“You off after this lot then, or what?”
“Yeh Charlie. Course. What else I going to do, eleven of an evening?”
“I know what I’m going to do.”
“Yeh? What? Fill in your pools coupon?”
“Nah. Here—talking of that, how you get on last week?”
“Nothing. Not a bleeding dicky bird. Why? You got lucky, did you?”
“Were looking like I got eight draws …”
“Yeh?”
“Yeh.”
“But you didn’t, did you?”
“Nah.”
“Nah. So what you up to then, Charlie?”
“Aggie. That’s what I’m up to. She’s a bit of all right, Aggie is.”
“Who the bleeding hell’s Aggie? Christine, your missus, ain’t it? What—you got something going, have you? Dirty old bastard.”
“Nothing dirty about it, Jim. Here—got a fag?”
“Blimey. Why you always run out? Ay? Always of an evening round about closing time, you go and run out of fags. Reckon by now you owe me about a hundred bleeding packets.”
“Pay you Friday, chum. No listen—Aggie, she’s a very accommodating woman. Classy lady, Jim, I ain’t kidding you. Adelaide Road. She got a friend. Nice girl. They’re in the basement there, right opposite the bus stop. Made it all real cozy. They got a orange bulb in the wossname.”
“A orange bulb …?”
“Yeh. Real cozy. So what you say? Aggie, she don’t fleece you nor nothing. She got reasonable rates. Daresay her mate’s the same.”
I would’ve gone. I would’ve. Because comfort I do need. Always I’m wanting that. And like everything else what I does for myself, I shouldn’t be too surprised if it end up costing me. Got to pay for the lot in this life, ain’t you? The bleeding lot. Learn that early on. But I’m telling you, I’d had a right bleeding skinful that night and no mistake. I weren’t even fit company for Cyril, never mind no floozy. But I do remember next morning down in the shop, and I were thinking to myself: Adelaide Road, ay? Nice and handy. Right opposite the bus stop. And Aggie, she got a friend. Nice girl, according to Charlie. And so the following Sunday once Mill gone out with the boy, I got myself down there, didn’t I? And that’s when I first come to meet her. Daisy. My Daisy. And floozy she ain’t, let’s be getting that straight right at the off. She got lovely manners. She a big girl, I’m not saying—but ever so dainty with it. Yeh and so it’s her little side door what I’m knocking on now. I already give her a ring. She know I’m coming. And okay—only early in the morning, but still she going to get herself all done up nice for me. Only one whatever did, my Daisy. Because Mill, well … when we was first married, I got to say, it weren’t too bad at all. Never forget that first time. Well, weren’t actually my first time: there was a couple of fat old scrubbers up Minehead who was popular with all of the lads. But the first time with Mill, I mean. A proper lady. Wedding night. On leave, I were. Still a war on. Didn’t have much time. That were the feeling then. Whatever you was up to, there were always this feeling at the back of your head that you better get a move on son, because you didn’t have a lot of time. She were lovely-looking in them days. Still is, I suppose. Yeh—suppose she is, but I don’t never look at her like that no more on account of I ain’t meant to. Well—made that pretty clear early on, didn’t she? She were keen on it, first off. And I were grateful. Tried to be nice. Never took up too much of her time, because I knowed how she were always so busy. Couple of minutes is all—can’t have been a hardship for her. Anyway, she didn’t never complain. One time I remember—well, couldn’t hardly forget it, could I? Only time we never done it in a bed. She were rolling out pastry on the kitchen table. Just had her hair done—smelling lovely, she were. Little pinny on her. And yeh all right—I were just in from the Washington, granted … but I come up behind her bold as brass, I did … and, well … just done it. It were lovely. I think we was both surprised. She never said nothing. Didn’t even stop rolling out the pastry.
What happened then though was them tests. Them tests what I had down the hospital. She done them before, some other sort of women tests. And then I had to. Weren’t too happy about it. Who would be? Anyway—turns out I ain’t no good. Can’t do it. Bloody useless. So no kids for Mill then, and it all she were ever wanting. Wasn’t for young Pauly coming along, I reckon she would’ve … well, don’t know what she would’ve done. Anyway—she didn’t want it no more after that. So I got to cope with it myself. Years I done it. Art photographs I got. That’s what they calls them—art photographs. Black and white. Some bird with her tits out and holding up a vase or something and there’s this sort of curtain or a Roman ruin behind her. Between her legs though, it’s a bit of a puzzle: she got no doings. It’s all just white and painted over. Not really what you’re after, is it? But they help you out a bit, them pictures. Bleeding daylight robbery what they’re charging—don’t get me on to it. Little shop down New Oxford Street it is, where they got rubbers and trusses and that. Years I done it. So when I met my Daisy—yeh, I were well pleased, I can tell you that. She ain’t no art photograph, not my Daisy. Real, she is. Flesh and blood.
“Coo—we’re up with the lark today, aren’t we Jimmy boy? Come in quick, will you dear? All the cold’s getting in.”
“Hallo Daisy, love. Keeping well, are you?”
“All the better for seeing you, my Jimmy. Been a little while, hasn’t it? Come on through, that’s it. That’s the way. Let’s all be as quiet as a mouse though, will we? Aggie—you remember Aggie, don’t you dear? Course you do. Well she’s still in her room, dead to the world. Had quite a night of it, poor love. Exhausted, she was—should’ve seen her. Now I’ve only just put the fire on so it’s still a bit parky. Got your milk on the stove, though—I didn’t forget. Ready in a tick. Haven’t ever seen you of a morning before, have I Jimmy? Let alone a Tuesday. Could have knocked me down with a feather when I twigged it was your voice on the telephone. Only just had my Corn Flakes. Everything all right, is it?”
“Right as ninepence, Daisy. Now it is, any road. Don’t reckon them, you know. Corn Flakes. My missus, she started getting them for the boy on account of they got submarines in. You bung in this … what is it? Baking powder or something, she were saying, and they goes up and down. What they think of next, ay?”
“I know. I got a blue one today. Your boy got a blue one? You can have it for him, if you like. I haven’t got any baking powder else I’d give it a go.”
“Couldn’t tell you. He got a red one, that I do know. Yellow I think I seen knocking about. Might not be baking powder … could be flour, or something. But I’ll leave it, Daisy, that all right with you. They’re only going to want to know where it come from. Blimey—you’re right though, ain’t you? Bleeding perishing in here. I can always fetch you down one of them Aladdin heaters, you fancy it. Two gallons of Pink Paraffin, last you a week easy. Make it ever so snug. Do pong, but after a bit you won’t hardly notice. Here—that remind me: got you a nice big bottle this time, see? You looking proper lovely Daisy, I got to say. I go for that red on your mouth. Favorite, that is.”
“Done special for you, Jimmy my love. Now let’s have a look … what bottle you got …? Ooh—Parozone, lovely. Ta Jimmy ever so much. I’ll bung some more on that bloody wall of mine right this minute, if you don’t mind, dear. It’s got ever so bad with all this rain. Creeping right up to the pelmet, now it is.”
“Yeh but bleach, it only get rid of the marks, Daisy. It ain’t going to stop the damp coming in, is it? You want to get it looked at.”
“Yeh well you try telling my buggering landlord that, the swine that he is. Lost track of the number of times I been on at him. Once they got your rent, they just don’t want to know. Bastards. Every landlord I ever had has been a right bloody bastard. Yeh but if you kick up a fuss, you’re out on your ear without so much as a by your leave. Place I had before, up Belsize Park—I come home one evening and all my things is on the pavement. Said I hadn’t paid the rent. Bastards the
lot of them. Here, Jimmy—you sit beside the fire nice and cozy and get yourself all sorted, all right? Back in a just a jiff. Lovely to see you, dear. Sight for sore eyes, you are.”
“You could’ve had him for that, couldn’t you? Landlord?”
“Well not really dear, no. Because I hadn’t, you see—paid him his bloody rent. Not for near on three weeks. Bit of a lean time, it was—going through a bad patch. People wouldn’t think it, but it’s up and down, this business. Ooh—listen to me …! Kept my deposit though, didn’t he, the sodding bastard. So that was a fiver gone west. Towel’s on the tallboy, look. Shan’t be a mo, Jimmy.”
Lovely, ain’t she? Ay? Just what I like. See how you can talk to her nice and easy? Always up for a little bit of a natter, Daisy is. Make me feel right at home. Which—you got to face it—is more than I ever does at home. Only other time I talking is with little Cyril. Apart from going on about the weather all the bleeding time with every Tom, Dick and wossname what’s coming in the shop. “Raining, Mr. Stammer,” they’re going. Yeh well I can bleeding see that, can’t I, you berk? I ain’t blind am I, you stupid old sod. “My it’s a scorcher today, Mr. Stammer!” Oh yeh well I’m right glad you telling me that mate, else I’d be putting on my mink bloody coat, wouldn’t I? Blimey, I don’t know. If it weren’t for the dosh, I’d be happiest in my little shop if no one ever come through the bloody door again. Just me with my fags, a nice bottle of Bass and chatting away with little Cyril: do me perfect.
It only a little basement, this—but she got it real cozy. A orange bulb. And she got red on the wall both sides of the fireplace, what you don’t see often. We got magnolia. I says to Mill one time—here, I says: how about we slaps up a bit of red distemper either side of the fireplace there? She says to me “I don’t really think so Jim, unless of course you are contemplating the conversion of this building into a fire station—or conceivably a jazz club …?” See? Not nice, is it? Always that little dig she got for me. Always got to make me know I’m a pig in the shit and I ain’t got no class. Ain’t got no taste. Yeh and about that—another time she says to me in that voice she got “Oh no on the contrary, Jim—you have plenty of taste, I do assure you. It’s just that none of it is good, do you see.” Snide. Ain’t it really? Putting me down, that’s all she ever do. Up go Pauly and that Barton butcher bastard, and down go Jim. Happen all the bleeding time. Not nice, is it? Ay? Yeh but my Daisy, she don’t do none of that. Care for me, Daisy do. Like this big white towel she got for me, look—all clean and fluffy it is. She done that for me. So I put the thirty bob under the candlestick there, and what I’m going to do now is, I’m just going to get my duds off and slip the towel on to me. Tuck it in neat around my doings. Then when she done bleaching that back wall of hers, she come along with this great big safety pin she got and make me all tidy. Then she bring my milk, nice and warm the way I likes it. And she don’t mind it when I sits on her lap nor nothing—because like I say, she a big girl, Daisy. Take it in her stride, don’t she? And the bosom what she got on her, it’s a right lovely thing—proper homely, it is: something a bloke can proper get to grips with. Come to mommy, is what she say. Yeh. Come to mommy. And when I got the rubber thing on the bottle in my gob, she go and stick her tongue right down my lughole—and that … can’t kind of like explain it really … anyway, it make me go all sort of funny. She sing me a little bit of a song, then. She got different songs, quite a lot. Baa Baa Black Sheep I like—always do like that one. Incy-Wincy Spider, that’s a good one and all—because then she go all tickly on me. Always have a right laugh, the both of us does, if she go and do the Incy-Wincy Spider on me. And she stroking my hair, see—and then she get to stroking my other bits, like … and it’s prime, that is. Prime. And she say Do you like that little Jimmy? And I goes yeh. And then she do her tongue thing again and I get all shivery with it and she say Do you like that little Jimmy? And I goes yeh. Then she go all serious and she say have you been a naughty boy little Jimmy and I goes yeh and she say Well let’s have just a little bit of a look then, shall we? And I goes yeh. And I gets up off of her and I lies on the settee there and she undo the pin and the towel and she patting me all dry with another towel she got there and she do it real nice and slow and soft, like—and she say Do you like that Little Jimmy? And I goes yeh. And then I gets that lovely feeling all sort of bubbling up and right inside of me and I looks at her, see, and she smiling down at me ever so kind, and she kiss my brow and then she bring over this bowl of warm water and a little bit of soap what smell of lavender and she make me all clean again and then she put on all of this powder and she go There now, my boy—thanks to Mommy you’re all nice and clean again, aren’t you? Did you like that little Jimmy? And I goes yeh. Oh yeh, Daisy—I did. I did. Yeh I bleeding did.
Milly was flustered, there was no point in denying it—though neither, she knew, must she ever let it show. Everything this evening must appear to be perfectly normal: already I’ve blithely explained away to him, I think, the essential core of the thing with a light and easy touch, yes I feel sure I have accomplished that—for it is, after all, only Jim we are talking about here, whose instinct at the best of times may hardly be said to be acute: he is quite devoid of nuance or suspicion—he sees only that which is plainly before him. But treading with care and treating the man—a womanly approach that is bred in the bone and will make it certain, I am sure, that all now is well. But I have little excuse—none at all. It was perfectly stupid of me to do what I did, and ultimately so very terribly demeaning: the work of a madwoman, really—but passion, you see: this is what passion will do to you.
At first I simply was sitting in the shop, and feeling rather ridiculous. Here is not my place: everything here is utterly alien. This is Jim’s domain, and the Lord knows he is welcome to it. It smells of him—or he smells of it: I think by now the two are thoroughly interchangeable. This so old and flattened frayed chintz cushion on his stool appears over the passing of centuries to have molded itself into the inverse form of his buttocks. And beneath it is a mottled and dusty collection of old and creased thick paper carrier bags with knotted string handles from an assortment of places in the Lane, one or two of them long closed down. Why would you keep such uselessness beneath the cushion of a stool? And how many years had they resided there? The jagged teeth on the tin of string are wholly corroded: they would never cut the twine, which is why so very often in his efforts the whole thing would be upset on to the floor, the string unraveling, and Jim there cursing; Paul complaining later on that it was he, once more, who had been charged with balling it all up again. Next to the tin on the counter lay half a pair of scissors: not an operative and complete pair of scissors, no, for this would of course function immediately and efficiently, no no—just this one blade of a pair, the bent-over rivet still rattling at its center. And so he would wield this blunted piece of uselessness, would he, as a cumbersome alternative to a straightforward knife, and all because the jagged teeth of the string dispenser are wholly corroded. Such a method, in Jim’s world, I can see would pass muster: in this, he imagines, he has come up with a canny and coping system, a more than ingenious solution. All of this I instinctively know, while still remaining, oh … simply miles away from any sort of understanding. And then there are the odors—this mingled sweetness of distant rot, the veil of mustiness—the throat-tightening tang of paraffin, the rasp of choking bleach: all these fumes which he professes not to notice. And then on the perch in his rusted cage … there is Cyril, the light of my husband’s life—and look: his tiny black eyes are seemingly angry: he is cocking his head as if eager to shout out at me “Here! Here! What’s going on? You’re not Jim! You’re not Jim! You’re not Jim!” Well no—thankfully I am not.
And I was hoping that no one would come in. Not least because aside from all these piles of the more obvious commodities, I have not a clue where anything is. So if anyone wants something even vaguely obscure, I shall just have to ask them politely to call again when once more the king sees fi
t to resume the throne at the heart of his castle; or anyway this stool, with its old and flattened frayed chintz cushion, its substratum of carrier bags. Another reason I was hoping for no sort of disturbance was that I now had so much thinking to do. I’d closed my mind to a good deal of what has been happening lately by convincing myself that I had simply not a jot of time to dwell … yes but here now is time, hanging thick in the dead air of this dank and silent, fossilized cavern. I should love to first be able to deal with what I suppose I have to think of as the minor things—to evaluate their impact, and then to judge how best to handle the inevitable consequence. Yes, that would indeed be a rewarding luxury … but of course it is the black and gigantic shadow of Jonathan that swoopingly obliterates every trace of that, as it threatens to engulf me. Because I am now quite totally persuaded that that so very brief but telling hesitation in Jonathan’s stride could mean only that he had indeed heard the calling out of his name—further, that he had registered its source, and yet was immediately determined to affect a total unawareness, and press on with purpose. Why? Why would he do that? A reluctance, fear even, to be seen to address me in the street? Hardly. Such a thing, after all, would be perfectly in keeping—we were in England’s Lane, for heaven’s sake, where both of us live and conduct our business. Not that, then. So what …? A disinclination to speak to me for some other reason. Yes. And of course I do know what that is: what else, after all, could it possibly be? For I can no longer blind myself so very willfully … because that is surely what up until now I have been doing. Though still … even at this very moment, just to think of, to see again, that so brief vignette—to simply recall it, that just-glimpsed and easy conviviality that he was sharing with Fiona in his office, when I had so much needed to talk to him, to be with him … still I am astounded by how very powerfully that has wounded me. That, and the drinking of what I am now quite decided simply had to be Benedictine. Though I chastise myself for it, for my vain and girlish naïvety. I mean to say—what on earth did I imagine? That because he and I will occasionally encounter, that all manner of relations with his wife would immediately cease? It simply isn’t logical. Yes but logic, of course, now is the po-faced, so starchy and irrelevant intruder—that so cold would-be annihilator of all that throbs inside of me. Logic, it is bloodless—and what I am feeling is raw and dripping, consuming me from without, while still so very hard and deep within me. Even now my gullet is tight, my stomach bunched and my pink-rimmed eyes are smarting. I can, though, justify without guilt or question my own behavior, solely by means of regarding Jim. I can look at Jim quite wholly dispassionately, knowing that then my mind will be gorgeously flooded by wave after wave—a hot and unstoppable deluge of Jonathan: so of course then I must rush to him. How could I not? But … for him, clearly, all is much different. His … wife … is a lady. An educated and handsome woman, and together, it would certainly appear, they still share a great deal in common. So what, then, am I? What does this make me? Am I just that so terribly casual a thing, then? Merely a matter of convenience? Painful, horrifyingly painful though it is to acknowledge … this recently, quite gradually and so very reluctantly arrived-at deduction is cruelly emerging as the one distinct and very lowering likelihood. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. What, then, shall I do …? About it. Well, this is hardly the moment for irresolution of any sort at all: end it, Milly. Yes. If I have to my name even one tattered streamer of honor intact, I must end it. Yes. But then … were I to do that … I should be without him. Would I not? And I do not want to be without him. You see. I cannot bear the possibility of being without him. You see. The very thought of even one more tomorrow, and Jonathan quite excised from my existence … is simply intolerable.
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