Читать книгу Honey for the Ghost - Louis Golding - Страница 4

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He turned the key in the front-door lock of the house in Territon Street and let himself in, then removed his army greatcoat dyed dark-blue and shook off the tiny globes of rain spread across it like a hoar-frost. Along the bare lobby and up the wooden staircase his boots sounded hard and heavy. They had not got round to buying themselves any stair-carpet, for it was still scarce and expensive and likely to be for a long time yet.

A dim line and a bright line of light rimmed the lower edges of the two doors on the first-floor landing. The dim line came from the night-lamp by young Dickie’s bed, in the front room that looked out on the street. The bright line marked the kitchen living-room that looked out on the stony garden and the railway embankment. He reached the kitchen door and entered the room. His wife, Sal, was leaning over the fire stirring a saucepan. The firelight shining from in front of her hair made it puff and blow like a steam rising from a cauldron of hot metal. He did not usually notice such things, or at least he did not put them into words in his mind; but he did to-night.

“Is that you, Jim?” she asked. Of course, she knew it was him. But that was part of the convention that prevailed between them. They pretended not to be excited, or even particularly pleased, when they met again at home, after the day’s work outside was finished for both of them. But they always were pleased about it, in their own quiet way.

“Yes, it’s me,” he said. “It smells good. What is it?”

“Stew, with mushrooms.” She turned from the fire, a glow in her cheeks. She looked lovely to-night. “The old woman,” she went on, “managed to get a half-pound to-day for four shillings.”

The old woman was Sal’s mother, old Mrs. Purdom. They both talked of her as the old woman. She lived with them, in a room up on the next floor and looked after the house and young Dickie. It would have been impossible for Sal to keep on the job at the chromium-plating works without the help of the old woman.

She looked up at the clock on the mantelshelf, but said nothing.

“Yes,” he admitted. “It’s getting on.” It was half past eight. “I left the bike at Baker Street,” he added. “There’s another slow puncture.”

It had certainly been a long day. Mondays and Tuesdays were always long days. They were the days he delivered the Weekly Clarion through a big swathe of the northern districts, and that meant getting up at five-thirty; even earlier when the bicycle was not behaving itself, which was quite often, with good inner tubes still so hard to come by.

“How’s the kid been?” he wanted to know.

“Not so bad. Mum says he was in a bit of a fight after school. His knee was bleeding.”

“He went to bed all right?”

He moved across to the angle of the room where a blue chintz curtain hid the hooks where they put their outdoor things. He hung up his cap and coat and came and sat down to the table. For a moment she stood, her back still turned to the fire, and looked at him. It was as if she was waiting for him to make some comment, answer some question; but he did not raise his eyes to hers.

She turned and took a kettle-cloth from a nail, and lifted the stew-pot from the fire to the hob. Then she brought two plates down from the dresser and scalded them with hot water. She was good at these things. She cut him a slice of bread, gave him his helping of stew and got down to her own plate.

They were not a talkative pair, and usually they were quite content to switch on the wireless when they sat down like this, facing each other over a meal. But it occurred to neither of them to put on the wireless to-night.

They were quite pleased the old woman was out of the way, too. Tuesday night was the old woman’s night at the local, the “Black Swan”. She had always given herself one regular night off since she had come to look after things, soon after Dickie was born.

On Tuesday nights quite a group of the old women from round about got together at the “Black Swan” and drank a nip or two of gin or cider and had a good time. Some were grandmothers, like Mrs. Purdom, who had buried or married off all their children and were helping out a married son or daughter. Others were lonely old women who lived in single rooms, like the two old bodies who had the ground-floor rooms under Jim and Sal.

And on Tuesday night the old women got together and had a drop or two, and sang songs in a rather querulous manner, and came home a little tearfully, and it did no harm to anyone.

So the old woman was out of the way, and Dickie in the next room was clearly sound asleep, for if he weren’t he would soon let you know about it. And there they sat, Jim and Sal, facing each other, and the kitchen cosy and bright as a scoured copper kettle. So was the whole flat, for that matter, it was all cosy and bright, except for the top floor back room, which was still a salvage-room for the bits and pieces from their former place in Querridge Street which a V2 bomb had brought tumbling about their ears. Some day that was going to be Dickie’s room, when he was too big to be sleeping in a cot in his parents’ bedroom. But he was all right for the time being.

Yes, though they both worked hard all day long they still managed to put a lot of elbow-grease into the house on the long summer evenings, and on Sundays. And the place needed it. This street, too, Territon Street, had been knocked about a good deal by the bombing, and the trains did not help either.

But Sal wanted to live near Querridge Street, where she had always lived, and you had to take what the Borough Council gave you, and things might have been worse. For instance, the rooms were quite big; there was a garden behind the house; you could hardly call it a garden yet, for most of the place was still buried under the air-raid rubble. But bit by bit the rubble would be removed, and underneath it was not cemented down, it was earth. So some day you would sow grass seed, and make a flower-border; and you could use up the rubble at the bottom of the garden and make a rockery.

She did not hurry him. She knew he always liked to take his own time. She hoped he would not want to go to bed without saying a word. No, he wouldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be right.

“There’s some more mushrooms down here.” He coughed a little. She waited for him to stop coughing. Then she prodded into the saucepan with her fork. “Yes, here.” She impaled the mushrooms and put them on his plate.

“Thank you, Sal,” he said. His lips parted in a brief smile, then came together again, and were sombre, as before. She cleared the plates away and got busy with a pot of tea. They could both take tea at any hour of the day or night. She scalded the tea-pot and dried it, then she put in the tea, first one tea-spoon, then a second. Then she paused, hoping that now at last he might say what he had to say. He said nothing. Then, as if she had only just opened the tea-caddy, she put in a third tea-spoon, as if it were the first, and a fourth, as if it were the second.

“One for the pot,” she murmured. That was formula, of course.

“No,” he said. “That’s four already. It’ll be like ink. I went to see him,” he told her.

“Yes?” Her breath came sharp and short. “What did he say?” She poured the water from the kettle into the pot.

“I think it’s all madam,” Jim said.

“What did he say?” she insisted.

“He said it is. He said I’d have to go away a few months. I’m not going. I’ll be all right.”

“Jim,” she begged. “You must go.”

“A bloke told me everybody who lives in a town’s got patches on his lungs. Everybody.”

She was pouring out the tea into his cup now, but her hand trembled, and the tea slopped into the saucer.

“Let me, Sal,” he said. “Don’t take on so.”

“I’m not taking on.” She poured out the second cup. Her hand now was firm as a rock. “You’ll go, Jim,” she said. There was silence. “Won’t you, Jim?” All her love for him, all her anxiety, were in her voice.

“I don’t believe in it. If anyone’s got guts, they’ll be all right. If they haven’t, it’s no good.”

“You mustn’t talk like that, there’s things you don’t understand. I want you to go, Jim. Do you hear? I want you to go.”

Neither said a word for quite a long time. A cough bubbled up from his lungs. It went through her like a wind through the branches of a tree. She turned her face away.

“I’ll go, Sal,” he said, “if you want me to.”

“Yes,” she said. “For his sake, too.” She turned her face away, for there was a tear in her eye, and he thought crying soppy. So did she, for that matter. “Oh, I forgot!” she exclaimed.

“What did you forget?”

At that moment there was a cry from the other room, where young Dickie was.

“Mummy, daddy!” the child’s voice called.

“He hasn’t!” she pointed out. “All right, Dickie, I’m coming!” she cried, and went to the door.

Then Jim remembered. They were broadcasting the match for the lightweight championship to-night from the Stadium, not far off, at Harringay. It was immutable custom that whenever a big fight was being broadcast, Dickie should be allowed to get up and listen to it. For Dickie was going to be a boxer, too, like his daddy before him. His daddy had gone quite a long way in the lightweight class till the war had sent him to do other things.

Jim went over to the wireless and switched on. A moment later Sally was back again, leading Dickie in by the hand, in his pink-and-white flannel pyjamas. Dickie was a sturdy youngster, about seven years old, freckled, his hair dark red-brown like his father’s, his eyes grey-blue like his mother’s.

“Oh, daddy!” the boy said reproachfully. “You didn’t wake me up!”

“That’s all right, son,” said Jim, as he tuned in to the station. He looked up at the clock. “You won’t have missed much. There! That’s it!” The cultured voice of the commentator established itself, over the ground-bass roar of the crowd. The first round seemed to have only just begun.

“They’re sizing each other up carefully. Well, we’ll have an opportunity to-night to see if the champion really has a glass chin. They’re both looking—Oh that was the Yorkshireman! A left straight to the point! And another! Now a left from the champion! And a right! And a left! They’re mixing it down below now.”

Jim came round to the rocking-chair on the right-hand side of the fire. It was wonderful the way that rocking-chair had held out when the bomb fell on the house in Querridge Street, though half the place had piled up on it. Jim sat down and Sal brought the boy over towards him.

“There!” Jim breathed, as he sat down, and took the boy on his knee. “All right, son?” But the boy did not reply. His head was bent sideways towards the aerial voice, like a bird on a bough. His eyes were shining and glancing like a mountain spring. Sal started moving the things to the sink with immense care, so that not the slightest clatter should mar the enchantment.

“—straight on the jaw!” continued the commentator. “That was a good one! The champion will have to look to his laurels to-night. At it again, both of them, left, right, left. Alfie means business——”

Clang! went the bell.

“Clang!” boomed Dickie.

The interval between the rounds was taken over by another commentator, in the nature of things more equable and judicial. The appraisal quickened in tempo, ran neck-and-neck with the seconds of the stop-watch. “But I still think,” wound up the second commentator, “that the Yorkshireman’s open as a barn-door to a good straight left.”

“Seconds out of the ring!” cried the time-keeper.

“Clang!” gonged Dickie. Then, his excitement flowing over, he turned his face up towards his father’s.

“Daddy!” he cried, clapping his hands. “Daddy!”

“Yes, son?”

“When you die, daddy, will I be a boxer?”

For two moments or three, out of the eyes and ears of both Jim Gunning and his wife, the whole universe of colour and sound died. There was silence and blackness. Then a voice cried “Break!” very sharply. The silence and blackness broke. The filament glowed again in the electric globe. The cultured, breathless voice of the first commentator continued out of the walnut-wood box:

“—and now again! And again! Tommy’ll have to beware of that left hand! Back to the centre of the ring again! Punching away down below! They break away! A left from the champion! Oh, that shook him!”

The small boy had forgotten his question. And it was not really the sort of question that demanded an answer. He had his fists doubled up, and was punching away, right, left, right, left, as if he were himself in the ring, taking on the champion.