The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories

by Various

  ‘I see you’ve got a lot of books,’ she remarked, noticing one propped against the sauce bottle, and two more on the sideboard.

  ‘They pass the time on,’ I replied, striking a match because my pipe had gone out. ‘I like reading.’

  She didn’t say anything for a while. Three minutes I remember, because I was looking across at the clock on the dresser. The news would have been on the wireless, and I’d missed the best part of it. It was getting interesting because of the coming war. I didn’t have anything else to do but think this while I was waiting for her to speak. ‘He died of lead-poisoning,’ she told me. ‘He did suffer a lot, and he was only forty-two. They took him away to the hospital a week before he died.’

  I couldn’t say I was sorry, though it was impossible to hold much against him. I just didn’t know the chap. ‘I don’t think I’ve got a fag in the place to offer you,’ I said, looking on the mantelpiece in case I might find one, though knowing I wouldn’t. She moved when I passed her on my search, scraping her chair along the floor. ‘No, don’t bother to shift. I can get by.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ve got some here’ – feeling in her pocket and bringing out a crumpled five-packet. ‘Have one, Harry?’

  ‘No thanks. I haven’t smoked a fag in twenty years. You know that. Don’t you remember how I started smoking a pipe? When we were courting. You gave me one once for my birthday and told me to start smoking it because it would make me look more distinguished! So I’ve smoked one ever since. I got used to it quick enough, and I like it now. I’d never be without it in fact.’

  As if it were yesterday! But maybe I was talking too much, for she seemed a bit nervous while lighting her fag. I don’t know why it was, because she didn’t need to be in my house. ‘You know, Harry,’ she began, looking at the fishing-boat picture, nodding her head towards it, ‘I’d like to have that’ – as though she’d never wanted anything so much in her life.

  ‘Not a bad picture, is it?’ I remember saying. ‘It’s nice to have pictures on the wall, not to look at especially, but they’re company. Even when you’re not looking at them you know they’re there. But you can take it if you like.’

  ‘Do you mean that?’ she asked, in such a tone that I felt sorry for her for the first time.

  ‘Of course. Take it. I’ve got no use for it. In any case I can get another picture if I want one, or put a war map up.’ It was the only picture on that wall, except for the wedding photo on the sideboard below. But I didn’t want to remind her of the wedding picture for fear it would bring back memories she didn’t like. I hadn’t kept it there for sentimental reasons, so perhaps I should have dished it. ‘Did you have any kids?’

  ‘No,’ she said, as if not interested. ‘But I don’t like taking your picture, and I’d rather not if you think all that much of it.’ We sat looking over each other’s shoulder for a long time. I wondered what had happened during these ten years to make her talk so sadly about the picture. It was getting dark outside. Why didn’t she shut up about it, just take the bloody thing? So I offered it to her again, and to settle the issue unhooked it, dusted the back with a cloth, wrapped it up in brown paper, and tied the parcel with the best post-office string. ‘There you are,’ I said, brushing the pots aside, laying it on the table at her elbows.

  ‘You’re very good to me, Harry.’

  ‘Good! I like that. What does a picture more or less in the house matter? And what does it mean to me, anyway?’ I can see now that we were giving each other hard knocks in a way we’d never learned to do when living together. I switched on the electric light. As she seemed uneasy when it showed everything up clearly in the room, I offered to switch it off again.

  ‘No, don’t bother’ – standing to pick up her parcel. ‘I think I’ll be going now. Happen I’ll see you some other time.’

  ‘Drop in whenever you feel like it.’ Why not? We weren’t enemies. She undid two buttons of her coat, as though having them loose would make her look more at her ease and happy in her clothes, then waved tome. ‘So long.’

  ‘Good night, Kathy.’ It struck me that she hadn’t smiled or laughed once the whole time she’d been there, so I smiled to her as she turned for the door, and what came back wasn’t the bare-faced cheeky grin I once knew, but a wry parting of the lips moving more for exercise than humour. She must have been through it, I thought, and she’s above forty now.

  So she went. But it didn’t take me long to get back to my book.

  A few mornings later I was walking up St Ann’s Well Road delivering letters. My round was taking a long time, for I had to stop at almost every shop. It was raining, a fair drizzle, and water rolled off my cape, soaking my trousers below the knees so that I was looking forward to a mug of tea back in the canteen and hoping they’d kept the stove going. If I hadn’t been so late on my round I’d have dropped into a café for a cup.

  I’d just taken a pack of letters into a grocer’s and, coming out, saw the fishing-boat picture in the next-door pawnshop window, the one I’d given Kathy a few days ago. There was no mistaking it, leaning back against ancient spirit-levels, bladeless planes, rusty hammers, trowels, and a violin case with the strap broken. I recognized a chip in the gold-painted woodwork near the bottom left corner of its frame.

  For half a minute I couldn’t believe it, was unable to make out how it had got there, then saw the first day of my married life and a sideboard loaded with presents, prominent among them this surviving triplet of a picture looking at me from the wreckage of other lives. And here it is, I thought, come down to a bloody nothing. She must have sold it that night before going home, pawnshops always keeping open late on a Friday so that women could get their husbands’ suits out of pop for the week-end. Or maybe she’d sold it this morning, and I was only half an hour behind her on my round. Must have been really hard up. Poor Kathy, I thought. Why hadn’t she asked me to let her have a bob or two?

  I didn’t think much about what I was going to do next. I never do, but went inside and stood at the shop counter waiting for a grey-haired doddering skinflint to sort out the popped bundles of two thin-faced women hovering to make sure he knew they were pawning the best of stuff. I was impatient. The place stank of old clothes and mildewed junk after coming out of fresh rain, and besides I was later than ever now on my round. The canteen would be closed before I got back, and I’d miss my morning tea.

  The old man shuffled over at last, his hand out. ‘Got any letters?’

  ‘Nowt like that, feyther. I’d just like to have a look at that picture you’ve got in your window, the one with a ship on it.’ The women went out counting what few shillings he’d given them, stuffing pawn-tickets in their purses, and the old man came back carrying the picture as if it was worth five quid.

  Shock told me she’d sold it right enough, but belief lagged a long way behind, so I looked at it well to make sure it really was the one. A price marked on the back wasn’t plain enough to read. ‘How much do you want for it?’

  ‘You can have it for four bob.’

  Generosity itself. But I’m not one for bargaining. I could have got it for less, but I’d rather pay an extra bob than go through five minutes of chinning. So I handed the money over, and said I’d call back for the picture later.

  Four measly bob, I said to myself as I sloshed on through the rain. The robbing bastard. He must have given poor Kathy about one and six for it. Three pints of beer for the fishing-boat picture.

  I don’t know why, but I was expecting her to call again the following week. She came on Thursday, at the same time, and was dressed in the usual way: summer frock showing through her brown winter coat whose buttons she couldn’t leave alone, telling me how nervous she was. She’d had a drink or two on her way, and before coming into the house stopped off at the lavatory outside. I’d been late back from work, and hadn’t quite finished my tea, asked her if she could do with a cup. ‘I don’t feel like it,’ came the answer. ‘I had one not long ago.’

&n
bsp; I emptied the coal scuttle on the fire. ‘Sit down nearer the warmth. It’s a bit nippy tonight.’

  She agreed that it was, then looked up at the fishing-boat picture on the wall. I’d been waiting for this, wondered what she’d say when she did, but there was no surprise at seeing it back in the old place, which made me feel a bit disappointed. ‘I won’t be staying long tonight,’ was all she said. ‘I’ ve got to see somebody at eight.’

  Not a word about the picture. ‘That’s all right. How’s your work going?’

  ‘Putrid,’ she answered nonchalantly, as though my question had been out of place. ‘I got the sack, for telling the forewoman where to get off.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, getting always to say ‘Oh’ when I wanted to hide my feelings, though it was a safe bet that whenever I did say ‘Oh’ there wasn’t much else to come out with.

  I had an idea she might want to live in my house again seeing she’d lost her job. If she wanted to she could. And she wouldn’t be afraid to ask, even now. But I wasn’t going to mention it first. Maybe that was my mistake, though I’ll never know. ‘A pity you got the sack,’ I put in.

  Her eyes were on the picture again, until she asked: ‘Can you lend me half-a-crown?’

  ‘Of course I can’ – emptied my trouser pocket, sorted out half a crown, and passed it across to her. Five pints. She couldn’t think of anything to say, shuffled her feet to some soundless tune in her mind. ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ I said with a smile. I remembered buying a packet of fags in case she’d want one, which shows how much I’d expected her back. ‘Have a smoke?’ – and she took one, struck a match on the sole of her shoe before I could get her a light myself.

  ‘I’ll give you the half-crown next week, when I get paid.’ That’s funny, I thought. ‘I got a job as soon as I lost the other one,’ she added, reading my mind before I had time to speak. ‘It didn’t take long. There’s plenty of war work now. Better money as well.’

  ‘I suppose all the firms’ll be changing over soon.’ It occurred to me that she could claim some sort of allowance from me – for we were still legally married – instead of coming to borrow half-a-crown. It was her right, and I didn’t need to remind her; I wouldn’t be all that much put out if she took me up on it. I’d been single – as you might say – for so many years that I hadn’t been able to stop myself putting a few quid by. ‘I’ll be going now,’ she said, standing up to fasten her coat.

  ‘Sure you won’t have a cup of tea?’

  ‘No thanks. Want to catch the trolley back to Sneinton.’ I said I’d show her to the door. ‘Don’t bother. I’ll be all right.’ She stood waiting for me, looking at the picture on the wall above the sideboard. ‘It’s a nice picture you’ve got up there. I always liked it a lot.’

  I made the old joke: ‘Yes, but it’s the last of the fleet.’

  ‘That’s why I like it.’ Not a word about having sold it for eighteen pence.

  I showed her out, mystified.

  She came to see me every week, all through the war, always on Thursday night at about the same time. We talked a bit, about the weather, the war, her job and my job, never anything important. Often we’d sit for a long time looking into the fire from our different stations in the room, me by the hearth and Kathy a bit further away at the table as if she’d just finished a meal, both of us silent yet not uneasy in it. Sometimes I made a cup of tea, sometimes not. I suppose now that I think of it I could have got a pint of beer in for when she came, but it never occurred to me. Not that I think she felt the lack of it, for it wasn’t the sort of thing she expected to see in my house anyway.

  She never missed coming once, even though she often had a cold in the winter and would have been better off in bed. The blackout and shrapnel didn’t stop her either. In a quiet off-handed sort of way we got to enjoy ourselves and looked forward to seeing each other again, and maybe they were the best times we ever had together in our lives. They certainly helped us through the long monotonous dead evenings of the war.

  She was always dressed in the same brown coat, growing shabbier and shabbier. And she wouldn’t leave without borrowing a few shillings. Stood up: ‘Er… lend’s half-a-dollar, Harry.’ Given, sometimes with a joke: ‘Don’t get too drunk on it, will you?’ – never responded to, as if it were bad manners to joke about a thing like that. I didn’t get anything back of course, but then, I didn’t miss such a dole either. So I wouldn’t say no when she asked me, and as the price of beer went up she increased the amount to three bob then to three-and-six and, finally, just before she died, to four bob. It was a pleasure to be able to help her. Besides, I told myself, she had no one else. I never asked questions as to where she was living, though she did mention a time or two that it was still up Sneinton way. Neither did I at any time see her outside at a pub or picture house; Nottingham is a big town in many ways.

  On every visit she would glance from time to time at the fishing-boat picture, the last of the fleet, hanging on the wall above the sideboard. She often mentioned how beautiful she thought it was, and how I should never part with it, how the sunrise and the ship and the woman and the sea were just right. Then a few minutes later she’d hint to me how nice it would be if she had it, but knowing it would end up in the pawnshop I didn’t take her hints. I’d rather have lent her five bob instead of half-a-crown so that she wouldn’t take the picture, but she never seemed to want more than half-a-crown in those first years. I once mentioned to her she could have more if she liked, but she didn’t answer me. I don’t think she wanted the picture especially to sell and get money, or to hang in her own house; only to have the pleasure of pawning it, to have someone else buy it so that it wouldn’t belong to either of us any more.

  But she finally did ask me directly, and I saw no reason to refuse when she put it like that. Just as I had done six years before, when she first came to see me, I dusted it, wrapped it up carefully in several layers of brown paper, tied it with post-office string, and gave it to her. She seemed happy with it under her arm, couldn’t get out of the house quick enough, it seemed.

  It was the same old story though, for a few days later I saw it again in the pawnshop window, among all the old junk that had been there for years. This time I didn’t go in and try to get it back. In a way I wish I had, because then Kathy might not have had the accident that came a few days later. Though you never know. If it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else.

  I didn’t get to her before she died. She’d been run down by a lorry at six o’clock in the evening, and by the time the police had taken me to the General Hospital she was dead. She’d been knocked all to bits, and had practically bled to death even before they’d got her to the hospital. The doctor told me she’d not been quite sober when she was knocked down. Among the things of hers they showed me was the fishing-boat picture, but it was so broken up and smeared with blood that I hardly recognized it. I burned it in the roaring flames of the firegrate late that night.

  When her two brothers, their wives and children had left and taken with them the air of blame they attached to me for Kathy’s accident I stood at the graveside thinking I was alone, hoping I would end up crying my eyes out. No such luck. Holding my head up suddenly I noticed a man I hadn’t seen before. It was a sunny afternoon of winter, but bitter cold, and the only thing at first able to take my mind off Kathy was the thought of some poor bloke having to break the bone-hard soil and dig this hole she was now lying in. Now there was this stranger. Tears were running down his cheeks, a man in his middle fifties wearing a good suit, grey though but with a black band around his arm, who moved only when the fed-up sexton touched his shoulder – and then mine – to say it was all over.

  I felt no need to ask who he was. And I was right. When I got to Kathy’s house (it had also been his) he was packing his things, and left a while later in a taxi without saying a word. But the neighbours, who always know everything, told me he and Kathy had been living together for th
e last six years. Would you believe it? I only wished he’d made her happier than she’d been.

  Time has passed now and I haven’t bothered to get another picture for the wall. Maybe a war map would do it; the wall gets too blank, for I’m sure some government will oblige soon. But it doesn’t really need anything at the moment, to tell you the truth. That part of the room is filled up by the sideboard, on which is still the wedding picture, that she never thought to ask for.

  And looking at these few old pictures stacked in the back of my mind I began to realize that I should never have let them go, and that I shouldn’t have let Kathy go either. Something told me I’d been daft and dead to do it, and as my rotten luck would have it it was the word dead more than daft that stuck in my mind, and still sticks there like the spinebone of a cod or conger eel, driving me potty sometimes when I lay of a night in bed thinking.

  I began to believe there was no point in my life – became even too far gone to turn religious or go on the booze. Why had I lived? I wondered. I can’t see anything for it. What was the point of it all? And yet at the worst minutes of my midnight emptiness I’d think less of myself and more of Kathy, see her as suffering in a far rottener way than ever I’d done, and it would come to me – though working only as long as an aspirin pitted against an incurable headache – that the object of my having been alive was that in some small way I’d helped Kathy through her life.

  I was born dead, I keep telling myself. Everybody’s dead, I answer. So they are, I maintain, but then most of them never know it like I’m beginning to do, and it’s a bloody shame that this has come to me at last when I could least do with it, and when it’s too bloody late to get anything but bad from it.

  Then optimism rides out of the darkness like a knight in armour. If you loved her… (of course I bloody-well did)… then you both did the only thing possible if it was to be remembered as love. Now didn’t you? Knight in armour goes back into blackness. Yes, I cry, but neither of us did anything about it, and that’s the trouble.