And that was what he was thinking now, except that, as ever, Donald was not quite looking at him. Donald had never looked at him, as far as Branson could recall, or ever spoken to him. Only now was he beginning to feel that this was odd behaviour for a father towards his son.
Tom tugged at the starting cable of the old petrol engine that sat rather awkwardly in Mr Briggs’s chest. On the fourth pull it caught, and gave its familiar, urgent throb. The sheet was drawn back by Tom and Branson, and Mr Briggs was revealed for the first time in his full, completed glory. There was a gasp of genuine delight from the observers because, although they had seen Mr Briggs many times before, in his various drafts of construction, Tom had managed a very special feat as a finishing touch to his robot. By hooking the engine up to a bicycle dynamo he had made the light bulbs that served for Mr Briggs’s eyes actually light up, and the bright stare that greeted the spectators as the sheet fell really did make it seem that he had gone some way towards creating a true automaton. Even more so as it began to move.
Tom had long before given up on the idea of a walking robot, and Mr Briggs was carried on a set of wheels. Instinctively the family, although nearly thirty feet away, took a step back as the robot trundled forward. The old lawnmower engine sounded unexpectedly powerful in the walled space of the yard and gave the impression that Mr Briggs could, at any minute, break into a terrifying sprint. Instead his progress was agonizingly slow and, thanks to the unevenness of the cobbled yard, lurchingly unstable. Again, this seemed to give him a human quality because he rolled from side to side as he progressed, like a drunken sailor (as Mrs Head quietly remarked). Perhaps most unnerving of all, however, was the way Tom had rigged the arms to the wheels so that they swung as the robot advanced. With a little too much free movement in the elbows and wrists, they were a little ungainly, gesticulating in a rather undisciplined way, as though the robot was frantically directing traffic or (Tory quailed at the thought) trying to put out a fire in its clothing.
The idea had occurred to Tory before that Tom had constructed a mocking simulacrum of his father in Mr Briggs. Donald, on the other hand, had been struck by a quite different and unexpected resemblance. He wondered if his son had intended to mock the figure of Winston Churchill. It wasn’t only something about the squatness of Mr Briggs’s body, the flatly rounded head, the pearshaped torso, he was convinced that the fingers of the flailing hands (consisting, as far as he could tell, of ten neatly soldered teaspoons), occasionally offered a V for Victory sign to the observers by the house. Donald was particularly sensitive to ignorant remarks about Mr Churchill and could still not quite believe that the nation had ditched him so readily in favour of someone who looked like a headmaster of a third-rate elementary school, and who seemed hell-bent on bankrupting the country.
Mrs Head, on the other hand, couldn’t help but be reminded of Major Brandish, her neighbour in Waseminster, and a proper soldier. He had played the cymbals in a marching band, and liked to clash them together whenever he got the chance. He had performed many cymbals recitals in her little cottage (the variety of sounds that could be drawn from such a crude instrument was remarkable); the climactic moments often had the major waving his arms in similar fashion to Mr Briggs. Paulette detected signs of their old schoolteacher in Upper Slaughter, Mr Davis, the jovial old bean who would describe historical episodes with arm-waving vigour – ‘And at the Battle of Prestonpans, when Bonnie Prince Charlie fought King James’s men, it was every man for himself …’
Only Albertina was able to see the robot as nothing other than the robot, Mr Briggs, and for this reason she was the most scared of him, out of all the family. As he came nearer, his eyes winking and his arms swinging, she searched blindly for her mother’s hand, then held it tight.
‘Are you going to make it stop?’ said Tory, a little quaveringly, as the robot approached to within a few feet of the spectators. Tom, who had walked alongside the robot for the entire journey, like a groom escorting a mechanical bride down the aisle, checking carefully for anything coming loose, reached for the motor and turned it off. The sudden silence that befell the yard was filled instantly with applause. It was begun by Tory, who nudged everyone else to join in, which they did, the girls somewhat reluctantly. Even Donald hung his stick on his forearm and clapped, slowly and loudly. The applause seemed to take Tom entirely by surprise, and he struggled to conceal the joy he was feeling at being so noisily appreciated. He couldn’t prevent the blush that coloured his half-downturned face as he pretended to adjust a vital part of Mr Briggs’s body.
Donald stepped forward. ‘Well, son, I’ve always said you were a clever bugger, and now here’s the proof, a mechanical being. All you need to do now is to teach it to cook, and we can kick your mother out of the house.’ No one laughed at this, apart from Donald.
‘I think Branson needs some thanks as well,’ said Tory, quietly. ‘He helped Tom a lot.’
That Donald should ignore this remark without a pause for breath, that he should ignore Branson so completely, surprised no one. Donald had not acknowledged Branson’s existence in two years. Tory did find it difficult to bear the little boy’s evident disappointment, because after she’d made her remark, she had noticed how he squared himself up, put his little chest out and his shoulders back, as if ready to absorb the impact of praise from his father, then deflated immediately the moment he saw it wouldn’t come. She regretted saying anything.
‘I’ve got a special prize for you, Tom,’ Donald went on, ‘one that I think you will appreciate for the rest of your life.’
Tom was still looking down at something in Mr Briggs’s insides, unable, quite, to bring himself to turn his face fully into the stream of fatherly appreciation.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me what it is?’
‘What is it?’ Tom said, without lifting his head.
Oh, such a shy boy, Tory thought, such a modest, abashed and awkward boy.
‘I’ve got you an apprenticeship at Bolan’s,’ Donald said, slapping a hand on Tom’s shoulder, so that he swayed a little. There was silence. The only response from Tom was the slightest frown of puzzlement.
It was Tory, eventually, who spoke. ‘Bolan’s?’
‘Yes, Bolan’s. Starting tomorrow, in fact …’
‘But Tom’s going back to school this week.’
‘School? The boy’s sixteen. He doesn’t want to stay at school when he’s a grown man, do you, boy?’ He shook Tom’s shoulder.
Tom swayed so much he had to hold on to Mr Briggs. ‘I rather thought I was going to stay on,’ he said at last.
‘Yes,’ Tory said. ‘He’s doing very well – all his teachers have said so.’
‘In two years he could be earning twice as much as any of those teachers. Anyway, it’s all arranged. There’ll be a van calling at half past seven tomorrow morning …’
Donald looked again at Mr Briggs before turning back to Tom. ‘Well, what do you say to your old man? I went to a lot of trouble to get this apprenticeship for you. Just lucky one of the foremen there is a former comrade-in-arms, an old soldier. Even so, I had to go down on bended knee – not the right one, obviously. So what have you got to say to me?’
‘Thank you,’ Tom, said. He appeared to be close to tears.
‘That’s the spirit, son,’ and with that Donald stepped back into the house, back into the sitting room, and closed the door.
The crowd in the backyard slowly dispersed. The grammar-school boys, many wearing their uniforms, gave Tom a consoling pat on the back as they went. Such brief, intense valedictions for the friend they might never see again.
‘You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,’ said Tory, once they were alone in the garden, apart from Branson, who lingered nearby.
‘But Dad’s arranged it.’
‘Without asking anyone else, least of all you. I think it would be quite reasonable for you to go to school tomorrow.’
‘It doesn’t actually start till Wednesday.’
; ‘In that case, you could go to the factory, see if you like it and, if not, go to school on Wednesday, just as normal.’
Tory had her arm around her son’s shoulders now. He was not an embraceable boy, normally, and flinched at any physical contact from his mother, but not this time. He accepted the compromise, but didn’t seem really to think that once he had put himself into the hands of his apprenticeship, he would be able easily to break free.
Later that evening, just after it became dark, Tom and Branson were on the roof of the privy, side by side, observing the stars through Tom’s telescope, bought from a junk shop on Scarborough Road with carefully saved pennies. The privy was the best place for observing the stars and the boys had spent many evenings on its roof, squinting at the night sky. Tom’s ambition was to find a new comet. As he had told little Branson, if you’re the first person to discover a comet, you can have it named after you.
Occasionally someone would come out to use the privy while they were on top, stargazing. If it was their mother, she would insist that they get down and go indoors before she would even enter it, and the same went for the girls, but Donald didn’t care in the slightest, to the extent that they sometimes wondered if he was even aware that they were on the roof while he was inside. The boys were the more embarrassed, and continued their astronomy in silence to the sub-noise of their father urinating or defecating, which he often did explosively, so that the roof of the privy seemed to shake.
Sometimes he would appear in the garden in a more contemplative mood, standing motionless by the back door, smoking his pipe, looking intently at nothing, or as though he was examining the night air. Sometimes he would attempt some exercise by walking up and down the backyard path without his stick, between the house and the yard gate, bending under the washing-line to do so.
He would stand in the yard right below the children, working his neck back and forth so that his head swung slowly about. It was almost as if he was bathing his head in a stream of water, but there was nothing there but cool air. At night Donald’s head reflected any light that was near. The distant light bulb shining in the back room of Mr Sawbridgeworth’s house opposite, would shine on Donald’s head, just as though he’d had an idea. Once, Branson could distinctly pick out the belt of Orion passing across the top of his father’s cranium, or so he thought. The moon was easily visible in Donald’s glossy, hairless skin, and suggested, to Branson at least, that it wasn’t as far away or as big as everyone thought.
On this particular evening Donald came out just as Tom and Branson had found Saturn and could see four of its moons, if not its rings, and stood below them at the privy door. He was silent for a while, as though ignorant of their presence, before suddenly speaking. ‘I know you have some nonsense thoughts about going to university, Tom, and I know you’ve got a good brain, and determination – Mr Briggs is ample proof of that – but the sad, squalid truth of our family is that we have no money because I, as an invalid, am not able to go out and work. I’ve tried my best – you know how hard I’ve tried, what with the brewing and the other deals I’ve put my hand to – but the law has no pity for a crippled man trying to feed his family by whatever means he can. As a result, I am crippled further, crippled right down to my heart, Tom, right down to my heart. I had a good brain too, once, you know. You can ask me anything you like about Charles Dickens, or Aristotle, or Plato, and I can give you an answer. There is no money to put you through university so you can forget about that. Bolan’s is a much better option, a good place to work, with good prospects for a clever young man. Apart from that, well, you’ll be called up to do your national service in a year or so. University was never on the cards …’
Donald’s speech seemed to drift off, as though he was unable to finish it, and after lingering a while, as if in expectation of a reply from Tom, who all the while had not taken his eye from the telescope, he went back indoors.
Even after his father had gone, it was some time before Tom said anything. ‘You wouldn’t think you could see so far from the top of a shithouse, would you?’ he said, still looking through the eyepiece, relishing that last noun, and using it as often as he could in the subsequent sentences. ‘I wonder what the people who live on Titan would think, if they knew they were being watched by people sitting on the roof of a shithouse. Mind you, perhaps they’re watching us from the roofs of their own shithouses.’
Branson was made a bit uncomfortable by the word Tom had used, because his older brother never usually swore or used dirty words of any kind. ‘What do they make at that factory?’ he said eventually.
Then he noticed that his brother, having put the telescope down, was sobbing into his knees. Branson’s discomfort increased. He had no idea why he should be crying but reached out to pat Tom’s shaking shoulders, in a vague apprehension that that was what one did with sobbing people.
The contact seemed instantly to gather Tom’s wits and he stopped crying. Instead he said, as if to himself, but really for Branson’s hearing, ‘Well, if they could see me now, those ninnies on Titan, they’d be having a proper laugh. I expect they’re laughing this minute, to see me have my life taken from me on the roof of a shithouse. They’d be laughing so much they’d probably fall off of their own shithouses. Goodbye, Titans, go back to your shitty little shithouses.’ The tears had returned by the time that final phrase was added, so that it was said stutteringly through gritted teeth, from the back of the throat, in a surprisingly manly tone. Tom let the telescope drop from his hands, and it rolled quickly across the slate and dropped again, onto the cobbles below. The lens popped out and spun like a coin.
*
The next morning at half past seven, a small green van parped its horn outside the house, and Tom, wearing his ordinary clothes and with a round of cheese sandwiches wrapped in newspaper tucked under his arm, left the house, watched anxiously by his mother from the front door. There was something about the boldness and lack of hesitation with which he had walked down the path to greet his new life that suggested to Tory that perhaps he would enjoy life as a working man after all.
*
When Tom came home that evening, he seemed a different person. His hands were shaking. His face was blank. He ignored anyone’s questions and, with a sort of rigid shrug, went straight to his room. Tory went after him but he had wedged the door shut. She could hear him sobbing within, though he was clearly struggling to keep silent. She imagined he had wrapped his face in a pillow, it sounded so muffled.
‘He’s probably been given the initiation,’ Donald said.
‘What initiation?’
Donald mimed sharpening a cutthroat razor on a strop, then gestured towards his crotch. Tory had to sit down, feeling faint.
She would have stood firm in her insistence that Tom should stay on at school, had not Tom himself seemed, despite his apparent shock at his situation, loyal to his father’s wishes and continued working at Bolan’s. He obediently went the next day when the little green van called for him. It amazed Tory that he should be so stoically set upon winning his father’s approval when his father’s motives were so very shabby.
When Tom’s headmaster called, a week or so later, to ascertain whether the rumours he’d heard were true, that one of his most outstanding pupils had left the school for good, Tom could not be made to come down from his room and face his former mentor. To her own dismay, Tory found herself siding with Donald in the discussion that followed, simply in order to present a united front and to give an impression of a settled, stable household.
Mr Wythenshaw was a slightly vague, kindly man with round, steel-rimmed glasses and a wispy moustache. He extolled at some length the exceptional abilities of young Thomas Pace, and how they had had very high hopes for him at Blackdown’s, and that they should try not to think of the short-term gain they might make by sending Thomas out to work at the expense of the long-term benefits for his future if he stayed on at school.
‘I must ask you to reconsider, Mr and Mrs Pace. We are very disa
ppointed that young Thomas will not be completing his studies with us. He is one of the most able pupils we have ever had at the school …’
‘Ableness doesn’t make any difference. We can’t afford to send him to university. If he’s so clever he’ll soon climb the ladder at Bolan’s and be managing director,’ said Donald. Donald then asked the headmaster what he had done in the war (he had been a captain in the First World War, he said, commanding soldiers on various perilous missions throughout the conflict), at which Donald grumbled, wishing he hadn’t sent his medals back.
‘I can’t understand it, Donald,’ said Tory, after the headmaster had gone. ‘You were so keen on learning when I first met you, always reading a book, and you knew so many things – yet you don’t seem to value education.’
‘I learnt all I needed to know without having to go to university. They’re a waste of time, Tory, when you’ve got public libraries full of books. Why would anyone need to go to university just to listen to a professor reading out from books that you could just as easily read for yourself ? Einstein never went to university. Think of that, my dear. And now you can do my head.’
Tory didn’t have an answer so settled into what had become one of the new routines of the house: applying ointment to Donald’s scarred scalp.
Letters From an Unknown Woman Page 19
