He read: ‘Wren (Troglodytes troglodytes). This perky, round little bird is easy to recognise, especially by the upright tilt of its tail. It feeds mainly on insects and spiders. Wrens have many calls, from the “tic tic tic” of alarm to the thin wheezing food-cry of the juveniles just out of the nest. The female sits on five to seven eggs …’
The words swam. They seemed to have nothing in common with the girl at all. Ralph closed his eyes and rested his head against the window.
*
Ralph was struggling through a bramble thicket. The thorns tore at his clothes, they scraped his face, but he couldn’t feel a thing. All he knew was that he had to escape.
He pushed through the tangle and opened his eyes. A light blazed. He seemed to be sitting in a carriage filled with bodies.
With a sinking sense of doom, Ralph returned to reality. How peaceful the soldiers looked! They weren’t dead at all. They lay slumped against each other amongst their mountains of equipment, snoring and dribbling, their legs, with their muddy puttees and great muddy boots, stretched out in front of them.
Ralph gazed at them with envy. How lucky they were, not to have to face his mother! No battle could be a more terrifying prospect. Ralph’s throat was dry. It was only now that the magnitude of what he had done sank in. He had failed in every possible sense – as a soldier, a student, a son.
Ralph tried not to think of Mr Turk’s reaction. Then there was Alwyne; he would probably find it all a big joke, which was almost the worst thing of all. What was he going to do? Crawl home and slink into a corner, like the dog did when he’d stolen the sausages?
The train was slowing down. Ralph pulled up the blind. This was forbidden by law; at night, trains had to be blacked out. But there was nobody to see. Perhaps the train had passed his station and was already on its way to Charing Cross.
All Ralph could see was his own reflection in the glass. He opened the window and leaned out.
His cap blew off. He scarcely noticed this: something else caught his attention.
The train was trundling along the viaduct, at a walking pace. Ralph recognised the spire of St Jude’s church, near his home. Far below he could see the loading yards. They served the storage vaults built into the arches beneath the railway, which were used by the local traders.
One of the yards was busy with activity. A motor lorry was backed up. Torchlight flashed; a man held up a lamp. In its light, Ralph could see men unloading carcasses from the lorry and carrying them into the vault.
It was then that he spotted Mr Turk. The butcher stood in the headlights of the vehicle, looking up and down the lane. Beneath the boater his face was in shadow, but it was definitely him. There was nobody about, except for a police constable. He stood nearby, under the gas lamp.
The train trundled on. At the time, Ralph was simply puzzled. What was Mr Turk doing, unloading meat at this hour of the night? It was not just this that seemed odd. There was something strange about the whole business. And why was the policeman there?
A few moments later the train stopped at London Bridge Station. Ralph forgot about the scene. He had more pressing things on his mind.
*
‘Where have you been?’ His mother pulled him into the parlour. The lights were blazing.
‘We were celebrating after our exams,’ said Ralph.
‘I’ve been worried sick!’ His mother pointed to his bag. ‘What’s this?’
‘Some things I’d left at the college. I was bringing them home.’
‘Why didn’t you telephone us?’
‘Telephone?’
‘Yes, telephone!’
‘I’ve never used it. Anyway I don’t know the number.’
Brutus padded in. He seemed more pleased to see Ralph than his mother.
‘Are you drunk? Where’s your cap? Goodness, you gave us a fright. Neville’s out looking for you.’
No he’s not, thought Ralph.
‘My own love.’ At last his mother hugged him. ‘I’m so glad you’re back. I thought you were dead.’
‘I think I’m getting the influenza,’ said Ralph. ‘I want to go to bed.’
*
The influenza, however, didn’t come to Ralph’s rescue and release him from life’s mortal coil. When he woke the next morning the symptoms had vanished. Perhaps it was due to the linseed tea his mother had made him drink, the night before.
He lay in bed, gazing at the room to which he had thought he would never return. A train rattled by. It was half-past nine; the household was up and about. His mother hadn’t woken him for breakfast, either out of consideration for his illness or as a punishment.
Ralph had no idea. He no longer knew her any more. But then, he felt a stranger to himself. His room was a place he had left behind, long ago. Its collections of birds’ eggs and cigarette cards belonged to a boy who had vanished years before the disastrous trip to Dover. Ralph realised this now. That boy had gone, the boy whose proud face was reflected in Boyce’s patent-leather pumps as he buffed them to a shine; who shared a bottle of lemonade with his father as they sat together on Box Hill.
Ralph climbed out of bed and got dressed. What was he going to do now? He had burned his boats, there was no question about that. If only yesterday had been a hallucination. If only the last few months had been a hallucination and he was back with his mother, looking after her, sitting on her eiderdown as she pinned up her hair.
Downstairs the telephone rang.
*
‘Fetch me the sago, there’s a dear,’ said Winnie.
Ralph was helping her in the kitchen. It was half-past twelve; Mr Turk would be home shortly for his dinner. Ralph had not seen him the night before and dreaded the prospect now. Life was so much simpler, below stairs. All Winnie had to do was to put a plate of food in front of the man and scarper off back to the kitchen. Her day was without complications – no guilt, no warring loyalties. Of course it was sad that she didn’t have a sweetheart, and indeed had few prospects of finding one, but the sex urge brought nothing but trouble.
‘I think I’ll become a butler,’ said Ralph.
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Winnie. ‘You’ll be getting a proper job soon, in an office.’
No I won’t, he thought.
‘You’ll be bringing home a wage and at six o’clock you’ll be as free as a bird.’ Winnie paused, her hands in the mixing bowl, a dreamy look on her face. ‘At nobody’s beck and call, won’t that be nice? Anyway, Mr Flyte says that when the war’s over there won’t be any big houses left, so bang go the butlers.’
‘You talk to him a lot, don’t you?’
Winnie poured the sago into the bowl. ‘He’s taught me a lot,’ she muttered. ‘He’s ever so clever.’
‘I know what he’s against – people working in offices, and people being servants, and things like that. But what’s he for? People sitting around on their bottoms talking all the time, like he does?’
‘That’s not fair!’ she snapped. ‘He’s got nothing else to do, the poor thing.’
Ralph didn’t reply. There was something annoying about Winnie’s voice when she spoke about Alwyne Flyte, as if she and the fellow were in cahoots. Didn’t she realise the man was only sucking up to her out of class solidarity, or whatever silly term he used?
‘Go on,’ he goaded her. ‘What does he believe in?’
‘In people like me having a vote.’
‘So who would you vote for, then?’
Wide-eyed, Winnie looked at him. ‘I don’t know, do I?’
Ralph raised his eyebrows. Neither of them laughed, however. They would have laughed, in the past.
Winnie paused, and gazed at him across the table. A flypaper hung down from the lampshade. It was stuck with black corpses.
‘What’s the matter, dear?’ asked Winnie.
‘Nothing.’
‘Mr Turk won’t be angry with you, I promise. Your mama will have calmed him down. After all, it was only a bit of fun. He probably would’ve done the sa
me thing himself, if he’d just finished an exam.’
Ralph got to his feet. He couldn’t bear to look Winnie in the eye. Betraying her felt the worst thing of all. ‘He’ll be here soon,’ he said. ‘I’ll take up the plates.’
‘Don’t worry, love,’ said Winnie. ‘Your mum’s ever so proud of you. She’s bought you a present.’ Winnie clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh, it’s a surprise!’
‘What do you mean, a present?’
‘She wasn’t looking at curtains yesterday. That was a fib, to put you off the scent.’ She smiled at him conspiratorially. ‘My lips are sealed.’
Ralph carried the tray upstairs. He felt sick in his stomach. How could his mother have done such a thing?
Ralph saw a pair of bedroom slippers descending the stairs. Mr Spooner appeared, accompanied by Lettie. The front door opened and Mrs O’Malley returned, carrying her dinner in a paper bag. She pressed against the wall as Mr Spooner shuffled past, his head bowed. Lettie took her father’s hand and led him out of the house.
Ralph felt a wave of loneliness. His home was filled with people yet he was utterly alone with his shame. Come back in a couple of years, sonny. Plenty of boys had passed muster at sixteen. The barber’s son had joined up; so had another boy from Ralph’s class at school. They had lied about their age, no doubt, but in their cases the recruiting sergeant had believed them. They had enlisted and fought – in fact the barber’s son, Derek, had promptly been killed. But they had looked man enough to convince.
Ralph started laying the table. As he did so, he heard the sound of the front door. His mother and Mr Turk walked into the parlour.
Something was up. Their faces were grim. His mother’s eyes were pink, as if she’d been crying.
‘Sit down, sonny,’ said Mr Turk. ‘You and me got to have a talk.’
Ralph sat down.
‘Your mother got a telephone call this morning,’ said Mr Turk. ‘From the college.’
There was a silence. The dog sniffed Mr Turk’s trousers but he kicked him away. ‘Eff off!’
‘Don’t do that,’ said Ralph.
His mother sat down heavily and pulled off her hat. ‘They said you didn’t turn up for your exam.’
The two of them waited for Ralph to speak.
‘No,’ said Ralph.
‘She came straight down to the shop and told me,’ said Mr Turk.
Ralph swung round to his mother. ‘Why didn’t you talk to me? Why did you go and see him first?’
‘What’s got into you, Ralph?’ Her eyes glittered with tears. ‘Why didn’t you do your exam? Know how much that college cost?’
‘Look at your mother!’ said Mr Turk. ‘Look what you’ve done to her. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
‘It’s none of your business,’ said Ralph.
‘Ralph!’ snapped his mother. ‘Don’t you dare talk to him like that!’
‘But it isn’t,’ said Ralph.
‘Show him some respect.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s all right, love,’ said Mr Turk. ‘He’s just a kid –’
‘I’m not a kid! –’
‘He’s just a spoilt little brat, and if he was my son he’d feel the back of my hand.’
‘Go ahead,’ said Ralph.
‘Stop it!’ cried his mother.
‘Hit me. I don’t care.’
‘Ralph!’
‘And I’m not your son,’ Ralph said. ‘I’m nothing to do with you, I didn’t want you to come here, none of us did.’
‘That’s not true!’ cried his mother.
Mr Turk turned to her. ‘That right?’
‘No! They all like you, they’re ever so grateful to you.’
‘Ah.’ Mr Turk turned his red face to Ralph. ‘Seems you’re outnumbered, little chap.’
‘Apologise to Neville,’ said his mother. ‘Go on, Ralph, say you’re sorry.’
Ralph’s heart was pounding. He looked at his mother. ‘You never even asked me. You said you were going to get married. You never even asked if I minded. You didn’t think of anybody else because you were so … so …’
‘So what?’
Ralph couldn’t say the word. He looked at Mr Turk’s congested face. He looked at his big red hands, sprouting black hair. At his arm that had jerked in and out.
‘It’s horrible,’ he muttered, and pushed back his chair.
Ralph ran upstairs to his bedroom and slammed the door.
He heard his mother following, and the scrabbling feet of the dog. She flung open the door and stood there, trembling.
‘What’s horrible?’ she demanded.
Ralph sat on his bed, looking at the floor.
‘Speak to me,’ she said. ‘I can’t help you if you don’t speak to me.’ She sat down beside him, and regained her breath. When she spoke, her voice was gentle. ‘Ralph, my love … I was fond of your father but nothing’s going to bring him back.’ She paused. ‘And, to be perfectly truthful, things weren’t all that well between us. Not in the last few years.’
‘You were happy. We were all happy.’
She sighed. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘What was wrong then?’
She knotted her fingers together. ‘Grown-up things. Things between a man and a woman. Oh he was sweet, and gentle, and kind … but that doesn’t make a marriage. In the fullest sense.’
Ralph’s ears roared.
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you this,’ she said, ‘but I thought you were old enough to know.’
‘He loved us. He went to war for us. He got killed for us!’ Ralph started sobbing. ‘You didn’t even wait till he got to the end of the street.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You went down to the kitchen,’ he blurted out. ‘You didn’t even wait till he’d gone round the corner. He might have turned to wave!’ Ralph wiped his nose. ‘You couldn’t even be bothered to wait that long!’ Nor, of course, had he. ‘Brutus showed him more love!’
‘Brutus?’
‘He mated with his leg.’
Her mother laughed, shakily. ‘Call that love?’
Ralph glared at her. ‘You seem to think so.’
His mother slapped his face, hard. ‘That’s disgusting!’
They stared at each other, aghast.
Then his mother jumped up and rushed from the room.
*
The clock chimed three. It was followed by the deeper chime of the grandfather clock downstairs. There had been no sound in the house for some time, not since the muffled bumps against the wall as Mr Spooner was helped up to his room. Ralph had heard Winnie’s encouraging murmurs. Winnie was so kind, so full of love. Ralph wondered if his mother had told her about his missed exam, or whether the shame was too deep to be shared with a servant. Sooner or later, however, Winnie would find out. They all would. Even Mrs O’Malley, vague as she was, would join in the chorus of condemnation.
Ralph was seized with recklessness. Blast the lot of them! He didn’t give a damn any more. He was a boat, oarless and rudderless, drifting away from a shore that was becoming fainter by the minute. If people shouted at him he no longer heard them. What was the point of it all anyway?
He’s just a kid, said Mr Turk. Just a spoiled little brat. He was, was he?
Suddenly, Ralph knew what he was going to do. The only question was a financial one. I have a special arrangement for those what’re going to fight. How much would Jenny Wren charge? He hadn’t the faintest idea. He only had two shillings left, not even enough for the train fare.
Just a kid, eh?
Ralph got off the bed. He went to the wash-basin, turned on the tap and spashed water on his face. His eyes were swollen from crying. The boils were as red as ever but when a woman was being paid she was in no position to complain.
His mother and Mr Turk had gone out. Ralph’s room was at the back of the house but he knew by the silence that they had left. Perhaps they had gone to his college, to discuss his so-called future.
<
br /> The coast was clear. Ralph opened the door and stepped into their room. The bed was unmade, the sheets rumpled. It reeked of their activities. To live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed. Intimate items of his mother’s lay strewn on the floor.
Ralph averted his eyes. He opened the wardrobe. Mr Turk’s clothes hung on the right-hand side. The man always carried wads of money around, not only in his bulging pocket-book but inside his jacket pockets. Ralph looked at the garments hanging in front of him – the frock coats, the evening coats the man wore for his City dinners, the various jackets in their loud and vulgar colours: tweed jackets, chequered jackets, the caramel-coloured one, edged with braid, that he had been wearing the day when he first came to the house. The thought of touching Mr Turk’s clothes made Ralph feel queasy. Besides, he had never stolen money before. His parents would be appalled.
Ralph plucked up courage and slid his hand into an inside pocket. But he didn’t have parents now. His father was dead and his mother wasn’t his mother any more, she was a strange woman smelling of Attar of Roses who slapped his face. And God couldn’t see him because God didn’t exist. They had all come to this conclusion in Palmerston Road, one way or another. Alwyne had said to him once: What I like about this house is that absolutely nobody goes to church, except Ada O’Malley, and she’s lost her marbles. Now what conclusion can we draw from this, young Ralphy my boy?
Ralph rummaged in the pockets. Somebody was rewarding him because he soon found some loose change and, finally, in the fourth pocket, a banknote.
It was a five-pound note. With trembling fingers Ralph counted out the coins and coppers. The sum total added up to five pounds, six shillings and tenpence-halfpenny. Ralph stuffed the money in his pocket.
It was then that he saw the typewriter.
It was sitting on the floor of the wardrobe, amongst the shoes. Remington was embossed on it, in gold lettering. On top of the typewriter sat a bowler hat; on the hat rim sat a detachable collar and studs. A pink satin ribbon tied them all together.
A card was stuck behind the ribbon.
Ralph leaned down and took it out. It was printed with a nosegay of flowers. HEARTY BIRTHDAY GREETINGS was inscribed in blue lettering, and accompanied by a poem:
In The Dark Page 17
