A Son of War

by Melvyn Bragg

  To tell her he would have to know himself much better.

  ‘You seem to want to get at me tonight.’

  He shook his head denying the truth of it without words.

  ‘I never wanted to lassify him as you said once. I wanted him to have one or two things I didn’t have, that’s all. I didn’t want to push him either. It would take or it wouldn’t. But I wanted him to see something else, Sam.’ It was declared like a plea. ‘That we didn’t have. Just to see something else, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’

  She looked as vulnerable as he had ever seen her. The white face seemed to tremble, the red lips held steady just, the loosened black hair made her face smaller, as if offering it protection. His anger evaporated. He shut the book. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that, Ellen. Nothing at all.’

  He felt so keenly in love with her, like long ago, rarer now.

  The blues hit the nape of his neck. Whenever Joe heard that sound, that alley sound, swamp sound, sound on the rocks, he felt he had come up for air. And he held the songs in his mind, mimicked the singers, dug southern American black out of his northern English throat, let himself be submerged, so that he could rise again reborn. They told him something nothing else could and in their bleakness he found hope. Big Bill Broonzy, Leadbelly, Memphis Slim, Billie Holiday, there could never be enough; there never was. He collected what he could, every drop, water in a drought. Best luck of all, to find a run of them on the wireless and listen in the night.

  That night he and Alan had hiked out the three miles to a village social. There had been a girl there, in the year below at school. Joe had never noticed her. She had black hair, perceptible breasts, peach and white skin, a strong nose, dark troubling brown eyes, a challenging grin. She wore a front-buttoned floral dress. When he asked her to dance she said, 'I’m not much good,’ and she was not, but it helped because they talked while he spelled out the steps that had been spelled out to him. Alan had also danced with her. Then Joe again. Then Alan. In the interval when they had lemonade and cake Alan said he would rather not share her so they spun. Joe won. He got the last dance at half past nine, and managed to hold her hand while they sang ‘God Save the Queen’.

  So in bed that night as well as the music there was the smell and re-created sight and feel of the girl, which seemed to feed directly the inner redoubt which he kept from everyone, even the terror, even the thing that was attacking him. The memory of her and the branching and fantasy in that memory, promises to see again, strengthened the redoubt. He felt he would be safe that night.

  When the blues stopped, he leaned down in the dark and turned the tuning of the low murmuring wireless to find more music. Although in the choir he sang anthems and plainsong, and at the piano he had played classical music, he would usually hurry past the classical station - an inheritance that was not for him. But this time a few notes held him. He stayed. It was the last sonata he had attempted to play, so stiltedly. Miss Snaith so disappointed. Here, though, fingers of a magician flowed across the keyboard and Beethoven rose up from this flow like nothing on earth and, with the girl in his thoughts, the music instantly seized his mind, his body. It was his bloodstream, like the blues, he was the sound of it, the smell of her, the impact of freedom in those moments, a time of freewheeling, happy, soaring outside himself but without fear.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Sam laid on a bus for the Dalston point-to-point - an evening meeting. He invited Joe along.

  As Sam saw people off the bus he asked Colin if he could give him two ten-shilling notes for a pound. When he had looked at the race-card he handed a very surprised Joe one of the brown well-worn ten shilling notes. I’ve marked your card,’ he said. ‘Six races. Put sixpence each way or a straight bob win as you fancy. Spend five bob.’

  ‘That means I can only bet on five.’

  ‘You can bet on the sixth if you make something from the first five.’

  ‘Why give me ten bob then?’

  ‘You need a reserve. You bring the other five bob back.’

  ‘What if I just keep the five bob and don’t bet?’

  ‘That’s a wasted opportunity.’

  ‘What if I win a lot to start with and decide to stop and give you the five bob back but don’t bet on all the races?’

  ‘Then you’re a better man that I am, Gunga Din.’

  They went separate ways.

  It sluiced down. Stair rods. At times the riders could scarcely be seen for the sheets of rain. People huddled under the big umbrellas of the bookmakers. The refreshment marquee was steaming. Joe won three and sixpence.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Lost on the night,’ Sam admitted, in the bus home.

  ‘Why didn’t you bet on what you told me to bet on?’

  ‘Second thoughts.’ He smiled. ‘As long as one of us is winning we can’t complain.’

  He took the shovelled change from Joe’s ten bob and thrust it in his pocket without counting it, which Joe noted and appreciated.

  Colin tried to get a sing-song going with ‘Secret Love’ but nobody was keen. He tried again with the new Johnny Ray but people were wet through and in no mood for it even though, as Colin loudly pointed out, ‘Such A Night’ could be thought ‘a good signature tune for the job’. Finally he concentrated on his hair, recently restyled in the DA cut - ‘Duck’s Anatomy,’ he announced to everyone, with a fat wink. Joe noticed that his dad would not respond to any of Colin’s overtures on the bus.

  He was surprised then when Sam beckoned Colin as they left the bus and walked up towards his aunty Grace’s house with him. Sam indicated that Joe should go across to the pub as several others were doing, scurrying through the persisting rain, dark figures in the fast deepening night. ‘Help out,’ Sam said to Joe, ‘I’ll only be a few minutes.’

  There was an archway next to Grace’s house. It was black, a tunnel into the gloom of a yard. The yellow dab of street-light from Market Hill offered only weak illumination.

  ‘This’ll do.’

  Sam stopped just inside the archway. Colin stood with his back to the wall, Sam on the cobbled way within sight of the steps up which he had bounded so expectantly after the war was over.

  ‘What we stopped here for?’

  ‘A talk.’

  I’m wet. I want to go in.’

  'It won’t take long. Fag?’

  Colin took one. Sam lit him up. He took time to light his own, looking all the while at Colin’s half-shadowed face, seeing again the eyes that were Ellen’s, the slope of the face: seeing more, though, a man now petulantly alert, a face welded to expressions foreign to his half-sister.

  ‘I’ve taken to marking the ten-bob notes,’ Sam said, after a deep draw.

  Colin’s silence was adamant.

  ‘One of those you gave me tonight was marked. Proves it was nicked today.’

  ‘I had too much change. I wanted to turn it into a note.’

  ‘Who did that for you?’

  'I'm not telling.’ Colin’s tone was virtuous. ‘I wouldn’t tell you that, Sam.’

  Sam took another deep suck on the fag and scratched the back of his head. He had made a resolution to keep his temper. He took his time.

  ‘You’re a liar,’ he said.

  ‘Nobody calls me a liar.’

  ‘You’re a liar.’

  Colin stepped forward, feeling impelled to follow through though there was a tremulous undertow to the aggressive gesture. Sam grabbed his shoulder with his left hand and pushed him against the wall. ‘I wouldn’t try, Colin. I wouldn’t even think about it.’

  The older man held him hard, gripping the shoulder, battening him against the wall and Colin heard a vibration of the deep fury, caught the killing anger in the eyes, and slumped. 'I'm sorry, Sam. I’ll pay you back. I’m sorry, Sam.’

  Whether the sobs were real or feigned, Sam could not tell. Reluctantly he let him go. ‘You said that last time. And the time before that. And before t
hat.’

  ‘This time I mean it.’

  ‘You’re out, Colin.’

  ‘One more chance.’ The sobs grew heavier, seeming real. ‘Everybody should have one more chance.’

  ‘You’ve used them up.’

  ‘What’ll you tell Ellen?’

  The question fired Sam’s anger even more strongly so that he stepped back. ‘I’ll tell her. I’ll tell her you’re a thief and I’m not having you in that pub one day longer.’

  ‘She won’t have it.’ The sobbing stopped. Colin’s jaw jutted forward. He knew that a crucial point had been made.

  ‘Don’t you mention Ellen.’ Sam held himself back.

  ‘She’s my sister. She won’t let me be thrown out. Ellen won’t have it. You’ll see.’

  Sam’s hand shot out and this time found the throat and banged Colin hard against the wall. Colin gurgled in terror. Sam slackened his grip. ‘You.’ Sam shook his head. ‘You’ve used her for years, you’ve just traded on her good nature.’

  ‘I can’t breathe!’

  ‘You’ve hidden behind her skirts. I would have sorted you out years ago but for her. I stood back because you’re such a kid half the time, but you’ve plagued my bloody life day in day out. You’ve confused that boy.’

  ‘Me and Joe’s pals.’ Colin’s voice was strangulated but he would be justified.

  ‘You’ve led him a dance.’ Sam’s grip tightened as bitter memories exploded in his mind. ‘You’ve taken advantage of the both of them.’ He banged Colin’s head against the wall. ‘You’ll leave him alone. Hear that? Leave him alone and stop the bloody stupid promises and lies and all the rest, or by Christ, Colin, I’ll do you harm.’

  He let go. Colin’s hand replaced his. He stroked his throat and made much of gasping. Finally, he said, ‘You needn’t have done that.’

  ‘I’ve thought about the budgies,’ Sam said. ‘You can have the key to the back-yard door and get into the stables that way. But, Colin, you’re barred the pub, at any time and there’ll be no let-up. Understand? I hope you do. For your own sake. Give me that ten bob.’

  Colin handed it over.

  Sam went out of the arch, into the rain, walked, almost marched, across to the Blackamoor.

  Colin spat and spat again on the ground, then walked slowly up the street ignoring the weather, seeking a friendly bar, still stroking his throat.

  Sam told Ellen that night and he had never seen her so upset. He did not know she could be so shaken. But though she pleaded he would not change his mind and though he felt ripped in two when she left him to walk so heavily, so afflictedly, up the stairs, he would not give in. He was wounded. Had she ever been as distraught over him?

  ‘Was he?’

  Grace was held by Ellen’s agonised eyes.

  ‘Was he?’

  The old lady lifted an arm, as if to ward off this attack.

  ‘Was my dad a thief?’

  Ellen had scarcely slept. She had come to the house the moment she knew she was most likely to catch Grace alone. There had been no preliminaries, no making of tea, nor any hesitation.

  ‘Is that why he left Wigton?’

  Grace could see the agony and was shaken by it.

  ‘Was my dad a thief?’ Like Colin. She did not add. She had not revealed what Sam had told her but Grace knew. Like Colin.

  ‘I just want to know. Don’t you see? Why he left Mam and me.’

  Ellen held back the tears with difficulty. She was aware that her voice had been loud. She lowered it almost to a whisper. ‘I just want to know.’

  Grace nodded. The tip of her tongue wetted her lips.

  ‘You have to tell me the truth, Aunty Grace. You have to.’

  ‘I will.’

  Ellen let out a big sigh of breath. ‘At least I’ll know the truth.’

  She straightened her shoulders a little, sat up, waited, polite, Grace thought, biddable, as she always had been. But now it was she, the girl, who was giving the orders.

  ‘He wasn’t a strong man,’ Grace said, speaking steadily, aware of the force of her own emotions, ‘but he was never a bad man. He was one of those who needed a bit more help maybe than people could afford to give. Leonard was good with him.’

  She stopped. Memories began to crowd out her words. Then she collected herself. ‘He wasn’t what you would call a thief,’ she said. ‘Not exactly, not in any real sense of that horrible word. So you can be reassured, Ellen.’ Her own words gave her confidence. ‘He was not a thief,’ she asserted.

  ‘So why did he go? Why did he leave us?’ Ellen forced herself to patience. Whatever was said now, she thought, whatever it was would be a resolution, would be some sort of answer, would slay the furies that had been released by what Sam had told her about Colin. It scarcely mattered what it was, she told herself, as long as she knew, as long as she could rest on knowing why her father had gone and without her and before she knew him at all.

  ‘Why did he go?’ It was a gentle repetition and perhaps it was that which brought silent sobless tears to Grace’s eyes, tears which Ellen had never seen, never.

  The old lady once more lifted her arm but this time it was to deny all further talk. ‘I can’t tell you, Ellen. But he was never a bad man. Your dad would have been good to you. He should never have gone, Ellen. But he did.’ She made one further effort. ‘He thought he had to go, you see. And who knows?’

  ‘I’m going for a walk,’ Ellen said, later that afternoon, and was gone before Sam could question her.

  She went across the road, past the old jail and Tenters, the short way to the baths, the way still taken by Joe only when he felt the need to test himself. She had thought to take the lonnings through the fields to Kirkland and then on to the small roads that threaded to the old village of Rosewain, but at the last minute she decided to stick closer to the town and went up the hill that had witnessed so many fearful descents by her son, down past the swimming baths, up Stoney Bank towards the Kissing Gate into the Lowmoor Road. Why had he gone?

  The wind had subsided but not disappeared. There was drizzle and the low dark clouds were full of storm. Her headscarf was soon soaked, her coat pasted with rain, the unsuitable shoes damped through.

  Ellen was scarcely if at all aware that this journey had any purpose. After meeting Grace and finishing her work she had felt a terrible desire to get out, just go, without an admissible reason. It was a flight.

  Plunged into a depression by what Grace had told her, the chatter of her past murmured around her through the lanes. Images of herself in the baths, flicking from tentative childhood through her adolescent passion for swimming, the games with Sam and the others, teaching Joe, pram-walks on Lowmoor Road, the bike rides to Forester Falls, berry-picking, hazel-nut culling, trying to stop the boys pinching birds’ eggs.

  She went up Crozier’s field where the bullocks could be worrying and then Highmoor, the Big House, the high bell-tower that overlooked her getting up and her lying down, the clear reminders of the famous deer park, the marches up there with the Guides and the teas and on to the Syke Road where you could branch off to Old Carlisle and the Roman camp, taken there for school trips, walking up in their neat crocodile, on to the Longthwaite Road and into the Show Fields. Why had he left them?

  By now she was clammy soaked. None of her clothing could fight off the slashes of rain that alternated with the drizzle. But the wetness was a curious comfort, reminding her of herself as she near sleepwalked through these so familiar fields of walking and courting, of Sam fishing, of Joe sledging, of the games and the circus, the wending sandbanked charm of the river Wiza, which defined all rivers, the place drenching her like the rain.

  She thought she might even go across towards the park and see Ruth to whom she could say as much as to anyone, but this uncommon need to walk alone around the town was too strong and she turned west beyond Greenacres, scarcely daring to look at her old house lit so seductively, and into the narrow lane, getting dark now, which rolled out past a couple of far
ms and led to the cemetery before which she paused.

  Where was her father buried? Colin had evaded that in the way he had, not to answer certain questions so that she would have to keep asking them. That was one of the ways he held on, she knew that, she let him do that. But it would be something, wouldn’t it? To be able to go to his grave at least?

  She went into the cemetery, past the huge war memorial on which the name Richardson was written in gold leaf several times, up and down the neat gravel pathways between the headstones, mostly simple, only a few at all grand. There was light enough for her to make her way and the sound of her wet soles on the ground was a companion. She would get it out of Colin somehow. But Colin had to be looked after.

  She did not want to think about Colin now.

  Down Station Hill alongside the cliff of wall that held up the railway line and under the bridge towards the factory. If only Sam had stayed there. Lit up, pounding, even at this time of night, a bright spot in the drizzling northern twilight, almost cheerful under such a severe sky.

  And now she pushed up into the town, the lanes, the yards, the clothing factory in which she had worked, every place, so much, every corner, she could reach out, remember and be remembered; soaking into her was this bounded town which had fostered her, and a weary equilibrium, a decision, had been reached by the time she went into the pub and managed some sort of smile in response to Sam’s worried look.

  She would find out where he was buried and go there.

  Colin managed to ambush him. He had waited at the end of the low road from the baths. Joe swerved and unsaddled himself in rather an embarrassed manner, Colin observed, which gave him, he thought, the upper hand.

  ‘You’ve been avoiding me,’ he said.

  'I haven’t.’ Joe’s denial was stout but clearly false. He had not been told why there had been the rift between his father and Colin but he had been told it was serious and that Colin would no longer be coming to the pub.

  ‘I can see through you.’ Colin grinned and sleeked back his hair. ‘I have X-ray eyes when it comes to you.’