Here I had no advantage at all, and for the first time my mouth sagged. I had suspected, when I considered the thing seriously, that Shadrack knew about the calendars. I felt that he knew something about the irregularities in the postage book, a subject I was surprised had not been ventilated earlier in the conversation. I was fairly sure that he knew about the offensive imitations of Councillor Duxbury but was too inarticulate to mention them. But I would have sworn, willingly, that he knew nothing about the nameplates.
In a way, the nameplates were just as serious as the calendars, if not more so. There were two of them, and I had hidden them in a box of shrouds down in the stockroom. The whole thing had happened during Shadrack's holiday in the summer. I had been supposed to order a coffin nameplate for the funeral of a preacher who had dropped dead in the aisle at Bridle Street Methodist Church. By mistake, thinking about something else, I had put the letters ‘R.I.P.’ on the engravers' instructions, with the result that they had turned out what was in effect a Catholic nameplate for a Methodist body. I had got the thing hurriedly remade, but too late for the funeral. By a miracle neither Councillor Duxbury nor the relatives had noticed it was missing, and the Methodist minister had been buried in an unidentified coffin. There was nothing to do with the nameplates but hide them, and I had often worried about them, sometimes going into the theological aspects of the affair and wondering if I had committed anything to do with the unforgivable sin. But I would have sworn that Shadrack knew nothing about it.
‘Y'see, that's another matter we've got to get cleared up. I don't see how you can leave without getting that cleared up.’
He did not make it evident whether or not he knew where the nameplates were. Perhaps he knew only that the body had been buried without a nameplate. I had lived in fear, for some time, of an exhumation order. I decided to sneak downstairs when he let me go and stuff the name-plates under my pullover.
‘Well, I can only say I'm sorry if there's been any inconvenience, I said.
‘Inconvenience? Inconvenience? Ha!’ He gave a short snort, and entered one of his caves of rhetoric. ‘It's not a question of inconvenience, it's a question of what you pr'pose to do about it. S'posing the relatives had found out, what sort of a fool d'y'think I'd have looked then? S'posing Councillor Duxbury had found out?’ (I felt a slight ray of hope that he was shielding me from Councillor Duxbury.) ‘Y'see, I'm vair much afraid that you've been spending too much time acting the fool. You seem to think you're on the music halls, not in a funeral furnishers.’
I was beginning to be possessed by the inward, impotent rage. What did the man want me to do? Atone for my sins? Work for another year as penal servitude? Pay for the calendars and the nameplates? Get the goodwill back?
Shadrack looked at the yellow paper in his file where, I was quite ready to believe, he had a list of my misdemeanours scribbled down, like a charge sheet. I expected him to tick them off and start each charge with ‘That he did unlawfully…’
‘Yes, there's been too much acting the fool in this office. We'll have to get some other system. Y'see, then there's those verses, you never wrote those out, now did you?’
Shadrack had once caught Arthur and me writing songs in the firm's time, and had set us to work making up little verses for the In Memoriam column of the Echo, a chore he handled for the bereaved on a commission basis. The nearest we had got to the job was an obscene poem about Councillor Duxbury and a couple of lines about Josiah Olroyd in the window: ‘Josiah Olroyd has gone to join his Maker. Come inside and join Josiah Olroyd.’ Shadrack knew about them both. I was relieved that he was getting on to the minor misdemeanours, but I knew that even those could keep him talking for hours.
‘Then there's all that office paper you've been using for your bits and pieces. I mean, that costs money as well.’
‘I'll pay for it.’
‘It's not a question of paying for it –’ In the outer office, the telephone began to ring. Shadrack picked up his extension and found that it was not connected. It was my responsibility to see that it was, last thing on Saturday morning, and he shot me a look of exasperation as he rose to his feet.
‘Anyway, under the circumstances I have to tell you, I have to tell you, Fisher, that under no circ'stances can we accept your resignation at the moment. Not at the moment. Not until we've got this straightened out. We may even have to take some kind of legal action, I don't know.’
He strode out of his office and went over to the switchboard. ‘Shadrack and Duxbury?’ I got up and stood in the doorway, running over the bit about legal action and testing it for strength.
Shadrack began talking to some mourning wife in his soupy, funeral voice. I just stood there. He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said: ‘Well we'll talk about this another time’ I walked unsteadily to the outer door, twisted the door-handle for a moment, and walked out into St Botolph's Passage. For the first time since breakfast I felt my elusive yawn coming on, and I leaned against Shadrack's window, gasping and gulping. My forehead was sweating, but I was relieved that I had jumped another hurdle. I remembered that I had not gone downstairs after the name-plates, but decided that after all there was little point in it.
I lit a cigarette and started walking down towards Market Street, trying to translate the interview into No. 1 thinking. ‘Now look here, Mr Shadrack, there's such a thing as slander -’
It didn't work. I set off home. My No. 1 mother said: ‘For God's sake, Billy, why don't you tell the boring little man to stick the job up his jacksy?’
6
I REACHED Hillcrest at about half past two to find lunch over and my mother in the kitchen, making notes for a scene about my not being home for meals. It was bacon and egg again, the traditional Saturday feast; the eggshells were in the sink-tidy and there was an air of replete doom about the house. Gran was mumbling to herself in the lounge. The old man was mending something in the garage, or thought he was.
‘What time do you call this?’ my mother asked as I opened the kitchen door. I knew my part in this little passage and replied: ‘Twenty-seven minutes past two, though you may have another phrase for it,’ reflecting that my answers were becoming as stereotyped as her questions. ‘I've had an exciting morning,’ I added, trying to get some uplift into the conversation.
My mother was not having any. ‘You seem to think I've nothing else to do but cook, cook, cook,’ she said, slipping with disturbing ease into a monologue so familiar to me that I could have chanted it with her, like those two men doing imitations on the radio. ‘You come in when you like and expect to find a meal waiting for you, you don't seem to think I'm entitled to five minutes' peace.’
‘Peace –’ I began, not troubling to think what I was going to say; anything obscure would pass for something clever. My mother cut me short.
‘I've not sat down all morning. If I'm not sick!’
From the lounge, Gran shouted: ‘If that's our Billy, there's his old raincoat been in the bathroom all morning. It's about time he started hanging his things up.’
I called back: ‘What if it isn't our Billy, where has his old raincoat been then?’ a grammatical pleasantry whose full subtlety I did not expect to be appreciated. I anticipated, and got, no reply. The old man came into the kitchen from the garage, carrying a shelf.
‘And you can start coming home on a dinner-time, instead of gadding round town half the bloody day,’ he said, without even looking at me.
‘Good afternoon, father,’ I said with heavy civility. I was beginning to wonder why I had come home at all.
‘And stop being so bloody cheeky. I've just about had enough of it.’
‘He wants to give him a good hiding, teach him some manners,’ called Gran from the lounge.
I began to feel angry, like a caged animal being taunted with sticks. This feeling, a regular enough occurrence in this house, had several outlets. One course open to me was to revert to what I felt must be my former self or my real self or something, an abusive shadow of the o
ld man. Another, less dangerous move was to introduce the mood of polished detachment.
‘What are manners -?’ I began, examining my fingernails. But I had underestimated the strength of the old man's frustration or whatever it was.
‘Talk bloody sense, man!’ he roared. ‘By Christ, if this is what they learned him at technical school, I'm glad I'm bloody ignorant!’
‘Ah, a confession!’ I murmured, but without any idea that he should hear me. The old man gave me a steady, threatening look. Aloud, I said, ‘I'm going upstairs.’
‘And keep out of them bedrooms!’ Gran called from the lounge.
The bedrooms were nothing to do with her. She was only the permanent guest. I whipped round in a sudden gust of fury.
‘Stick the bedrooms up your -’ I began, then checked myself on the absolute verge of disaster, so abruptly that I physically teetered on my toes.
‘You what!’ The old man dropped his shelf on the floor and came almost running across the kitchen, face to face with me. ‘What did you say? What was that? What did you say?’ He grabbed my collar and put his fist close against my face.
‘These melodramatics -’
‘Don't melodram me with your fancy talk!’ I was seized, not with fear or anger but with sheer helplessness at the thought that these were beautiful Josiah Olroyd lines and I could not point them out to anybody, or even scoff.
‘I merely said -’
‘Talk bloody properly! You were talking different a minute ago, weren't you? What did you just say to your grandma? What did you say?’
‘Well, don't pull him round, that shirt's clean on,’ my mother said, anxiously.
‘I'll clean shirt him! I'll clean shirt him round his bloody earhole! With his bloody fountain pens and his bloody suéde shoes! Well he doesn't go out tonight! I know where he gets it from. He stops in tonight, and tomorrow night anall!’
I stood by the sink, looking weary, seeking some facial expression that was not outside the histrionic experience of the family. I searched for something to say that would not sound clever or impertinent. From the lounge I heard Gran muttering, ‘Cheeky young devil!’ but her voice sounded thick and strange.
‘Look –’
‘Don't look me! With your look this and look that! And you get all them bloody papers and books and rubbish thrown out, anall! Before I chuck ‘em out first, and you with 'em!’
The only way into the conversation was to counterfeit the old man's blunt and blunted way of talking. I set my lips into the same loose, flabby shape and said in the rough voice: ‘What's up, they're not hurting you, are they?’
‘No, and they're not bloody hurting you, eether,’ the old man said, taking over, in his mind anyway, the role of family wit.
He went back across the kitchen and picked up the shelf where he had dropped it. I stood there straightening my tie, not speaking. My mother looked at me, her ‘You've done it now’ look. The old man turned back.
‘Anyway, I've finished with him. He knows where his suitcase is. If he wants to go to London he can bloody well go!’
‘Oh, but he's not!’ my mother said sharply. She had been dithering for some time, wondering which side she was on, and now she came down on mine, or what she thought was mine.
‘I've finished with him! He can go!’
‘Oh, but he's not!’
‘He's going. He's going out.’ The idea was building up attractively in the old man's mind. ‘He's going!’
‘Oh, but he's not. Oh, but he's not. Oh, but he's not.’
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Can I settle this –’
This time the old man ignored me.
‘It's ever since he left school, complaining about this and that and t' other. If it isn't his boiled eggs it's summat else. You have to get special bloody wheat flakes for him cos he's seen ‘em on television. Well I've had enough. I've had enough. He can go.’
‘Oh, but he's not! Now you listen to me, Geoffrey. He's not old enough to go to London, or anywhere else. You said yourself. He doesn't think. He gets ideas into his head.’
‘Well he's going, he can get that idea into his head.’
‘Oh, but he's not. Not while I'm here.’
The old man's anger died down as quickly as it had flared up. ‘He wants to get into t' bloody army, that's what he wants to do,’ he said.
‘Yes, and you want to get into t' bloody army as well,’ my mother said.
This exchange of epigrams seemed to mark the end of the conversation. I turned to go.
‘Where's he going now?’ the old man said.
‘I'm going to be sick,’ I said viciously.
I went into the lounge, expecting Gran to toss her widow's mite into the controversy as I passed. I glanced at her as I walked towards the hall door, and saw at once, with a quick sense of panic, why she was so silent.
I shouted: ‘Mother! Quick!’ and looked up at the ceiling rather than at my grandmother. She was sitting in her armchair in a curiously rigid position, her yellow face convulsed, her neck ricked back. Specks of foam appeared on her lips and her watering eyes were bulging. She was trying to cry out, but no sounds came. Her skinny hands gripped the arms of her chair and her back was arched as though she had frozen in the act of getting up.
My mother and the old man came rushing into the room. ‘Now look what you've done!’ my mother cried. The old man dashed over to open the window.
He shouted: ‘She's having a bloody fit, can't you see? Get t' smelling salts! Go on, then, frame yourself!’
Glad to get out of it, I galloped upstairs for the smelling salts. Gran's fits, occurring nowadays with increasing regularity, always filled me with dread and, I could not help it, disgust. I had a horror that I would one day be alone with her in the house when she threw one, and I was often haunted by the thought of what I would do in these circumstances. Rummaging around in my mother's dressing-table for the smelling salts, automatically conning the contents of the drawer to see if she had found anything of mine and hidden it, I realized that emerging from my panic was the old thought that perhaps this time Gran would die and there would be no more scenes. I tried to push the thought out by the counting and quoting method: ‘Seventy-four, ninety-six, the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.’ Calming a little, I no longer hoped that she was dead but that she was all right, or at least looking all right on the face of it, with the foam wiped off her lips and everything looking normal. I found the green bottle of smelling salts and went downstairs. At the turn of the stairs, scraping my shoe against the loose stair-rod, I told myself that I would count five and that at the end of that time she would have recovered, and I would go in.
I counted slowly, one, two, three, four, five, six. The hall door opened suddenly and the old man was peering round urgently. ‘Come on, what you bloody doing?’ I jumped the remaining stairs and handed him the bottle. ‘Still feel sick,’ I muttered. He shut the door in my face.
I walked slowly back upstairs, trying to make myself feel sick, but with no success. I went into my room and lay shivering on the bed. I strained my ears to listen for the voices downstairs, and told myself that I could hear the faint voice of Gran, and that that meant she was all right now. To get the incident out of my head I tried out a piece of No. 1 thinking, concerning my own death and the grief of the family. It tapered out and, feeling more at ease, I began to think aggressively, and then constructively, casting myself slowly into the role of master of the house. There was an insurance man bullying Gran into taking out a funeral policy, but she was too dim to know what it was all about. I came in just as the insurance man was becoming sneering and abusive. ‘Would you mind, sir? This lady happens to be my grandmother.’ – ‘And who are you?’ – ‘Let us say that I have some experience in these matters.’
By now there were definitely voices downstairs, and I heard the old man going out into the garage. He wouldn't be going into the garage if everything were not all right. I breathed in deeply and began to sing quietly to myself. I rolled myself
off the bed, stood around indecisively for a moment, then kneeled down and dragged the Guilt Chest out, checking the stamp-edging only perfunctorily and not worrying overmuch whether they had been in it or not. It was time for another decision. I opened the wardrobe and got down the biggest sheet of brown paper I could find. I spread it out over the bed. Then I fell once again into a mild stupor, putting the recent conversation downstairs into some kind of glassy-eyed perspective. Brooding over Gran's complaint about my old raincoat in the bathroom, I remembered with a jolt the letter still there in it. I bounded into the bathroom and felt for it in my raincoat-cum-dressing-gown pocket. It was still there. I took it out and tried to remember the way I had folded it. They would surely have mentioned the matter if they had opened it and read it. I smoothed the letter out, and fluff fell out of the creases. I read it again.
Dear Mr Fisher,
Many thanks for script and gags, I can use some of the gags and pay accordingly. As for staff job, well, I regret to tell you, I do not have ‘staff’ beside my manager, but several of the boys do work for me, you might be interested in this. Why not call in for a chat next time you are in London? Best of luck and keep writing,
Danny Boon
Read in this light with the old man's threat to kick me out tentatively expressed if not actually confirmed, it did not seem after all much to go on. The thought of being in London began to fill me, once again, with apprehension. I walked back into the bedroom and took out the pound notes that I had been hoarding in my wallet. There were nine of them. I emptied my loose change out on to the sheet of wrapping paper on the bed: fourteen and sixpence. Nine pounds fourteen and sixpence. But I could not do the complicated sum of subtracting rail fares, rents, meals, and the rest of it. I put the money away and turned back to the Guilt Chest.
Carefully, I winkled out a stack of about three dozen calendars and piled them on the sheet of brown paper. There seemed to be room for more. I got another dozen, and then wrapped the whole lot up, finding a length of string in the elephant-shaped vase on the bedroom mantelpiece. They made a heavy parcel, heavier than I had expected. I closed the Guilt Chest, putting the stamp-edging in a new position, and went downstairs, humping my parcel with me. In the hall I picked up a gramophone record that had been there for days, waiting to go back to the shop.
Billy Liar Page 8
