The Likes of Us

by Stan Barstow

  I opened the back and looked at the inscription there: ‘For loyal service…’

  Fifty years... My grandfather had been a blacksmith. It was hard now to believe that these pale, almost transparent hands had held the giant tongs or directed the hammer in its mighty downward swing. Fifty years... Five times my own age. And the watch, prize of hard work and loyalty, hung, proudly cherished, at the head of the bed in which he was resting out his days. I think my grandfather spoke to me as he did partly because of the great difference in our ages and partly because of my father. My mother never spoke of my father and it was my grandfather who cut away some of the mystery with which my mother’s silence had shrouded him. My father, Grandfather told me, had been a promising young man cursed with a weakness. Impatience was his weakness: he was impatient to make money, to be a success, to impress his friends; and he lacked the perseverance to approach success steadily. One after the other he abandoned his projects, and he and my mother were often unsure of their next meal. Then at last, while I was still learning to walk, my father, reviling the lack of opportunity in the mother country, set off for the other side of the world and was never heard of again. All this my grandfather told me, not with bitterness or anger, for I gathered he had liked my father, but with sorrow that a good man should have gone astray for want of what, to my grandfather, was a simple virtue, and brought such a hard life to my mother, Grandfather’s daughter.

  So my grandfather drifted to the end; and remembering those restless fingers I believe he came as near to losing his patience then as at any time in his long life.

  One evening at the height of summer, as I prepared to leave him for the night, he put out his hand and touched mine. ‘Thank y’, lad,’ he said in a voice grown very tired and weak. ‘An’ he’ll not forget what I’ve told him?’

  I was suddenly very moved; a lump came into my throat. ‘No, Grandad,’ I told him, ‘I’ll not forget.’

  He gently patted my bind, then looked away and closed his eyes. The next morning my mother told me that he had died in his sleep.

  They laid him out in the damp mustiness of his own front room, among the tasselled chairback covers and the lustres under their thin glass domes; and they let me see him for a moment. I did not stay long with him. He looked little different from the scores of times I had seen him during his illness, except that his fretting hands were still, beneath the sheet, and his hair and moustache had the inhuman antiseptic cleanliness of death. Afterwards, in the quiet of my own room, I cried a little, remembering that I should see him no more, and that I had talked with him and read to him for the last time.

  After the funeral the family descended upon us in force for the reading of the will. There was not much to quarrel about: my grandfather had never made much money, and what little he left had been saved slowly, thriftily over the years. It was divided fairly evenly along with the value of the house, the only condition being that the house was not to be sold, but that my mother was to be allowed to live in it and take part of her livelihood from Grandfather’s smallholding (which she had in fact managed during his illness) for as long as she liked, or until she married again, which was not likely, since no one knew whether my father was alive or dead.

  It was when they reached the personal effects that we got a surprise, for my grandfather had left his watch to me!

  ‘Why your Will?’ my Uncle Henry asked in surly tones. ‘I’ve two lads o’ me own and both older than Will.’

  ‘An’ neither of ’em ever seemed to know their grandfather was poorly,’ my mother retorted, sharp as a knife.

  ‘Young an’ old don’t mix,’ Uncle Henry muttered, and my mother, thoroughly ruffled, snapped back, ‘Well Will an’ his grandfather mixed very nicely, and your father was right glad of his company when there wasn’t so much of anybody else’s.’

  This shot got home on Uncle Henry, who had been a poor sick-visitor. It never took my family long to work up a row and listening from the kitchen through the partly open door, I waited for some real north-country family sparring. But my Uncle John, Grandfather’s eldest son, and a fair man, chipped in and put a stop to it. ‘Now that’s enough,’ he rumbled in his deep voice. ‘We’ll have no wranglin’ wi’ the old man hardly in his coffin.’ There was a short pause and I could imagine him looking round at everyone. ‘I’d a fancy for that watch meself, but me father knew what he was about an’ if he chose to leave it young Will, then I’m not goin’ to argue about it.’ And that was the end of it; the watch was mine.

  The house seemed very strange without my grandfather and during the half-hour after tea, when it had been my custom to sit with him, I felt for a long time greatly at a loss. The watch had a lot to do with this feeling. I still admired it in the late afternoon but now it hung by the mantelshelf in the kitchen where I had persuaded my mother to let it be. My grandfather and his watch had always been inseparable in my mind, and to see the watch without at the same time seeing him was to feel keenly the awful finality of his going. The new position of the watch was in the nature of a compromise between my mother and me. While it was officially mine, it was being held in trust by my mother until she considered me old enough and careful enough to look after it. She was all for putting it away till that time, but I protested so strongly that she finally agreed to keep it in the kitchen where I could see it all the time, taking care, however, to have it away in a drawer when any of the family were expected, because, she said, there was no point in ‘rubbing it in’.

  The holidays came to an end and it was time for me to start my first term at the Grammar School in Cressley. A host of new excitements came to fill my days. I was cast into the melting pot of the first form and I had to work for my position in that new fraternity along with twenty-odd other boys from all parts of the town. Friendships were made in those first weeks which would last into adult life. One formed first opinions about one’s fellows, and one had one’s own label stuck on according to the first impression made. For first impressions seemed vital, and it looked as though the boy who was lucky or clever enough to assert himself favourably at the start would have an advantage for the rest of his schooldays.

  There are many ways in which a boy – or a man – may try to establish himself with his fellows. One or two of my classmates grovelled at everyone’s feet, while others took the opposite line and tried systematically to beat the form into submission, starting with the smallest boy and working up till they met their match. Others charmed everyone by their skill at sports, and others by simply being themselves and seeming hardly to make any effort at all. I have never made friends easily and I was soon branded as aloof. For a time I did little more than get on speaking terms with my fellows.

  One of our number was the youngest son of a well-to-do local tradesman and he had a brother who was a prefect in the sixth. His way of asserting himself was to parade his possessions before our envious eyes; and while these tactics did not win him popularity they gained him a certain following and made him one of the most discussed members of the form. Crawley’s bicycle was brand new and had a three-speed gear, and oil-bath gearcase, a speedometer, and other desirable refinements. Crawley’s fountain pen matched his propelling pencil and had a gold nib. His football boots were of the best hide and his gym slippers were reinforced with rubber across the toes. Everything, in fact, that Crawley had was better than ours. Until he brought the watch.

  He flashed it on his wrist with arrogant pride, making a great show of looking at the time. His eldest brother had brought it from abroad. He’d even smuggled it through the customs especially for him. Oh, yes, said Crawley, it had a sweep secondhand and luminous figures, and wasn’t it absolutely the finest watch we had ever seen? But I was thinking of my grandfather’s watch: my watch now. There had never been a watch to compare with that. With heart-thumping excitement I found myself cutting in on Crawley’s self-satisfied eulogy.

  ‘I’ve seen a better watch
than that.’

  ‘Gerraway!’

  ‘Yes I have,’ I insisted. ‘It was my grandfather’s. He left it to me when he died.’

  ‘Well show us it,’ Crawley said.

  ‘I haven’t got it here.’

  ‘You haven’t got it at all,’ Crawley said. ‘You can’t show us it to prove it.’

  I could have knocked the sneer from his hateful face in rage that he could doubt the worth of the watch for which my grandfather had worked fifty years.

  ‘I’ll bring it this afternoon,’ I said; ‘then you’ll see!’

  The hand of friendship was extended tentatively in my direction several times that morning. I should not be alone in my pleasure at seeing Crawley taken down a peg. As the clock moved with maddening slowness to half-past twelve I thought with grim glee of how in one move I would settle Crawley’s boasting and assert myself with my fellows. On the bus going home, however, I began to wonder how on earth I was going to persuade my mother to let me take the watch out of doors. But I had forgotten that day was Monday, washing day, when my mother put my grandfather’s watch in a drawer, away from the steam. I had only to wait for her to step outside for a moment and I could slip the watch into my pocket. She would not miss it before I came home for tea. And if she did, it would be too late.

  I was too eager and excited to wait for the return bus and after dinner I got my bike out of the shed. My mother watched me from the kitchen doorway and I could imagine her keen eyes piercing the cloth of my blazer to where the watch rested guiltily in my pocket.

  ‘Are you going on your bike, then, Will?’

  I said, ‘Yes, Mother,’ and, feeling uncomfortable under that direct gaze, began to wheel the bike across the yard.

  ‘I thought you said it needed mending or something before you rode it again...?’

  ‘It’s only a little thing,’ I told her. ‘It’ll be all right.’

  I waved good-bye and pedalled out into the street while she watched me, a little doubtfully, I thought. Once out of sight of the house I put all my strength on the pedals and rode like the wind. My grandfather’s house was in one of the older parts of the town and my way led through a maze of steep cobbled streets between long rows of houses. I kept up my speed, excitement coursing through me as I thought of the watch and revelled in my hatred of Crawley. Then from an entry between two terraces of houses a mongrel puppy darted into the street. I pulled at my back brake. The cable snapped with a click – that was what I had intended to fix. I jammed on the front brake with the puppy cowering foolishly in my path. The bike jarred to a standstill, the back end swinging as though catapulted over the pivot of the stationary front wheel, and I went over the handlebars.

  A man picked me up out of the gutter. ‘All right, lad?’

  I nodded uncertainly. I seemed unhurt. I rubbed my knees and the side on which I had fallen. I felt the outline of the watch. Sick apprehension overcame me, but I waited till I was round the next corner before dismounting again and putting a trembling hand into my pocket. Then I looked down at what was left of my grandfather’s proudest possession. There was a deep bulge in the back of the case. The glass was shattered and the Roman numerals looked crazily at one another across the pierced and distorted face. I put the watch back in my pocket and rode slowly on, my mind numb with misery.

  I thought of showing them what was left; but that was no use. I had promised them a prince among watches and no amount of beautiful wreckage would do.

  ‘Where’s the watch, Will?’ they asked. ‘Have you brought the watch?’

  ‘My mother wouldn’t let me bring it,’ I lied, moving to my desk, my hand in my pocket clutching the shattered watch.

  ‘His mother wouldn’t let him,’ Crawley jeered. ‘What a tale!’

  (Later, Crawley, I thought. The day will come).

  The others took up his cries. I was branded as a romancer, a fanciful liar. I couldn’t blame them after letting them down.

  The bell rang for first class and I sat quietly at my desk, waiting for the master to arrive. I opened my books and stared blindly at them as a strange feeling stole over me. It was not the mocking of my classmates – they would tire of that eventually. Nor was it the thought of my mother’s anger, terrible though that would be. No, all I could think of – all that possessed my mind – was the old man, my grandfather, lying in his bed after a long life of toil, his hands fretting with the sheets, and his tired, breathy voice saying, ‘Patience, Will, patience.’

  And I nearly wept, for it was the saddest moment of my young life.

  A Lovely View of the Gasworks

  ‘Well,’ he said after a silence, ‘what d’you think to it?’

  She answered him from the tall sash window where for several minutes she had been standing gazing out across the town in a dreamy, pre-occupied sort of way. ‘Lovely view of the gasworks,’ she said, stirring now and rubbing slowly at her bare upper arm with her left hand.

  He had been keenly aware of her absorption of mind ever since meeting her that evening and it had created uneasiness in him. Now he said, with the suggestion of an edge to his voice, ‘It doesn’t matter what’s outside; it’s what’s inside ’at counts,’ and some deeper significance in his words made her glance sharply at him and seemed to bring her back from wherever her thoughts had carried her to the room and him.

  ‘D’you think it might be damp?’ she said, rubbing gently now at both arms together. ‘It’s none too warm in here.’

  ‘The sun’s gone,’ the man said. ‘And the house has been empty for weeks. You’d soon notice a difference when we’d had fires going a bit.’

  She was quick to notice his choice of words, as though he himself had already accepted the house and now awaited only her acquiescence for the matter to be settled.

  ‘You’re a bit set on it, aren’t you?’ she said, watching him.

  ‘I don’t think it’s bad,’ he said, pursing his lips in the way she knew so well. ‘I’ve seen plenty worse. Course, I’ve seen plenty better an’ all, but it’s no use crying after the moon.’

  ‘It seems all right,’ she said, looking round the bedroom. And now, strangely enough, it looked less all right than it had when they first came in. Then, lit by the evening sun, this room in particular had seemed charmingly airy and bright; but now the sun had gone she could see only the shabbiness of the faded blue wallpaper and feel how bleakly empty it was. She paced away from the window, a dark girl with a sallow complexion and pale bloodless lips, wearing a home-made yellow frock which hung loosely on her bony body. And suddenly then all the feeling the man had previously sensed in her seemed to burst and flood out as her features lost their control, and she threw up her hands.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she cried. ‘I don’t know if it’s worth it or not.’

  ‘You mean the house?’ he said, hoping she did, but knowing more.

  ‘All of it,’ she said with passion. ‘Everything.’ And she turned her face from him.

  As he watched her his own face seemed to sag into lines of hopelessness and his nostrils quivered in

  a heavy sigh. ‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think you’d do it in the end.’

  ‘I haven’t said I won’t, have I?’ she snapped over her shoulder.

  ‘Well, what’s wrong, then?’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s her,’ the girl said. ‘I saw her this afternoon. She followed me all round town. Everywhere I went, she followed. I thought about stopping and giving her a piece of my mind, but I knew she wouldn’t mind a scene.’

  ‘You did right not to speak to her. She enjoys feeling badly done to. She always did. God!’ he said with feeling. ‘Why can’t she leave us alone? She gets her money regular, doesn’t she? What more does she want?’

  ‘You,’ the girl said, turning to look at him.

&
nbsp; ‘She never wanted me when she had me,’ he said. ‘A home, kids, the sort o’ things everybody gets married for – she never wanted any o’ them things.’

  ‘You don’t know much about women, do you?’ the girl said.

  ‘Not a thing. Not one damn thing.’

  ‘She’s your wife,’ the girl said. ‘And that’s more than I’ll ever be.’

  She was near to tears now and he crossed the bare floorboards between them to take her in his arms and draw her to him.

  ‘I’d marry you tomorrow. You know that.’

  ‘I know, I know. But she’ll never set you free.’

  ‘Who knows?’ he said past her shoulder. ‘One day, p’r’aps.’

  ‘And till then?’

  ‘That’s up to you. You’re the one with everything to lose. You’ve your people to face, an’ your friends. Folk’ll talk three times as much about you as me. They won’t blame me: they’ll blame you. They’ll say you’re a fool for risking everything for a bloke like me. They’ll say I can’t be much good anyway: I couldn’t keep steady with a woman when I was wed to her, so what chance have you to hold me without even your marriage lines. They’ll tell you I could leave you flat any time and you’d have no claim on me. She’s got all the claims. You’ll have nothing.’

  ‘Oh, stop it,’ she said. ‘Stop it.’

  He turned away from her and felt for his cigarettes. The packet was empty and he crushed it and hurled it into the fireplace.

  ‘Who the hell am I to ask you to do this? he said. ‘You could be lookin’ round for some lad your own age. Somebody ’at could marry you, all decent an’ above board.’

  She looked at him, thinking how different love was from the way she had always imagined it would be, and she came again to the verge of tears before his thin balding figure in the ill-fitting sports coat and creased flannel trousers, and the baffled way he took life’s blows on the face.