by Annie Clarke
Stan yelled, ‘Don’t you bliddy dare, for I’m not coming in for yer if you drop off. Come and eat. Davey’s to get his train, so’s we only have an hour here.’
Davey rose from the fire and walked to Fran, holding her close and together they watched the flames gain a hold. Stan and Sarah did the same, standing to the left of them. Fran whispered, ‘Everything’s all right, you know Davey, we have one another, haven’t we?’
It was really a question, and one she had never asked him before. What the hell could he say? Did he tell her what a fool he’d been? How he’d woken on Daisy’s bed when he thought Fran was going to chuck him after he’d had the anonymous note telling him she was mucking about with Ralph? How the hell could he have been such a fool to believe such rubbish?
As her eyes searched his face he said nothing, not knowing what right he had to say anything to this wonderful girl, so he just stared down at the crackling fire, treasuring every moment of her body so close to his, only rousing when Stan called, ‘What the hell are you doing, Davey? The fire’s going out. We need more wood.’
It wasn’t just Davey he startled, but Ben and Beth who were running along the bank, and he felt Fran stiffen in his arms. He stopped, and turned. Davey saw his sister, Sarah, step back from the fire, her scarf falling from her hair to her shoulders, calling to Stan, ‘Howay, bonny lad, keep your hair on, there’s a few more sticks to burn through yet.’
But Stan had stormed across to Davey, and now gripped his arm and pulled him away from Fran. ‘I said, we need more sticks, I’m bliddy freezing. You lasses, get the sandwiches out, eh, not to mention the beer, cos Davey has to go soon.’ All the while he was talking he was tugging at Davey, who was forced to walk along the bank with Stan until they reached the gateway of Farmer Thomas’ field.
It was here he backed Davey against the gatepost, so hard the gate catch dug in his back. Stan gripped his lapels, shaking him, keeping his voice low. ‘For the love of God, what’s the bliddy matter with you? You’ve a face like an armpit, and my sister has had a bliddy awful time balancing that bastard Ralph against keeping the family safe and making herself almost outcast from the village for what they thought she was doing with the boss’s son. And you, what are you doing, punishing her with your distance? What do you want her to do, grovel? Well, hell will freeze over before our lass does that, and while we’re about it, I’ve a good mind to give you a bliddy good hiding.’
He almost chucked Davey from him. ‘If it’s over then tell her, and don’t pull the grief card, we’re all feeling it. But sort it, because I’m not bliddy well having it.’
Davey fought for his balance, his boots sinking into the ploughed earth, and then he stood, ready for another go from Stan. It was no more than he deserved. There was silence between them. All Davey wanted to do was tell him about Daisy, but how? Stan would never have been such a fool.
He stared over the fields to the pit, and wanted to be back where everything was simple, where he could be here for Fran and his family. But after what he’d done with that girl … Thank god he had been too drunk to be anything other than a fool.
He looked at Stan who was blocking his way to the beck, and it was as though they were bairns again. Stan was the leader and knew everything, kept them safe, and in whom they trusted like they’d never trusted anyone before or since. Stan who solved all their problems.
He wanted to weep, but men didn’t. He started to speak, but his voice shook. He swallowed, and Stan’s voice was different now, gentle, kind. ‘Come on then, our lad. Spit it out.’
Davey did, in a torrent: how he’d had the anonymous note saying that Fran was seeing Ralph, how Fran had then called the telephone box as usual and wanted to tell him something which he couldn’t bear to listen to. ‘I thought she were telling me it was over, so I got bliddy drunk, didn’t I? Falling over me own feet I were, and this Daisy from work, she helped me, and took me back to her room—’
Stan grabbed him again. ‘She bliddy what?’
Davey wanted Stan to give him a good belting, anything to dull the pain of what he’d done, or might have done. ‘I woke on the bed in t’morning, not in it. On it. She were making tea or some’at, and calling me sweetheart and then when I tried to leave she were right mad, and said I’d led her on.’
Stan shook him again, so he felt like the man with the wobbly head from the cinema. ‘For God’s sake, Davey Bedley, are you bliddy mad? So did you? What the hell happened?’
That was the worst of it, because while Fran had done what she had to, to keep her family safe, he had done it, whatever the hell ‘it’ was. He was right miserable and jealous of every other bugger under the sun. He stared at Stan and shrugged, then almost shouted, ‘I don’t bliddy know.’
Stan let him go, and stood beside him now, handing him a Woodbine and they both lit up. ‘Go back over it, bonny lad. You woke up, with your clothes on, or not?’ Stan asked.
‘I had me drawers on, and …’ Davey was back in the room, seeing himself, and her, then added, ‘And I had me socks on.’
Stan flicked the ash from his cigarette, and stared as the tip glowed in the cold air. ‘By, lad, you must have been a sight to behold.’
Davey stood in front of him. ‘Bliddy hell, I’ve just thought of something else. The elastic had gone in me drawers in the morning, and the other pair were in the wash, so I’d stitched ’em tight before I went out, to keep the buggers up, and were going to have to break it when … Well, you know what.’
Stan nodded. ‘And you’ve remembered …?’
Davey felt as though boulders that weighed tons were lifting from his shoulders. ‘They were still sewn tight. I’d forgotten. How the hell could I forget that?’
Stan shook his head. ‘Because you’re a bliddy fool, is why. Not safe to be let out on your own, but the thing is, you’re in the clear lad. You were so drunk you would have been anyway, no way you could have done owt frisky, trust me. You’ll have to tell that lass or whatever her name is, to stop being such an unholy cow making some’at out of nothing, though why anyone would fasten on you, heaven alone knows.’ Stan was grinning and his arm was round Davey’s shoulders now just like the days when they were bairns. ‘By bonny lad, you’re starting to look a sight better than you did, and I reckon our fathers’re up there laughing their socks off at the whole sorry mess. So, best you sort it with our Franny now you’re back on.’
Davey was fierce now as he ground out, ‘I were never not on, I love ’er, Stan, more’n life itself but I felt dirty and I knew I had to tell her I were a damned fool, but I can now, because I know that’s all it was, just me being too drunk to know which side up I was.’
Stan flicked his stub away. It arced through the air, and fell onto the ice between two furrows. ‘Bet you can’t get yours within a foot of mine. And let’s not talk about which side up you were, eh?’
Davey’s stub ended up six inches from Stan’s, and they argued about how much Stan owed him as they walked towards the girls who were calling them now. They realised they had no wood to take back, so they had a quick scavenge in the hedge, grinning and talking just like they always had. But as they walked back, Stan said, ‘Hang on, what about the note? Wasn’t there some’at you said to me about it at the funeral? What with everything else, I’d forgotten all about it.’
‘Aye, it were from that snotty Amelia. I recognised the handwriting on her flowers. I don’t trust her, Stan. I’ve got to tell our Fran about me daftness with Daisy, but what about Amelia? Do I tell her about that?’
Stan shrugged, and in doing so dislodged a small log. He stooped to pick it up. ‘They have their own ideas about her, so I reckon we let it lie, eh, unless it comes up? I’ll keep an eye on ’em, and her. Don’t you worry. Amelia’s only an office worker so can’t do any damage. Best you forget about her, and clear the air with our Fran, because we’ll have to set off in twenty minutes if you’re to catch your train, and finish the beer. Race yer, eh?’
Stan was off, tearing along the
bank. Davey was catching up fast, because his Fran was there, his Fran, the love of his life. They built up the fire, they sat on their macs and ate and drank. They toasted their fathers, all three of them, and it was as they cycled home that Davey told Fran he’d been an idiot, and began the story. The wind was up, but behind them, and as they sailed down an incline she said nothing at all until he got to the part where he’d sewn up his drawers, and then her laugh soared over the wind, and probably right up to their fathers.
She held out her hand, he took it, and then, though he had said he wouldn’t, he told her of the note. Again she said nothing for a while, but held his hand even more tightly, and as they came into Massingham she said, ‘I’m glad you told me. It’s best I …’ She waved her hand to the girls. ‘We know. As the three of us have said before, we might learn to like her again, but how can we ever trust her after all that she’s done?’
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Published by Arrow Books 2019
Copyright © Annie Clarke 2019
Front cover photograph Silas Manhood
Background © Getty
Design: Emma Grey Gelder
Annie Clarke has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in Great Britain by Arrow Books in 2019
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London, SW1V 2SA
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781473564640
