by Stan Barstow
Since then there had been no communication between us, not even the crossing of a glance. At the entrance of the little man’s group they were still sitting motionless on the bench near the fireless grate, the couple like sentinels, one on each side of the old man, who seemed to be sunk in a coma, totally unaware of his surroundings, his gaze fixed on the floor some distance beyond the polished toes of his black boots. A narrow band of black material encircled the grey herring-bone tweed of his left arm. The woman was looking disapprovingly towards the crowded end of the room from behind round spectacles. I guessed she was a woman who looked disapprovingly at most things.
It had struck me a few minutes after their appearance that the group must be a choir, for they all carried bound copies of what looked like music. And as if to confirm my guess the little man now lifted his voice and addressed them all.
‘We’ve got a while to wait, so what about a song to keep us warm?’ There was a general murmur of assent followed by good-humoured groans and jeers as the little chap went on, ‘Not that any chance to practise comes amiss, eh?’
He stood before them, his shoulders thrown back, regarding them with an almost comical assurance. He could handle them, I thought. He might be a slightly humorous figure but he knew how to deal with them.
‘Well, sort yourselves out, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s not get sloppy, because an audience is an audience, however small.’ He half-turned and bowed his head in acknowledgement of our presence as the members of the choir reshuffled themselves and waited for his signal to begin. He pondered for a moment, then announced a piece whose name I didn’t recognise, and the choir fell silent as he raised his arms.
It was as they burst into song that the old man’s head lifted and turned. Something came to life in his eyes and the long fingers of each hand slowly clenched and unclenched themselves. The music was open-throated and stirring, designed to display the blend of the full choir, and the conductor guided it with flamboyant but accurate sweeps of his hands, his head cocked back and an expression of ecstasy on his plump shining face.
The old man suddenly stirred and got up, and before his companions had realised it he was striding down the room to stand at the end of the line of tenors. His head came up and his throat vibrated as he joined his voice to the singing.
The couple exchanged surprised glances and the woman said something to the man, her mouth snapping peevishly shut at the end of it. The man glanced uncertainly at the body of singers and the woman gave him a dig of the elbow which brought him to his feet. He crossed the room and took the old man’s elbow and tried to lead him away. The old man was now singing at the pitch of his voice and the sound carried clear and wavering above that of the other singers. He shrugged the younger man off and the other said something to him and took his arm again.
Just then the conductor noticed the little scene and called out over the choir, ‘Let him alone. He’s all right. Singing does you good. It’s a tonic.’
This seemed to nonplus the younger man and he stood for a moment looking uncomfortable before returning to his seat. The woman gave him a furious look as he sat down, and made as if to rise herself. But he restrained her with his hand and his lips formed the words, ‘Leave him alone. He’s all right.’
The woman went off into a long muttered harangue during which the man looked sheepishly at the floor. Then she nudged him as though to prod him into action again as the choir came to the end of their piece and the conductor applauded vigorously, shouting, ‘Bravo, bravo! Lovely, lovely!’ He took the whisky bottle out of his pocket and tilted it to his mouth.
‘Now then,’ he said. ‘What about another one, eh. What this time? I know, I know. An old one. A real old favourite. Love’s old sweet song.’
A moment later, before the little conductor could gather his importance round him and lift his arms, the old man had started the song in the still true, still sweet, but weak and quavering relic of what must, years before, have been a telling tenor voice:
‘“Oft in the dear dead days beyond recall...”’
And the conductor, recovering from his momentary surprise, gazed fondly at the old man, holding back the choir until the chorus and then bringing them in, deep and sweet and rich:
‘“Just a song at twilight, when the lights are low, and the flickering shadows softly come and go...”’
I watched and listened, my spine cold. For the old song had associations with my life, bringing memories of my mother’s contralto voice and the gaiety and fun of family parties, so long ago...
‘“Comes love’s sweet song, comes lo-oves old swe-et song...”’
The music died into a hush. No-one spoke or moved for several moments. The old man stood absolutely still, staring somewhere before him. Then the woman nudged her companion again and he went over and touched the old man’s arm. The old man came this time, unresisting, and as he turned fully towards me I saw that his face was livid with emotion, his eyes bright and shining in the waiting-room lights. He was two steps from his seat when it all left him in a sudden draining of life and energy that took the use from his limbs and sent him slumping to the floor. At that moment too there was the clank of the loco outside and the porter stuck his head in at the door.
‘This is it. The last one tonight.’
The choir broke their ranks and moved out in a body. As the little choir conductor brushed by some instinct made me reach out and lightly lift the whisky bottle from his pocket. The couple had got the old man on to the bench but he hadn’t come round. I went over to them.
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘I’ll help you to get him onto the train.’
With his arms round our shoulders the younger man and I carried him between us to the waiting train and struggled him into a compartment where we laid him out on the seat. The woman got in behind us, clucking with exasperation. The porter slammed the door, a whistle sounded and the train jerked into motion.
‘I knew we never should have come,’ the woman said. ‘I knew from the start ’at it was foolish; but he would have his way. And now look at him. It might be the end of him.’
I got the whisky bottle out. ‘Hold his head up,’ I said to the man, who was gazing helplessly at the prostrate figure on the seat. He put his arm under the old man’s head and raised it.
‘He’s teetotal, y’know,’ the woman said, looking at the whisky. ‘He never touches strong drink.’
‘He’s ill too,’ I said. ‘It won’t do him any harm.’
I put the bottle to the old man’s lips and let a few drops of whisky trickle into his mouth, at the same time slipping my other hand inside his coat to feel for his heart.
‘Wrap your overcoat up and put it under his head,’ I said to the younger man.
The woman leaned forward from the opposite seat, the lenses of her glasses glinting in the light. ‘Are you a doctor?’ she said.
I said no, letting a few more drops of whisky trickle into the old man’s throat. His breathing was becoming stronger.
‘Will he be all right?’ the man asked and I nodded. ‘I think he’s coming round now.’
We sat in a row and looked at the old man.
‘I knew we never should have come,’ the woman said again, and the man rubbed the palms of his hands nervously together between his knees.
I put the whisky away to give back to the little choir conductor when we got off the train. I imagined he’d be missing it by now.
‘All that way,’ the woman said. ‘Thirty mile there and thirty mile back. And a cemetery on the doorstep! I told him, but he wouldn’t listen. Stupid. Stubborn.’
‘He’s her father,’ the man said to me. ‘We’ve been to bury his wife. Not her mother; his second wife. She came from up Clibden. Happen you know it.’
‘A little place, up on the moors, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right. Miles from an
ywhere. He met her while he was out hiking one day. They used to laugh about it together and say how near he’d come to missing her. He’d reckon he wished he’d taken another turning. “I never knew what wa’ waiting for me up that lane,” he used to say.’
His voice sank to a confidential whisper. ‘The wife, y’know, she didn’t approve of the trip. She said we should’ve buried her nearer home, in the family grave. But he said he’d always promised to take her back there if she went first. We never thought he’d go through with it, it being winter an’ all that. But we couldn’t budge him. We never should’ve humoured him, though. The wife’s right: we should’ve made him bury her at home. It’s been too much for him. I don’t suppose he’ll ever be right again now... An’ all that singin’... Whatever made him do a thing like that, d’you think? After he’s been to a funeral, eh? I thought the wife ’ud die of shame when he got up like that and sang at the top of his voice.’
I looked at the old man as his son-in-law’s voice droned fretfully on and thought of him in the waiting-room, singing the old songs… ‘Just a song at twilight, when the lights are low…’
Then the woman spoke up suddenly from the other side of her husband. ‘The trouble with old people,’ she said, ‘is they’ve no consideration.’
‘No,’ I said.
Holroyd’s Last Stand
Mrs Holroyd first gets wind of it when she finds a small lace-edged handkerchief in the pocket of her husband’s best suit one morning when he is down the pit. She wonders, of course, as any wife would, and realises there could be, and no doubt is, a perfectly reasonable explanation for its presence there. He could have picked it up on the street or found it in a bus. After all, he has never given her cause to suspect him before. True, Holroyd was a ladies’ man at one time, but that was years and years ago and marriage has long since cured him of the urge to wander. That and age. Or so she has always thought. For the brash cockiness of the well-built florid youth has long ago changed into the dour taciturnity of a middle-aged man who works hard in a man’s world. He neglects her, of course; but how many women in the village could say otherwise? To a miner there is a man’s world and a woman’s, and the two make contact only at the table, in bed, and sometimes on weekend evenings in the pubs and clubs. But all the same, there is a code, and Holroyd has never carried on with other women, she is sure. At least, she always has been sure because she has never given the idea a moment’s thought. But now? Who knows what he really does on his many nights out?
Mrs Holroyd leaves the handkerchief where she found it and says nothing. The morning after Holroyd has worn the suit again she looks for it and finds it gone, which makes her wonder still more and prompts her to begin examining his clothes regularly. What she hopes to find she is never quite sure but her watch is rewarded a week later when she finds in another pocket of the same suit a partly expended packet of an article she and Holroyd have never used in their married life. And then she wonders in silence no longer but calls her two married daughters to her side and divulges all.
The person concerned being their father, they are at first shocked and then, more naturally, angry.
‘The old devil,’ says Gladys, the elder daughter.
‘After you’ve given him the best years of your life,’ says Marjorie, who reads a great many romantic novelettes and held out for some time against the local lads, waiting for the coming of a tall, dark, pipe-smoking man with expensive tastes in fast sports cars, only to wind up married to a young collier from the next street, who smokes the cheapest fags and can afford nothing more dashing than a pedal cycle against the competition of a new baby in each of the first five years of their marriage.
‘This is the thanks you get,’ Marjorie goes on, ‘for working your fingers to the bone for him.’
‘Well, what are we going to do about it?’ says Gladys, the practical one.
‘Aye, you can’t let him get away with it.’
Mrs Holroyd, after revealing the evidence of her husband’s guilt, feels mildly inclined to his defence. ‘I would like a bit more proof,’ she says uncertainly.
‘Proof!’ Marjorie exclaims. ‘What more proof do you want than them things? Ugh! Mucky things. I wouldn’t have one in my house.’
‘Where d’you think he meets her?’ Gladys asks, and Mrs Holroyd shakes her head.
‘Nay, you know as much as I do now. Sheffield, I suppose. I shouldn’t think he’d do it too near home. He’d be too frightened o’ being seen.’
‘It’ll be when he goes to t’Dogs,’ Gladys says. ‘Happen he doesn’t go to t’Dogs at all, but meets her, whoever she is.’
‘Happen he takes her to t’Dogs,’ Mrs Holroyd says.
‘The cheek of the old devil,’ Marjorie says.
‘We’ll soon find out,’ Gladys says with determination. ‘Next time he goes I’ll be on the bus before him an’ waiting. I’ll soon fathom his little game.’
‘Suppose he sees you?’ her mother says. ‘An’ what will you tell your Jim?’
‘He won’t see me,’ Gladys says. ‘An’ I’ll think of summat to tell Jim. An’ not a word to Harry, Marjorie. We don’t want them getting ideas.’
A fortnight later mother and daughters hold another conference.
‘There’s no doubt about it, then,’ Mrs Holroyd says. ‘He’s carrying on.’
‘The same one every time,’ Gladys says.
‘A fast-looking piece, I suppose?’ her mother says.
‘A bit simple-looking, if you ask me,’ says Gladys. ‘All milk an’ water and a simpering smile. Just the sort to suck up to me dad an’ make him think he’s a big man.’
‘Aye,’ Mrs Holroyd says, ‘he allus liked lasses sucking up to him as a lad. But I thought he’d grown out of that years ago.’
‘They never grow out of it,’ Gladys says.
‘I wouldn’t ha’ classed all men alike before this,’ her mother says. ‘But now…’
‘Now we know,’ Marjorie says.
‘Aye,’ Gladys echoes, ‘now we know. And we’ve got to decide what to do about it… Put the kettle on, Mother.’
‘Is that a new tie you’ve got on?’ Mrs Holroyd is asking her husband one evening a few days later.
‘This? Oh, aye, aye. I saw it in a shop winder in Calderford t’other Saturday afternoon an’ took a fancy to it.’
‘Very smart,’ Mrs Holroyd says. ‘Your shoes are over here when you want ’em. I’ve given ’em a rub over.’
‘Eh? What? Have you?’ Holroyd glances at her in the mirror where he is combing his thinning black hair.
‘Aye. You don’t want mucky shoes when you’ve got a new tie on, do you?’
‘No, that’s right. Thanks very much.’
‘I don’t like to see a man become careless with his appearance as he gets older,’ Mrs Holroyd says, stirring the fire with the poker. ‘When a man’s smart it shows he’s got an interest in life.’
‘Aye. I suppose you’re right.’
‘Dogs tonight, eh?’
‘Aye, that’s right – t’Dogs.’
‘Does your lady friend like t’Dogs?’ Mrs Holroyd asks, and Holroyd, suddenly very still, shoots her a startled look in the mirror.
‘Eh?’ he says. ‘What’s that?’
‘Your lady friend,’ Mrs Holroyd says. ‘That young woman friend of yours in Sheffield.’
‘Well, I, er...’
‘Now don’t tell me you didn’t think I knew,’ Mrs Holroyd says. ‘Though you have kept pretty quiet about her, I must say.’
Holroyd turns from the glass and bends for his shoes, saying nothing.
‘You’re not ashamed of her, are you?’ Mrs Holroyd asks. ‘She’s not deformed, is she?’
‘Oh, no, no,’ says Holroyd, darting perplexed looks at her now, which is easy enough to do since she doesn’t once m
eet his eyes.
Only when he is on the point of leaving, and showing signs of wanting to get away without further conversation, does she transfix him at the door by looking him straight in the face and saying:
‘Well, why don’t you bring her and let’s have a look at her?’
He gapes, flabbergasted. ‘Bring her here?’
‘Aye, why not? Bring her to tea sometime.’
He looks at her for several moments during which the frown on his face gives way to a glint in his eyes.
‘All right,’ he says finally, a half-embarrassed but defiant note in his voice, ‘I will. I’ll bring her o’ Sunday.’
‘Aye,’ Mrs Holroyd agrees, turning away. ‘Sunday. That’ll be nice.’
‘Come in, then,’ Holroyd says. ‘C’mon, don’t be shy.’ He takes the young woman by the arm and pulls her off the dark step and into the kitchen.
‘What d’you want potterin’ about at back door for?’ Mrs Holroyd says. ‘T’front door’s for visitors. Anyway, come in, don’t hang about in t’doorway.’
‘Dyed hair,’ is Mrs Holroyd’s first thought as the young woman steps into the light.
‘Well, er… Holroyd says, ‘this is Ella, er, Miss Fairchild. And this is my, er, Alice.’
‘How d’ye do, Miss Fairchild,’ says Mrs Holroyd.
‘Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,’ says Miss Fairchild, blinking in the strong light of the kitchen bulb. Her eyes are very blue in a doll-like face and though her features give her an appearance of youth she won’t, Mrs Holroyd is sure, ever see thirty-five again.
‘I’ve heard quite a lot about you from William,’ Miss Fairchild says.
