and gone for ever, as untraced and untraceable as those banal snows some folk keep asking about. Not that she bothered to ask. She was a working-woman with a good overtime in the biscuit factory. She could do without his wages. The manless planet of her life moved round her son Gerald. He was Gerry to his schoolmates, but never to her. She always gave him his name in full. She thought it sounded right out the top drawer that way. That was why she chose it, though neither she nor her husband had ever any Gerald among their kin. She loved her Gerald fiercely. She loved him a lot more than she loved his little sister Senga. He was a good boy to her, but too kind and gentle perhaps, too innocent. She had always to be protecting him from the malice of the world. But that’s what she was there for. He was tall for his age, blond and grinning. The girl was skinny, gin-gerhaired, crosseyed, freckled and nervous. She had loved her father because he used to cuddle her at bedtime. But after the row she got for asking where he was when they flitted she was afraid to mention his name again.

About a year later, say the week before Christmas, when she was turned eleven and Gerald was fourteen, he was thumping her hard because she wouldn’t fry sausages for him at teatime, even after he told her twice. The anapaests of his bawling were hammered out by his punches.

‘Aye, you’ll do what I say and jump up when I speak for you know I’m your boss and you’ve got to obey.’

Eight scapular blows.

She whimpered and crouched, but she still defied him, and her mother came home earlier than expected and caught her red-eyed in the act. Gerald was glad to have a witness of his sister’s disobedience and complained it wasn’t the first time.

Mrs Provan stared at Senga, frightening her.

‘You’d start a fight in an empty house you would,’ she said. ‘You bad little besom.’

She advanced speaking.

‘You know damn well it’s your place to make a meal for Gerald when I’m not in. I’m fed up telling you.’

Senga retreated silently.

Poised to jouk, right hand over right ear, left hand over left ear, her head sinistral, she borded the kitchensink in a defence of temporary kyphosis.

Mrs Provan halted.

Senga straightened.

‘It was me set the table and made the tea,’ she replied with spirit, confounding her mother and her brother in one strabismic glare. ‘If he wants any more he can make it himself.’

‘It’s not a boy’s place to go using a fryingpan,’ said Mrs Provan. ‘That’s a girl’s job. Your job.’

‘It’s him starts fights,’ said Senga. ‘Not me, It’s him. Always giving orders.’

Her guard was dropped.

Her mother swooped and slapped her twice across the face, left to right and then right to left.

Gerald grinned.

Senga wept.

‘I wish my daddy was here.’

Gerald chanted.

‘Ha-ha-ha! Look at her, see! She wants to sit on her daddy’s knee!’

‘She’ll wait a long time for that,’ said Mrs Provan.

She put her arm round Gerald, ratifying their secret treaty, and Gerald rubbed his hip against her thighs.