The Rabbit

by Ted Lewis

  “Went to Queens,” Clacker said.

  “Good show?”

  “All right.”

  “Don’t give us that,” Arthur said. “I bet your eyes were popping out your bloody head.”

  “Bollocks.”

  “Staring out your bloody head.”

  “You want to ask Gaffer’s son.”

  “Were you there, Victor?” said Arthur.

  I nodded.

  “I bet your old man doesn’t know, does he?”

  Clacker laughed.

  “Was it good?” Arthur went on.

  “Not bad,” I said.

  “He’s seen so many nudes in Art School they don’t bother him no more,” said Clacker.

  “I didn’t say that. All I said was you didn’t think anything of them when you were drawing them.”

  “By God I bloody would, wouldn’t you, Clacker,” Gil said. He made a fist and bent his arm. The men laughed.

  “No, you’ve got it all wrong,” Clacker said. “When you’re an artist you don’t have the kind of thoughts everybody else has.”

  “Do they really have nowt on, Victor?” Arthur said.

  “Yes.”

  “Nowt at all? I mean, you can see everything?”

  “Well, usually they keep their legs together.”

  “They wouldn’t if I was there,” Gil said.

  “They wouldn’t let you in,” said Clacker. “You don’t look arty enough.”

  “They let anybody in providing they’re some good,” I said.

  “So you’re some good, are you?” Clacker said.

  “Well, even if I was, it wouldn’t be for me to say, would it?”

  “Why not?”

  “Well you can’t go around saying how good you are, can you?”

  “Clacker’s always telling us what a good darts player he is,” said Gil.

  “That’s because it’s true,” said Clacker.

  “Couldn’t hit a pig in a fucking passage,” Arthur said.

  “I’ll give you two hundred start any day.”

  “Next time you’re in George,” Arthur said. “Only I’ll give you the two hundred.”

  “Anyway,” Clacker said, “let’s be having a look at his drawings. If he won’t say if he’s any good or not, we will.”

  Clacker got off the tires. My sketchbook was on the bench behind me, propped up against the wall. Clacker walked across the canteen and leant over me and took hold of the sketchbook. He paused and looked into my face.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” he said.

  “Well,” I said, “I mean, I don’t know...”

  “Ta,” he said.

  He straightened up and opened the book.

  “They’re mainly only rough sketches,” I said.

  Clacker leafed over a few pages.

  “What’s this then?” he said. “The Ferry?”

  “Supposed to be.”

  “I wouldn’t want to go to Hull in that.”

  “It’s only a rough.”

  “Bloody rough.”

  “Anyway, you don’t have to be mechanically exact. You go more for the feeling of the thing.”

  “That’s what I’d go for with one of them nudes,” Gil said.

  “Who’s this supposed to be?” Clacker said, flipping over a page.

  “My dad.”

  “Looks more like your spaniel.” Clacker studied the drawing. “Did he have to sit there long while you drew him?”

  “About half an hour. Maybe more.”

  “Well that wouldn’t be no hardship. He must be used to sitting on his backside by now.”

  Some of the men laughed. Clacker turned over another page.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s an abstract.”

  “What of?”

  “Nothing. Just coloured shapes.”

  “Looks like the inside of Fred’s billycan.”

  “Come on, Clacker, find us a nude woman,” said Gil.

  “I doubt if I’d be able to recognize one if I saw one.”

  “Don’t be soft, Clacker,” said Arthur. “He’s good, is Victor.”

  “How the bloody hell would you know?”

  “Our Doreen told me. Victor got Art Prize at Grammar School.”

  “Grammar School.”

  The words sneered their way out of Clacker’s mouth.

  “What’s up, Clacker?” Gil said. “Weren’t you brainy enough to be a Grammar bug?”

  “I’d more sense than to piss about there for five years.”

  “Oh yes,” said Arthur. “He’d got the sense to be a quarry-man so’s he’d be able to earn fourteen quid a week for the rest of his bloody life.”

  “It does for me.”

  “I used to say that. Wait till you get married.”

  “I’m not that daft.”

  All the while he’d been talking, Clacker had been flipping through the sketchbook.

  “Here you are, Gil,” he said at last. “I think I’ve found you a nude woman.”

  Gil got up quickly and looked over Clacker’s shoulder.

  “Bloody hell,” Gil said, and he and Clacker burst out laugh¬ing.

  “What’s up?” Arthur said.

  “She’s covered in bloody hair,” Gil said.

  I stood up.

  “Where?” I said.

  “All over,” Gil said. “Her legs, her bloody arms, every¬where.”

  I glanced at the drawing and sat down.

  “That’s shading,” I said.

  “Oh,” said Gil.

  “How’d you fancy a night with her, then?” Clacker said to Gil.

  “I think she’s a bit old for me.”

  “Too fucking true, man. No wonder he doesn’t fancy them if they’re all as bad as this. Enough to put you off your beer. I’ve never seen owt as ugly as that before. Or is it just the way she’s been drawn? Yeah, that must be it. I mean, nobody could be that ugly.”

  “Give me the book back, then,” I said.

  Clacker turned another page.

  “I haven’t finished looking yet,” he said. “Hey, look at this, Gil. A nude feller.”

  “You what?” Gil peered over Clacker’s shoulder again. “Christ, he wouldn’t be much good to anybody.”

  “He’s wearing a jock-strap, you daft bastard.”

  Clacker snapped shut the sketchbook.

  “Well, I don’t think I could fancy drawing them all day.”

  “They wouldn’t have you,” said Arthur. “Like Victor says, you’ve got to be good.”

  Clacker looked at the sketchbook, then at me.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said.

  I got up and took the sketchbook out of Clacker’s hands. As I did that I caught the look in Clacker’s eyes. He wasn’t surprised that I’d leapt up and taken the sketchbook from him. The look in his eyes told me that as far as he was concerned my action had been inevitable. And now I was left with all eyes on me, holding the sketchbook like a spoilt child with a snatched toy. There was only one thing I could do after that and that was to leave the canteen. But I wasn’t quick enough to escape Clacker’s final remark. As I turned the door handle he said:

  “Temperamental.”

  The tone was surprised, as if he hadn’t expected what had happened, as if what had happened had been of no impor¬tance, or rather as if he’d been surprised by the importance my actions had given the scene. And to make things worse, as I closed the door behind me, Arthur said:

  “You are a prick, Clacker. What do you want to go and do that for?”

  The door cut off Clacker’s reply. Arthur’s efforts to side with me against Clacker had only
made me feel worse. My chest was full and my eyes were brimming. I cursed myself for my behaviour. Why hadn’t I just sat there and grinned and made the same sort of comments back to Clacker? I’d never been able to be like that. I’d always just sit there and let the self-pity build and build inside me until it released itself for everyone to see.

  The office door opened and immediately I moved out of the lobby and began walking away from the canteen. My father’s voice carried after me through the dry sunny air.

  “Where are you off? Sketching?”

  I nodded without turning round. I couldn’t trust myself to speak.

  For a while I lay in the long grass near the stone chute until I heard the canteen door open and the hobnails scraping on the concrete lobby. I didn’t want to walk back to the lorry holding the sketchbook, but if I left it behind in the grass, its absence would be just as noticeable. There was no way out. I had to go back to the lorry. With the sketchbook or without it made no difference.

  I stood up and walked back to Gil’s lorry which was loaded up for the station. Arthur was already starting up his lorry to take it down into the quarry and get another load. Clacker was standing by the full lorry, scowling, waiting for Gil. Clacker watched me while I got into the cab. I waited in the still, metallic heat for Gil to come back. My father came out of the office again. Herbert Wheatley was with him. Herbert walked off in the direction of the quarry and my father came over to the cab, the side where Clacker was standing.

  “Everything all right?” he said, looking up through the window at me.

  Clacker looked at my father’s face, still scowling.

  “Yes, why?” I said, as coldly and unpleasantly as I could.

  “Just asking, just asking.”

  My father looked away from me, turning his back on Clacker, and stood there as if he was searching the horizon for the answer to some other question. Clacker continued glowering at the back of my father’s neck, then he dropped his head and scuffed the ground with his boot and broke into one of his sneers.

  “How is it down at kilns, Clacker?” my father said, still peering at the horizon.

  “All right,” Clacker said. “I’m getting through it.”

  ‘Mm,” my father said. “Anyway, I want an extra effort today. I want some extra loads for steelworks by tea-time.” He turned to face Clacker. “Right?”

  Clacker looked at him for a few seconds. Then he nodded. “Right,” said my father, and walked back into the office.

  I could have killed him. Why couldn’t he see that kind of thing only made me feel worse?

  Gil appeared and walked over to the cab and got in. Clacker didn’t move until Gil had slammed the door of the cab, then he walked round to the passenger side and got in. I made myself as narrow as possible so that we wouldn’t have to make contact but Clacker bundled in and barged his elbow and his shoulder into me. I leant away as far as I could without actually pressing against Gil. The engine shuddered into life and threw Clacker and me together again.

  “Got enough room, have you?” Clacker said to me.

  I didn’t answer. I just wriggled about and generally tried to make myself smaller.

  When we got to the station Clacker got out and did the tailboard. I got into the wagon we’d been working before breakfast. When the new load had been emptied Clacker got into the wagon I was in and thrashed about with his hammer for a few minutes. Then he climbed over into the wagon which held the new load and started work on that one. I scrabbled around for flints.

  “We won’t get many extra fucking loads at this rate,” said Clacker.

  I looked up.

  “That load’s finished,” he said.

  “There’s still some flints,” I said.

  “Fuck the flints,” said Clacker. “It’s the stone that wants seeing to. Flints can be done later, if we’ve time.”

  I was about to repeat what my father said about the flints but I changed my mind.

  “Aye, and you can tell your old man that an’ all. I don’t give two fucks.”

  “What are you talking about? Why should I?”

  Clacker went back to work without answering. I stood there for a few minutes trying to think of something else to say, but eventually I gave up and got into the next wagon with Clacker.

  On the way home, after we’d dropped Herbert off, my father said:

  “Everything going all right?”

  I’d known it was coming from the minute we’d got in the car.

  “Yes, fine.”

  “Getting on with Clacker all right?”

  “Yes, why shouldn’t I?”

  “He’s a funny bugger.”

  “So are most people.”

  “Anyway, if there’s any bother, you’ll let me know, won’t you.”

  “What sort of trouble?”

  “Trouble. Anything.”

  “Between me and him?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And if there was?”

  “I’d bugger him off, that’s what.”

  My father’s voice was all of a sudden vicious and full of malice.

  “What, you’d sack him?”

  “His feet wouldn’t touch.”

  “You’d sack him if anything happened between the two of us?”

  “He needs showing who’s boss, does that insolent bugger.”

  “Then why are you always cracking jokes with him?”

  “Don’t be bloody silly.”

  “Is that the only way you can handle him, by humouring him all the time?”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I shrugged.

  “Actually, I suppose if he had a go at me, then that would give you a good excuse to get rid of him.”

  “If I want to get rid of anybody I get rid, and that’s all there is to it. If he had a go at you, that’d be beside the point.”

  “Quite.”

  “Now look here—”

  “Forget it.”

  “You forget it,” said my father. “You bloody well forget it.”

  “I will.”

  “You always have to have the last word, don’t you?”

  “Pardon?” I said.

  My father swung the car into Johnson’s yard. I got out the minute the car came to a halt and began to walk back down the yard. The sky was soft and still and as I turned into the High Street the warm leftover smell of Cottingham’s bakery filled me with a strange happiness. But I didn’t pause, I kept on going; I didn’t want my father to catch up with me. That would mean some kind of compromise, and that kind of softening always brought depression rather than gladness. The removal of a point of conflict with my father left an odd sort of emptiness.

  “Victor.”

  I stopped and turned. My father was in the middle of the road, crossing over to the other side.

  “I’m just getting some cigs.”

  He went into Rowleys. I wandered on a bit until I came to the Star. The Randolph Scott publicity leaflets were still in the showcase and I still hadn’t been to see the picture. I stepped closer and re-read the credits. Tonight was the last night. The trouble was I’d already decided once more to go and square things up with Veronica.

  My father’s reflection loomed into the glass case.

  “Off there tonight then, are you?”

  I didn’t answer. We fell into step.

  “It’s a beautiful evening. You’d be better off doing some sketching.”

  This was his revenge for the conflict in the car.

  “You’d get a good few hours in if you started straight after tea.”

  We reached the orchard gate. Metcalf’s ducks had broken through the hedge and were posing, dappled, beneath the apple trees.

  �
�There you are,” said my father. “Ready made. What could be better than that?”

  “I’ll have a word with them to see if they can hold it till after tea.”

  We walked in the back door. My grandmother was divid¬ing up a steaming meat pie, carefully sinking the kitchen knife into it, unmoved by the scraping of the knife’s ser¬rated edge on the surface of the pie dish. My mother was lifting the chip basket from the pan, shedding fat like sizzling raindrops. My father hung his hat behind the door and sat down at the table and picked up the paper. No one spoke. I went out of the kitchen and into the front room and sat down at the piano and began to play some Pete Johnsen but I stopped after a few choruses. I never liked playing when my father was in the house. I could always sense the waves of irritation at the fact that the music was boogie and not Mantovani, as if the irritation he felt was engineered and not acci¬dental. I closed the lid and lay down on the settee. Swathes of evening sunlight illuminated lazy currents of dust as they spiralled round the room. I tried to sort out the coming evening in my mind. I had to square things with Veronica, and apart from had to, I wanted to, for the thoughts of her that had been with me throughout the day had been affected by a kind of excitement, caused by the unsureness of how she would react after what had happened the other night. And at the same time I was excited by the fact that I might yet not go and see her, because of the film, the fact that the boys would be going to see the film. I wanted to resolve the situation and at the same time not resolve it, to avoid the dead hand of inevitability. And whenever I felt my aimless mind was drifting close to a decision, it would bounce off again, back into the clearly defined events of the day con¬cerning Clacker.

  Veronica opened the front door.

  “Hello, Victor,” she said. She was quite bright, considering.

  “Is it O.K. to come in?”

  “Of course. Why shouldn’t it be?”

  Before I could reply Veronica had retreated down the hall and opened the door into the front room. Her move¬ments were bright and lively. I was going to pause in the doorway and turn to her and begin my speech but her pose as she held open the door suggested that I ought to wait a few moments before launching into my apology so I walked into the front room and stood in front of the fireplace. Veronica came a little way into the room. She was really looking good. She had on the soft white sweater that I liked and her plaid skirt with the big pin.