Down the Figure 7

by Trevor Hoyle

  ‘Aye, when pigs can fly,’ his dad muttered.

  ‘I wrote and said I was coming down from Catterick two months ago,’ Jack said. ‘Just waiting for my demob papers to clear.’

  ‘Is that in Egypt?’ Terry asked. And after Jack laughed and shook his head, Terry explained, ‘I thought it was ’cos you’re so brown.’

  It was true – Jack had a deep and even tan that made his eyes and teeth flash brilliantly, and with his black wavy hair he was the dead spit of the film star Tyrone Power in the pirate picture Terry had seen at the Ceylon a week or two ago.

  ‘Here you are, Joe.’ Jack held out the box with its frill of crinkly white paper. ‘Have some Turkish Delight.’

  ‘No thanks, it sticks to me plate.’

  Barbara Webb dabbed at her eyes. ‘Oh Jack, it’s so good to have you back home again. You were so young, only a lad when you were called up.’

  ‘Bit more than that,’ Jack laughed. ‘Nearly eighteen, sis.’

  ‘Still young, I think … that reminds me, Eileen Kershaw asked when you were coming home.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’s working at Turner’s, in the canteen. Why didn’t you write to her?’

  ‘I did write.’

  ‘One letter and two postcards in nearly four years.’

  ‘I’d nowt to say.’

  ‘Thousands of miles from home in a foreign country and you’d nothing to say! You could have told her about North Africa.’

  ‘What – that it’s hot, stinks, and has millions of flies? Come as a shock to Eileen I daresay.’

  … working for the Yankee Dollar…!

  As the record came to an end the memory snapped off, quick as a light-switch, and Terry was back in the snug burrow of his bed, following the cracks in the ceiling as an explorer traces the tributaries of a mighty river in darkest Africa.

  Lying here at ease, his hand came to rest quite naturally between his legs and he tried, for the umpteenth time, to masturbate successfully.

  ‘Your bacon butty’s on the table,’ his mother called from the bottom of the stairs, and Terry slumped back into the bed, defeated by a whisker.

  When he had got dressed in front of the kitchen fire and eaten his breakfast, she said, ‘I want you to go to the butcher’s. I’ve written it down.’

  Terry was still slightly adrift in the memory of Uncle Jack’s homecoming, and something bothered him about it: that had been three years ago, in 1947. Why did Jack not leave the army until two years after the war ended?

  ‘Because he wasn’t called up till ’42, a few days after he turned eighteen,’ his mam said. ‘The buggers nabbed him for two more years after the war. Never left Egypt except for a short leave.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Barbara said. ‘Stop asking daft questions,’ and shoo’d him on his way.

  Sylvia was playing outside the backyard gate in the dirt, serving tea to a circle of dolls. It was a fine day, clear and cold, with hardly a stirring of wind. Terry fed his pigeons and put the money and the list his mother had written in his pocket, thinking how funny it was that Saturday mornings had their own special flavour; even if you lost track of the days you’d still know when it was Saturday.

  Mrs Heap was down on her knees on the strip of pavement, donkey-stoning her front step a vivid buttery yellow, and Bessie Smith, Male’s mam, was at the top of the step-ladder washing the fanlight over her door. Teddy Travis, Danny’s elder brother, was tinkering with his Norton, lying flat on his back in the dirt surrounded by spanners, chromium-plated bolts, c-clips and oily rags. The one car in the street was owned by Sam Clegg, the coal merchant: an upright Austin Seven with a canvas roof on struts like a pram-hood and black wire-spoke wheels. It was always spotlessly clean and polished till it shone; he even washed the tyre treads. Opposite Sam Clegg’s were three garages which had once been used to house the Civil Defence fire-fighting equipment; now they were rented by a small round man with bright button eyes and a swarthy bald head who kept two ice cream vans there, painted with the name ‘Granelli’s’ in gold circus lettering.

  Alec and Male were sitting on their bikes watching the traffic on Entwisle Road. Male was counting the red cars and Alec the blue ones to see who could get most. Terry had pestered his mam and dad for a bike since he was seven or eight but his father said they were dangerous, which when interpreted in the language of the Webbs meant that bikes were too expensive and they couldn’t afford to buy him one. Male had managed to get his because Mrs Smith worked the housewives’ shift at Oswald & Duncan’s, while everyone in Denby knew how Dolly Bland, Alec’s mam, earned a bit extra on the side.

  Terry asked them what they were doing that afternoon: Alec’s blank brown eyes were lost in counting, his lips miming numbers. ‘Fourteen,’ he said at last. ‘Eleven,’ Male said.

  ‘I might be going to the match with me dad,’ Male said.

  Terry, who had no interest in football, said, ‘Do you fancy the baths?’

  ‘I’ll have to ask me mam,’ said Alec.

  ‘Why do you always have to ask your mother before you can go anywhere?’ Terry said. Secretly he thought Alec a bit of a mard-arse, though had never said so. ‘Anybody’d think you were a kid.’

  ‘I’m older than you, Webb.’

  ‘Three weeks.’

  ‘I’m still older.’

  ‘Are you going or not?’

  ‘Might do.’

  ‘Call for us.’

  ‘Call for me.’

  ‘All right.’ Terry was bored with the contest. ‘About two o’clock.’

  The butcher’s was next to a chip shop, and next to that was the Trafalgar pub. Terry liked the butcher’s shop: Arnold the butcher had a kindly face and a blob of a purple nose like a lump of plasticine. He wore a straw hat and a blue-and-white striped apron soiled with blood. He teased Terry and told him jokes and asked him riddles, and Terry would stand there, moving the toe of his shoe in the sawdust, making rivers, dams, bridges, exploding them with dynamite in his mind.

  ‘What’s the longest word in the world?’ Arnold asked.

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Smiles,’ Arnold said, forcing scrag end into the mincer with a wooden baton. ‘There’s a mile between the first and last letters.’ He boomed a hearty laugh, his face going even redder, more amused than Terry.

  ‘When is a door not a door?’

  Terry knew this one but shook his head because he liked Arnold and didn’t want to spoil his fun.

  ‘When it’s ajar. Get it? A jar.’ His pink jowls trembled against his starched collar.

  ‘Hey,’ Terry said. ‘That’s clever.’

  ‘How’s your mam these days?’

  ‘Swell.’

  (This was a word he’d heard the Yanks using, who came over from Burtonwood, the US Air Force base, to whom the standard greeting was, ‘Got any gum, chum?’)

  ‘Still go to the Carlton, does she?’

  Terry shrugged.

  ‘Terrif dancer, your mam.’ He lofted a clotted clump of fatty mince onto the scales. ‘Used to come to your house when you were a baby. Didn’t know that, did you? During the war, in the blackout. Your mam and dad used to have parties—’

  ‘Parties?’

  ‘Don’t look so flummoxed. Hey – your dad was a bit of a nifty dancer too.’

  ‘Me dad?’ Terry said. ‘My dad?’

  ‘Big gang of us in them days. Carlton on a Saturday night, then back to Barbara and Joe’s for supper. Course, you were tiny then, nobutt a babby.’

  It did seem incredible, but even as he spoke a vision drifted on the edge of Terry’s mind, imperfectly remembered, of being taken from a warm bed in his mother’s arms and thrust into a crowd smelling strongly of something. There was noise, and heat, and lights that made him blink, and people standing close together holding glasses, breathing fumes over him. Ladies with strong perfumes clutched him to their bosoms, their brooches pointed and sharp digging into his chest, and many we
t kisses on his smooth cheek. He was passed from hand to hand like a rag bundle, dazed by the light and the noise, buffeted to and fro before being returned to darkness and sleepy warmth. It was a memory and not a dream, though nowhere in it could he find a round-faced, red-faced man with a blob of plasticine for a nose and a jolly laugh that set window-frames rattling.

  Arnold gave Terry his change with the same hand that had wrapped the mince, so that the coins were greasy, with bits of fat stuck to them. ‘Why can’t a cross-eyed teacher teach properly?’ – and when Terry shook his head, wrapping the money in his handkerchief with a slight shudder of disgust – ‘Because he can’t control his pupils!’

  Arnold laughed delightedly at his own wit as he wiped his blue hands on his apron.

  For Saturday dinner they had liver and onions and chips, with strawberry blancmange to follow. Joe sat in his working shirt, his scrubbed arms resting on the kitchen table, devouring the food as might a starving man. Afterwards he would have a proper wash in the sink and get ready for the match. Usually the meal was a pleasant one, with the rest of the day stretching before each of them to dispose of as they pleased, but today Terry made the mistake of asking his father what ‘Fuck off’ meant. It was a question he had not considered lightly, suspecting that it meant something very rude, not to be mentioned in polite society, ever since the Boy Scout had snarled it to his face one afternoon on his way home from school.

  But Joe was in no mood for educational enlightenment, fetching Terry a beauty across the back of the head with a hand that felt like a shovel and knocking him clean off his chair.

  Barbara said, ‘The lad was only asking a question, Joe!’

  ‘Don’t let me hear you using that word again in this house,’ Joe said. ‘That filthy talk.’

  Finding himself on the floor with a throbbing head in the middle of his dinner was an experience that Terry wasn’t likely to forget; he was hurt and wanted to cry but he wouldn’t give his father the satisfaction. Underneath the pain and the hatred he somehow sensed that Joe was the loser: that his adult strength was all he possessed, and without it he was a sinking man.

  Barbara’s face had closed up like a fist. She was making a clatter as she collected the plates and carried them to the sink, turning on the geyser and filling the kitchen with steam and the gush of boiling water. Joe said:

  ‘How am I going to have a wash now?’

  ‘You’ll have to wait. Won’t you?’ Barbara said, spacing the words evenly and calmly.

  ‘You know I’m going to the match.’

  ‘Can’t be too soon for me.’

  ‘How can I, woman, when you’re washing up? You could have left them till after.’

  Barbara screamed, ‘Do you want me to throw them on the floor? Do you? Because I bloody will!’ She took hold of the enamel bowl and half raised it out of the sink: it was a gesture, nothing more, but the anger was real.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, woman.’ Joe’s voice had thickened. If this went on much longer he would lose his temper and become dangerous.

  From the back door, holding a doll in the crook of each arm, her muddy drawers at half-mast, Sylvia said in a cross little girl’s voice: ‘Stop shouting at my mummy.’

  ‘Go out and play,’ Barbara said. ‘You and all, Terry.’

  He was glad to get away out of that atmosphere. It didn’t give him any pleasure to hear them arguing, even when he knew she was defending him. He went through the backyard and ran down the dirt back-entry, jumping over the sticky mud patches where the water had evaporated, and all at once, for no reason, felt tons better. It was Saturday afternoon. He was off to the baths with Alec. And (you never knew your luck) there was always the chance that Margaret Parry would be there in that pale-yellow cossie that was a size too small.

  Christmas up Syke

  IT SNOWED ON CHRISTMAS DAY. JUST AFTER DINNER there was a taxi coming to take them all to Auntie Martha’s who lived up Syke near the ponds. Terry’s sack contained the usual packets of sweets, chocolate selection box, apple and tangerine, a painting set, a ludo and snakes-and-ladders game combined, and three books: 1001 Amazing Facts, The Boys Bumper Book of Adventure, and Jets, Rockets and Guided Missiles, which was his favourite. He was expecting no more, and so the first sight of the brand-new shining bicycle as he opened the stairs door and stepped into the kitchen made the eyes bulge in his head. It was a red Raleigh Sport with drop handlebars, a Sturmey-Archer 3-speed and a hub dynamo. It even had white wall tyres.

  Terry hugged his mam, knowing the sacrifices it must have cost, but he was too embarrassed to thank his dad directly or permit a show of affection. He slapped Joe on the shoulder instead, and his dad feigned a punch in return, with a nod and sort of a sheepish grin.

  Terry put a Mars bar from his selection box in his windjammer pocket and wheeled His Bike into the street: it made a smooth well-oiled ticking sound: there was no one about to show off to, but on this wonderful morning it didn’t matter.

  The snow lay thinly on the hard ground, heaped like powder in the ruts and hollows of frozen mud. Denby was silent and deserted as he rode along, the tyres crunching softly through the snow, and everywhere the peaceful whiteness covering the houses and pavements and making the stone setts into rows of little rounded hillocks. Terry had never been so happy in his life. He rode along Cayley Street, changing gear for the fun of it, past Wellens’s shop, did a circuit of the Top Track and then down the slope and round the Bottom Track, making a detour to the dead end of the Figure 7 and back again. He liked watching the blur of the spokes and the mirror-bright rims reflecting the handlebars, himself, the sky, in narrow distortion. Everything he saw gave him pleasure: he was aware of his own aliveness, glad to be Terry Webb and no one else.

  When he arrived back his mother said, ‘Have a good wash and put your best clothes on. We’ll have some hot mince pies round the fire.’

  ‘But I had a bath last night.’

  ‘You still need a wash, Terry, on Christmas Day.’

  Terry sighed, docile and resigned. It seemed daft having a wash when you weren’t dirty.

  His father had lit a fire in the front room, this being Christmas morning, and all the family sat round the hearth drinking tea and eating hot mince pies. In deference to the occasion Joe was wearing a shirt with a collar, the trousers of his Sunday suit, and carpet slippers (though still no socks). There was wrapping paper and string everywhere – in the hearth, on the floor, under the cushions – and Terry’s books and games and Sylvia’s doll’s house furniture and tea party set scattered over the rug. Joe was pacing himself nicely, smiling grimly through it all, averting his eyes from the mess and confusion, tapping his foot in time to Sandy Macpherson’s medley of carols on the wireless.

  Dolly Bland popped her head in to say ‘Merry Christmas’ and sip a glass of sherry, then a little later Dot Hartley, Kevin and Doreen came in from next door, bringing a jigsaw of Tower Bridge for Terry (he hated jigsaws) and a skipping-rope for Sylvia.

  Barbara was doing a lot of nudging and winking with Dot, which Terry didn’t twig till his mam asked him to get a chair for Dot; and ten-year old Doreen intercepted him and plonked a big wet one in the middle of his face – right under the mistletoe.

  ‘Come on, our Terry,’ his mam said, ‘that’s sixpence you owe her …’ She was jigging about, as fluttery as a schoolgirl.

  Terry had gone a deeper shade of red than his new bike. It wasn’t that he minded being kissed so much, but to have been manoeuvred into position so effortlessly made him feel a right idiot. Ungraciously he handed over the sixpence, appearing flustered, and with everyone standing round grinning, he said, ‘Mrs Hartley can have my chair,’ and as she moved forward to accept he stood on the arm of the settee and kissed her on the lips, tilting his head to avoid the mole on her chin.

  There was a moment’s complete silence. Terry got down off the settee and held out his hand. ‘Sixpence, please.’

  ‘I’ll go to the bottom of our stairs,’ Barbara said, hand s
pead-eagled on her chest.

  Handing over the money, Dot said, ‘You won’t have any need to worry about your Terry. Talk about sharp.’ And in his private tally of victories and defeats Terry chalked up another Swastika on the side of his Spitfire: it was perfectly okay pretending to be a kid so long as the adults didn’t rumble you.

  The taxi came for them at two o’clock. It was a Morris Oxford with a faded pennant on the radiator, and Terry almost peed himself as the long black bonnet slid into view past the leaded window. He had been coerced into having yet another wash (he still wasn’t dirty) and his face shone like an apple as he stood on the doorstep, his knees shaking with cold and excitement. Joe bustled about, turning off the gas, locking the back door, making sure the cat was out, while Barbara piled presents on the sideboard. Every two minutes she would say, ‘Have we got everything?’ – repeating it over and over like a chant, as much for her own benefit rather than actually addressing anyone.

  The driver waited morbidly behind the wheel, an indifferent face beneath the shiny peak of his cap, and at last they were ready, Bessie Smith and Mrs Heap and Mrs Travis peeking out from behind net curtains as the driver put the car into reverse and the Webb family moved majestically backwards down the snow-covered street. Terry sat next to the driver; the smell of leather intoxicated his senses. He breathed in luxuriously and tried to see over the dashboard: the long shiny bonnet sloping away and the pennant vibrating stiffly in the slipstream.

  As they rode along with incredible smoothness he kept finding a smile on his face: he still couldn’t get over the astonishing fact that he actually had a bike. Bloody Nora, wait till tomorrow. Male and Blandie would be pig-sick: his Raleigh had a 3-speed and a dynamo and theirs didn’t. He sat back and wallowed in a kind of smug inward rapture, the smile imprinted right the way through him like Blackpool rock.

  Then they were at the door of Auntie Martha’s and Uncle Cyril’s: now Christmas would really begin.

  Terry suffered the hugs and kisses stoically in the cause of peace, harmony and goodwill towards all relations. Already the big table had been opened out, the felt underlay to protect the polished surface placed in position and the best tablecloth, washed and starched till it dazzled the eye, smoothed by Martha’s capable hands so that it hung down to regulation length. The great white rectangle commandeered the room like a coffin at a wake, which meant that everyone was obliged to sit in corners and against the walls, conversing at a distance while the sisters Martha, Polly and Emily passed constantly to and fro from kitchen to table, table to kitchen.