Alligator Playground

by Alan Sillitoe

  He put a hand on her back when the queue moved and, as if to excuse the liberty said: ‘Sausages, if I can find good ’uns. Sometimes steak, or chops, but always soup first. Or I might make a stew that lasts a day or two. Then a tinned currant pudding with treacle or custard on top. Or a bit of fruit: I must have dessert, and it’s nice to ring the changes.’

  ‘Don’t you ever cook fish?’

  His face turned into a gargoyle of distaste. ‘Fish eat people. They love drowned sailors.’ When the couple in front were served he took another opportunity to put a hand on her shoulder, which she accepted as friendly. ‘Here you are, duck, it’s your turn now.’

  She got her bundle and wished him good night. He held out a hand to be shaken, a mauler so big it covered hers. They now knew where to find each other, but he might have a wife in every port.

  After emptying Midnight’s supper into his dish a week later she went to the chip van but Sailor didn’t turn up. Perhaps the drizzle put him off. Ten minutes went by, and she wondered why she was getting her feet wet and letting the fish and chips lose their warmth in her hands.

  He said when they had been served, not caring that the chip man and two bikers would hear, and using the van’s light to make sure she saw his earnest blue eyes: ‘Why don’t we go back to my abode and eat our stuff there?’

  On the way she was unable to see what was in it for either of them, and stayed silent, holding his burger and chips bundle while he stooped to fit the key in the lock. In the entrance hall a line of footwear from wellingtons to bedroom slippers shone ready for pulling on. Luckily his irony was obvious when he told her in the small kitchen not to look too closely at the dust. She’d never been in a neater place. He switched on a big old fashioned radio she hadn’t seen since being a kid in the fifties. The green eye glowed and news seemed to come from every wall at once. ‘Haven’t you got a television?’

  ‘I can see all the pictures I want in my head, without even having to switch on. There are plenty I don’t like, as well.’ She didn’t ask what they were. Scoured pans rested on a white formica top, the empty sink polished, plates and dishes wiped and stacked on a shelf. He put their coats on hangers and took them to a hook in the hall. ‘I had ants when I moved in, but they didn’t last long.’

  It wasn’t cold, but he popped the gas fire into light, the spent match going into a glass dish special for the purpose. ‘The walls are nice and clean,’ she said.

  He carried plates, knives and forks from the serving hatch, as well as bread and butter, and a huge green enamel pot of tea. ‘I can’t abide paper, so I stripped it off as soon as I got here, and painted the walls.’ He set the meal on a card table because the large one was covered with an unmade jigsaw puzzle. ‘It’s got a thousand pieces, so I don’t suppose I’ll ever finish it.’

  A few edges and three corners were fitted together, and her fingers itched to work on it. ‘What’s it of?’

  He swallowed some food. ‘“The Battle of Trafalgar”. I’ve had it for years. I did some at my last place – I worked in a factory then but I had to put it back in my ditty bag for the move. One day I hope to see poor old Nelson being shot!’

  She appraised the room. ‘You certainly know how to take care of yourself.’ Sidney had been waited on hand and foot, but he had been out at work all day. So had she, some of the time, but that didn’t seem to matter.

  He shook the breadboard over his plate, mopping up crumbs and fat by pushing a crust around with his fork. ‘I wouldn’t be much of a man if I didn’t. I can’t stand untidiness. There was a bloke I was stationed with in Trincomalee…’

  Taking no further note of time, he talked about India, China and Japan, of Temples and places she would never see, beaches of white sand running for tens of miles with no one there but himself, palm trees you had to be careful when walking under otherwise a coconut would fall on your napper, of Oriental cities so crowded you fought your way from point to point.

  She listened till the tin clock on the shelf said a quarter to ten, though felt no inclination to leave, liked him in fact for talking so much, recalling how Sidney often said of her long silences: ‘I can never tell what goes on in that mind of yours. I’d give more than a penny for your thoughts.’ Maybe he was fishing to know whether she suspected his carryings on, but even if she had she wouldn’t have talked, because it was no use wasting your breath till certainty struck you dumb. As for blurting out her thoughts, such as they were, you always had to have something that was yours and nobody else’s. Tell a stranger what was in your head and it didn’t matter, but if you blabbed everything to your husband you would soon have no self to call your own. More often than not she considered her thoughts either too vague to grasp or too daft to mention.

  ‘The only thing I lack here,’ Sailor was saying, ‘is a garden. I used to dream of having one when I was at sea, though there was little time for dreaming. I’d fancy the spade going into English soil, mixing it with wood ash from a fire, and planting rose bushes. I’ve applied for an allotment, but they’re like gold these days.’

  He looked beyond her and she wondered where to, what palm tree shoreline, or wet cornfield in summer. ‘I used to smell woodsmoke when I was sweating to death up and down the China coast. English woodsmoke, not smoke from dung fires the Indians make. Once as a lad I made a fire at the edge of a field and sat trying to keep it burning, because most of the wood was still alive. After it got going, a bloke came out of his allotment and asked if he could have some of my ash for his garden. I wanted to say no. “I’ll only take a little,” he said. “It won’t affect the fire. It’ll be marvellous for my soil.” So he scooped up the ash with his trowel and bucket, and left me a nice clean fire but no ash at all. In five minutes it’d gone out, and wouldn’t start again. Talk about barefaced robbery! Never trust anybody, I thought, as I walked home.’

  ‘You’ve had a very full life,’ she said, getting in a few words of her own. ‘And you don’t seem to have many regrets, either.’

  He shook his head. ‘I did get married when I was young. We had a daughter, but after cat-and-dogging it for a few years I threw in the towel and went back to the Navy.’ By his tone she sensed a tale he wouldn’t like going into. ‘Vain regrets never did anybody any good,’ he said.

  Her marriage had passed as if in ten minutes, with nothing worth half as much telling as the least of Sailor’s yarns. Even if there had been she was too much at ease in his cosy den to bring them up. A man who went out of his way to talk to a woman was unusual whether or not it was because he needed to. She repaid him by listening, and in any case enjoyed it. Maybe he was only talking to be polite, but nothing mattered as long as they felt at ease.

  The tot of whisky he splashed out for the road caused a joyous giddiness on the way home, and before going to bed she took the framed photographs of Sidney off the shelves and put them in a box under the stairs.

  She saw what a precise and careful driver he was in his banger of an Austin Countryman when he took her to his favourite pub in Radford. They sat at a corner table. ‘I used to come here in my younger days,’ he said, ‘and that’s a long time ago. What I would like to know, though,’ and he leaned close to ask, ‘is whether or not you’ll marry me.’

  ‘It’s a bit sudden, Sailor.’ It wasn’t. She had imagined it already. He was no longer young, a person who knew his age as well as his mind.

  His pint sank to the halfway mark in one long swallow: ‘Everything always is.’

  Sidney often said you never knew your mind till you had made a mistake, and who would know better, though she didn’t like thinking of him at the moment. ‘Still, if you let such a notion put you off, you’d never do anything,’ he said with that possessive smile. ‘Human beings aren’t rats in traps.’

  She felt comfortable with Sailor, who had grown used to her silences and never tried to disturb them, but it was difficult to say a straight yes when she so much wanted to. ‘I’ll need a few days.’

  ‘I wouldn’t respect yo
u if you didn’t.’

  It was hard for both, and she wanted to dissolve the tension by getting the matter done with. She might not be clear in her mind even if a whole year went by. She liked his proposal because to marry him would mean there’d be no more big decisions to make. ‘Now you’ve asked me, don’t you want a day or two to think about it?’

  He seemed surprised. She was questioning his sincerity. ‘Once something gets into my head and I say it, my mind’s made up.’ Two people suited for each other would sound foolish uttering romantic words, but he must have read her thoughts when he went on: ‘I fell in love with all I didn’t know about you, as well as with what I plainly saw. I can’t say fairer than that. I can guarantee though that the rest will take care of itself. I might not be much of a catch, but I’ll look after you, you can be sure.’

  Sidney had never spoken such heartfelt and reassuring words, and it suddenly struck her that you always had to wonder what someone was hiding when they accused you of never talking. Sailor’s warm hand came onto her wrist, and she met the full blue of his candid eyes as if for the first time. ‘I do love you, Sailor.’

  ‘Well, I hoped to hear that, and I can’t tell you how happy it makes me. Another thing though is that there’s more than one way of answering my question, so take your time over it. When we’ve had another drink we can go to my place for a cup of coffee. Then I’ll escort you home.’

  She let on about her plans with Sailor while talking to Edna by the front gate.

  ‘Sounds all right,’ Edna said, ‘but you’ve got to be careful, duck. If he is a sailor he might have women all over the place.’

  ‘How can anybody know about anybody?’ Ann wondered, convinced she knew all she wanted to know of him.

  ‘I’ve seen him a few times at the school,’ Edna went on, ‘and he looks a nice enough chap.’ You couldn’t put anybody off what they were dead set on doing, and who was she in any case to prophesy how things would work out? All you could say was good luck to people, and let them get on with it.

  On signing the book Ann saw that Sailor’s first name was Paul, which was so far out of kilter with how she regarded him that Sailor it would be forever. Bill and Edna, with Teddy, had come into town as witnesses, and Teddy cried because they hadn’t brought Midnight, tears slopping onto his best suit, till Sailor picked him up and promised he would see the lucky cat soon enough.

  A few packs of confetti were scattered over the couple as they came out of the registry office, a photographer semaphoring from behind his tripod. Ann in her smart costume smiled arm in arm with Sailor, thinking everything was good today, though she wanted it to be over since the best was yet to come.

  As if just back from six months at sea, Sailor took her in his arms for their first public kiss. He stared into the lens towards an oblivion he alone could see, facing his chemical reproduction in a dark three-piece suit, and tie whose small knot showed off the impeccably ironed shirt. Getting spliced, said his stance, was a serious matter, and it wouldn’t do to lose your soul over it by not looking tiptop.

  Frank Orston came with a walnut-cased wall clock as a present from the school, and they listened to its chimes in the living room to a round of double whiskies. Sailor leaned against the mantelpiece, his glass at arm’s length towards Ann. ‘Here’s to the deed that’s going to last all my life. And to commemorate the occasion in proper style I’ll take the lid off the champagne.’

  He aimed the cork at the ceiling like a master gunner, all eyes upturned to the as yet invisible mark he might leave there. The explosion sent Teddy running for cover behind the settee.

  After the bubbly it was wine, or whatever choice of liquor from bottles ranged along the sideboard. Bill, a lean long-jawed man with coal black hair, forked up ham and salad. ‘A penny bun costs tuppence now – or so my father used to say.’ He held back a ribald addition because he wasn’t sure how Sailor would take it.

  Ann and Edna sat on the settee, a bottle of Cyprus sherry on the small round table between them. Midnight leapt onto the television, and Ann was glad Sailor stroked him into a purr. She lost count how many times he asked if she was all right, loved him for wanting to make her happy, and knew their marriage was forever. The romantic uncertainty of the night to come made her feel as she had when leaving the office in her teens to meet a boyfriend for a stroll beyond the bus terminal, ending by all but going the whole way in the darkest part of the wood.

  Tired of playing with Midnight, Teddy clamoured for whisky, and Sailor let a couple of canary drops into a glass of water. ‘This’ll make you drunk in no time,’ which sent him tottering around the room and slurring his words.

  Mrs Grant straightened him up when he fell. ‘You are a silly lad.’

  ‘Life’s not worth living,’ Sailor said, ‘unless you treat it as one long holiday, whether or not you have to work. So now we’ll cut the cake.’

  With so much food and drink the party went on till after dusk, Teddy asleep on his father’s shoulder when Edna said it was time to leave. After they had gone every plate and cup in the house needed washing, and Sailor filled the sink with suddy water to get them clean. Ann’s energy came back in putting the food away, the fridge packed with dishes covered in Cellophane.

  Sailor kissed her as she went by, looking at the clock so that he could, she thought, decently surmise the hour for going to bed. ‘I suppose there are certain things I should tell you now that we’re married, my love.’

  Matched with what she ought to say would cancel both sides out, though she was pleased by his offer. No ripple should pass through their perfect day. ‘It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now except us, Sailor.’ She kissed his worried face till the boyish smile came back, and when he led her upstairs the flush of eagerness was on both their faces. Drifting to sleep against his naked back, she knew him to be a man who could make a woman happy.

  Ann offered to read the map but Sailor said he had given it a good looking over before she got out of bed. ‘All I do is set course southwest and keep my hands at the tiller. Towns are like islands, and I’ll stay clear of them when I can. It’s the same as going across the ocean to me.’

  In the afternoon he steered his black Austin Countryman up the gravel drive of The Tummler Hotel, and a naval-looking man with a thick beard took their cases in. After approving the room with its four-poster bed they came down to a set tea in the lounge. A solid black-boxed body of a dog, with a jutting black box of a mouth, waddled lamely from under the next table for a piece of Sailor’s scone. ‘It’s funny getting a whiff of the sea again. Did you smell it, when I opened the window upstairs?’

  ‘Let’s go for a walk when we’ve finished. You can have a paddle if you like!’

  ‘No fear. I swam in it once, and not for fun.’ She was glad he was fuelling himself against the memory, eating to live. ‘We’ll take a look at it, though.’

  Pale stones clashed underfoot. ‘I wouldn’t like to walk ten miles on this.’

  She kissed his cheek. ‘Nor me.’

  Cold gusts struck when they descended the hogsback from which to view the water. She watched the subtle guidance of wings on gulls riding the thermals. Sailor didn’t like the muffler-ring around the white button of the sun. ‘Stand behind me, love, if the wind starts chilling you.’

  An isolated white cloud on the horizon rose like an iceberg out of the nondescript. ‘I shan’t see anything, then.’

  ‘Let’s walk down the bank. It’ll shield us both.’ He took her hand, finding dry patches along the muddy path. Stopping by a gate, they looked inland up a hillside of sheep. He breathed heavily, as if the walk had worn him out. Or maybe the sight of the sea had put on a year or two. She took his arm. ‘You’re tired, sweetheart, after driving all that way.’

  A white-topped wave, neat as a quarter mile straight-edge, crumbled on cue at a line of pale cliffs, making way for another behind. She was surprised to see what little distance they were from the hotel, smoke at the cold end of September coiling out of its chim
ney. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said.

  He stretched full length in an armchair by the lounge fire, while she read an old Georgette Heyer from the shelf, dozing towards sleep. Sailor touched her arm. ‘Come on, my love, let’s have a drink before dinner.’

  Two double whiskies were followed by pints of lager with his platter of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, boiled and roast potatoes, cabbage, carrots and peas. For her he ordered a half bottle of iced champagne, which she relished to the final fizz with the Dover sole and sorbet that followed.

  He finished as if he hadn’t had a hot dinner for months, though for a big man it wasn’t so much. ‘You were hungry,’ she said.

  ‘Must be the sea air.’

  Tramping the humps and hollows of Maiden Castle they looked both ways, at land and sea. Sailor’s energy was renewed, and when she lagged over the thick damp grass he put out a hand for her to catch up. ‘I don’t like the sea anymore.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘I’ve seen too many people drown in it. Hundreds, though you had to expect that. I’ve taken against it in my old age.’

  You wouldn’t think so, the way he talked with Ben the manager, who had been on a destroyer in the Falklands. They were locked into each other’s tales, alternating up to midnight with pots of beer and measures of whisky. Ann, content with her book, was happy to recall Edna’s doubt that Sailor had been a sailor. The only other guests were a couple who stayed most of the time in their room.

  A week at Scarborough with Sidney had been as nothing compared to her days at The Tummler Hotel. Sailor was a man hard to know, but love was more enduring with someone you couldn’t entirely fathom. He let nothing worry him, though he was far from simple, suggesting that he had been through hard times after all. From thinking all men were more or less like Sidney she now knew there were different sorts in the world and that Sailor was one of them. He was relaxing to be with, and as long as she went on being curious she would never stop loving him.