Keith knew the pubs well at night, but daytime drinking was a different scene. He tried the Swan and the Brown Cow first, but they were both dead, nothing more than a bored landlord in either. Keith knew there must be life somewhere, there always was, you just had to seek it out. He found it in the Victoria, a small low-ceilinged pub at the side of an alley opposite the library. There were three small rooms, each one with men sitting, smoking, drinking and talking. The smoke hovered in the air, there were cigarette burns like bullet holes in the upholstery and the mottled glass windows meant nobody could see in from the outside. Keith liked it. He climbed on a bar stool, ordered a pint and arranged his change on the bar top. Over the next couple of pints he chatted to the barman, and to the men, as they came and ordered their drinks, stared ahead as if lost in thought when there was nobody to talk to. Keith knew how to be absorbed into a community of drinkers – it was simple. You stayed in the same spot, not pushing yourself on anyone, you commented when required, agreeing with whatever point of view held sway, you accepted the offer of a drink if it came and always bought one back. By the end of the afternoon he was part of a group of men sat in the back room of the pub. Keith had told the men he’d come to Etherton for the job at the cement works and, with a few omissions and alterations, the story of his sacking. For the last half an hour the men had shared similar stories of terrible jobs and unreasonable bosses and Keith was enjoying himself. He was sad when everyone began dribbing and drabbing out of the pub, making way for the after-work drinkers. Keith found himself alone with a blond man called John and they stayed for an extra couple of drinks together. He liked John, he was a few years younger than Keith and he let him talk, let him tell his stories. He laughed at the funny moments and acted angry for Keith when there was reason to be angry. Keith was sad when John stood up to leave, he’d been thinking they might drink on into the night, but John said, ‘See you Thursday? We meet around two on Tuesday and Thursdays.’ Keith was non-committal, but he was already looking forward to Thursday.
Thursday went the same way with Keith and John left alone at the end of the afternoon. Keith drained his glass and despite wanting to stay, and John showing no signs of being ready to leave, gathered his change together and said that he’d be off.
‘Stay for another,’ John said, but Keith shook his head. The £60 in his wallet was almost gone and he didn’t know when any more money would find its way there to replace it.
‘Have you got somewhere to be?’ John asked.
Keith shook his head. ‘I’m a bit broke at the minute,’ he admitted. ‘Down to my last bean is the truth.’
‘It happens,’ John said, ‘it happens to all of us.’
Keith wondered what John did for money. Despite claiming to have known poverty, his wallet was always full, he wasn’t rooting in his pocket for coins when he approached the bar. What job paid so well and let you spend afternoons in the pub?
‘Let me shout you a drink,’ John said.
Keith held up his hand to protest, but in his head he was already drinking the drink. John returned from the bar with a pint and whisky for each of them, dismissing Keith’s thanks.
‘We all have our ups and downs,’ he said, as he carefully slid the drinks onto the table. ‘And it’s important to share when you happen to be going through a green patch.’
Keith nodded firmly at this. As if his ups had ever come along half as regularly as his downs. As if he would share. He took a glass and drank a big swig of beer.
‘I’m expecting some work to come along soon,’ John said, ‘if you’d be interested?’
Keith looked up from his drink, suddenly alert. ‘Anything would be good,’ he said.
‘Let me speak to the other two, see what they say. I know they’re looking for an extra man for a job they have in mind.’
John took a glug from his pint, threw the whisky into himself and stood up to leave.
‘See you Tuesday. We’ll discuss it then.’
They shook hands and John left the pub. Keith looked at the near full pints and the whisky in front of him and smiled.
Eighteen
Thomas and Raymond met on Tuesday evenings at the side of the forest by the farm. They usually headed into the trees, but sometimes they drove to the foot of a hill and climbed to the summit, or walked across Chapman’s fields to Steadlow reservoir. Raymond knew every tree, plant, flower and shrub they came across, and didn’t need prompting after a while. ‘Pink campion,’ he would say as they passed a cluster of small-headed, pinky-red flowers gathered around a tree trunk. Thomas would make a mental note, try to remember, and often he would, it was a much easier way to learn than from a book. They talked about work. It surprised Thomas, Raymond’s interest in his job. Usually whenever people asked what he did and he replied, ‘Bank manager,’ they nodded and moved on to talk about something else, as if all the details and tasks of his working days were apparent to them from those two words. But Raymond seemed happy to listen, and it was a relief for Thomas, to be able to talk. Ann had stopped asking years before, and he knew she only half listened when he spoke about work, that she thought he was making a drama out of nothing much at all. But his job had changed; it was no longer the job he’d signed up to do, and it made him unhappy. The previous bank manager, and Thomas’s own manager, Douglas Wright, had been the guardian of the bank’s money, vetting and calculating risk, encouraging saving and urging caution, caution was the ethos of the bank back then. But by the time Douglas retired and Thomas was promoted to manager everything had changed. Thomas was tasked with meeting monthly lending targets, selling a certain number of loans every month, approving enough of the right type of mortgages. Thomas knew that Douglas had suffered sleepless nights after turning people down for mortgages, when there wasn’t the money available to lend, but Thomas’s sleeplessness was due to the pressure of selling. It seemed that the purpose of the bank had changed overnight, and with it Thomas’s job. Thomas despised being a salesman. It wasn’t in him. He cringed when he was browsing in a shop and a salesman approached him with a smile, and he hated to think that anyone would feel that way about him. But it had to be done; it was now his job to do it, and he tried, even though every instinct Thomas had was that of a careful, cautious banker, a banker from the old generation. And now he found himself working his way through his customer database, calling up those with a cushion in their account and suggesting ways to invest the money, or suggesting to less well-off customers they might want to take advantage of an introductory interest rate on a new credit card. Most people were polite, some were flattered to receive a phone call from their bank manager, others a little intimidated or nervous, and hardly anyone was ever rude, but Thomas still felt cheapened by it. Whenever he made one of these calls he instinctively leant his head into his right hand and rubbed his forehead until a red patch formed. The nadir for Thomas was an advert the bank ran. Posters all over the country of a bright red sports car, underneath the caption: Why wait? Have it now! It was the opposite of how Thomas had been raised, the opposite of how the bank had operated for years. What had happened to saving, sacrifice and patience? Where was the pleasure in a new car you couldn’t afford, a car that would end up costing twice as much by the time it was paid off? Thomas told Ann about the advert, shaking his head as he did.
‘What about this place?’ Ann said.
‘What about it?’ Thomas asked.
‘We needed the money for it, we didn’t have it, my parents loaned us it. What’s the difference?’
Thomas didn’t argue, he couldn’t bring himself to argue. If Ann couldn’t see the difference what was the point?
Raymond was an easier confidant. He listened carefully and nodded at everything Thomas said. Whether he really agreed or not, Thomas couldn’t tell and didn’t mind much, it was good to get it out. In return Thomas encouraged Raymond to tell him about life on the farm, although the accounts Raymond haltingly relayed often amounted to nothing more than a list of the jobs he’d completed since th
ey’d last walked together. But Thomas was keen to hear anyway, it was another world from his quiet, brown-carpeted, cream-walled bank. He was particularly interested in hearing about Chapman, the red-faced little man he’d met briefly once, in the gloomy farmhouse corridor, so he drew the tales out of Raymond.
‘So you get ten minutes in the bathroom in the morning?’
‘Any longer and you can hear him outside on the landing, shuffling and coughing.’
‘What happens if you need longer?’
Raymond shrugged and said, ‘I don’t know, I stick to the ten minutes.’
‘But they let you have your meals with them?’
‘Sandwiches or soup at lunch and a hot meal at night. Sheila cooks.’
‘So he feeds you at least?’
‘He does, but it comes out of my pay. It’s gone down a bit this year, because the price of food has gone up.’
If anyone other than Raymond had been speaking, Thomas would have suspected them of exaggerating for comic effect, but he doubted if Raymond had ever exaggerated anything in his life.
‘Isn’t it hard – living in the caravan? Can’t you have a room in the house?’
‘I’d rather stick with the caravan,’ Raymond said, and Thomas laughed.
One night, after they’d been meeting and walking regularly for a few weeks, as they headed back to the road and Thomas’s car, Thomas said, ‘Do you fancy a pint one night? Over at the Tillotsons?’
Raymond said it would be nice.
‘Thursday,’ Thomas said, ‘I’ll pick you up.’
Later that night Raymond sat on the edge of his bed in the caravan trying not to fret, but fretting anyway. Would he like a pint out? It was the question he’d been dreading, but the question he knew was inevitable; it was what men did – they went to the pub. Feelings of anxiety and stress immediately flooded his heart when Thomas made the suggestion – busy rooms, loud conversation, strangers looking; it was everything Raymond tried to avoid. But at least Thursday is soon, Raymond thought, at least there isn’t too much time to worry and wait. Regardless, he did manage to cram a huge amount of worry into the next forty-eight hours. After tea on the Thursday, with his stomach feeling slick and greasy, Raymond asked if he could use the bathroom. ‘Will there be any water?’ he asked, hoping it didn’t sound like a demand, worrying that Chapman would be annoyed by a second bathroom session of the day.
‘There can be,’ Sheila said. ‘A date is it, Raymond?’
Raymond’s cheeks flushed as if Sheila had pressed a button that released dye.
‘Just going for a drink, he said, ‘over at the Tillotsons.’
‘With your new friend?’ Sheila asked.
Raymond nodded.
‘Well, good for you,’ Sheila said, sounding a little peeved. ‘He deserves a night out, doesn’t he, Frank.’
Chapman didn’t reply.
Back in the caravan, shiny and scrubbed, Raymond considered his clothes. But there wasn’t too much to consider. He owned work clothes and evening clothes, which became work clothes over time. He pulled out his newest trousers and newest shirt, both of which were already years old, and his only pair of shoes. He was standing at the side of the road, waiting to be picked up ten minutes too early, thinking he really needed the toilet again, dreading the evening that lay in front of him. At one point he considered walking deep into the trees and hiding there until Thomas drove away, but he knew he wouldn’t do that. A few seconds later he heard an engine approaching from behind the bend, and it was too late to escape.
When Thomas pushed the door of the Tillotsons open it was onto a packed little pub, groups of men standing together, holding pints, chatting, the faint thud of landing darts and the crack of pool balls coming from the snug. Thomas headed to the bar, smiling and nodding at people as he went, Raymond tracking right behind him. Raymond had wanted a deserted a pub; him and Thomas alone at a corner table, talking about the things they talked about on their walks, nobody noticing or staring. He kept his head down, wishing he was half his size, hating his huge body.
‘What’s your poison?’ asked Thomas cheerfully, when they reached the bar.
‘Bitter,’ Raymond said, firmly. He knew that much. Men in Abbeystead drank bitter.
‘Two pints of bitter then,’ Thomas said and Raymond nodded. That was what you drank. That or mild.
As they turned with drinks in their hands, to head over to a table on the back wall, Raymond’s cheeks burned red and his hands shook a little. Were people staring at him? Were they telling each other that it was Chapman’s farmhand? The big man who never comes out, never says anything if he does? They finally reached a free table and sat down. Raymond felt hunted.
‘Lively,’ said Thomas.
Raymond agreed that it was, and because he didn’t know what else to do, and because people went to the pub to drink, took a huge swig from the glass in front of him. He gulped down almost half the liquid in one go. He found it sweeter than he remembered, kinder to his tongue than he’d anticipated. He put the glass down and wiped his sleeve across his mouth.
Thomas laughed.
‘That pint looks like a half in your hand,’ he said, but he said it kindly, it didn’t sting Raymond like a criticism. Raymond held his hands out, turned them over, considering them. ‘People say they’re big,’ he said.
‘I bet they’re useful though,’ said Thomas, ‘with your work.’
‘I suppose so,’ agreed Raymond, ‘but sewing buttons is tricky.’
Thomas laughed loudly, as if Raymond had made a joke, and Raymond joined in, pleased that the first thing he’d said in the pub had gone down well. He couldn’t relax yet though, the next hurdle was coming up – he would have to negotiate the crowded room by himself, get to the bar, order more drinks, and somehow return them to the table unspilled. People would stare, they might try and talk to him, but he knew how important it was to buy the next drink. He’d learnt from Chapman that a man who accepted a drink and didn’t buy the next one was not a man people liked to drink with. Seeing that Thomas was taking small sips, taking his time with his beer, Raymond let his pint sit on the table a while and waited until Thomas caught up.
They spoke about the usual things, which was a relief to Raymond, at least the conversation didn’t have to be different in the pub, but he couldn’t concentrate as well as when they were out walking – the noise and the people swarming around them made it as difficult for Raymond as having a conversation in a heavy wind. He wasn’t used to all the voices, mingling together, spilling into his ears, the sudden storms of laughter, the shouting of a name. Raymond watched Thomas carefully and tried to time his last gulp with Thomas’s, and as soon as Thomas put his drained glass on the table Raymond grabbed it from him and headed to the bar, keen to get the ordeal over with. Raymond was served quickly and without any confusion and returned to the table without spilling the drinks on anyone. He sat down with a sigh. Thomas held up his drink and said, ‘Cheers.’ Raymond relaxed, just a little, for the first time that night. They ended up drinking four pints. Thomas usually stopped at three, he said, but Raymond wouldn’t leave the pub owing a pint.
‘You can get the first one next time,’ Thomas had said, but Raymond was already up and off, on his second expedition to the bar.
Raymond climbed into his bed that night and slept more deeply than he’d slept for years. In the morning he couldn’t remember, what, if anything, they’d spoken about on the way home. But he did remember he’d survived, and, in the end, enjoyed a night out at the pub. The next morning, mucking out, his head still a little woolly, Raymond stopped work suddenly. He stood straight-backed with fresh cow dung clumped thickly to the face of his shovel, his mouth open. ‘Thomas is my friend,’ was the thought he was thinking, the thought that had stunned him into stillness in the warm, shit-filled shippen.
Part Two
One
‘You were right, Mum! Fast asleep!’
Harriet ran across the room and jumped into Thomas’s lap.
Thomas tickled her until she begged him to stop, until she nearly cried with it. Ann had taken the children to see her parents for the afternoon and now they were back they settled into their Sunday night routine. Daniel was upstairs playing computer games in his room, Harriet had been watching television alone but, as she often did, drifted to where Thomas and Ann were reading in the back room. She pulled one of her books from the shelves and lay down on her front on the floor, opened the book and furrowed her brow. The quiet was only broken by the rustle of Thomas’s newspaper, Harriet’s fidgeting feet and the occasional, thin music escaping Daniel’s room. Thomas was half-reading a review of a film he had no intention of seeing when the knock came. He looked over to Ann, to see if she was expecting anyone, but Ann didn’t glance up from her book and Harriet had already charged off. Thomas scanned the page for the last sentence he’d read and called out to Harriet. When he looked up the men were walking into the room. They stood against the wall, in a line, in front of a painting of sheep in the snow. Harriet was held by her shoulders.
Into the Trees Page 7
