Alligator Playground

by Alan Sillitoe

  The first thing Sailor brought from his flat at the school was a coat of arms of his last ship served on. Then came his precious life’s papers, and a Japanese tea service which he set on the living-room sideboard. ‘That’s been round the world a time or two, but it’s found a home at last.’

  A paper-thin cup held to the light showed a Geisha girl with a parasol. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ She polished the front-room table and laid out his thousand piece jigsaw puzzle.

  ‘We’ll do it between us,’ Sailor said, ‘in our idle moments.’

  She wondered when they might be, because like all true mariners he cherished his drink. Most nights they went to the pub in Radford, sat among smoke and beer fumes at a small round table in the saloon bar. She was happy to be with Sailor because he was so obviously glad to be with her. She drank her half pint of Midland ale, while he bandied with his friends, or held her hand and told stories of his travels, pints going like magic. He ordered a whisky for them both before the towels went on.

  ‘Will you be all right driving?’

  He steered away from the kerb. ‘With you in the car we’re as safe as houses. We’ll be back to our bread and cheese, and a nice pot of tea, in no time.’

  When she stayed at home one night with the cat and watched television Sailor came back with flowers. ‘Where did you get them, so late?’

  ‘There’s always somebody selling ’em.’

  She loved it when he brought her little gifts, and told him so.

  ‘You’re worth it, my love.’ He filled a vase with water in the kitchen, then drew her onto his knees. ‘First, I think of you as would like to have them. Second, I think of the poor old drudge as comes round trying to sell ’em. Third, I get selfish and think of me who’d like to do a good turn to the seller, and an even better turn to the woman I love and who I know would appreciate it. That way I get credit for everything. You can call it selfishness, if you like, but more things fit mortise and tenon in this life than you might think.’

  ‘You’re my young man, and I love you, Sailor.’ He was sixty, but could be any age, always sure of himself in knowing what he wanted while rarely admitting he needed anything. He was also a man of habit and regularity which, he said, made life easier for all concerned, and she liked that.

  He laid the table for supper, and lit the gas for the kettle, though she told him after more kisses to fill it before putting it on the flame. ‘You must have had a drop more than usual.’

  The screw top of the pickled onions was no match for his big hands. He stabbed in his fork. ‘I’ll tell you what, though…’

  She laughed. ‘You’ve been thinking.’ He sometimes was, behind those blue eyes. ‘What about, Sailor?’

  ‘I’m beginning to feel I’ve done enough work in my life. I’ll be glad when I’ve finished at school.’ He put a sliver of cheese into her mouth. ‘Would you mind if I started taking my ease a bit?’

  ‘I thought you’d still got two years to do.’

  ‘So I have, but there are times when I wonder if it’s worth waiting for.’ The shade of uncertainty was a welcome confession of intimacy. ‘I never do anything in a hurry,’ he said in his usual voice, ‘though even if I don’t wait there should be enough money coming to us.’

  On their wedding day his account had shown five hundred pounds, and how much remained was his business. He never enquired about her savings, which had been more than a thousand at the last statement. It wasn’t much these days, but as long as there was something in both books they felt secure enough.

  Sailor fell into sleep soon after kissing her goodnight, and Ann knew nothing till morning when the still warm space told her he had gone to work.

  At the school party she served tea and cakes, a cloth folded around the handle of the large metal pot. Sailor, togged up in beard and scarlet, shed gifts from a sack sewn up out of sheets, and said a few gruff words to make each child laugh.

  When they got home he needed a glass of whisky, Ann topping up hers with water. ‘You should have been an actor, the way you charmed those kids.’

  ‘I should have been a lot of things,’ he said, as if he easily could have. ‘I know who I am while I’m acting, though, so you can be sure I’ll always be myself when I’m with you.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘I want us to have as easy a life as possible, something I’ve only thought about in the last year or two.’

  She didn’t say life was already good enough for her, in case it disturbed him. Nor could she ask why he didn’t think it was, because she knew he respected her for not bothering to probe. Love depended on such unspoken treaties. ‘Do what you think best, Sailor.’

  He put on the finest smile, and spread his arms. ‘Welcome aboard!’

  Such a covering embrace heated her sufficiently to say: ‘You are a devil!’

  ‘Now you’re flattering me.’ He spoke passionately in her ear. ‘If I am, though, let’s finish our supper, and get to bed, which is where I like you most.’

  Every bottle lining the sideboard on Christmas Day displayed a badge of Sailor’s popularity with parents at school. He sniffed the odour of roasting pork permeating the house, and twisted the cork from a bottle of sherry. ‘We’ll have a look at the jigsaw puzzle after our dinner. It’s time we set to on it.’

  A glass of wine, followed by brandy, made her sleepy, but she looked at the painting on the box while Sailor had a go at sorting sky and bits of rigging. Dark blue to the left faded into grey at the right, slivered by the tips of masts. Between billows of white and orange she followed the trunk of HMS Victory with her fingers, solid in its girth and strength, as if cut from one great oak, down to the main deck where red-coated marines with white crossbelts held muskets ready. Men stood back from fire and shot, a fallen sail waiting to become a shroud.

  The job would be a long one, though a few pieces latched in every evening would one day get it done. ‘It’ll take us quite a while, Sailor.’

  He fitted up a corner, but she supposed he had got that far before. ‘We’ll do it, my love, never you fear.’ He worked along the top line till it was almost done. ‘The sooner the better, though.’

  The jumble of ships brewing slaughter touched anxiety in her. ‘You think so?’

  Flattening every piece face up till none were hidden, he turned away as if he also was disturbed. ‘We’ve made a start, but let’s go up for a kip now. We can have another go after tea.’

  She expected to see more of him after he retired from work, but he often went out alone and came back half seas over at well gone closing time. Pubs would put the towels on, then lock the doors, with favoured customers still inside. When he stood in for the new caretaker and went straight from school she had no idea where he ate, if he did, because he didn’t care for supper. Persuading him into a few mouthfuls, she guided him upstairs, to get his shirt and trousers off before he fell on the bed.

  Some evenings she sipped a glass of whisky to ease her mind, soothing the tremor that something would happen to stop her seeing him again. Every possible mishap pictured itself, especially as he drove the car so blithely. She looked at the clock, and when such notions rushed back with their worry, she had another drink of whatever was on the sideboard.

  ‘Never be afraid of things like that, my own dear love. After the perils I’ve been through in life nothing can happen to me.’ He closed the door, taking a video, and a bottle bought at the pub, from the pocket of his naval jacket.

  ‘Where have you been, though?’

  He sat with a hand on each thigh. ‘I was at The Black’s Head,’ he said in a gentle tone. ‘Ask anybody, and they’ll tell you. I got talking to Arthur Towle about old times. Nobody could see us under the smoke of our pipes. Arthur was a stoker, and we once served on the same destroyer. Afterwards I had to walk around to get some fresh air into my faculties before driving home. Tomorrow, we’ll go arm in arm, though, you and me together. I can’t have the love of my life feeling neglected.’

  ‘I’ll never feel
that, Sailor.’

  A piece of grit seemed to irritate his eye. ‘Even so, it’s only when I’m with you that I can be sure of not seeing it.’

  ‘Seeing what?’ She couldn’t be certain whether he meant a spectacular musical comedy, or a queen walking the Bloody Tower with her head under her left arm.

  He smiled the question away. ‘Something that’s finished and done with.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’ The pain seemed too much for him. ‘But don’t, though, if you don’t want to.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell. It’s so far in the past it’s not worth the candle.’

  She put an arm around his shoulder. ‘Just as you like, Sailor.’ If there was so much to talk about that he couldn’t then there wasn’t. When he had to, if ever he did, she would hear whatever it was. They stayed up till midnight with their arms around each other, seeing the video and drinking from the bottle he’d brought.

  He came back one day and unloaded six tins of paint from the car boot. ‘We’re going to decorate the house.’

  Trestles were borrowed from Bill and Edna, and Sailor hoisted himself up to transform the walls into a shining scape of white. With his cap on and pipe going, he came down to lay newspapers over carpets and furniture. Ann, in shirt and jeans, did the woodwork of cupboards and skirting boards, wondering why she had waited so long to have the house re-done. ‘Now we can see each other, Sailor.’

  ‘Even the cat,’ he laughed, wiping the end of Midnight’s long tail with a rag soaked in turps.

  In the garden he got out of his seat to dig a bed and weed the borders, though his energy seemed diminished. A trellis fence screened them from neighbours, and at the lower end clouds showed above the roof tops. He had built a feeding board for the birds, and collared doves drove sparrows from the peanuts. They rarely flew away when Sailor walked out. She watched him talking to them. ‘What do you say to each other?’

  ‘We have a chat,’ he grinned, ‘about the oceans we’ve crossed. We compare notes.’

  He gazed at the sky, a battle with the west wind imminent, clouds distorted as if into shapes he needed to see. Midnight lay in a hump on his knees and he stroked him into a purr, another black cloud under his control.

  Craving a swallow at the bottle, or wanting to read the newspaper, his knees parted slowly to let the cat fall. He filled his pipe as if putting shreds of his soul into it, then puffed out shapely billows of smoke.

  When the weather was bad they picked away at the puzzle of Nelson’s last battle, Ann listening to Sailor’s stories as if she hadn’t already heard them, wanting to know what happened next in those half forgotten. He assembled a patch of the main deck, while she worked at the glowering French ship that had given so much slaughter.

  ‘We’ll need a month of Sundays, but we’re getting there.’ His remark signalled a break from the gloom of billowing cannon smoke behind the Victory’s deck. He reached for glasses and a bottle from the sideboard.

  They played games of draughts, alternated by tots of whisky and mugs of tea. Sailor drooped in the armchair and slept. She wondered about the travels of his dreaming mind, and one afternoon he came out of sleep with skin like pale clay, dull eyes looking but not seeing. ‘Oh,’ he moaned, ‘I’m glad I’m back.’

  She held his hands. ‘Of course you are, Sailor. You’re with me. But where did you go?’

  The old smile was distorted by uncertainty. ‘I wish I could put a name to it. All I know is I don’t like being there. I’m in a boat, you see, and the alarm bells go. The ship’s sinking and the sky’s all dark. The flashes could be guns or lightning, because there’s no sound. It never bothered me when I was young, so why does it now?’

  He tried to shut his past from her. If she knew everything she would love him more, but if she never knew anything more about him she wouldn’t love him any the less. Maybe it was only the war which tormented him. She hoped so. His medals were in a case on the mantelshelf, and she had seen the paper with his name written there, telling what they were for: ‘In the Service of the Principles of the Charter of the United Nations; Korea; the Defence Medal; the Pacific Star; the Africa Star; the 1939-1945 Star.’

  ‘You’re all right now, Sailor.’ Tears on her cheeks said she couldn’t be sure. ‘Nothing bad can happen while you’re with me.’

  ‘Don’t worry, love.’ He stroked her face. ‘We’ll be all right. You’re the queen, and I’m the king. That’s the only thing as matters.’

  The pain of her spirit, so hard to endure, was dulled by a drink of whisky. ‘It’s the best thing out for lessening life’s little obstacles,’ he said.

  You had to believe him, for who knew better? He must have fought through many obstacles in his life, and keeping the memories in watertight compartments was his way of making the pain bearable. Perhaps not talking made them worse, but dousing their pain with alcohol brought her and Sailor closer than if he had relinquished his guard and told all that gnawed at him.

  Sidney’s prize carriage clock was no longer in its place on the living-room shelf, and she stared at the space as if to make it come back. It was plain they had needed the money, and Sailor had sold the clock that he knew was precious to her, because how else had the whisky that he brought back every day been paid for? His savings must have finished long ago.

  The thought that he might be out of the house so much because he had found another woman almost caused her to faint. She couldn’t wait for him to fall against the kitchen door, but put on her coat to go out and look for him.

  The slow bus seemed to be sliding backwards, her emotions melting into that pitch of jealousy which she had been too unknowing to suffer with Sidney. He wasn’t in The Black’s Head, and she didn’t find him in the Radford pub, either. She imagined herself either one step behind or one in front, weeping because she didn’t know whether or not she was being a fool. On her way home she bought supper at the chip van, and Sailor was waiting at the house.

  ‘Thank God.’ He held her for a kiss. ‘I thought you was gone for good.’

  ‘How could you think such a thing?’ But there was a lightness in his tone. ‘Have you been in long?’

  ‘Ten minutes,’ he said.

  She spread fish, chips and saveloys, sliding the pan into the oven. ‘Where did you go? I looked everywhere.’

  ‘I was in The Jolly Higglers.’

  She hadn’t gone there, but she couldn’t have called in every pub in Radford. ‘Were you?’

  ‘You don’t believe me? I was talking to a chap as deals in cars, and I sold him my old banger for a hundred quid. He’s taking it away tomorrow morning. I don’t drive much these days, and it’s only good for the knackers’ yard. Anyway, it’ll help our finances along.’

  She sat before him. ‘What have you done with the carriage clock, though?’

  He paused from filling his glass. ‘I’ve hidden it.’

  ‘You wouldn’t tell me lies, would you, Sailor?’ She looked into his eyes. ‘You didn’t sell it, did you?’

  He reached for her hand. ‘I love you too much to lie. I suppose you’ll think me a bit touched, but I didn’t like such a valuable timepiece being kept on the shelf for anybody to see and carry away as soon as they broke into the house.’

  She was ashamed at having called him a liar. Even if he had been she shouldn’t have said it, and he wasn’t, which made it worse. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I’ll show you.’

  He pulled a shoe box from behind cloths and tins of polish jumbled in a cupboard under the stairs, showing her the clock in the bed of a yellow duster. ‘Maybe I am barmy. The notion does occur to me at times, but so many houses around here get broken into that I had a funny feeling somebody would nick it. I like to follow my instinct, as I did when I fell in love with you and asked you to marry me.’

  ‘And I’ll always be glad you did, Sailor. I can’t think of a better man than you.’

  When supper was heated to a tolerable crisp in the stove he fetched a bottle of whisky from behind the settee, which
he had hidden as a surprise on coming in, and they laughed at a slyness made innocent only because he wanted to make her happy.

  She flooded what was done of the puzzle with light, and saw that it hadn’t much increased. A completed frame hemmed the conflict in, but she longed to see the picture finished, in the hope of finding something about her and Sailor. When it was done she wouldn’t be able to use the table, but she couldn’t bear the thought of breaking it up after years of slotting every piece together. ‘That would bring bad luck on us,’ she told Sailor.

  ‘I sometimes think the best thing would be to burn the whole lot,’ he said. ‘I’ll never want to see it again after it’s done.’ He assembled a glimpse of clear sea. ‘Look at this space for lost souls, though.’

  ‘I like it,’ she said. ‘It’s so much part of you. We’ll fasten every piece onto some sticky Cellophane and have it framed. It’ll look nice on the wall above the fireplace.’

  ‘Anything you like.’ He pounced on another bit of the sail. ‘Your wish is my command.’

  ‘It’s looking wonderful.’ Both were happiest at such moments. ‘We’re really getting on.’

  The face of Roman numbers was plain to see when unwrapped from the cloth. The key stopped unmistakably against the barrier of being fully wound, minutes clicking healthily as if measuring her life and Sailor’s from its snug hiding place. She knelt on the floor to feel its weight, knees sore on standing up and life itching back.

  The cloth wrappings dropped from her fingers, and for a moment her heart seemed to stop. She couldn’t see the clock with the eyes God had given her. Or the devil of a timepiece had grown legs and gone walkabout, sending out rays saying come and find me. She pulled everything onto the carpet but it still wasn’t there. Sailor had found a new hidey-hole, and she already heard him making a joke of it. His mind might be unfathomable, but he wasn’t the sort to play a game without good reason, in which case she wouldn’t let the matter worry her, and saw no point asking where the clock had gone.