The White Room

by Martyn Waites

  Lights flickered, film whirred. A corner shop where an eight-year-old Jack and his friend had shoplifted a quarter of black bullets, earning himself a strapping from his father. He had never done it again.

  A back alley where Molly Shaw lifted her skirt and took down her drawers to show Jack and six of his friends what was underneath. They had looked on, confused, as she pulled them up again, laughed and ran off.

  Topper’s front door. His best friend, now gone. Eighteen years old, blown up by a German landmine. He sighed, shook his head and walked on.

  The memories continued. The films unspooled. It was watching a life from the back of a deserted cinema, unable to join in with the rest of the audience, unsure of what his responses should be. The images were familiar, yet the language of common, shared experience was completely alien to him. Foreign with no subtitles. No one there to explain the meaning. A life of simple definitions: good and bad, right and wrong, black and white. A life lived in a far-distant country, a long time ago. A life Jack couldn’t relate to any more.

  He walked on. People nodded, sometimes spoke: a small greeting. Jack nodded, sometimes spoke in return. He walked on.

  He knew the way they looked at him. Surprise, shock. He felt their stares, could almost hear what they were thinking: no nineteen-year-old should look like that. Should walk like that. Not when you think what he was like before. And his hair … He knew they wanted to ask him about the war, what he’d seen, where he’d been, but he knew they wouldn’t. They didn’t want to hear the answers. So they would stay behind their windows and nets scrutinizing him, reaching their own conclusions. If they met him and had to say hello, they would do so quickly, just enough to catch the hollowness of his cheeks, see the ghosts lurking behind his eyes, before looking away fast and excusing themselves, hoping that whatever he was carrying wasn’t contagious.

  Among them but no longer of them, he was able to see Scotswood and its people objectively. What he saw was poverty. A lack of nourishment in all areas. A community badly housed and badly educated, dressed in old clothes made drab through repeated washing, pressing and repairing. The make-do-and-mend ethic shot through every aspect of their lives. A cold, hard life lived in cold, hard houses. Just bodies piled upon bodies. Existing, not living. No heating or water. Children playing in the streets dirty and ragged.

  Jack found it hard to believe they were on the winning side.

  He walked on with no direction.

  He didn’t want to go home, back to the house he had grown up in and in which his mother, father, brother and sister still lived. It was too small and no longer a home to him, just a place he slept, usually uncomfortably. He needed something to do, somewhere to go.

  He put his hand in his pocket. His fingers curled over a piece of paper. Finding it unfamiliar, he drew it out and unfolded it. It was a flyer. He read:

  MEN:

  WHEN YOU RETURNED HOME VICTORIOUS FROM FIGHTING FOR YOUR COUNTRY, DID YOU EXPECT SOMETHING MORE? WE AGREE. WE ALSO BELIEVE IN THE ENRICHMENT OF LIFE.

  IF YOU ARE LIKE-MINDED, JOIN US TONIGHT

  AT 7.30 AT THE ROYAL ARCADE.

  THE SPEAKER WILL BE MR. DANIEL SMITH.

  SOCIALIST SOCIETY

  Men had been handing out leaflets as he had entered the slaughterhouse that morning. He had absently accepted it but never looked at it. He looked at it again, read it slowly, picked out what were, to him, key words:

  Socialist Society. Enrichment of life. Did you expect something more?

  He stopped walking, looked around.

  Poor, badly housed and badly educated.

  He folded the paper, replaced it.

  Did you expect something more?

  Seven thirty, Royal Arcade.

  He would be there.

  Monica walked down the street, absently pushing chips into her mouth. The chips were hot, salty and vinegar-soggy. They burned her mouth as they went in, blistered her gums. She didn’t care. She wanted them to hurt, wanted to feel something that would block out the earlier pain.

  Her tears had stopped. The man had given her a handkerchief to wipe them away before her father picked her up. She had cleaned herself up all over with it. It stank. She obviously wasn’t the first person to have used it.

  Her father walked alongside her, eating his chips and fish from old newspaper. They walked slowly: he to make his meal last, she because she hurt. They said nothing to each other. Under his arm he carried a boxed doll. She had looked at it once when he had picked her up, but she hadn’t touched it. She wasn’t in a hurry to play with it. It seemed small and inappropriate, like a bandage that wouldn’t cover and didn’t heal a wound.

  She opened the battered fish with her fingers. Hot steam escaped. She picked a piece up, fat and batter burning her fingers, and shoved it in her mouth. More pain.

  ‘Hey, careful,’ her father said. ‘You’ll burn yoursel’.’

  She chewed, ignoring him. Tears came into her eyes, whether from the pain of the food or the earlier pain she didn’t know. She didn’t care. She fought them back, swallowed. There were no children playing on the street now. They had all gone home. Home, she thought.

  Her father finished his meal, threw the grease-sodden newspaper in a bin.

  ‘Good, that,’ he said. ‘Always nice to have a treat.’

  Monica looked down. Her shoes were scuffed and there were bruises developing on her legs. Her feet hit the pavement indiscriminately. She no longer avoided the cracks. She walked on as many as possible. The paving stones wouldn’t protect her.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder, looked up. Her father was looking down at her, smiling.

  ‘You’re a good lass, you know that?’

  Monica said nothing. Smelled the beer on his breath. Beer and whatever was in the hip flask in his coat pocket.

  ‘A good lass. You know, you’re special. A special little girl.’

  Monica said nothing.

  He squeezed her shoulder.

  ‘Sometimes people have secrets. Things that other people shouldn’t know about. They wouldn’t understand. You know that, don’t you?’

  Monica said nothing.

  ‘I know you do. Your mam … well, it’s best not to say anything to her about where we’ve been. Understand?’

  Monica said nothing.

  ‘I know you won’t. You’re a good girl.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘What we’ve got is special, you know that? What we’ve got—’ he looked around quickly ‘—is love. Real love. I know men aren’t supposed to say it, because it sounds sloppy, but I love you, Monica. You’re a special girl.’

  Monica swallowed the hot potato in her mouth.

  ‘I love you too, Dad,’ she said, her voice a small, caged thing.

  Her father smiled.

  ‘Good.’

  He squeezed her shoulder again. Monica put more burning food into her mouth.

  They walked home in silence.

  Later and the streets of Newcastle were damp and dark with night and drizzle. Jack didn’t care. He was elated. Those streets seemed transformed in his mind into avenues of possibility. What he had seen and heard in the Royal Arcade had, he felt, changed him.

  He had been nervous about going in, thinking the people there would have all been better read, better educated than him. But he had been welcomed unequivocally. For the most part they were just ordinary working-class men and women, coming along after finishing work or taking time off from household chores. He tried to remember names: Jack Common, Billy Beach. They had talked, even argued quite heatedly, violently, but Jack sensed it was a healthy argument; they were all on the same side.

  Jack had become lost at times trying to follow the conversations and had had just to sit back and accept the incongruity of the situation: in the rarefied and genteel atmosphere of the old Victorian Royal Arcade, shipworkers and bakers talked knowledgeably and at great depth about social justice, equality, politics and the arts. Admittedly, some of the plays and films he had never heard of, but he tried t
o catch some of the names: The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari was one, Battleship Something or Other was another. He sat there, nodding occasionally, sometimes offering a small opinion when asked. He was asked if he had been in the war. He had nodded, given rudimentary answers, not elaborating. There had been glances at his hair following that, but no questions, none of the staring, the fear he had encountered in Scotswood. These people seemed to know what had happened to him, or at least understood. There, in that company, he began to relax for the first time in months.

  More than that: it was as if windows and doors, long barred and boarded inside himself, had been flung open, allowing him access to inner places he had only suspected existed. He knew what wasn’t right within, where he didn’t belong. Now he felt he was beginning to discover where he did belong.

  Halfway though the evening, Jack Common had stood up and introduced the speaker: Mr Daniel Smith. A small man, about thirty, Jack reckoned, with neat hair and passionate eyes, he had taken the small stage, looked out at his audience and began to speak of his vision. He spoke with clarity, yet without betraying his working-class origins. His voice was that of the working man, of a shared commonalty.

  To Jack, he was revelatory. His vision, Daniel Smith said, was shared – he knew – by everyone in this room. ‘Oh, I know we sometimes argue—’ and here he pointed out certain faces, soliciting laughter among the knowing few ‘—but I know we’re all on the same side really. All of us. Everyone. Because we all share the vision of a new city, a new society. One in which the future isn’t something to fear but something to look forward to. And we look forward to this because it’s something we’ll all work together to create. A city, a nation following a true socialist vision, one in which everyone is valued for the contribution he or she can make in it.

  ‘Just think,’ he said. ‘What if everyone had a decent place to live? One that was warm and comfortable, well designed and, above all, affordable. Everyone, not just the lucky few. What if everyone had decent schools beside them to send their children to? Local libraries within their reach? Good hospitals with the same high standard of care whether you’re rich or poor? Decent jobs that a man can be proud to come home from?’

  Jack leaned forward eagerly.

  ‘Universities for everyone of ability, whether they be rich or poor? Not only that, but what about culture? The working man’s always being told that it’s not for him. The theatre, the opera, the ballet. Cinema, art, music. Not for him.’

  He drew breath, looked around the room, making sure he had them all with him.

  ‘Why not? Why shouldn’t they be in the working man’s grasp? Why should we and our families be dissuaded from enjoying them? These are things,’ Daniel Smith said, shaking his head, ‘that have been denied the working classes too long. Too long.’

  Jack looked around. There were nods and murmurs of assent all about him. He wasn’t sure about the opera and ballet himself – he would give Mr Smith the benefit of the doubt on that one – but the rest he agreed with. He kept listening.

  ‘Working men get together in pubs to drink beer, play darts and dominoes, to sing songs.’ He looked around the room, the faces now enrapt. ‘But,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I know, and you do too, that there are better songs we can sing.’

  More murmurs and grunts of assent from the audience.

  Daniel Smith continued: ‘When you look around at this city and you see some of the places and the conditions that people live in, you wonder how they manage. I’m talking about places like Byker, Heaton, my own Wallsend, Longbenton, Scotswood—’

  Jack’s ears pricked up.

  ‘—Benwell. And plenty of others.’ Daniel Smith sighed, shook his head. He looked as if he had personal experience of these impoverished areas. A silent yet palpable expectancy hung in the air. He continued: ‘You look at these places and you think, We’ve just won a war. I’ll say that again. We’ve just won—’ he stressed the word hard ‘—a war. We’re supposed to be the victors.’

  Jack found his head nodding to the words.

  ‘As you know,’ Daniel Smith continued, eyes alight with passion, ‘I’m anti-war. I’ll have no part of it. And I don’t believe in all that sloganeering that went on either. Let’s wipe the Germans off the face of the earth. The only good German’s a dead German. Rubbish, all of it. What myself and my colleagues in the Independent Labour Party believe in is a united socialist Europe. We’ve just won a war. We have a massive opportunity to do something truly different in our society now. All of us. We’ve got to get on to Attlee, tell him not to lose the advantage he’s got. Make him work for his money. All of us.’

  He stopped talking, gave a self-deprecating smile, placed his hands on his chest.

  ‘Now, I’m just one person standing up here. You down there are the many. So with that in mind I leave you with one final question: that future I was talking about earlier. Do you want it?’

  Nods and murmurs from around the room.

  ‘Do you? Well, so do I. But if change is to happen – and it has to – then it’ll have to come from you. Not just me. Because we’re all in this together. All of us. We’ve got to pull together on this. Stop having dreams and visions. Start turning them into reality. Thank you.’

  He stood down to rapturous applause.

  Jack, like everyone else, was on his feet. Convinced. Converted.

  Dan Smith stepped down from the podium and found himself immediately surrounded by people: handshaking, backslapping. Jack wanted to move forwards, tell the man who had spoken that he could have been directly addressing him, the words could have come from his own mouth. He found himself swept along by the throng. He stopped in front of Dan Smith, who was reaching out his hand to shake. Jack took it.

  Jack opened his mouth to speak, found there were no words there.

  Dan Smith smiled at him. Jack smiled back.

  ‘New face?’ he asked.

  Jack nodded.

  ‘Good. Good to see you.’

  Dan Smith smiled warmly and moved on to the next person.

  The crowd surged, Jack floated away, bobbing like driftwood on an open sea. He allowed himself to be eased to the back of the throng. He stood there, alone, wishing he had said something, cursing his lack of education, thinking of all the pithy one-liners he could have come out with, now lost to the moment. He looked at the other people talking to Dan Smith, saw how easily they made conversation. He shook his head, sighed.

  ‘Enjoyin’ yourself?’

  Jack looked up.

  ‘Aye, you.’

  The man smiled at Jack.

  ‘Ralph Bell.’

  The man stuck out a big, meaty hand. Jack took it, said his name.

  ‘He’s good, isn’t he? Dan Smith. The speaker.’

  Jack nodded. ‘Aye. Aye, he is.’

  ‘More than a speaker, though. A doer. Great things are expected of him.’

  Jack looked at Ralph Bell. He was a big man, stocky and tall, but not fat. Arms and chest enlarged by manual work. Brown hair greased back, suit and tie functional. Moustache. He looked about thirty, thought Jack, although given his ruddy, leather-weathered face, that figure could have been revised upwards.

  ‘Aye,’ said Jack. ‘When he spoke, I wanted to tell him everythin’ he said was true.’

  Ralph Bell gave a small laugh, looked over to where the throng still surrounded Dan Smith.

  ‘But you couldn’t find the right words. Well, don’t worry. He’s here often. You’ll get your chance. This your first time here, is it?’

  Jack nodded.

  ‘Thought I hadn’t seen you here before.’ He pointed to Jack’s hair, smiled. ‘I’d have noticed.’

  Jack felt himself redden.

  Ralph Bell gestured around the room.

  ‘They’re a good bunch, as this lot goes. Everybody argues. But we’re all on the same side. Really.’

  Jack ran his fingers self-consciously through his hair. It was now claiming Ralph Bell’s attention.

  ‘
Where you from, then?’ Ralph Bell asked.

  ‘Scotswood.’

  ‘You workin’?’

  ‘Got job in one of the slaughterhouses down there.’

  Ralph Bell grimaced.

  ‘Rather you than me. I couldn’t do it. Must be horrible, that.’

  ‘Aye, it is. Horrible. Lookin’ for somethin’ else.’ Jack knew he was mumbling his words.

  ‘That what turned your hair white, then?’

  Jack looked at him, mouth working up to a reply.

  ‘Nuh – no,’ Jack stammered. Words came to him only in meagre clumps at the best of times, but they were practically nowhere to be seen tonight. ‘That’s from … the war. I saw some things …’

  He trailed off, hoping the memories wouldn’t invade his head again. Not here. Not now.

  Ralph Bell nodded.

  ‘Don’t want to talk about it, eh? Best way, probably.’

  Jack nodded. He suddenly wanted to be away from the group, out of the Royal Arcade.

  ‘I’d best be off.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Ralph Bell, ‘there’s a few of us goin’ for a pint afterwards. Want to come?’

  ‘No, I’d best …’ He gestured vaguely towards the door.

  ‘Please yourself. Next time, perhaps.’ Ralph Bell stuck out his hand once more. ‘Nice to meet you, Jack. You comin’ back again?’

  Jack looked around the room. Dan Smith still had an audience. People were still chatting animatedly. It seemed warm, welcoming.

  ‘Aye … aye, probably.’

  ‘Good. The more the merrier.’

  Jack turned to go.

  ‘Oh, before you go.’ Ralph Bell spoke as if a thought had just struck him.

  Jack turned back.

  ‘You said you were lookin’ for somethin’ else. Instead of the slaughterhouse. That right?’

  Jack nodded, slightly wary. ‘Aye …’

  ‘You ever done any buildin’ work? Labourin’ an’ that?’

  ‘In the army, I did.’

  Ralph Bell smiled. ‘I might be able to help you, then. I’m a builder. Run a buildin’ firm in Walker. Oh, I know what you’re thinkin’.’ He laughed. ‘What’s a builder doin’ here with all these socialists? Well, you shouldn’t believe what you hear. We’re not all Conservatives. But we are always lookin’ for lads who aren’t afraid of hard work. You like the sound of that?’