by A. L. Barker
Across the street in the café Rumbold sat at a table with Evie standing beside him. Once when Joe went to the café with a message he had seen the way Rumbold looked at Evie, and once as she passed in the street he saw it again. He knew what it was supposed to mean, and because he hadn’t been able to come by it any other way he tried the look before a mirror, hoping the rest would follow. There was a flaw in the mirror. It gave him a lip like a camel’s—nothing else. He didn’t seem to be liable. That was unusual. At his age others were not only liable, they were fully capable, or claimed to be—the same ones a year or so back who were shooting a line about how far they could send a spitball.
Being liable didn’t make Rumbold look like a man either, it made him look like a sheep. There was something—a complete give-away—that Joe couldn’t fancy for himself.
He had his feelings and they were real. Like the way he fired up when he got into a car. When the engine woke and the wheels turned and the streets were paid out on a string, he sat like a hero with power beating up through the soles of his feet. He was no longer flesh and blood, he was all steel and iron and sparking core. Could anything come up to that? Did Evie do as much for Rumbold, or tangling with girls for his liable friends? Joe knew the answer, but he sought it just the same.
He considered the factory girls who went down to the Park at night, and he considered Evie. In detail, because he wanted to be fair—one neck, two arms, a pair of sharp little breasts jacked up tight, hips that fretted as they jibbed along in their crazy shoes. Down by the Park railings there were certain things to be done, but when he thought of doing them he thought of chilled rabbits stretched on fishmongers’ slabs and it was their blue flesh that touched his own.
Evie was no rabbit, she was a separate case. He couldn’t even take an inventory because she was all of a piece, all Evie. He would sooner have laid his finger on a hot iron as on any of that thick white knowing skin. Of course Rumbold didn’t care about the knowing. He was a man of forty and the owner of a business and he could walk in any day and order a cup of tea and all her knowing wouldn’t be worth the sixpenny bit he threw on the counter. But there had to be something else, something triggered off by the sight of her across the street, a slow gripe that went on aching until it had to be soaked out in the bar of the Airlie. Joe had seen it happen, and about the second or third time he stopped being sorry for Rumbold. He used to go into the back of the workshop and spit on a heap of iron, always on the same place, where there was a fiercer, yellower stain among the crumbles of brown rust.
The snow had stopped. It lay in threads on the roofs and in grey curds along the street. Joe was watching the black doctor who had switched on the light in his surgery. It had been a shop, the windows were three-quarters painted dead green, but the doctor was so tall that the top of his head showed where the paint ended and the clear glass began.
He kept very still. He might be listening to his stethoscope; he might be using a knife, a long blade like a butcher’s. Joe pictured it falling through flesh white and tidy as a block of lard.
Perhaps the doctor didn’t believe in the knife, perhaps he believed in ju-ju—when the castor-oil and peppermint failed he tried cock’s feathers and snake’s teeth. They said so, anyway. Billy Diprose said the doctor had slipped a monkey’s paw into the plaster of his broken leg.
He kept so still, Joe might have thought it was a black cap hanging there. But he remembered a summer morning early when the sun was down at the doorsteps. The surgery door stood wide, Joe was on his paper-round. He threw the newspaper on the mat and as he threw it the doctor was there in the surgery, just standing, his hands hanging, the thumbs turned out like triggers. Joe called, “’Morning, mister,” but he didn’t move. He waited, head down, as an old horse waits in the shafts. He wasn’t old, either, he had cheeks as blue as a plum and his body moved as if every bone was greased.
The tanker didn’t come. Children scooped the grey stuff from the pavements and tried snowballing. Old Charley came out in time to catch them lobbing it at his cab. He went after them, beating the skirts of his coat like a bulky bird. Joe fetched a broom and began sweeping out the pump bay.
He didn’t hear the car. That was part of it, his looking up, not for any reason—just to stretch his neck—looking up from his broom and seeing it there under the flicker sign. Afterwards, when he wanted to put a time to it he knew that was the beginning. What he should have done, he should have turned his back, he should never have let that first sight of it sink in and make a place for itself. Everything else could have happened just the same and it would only have been living, like you were bound to do, and at the end he would have been able to walk away.
He could as soon have turned his back on a vision. That’s what it was, a kind of vision sprung on the brown bricks of Shop Street. He stood with the broom under his elbow and a slow sweet ache reaching down into him. There had been cars before, Jaguars and Cadillacs, Bentleys and Impalas, picking their way into the pump bay on whitewalled tyres, spoon-fronted and fish-tailed, with engines that ran on molasses, or slim and predatory, slitting the street like ripped silk. They had never touched him on the quick. He couldn’t have said why this was something in his life, although everything as good as happened the moment he set eyes on the car.
It was overdone in a queer foreign way. Brand new it must have been blatant, almost ludicrous; wear and tear had toned it down. The hunting build, the long funnel of a bonnet, the tiny cab crouching into the chassis, the branching guts of the exhaust—every line was angled for power. The lamps were a foot long, the radiator grid was sheared like a bullet. A bar of fancy chrome flowed from nose to tail, there were flanges and discs and bracings of chrome—Joe had never seen anything so rich and rash in his life before.
It stopped by the pumps, shivering delicately as the engine died. A man got out, unwinding himself a leg at a time from the driving seat. Joe hardly noticed, he was watching the car, taking it in, filling himself with it, every detail, even the way the beads of mud jigged and broke down the flaring wings.
The man got in Joe’s way, standing there in front of it. Joe edged by him and unhooked the petrol hose. Now he was right beside the car, he was touching it, first with his fingers, then with his open palm. He made no attempt to unscrew the filler cap. It was a craze, he had to get his hands on the car.
He felt the cold bite of metal, the power bunched under it thrust out and up into his bones. It was always like that, as if there wasn’t anything to choose between his flesh and the steel guts of an engine, as if he was doing its breathing and thinking, and it was sparking and belting for him. But there had never been anything like this in Shop Street. He was seeing it for the first and—for all he knew—last time.
Rumbold had fixed a buzzer so that they could hear if they were in the workshop and anyone went into the office. When Joe looked up the man who had come in the car was standing with his back to the street and his shoulder was pinning back the office door. The noise of the buzzer fetched Joe out of his trance. He started to run over to the office and was pulled up short by the pump hose which he still held.
The buzzer went on shrilling, loud enough to make people stop and stare across.
“Look, mister, look—” Joe had to push in to switch it off. It was quiet then, except for the sound of cranking from across the street. Joe knew by the clatter it was old Charley winding his cab. The man in the doorway shifted his weight so that he could lean the other shoulder against the jamb. He was taking a good look at the office and he looked over and around Joe as if he was a steamed patch on the glass. “Anything I can get you?”
He was weighing up what he saw and there was no way of knowing how he found it. He had a long immobile face, big-boned, the skin tight and shining as if it had been soaped. He wore rimless pince-nez, and on his strong hook of a nose they were a kind of gadget.
“Can I get you something, mister?”
Now the pince-nez were turned on Joe. The lenses were so sharp and sparkl
ing he couldn’t see through them, he even wondered if there were any eyes or if it was just glass that was winkling him out. He moved uneasily and the light from the office bulb suddenly fell short and the stranger dropped into a different focus. He had eyes all right and he was like anyone else, only better dressed.
Joe noticed how he was dressed because after the glasses there were only the clothes, a country spark’s clothes—camel top-coat, snap-brimmed felt and suede shoes—and it was Tom, Dick or Harry wearing them.
The stranger took out a new packet of cigarettes and ran his thumbnail under the cellophane. “Where’s Rumbold?”
“He’ll be back directly.” The flame of his lighter threw a skin of gold across the pince-nez. “He’s out on business.”
Joe wondered why he said that. If it was to cover up, there was nothing to cover. Those glasses had seen everything and perhaps read the bills on the hooks and the books in the safe.
“What’s your name?”
“Munn.”
“Is this your first job?”
“Second. If it’s urgent I could fetch him.”
He moved past Joe, so closely that their shoulders touched, and sat down by the desk, stretching his long legs in front of him. “I’m in no hurry.”
“You can’t sit there. This is the office, it’s private.”
The stranger blew two neat plumes of cigarette smoke. “How many work here?”
“Just me and Mr. Rumbold. This is his office.” Joe cast about and found the right phrase. “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to ask you to step outside.”
“You talk and I’ll listen.”
Joe reviewed the situation without rancour. Short of throwing the man out there was nothing he could do—and it had to be short of because of the camel coat and the suede shoes and the fancy glasses and the way he sat, quietly and very natural, as if he had the place on his hands.
“Do you sell gas or can’t you give it away?”
“We slack off now and then. I’ll sell twenty gallons an hour and the next hour I’ll sell two. That adds up to an average of sixty a day.”
The stranger smiled, opening his mouth and showing long white teeth. Joe stood patiently. He had noticed before how people had a private humour and kept close hold on it.
“How old are you, Munn?”
“Sixteen.”
The stranger reached out and took Joe’s arm above the elbow. His fingers pried round the muscle, rolling it, then moved down and dug into the bare flesh of the forearm. “A bit flabby—”
Joe drew away sharply. He put his arm behind his back and rubbed it on his overalls.
The pince-nez twinkled. “You should exercise, harden up. You don’t want to be like a girl, do you?”
The short hairs prickled on Joe’s neck. He went out to the yard, picked up his broom and got on with his sweeping.
A few minutes later Rumbold came back. He saw the car and through the open door of the office the man who sat waiting. He stood on the drive-in, staring. The cold wind brought up liver-coloured blotches along his jaw.
He didn’t notice Joe, who was trying to explain about the stranger. He walked very deliberately towards the office, stepped inside and shut the door behind him with a thrust of his heel.
Joe watched them through the glass. Rumbold was unusually still, knee to knee with the stranger in that narrow space. Then as if a string had been pulled he began shrugging, wagging his elbows, carving out the air with his hands. He always did that when he talked. The other man sprawled comfortably, a pod of ash grew on his cigarette.
Joe finished sweeping and went to where the car stooped under the pumps. He went close, smelling the warm breath of petrol and oil and leather. He ran his hand along the door and crushed the driblets of rain under his fingers. There was a green light in the dash. It showed him a polished panel set with gauges. The wheel, the switches and levers and pedals brought a water of longing under his tongue. He leaned his forehead against the window.
Rumbold caught him like that. “Joe, what in hell are you doing?” He opened the door of the office and saw the greasy seat of Joe’s pants where he crouched with hands on knees staring in at the car. “Get away from there!”
He came running across the bay, Joe thought for a minute he was going to kick the car, but instead he began to hustle about, flapping his hands as if Joe were a chicken. “Pack up, pack off home. I don’t want you around.”
“I’ve got to wait for the tanker.”
“Damn the tanker!”
He was frightened, something had frightened him and he had come to work it off.
“I don’t like him—” Joe touched the bridge of his nose—“him with the fly-breakers.”
Rumbold gave Joe a clever look. “Mr. Brind’s an old friend of mine.” They considered the statement, stripped it down together. “A very old friend,” added Rumbold.
Joe fetched his jacket from the workshop. He had grown too big for it, and as he walked down Recovery Road he stopped and eased the sleeves out of his armpits and took a look back at the car.
*
Aberglaslyn Terrace was a row of sway-backed houses across the blind end of Lampeter Road. At the other end the buses ran up and down Clydach Street past the Bronwydd Arms where they had ten-foot mirrors round the bar and china beer-pulls. In this district every road had a Welsh name—Conway, Harlech, Llandilo, Moelwyn, Talybont—The Welshies it was called.
Chrome and neon had moved in. There were chain-stores and coffee-bars and supermarkets and a Palais. There was also a lot of small property, one-man businesses catering for local taste, hamburgers and ice-cream or jellied eels and faggots. You could sit on a high stool and drink espresso coffee out of glass cups, or you could take a jug to the Bronwydd Arms. You could buy a radiogram where they didn’t know you from Adam, and next door they would ask after your father and turn out half the stock to find your pair of brown bootlaces.
Big ideas didn’t breed in The Welshies. Life was a known quantity, six days a week, Saturday night, and Sunday to sleep over. On Sunday mornings everyone was home, boxed away under the slate roofs with feet to the four corners. Their sleep was a communal thing, righteous, a little bellicose, closing its ranks behind the lonely milkman, four-square down the empty street where the drawn curtains stood in rows and the letter-boxes aimed their Sunday papers at the sky. Round about ten, it began to break up. People leaked out, the men without their collars, the young ones ready-greased to cut a dash. Women brimmed on to the doorsteps and a steady tide of children broke into the gutters.
Even in The Welshies there were social strata. The people of Conway Road were a cut above Llandilo. Theirs were the Victorian villas, two rows of sulphur brick with a yard of sooty garden and built-in boot scrapers. Llandilo Road was raised originally to house the men who worked in the marshalling yards. It rang with an iron clatter and was seasoned by the smoke from the engines. People didn’t live in Llandilo road, they swarmed. The black hives opened directly on to the pavement and a lot of life spilled out, reaching high-water mark on the lamp posts where they threw their old tyres.
Aberglaslyn Terrace was a notch lower. It was the bottom. They were rough in Llandilo Road, on the Terrace they were shady. Someone had given the place a bad name and every petty crime that was located there kept the tarnish green. A colony of Jamaicans, simple inoffensive people, brought their touch of the tarbrush. By being there, by being brown, they gave their white neighbours’ brawls and beatings a sinister dockside savour.
There was something flimsy about the Terrace. The houses were too tall and narrow ever to have toed in firmly. They were built for show and the years had peeled away the show, cracked it like cat-ice. You could trace the scabs of cornices and parapets, the stubs of porticoes and a few of the sham balconies with a clutter of pigeon-roosts on top. The old tabby houses clung together, gawking out over a sea of slate. From the attic windows, five storeys up, you could see the river and the derricks and khaki-coloured smoke bagging from the power-house
chimney. You could hear the tugs whooping and sometimes gulls screamed and clung over Aberglaslyn Terrace as if it were a ship and they on a following wind.
Joe liked the view from the attic. He had grown up with it; when he was away on ground level, the feel of it was still there. His bed was under the window so that he could sit up any time and see what was going on. There was always something, and Joe didn’t look at the sunsets and the dawns, he had no eye for the sulky splendours of the river. It was the busyness he liked, the purpose. Everything had a purpose, even the crazy cowl that chased round and round on McFillery’s chimney. Nor did he dream of foreign seas when the freighters edged up on the tide. He liked to see them, they were the salt of the river, but where they came from and where they went—Trondheim or Rio—was all the same. The Surrey shore was far enough for him.
Sunday morning was not so profound along the Terrace as in the rest of The Welshies, sleep being less of an institution than a let-up with constant forays—footfalls, voices, barking dogs, babies wailing and the savage amours of cats. When these were hushed, the old houses kept up a faint whickering, a stirring and easing that went on through the night. As soon as it was light the Terrace put out drablets of smoke and raking cockcrows. At a time when the rest of The Welshies were stretching and yawning in their beds, up on the Terrace they had rubbed off the edges of the day.
The Munns slept later than most. They were not restless, nor were they crammed into one room like some of their neighbours. Joe and his brother shared an attic. The ceiling sloped down on Joe’s side, if he wanted to stand upright he had to move across to the door. Even there he was liable to scrape his knuckles as he threw on his braces. But he had the view.
He propped himself on his elbow as soon as he woke and pushed wide the window. Sometimes the river was sharp as a knife; this February morning it was fetching up for fog. Yellow lozenges of light pricked through the flannel greyness with an occasional green and red beyond the greased slates. Nothing fancy, nothing pretty, but it put Joe back on course. It was a weather gauge too. He could see how the day would shape as it was being born down there in the slot of the river.
