“Please, Jonathan …” she heard herself just hoarsely whisper.
“What on earth do you imagine you are doing, Milly? Never before have I seen you like this …”
“Please, Jonathan … here: look. I can clear a space on the floor. We can put all these newspapers down …”
“God Almighty. I think you have taken all leave of your senses. Do you seriously imagine that I … that we should …?!”
“But Jonathan—you don’t understand. I love you! You see … that’s what it is. I love you …!”
Milly was aware of his eyes full upon her. She stood there quaking, awaiting whatever was to come. Had not the banging on the shop door—the clamor, the terrible clattering—brought back her shattered mind into a new though confusingly distorted sort of focus, she might indeed have again and with renewed desperation flung herself at Jonathan … or else simply wilted to the floor, and there she would have wept.
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed—and her eyes as she gazed up at him now were quite fearful.
“Where is the door out of here?” asked Jonathan calmly. “The back door—where is it? Can’t seem to see …”
“Oh—behind the curtain. No, not there—that way. Yes—you go. Best that you go now.”
She batted aside the old and filthy curtain, wrenched open the door, stood well back as he quickly and without so much as a single word walked right past her, and then, with a sigh, she slid back the bolt. Still she could hear all of this ceaseless rapping coming from beyond the shop—and oh good heavens, just take a look at Cyril: hopping about and twittering in his cage in possibly terror, or else maybe high amusement. And Jim’s face, by the time she had patted her hair, smoothed down her frock and got to the door—it was boiling red. She smiled at him very stupidly through the only scrap of dusty glass not obscured by browned and ancient advertisements. His eyes were bulbous, as sometimes, she knew, they can become. She turned the key in the lock and the bell was clanking quite frantically as he roughly barged open the door.
“What the bleeding hell is this then? Ay? Back in bleeding half a bleeding hour! I don’t never do that. Why you think I leave you here? Ay? I could’ve done that, couldn’t I? Ay? Put a bloody sign up. But I never. What the bleeding hell you reckon you up to, woman?!”
“Well I do think, Jim, that you might actually show me just a little compassion. It’s this ghastly shop. I was quite overcome. Felt so terribly ill. These awful fumes—I thought I was going to faint. I had to go and splash some water on my face. And don’t ever, please, call me ‘woman.’”
“It don’t take half a bleeding hour to splash some water on your face! Do it? Half hour! Could’ve gone up the bleeding swimming baths, done hundred sodding lengths in a half a bleeding hour! And I’ll call you whatever I bloody well want, see?”
“Oh look, Jim—there’s no harm done is there? Hm? You’re back—and I’m all right. So it’s fine now, isn’t it? Oh and Edie—Edie from the Dairies, yes? She’s going to come back later for a window wedge. Door wedge. I didn’t know where you kept them. Are they different actually, Jim? Window wedges and door wedges?”
“Window wedges is in the drawer by the till there, look …”
“Yes well she said they were in a drawer, but I wasn’t to know which drawer, was I?”
“Yeh well window wedges is there. See where I pointing? With the three-pin plugs and the cable connectors, window wedges is. Door wedges—door wedges, they’s under the counter with the candles and the washing lines.”
“Right. Jolly good. Well I’ll know for next time then, won’t I? So they are, then. Different. Door and window wedges.”
“Door wedges, they biggen them up, that’s all. Who else come in?”
“No one. It’s been awfully quiet. You didn’t miss anything. Apart from Edie, like I said. But she will be back—she said so. Look, Jim—I have an awful lot to do upstairs. All right? Still a touch of headache. So if you’re quite finished shouting at me, I’ll go. And how is it?”
“What you on about now? How is it? What sort of a bleeding question is that then? Bleeding riddle. How what, Christ’s sake?”
“Tooth, Jim. Your tooth. Dentist, yes …?”
“Oh. Yeh. That. Good. Yeh. Good. Much, er …”
“Better?”
“Yeh. Better.”
“Doesn’t hurt any more, then?”
“No. It don’t. All right now.”
“ … thank you for asking, Milly …”
“Yeh. Right. Ta, then. Right.”
So that, I am very much afraid, is all that happened to me this afternoon. Life really is, you know, becoming rather over-fraught, and I hardly even know now what is uppermost in my mind. A fearful inner agony, and the rumble of foreboding … these, certainly, are vying for position. But as usual, I can’t really yet be dealing with just any of it—and anyway it is evening now: I have attended to Paul—pretended to listen attentively to all of his schoolboy chatter, when in the normal way of things I would hang upon his every word: couldn’t tell you whatever it was he was talking about. Earlier, I went to Dent’s to get some kippers for our tea. And no, not solely because I was disinclined to buy meat at the butcher’s. Paul, he’s always complaining about all the little bones in a kipper, but I did it mainly for Jim, if I’m completely honest: he does so enjoy them, and it is important that the household remain harmonious. It really is a mercy that it is so very pitifully easy to ensure the complicity, the easy cooperation of men. Some men. The biddable. But we need peace here because there is more than sufficient discordance elsewhere, I feel—and not least within me. I do have to idly wonder, though, quite where Jim went off to this morning. It was so perfectly obviously not the dentist. He hasn’t been to a dentist since the day he was demobbed—and if a tooth of his was genuinely giving him trouble, oh well my goodness: wouldn’t we all be so terribly aware of that! There would be no other subject on the agenda. So not the dentist—but where then, so early in the morning? I actually do find it rather encouraging: that he should have anything at all to attend to that seems not to be centered upon the shop, the Washington and Cyril. So I hope he liked it, whatever it was: because I do think he deserves it, really—any sort of pleasure he can get: I wish him no ill. One other thing though that also is rather troubling me … is the pain. I’ve got that pain back, the stab, and I actually think it’s rather worse. Trying not to let it show. Just hope I’m making a good job of it.
“Nah, Pauly—it ain’t no good you trying to pick the bones out of no kipper. Just stick it in your gob. Crunch it down. Learned that in the army.”
Milly recognized the look of mingled revulsion and dazed incomprehension passing across Paul’s face before he turned it up to face her, in mute supplication.
“Here, Paul—I’ll help you with the bones. And for dessert I’ve got steamed jam sponge pudding. You like that, don’t you Jim?”
“Yeh. Partial to that.”
Yeh—partial to that, and partial to all this special treatment what all of a sudden she doling out to me. Couldn’t work it out—not at first I couldn’t. In the dark, I were. Because I ain’t often let her have it like that—really give her an earful, like I done. But I were that narked, I can’t tell you. Back in half an hour! I’ll give her back in bleeding half an hour, I were thinking. Because I ain’t never done that, bung up a sign. Have I? In all the years I been here. So yeh, I give it her good—but blimey, when I cools down, weren’t I expecting to cop for it after. Thought I’d get the right cold shoulder. Keep it up for weeks, that what I were reckoning. And now it like I’s a film star or something. I don’t know. Kippers. Steamed jam sponge pudding. What’s all that about, ay? Well … reckon I got a clue. I ain’t saying nothing—not yet I ain’t, nah. But in the back of my shop, there weren’t half a funny pong. Not like a normal pong what I always got—nah, this were something funny, see? And I goes to Cyril: here Cyril, my lad—smell that, does you? What been going on in here then, ay? You tells your Uncle Jim. Yeh—and him
tweeting away there. Shame I doesn’t speak budgie though, ain’t it? But then on the floor just under his cage, there—I seen it. Yeh. So where’s that come from then, ay? Mill? Don’t reckon so, no. So what sort of a person is going to be smoking a fag what’s black, with a bloody gold-colored tip on it? Yeh well. You got to ask yourself.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Got to be a Man About It
Oh dearie me—feeling a little dicky, if I’m honest. Anthony, he’s all over the floor and playing with his little motor cars after his tea—making all those sort of vroom-vrooming noises and shouting at me to look look look, and it was all I could do not to tell him to pack in all of his racket. Well—not to blame, is he? Young boy with his toys—only natural. Not to blame, is he? For his dad having had too much whisky, and now the man’s under the weather as a result of it. Not his fault that his dad’s a right and proper bloody idiot, and no mistake. Yes I know but look—I needed it, I did. Little snifter. Because tonight, once I’ve got Anthony off—see he’s done his teeth, tuck him up nicely—well then tonight, I really am going to. Got to. Can’t put it off. Talk to her. Get her to talk to me. Got to. She’s got to. Because well we can’t, can we? Go on like this. Not for a moment longer, I’d say. Milly was right: got to be a man about it. Show some gumption. And oh … just that one thought of Milly, now. She probably hates me. Must do. Can’t blame her, really. What was I thinking of …? I mean—what in blazes did I imagine I was playing at …? Dear oh me—I still go red when I remember it: feel my neck and then my cheeks, feel them turning all red whenever it comes back into my mind. Hadn’t planned it, or anything. Well of course I hadn’t. Wouldn’t have dared. Just happened. That’s all. One minute I was chatting away to her—next minute I was kissing her. Kissing her …! Christ Alive! Can’t believe it. Hadn’t planned it, or anything. Just happened. And she—she pulled out of it pretty sharpish, well naturally she did. Lady, isn’t she? Real lady. And with a friend, with a neighbor in his sweetshop in the middle of the day—hardly expecting it, was she? No—nor me, either. Well of course she wasn’t expecting it. Another woman, well—would’ve had the police on me. Oh dear. She probably hates me. Must do.
“Look at this one, Daddy! My favorite. See it? Ferrari, this one is. Racing car. Swapped it with Paul.”
“Ferrari, is it …?”
“Yes. Ferrari. Think that’s how you say it. It’s a foreign car. Not sure where it’s from.”
“Could be French. Could be German …”
“Could be. But I didn’t believe it when Paul said he’d swap it because I think it’s really really great and if it had been mine I never ever would have swapped it, not in a million years. And I really like the red. Do you like the red, Daddy? You don’t ever see red cars, do you? In the street. They’re all black and blue, aren’t they?”
“Maroon. Sometimes you see a maroon one.”
“Yes. Old Patten—our headmaster. He’s got a maroon one. Rover.”
“Nice car, Rover. Quality.”
“I gave him a Pickfords removal van and a cow. Paul. That’s what he wanted for the Ferrari.”
“Cow …?”
“Mm. From my farm. I had two anyway, so I didn’t mind. The Pickfords removal van I did rather like because the door at the back opened up and you could put things in it but that’s what he asked for and I really really wanted the Ferrari.”
“Well I’m pleased for you, Anthony. Very pleased that you got what you wanted. Now young man—time to get you off to bed, I think.”
“Oh Daddy—can’t I stay up a bit longer?”
“Not tonight, my boy. Not tonight. Tonight Daddy’s got to have a little word with your mother, you see.”
“Why? She won’t talk back, or anything.”
“Well maybe she will. It’s not her fault. She’s not well.”
“I know. You keep saying it. When will she be better?”
“Don’t know, son. Couldn’t tell you. Maybe soon.”
“That’s what you say about me always, isn’t it Daddy? That maybe I’ll be better soon.”
“And maybe you will. Who’s to say?”
“Actually … one of my legs, left one—it did feel better today. I could move it a bit more easily. Wasn’t so achy. Do you think it’s going to go away, Daddy? In my left leg? And then maybe the other one after?”
Oh dear Lord … just look at him, won’t you? His eyes, those two big innocent eyes of his staring right up at me, and full of hope. So trusting in his dad. Wanting me to make it all go away. Breaks my heart. It bloody well breaks my heart. I’m sitting here, sozzled on the whisky, trying to get up the strength I’ll be needing just to talk to my own bloody wife … and my little boy, my own baby boy, is asking me when everything’s going to be normal. It does. It does. It breaks my bloody heart.
“You never know, do you? Could be, Anthony. Could be.”
“Oh and I meant to ask you—what does it taste like?”
“Eh? What does what taste like? Talk in riddles, you do.”
“Black and White. Funny name. I saw you pouring some before tea. It’s a lovely color, isn’t it? Not black and white at all. What does it taste like?”
“It’s not for little boys.”
“I know that—but what does it taste like? Is it nice?”
“It’s … nice, yes. Quite, um—strong. But yes. Nice enough.”
Because I can’t just tell him, can I? That it burns my throat and sits so sour and heavy on the stomach. That it’s not the taste I drink it for. That I drink it because it blunts the sharp edges. Of my life. And gives me a bit of courage to carry on with it. And the more of it you take, the more you seem to need. Which is odd, really. If you stop and think about it. All I know is, a bottle these days … it just goes nowhere. And it’s two pound two-and-six—that’s what they’re charging for it in Victoria Wine. Criminal, really.
“What are you going to say?”
“What are you talking about now, Anthony? And it’s bedtime, my lad—I’ve told you.”
“To Mommy. What are you going to say to her?”
“I’m … well, I’m just going to have a little chat, you know?
“Maybe bring her up a little bite. Sandwich, or something.”
“But she won’t eat it, will she?”
“Well you never know, do you? She might.”
“She won’t. She never does.”
“Well she might, is all I’m saying. You don’t know, do you? She might. Now come along, young lad—get up those stairs. I’ll be in to see you very soon.”
“All right, Daddy. Can I read? When I’m in bed, can I read?”
“For a little while.”
“Oh goody. I’m reading such a good book at the moment. Really funny. It’s called According to Jennings. It’s Paul’s. He didn’t give it to me or anything—he wants it back. Just lent it, that’s all. It’s about these boys who are our age and they’re in a prep school but it’s not like my prep school because they stay there all the time. That must be quite nice, I think. And guess what? The author is called Anthony, just like me.”
“Really? Boarding school? You’re saying you like that idea, are you?”
“Think so.”
“What—not to be here any more, you mean?” “Well … maybe you could come too, Daddy …”
“I don’t think they’re wanting fathers and mothers there, Anthony. These places. Whole point, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t say mothers. I said you.”
Everything he utters—every single word that comes out of his mouth … goes right through me like a jagged bloody sword. And another thing—he’s dead right about the sandwich. I’ve decided now I’m not going to make one. Well it’s silly, isn’t it? Because he’s right, of course he’s right: she won’t eat it, or anything. There’s no “might” about it. She won’t eat it, and that’s that, plain as day. Will she? Because she never ever does.
“Come on now, Anthony. No more prattle out of you tonight, my lad. Up you get—chop
-chop. See how quickly you can clean your teeth and get your jimjams on. I’ll be timing you.”
“Oh you always say that, Daddy—you always say you’re going to time me and you never really do. When I ask how long I took, you just go and make something up.”
“That’s thirty seconds gone already …”
“Oh gosh—I didn’t know you’d already started …!”
And he’s up now, look at him. Got hold of his crutches. Off he goes, my brave young soldier. He tucks them under his arm, the crutches, once he’s got a footing on the stairs. Holds on tight to the banister. Pulls himself up sideways, sort of style. One step at a time. Got his own little system. Takes a while, but he gets there in the end. Won’t let you help him. Doesn’t like it one little bit if you ever try to help him. So … I’ve just popped next door now to get myself a little nip, and soon I’m following him up the stairs. Ah … just take one look at him, will you? Sitting up in bed, he is. Smelling of minty toothpaste. Transistor on the bedside table there, fizzing out some awful tune or other. And he’s got his book out.
“Oh yes, Anthony—I see what you mean. Anthony … what is it? Buckeridge. Well there it is—it must be that all the cleverest people are called Anthony, then. Maybe you’ll be a famous author when you grow up. Like writing essays, don’t you? Always get good marks for your English essays.”
“Must be nice to have your name on a book. Maybe I will. Anthony Miller. Yes—I will. I’ve decided. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to be a famous author and have my name on a book. Anthony Miller.”
“That’s the spirit. I’ll be wanting your autograph next.”
“Are there lots of famous authors called Anthony then, Daddy?”
“Oh yes. Scores.”
“Who? What other ones are called Anthony?”
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