Buster

by Alan Burns

  “What about your communist friend – whatsisname – Gherkin?”

  “He thinks I did a good job.”

  “But he’s leading the troops from behind?”

  “No. In the developing political situation—”

  “I don’t give two pins for the blasted situation. He got you into this mess – can he get you out?”

  “The Government is tottering—”

  “And a puff of your adolescent emotion is going to bring the Government down! You’ve been cashiered and ruined your career and you still shout Daily Worker slogans at me.”

  “You’re doing the shouting, Dad.”

  “You’ll miss your train. Better go now. I was going to tell you: I’ve been trying to get you into the Inns of Court, to read for the Bar. I only hope they don’t ask me for your army record.”

  They went into the station. His father bought the ticket, handed it to him with a five-pound note.

  “You’ll be needing this now, Dan.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me – keep out of trouble. And you’ll find a law book in your bag. No harm in a bit of swotting, if you get the chance.”

  “I will. Thanks for everything. Give my love to Helen. Cheerio, Dad.”

  “Goodbye.”

  Alone in the carriage, he dumped his bag beside him. He put his feet up and glared horribly out of the window. A bald old man, unperturbed, got in and went to sit where the bag was. Dan swung the bag up to put it on the rack. Plunk! He hit and smashed a light bulb and bits of glass pattered over the miserable blue suit.

  The girl opposite crossed her long legs, lifted one leg to fiddle with the heel of her high-heeled shoe. Past the band at the top of her stocking (reinforced to give the suspender something to hook into) that inner surface of her thigh was her softest and sweetest part. In a tunnel the train stopped dead. The one bulb gave a bead of light.

  “Aren’t you frightened?”

  She didn’t answer. He stretched to get something from his bag. As he did so his army boot struck her leg hard. When the train brought them out of the tunnel he saw the heavy dark mark on her leg caused either by a bruise on the skin showing through the stocking or by the black polish from his boot. As she got out at the next station, she said to him, in a strong cockney voice: “If you’re the kind of miserable little sod who takes it out on young girls, the sooner you’re locked up the better.”

  The train swung out towards the strange fresh air, rising from a concrete ditch topped by level railings, passing another train sliding in the opposite direction into the long hole: first the head, then the long body, last the tail light spinning away and down. He looked into the back windows of grey slum houses, grey lace curtains, bits of kitchen, geysers and cupboards. Further from London life got easier. Hundreds of oblong back gardens, trees, television aerials, multicoloured clothes on clotheslines, shirts, upside-down trousers held by pegs, one to each ankle. Outside stations in desirable residential areas massed cars waited: some for wives with spare keys, to do the shopping; others till evening to save their masters ten-minute healthy walks. Came odd hopeless triangles of desert: long grass, planks, patches of stinging nettles, pram bits, small hills of gravel; nobody owned them.

  A monster black-and-yellow army sign shattered the countryside. He obeyed the arrow, walked across open heath, among beach trees and blackberry bushes. The berries were hard and green or having been picked with a morose scrap of hay left behind. The kids must be on to them as soon as the green gets tinged with pink. They are forced to eat them hard and sour, because if one leaves them as uneatable, others will risk the tummy ache. He dreaded arriving at the camp, pictured it again and again. He remembered the radio blare and the cursing, the purposeless parades, being ordered about by unintelligent sergeants.

  His job was to push trolleys or carry shelves of supplies from the food store to the kitchens. He put both hands under the heavy wood shelves, which were piled with loaves, slabs of lard, bacon, bowls of potatoes. His neck muscles and the backs of his knees ached. The trolleys, mysteriously, were always empty, so they were light and easy to push. He liked pushing trolleys best. It was the most useful work he had done since joining the army.

  Chapter 5

  He was downstairs early, before them. The maid, on her knees in the lounge, was laying the fire; her bare legs stuck out from under her skirt. Among the plates on the breakfast table there were, as usual, two butter dishes. One, between his father’s place and Helen’s, held yellow heavy butter. In the other, convenient to his own place, he recognized the white flakiness of margarine. He changed the dishes over. At breakfast he spread the butter thickly, asked for more toast, kept the dish close to him. He smiled at Helen.

  His father was calling for him to come out to the car immediately; he couldn’t wait all morning; he, at least, had some work to do. Dan went quickly to the maid’s room, stood holding the door open. She sat on the cheap bed, darning her skirt.

  “Could you spare just ten bob, Joan?”

  “You know I’m not paid till Friday.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Wait – I think I have two shillings.”

  She opened the wardrobe with a little key that had survived three owners and two second-hand shops. While she searched in her handbag, he looked, ashamed, at the bits of worn carpet which didn’t match. A porcelain Christ hung from a nail on the wall. Catholic pamphlets and women’s magazines were piled up, tattered from being read religiously. She gave him half-a-crown.

  “I’ll pay you back. It’s damn nice of you.”

  “It’s nothing of the kind.”

  He walked from his father’s office to the public library. Intently, he indexed things: a charwoman washing the tiles in the doorway of a chemist’s shop; her broken shoe; a cubic yard of white hot coke in a machine thuga-thugathugathuga making asphalt; a chap looking up at a lorryful of fruit.

  At a table in the reference library and reading room he struggled to study, learnt rare words, wrote sexy stories. A tired woman dragged a child to The Nursing World in a rack on the wall, hisswhispering:

  “Michael, I’m not hurting you. Now stop it. I’ve got you, so your hand can’t slip.”

  Situation vacant. The Law of Master and Servant. Preface. The author could not forbear to mention the generous assistance afforded him by… A ragged tanned man asked at the counter for the Bankers’ Almanac, please. The librarian, a thin girl with tight curls permanently waved, consulted reference books about reference books.

  He said: “It’s all right – I’ll find it.”

  She hurried, touched his elbow.

  “It’s BA 332.8.”

  She pointed to the shelves.

  “I can get it,” he said.

  He hovered in the middle of the room. Reaching up on tiptoe, she put her hand on a large blue book, tips of her fingers at the top of it, her palm resting along the spine. He looked down at her shoes.

  “Thanks; I’ll get it,” he said.

  She eased the book out so that a triangle of it was away from the shelf. She walked back to the counter, past him. He stood before the books, reading their heavy-lettered titles. Hummed a bit. His long brown forefinger touched Bankers, did not move the book. He took his hand away. He scratched his neck inside his collar. Chapter One: Nineteenth century. Conditions of employment. The early Workmen’s Compensation Acts. Whereas. A girl shook the table as she scribbled hard notes from the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Rubber products. She leant across the book, resting her bosom on it. As she wrote, the end of her pen, which was soured and scratched where she had nervously sucked and bitten it, jabbed into her rhythmically. He bent down to tie his laces, looked up at her beneath the table. Shadows. KOJE yelled from a newspaper headline. And the prisoners at the gateway sang their international song. “One miner’s worth ten lawyers,” he had said to Gerson. “Yes,” Gerson had re
plied, “down a mine.” He moved to another table and worked. As he left, at twelve, for lunch, an old lady was explaining to the chief librarian: “It was an anthology by Herrington – I have it so firmly in my mind. And so have you, haven’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t say that, madam.”

  “You’d remembered you’d seen it.”

  “Well, I might have seen it on a list.”

  “Yes, that’s right – on a list.”

  * * *

  “Helen tells me you’ve been borrowing money from the maid again.”

  His father was tired.

  “I’ll pay her back.”

  “That’s not the point. It’s not nice. And I’ve given you twenty-five pounds this month. That means you’re spending over six pounds a week. Families live on less, and you’ve got to.”

  “I don’t know where it all goes. If you exploited the workers less intensively I might qualify for a government grant, and then I’d be on my own.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Maybe it’s what many people want.”

  “You’re quite wrong, Dan; only the other day Helen was saying—”

  “I know: ‘how much she liked me’.”

  Dan heard the kitchen door slam. He said quickly:

  “Saw a loony boy this afternoon.”

  “Mmm.”

  “He was making a pig in the sky with string.”

  Helen jerked the door open. “Perfect timing,” he thought. She saw him smile.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  His father said quickly: “Only a boy Dan met.”

  “Didn’t he say ‘pig’ or something?”

  “Yes? There’s a marvellous programme on tonight. Danny Kaye.”*

  “He’s brilliant,” Dan said.

  “I wonder if he passed his law exams first time,” Helen said.

  “Well, I’m certainly going to, if that’s on your mind.”

  “Of course you are,” said his father. “There’s time for a cocktail before dinner. Dan, get the ice. Have we a fresh lemon and a little grated nutmeg, Helen?”

  * * *

  He sat for his exam. It would be a month until the results were published in The Times. He had to do something. Anything. He walked into the town hall. “I’m forming a branch of the Peace with China Committee,” he announced.

  “Oh, well—” said the young clerk.

  “I’m told you could give me a list of local organizations.”

  “I’ll see.”

  He called through a door: “Young gent here from the China people wants the orgs file.”

  Mumbles. Squeaks. A cardboard folder.

  “’Fraid you can’t take it away, but you can copy the addresses.”

  For ten days he knocked on doors, asked beekeepers, octogenarians, pacifists, Conservatives, folkdancers, scouts, Labour and Communist Party members, rose growers, trainspotters, curates, trade unionists, stamp collectors, youth leaders to stop MacArthur,* prevent international conflagration and keep their hands off China.

  Sixty enthusiasts were invited to the inaugural meeting at Dan’s home, Thursday evening, 7 p.m. sharp. Helen and his father went early to the cinema. Joan was told she could go after she had prepared the egg sandwiches. Bottles of light ale, which his father had ordered from the off-licence, stood in rows on the floor, and on trays tall glasses waited in twelve columns of five. Dan brought down the old Left Book Club books and strewed them around.

  At seven, Rickie came, from the big house next door. He was middle-aged, a vegetarian, ran a cycling club for boys; he wore shorts. By seven thirty, two nice old ladies from the Peace Pledge Union were sitting in armchairs talking with Bert – a cross-eyed chap in a blue suit with a rucksack. At eight o’clock Bert said they needed a chairman – and would Dan open the meeting? Dan stood by the fireplace, said, Yes, well, they all knew why they had been asked, and if they agreed with the aims of the committee, they could form a branch and try to do something about it, because it was a mistake to think that the people were powerless. That was playing into the hands of the reactionaries. The people flew the bombers and fired the guns, and the people could make war impossible. They ate sandwiches, and Bert drank a quart of beer. They agreed to hold a public meeting in the church hall. Bert had some pamphlets about Peoples’ China, and they all bought one. They decided to meet monthly at Bert’s home. Dan was elected secretary by four votes to none.

  Helen complained about the mess. His father said cigarette ash was good for the carpet, it made it grow, and he told everyone that Dan was secretary of the Peace Movement.

  Dan was still in bed on Saturday morning when Helen brought up the papers.

  “I can’t find your name in The Times,” she said.

  “Then I’ve failed.”

  “You’re very calm about it.”

  “There’s no point in getting hysterical,” Dan said.

  “What will your father say? You might show some feeling for him, after all he’s done for you.”

  “He’s a very generous man. Don’t you find that?”

  “You’re his biggest disappointment—”

  “Mind your own business.”

  “Your father’s happiness is my business.”

  “Quite a profitable one.”

  “Take that back! Take that back!”

  She was crying. He heard her sobbing and shouting in his father’s room. He thought, Good – he’s got something else to think about, apart from my bloody exams.

  His father came in, sat on the bed.

  “Do you want to give up law?” he asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “There’s no ‘of course’ about it. You could have passed that exam. You’re not a fool. You just didn’t work.”

  “Other chaps fail.”

  “You’re not like them. You can do it, Dan. I only wish I had your chances – I’d be working day and night. I’ll help you all I can, but you’ve got to do the work.”

  “I could study better in a place of my own. Nearer the college, to save travelling.”

  “All right. I’ll find you a room – not too far away, so you can come home for the weekends.”

  The three of them had become expert at mealtime chat, but lunch was like an escalator suddenly stopped – everyone having to climb the unaccustomed stairs. Dan sat quiet, looked at his face upside down in a spoon. Helen chatted in little swoops. Up she went, then, hearing the brittle brightness, stopped awkwardly. His father knew the weight was on him, and cautiously avoided forbidden places. He pointed with his knife at the electric clock:

  “That was a bad buy, Helen; it’s never been right since we bought it.”

  Helen said: “And the trouble is you never know whether it’s going to gain or lose, but our bedroom one is—”

  Dan interrupted her: “It’s caused by minute variations in the electric current, you know. But that steady sweep of the big hand – it’s so impressive. Gets people every time.”

  He wondered whether they would leave his chair by the table or put it against the wall. The table was going to be very big for the two of them. Joan brought in three cups of coffee on a green plastic tray. His father glanced from her breasts to the coffee cups and back again.

  Dan went to Bert’s house, to see about the committee.

  “I’m sorry, dear, Bert’s not back from work yet,” his wife said. “I know he’d like to see you – he’s told me about you; come in and wait – I’ll make a cup of tea.”

  She was pregnant – about seven months gone. She shut the front door behind him: “clack” of a council house, not “clonk” like the door of his home. The house seemed as full of kids as she was: four of them – “the eldest is nine” – ran around the kitchen, into the garden and back again, up and down the stairs, got legs caught in the banisters
, swiped each other with sticks, knocked over milk bottles, pushed a rusty old pram round and round the garden, climbed into the dustbin, got bits of grit in their eyes, used the dustbin lid as a shield while the others threw stones, pulled each other’s hair, burst into tears, yelled, laughed, wiped dripping noses with greasy hands, sat in a puddle eating dirt, asked questions, painted on the wall “it’s our wall”, stood staring at flies, poked a tortoise with a stick, held it up by its shell, screaming:

  “Don’t drop Mr Wooby! Don’t drop Mr Wooby!”

  “They dropped him once and cracked him,” she said.

  She walked round all the time, following them, telling them off, listening to Dan, talking to him. The kettle went on whistling. Her belly pushed at him. She had a wheelbarrowful of childbelly; she wheeled it in front of her. He sat harmless on a kitchen chair, waiting for her navel to shove into his face. Her belly was covered by a skirt wrapped round it – huge pink and white blobs and big white buttons. The last three buttons hung down by their cotton threads, pulled by the kids scrambling beneath her. Like a huge mother sow she didn’t crush one of them. She bent down, showing her pink underslip, and wiped or swiped bits of fluff and hair from the kids’ sticky mouths, and yellowish snot from their noses.

  Bert came in.

  “Glad to see you here, Dan.”

  Hefty handclench. He poured himself a cup of tea. Through the cabbagey smell of the kitchen his sweaty smell came over. His wife lifted a baby from a pram in the corner:

  “It’s time for his bath.”

  And she pushed herself upstairs.

  “Been digging trenches in the park,” Bert said. “Foundations for a new school. They must have heard about my lot.”

  “I’m terribly sorry, Bert, I’ve got to give up the Peace Committee.” Dan knew he was talking in a special way, slurring words and dropping aitches.

  “That’s all right, mate. Didn’t your mum approve?”