A Pocketful of Rye

by Anthony Masters

  Suddenly they burst on to the platform, their heavy boots clattering on the concrete. Nance was still in the lead, the largest shadow in the half light, and at her back—her mutinous allies, a little more subdued, a little more passive.

  “Tea up.” She disappeared into the tiny porters’ rest room, whilst the others gathered stiff wire brushes and brooms from a handcart on the platform. With an exultant cry she re-emerged clutching the buff form with a message scrawled across it.

  “Listen to this, girls, what a sauce this is—it’s that bloody Nigger again—’ Nance Needs It’ he says—well he’ll catch it from Nance when she finds him—and not in the way he means it!” And she went into great peals of triumphant laughter, her body in the shapeless boiler suit swaying to the motion of it and the noise bounding from one end of the station to the other—each note clipped and staccato, falling into the mantled silence like coarsened quicksilver. Then with a final shout of joy she went back into the room and there was a rasp and a pop as she lit the gas under the enormous kettle.

  Soon they drank from huge chipped teacups, sitting in a row on the hard benches, Madonna-like and silent except for the noise of the tea. Nance was quiet over this ceremony—even taking tea with the Fluffers was a rite, and it would be sacrilege to destroy the savour of the first dark, thick brew with conversation. Drawing at their cups the other women contemplated the night’s work morosely. Freda, squat and pallid, drank noisily, whilst Elaine, small and looking quite unsuited for this work, sipped delicately, her finger arched, her eyes roving the platform as if to summon silver tea trollies and butter-running tea cakes. Olga, broad and with a man’s strength, sat dark and Rumanian, staring into her cup. Soon she would go through her nightly ceremony of leaf telling, but temperamentally she would have to be approached first. Nance, with a deeply ingrained belief, would soon ask and Olga would bridle and say she felt she had lost the power.

  “Now, dear, you know you can do it—and it’s a marvellous gift too—be a duck and read my cup now.”

  Olga took Nance’s cup in a tawny hand and the others gathered round her, staring dimly at the dull, soaked leaves, trying to discover the secret. Jean, the forewoman, lean and wiry, leant on her brush and stared down at the huddled mystics.

  “You’re a lot of bloody superstitious old wives—you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

  But she was unheeded and soon even she became immersed in the gypsy silence, and the platforms were seeped in expectancy as the women waited. Olga began in what she privately considered to be her ‘Medium’s voice’, only to be used on these attention-riveted occasions. Her imagination gained fertility as she talked:

  “I see much darkness—long hours of work—a journey—two ships but no harbour—then great beauty.” Olga put the cup down, apparently worn out by spiritual exertion.

  Nance sat back well satisfied—She had heard it all before—but after all it was her future. It must always be the same or she would never have believed Olga. As it was, the repetition pleased her. All that was new was the last phrase—‘then great beauty’. She softly repeated it then burst into speech.

  “There you are, girls, the pools win—the cruise—the sailor—and old Nance has it—what did the Nigger say?—‘Nance needs it’—well, she might get it yet.” And once more her rich laughter pealed into the grey haze, each note crystallising the silence.

  Jean blew the whistle and the army sluggishly rose. Shouldering their brooms they clumsily lowered themselves on to the rails, their boots slowly covering with a fine dust. Then they began to bend over the deadened electric rail, slowly working their way towards the blackened tunnel, scraping with their brooms at the fluff set up by the electricity.

  Gradually each woman disappeared into the great yawn of an entrance, floodlights were lit inside and an hour passed of steady work.

  Soon, Nance was in her element. Her great body heaved industriously as she wielded her broom, and she began to whistle and sing joyously. She broke off to fling jokes up the tunnel to the beginning of the line, bullying those nearest her and pulling a greying handkerchief out of her boiler suit to mop her sweating forehead. From the tunnel came the distorted echo of Nance’s voice and sometimes another sound of singing, strangely disconnected, issued out.

  Gradually the patch of light receded as they worked their way further up the tunnel, the flashlights illuminating its blackened sides, wire-strung and with tiny alcoves, holding stored electrical equipment, ringed with warning notices. The first burst of energy had worn away from Nance and she had slowed to steady work, but she still talked and sang incessantly, drawing the others into ballads and soul shattering laments. She would lift her voice in the tunnels and give vent to all the Victorian songs she had learnt or picked up and cried over.

  When she felt softness underfoot she paused and shouted to her neighbour, breaking off in mid-song.

  “You’ve dropped one of your broom heads, dear.”

  “No I haven’t, Nance,” came the meek reply, discouraging further conversation.

  “Then what the hell is it?” And she bent down to feel the object. It yielded to her touch and she felt soft down.

  “Here—got a torch?” she bellowed and silently a torch was passed down to her. The harsh white light lit crumpled feathers amidst a broken heap.

  “Why—it’s a bird,” Nance softly exclaimed.

  “What—what is it?”

  “It’s a bird—all the way down here.”

  “Can’t be—how could it fly down—all this way?”

  “It’s a bird—just a dead bird.”

  “It’s been here for ages—come on, Nance, leave it alone.”

  “It’s filthy, Nance, leave it.”

  But Nance had bent over it and was brushing the dirt from the feathers. The Fluffers had edged along the rails towards her, their routine broken and their backs aching on straightening their bodies.

  “What a shame.”

  “Poor thing.”

  “Fancy flying all the way down through—”

  “You’d think it would have more sense.”

  “What a shame, though.”

  Nance still brushed at the feathers, her clumsy fingers feeling the decay of the latticework skeleton underneath and the sharpness of the tiny bill.

  “Come on, Nance.”

  “Nance, love, we’ll never finish.”

  “Oh—Nance, please leave it.”

  They moved on, away from her a little, leaving her awkwardly bent forward on her knees—her heavy body crouching and her cap sliding over her eyes. She thought of Olga—and the tea leaves. Then—this was the great beauty.

  She caught them up, and began to work with renewed energy. Slowly in a straggling line they moved on up the tunnel—they had lost the tiny patch of light at the end and there was only the pallid gleam of the flashlights. She began to sing again and the other women joined in the choruses. She bellowed jokes and bullied the women around her. Slowly another patch of light began to appear at the other end of the tunnel and gradually the Fluffers worked their way towards it. Then, bleary-eyed, they emerged at the next station, breaking in once again on the cloistered silence. Their voices had been muffled in the tunnel and from the platforms even their singing seemed dim. But now they lowered their voices as if the bigger space overawed them. Stiffly they clambered on to the platform and sank on to the wooden benches. A quarter of an hour later, after more tea drinking, they walked back through the tunnel to pick up their belongings. They were all tired now, even Nance, whose spirits seemed to have flagged. They reached the station, clambered on to the platform and in a weary file made for the lockers.

  Nance walked through the tunnels alone. Restored to befurred finery, she clacked her way up to daylight through the empty tunnels. Changing hurriedly she had left herself unbuttoned, and her walk was made erratic by constant hitching and pulling at her skirts. Walking the vast sweep of one of the main passageways she felt herself drawn into the folds of its very emptiness—bef
ore her and behind her was space, glowing bleakly in a half-fading light. The walls seemed to lose themselves in deep shadow until she appeared to be walking on a limitless plane, never ending, and hazing slowly on a horizon. She was relieved to reach the foot of the escalator, and glancing at her watch she saw it was five. There was a clanking from above and the escalator slowly began to move—destroying the complete emptiness by its machinations. She rode up on it, staring straight ahead, and it deposited her in the ticket hall. A watery light was seeping through, making the electricity fade into a pallid anaemia and suddenly a shaft of sunlight shot though a tiny window to focus on the grimy ticket machines. Nodding blearily the porter unlocked the grill for her, and Nance stepped out into the morning, shivering and hunching herself into her fur. For a moment she paused to feel the creeping warmth of the sun on her back. Then from her pocket she produced an untidy heap of feathers, and placing it in the gutter walked swiftly away. With her hands deep inside the pockets of her beloved green coat, and her hat at the usual jaunty angle, Nance winked saucily at a passing policeman.

  “Why, I must look as if I’ve been to a party,” she thought to herself and walked on through the sunlit morning.

  Jan by the Water

  The dog drifted slowly past her, swirling and eddying lethargically in cross currents, bumping every now and then against the quayside, and then being swung in decreasing rotation to the beach. Tiny wavelets positioned it limply on the pebbles, until it was above the tidemark except for the front paws trailing in the receding water. The twilight darkened its coat and night gradually caught it in silhouette.

  Jan, twelve, curious and unafraid, loved the deepening dockland shadows, and on a summer’s evening would watch night fall with the wonderment of complete simplicity. To her it was a gradual extending of an already bewildering beauty—a beauty that she had only begun to credit. The sensation of night—the smell and sound of evening enveloping her, reducing her to insignificance in the splendour of sunset, and making her one small part of the changing seascape. She longed to sit long enough to merge with the shadows, to become a part of the scene, yet able to watch its moods with detachment. For hours she would daydream in the summer evenings, spending a solitary, companionable holiday. Then her mother would cry from the house, and she would be admonished, dosed and put to bed to avoid a chill.

  This evening, warm and star scented, she watched the night take the dog, stealing over its bedraggled coat, and soften its stiffening body. She never questioned how it came to drown, and its sadness seemed to be part of the long melancholy of the beach and its desolation. She only accepted the peace, and its gentle yielding consistency. Although Jan hardly moved from this favourite spot, the atmosphere of beach and quayside entirely pervaded her—the sun-scorched rope and netting assumed shapes unknown and exciting. As the shadows lengthened the shapes grew more liquid—expanding or contracting at her own will, altering in form to allow dreams and dispel time and urgency. The night wove deceit and she sat in its coils, heedless of bedtime and retribution. Hours passed as she dreamed, her fantasy overcrowding discomfort when cramp or chill touched her and the seascape changed listlessly to a wrapt admirer. Time retained her attention before she outgrew this capacity to sit and watch the evening.

  The sun had crimsoned the horizon and sunk in lassitude. Gulls had flown across one headland and lights from another had coloured the waterline pebbles. Jan smelt the ocean night—a mixture of brine and rotting weed which she could sense was lying in silky masses at the edge of the sea. Sometimes, walking along the beach at night, she had taken off her shoes and walked the warm layers of weed. Sun-baked all day as it lay on the beach, the water reclaimed it at evening tide, washed it clean and deposited it. She felt the clinging warm weed at night, and loved to wade deeper in clear water to see by increasing moonlight the parallel neatness of runnels of clean washed sand. Then tiny waves would slap at her skirts and she would return through its icy clarity to the caressing weed beds, on to the hard round pebbles and so back to her vantage point.

  Tonight she had not stirred but was content to watch a shadow detach itself from nearby houses and walk down slowly to the water’s edge. There was bulk in the figure, but night softened clumsiness and gave grace to a daytime slouch. The man stood by the sea, then bent and cleaned netting. He waded beyond the weed and bent over the clear water, passing the material through the wavelets. Turning he saw the humped shape on the pebbles and waded towards it, ripples spreading gradually behind him to lose themselves in a millpond stillness.

  Reaching the dog the man bent and detached some object from its coat. Shaking it free he threw it into the shadows where Jan sat, immovable and struck with sudden bewilderment. Peace shattered around her as iron clattered to the ground, and she saw rusty ugliness in front of her as the weight dripped water and gleamed dully in the light reflected from the mainland. Straightening, the man grunted and began to feel for tobacco. He lit a pipe, light for a moment parodying grotesquely his features in relief, then there was only a faint glow and a momentary impression of solidarity. Then all was lost in shadow and the only sound was wavelets uncovering sand, in long slow gasps.

  Returning, he passed close by her and Jan withdrew, shivering in sudden coldness and half realised uncertainty. She sensed the wet rubber of his waders and tobacco on his clothing. As he passed over a small patch of reflected light she could see the tiny strands of warm weed clinging to the rubber. He disappeared in shadow, but she could hear the fall of pebbles as he leapt the last rise of the beach on to the turf. Turning she saw the glow of smouldering tobacco and heard a muted whistling.

  The weight gleamed dully by her side. She suddenly got to her feet and, surprised by her own activity, staggered as the cramp caught her. Straightening her toes she began to kick pebbles over the top of the weight until it was completely buried. She glanced once more down the beach and saw a bare strip of sand revealed as the tide went out—and above it the humped shape of the dog. Abruptly she turned and hurried back to the house, conscious for the first time of the pleasure of returning home.

  On the beach more sand was uncovered, the lights went out on the mainland and moonlight hollowed the surround. Rocks, sand and deep pools appeared briefly only to be covered again by the returning tide. Dawn came, all sand disappeared and water lapped around the stiffened body on the pebbles.

  At sunrise and high tide the beach was clean, and Jan awoke to the sound of waves breaking and dragging on the loose surface. She went to the window and looked down on to the deserted beach.

  Patrick Waiting

  Waiting—Imperturbable Patrick deciding on the inevitable—waiting for her to break the greyness and run, half eagerly, half fearfully towards him—knowing she would never come at all. The shroud would remain unlifted and there would be no movement, positive or negative, to provide decision for him. The emptiness around him deadened optimism and stupefied hope—thought withdrew and only constant doubt remained until the final realisation of hopelessness. He saw—great chimneys amidst rusting machinery, looming in bulk behind and before him, a rubble-strewn surface tarred and darkened in a fading urban light, a slag-tipped arena with sides of loosened clinker, matchwood huts and towering structures like glazed cobwebs pointing taperingly to a vacant sky.

  Patrick had waited before in the shadows here—slight and gangling he was a pallid gash before the darkened industry. The desolation of long inactivity surrounded him, and he thought of nothing and hoped only a little. Suddenly his hopes burst and splayed inside him, each spark kindling an instinct, an animal belief in fate which had no reason and allowed no question. Then, in a moment, he had lost everything except the nagging dread of the walk home, the hope unfulfilled and fate a laughable quality.

  Waiting—dreading this last stage of the August night, dreading the ultimate futility of standing in this spot one moment longer; Patrick waiting; in passive desperation he was waiting for an excuse to go home—or an excuse to stay—waiting—for something to happen
or nothing to be announced.

  Stifling, the waning summer night drew the buildings to him, drew the machines and distorted piping to within an inch, and then a mile of him. Distended, ugly and coolly beautiful gasometers touched stagnant water-tanks, long tubular legs ending dustily on a broken foundation, and metal framework caught sudden moon shafts, silhouetting then softening as the shadows bound them. Through glassless windows generators rusted, unpolished brass rails mysteriously shone in the tepid moonlight, catwalks and ladders climbed into domes whose ceilings seemed limitless and whose depths appeared remote. Planes merged, evaporated into insubstance, and emerged in stark relief; perspective, caught unawares, played and furtively unfastened exaggeration until line and angle became humanist, shifting and adopting shapes that shimmered in momentary white light—wrecked or distorted even imagination, conjured dreams and idly became real before the mind could grasp the former parody and now the sudden normality. Cosseting them, the August night wove dreams around the wild latticework of chimneys, boilers, and transformers. Linked by metal, broken by shadow, the shapes offered secrets, disclosed mysteries, loosened immobility, parodied form, until all that was static was movement and all that was dead was alive.

  The children arrived, in twos and threes, stumbling over loose manholes and broken masonry, sending irrelevant laughter high into the greyness about them, then, as if in church, hushing each other, stifling whispers, treading cautiously and settling, hidden behind rusting hulks and lumps of broken concrete. In his abstraction Patrick watched them arrive, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, idly tearing paper, shifting through layers of fluff, thinking of nothing—but with a gradual demolition of hope. Through introspect he watched the children settle and hide, heard suppressed laughter and furtive warning, sensed mounting excitement within him. His interest did not quicken, but he watched and realised the arena in front of him.