by Tobias Hill
The Third Programme ends. The anthem plays out into silence. The window has misted up. The last lights are uneven stars.
On the kitchen table: an ash-tray (hers); a covered plate; two glasses; a bottle of sherry wine. Sherry is too sweet for Michael’s tastes, but it’s all she has. Besides, she likes it herself. She pours one now, to settle her nerves.
He comes in a quarter shy of twelve. He kisses her fast – brush of dank bristle – and splashes water on his face.
‘What’s the occasion?’ he asks, straightaway, without even seeming to have glanced at the bottle, and Mary shivers.
‘Do I need one?’
He turns, leans on the washboard, and laughs – one of his rare, gruff laughs – but he doesn’t say anything. It is she who goes on. ‘How was it, out?’
‘Same as ever. Old men flashing their money around, young men begging for it.’
‘I kept supper for you. It’s plaice,’ Mary says, and he comes and sits. Mary pours the sherries. Michael raises his, peers through its citrine. He is in good spirits, and she’s glad for that, grateful that the night has sweetened him.
‘What are we drinking to?’ he asks.
She doesn’t know. She hasn’t thought. ‘You choose,’ she says.
‘Health and wealth.’
‘No,’ Mary says, ‘let’s drink to us,’ and that’s what they do.
She takes another of his cigarettes and smokes it while he eats. He dines slowly, as always. Food and drink, smoke and love: her man takes them all the same way, curbing his natural appetites. She wants to talk, but she waits. Michael is like a dog with his food. It won’t help to interrupt.
‘How was Cyril?’ she asks, when he’s done, and Michael wipes his mouth. He likes Cyril no more than Mary does, the few times she’s met him. A cocksure, shifty little man.
‘Cyril was there,’ Michael says. ‘It was Alan Swan’s invitation.’
She has heard of Swan. He’s respected: not respectable. Feared. Should she be worried, that he’s courting Michael? Mary doesn’t judge on rumour; rumours are all she’s heard of Swan. You don’t know a man until you meet him. Besides, Michael can look out for himself.
‘He wants to meet you,’ Michael says, and Mary starts at the thought-echo.
‘Why?’
‘Wants to know us better. He’s keen on family, likes family men.’
‘Does he like you, then?’
‘He will,’ Michael says, ‘When he meets you and the girls.’
‘Oh no, Michael, not the girls!’
‘It might get us in his good books. They’re good books to be in, Alan’s. I wouldn’t be surprised if he put some work my way himself.’
‘Cyril might have something to say about that.’
‘Cyril’s no fool. He’s Alan’s man too.’
‘You never told me that.’
‘Well, he is, at the end of the day. If Alan went over his head, Cyril would know to hold his tongue.’
Mary begins to clear. She doesn’t want the girls meeting Alan Swan and Michael knows it. Mary will do what she has to, she’ll put on a pretty face and meet the men Michael deals with, all those they both despise – the respected-not-respectable men, the fences and spivs and mastermen – but her girls will have nothing to do with that world. Mary won’t have it.
‘There’s no hurry,’ Michael says. ‘You’ve time to think it over. Alan mentioned the new year. His house. A good spread, I shouldn’t wonder.’
His house, Mary thinks. She says, ‘But what will I wear?’ and Michael laughs again. He pushes back his chair and comes round by her.
‘All things being well,’ he says, ‘We’ll find you something better than cinders.’
‘I mean it!’
He puts his rough cheeks down by hers. She can see the cruel curve of his mouth, the part which has lacked all volition as long as she has known him; the single sign of weakness which is, for her, a part of him. His hands go to her waist, her ribs, running up under her breasts. Her finest hairs rise where his fingers pass.
‘You could go in mourning,’ he murmurs, ‘you’d still be the sweetest lass there.’
They kiss again. Not briefly, this time. Her throat is curved back to him.
‘Not the girls,’ she says, and he sighs.
‘Not the girls, then. Let’s go to bed,’ he adds, when he lets her go; and she wants it just as he does, but he feels her hesitation. ‘What?’
‘I had something to ask you. It’s about Mrs Platt.’
He frowns, not comprehending, nor much pleased not to. ‘They put the brokers on her,’ Mary says, ‘did you hear?’
Michael doesn’t answer. Slowly he goes back to his chair. He sees what’s coming, Mary knows, and he doesn’t like the look of it. His eyes linger on the sherry, her inadequate sweetener, and she winces.
‘I’d like to do something for her.’
‘What’s Annie Platt to us?’
‘She’s our neighbour, isn’t she? At home, we looked out for our neighbours. We did.’
Michael nods. Their talk has taken a turn for the worse, and his mood turns quickly in its wake. ‘You did,’ he says. ‘You and yours.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘What have they got to show for it? They’re poor as they ever were. Hopeless, the lot of them. They’ve no call to be giving charity, to neighbours nor strangers. What’s charity done for them? And mark me, this is London now, we’re not in Birmingham now. No one has time for neighbours, here, no one looks out for us. We owe no favours.’
It strikes home. It’s true in its way, all of it. Mary has said as much herself, of her family, all of them still in Ladywood, going nowhere, the lucky ones – the ones not bombed out – grafting to make ends meet in the threadbare rooms and houses they were born into. But she has started on Annie now, she won’t sleep easy if she lets it go, and Michael won’t let it drop if she does. Better to try and make a fist of it, to soldier on.
‘Annie’s alone. She’s no children to look after her –’
‘You reap as you sow. If we’re talking of children, now, it’s time we did something about those boys.’
‘What boys?’
‘The urchin,’ Michael says. ‘And the darkie. The girls are growing up. They should know not to play with them.’
There is a glint in his eye. Mary has roused him, has stirred the fighter in him, who always argues this way, like a maddening boy or a brawler, ducking her points, jabbing with words. She presses her hands into her lap.
She says, ‘I’m not talking about that now. I’m talking about Annie.’
‘You should,’ Michael says. ‘You put a stop to them running on the waste, you can put a stop to this. It’s high time.’
‘They’re just children, Michael.’
‘I don’t want them mixing. I want the best for them.’
‘I know you do, and so do I –’
Still they keep their voices down. It won’t do to wake the girls.
‘You used to be dead set against them. The darkie and all his kind.’
‘I’m saying they’re just children. Wait until they start new schools, they’ll go their own ways, then, you’ll see. They won’t need us telling, they’ll understand what’s best. It can wait, love, but Annie won’t. She doesn’t need much to put it right. It wouldn’t be much, I’m sure –’
‘It won’t have to be anything. You’ve never had a good word to say about her, why would you want to help her now?’
‘Oh, Michael! Why do you always have to be so hard?’
His eyes widen for a moment. I’ve hurt him, she thinks, surprised. There is injury in his eyes; and then it’s gone, snuffed out, and she knows she has only angered him.
He stands. Mary rises with him. ‘I’m sorry, love. Please don’t be cross with me,’ she says, and she puts her hand on his arm, but she takes it away when he looks at it.
‘You’ve the housekeeping,’ he says. ‘Give her that if you must. I’ll make it up.’
She nods, but Michael doesn’t see her. He’s looking round the kitchen – the cracks in the ceiling, the grease on the glass – as if he feels its meanness, and fear uncoils in her.
‘Where are you going?’ she asks, almost before she knows he is; perhaps before he knows it himself.
‘Out,’ he says.
‘I’ll wait for you.’
‘Do what you want,’ Michael says, and he takes his mack from the hook.
*
On Sunday they awake to snow. It’s nothing to write home about, as Solly would say, but here and there the wind makes something of the fall. Along the south side of the square it’s deep as the cream on country milk.
The snowball fighters take to the streets before the sun can thaw them. Packs of them snipe and scuffle between the water fountain and the flower stalls.
‘Throw that anywhere near here,’ Rob Tull yells at Jem, ‘I’ll thrash you into Christmas!’ And he brandishes a holly wreath until the boy scuttles off, all done up for chapel in his too-short Sunday clothes.
Pond and Iris crouch together. Iris’s not much use at throwing, but they’re both ace at not getting hit. They’re hiding behind the car in which the bailiffs sit. Floss streaks past, bellowing, with snow-melt in her hair.
‘What are they doing?’ Iris whispers, and Pond peers through the car’s back window. One bailiff is reading the racing edition. The other is watching the Columbia Buildings.
‘They’re waiting, aren’t they?’ Iris says, and when Pond nods, ‘They’re waiting in case Mrs Platt decides to make a run for it. The bloody bastards.’
Pond looks down at her. ‘You shouldn’t say that.’
‘I know,’ Iris says. ‘Sorry. They make me want to spit, though. Rotters. And I don’t see why they need a car. It’s not as if Mrs Platt is going to run. It’s not as if they’ll have to chase her, is it?’
‘No,’ Pond says.
Iris goes up on tiptoes beside him. She inspects the brokers. The thin one tips up his hat and scratches behind his ear. The fat one licks his pencil and turns a page.
‘They look like Laurel and Hardy!’ she hisses. ‘You wouldn’t know they were rotters. They look just like anyone.’
‘Anyone can be rotten,’ Pond says.
‘But if they’re just like anyone, then it’s not right to hate them, is it? I wonder what they’re called? I think the thin one’s Mr Doe, and the fat one’s Mr Dear.’
‘Those are good names,’ Pond says, and smiles.
Iris lets go of the car. She squats. She takes her mittens off. Her hands move furtively.
‘Pond?’ she says. ‘Pond, look here. I think they dropped something. It’s bailiff equipment.’
Pond hunkers down beside her. Iris brings her cupped hands between them. ‘See?’ she whispers, and she opens her thumbs – as if she holds a butterfly – and there is the snow, blue-white, packed and scalloped by her fingers.
‘It’s Mr Doe’s snowball,’ she says, and gulps, looking at Pond in wonderment.
He darts back as she goes for him. She shrieks – she goes to throw – but Pond is too quick for her. He’s away, up and running. Iris races after him.
Already the crowds around them are turning the white back to grey. Pond goes at a dog-trot, feinting to stay clear of Iris, cautious with his footing. The sun is out, bright in his face. In Club Row a lone Sunday cheap-jack is calling out the prices of bird sand and cuttlefish bones. It’s a nice day. Pond is still smiling. Iris is calling after him.
‘Wait . . . Pond, wait for me . . . It’s not fair, your legs are too long . . . Pond, will you wait?’
On the corner of ?Wentworth Street he slows. He doesn’t have to, he could run all day in this dazzling light, but he stops anyway. He knows what’s going to happen, but he doesn’t mind, it won’t hurt at all.
Iris comes up panting. She leans on him to catch her breath. She risks a look at him, titters, then crushes Mr Doe’s snowball against his duffle-coated chest. There’s not much left to crush. Her hand is crab-clawed from clutching it.
‘I got you!’ she crows. ‘I got you I got you!’
They pull themselves together. Iris’s fingertips are turning blue. She puts her mittens back on, but her teeth are chattering, and the sun is going behind the clouds.
‘We could get tea,’ Pond says.
‘I haven’t any money. Have you?’
‘No, but Solly’s pitch is down there.’
Iris puts her hands under her arms. ‘It would be nice,’ she says.
Solly has two customers, and a very important repair to finish, but being busy makes him cheerful, and he gives them a halfpenny each, brushes Pond down and sends them packing. They save one halfpenny for later and share a mug of tea by the seller’s brazier.
‘Why do you still call him Solly? He’s your dad now, isn’t he? You should call him Dad properly.’
‘I know,’ Pond says. ‘I do, sometimes.’
‘He’s a nice man, isn’t he? He sounds so foreign, but he’s alright when you get to know him. You must be glad he’s your dad. I am. You make all the games better,’ Iris says, and blows on the tea. She bathes her face in its steam. ‘I hate feeling cold. It’s the worst thing there is, worse than feeling hungry, even. Don’t you think so?’
Pond thinks about it. ‘Some people, they don’t like being alone.’
‘Oh,’ Iris says, ‘yes, Floss hates that. That would be the worst, for her.’
The tea is finished. They trudge homewards up the Lane, through the wet and the clamour, past Jem’s dad’s pitch and the Pound Note Man and the hot sarsaparilla seller.
‘You must have been cold all the time,’ Iris says, ‘when you lived in Long Debris.’
‘Not always. There were fires. The men make them in the houses.’
‘Weren’t you afraid of them, the men?’
‘Some,’ Pond says, ‘when they were drinking. Mostly I kept away from them. I had my place.’
‘You were alone, then.’
‘No,’ Pond says. ‘I wasn’t never alone.’
They have come up Bishopsgate and back into quieter streets. The snow still lies white in the alleys, virgin on the yard walls. Iris looks at Pond. All of a sudden she is shy again. When she says what she wants to say it all comes out in a halting rush.
‘I know why. I know why you weren’t alone. It’s because you had someone with you always. I do too. I have a friend, a made-up friend. He’s called Semlin. I know he’s made-up, really, but I do so like having him. And you have someone, don’t you?’
Pond doesn’t answer. His face has stilled. His sharp eyes cast one way and the other. He starts to walk faster. Iris jog-hops after him.
‘You don’t have to tell me, I don’t tell people either, but I know you’ve got one, a friend. I saw you whispering to him. You don’t do it as much as I do, only sometimes when we’re playing Troll, or things like that. Pond? You’re going too fast.’
Pond stops. He doesn’t speak. Iris takes his hand.
‘Mine’s still cold,’ she says.
They come up to the Birdcage. Mrs Joel, the publican, is salting her pavements. Iris can see her dad, standing up a little Christmas tree for a lady customer. She lets go of Pond’s hand.
‘I have to go in now,’ she says, and Pond nods. He doesn’t look at her. ‘Call for me later, if you like.’
He shrugs; the old shrug, inarticulate and meaningless. Only as Iris starts off does he look after her. He frowns.
‘What’s he for?’ Pond asks, and Iris turns, with the market’s Christmas picture – trees and holly, wreaths and berries – all behind her.
‘I don’t know. He’s just for playing, or when I’m lonely. What’s yours for?’
For a moment it seems that Pond won’t answer: then he starts, as if woken. ‘He looks out for me,’ Pond says, and Iris smiles, as happy as if her father had praised her.
‘Call for me later, then?’
‘Yes,’ Pond says, and he stands there,
hands at his sides, until Iris is gone.
*
Mary is calling through the letterbox.
‘Annie? It’s me, Mary from next door. Are you there?’
She’s trying to call quietly; quietly enough that only Annie will hear. There’s no one on the walk – only two little mites out playing – but someone will be listening, one walk up or down. Someone always is, in the Columbia Buildings.
‘Annie, dear, the men are gone. There’s no one out here but me.’
Right, Mary thinks, that’s it. The letterbox is so cold that her hands feel like they’ll freeze to it. She’s made up her mind when the door opens in her face and there is the old woman, grinning.
‘Har,’ Annie says, ‘har har. Bit fresh for them, was it? Serves them right. Bloodsuckers. I hope their balls drop off.’
‘Can I come in?’ Mary asks, and Annie nods craftily.
‘Oh, you can, yes. You come in where it’s warm,’ Annie says, but she looks out both ways as she shuts the door.
It is warm, too. Annie has a fire going. Mary follows her back into the lounge. There’s a battered old suitcase on the settee with a few things in it; stockings, photographs. Annie riddles the coals.
‘There,’ she says, and perches on one of the straightback chairs; all of them, Mary sees in the firelight, painted with the chipped brown gloss of classroom desks or church halls.
‘Are you packing?’ Mary asks. ‘Are you leaving, then?’
‘I told you I would,’ Annie says, and waves at Mary, as if she’s standing in the way of a pictures screen. ‘Sit down, won’t you? Sit down on that nice armchair there.’
Mary sits. She watches Annie rise and fold more clothes into the case. There is a flush in her cheeks that wasn’t there yesterday. She looks well. She looks so well that Mary wonders if it can be healthy.
‘Where are you going to go?’
‘Pontefract,’ Annie says promptly. ‘I’ve a nephew there.’
‘But what about your things? All your things?’
Annie waves an arm at her again. ‘Oh, things!’ she says, and her voice drops to a mutter. ‘I don’t give that about things. You can take them or leave them, can’t you? That’s what makes them just things, they don’t matter. I don’t hold that against those men, not when it comes to it. Let them take what the landlord’s due. It’s just that I won’t be made an exhibition. If there’s anything left when they’ve finished, well, you might send it after me.’
