by Melvyn Bragg
‘You haven’t time for that,’ she said. ‘Joe, help me clear up.’
The boy fell in, further elated by a man-to-man wink. He hurried with the dishes because part of the deal was that on Sundays he helped his dad behind the bar for the first hour, to give his mother a rest. It was never a busy hour.
Afterwards he mooched up street, but all he saw of interest was Colin on his motorbike with Paul proudly clinging onto the pillion seat. Paul had once been in Joe’s gang but lately had fallen away. He had heard that Colin had taken him up but this was the first time he had seen them together. A shot of jealousy surprised him because only fear would have persuaded him to take Paul’s place. Colin had turned against him and Joe was nervous of the consequences. Colin did not wave and Joe was hurt.
‘I’ve put everything upstairs,’ Ellen said when he returned. ‘That’s how you wanted it? There’s lemonade but if you want tea - just make it.’
They stood in the kitchen, his parents, side by side, both wearing coats even though the day was warm. Coats looked smarter.
‘You’ll not be broken-hearted that we’re out for a walk.’ Sam’s mood was a little more amiable, but still carried the edge he’d shown when Joe insisted that he and Alfred had tea together upstairs in the parlour. He and Alfred alone.
‘Your dad wants to go for a walk.’ Ellen did not look too happy. What she wanted above all else was time alone to gather up every last drop. Why had Marjorie said she knew how to hold onto him? Why could her own mother not do that? Colin was a good dancer too. And Joe. She should have made a list: Mr. Hawesley would have loaned her pencil and paper.
‘The Easter Parade,’ said Sam, and put on his trilby with a little flourish, tapped the brim.
Joe took the stairs two at a time. Everything was perfect. Egg sandwiches. Jam sandwiches. Four iced cakes from McGuffie’s. Two packets of crisps. Four pasce eggs. Two bottles of lemonade. One chocolate egg. The boy nodded to them. This was something like a tea, far and away better than the amateur effort they put on at the vicarage.
Alfred was prompt. He was reluctant to go upstairs. Joe gave him an unplanned guided tour of the pub. Alfred was very taken with the singing room. ‘You mean people just come in and sing? Do you pay them? What do they sing?’ The kitchen baffled him. ‘You’re having supper and people just walk in and order a pint! Do they have supper with you?’ To divert ever-increasing embarrassment and upgrade the place, Joe pointed to a shelf in the corner which would soon support a new television set. ‘Father says television will end all conversation,’ said Alfred and Joe wished he’d kept his mouth shut. Eventually Joe levered his guest upstairs into the parlour, neat, shining with polish, tea laid out on the table, dead smart, Joe thought. Alfred ignored the room.
‘Are those cakes from a shop?’
‘McGuffie’s.’
‘We’re not allowed shop cakes.’
‘We could start with them.’
Joe held back and ate one cake to Alfred’s three. Then the chocolate egg. The crisps, the lemonade. Joe went downstairs for another two bottles.
‘You can just go downstairs and nick bottles of pop?’
‘I’ll offer to pay.’
‘Are those dumping eggs?’ Joe nodded. ‘Can I try?’
This was not as Joe had planned it but Alfred’s good humour was flattering. The accent of the vicar’s son was so far above his own, the way he carried himself, the gesture and poise of him. Joe was fascinated by someone who had walked off the pages of the public school stories which dominated boyhood reading material. Alfred was a specimen.
He explained the holds on the egg, the very simple rules, demonstrated the short tap, the point to point butt, the cruncher, discussed the separate virtues of round end and pointed end, told him all he knew.
‘Right.’ Alfred clutched his egg tightly.
‘I have to see some of it. Otherwise how can I dump it?’
Alfred revealed a coy crescent of shell. He would never have got away with it in a real competition, Joe thought, but he was a guest. He tapped quite gently. As he did so, Alfred pulled back the egg. That was cheating.
‘Your turn,’ said Joe, showing a generous rump. Alfred failed to crack it.
Joe hit hard. Both eggshells broke. ‘What happens now?’
‘We can use other bits until it’s all knackered.’
‘My turn.’
‘You have to eat it,’ said Joe, after a disappointing draw. Alfred took it in two bites and picked up a second egg.
Bored, Joe went for a quick win and lost.
‘Do you think,’ Joe said, as they munched through egg number two, spiced with salt, lubricated with cherryade, ‘that Jesus got divine in that sepulchre or did He go up to Heaven and change up there and come down again different?’
‘They’re jolly good eggs. Don’t know. I expect he went up.’
‘Do you think,’ Joe was hoping for a proper discussion with this public school boy, ‘that He felt no pain on the cross and if He didn’t how can we say He suffered?’
‘I just go along with it,’ Alfred said and reached for a jam sandwich.
‘What’s it like sleeping in a dormitory?’
‘Hell at first,’ Alfred’s reply was instant and heated. ‘But you get used to it.’
‘Do you escape at night?’
‘What for?’
‘I thought you had adventures.’
‘Could we play darts?’
When Sam and Ellen returned they were on a marathon - who would be first to reach one thousand. Alfred immediately broke off the game and extended his right hand. ‘Good afternoon, Mr. Richardson.’ And again, this time with a little nod. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs. Richardson. The tea was spiffing.’
Both Ellen and Sam noticeably stiffened at the formality. But they were calmer, Joe observed: the row had blown over.
‘We had an extra bottle of pop,’ Joe said. ‘Each.’
‘What’s this you’re playing?’ Sam referred to the crush of numbers chalked on the scoreboard.
‘First to a thousand.’ Joe muttered his reply. ‘What sort of game is that?’
‘Sam!’ But Ellen was not really cross. There was in Sam’s tone a banter which brought the boys out. Her role, she saw, was to dust away all awkwardness. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
‘Could we play a proper game, Mr. Richardson?’
Sam glanced at Joe, who shrugged. Nothing else had worked.
‘Two hundred and one then,’ Sam said and wiped the scoreboard clean with the rag. ‘Middle for diddle.’
‘Middle for diddle!’ Alfred’s voice rose half an octave, near enough a scream of delight. For the first time, it grated on Joe. Sam was tickled.
‘Nearest the bull starts off. You throw.’
Alfred hurled the dart like a javelin.
‘Good God,’ said Sam, ‘is that what you’ve been playing at? Here. This is how you hold a dart. Stand here, twist a little bit sideyways, fix your target, bring your arm up smoothly as if you’re going to brush the sides of your hair, then throw, firm but not hard, and follow through, the follow through is what makes it. Now then. Try again.’
I could have taught him that, Joe thought: why didn’t I?
‘Not a bad lad at all,’ Sam said, later.
They were in the kitchen, sitting over the tea Alfred had very politely refused.
‘They have beautiful manners, you have to give them that.’ Ellen was thankful for the harmony, however temporary it might prove. ‘They turn out some big smart well-spoken fellas.’
‘I met plenty in the army.’
The officer who came to see you once. He was a beautiful speaker.’
‘Colonel Oliphant.’ He drank his tea now without slurping, Ellen noticed. ‘But there were others every bit as bad as he was good.’
‘There’s bad and good wherever you go. They’ll turn him into a well-turned-out, good-mannered man.’
‘What about Joe? What’ll they turn him into?’
�
�You needn’t bring Joe into it. Isn’t it about time you got washed for evensong?’
‘So your friend wasn’t afraid of the Big Bad Wolf after all, Joe? And what do you know? We didn’t embarrass you a bit.’
The boy was ashamed. He knew his father had realised from the first what was behind the manoeuvre to get the tea upstairs. He looked at him, fearful, deserving punishment. And yet, coiled inside him was the unforgivable knowledge that he would do the same again.
‘He’s a nice decent lad,’ Sam said. ‘But I’d back you against him any day. Away you go.’
The boy went out on a rush of gratitude at such undeserved support.
Alfred was not at evensong. After the service when the vicar had given the choir the final blessing, Joe sidled up and asked why not.
‘He felt rather sick.’ The vicar’s smile was too obviously strained. ‘His mother thought it was something he’d eaten.’ People were listening. ‘The cakes, I think she mentioned cakes.’ Listening closely. ‘Alfred isn’t used to - rich - food. But you were very kind.’
Joe slunk to his corner to hang up the surplice and cassock without daring to look anybody in the eye. The organist decided to postpone telling Joe that he would have to leave the choir. The boy walked through the dark Sunday streets feeling worthless.
‘How can cakes make you sick?’
He was alone with his Auntie Grace. She had soon winkled out the cause of his hurt.
It’s what you’re used to. When I was in service none of the family would have tolerated bought food - they didn’t have to. We cooked and baked the lot - but it’s only what you’re used to. That’s all. Don’t take it on yourself, Joe.’
They were in her room. Leonard had lit a fire despite the warmth over Easter. Grace had turned off the main light, leaving only a side lamp as she had intended to drowse and liked firelight, lamp glow, a domesticated dusk. But Joe was no disruption, especially a Joe in need, a perturbed, deflated Joe, a Joe whom she had watched over from the cradle.
'I was second cook!’ said Grace, and laughed - quietly, but she laughed, not a common sound, and the boy who was sitting at her feet, between her rocking chair and the fire, felt favoured, felt complicit. ‘That was how your Uncle Leonard found me. But a second cook was somebody then, Joe, and for all his money I made him wait. His mother was against it, of course, but I soon had her sized up. If you can keep a man waiting, Joe, then he’s yours for life.’ Again the laugh, more of a chuckle this time, a warming embrace of sound which did what it was meant to do and calmed down the demons wounding the boy’s spirit.
‘You had to do everything for them,’ Grace said, ‘they were such babies!’ Her scorn made Joe feel stronger. ‘You dressed them, you washed and ironed for them, you drew their baths and made their food, you polished their shoes, laid the fires, you saw to the men’s drinks, the women’s creams and oils, the car was buffed up every morning, the dogs were to be brushed down, a speck of dust was a crime. They were babies but they had a grip on you and you always knew your place. You had to. Most of that went in the war, Joe, and I’ve met some who miss it - but not the cleverer ones. We knew we were well out of it. However nice some of them were and some were. There were big smart men among them and some lovely-looking tall women. But when all was said and done, you were only a servant. You were treated like one and you had to think like one. Once you do that, Joe, you’re a goner. Remember that.’
Her voice was low, the strokes had softened and slurred it. But there was that in it which lulled the boy, an undemonstrative urgency as if the failing woman sensed that there would be few times for them to be close like this, few occasions when he would welcome help, or when she could give it. ‘Remember that,’ she repeated and reached out to stroke his hair.
When he saw Alistair outside the pub, just to the side of the steps, Joe hesitated. Alistair was drunk. Joe had seen many drunken men and some women over the years and Alistair was drunk. Dead drunk. When he got close, Joe saw that he was rocking on his heels, his hands in his trouser pockets, his glazed eyes focused nowhere.
‘Joe!’
The boy had to stop. Alistair tossed his head, the tuft, and Joe moved close to him.
‘Your father,’ he said, ‘is a good man, Joe. Even if he’s just said I can’t drink in his house tonight. He won’t serve me. I went to Carlisle dance yesterday, Joe, and just got back tonight. That’s some dance, eh? A twenty-four-hour dance, Joe, eh? I’m not banned, Joe, just not tonight.’ He reached out, rocked a little, took Joe’s shoulder and pulled him close. ‘You tell your dad I’ll cause no trouble for Sam Richardson.’ His face was riveted with fatigue, the words came emphatically through a desperation of drink. ‘Sam Richardson’s been good to my mother, see? So tell him no trouble. And …’ Joe had used the full stop as an excuse to move off: Alistair pulled him back. ‘And tell him that if he wants anybody taken care of just send me a message. Tell him that. Anybody taken care of. Send for me. I won’t have trouble in Sam Richardson’s pub, I’ll clear it out for him, O.K., pal? Tell him that.’
’I will.’
‘You do.’ He released him, stumbled.
‘I will.’
‘You do.’
‘Goodnight then, Alistair.’
‘You tell him.’
Joe turned at the top of the steps.
‘I will,’ he promised. Alistair nodded, hugely, and then began his slow ascent of King Street.
In the pub the dumping competition drew everyone into a party battle and the gaudy eggshells littered the floor, one after another cracked and broken, some of the whites stained by the dye, Sam the judge for the semi-finals between the winners in the kitchen, the singing room, the darts room and the bar, and then for the Final. Joe, moving among these adults at play, drinking, talking too loudly, warm now, far from the strictures and ceremonies of the church which had begun his day, the inflamed sense of failure which would never go, found ease and distraction here and comfort, hope, energy, in what was so ordinary, so common. He felt a happiness, immersed in and being fed by this pagan celebration, a gratitude that there was this life also.
Later, after the pubs had closed, after the stragglers had made it back, when the only noise in the town was the shuddering of old machines in the sleepless factory, no cars on the street, last trains long gone, Lizzie looked fearfully out of the dank abandoned house.
It was too light. The moon was just past full and the near glowing orb of it made shining rivulets of the streets, pooled into light the yards and lanes, silvered the railway tracks, made visible the fields which circled and penetrated the old town. You could have read by that strong light. She stood as if paralysed for a while but she had to move. She would find the shadows. She was aching so badly now, thirsty, hungry, stunned. They had finally left her only in the middle of the day.
Her face was bruised, cut, set in a terror that made her look intently into the silent town before taking the first step. Her dress had been ripped - her mother would kill her - the shoes were ruined, no coat. Barefoot, licking her swollen lips, panting little straining breaths, Lizzie crept up the hill, making for the only place she could, the last place she wanted to be seen.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When Sadie learned on Easter Monday morning that Ruth Ellis had been charged with murder for shooting her faithless boyfriend outside the Magdala pub in London, she felt guilty. She admired the blonde, glamorous-looking young woman. She would have bet everything that the playboy type who messed her about deserved the bullets. She could see herself doing it - she could see that too clearly. That was the guilt. But the pain of her unabsolved soul, the burden of her private despair, forced her to deny her true opinion, and by the time she had worked the first hour in the pub, she had changed sides.
‘He deserved it but they’ll have to hang her,’ she said.
‘She has to be found guilty first of all,’ said Ellen.
‘What does Joe think?’
The three of them were having a morning break in the
kitchen. Sam had been up hours before, done his work and joined the coach party to Carlisle Races.
‘Mr. Braddock wanted us to have a debate on capital punishment after O levels,’ he said, ‘so Ruth Ellis fits in.’
‘But you think they shouldn’t hang her.’ Sadie smiled coquettishly at Joe. ‘It’s them vital statistics. She’s like a film star, isn’t she? But she’s still murdered him, Joe, whatever he did.’
Outside a pub,’ Joe said, seeking a kinship.
‘She must have been driven to it.’ Ellen’s voice was the most thoughtful of the three. ‘They said she loved him. How can you love somebody and shoot them unless you’re driven to it? How could she turn into a murderer?’
‘Murderess,’ corrected Sadie. ‘It said on the wireless. Ruth Ellis, Murderess. Ruth isn’t much of a film star name. Joe would let her off, wouldn’t you, Joe - like all men?’
‘It says “Thou shalt not kill”. That’s what it says.’
‘That’s daft.’ Sadie smiled at the easy victory. ‘You can’t have wars without killing and then where would you be?’
‘Ruth’s a nice name,’ Ellen said.
‘She must have just stood there outside that pub in cold blood, just waiting for him to finish his drink and she sees him when he comes out and bang, bang, he’s dead. But she’s got to hang, Ellen, whatever drove her to it. We can all say that. There’s not enough hangs. That’s what I think.’ Sadie got up abruptly. She was angry. Joe had never seen her anger and he flinched. ‘I’m off to do them Ladies’ toilets.’
‘What’s the matter?’ he whispered, after Sadie had quit the room.
Ellen shook her head.
‘I’ll need you on tap ‘til your dad comes back,’ she said.
Mid morning and the curtains were still drawn in the front bedroom where Lizzie and her sister slept. It was noticed. One or two of the neighbours went round to the back but the door was locked. The knocking was in vain.
Sam had done unusually badly. He had behaved like a novice. First in putting too much on an outsider because he fancied his chances against the bookies: then in putting everything on a hot tip - genuine, from the stable - which pulled up with less than a furlong to run.
