He mocked Emily for her ways, but she was not slow to mock him back, so he became more wary of her than Ivy. Emily was angry to see that her sister, though capable of knocking him down, was crippled by feelings of stupidity at having brought him into the house.
She should have known better, she told herself over and over again. Even Burton would not have been so heartless as to laugh at what she had done. He would have been angry at her doing something he would never have sanctioned had he been alive. She wouldn’t have done it then, of course, but if he had been alive he would have kicked Gerald every inch of the way to the workhouse.
She felt like thumping herself, unable to believe she had let such a thing happen at a time of life when only peace and quiet was needed. She had always vowed, and it was bitter to remind herself, never to marry unless to the right man, and now she knew it had been unwise to marry any man at all. How could an upstanding blacksmith’s daughter have attached herself to a type like Gerald? Though a tall strong woman, she couldn’t bring herself to throw him out as he deserved.
As years went by, though wizened and close to eighty, it seemed he would live forever. She prayed that God would strike him dead, but it was she who became ill, from Parkinson’s disease. When she was being taken out on a stretcher to the hospital Gerald’s last words were: ‘I hope you don’t come back.’ Three weeks later only Emily went to her funeral.
Gerald didn’t have things all his own way when living with Emily. Ivy was no longer there with the nervously guiding hand to bring her to order. Emily had feared Burton, yet had also loved him, and the space left was gradually filled with utter loathing for the man Ivy had so frivolously brought into the house. Burton’s spirit helped her not to put up with his tantrums.
When he tormented her she would, accidentally it seemed, bump into him so forcefully as to send him painfully against the furniture, such hard knocks frightening him more than the thugs from the housing block.
‘Say that again.’ She fixed him with tight lips and a steady eye. ‘Go on, say it once more, just say again what you said just now, you fucking pest. Come on, say it. I’m waiting. But if you do I’ll split your fucking head open and make you clean the rug afterwards.’
She would go out until she was calm enough not to come back and murder him. She would walk down the street and have a talk with Sabina, or make herself useful for an hour at the church hall. Men and women who were not much older smiled as she came around with cakes and cups of tea, laying bets as to whether or not her shaking hands would let go of the tray before she reached them – though they never did.
Most days she would come out of the church hall and go over the road to the Gregory Hotel for half a pint of bitter before facing Gerald at home. He thought himself the most put-upon man in the world, and dreaded the click of the door knob as she came in.
She hung up her coat, and fixed him with her implacable blue-grey eyes, blew smoke over his fragile head from a smouldering Woodbine cadged from Sabina and, though he hadn’t spoken, say: ‘I know you. I know your sort. I’ve got you weighed up, I have an’ all, mate, so don’t think I haven’t. Oh yes, I know your game right enough.’ Her face went closer. ‘You think I don’t, don’t you? But I do.’ She gave a little laugh which to him was no laugh at all. ‘I know, what you’re up to. Right from the start I’ve known: “Serve me this, and serve me that, get me some ale, and bring me a packet of baccer while you’re at it.’” She mimicked him perfectly. ‘But I’m not Ivy, you know. Ivy was worth a hundred of a rat like you. Well, I won’t lift a finger for you anymore.’
She went on so long in her maniacal way as he cringed by the fire not even daring to fill his empty pipe, and hoping her wrath wouldn’t explode beyond words. When she cooked a meal she left his part on the gas to turn into mush, or frazzle, and enjoyed seeing him jump up to save it.
Coming out of the church hall one evening she collapsed halfway across the road, and died on the way to hospital. Gerald sat in triumph among his inherited possessions, though Ivy had previously given out Burton’s prize horseshoes to the family.
His enjoyment didn’t last long. The mangonels of social destruction were moving downhill from the city centre, and he was ordered by the council to quit the place. Whole streets were razed, the space covered by highrise firehazards designed for people’s wellbeing by those who would never have to live in them.
His sister in a village near Newark agreed that he could stay with her. He sold every last cup, sheet and artefact of Mary Ann’s belongings and, with a fat wallet and pockets rattling, gave his death-mask smile as four suitcases were carried to a taxi to go with him to the station. The only thing left in the house was his marriage certificate to Ivy, screwed into a ball and thrown on the bedroom floor in a delinquent rage, to be found by Sabina’s son Derek when he went for a last look at his grandparents’ house before it was wiped out.
THIRTY-THREE
A soddened sky, but what else in December? – vegetation ponging like when they were kids, taking Brian back to pulling barrows of rotten potato tops to the compost heap at the Burtons’.
‘You’d expect plenty of parking outside a church,’ Arthur called. ‘There’s nothing legal anywhere,’ but a touch of anarchy and lateral thinking fitted both cars neatly along a double yellow line: ‘If I catch a warden fastening a plastic envelope under the windscreen I’ll give him such a pasting he’ll crawl back sobbing to his mam for a wank.’
They laughed, always did with Arthur though never at him. The juicy mot juste’s got nothing on him, Brian thought. The church was locked and barred, and should you want to get in, a notice on the door said apply to the rectory. Brian had come especially from London, to stay the night at Arthur’s. Warm in his countryman’s three-quarter woollen overcoat with poacher’s pockets, he wore a navy blue suit, a white collarless Jermyn Street silk shirt buttoned to the neck. ‘It’s Sunday morning, and in any case the doors should be open for sanctuary. You might be an asylum-seeker, or the cops could be after you. I suppose they’re afraid of the Nottingham Lambs kicking the altar down.’
‘If it did get kicked down they’d build a mosque in its place,’ Derek said.
Arthur adjusted his Rohan garment from a car-boot sale, spruced up and reconditioned for a few quid to look new. ‘The yobs would burn that down as well. Nothing’s sacred. They’ll turn on the town hall one day. Somebody ripped up a Belisha beacon in town the other day and slung it through a shop window. A naked dummy clutched it to her tits like a big lollipop, everybody pissing themselves going by.’
Derek’s Gortex jacket had seen much service in the Pennines, and kept the rain off as he opened the cemetery gate. ‘It must have been as wet as this in 1946, and at Oliver’s funeral as well. They were buried about the same time of year.’
Brian carried flowers, and champagne in a plastic bag. ‘Don’t drop it,’ Arthur said, ‘or Burton will jump out of his grave and thump you.’
He lifted the bottle. ‘He’ll like the idea of us celebrating the anniversary of his death with Moet et Chandon. Shame he can’t come up for a sup.’ Grass was long and rank around the multitude of graves, grownover pathways knitting into each other, half-covering fallen or slanting stones. Brian paced the back wall of the church, made a right angle, and trod over the long dead to where the grave should be.
‘Too far,’ Arthur called. ‘Go a bit left. Then on from there.’
Brian cursed the uncertainty of his bifocals. Green mould streaked the names. ‘Can’t read a thing.’
‘You’re right next to it, so watch where you put your great clodhoppers. Me and Avril cleaned the grave up a year ago.’
The sacred plot was rectangled by indestructible marble, and under Oliver’s inscription was chiselled: ALSO ERNEST BURTON, FATHER OF THE ABOVE, DIED DEC. 8TH, 1946. AGED 80.
Derek lifted a vase from the next grave, filled it at the tap, and set their flowers by the scroll with its embossed horseshoe. ‘At least we’re remembering him.’
�
��He’ll appreciate it,’ Arthur said. ‘If you can’t remember, you’re dead from the neck up.’
‘Fifty years ago to the day.’ Brian laid three plastic cups along the ledge. ‘He lived thirty-two years after the death of his favourite son. It must have been pain all the way.’
‘It don’t bear thinking about.’ Arthur righted a cup tilted in the breeze. ‘We should have brought proper glasses. Burton won’t like plastic.’ A hand to his mouth, he leaned over the beige stalks. ‘We’re drinking to you with champagne, Grandad! If it’s too hot down there, come up and have a swig.’
The cork curved out onto the grass, no sound in the heavy air. Arthur steadied the spout, three beakers filled without spilling. They took off their caps and stood at the head of the grave. ‘Here’s to Burton! If he can’t hear us down there, nobody can.’
Derek waved at a man in a Sikh turban framing the back window of one of the houses. ‘He thinks we’re nicking tombstones to make a garden path.’ A shade of consideration passed over his features on turning back to his brothers. ‘We’ll spare a thought for Oliver. He deserves it just as much.’
They agreed, and drank to him. ‘Here’s to the South Nottinghamshire Hussars as well.’
Brian tipped the rest of the drink out in shares as equal as any could gauge. ‘Burton should feel happy at three of his grandsons drinking to his memory.’ A cloud over the church tower spat rain as he put cups and bottle in the bag. ‘When we celebrate his sixtieth anniversary I expect it’ll still be pissing down.’
Arthur put his cap on, and turned towards the gate. ‘How many of us will be alive in ten years? But if we live that long we’ll bring half a dozen bottles and have a party, and come by taxi.’
‘And bring our Zimmer frames as well,’ Derek said.
A thought lit Arthur’s grey eyes. ‘Mine’ll have a built-in pocket for Viagra.’
They embraced, one-time members of the unkillable poor. Brian shared Arthur’s Peugeot, and Derek got into his sleek Volvo Estate saying: ‘See you at the Five Ways tonight.’
Arthur fingered his jar. ‘Our mother was the last of the Burtons.’
Derek gentled tobacco into his pipe to be sure of a smooth draw. ‘We haven’t gone yet.’
‘We soon might be. I’m sixty-two, and Brian’s sixty-eight. You’re the baby, at fifty-seven.’
‘I saw Burton in a dream a few nights ago.’ Brian came from behind his cloud of Antico Toscano cigar. ‘He was smartly dressed, as usual. “I was something else before I was a blacksmith,” he said. I was going to ask what, but he walked away, keeping the secret to himself. I don’t normally remember dreams.’ Why should I? Dreams were only dreams, could mean anything, or nothing. You’d never get to the botton of them, and they were your own affair anyway. ‘I’ve got one of his prize horseshoes, that Mother passed on to me from Ivy. It was made to fit a lame horse, which is right for me. The other day I cleaned it till I could see my face. Then I saw Burton looking at me.’
‘What did he say?’ Derek asked.
‘I know.’ Arthur put on Burton’s commanding tone. ‘“Shine it up a bit more. It’s not good enough.’”
‘I wonder what he’d think of things if he came back to life?’ Brian said.
Derek turned his glass in a circle. ‘He wouldn’t recognize the place.’
‘He’d know us,’ Arthur said, ‘and we’d know him. He was a family man, and I can’t think of him without seeing Mary Ann as well, so let’s drink to her. As long as we’re alive they will be.’
Brian lifted his glass. ‘You’re only immortal as long as somebody remembers you. Then you fade into the billions already dead. We’ll drink to her, then. She’s in heaven, but I’m sure Burton’s allowed to go and see her now and again.’
Three glasses tapped wood on coming down at the same second. Derek smiled. ‘There’s a lot of him left in us. Arthur’s got all his prejudices, for a start.’
‘Now then, that’s slander,’ Arthur said. ‘I’ll get my lawyer on the blower.’ He drank the rest of his jar, arm at ninety degrees to give himself space, proving the truth of his brother’s remark. Arthur’s height and stance indisputably resembled Burton’s, and apart from his gardening he had worked all his life in heavy industry. He retorted that Brian reminded him of Burton, in the way he wore his cap, and stood with fingers in the pockets of his waistcoat crossed by watch and chain.
‘What a right pair you are,’ Derek said, ‘to believe in such things.’
‘You’re like him as well,’ Arthur said, ‘in not believing anything anybody says. But nobody these days has to work as hard as Burton did. A blacksmith would have ear-muffs, and leather gauntlets to prevent scars on his arms, and a visor to stop sparks blinding him. When we fired Brens and threw grenades in the army we didn’t have anything to protect our ears, but I’ll bet swaddies have them today. I can just imagine them going over the top with ear-muffs to keep out the noise.’
At the gaffer calling ‘Time!’ Derek went for three more pints, knowing the towels wouldn’t go on till such favoured clients stood to leave. When he got back Arthur was saying: ‘If Burton had a permit from hell to take a look at the modern world he’d have to sink a dozen pints to get the cinders out of his throat. But he’d be amazed how easy life is, and how soft people are. If I took him a walk around town he’d be glad in some way but not in others. He wouldn’t think much of the highrise hencoops, and I don’t suppose he’d think much of all the fat guts walking about the streets. As for a beggar tapping him for a quid, he’d push him aside, and anybody trying to mug him would get the worst pasting of his life, while a police car went by and took no notice. Imagine him though, if you can, going into Yates’s Wine Lodge on Saturday night, and after talking to one of the gorgeous young girls, getting her outside behind a wall to give her a bit of you-know-what, and finding a button in her cunt! It wouldn’t stop him, but what a surprise.
‘As for what’s called ale, he’d think it was brewed out of suds at the Raleigh, and he wouldn’t touch the grub in any pub or restaurant because apart from it being like shit he’d find everything overpriced to what it had been in his day, even allowing for inflation. He’d notice the rabbit hutches in place of the cosy little houses in Woodhouse, but the railway bridge is still there, and a bit of the lane leading to where Old Engine Cottages used to be. The pub’s doing good trade at the top of Radford Bridge Road, where Oswald’s wife Helen used to go for her stout after Howard died, though the traffic’s murder if you want to get to it. Neither Lenton nor Radford stations exist anymore, and though Wollaton Hall no longer belongs to Lord Middleton it still looks as good as ever on its hill. Nottingham’s spread as far west as the motorway, and he’d have to look out for cars, buses, vans, lorries and motorbikes speeding all the time like Dinky toys gone mad. He’d soon get used to looking both ways before crossing a one-way street. The supermarkets and legal bookies would surprise him, but there’d be no corner-shops or beer-offs for Mary Ann to gossip in or play the one-armed bandits. Maybe in heaven there’s a special arcade for her to pass an hour in, and they give her endless pennies to keep her happy.
‘Burton on his way to town would wonder where all the pedestrians were, nobody on the pavements to say hello as he went by, till he realized they were all in their motorcars, and if they waved it would only be to laugh at him for using Shanks’s pony, and for being togged up in a suit and wearing a hat, and not in trainers and a bomber jacket. He’d wish himself back in hell rather than among such sloppy dressers, though he’d be glad to see the White Hart looking the same, at least from the outside, with the row of cottages opposite where he set off from for Wales on his twenty-first birthday. He met Mary Ann there, but wouldn’t recognize the inside because the walls have been ripped out to make more piss-up space. If he went in and got jostled too much at the bar he’d think it time to nip back to Old Nick’s taproom, because there’s no sabbath in hell, and he’d have his own special place, the only member of the club not forced to stand in a queue wh
en the ale’s given out. In a place like that the Big Wheel’s always turning, and old tunes he liked are played whenever he feels like hearing them, so it can’t be as hard as the world when he was in it. He’ll be in hell as long as anybody thinks it exists. It’ll be a shame that after we’ve snuffed it there’ll be nobody to remember him, though the more we drink to him the better, because I see the landlord’s getting twitchy to put the towels on, so we’d better look sharp and sup up. When Burton’s decided his leave from hell is over he’ll walk away saying: “It was nice to see you chaps again, but when Old Nick calls time for the three of you you’ll know where to find me. I’ll be waiting.”’
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