by Pat Barker
His father had got his jacket and cap on now, and stood ready to go out, looking at them with a hard, dry, stretched-elastic smile, the two of them together, as they had always been, waiting for him to go. ‘I’ll see you, then,’ he said.
There was no question, as in the majority of households there would have been, of father and son going for a drink together.
‘When will you be back?’ his mother asked, as she had always done.
‘Elevenish. Don’t wait up.’
She always waited up. Oh, she would have said there was the fire to damp down, tomorrow’s bait to be got ready, the table to be laid, the kettle to be filled, but all these tasks could have been done earlier. Prior, once more lowering his eyes to the cup, tried not to ask himself how many violent scenes might have been avoided if his mother had simply taken his father at his word and gone to bed. Hundreds? Or none? The man who spoke so softly and considerately now might well have dragged her out of bed to wait on him, when he staggered in from the pub with ten or eleven pints on board.
Leave it, he told himself. Leave it.
After his father had gone, Prior and his mother went on sitting at the table while they finished drinking their tea. She never mentioned France or Craiglockhart. She seemed to want to ignore everything that had happened to him since he left home. This was both an irritation and a relief. He asked after boys he’d known at school. This one was dead, that one wounded, Eddie Wilson had deserted. He remembered Eddie, didn’t he? There were deserters in the paper every week, she said. The policeman who found Eddie Wilson hiding in his mother’s coal-hole had been awarded a prize of five shillings.
‘There was a letter in the paper the other week,’ she said. ‘From Father Mackenzie. You remember him, don’t you?’
She found last week’s paper and handed it to him. He read the letter, first silently and then aloud, in a wickedly accurate imitation of Father Mackenzie’s liturgical flutings. ‘“There may be some among you, who, by reason of your wilful and culpable neglect of the Laws of Physical development, are not fit to serve your country, but –” Oh, for Christ’s sake!’ He thew the paper down. ‘Some among them carry their wilful and culpable neglect to the point of getting rickets. If he’s physically well developed it’s because his mother could afford to shove good food in his gob four times a day.’ And goodness wasn’t he well developed, Prior thought, remembering Father Mackenzie in his socks.
‘He just thinks a lot of people are shirking, Billy. You’ve got to admit he’s got a point.’
‘Do you know the height requirement for the Bantam regiments? Five feet. And do you know how many men from round here fail that?’
‘Billy, sometimes you sound exactly like your father.’
He picked up the paper and pretended to read.
‘There’s a lot of talk about a strike at the munition works. Your father’s all for it. Well, he would be, wouldn’t he?’
‘What’s it about?’
‘I don’t know.’ She groped for an unfamiliar word. ‘Dilution?’
‘Sounds right.’
‘Well, you can imagine your dad. “Bits of lasses earning more than I do.” “You mark my words,” he says, “after the war they’ll bring in unskilled labour. The missus’ll be going to work, and the man’ll be sat at home minding the bairn. It’s the end of craftsmanship. This war’s the Trojan horse, only they’re all too so-and-soing daft to see it.”’
Typical, Prior thought. However determined his father might be to raise the status of the working class as a whole, he was still more determined to maintain distinctions within it.
‘Oh, and he doesn’t like false teeth. That’s another thing,’ his mother went on. ‘Mrs Thorpe’s got them, you know. “Mutton dressed up as lamb,” he says. The way he goes on about her teeth you’d think she’d bit him. And then there’s Mrs Riley’s dustbin. Lobster tins, would you believe. “They were glad of a bit of bread and scrape before the war.”’
‘He’s got a funny idea of socialism.’
She shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know. Things like women’s rights, he was never in favour of that.’
‘No.’
‘I remember him going on at Beattie Roper about that.’
A pause. ‘I went to see Beattie.’
She looked stunned. ‘In prison?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve no call to go getting yourself mixed up in that.’
Faced with this sudden blaze of anger, he said, ‘I have to. It’s my job.’
‘Oh.’ She nodded, only half believing him.
‘How’s Hettie?’
His mother froze. ‘I wouldn’t know. I never see her.’
There had been a time, when he was seventeen, when he and Hettie Roper had been ‘walking out’, and, for once, the ‘quaint expression’ had been painfully accurate. ‘Walking’ was exactly what they did. And talking too, of course: passionate, heated talk, about socialism and women’s rights, spiritualism, Edward Carpenter’s ideas on male comradeship, whether there could be such a thing as free love. He remembered one day on the beach at Formby, sitting in the dunes as the sky darkened, and the sun hung low over the sea. All day he had been wanting to touch her, and had not dared do it. The sun lingered, tense and swollen, then spilled itself on to the water. ‘Come on,’ he said, picking up his jacket. ‘We’d better be getting back.’
That night, as on so many other nights, his mother had been waiting up for him. A book was open on her knee, but she hadn’t bothered to light the gas. And then the questions started. He realized then that she hated Hettie Roper. He didn’t know why.
‘Does she still run the shop?’ he asked.
‘No point. Nobody’d buy anything off her if she did.’
‘Does she work?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘So how does she live?’
A shrug. ‘She’s still got the allotment.’
‘I thought I’d pop round and see her.’
Silence.
Reminding himself he was no longer seventeen, Prior stood up and put his cup on the draining-board. ‘I won’t be long.’
Before the war, women used to sit on their steps in the warm evenings until after dark, postponing the moment when the raging bedbug must be faced, and taking pleasure in the only social contact they could enjoy without fear of condemnation. A woman seen chatting to her neighbours during the day quickly felt the weight of public disapproval. ‘Eeh, look at that Mrs Thorpe. Eleven kids. You’d think she could find herself summat to do, wouldn’t you?’ Now, looking up and down the street, Prior saw deserted doorsteps. Women were out and about, but walking purposefully, as if they had somewhere to go.
He supposed it was Mrs Thorpe’s name that came particularly to mind because she’d been one of the worst offenders, with her lard-white breasts the size of footballs, and Georgie or Alfie or Bobby worrying away at them, breaking off now and then for a drag on a tab end. Or perhaps, subconsciously, he’d already identified her, for there she was, coming towards him, divested of the clogs and shawl he’d always seen her in and wearing not merely a coat and hat but flesh-coloured stockings and shoes. It was scarcely possible the attractive woman with her should be Mrs Riley, but he didn’t know who else it could be.
They greeted him with cries of delight, hugging, kissing, standing back, flashing their incredible smiles. There was a saying round here: for every child born a tooth lost, and certainly, before the war, Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley had advertised their fecundity every time they opened their mouths. Now, in place of gaps and blackened stumps was this even, flashing whiteness. ‘What white teeth you have, Grandma,’ he said.
‘All the better to eat you with,’ said Mrs Riley. ‘And who are you calling Grandma?’
Mrs Thorpe asked, ‘How long have you got, love?’ And then, before he had time to answer, ‘Eeh, aren’t we awful, always asking that?’
‘Two days.’
‘Well, make the most of it. Don’t do anything we wouldn’t
do, mind.’
He smiled. ‘How much scope does that give me?’
‘Fair bit, these days,’ said Mrs Riley.
He remembered, suddenly, that he’d sucked the breasts of both these women. His mother had been very ill for two months after his birth, and he’d been fed on tins of condensed milk from the corner shop, the same milk adults used in their tea. Babies in these streets were regularly fed on it. Babies fed on it regularly died. Then Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley had appeared, at that time, he supposed, lively young girls each with her own first baby at her breast. They had taken it in turns to feed him and, in so doing, had probably saved his life. He had known this a long time, but somehow, when Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley had been shapeless bundles in shawls, it had not registered. Now, though not easily discomforted, he felt himself start to blush.
‘Look at that,’ said Mrs Riley. ‘He’s courting, I can always tell.’
‘Are you courting?’ Mrs Thorpe asked.
‘Yes. Her name’s Sarah. Sarah Lumb.’
‘Good strong name that,’ said Mrs Riley.
‘She’s a good strong lass.’
‘Mebbe has need to be,’ said Mrs Riley, looking him up and down, speculatively. ‘Do y’ fancy a drink?’
‘No, I’d like to, but I’ve got to see somebody.’
‘Well, if you change your mind we’ll be in the Rose and Crown.’
And off they went, cackling delightedly, two married women going out for a drink together. Unheard of. And in his father’s pub too. No wonder the old bugger thought Armageddon had arrived.
Prior walked on, noticing everywhere the signs of a new prosperity. Meat might be scarce, bread might be grey, but the area was booming for all that. Part of him was pleased, delighted even. ‘Bits of lasses earning more than I do’? Good. Lobster tins in Mrs Riley’s dustbin? Good. He would have given anything to have been simply, unequivocally, unambiguously pleased. But he passed too many houses with black-edged cards in the window, and to every name on the cards he could put a face. It seemed to him the streets were full of ghosts, grey, famished, unappeasable ghosts, jostling on the pavements, waiting outside homes that had prospered in their absence. He imagined a fire blazing up, a window shaking its frame, a door gliding open, and then somebody saying, ‘Wind’s getting up. Do you feel the draught?’ and shutting the door fast.
The glow he’d felt in talking to Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley faded. He slipped down the back alley between Marsh Street and Gladstone Terrace, making for Tite Street and Beattie Roper’s shop, a journey he must have taken thousands of times as a child, a boy, a young man, but now he moved silently across the cobbles, feeling almost invisible. He was no more part of the life around him than one of those returning ghosts.
He came out at the top of Hope Street and started to walk down it. Hope Street ran parallel with the canal and was known, predictably, as No-Hope Street, because of the alacrity with which its inhabitants transferred themselves from one to the other. At least before the war they did. Suicides were rare now. The war had cheered everybody up.
Half way down, on the corner of Hope Street and Tite Street, was Beattie’s shop, its windows boarded up. He knocked loudly on the door.
‘You’ll not get an answer there, love,’ a woman said, passing by. He waited until she’d turned the corner, then knelt and peered through the letter-box. The counters were cleared, the floor swept clean. He called, ‘Hettie. It’s me, Billy.’ The door into the living-room stood open. He felt her listening. ‘Hettie, it’s me.’
She came at last, kneeling on her side of the door to check he was alone. There was a great rattling of bolts and chains, and she stood there, a thin, dark, intense woman, older than he remembered. No longer pretty.
‘Billy.’
‘I’ve been to see your mother.’
‘Yes. She wrote.’
A long hesitation, which told him immediately what he wanted to know. He took off his cap and stepped forward. Almost simultaneously, she stood aside and said, ‘Come in.’
The living-room was empty. Both doors, one to the scullery, the other to the stairs, were closed. He looked round the room, taking his time. A fire blazed in the grate. The kettle stood on the hob beside it. The table, with its green cloth, still took up most of the space, six empty chairs ranged neatly round it. Hettie followed his gaze, and he could see how changes she’d become accustomed to — the empty chairs – became strange again, and unbearable as she saw them through his eyes. ‘Oh, Billy,’ she said, and then she was in his arms and crying.
He cuddled her, lifting her off her feet, rocking her from side to side. Only when the sobs subsided did he loosen his grip, and let her slide to the ground. Her spread fingers encountered belt, buckles, buttons, tabs, stars: the whole hated paraphernalia. He said quickly, ‘I see you’ve still got Tibbs.’
A fat tabby cat lay coiled on the rug, the pale underside of his chin exposed. Ghost smells of cat pee and creosote drifted in from the shop.
‘Yes,’ she said, laughing and sniffing. ‘Pees on everything now.’
Her laughter acknowledged the fund of shared memories. Thank God, Prior thought, pulling out a chair and sitting down.
She fetched the tea-pot and started making tea. ‘How’s me mam? She says she’s all right.’
‘Thin. But she’s eating. She’s come off the strike.’
‘Hmm. How long for? I tell her she shouldn’t do it, but she says, “How else can I convince them?”’
‘Have you been to see her?’
‘I’m going next week. I gather we’ve got you to thank for that?’
‘I put in a word.’
She poured the tea. ‘How come you’re in a position to put in a word?’
‘Got a job in the Ministry, that’s all. They’re not sending me back ‘cause of the asthma.’
‘But what do you do?’
He laughed. ‘Exactly what I did before the war. Push pieces of paper across a desk. But I managed to get me hands on your mam’s file – via a young lady in the filing department – and then I thought I’d go and see her.’
‘And you just bluffed your way in?’
‘Well, not exactly, I had Ministry of Munitions headed notepaper. That gets you anywhere.’
‘Huh! I wish we had some.’
She believed him. Just as once her mother had believed Spragge. She was sitting at the head of the table, in her mother’s chair, no doubt because that made her mother’s absence seem less glaring, and he was sitting, almost certainly, where Spragge had sat. He looked across to the dresser, and there sure enough was the photograph of William.
Hettie saw him looking at it, and reached behind her. ‘I don’t think you’ve seen this one, have you?’ she said, and handed it across.
William was leaning against a stone wall, his arms loosely folded, and he was smiling, though the smile had become strained as the photographer fiddled with his camera. He was wearing bicycle clips. A pencilled date on the back said ‘May 1913’. Prior thought he knew the place, they’d gone there together, the three of them. Behind the wall, not visible in the photograph, a steep bank shelved away, covered with brambles and bracken, full of rabbits whose shiny round droppings lay everywhere.
‘Why does it look so long ago?’ he said, holding the photograph out in front of him. Without conscious duplicity (though not without awareness), he was groping for the tone of their pre-war friendship.
She laughed, a harsh yelp that didn’t sound like Hettie.
‘No, but it does, doesn’t it?’ he persisted. ‘I mean, it looks longer than it is. You know, I was thinking about that on the way over. About…’ He took a deep breath. ‘You know if you were writing about something like… oh, I don’t know, enclosures, or the coming of the railways, you wouldn’t have people standing round saying…’ He put a theatrical hand to his brow. ‘“Oh, dear me, we are living through a period of terribly rapid social change, aren’t we?” Because nobody’d believe people would be so… aware. But here we are, li
ving through just such a period, and everybody’s bloody well aware of it. I’ve heard nothing else since I came home. Not the words, of course, but the awareness. And I just wondered whether there aren’t periods when people do become aware of what’s happening, and they look back on their previous unconscious selves and it seems like decades ago. Another life.’
‘Yes, I think you’re right.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I went to London a couple of months ago, to see one of the few suffragette friends who still wants to know me. And we were sitting in her house, and there was a raid, and we actually heard shrapnel falling on the trees, and do you know it sounded exactly like rain. And she was … full of herself. Short hair, breeches, driving an ambulance, all things she’d never’ve been allowed to do in a million years. And suddenly she grabbed hold of me and she said, “Hettie, for women, this is the first day in the history of the world.”’
‘And the last for a lot of men.’
Her face darkened. ‘Don’t beat me over the head with that, Billy. I’m the pacifist, remember.’
‘At least you’ve got the vote.’
‘No, I haven’t. I’m not thirty. Mam hasn’t, she’s in prison. Winnie hasn’t, same reason. William hasn’t, he’s had his vote taken away ‘cause he’s a conchie. So as far as votes go this family’s one down on before the war.’
‘Where is William?’ Prior said, looking at the photograph again.
‘Dartmoor. He took the Home Office scheme. He’s doing “useful work unconnected with the war”.’ She snorted. ‘Breaking stones.’
‘I’m surprised he took it.’
‘You wouldn’t be if you saw him. He’s that thin, you wouldn’t know him.’
