Birthday: A Novel (The Seaton Novels)

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘I was glad you did. My hands were freezing, and yours were burning hot.’

  He looked at the framed photograph of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, in its frame on the wall, the famous engineer crowned by a stovepipe hat and standing against a heap of enormous chainlinks. ‘I got your bumper off next day, and took it to the factory. Hammered it as good as new. Good job I’d done some panel beating in my time. But I still like nudging into your front bumpers.’

  ‘You aren’t doing badly just now.’

  ‘It’s only because I love you.’

  ‘If I didn’t know that I wouldn’t know anything, would I?’

  ‘That’s what I like to hear.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll always say that to you.’

  ‘You mean you tell lies sometimes?’

  ‘Not these days I don’t, but I’ve never lied to you. I only lied to stop people getting hurt, though it didn’t do me much good. Or them, either.’

  Talk flowed with an ease he hadn’t thought possible with someone so long lived with. After six months – and he supposed it had been as much his fault as hers – he and Doreen had fallen into a putrid trap of resentment and animosity, the first words on whatever matter fuelling them into days of unspoken dislike.

  At first Avril hadn’t appeared to be his sort at all, though she was no less attractive for that, but she had confidence in all she said, which made her so easygoing that they soon got to know each other as much as two people ever could. Nothing spoken was given too much importance, and there was no need to worry about what might be hidden between their words.

  Her years as a catering manageress had taught her how to deal with people, but since being made redundant she did dressmaking, studied botany and bird recognition, and was learning to read music, which told him more about her than if she hadn’t had such hobbies.

  He used to joke that marrying him had brought her down in the world, to which she replied that since they loved each other what could it matter, providing of course that he came up a few steps to meet her now and again, though not right to her level, because then they would have nothing to argue about, and she would see no reason to laugh at his stories. ‘On the other hand I don’t think I ever have told a lie. At least I can’t remember when I did.’

  ‘You must have done, once.’

  ‘I could never be bothered.’ She lit a cigarette. ‘Nobody’s worth lying to. You have to hate somebody, to lie to them. Or be frightened by them.’

  He’d always thought that everybody lied, that lying was a way of getting what you wanted, or of survival in a perilous situation, or even as a means of entertainment. Life would be dull if people didn’t lie.

  ‘Mind you,’ she said mischievously, ‘there are lies, and lies. You tell lies to make me laugh when you want to cheer me up, or when you’ve got nothing to say and can’t bear to stay quiet. I sometimes think you ought to have been an actor. You’d have been good on the stage.’

  He growled into her ear. ‘I’d have played Frankenstein, or Dracula. When I tried it in Sunday School they threw me out because I frightened the other kids to death. I’ll tell you about it sometime.’

  ‘I couldn’t act to save my life,’ she laughed. ‘That’s why I’ve never been one for telling lies. I don’t feel threatened enough, not by you anyway. And it’s unnecessary to lie to somebody if you love them.’

  ‘Now you tell me,’ he said. You never knew what a woman was thinking, no more than she could tell what was in your mind, but to Avril it didn’t matter, and there was no need for either to fish for each other’s thoughts. They talked about whatever was in their minds and in his better moods he knew he had been waiting nearly half his life to meet her. ‘The sun’s come out, so let’s have a look at the garden, before it goes back in again.’

  SEVEN

  When Derek mounted the steps of The Crossbow for a better view the sweet and playful air seemed to promise eternal life. Beyond the bungalows and council houses stood the grey tower blocks of the tobacco warehouse. Then, as far as the crest – where in the old days a mass of small dwellings with their smoking chimneys had lapped up the hillside like a hurriedly made rug – came the dragons’ teeth of highrise hencoops nobody had ever wanted to live in. ‘The street where I grew up has been bulldozed.’

  To see him so assiduously reconnoitring the landscape made Eileen think of the verses in the Bible she had read aloud at the Sunday School her father had sent all his kids to. No one who went into the terrain Derek looked at would come back with a bunch of grapes hanging from a stick and say it was the Promised Land, though it was all they had and couldn’t be liked any the less for that. ‘The house I was brought up in’s gone as well.’

  He came down to join her, touched the back of her neck with affection. ‘We got here early.’

  ‘We always do, but it’s better than being late, and I don’t mind waiting on an evening like this.’

  People were going up the wooden steps to the lower floor of the pub, but he and Eileen sauntered around the large car park bordered by bushes and trees of what had once been a triangle of dense jungle between road railway and canal. In the days before the pub was built Arthur, after coming out of the army with a pair of heavy duty wirecutters, scorned warning notices and boundary fences. Infantry training had taught him to move across terrain without being seen (a childhood skill, in any case) lumbered with fishing tackle, a knapsack of food and drink, and often a bicycle. He ensconced himself where the fishes bit, in spite of juddering trains and the noise of motor traffic.

  Derek smoothed his black militarily trimmed moustache. ‘As a kid I often walked the two miles to get here.’

  ‘Nobody does that now,’ she said. ‘They jump into cars or get on their motorbikes to go a hundred yards. They’ve lost the use of their legs by being stuck at video games or flopped in front of the television.’

  On any spare day the two of them set off up the Trent valley, or left the car at a Derbyshire village and did a circuit of ten or so miles, each with Swift binoculars to spot what birds were flying. Rain didn’t put them off, though better if a Pennine wind blew air at their ribs. ‘I wonder how long they’ll be?’

  ‘Not too long,’ she said. ‘They’re never late for a party in a pub. It’s you who made us get here early.’

  ‘I’ve always been like that. I can’t think why, except that in my job you’ve got to be punctual. I’d be letting the others down if I wasn’t, and I wouldn’t like anybody to let me down.’

  His work at the surveyor’s office led Arthur to twit him about complicating the traffic system: ‘I can just imagine you getting to work at half past nine. You don’t have anything to do, and you’re dead frightened of being laid off, so you light your fags or pipes, and make some tea. Then you put your heads together, till somebody says: “When I came in on my push-bike this morning the traffic was flowing like water, not a hitch anywhere, so what about another one-way system, to balls it all up?”’

  ‘Did you see that magpie?’

  He trawled fingers through short thick hair that would never fall out. ‘A beauty, wasn’t it?’

  ‘They get fat from rummaging for leftovers in the pub dustbins.’

  ‘It was so tame you could have touched it.’

  ‘You nearly ran one over coming in,’ she said. ‘But you never do, they’re so quick. Let’s walk around a bit. We might see another. When Arthur and Avril and Brian get here they’ll know our car.’

  ‘Brian used to take me walking in this area. We’d have a bird recognition book, and one on flowers and trees, so we stopped every few minutes to look something up. I’ve never forgotten what I learned, though I was only ten at the time. When we were tired he took me to a cottage on a lane near Cossall where they sold lemonade and sweets out of a little side window.’

  Such outings jumped to mind because the three brothers were getting together. ‘If we heard a cuckoo we’d try to find the nest, but it was too far away, or hidden too cunningly in the bushes. The nest we did find a
lways belonged to another bird. Brian would sometimes thump me if I named the wrong flower, or couldn’t tell what sort of a bird was flitting over.’

  ‘I know he’s got a temper, but why did he do that?’

  ‘Something was eating him up. I never knew what it was. He just got ratty and took it out on me. But I tried not to lose my temper like that with our two kids, even though they did drive me half barmy at times.’

  In the sixties the family was supposed to be outdated and the cause of all mental troubles, everything the fault of your parents, or the claustrophobia of the home, but he hadn’t believed it, because he and Eileen were too busy making sure the kids had all they’d lacked when young but without spoiling them. Those who spouted that the family was done for had grown up with more than he’d had as a kid, which made their attitudes hard to credit.

  ‘But just think of Jenny,’ she said, ‘who had seven to bring up. It’s not a family, it’s a crowd. And look at all the people going into the pub. We’ll be lucky to have that many friends and family at our party when we’re seventy.’

  ‘Well, the years’ll whistle by, so it won’t be long, now that the kids are off our hands.’

  ‘The house is peaceful, though I’m glad they don’t live too far away.’

  ‘And we’ve got more money as well,’ he said, ‘with your job and mine. I’m looking forward to getting under the Channel to France next month. Maybe we’ll try Spain this year.’

  ‘I like Austria, or Switzerland.’

  ‘I know, but we ought to go somewhere different.’

  They talked about Avril because her prognosis didn’t look good, and hoped the chemotherapy would work. She had knitted into the family like the warp and weft of cloth, and they all liked her, so how would Arthur manage if she died? Meeting her had been the best thing in his life, and they got on so well it would be awful for him to be on his own. Since all their parents had died ten years ago nothing bad had happened, but you would be daft if you expected the peace to go on forever, yet you do. So now Avril had cancer, but she was taking it well and didn’t really look ill, so they could only hope everything would be all right.

  Derek rolled the glasses till all details were clear. The past was built over, and good riddance to the slums, a word Arthur and Brian didn’t like. Being older they’d lived through earlier days, though when the three of them sat reminiscing in a pub, talking politics and bringing up the old times, they seemed much the same age. Arthur and Brian often turned their experiences into a comic show, laughter proving them brothers to the bone.

  To lack a meal in those times wasn’t rare for Brian and Arthur, but it hadn’t been good in the forties, either, even after the war when everybody had work and life was supposed to be easier. One winter he had walked miles trying to buy coal or coke for the fire, and often he was lucky if he carried a half hundredweight home in a sack on his eight-year shoulders, though at the time there seemed no reason for whining, because everybody was doing it.

  From their different perambulations they met again among the cars, Derek coming from behind to say: ‘Love you, duck!’

  ‘Oh, that’s a relief,’ she said. ‘I was just thinking we’re the only ones in the family who didn’t get divorced.’

  ‘I hope you’re not disappointed.’ His brothers and sisters had all split up, but with a bit of effort they might have stayed together, though Derek laughed at his self-assurance on saying so, since he hadn’t been through what Arthur had. As for Brian, he only hitched up with difficult women, though you couldn’t blame them for his divorces because he was probably just as tormenting to live with. Only Jenny would have had the saintliness to keep him in his place, but he’d done a runner. If he hadn’t, it wouldn’t have been as bad for her as caring for a paraplegic all those years. ‘We were too busy earning a living and looking after the kids.’

  ‘We loved each other, I suppose.’

  ‘Still do, don’t we?’ he smiled.

  She took his arm as they strolled towards the pub steps. ‘I’m longing to see Brian’s face when he sets eyes on Jenny. How long is it since they met?’

  He put the binoculars into his pocket. ‘A good few years. She’s seventy, so I can’t see him going daft over her.’

  ‘He’s seventy as well. I don’t expect she’ll see much in him, either.’

  He took out his pipe. ‘None of us are toy boys anymore. Brian once told me that according to the French the ideal age for a man’s girlfriend is half his age plus seven.’

  ‘Men would say that, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘So any woman much older than forty wouldn’t do for him.’

  ‘He’d be a fool if he believed it,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I’d say the best age for a woman’s boyfriend is half her age minus seven. That would make mine twenty-three, when I ran away with him.’

  ‘I’d kick your arse if you did.’

  ‘I’d put ground glass in your tea before you could think of it.’ She laughed at him laughing. ‘Brian’s only ever lived by his own rules, and he doesn’t know what they are most of the time. He’d have been cleverer keeping to a quiet life, I sometimes think. But he lives off other people’s experiences most of the time. Have you noticed how his ears start to wiggle when we talk about what goes on in our street? He’s got the best of both worlds.’

  ‘He can still seem pretty miserable.’

  ‘No, he just puts it on.’

  ‘Mind you, he’s happy when the three of us go out together with our caps on, and sees there’s not much difference between us and everybody else in the pub.’

  ‘That’s what he comes up for,’ she said. ‘He likes having two lives.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t? Two’s bound to be better than one.’ He scooped the dottle from his pipe and slopped it onto the gravel. ‘But having only one is all I’ve got time for.’

  ‘Same with most people. He can’t live with only one, though. I wonder how much he thinks about London when he’s up here with us? And do we cross his mind when he’s down there?’

  ‘He phones us now and again,’ Derek said, ‘and writes letters, so he must. He keeps in touch, and we like him to. He always phones to let us know when something of his is coming up on the telly.’ He puffed his curved briar into life. ‘I’m ready for a drink.’

  ‘I wonder if there’ll be any food?’

  ‘Tons, I expect. She’s got seven kids and all the in-laws to lay things on for her.’

  ‘I told you we shouldn’t have eaten before we came.’

  ‘You said you were hungry.’

  ‘I couldn’t let you eat on your own, could I?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have minded,’ he said.

  ‘You always say that.’ She turned at the noise of an engine. ‘Anyway, here they are.’

  EIGHT

  ‘We don’t need navigation,’ Avril said. ‘The car must be smelling the beer.’

  ‘That’s because I’ve trained it.’ Arthur drove along the wide tree lined road. ‘See that froth on the windscreen when I press the button? It’s Shipstone’s finest ale.’

  The sunlight nevertheless dimmed in his mind to a darkening afternoon before the alligator of cancer had dragged Avril down, when he carried two large plastic bags of fallen Bramleys into the kitchen, for them to sit at the table and peel, a common autumn duty to cut out the cores and bad bits, and slice them up to make stewed apple and purée.

  ‘You’d do better to put the light on,’ she said, ‘or you’ll nick your finger like you did last time. I don’t like to see blood in the saucepan.’

  The striplight across the ceiling illuminated the dining-kitchen: sink, fridge, washing machine, stove, microwave, working tops, and the formica table they sat at. Cupboards and walls were painted white, Avril wanting life clean and convenient after her catering days.

  He took up a butcher’s steel to sharpen a short wooden handled knife bought from a market stall in Spain. ‘You’ll tear the apples with that chrome one, and use twice the energy than if it was like a razo
r.’

  ‘You’ve got your way,’ – she placed a large pyrex bowl in the middle of the table – ‘and I’ve got mine.’

  ‘Mine’s better.’

  ‘We shall have to see about that. You always end by cutting your finger.’

  ‘This time I won’t.’

  She emptied a plastic bag of apples into a larger bowl, and took one out to start work. Arthur sorted one of the biggest. ‘Don’t leave all the little ones to me,’ she said.

  ‘I like to do the big ’uns first, and see the heap go down.’

  ‘We’ve got a long way to go before you’ll notice.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘so I can see.’

  ‘So take some of the small ones as well.’

  ‘It’s just that I like the big ’uns, and I shan’t mind if you pick ’em as well. Anyway, I’m doing you a favour, because they’re too big for your little hands.’

  ‘My hands aren’t little. And if they were I wouldn’t moan about it. I never moan.’

  ‘It sounds like it to me.’

  They bickered, yet without irritation. ‘If you call that moaning I don’t know what you’d say if I did moan.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard you moan,’ he admitted.

  ‘I hope you never will. If I did, you’d know it.’

  He scooped peelings into the compost bucket by his feet. ‘You never do, though. Maybe that’s why I love you.’

  ‘Is that the only reason?’

  ‘There’s lots, but isn’t that enough?’

  ‘It could be, but I won’t want you to disappoint me.’

  ‘I try not to.’

  ‘Just be yourself,’ she said, ‘and you’ll be all right.’

  He placed a large apple before him, levelled the knife so as to centre it by the core, laid his palm on the dull side of the blade, and pressed, hoping to see two unblemished hemispheres of white fruit as the apple fell apart. But the zig-zaggjng thread of a black tunnel marred it, a miniature coalmining beetle eating its way along a gallery towards the heart, more than halfway there, as if going full pelt to get a big Christmas bonus. Excavations were necessary, even before cutting off the peel. ‘I can’t imagine our Brian sitting at a table, and slicing apples hour after hour.’