Birthday: A Novel (The Seaton Novels) Page 12

  Tall and tending to corpulence, he wore a navy-blue waistcoated suit, white shirt and a colourful reddish tie, stood with amiable dignity, his back to the bar, an aspect of being pleased with life, as if he scorned to question that there could be anything more to know about himself than had been obvious from birth, confident that such an attitude had done nothing but good – a prosperous hardworking man who took no nonsense from anybody but could be kindly as well.

  The handshake was firm, his smile as if offering to be a friend for life, and that if he wasn’t taken up it could be no fault of his. ‘She’s often told us about you.’

  ‘I hope I didn’t sound too much of a villain.’

  He laughed. ‘No, it was the other way, mostly.’

  If proof of belonging was that you had no secrets among the people you mixed with, then he was surely one of them. ‘Thank God for that!’

  ‘Ronald has his own business,’ Jenny said, with some pride.

  ‘It sounds very grand.’ He let his cigarette ash fall to the floor. ‘It’s just a family thing, though we do well enough, a place called Leen Technology. I deal in software and superpower, you might say. I suppose you’re all plugged into computers, with your job?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Brian held up his pen. ‘This is the smallest word processor in the world! But when I do get wired up, and I’ll have to, sooner or later, I’ll call you.’

  Ronald gave him his card. ‘Anytime. I’ll sort out the best deal for you, as a friend of the family, plus all the advice to get yourself on line.’

  Jenny introduced him to Ronald’s wife Sylvia, a tall woman wearing a black and white dotted dress, with blonde hair pulled close to her head and ending in a short ponytail over the back of her neck. She had the full figure of a woman in her forties, worth getting to know, he thought, with those interesting lips and opaque cornflower blue eyes, his usual quick look confirming her as the most attractive woman in the room, though he didn’t suppose, to go by her cool handshake, that he would get very far in trying to become more acquainted, especially at a 70th birthday party when he was known to be the same age.

  ‘Brian’s come up specially from London,’ Jenny said, which fact brought a smile from Sylvia: ‘That was good of you.’

  He hoped to hear more, but she looked with a proud kind of vacancy into the crowd, sure she missed nothing by standing aloof. ‘I wanted to see her,’ he said, though he hadn’t thought of her for months or even years at a time. ‘She’s always meant a lot to me.’

  ‘It’s the same for the rest of us,’ Sylvia said.

  When Ronald offered him a drink he wanted to say yes, talk to him more, soak down a few jars in his and Sylvia’s company, but was tugged away by some perverse instinct which nine times out of ten led him to refuse whatever might turn out to be enjoyable: ‘Thanks, but I’ve got one at our table over there.’

  ‘Any time you like, and it’ll be my pleasure.’

  They shook hands on it, and Jenny walked with her daughter-in-law to another part of the room.

  The man with the microphone bellowed out words with the sincerity of an old-fashioned tuppenny hop. ‘You can’t hear yourself think over that racket,’ Arthur said, ‘never mind talk.’

  The lyrics knocked at the back of his head, telling about love not being all it was said to be when a sweetheart walked off with your best friend. His performance enlivened the party, such a noise level that no one could hear unless they were shouted at, the pitch only normal to people whose ears had been battered by it all their lives, but the coarse-grained emery paper scraping back and forth across Brian’s skull honed away what brains were inside.

  Double-glazed windows in London cut down noise, but if he opened a window for a lungful of petrol-soaked air, the grinding of cars and thump of pneumatic drills, the screaming bandsaws from renovations in the next house, forced him to turn up Radio Three more than he cared to. Stereo systems in open-topped cars belted out jungle music that shook the backbone, and he craved a three-o-three Short Lee Enfield service rifle to pot one of the tyres, and kill the driver when he got out to look. People preferred overwhelming noise to quiet thoughts that would drive them insane, not knowing that only silence enabled you to be yourself.

  ‘If I open a pub door and hear this,’ Arthur shouted, ‘I slam the bogger shut, and find another where it’s quiet. The factory was bad, but this’ll send me deaf if I stay much longer.’ Avril was pale from the effort of leaving the house, and Arthur knew he must get her back to rest, whatever she said about not wanting to spoil their evening. ‘I don’t think I can stand it much longer,’ Eileen said.

  The decibel count wiped away all functions of the brain or mind, eyes swivelling and hands twitching to close on the singer’s throat. Brian wondered how much more he could take, and whether it could be used as a reason to leave. ‘I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks so.’

  ‘It’s not a bad performance,’ Derek bawled. ‘At least it’s got some melody’ – though agreeing it was too loud. ‘I thought he was miming, but it’s him right enough. They must have headhunted him from a miners’ welfare.’

  Arthur said he would have one more pint. ‘The noise makes it taste soapy.’ Derek went for them, but Brian looked into the mass, hoping yet not hoping to see Jenny, though enough had been said, the experience tasted, time to cut, thinking he wouldn’t find her yet impelled to try.

  A bridgehead into the crush, careful not to knock drinks or tread on toes, he parted a man and a woman shouting to each other through their smiles. The noise seemed to blind as well as deafen. He waved to Ronald at the bar, and went to him, putting his ear close to get the response ‘I’m looking for Jenny.’

  ‘She must be somewhere. I’m sure we haven’t lost her. Try another recce: you’ll find her.’

  She was talking to a man and his wife. ‘I have to go now,’ he said.

  ‘You needn’t shout. I can hear you.’ Maybe everybody had ears that noise couldn’t chasten. ‘I’m sorry you’re going,’ she said. ‘I really am.’

  ‘We’ll leave you to your old flame,’ the woman gave a dirty laugh, and pulled her husband away.

  ‘I’d like to stay, but I can see you’ve got lots to keep you busy. And Arthur’s wife isn’t feeling well. She’s on chemotherapy.’ To mention the noise would grate against the perfection of her party, and she might remind him of the indescribable sounds of the Goose Fair, or the dances at the youth club, or the bedlam in some of the pubs when singing began on a Saturday night.

  ‘Oh, I’m ever so sorry to hear that. I hope she’ll be all right. But you haven’t had anything to eat.’ She pointed to food heaped on the large trestle table, where people were loading their paper plates. ‘You must be starving.’

  ‘No, I’m not, love.’

  She held his hands. ‘Of all the people! If I’d known about the party I still wouldn’t have expected you. They’re such devils, springing it on me like this. When I came up the stairs I thought I was just going to have a meal with Ronald and Sylvia.’

  ‘They’re fond of you, that’s why they did it.’

  ‘I know. They’ve always been good to me.’

  ‘And you’ve been good to them.’

  ‘I don’t know about that, though I did bring seven of ’em up. And I do love them all.’

  He wondered if she would have stayed with George for so long if they’d had no children, then he knew that she would, on feeling the intense warmth from her hands. ‘I’ll call for you at home next time, but I’ll phone first so that you won’t get such a shock.’

  ‘Oh yes, come and see me whenever you like. We can talk when you do. I’d like that. We can’t do it here, I realize.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘We did have some good times when we were young, didn’t we? I used to wish they could go on forever.’

  ‘So did I.’

  ‘Do you remember when we sat in the living room at home afterwards, and listened to Joe Loss on the wireless?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘It�
�s a shame such times can’t come back.’

  ‘We had them, that’s the main thing. Nobody can take ’em away.’

  ‘That’s true.’ The same old youthful glow was in her eyes, till she added that they’d had their ups and downs as well. He couldn’t deny it: ‘But you only remember the good times,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve got to, haven’t you? It really has been a tonic seeing you.’

  ‘For me too.’ Derek and Eileen were standing, Arthur and Avril already by the door. ‘I must be off, though. I don’t want to keep the others waiting.’

  ‘If you’ve got to,’ she said, in the same cool tone as when he had proposed leaving her in Ripley market and cycling alone to Matlock. ‘I suppose we should have met somewhere else, but we can next time, can’t we?’

  Lip-reading as much as hearing gave her words added importance. ‘I’ll be sure to arrange it.’

  ‘I know you will.’ She leaned, and he took her by the shoulders, as so often before, and drew her into a kiss, thinking one for each cheek, as she perhaps expected, but their lips pressed hard, neither wanting to let go, as if the gate latch had already clicked and her parents were on their way up the garden path, Jenny and he locked in a final passionate kiss before his long traipse home through the misty darkness.

  Eyes closed as if to make the moment last, their ancient past putting sugar into the kiss, a mellowed regret at not having kept their love alight, a kiss in mourning for the chance they’d let vanish – neither caring about whoever looked on from the crowd.

  ‘I’ll see you again, duck,’ he said in the homely lingo of so long back, not knowing who had drawn off first.

  Many wanted her to themselves: children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, cousins and inlaws and nephews and nieces and friends, and to give some of herself to everyone would take whatever was left of the evening. She let go of his hand. ‘I’ll look forward to it. But now I must talk some more to the others.’

  TEN

  ‘I’d never have believed it, you kissing a seventy-year-old woman like that.’ They walked into more silence the closer they got to the cars. Avril felt it necessary to tell Arthur that Brian was seventy as well.

  ‘That’s true, but he don’t look anywhere near it.’

  ‘It was romantic,’ Eileen said. ‘I hope somebody kisses me like that when I’m seventy.’

  ‘I will.’ Derek filled his pipe. ‘I promise.’

  ‘Oh, you!’ she laughed.

  ‘Anyway, you’ve seen her.’ He put the pipe back in his pocket because Eileen wouldn’t let him smoke in the car. ‘It’s all over now.’

  Brian couldn’t think it was. ‘So it seems.’

  ‘I wondered what he was up to,’ Arthur said. ‘Everybody was staring, but you was too far gone to notice. They wanted to hear you pop the question, though I’ll bet they’re laughing their heads off now you’ve scarpered. I’ve never seen such a mad, passionate kiss.’

  Banter eased his emptiness, brought from it by seeing a tip of the last sunlight on a leaf as if it had been rinsed. They were in love with the past rather than each other, and if he called on her they might talk the nostalgia away, though maybe he needed to get rid of it more than she wanted it clear of herself. He couldn’t say why he felt the urge to kick something so precious, because nothing was finished till the blackout came down and you were dropped into the same common hole never to see daylight again.

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ he said to Derek and Eileen. ‘We’ll talk for an hour, then I’ll make for Trent Bridge and head south.’

  Eileen sorted car keys from her pocket. ‘We’ll have the coffee ready.’

  ‘I enjoyed the party,’ Arthur turned on the ignition, ‘but that bloody noise was the limit.’

  ‘I heard a couple say they thought it was too loud,’ Avril said. ‘I can still hear it.’

  She was exhausted, and every second, when not talking, Arthur was filled with misery thinking about her illness. ‘I’ll get you home as quick as I can. I shouldn’t have kept you out so long.’

  ‘I can’t stay in all the time,’ she said. ‘And I wouldn’t have come away earlier, even if you’d said I should.’

  Mellow light gave the redbricked houses a glint of newness. It was uncanny for the district to be so quiet on a Saturday night. A westerly wind pushed clouds which would certainly throw down rain by tomorrow morning.

  ‘You never see anybody walking,’ Brian said. ‘Maybe they’re already in the pubs.’

  ‘People are watching the telly,’ Arthur said. ‘The old ’uns, anyway. The young ’uns are downtown boozing and getting into fights. They come back with black eyes and blood all over their clothes. Shows they had a good time. Or they go to clubs and get drugged up to the eyeballs. Then some of ’em go mugging to get money to pay for a bit more. Nottingham’s dangerous these days.’

  ‘It always was,’ Brian said.

  ‘I don’t know about that. We had fun when we were young. We got drunk now and again, but we didn’t go mugging. We didn’t take drugs. Whatever you do, never walk around Slab Square on Saturday night. Some blokes’d knife you as soon as look at you.’

  ‘I’ve always gone where angels fear to tread,’ Brian told him.

  ‘You’ve been lucky.’

  ‘My father used to say,’ Avril said, ‘that if you go where angels fear to tread only the Devil can lead you back.’

  Basford Crossing was passed without comment. His life between leaving as a young man and meeting Jenny at her seventieth birthday party would hardly make the sitcom of the century. In the theatre it would come off after a week, to universal execration, while a painted triptych would send people away screaming. As the sound of music it would be more deafening than those forlorn lyrics at the party. Or so he imagined, though self-flattery was the first sign of the demented.

  His second divorce had been of nobody’s making but his own, because his previous experience of matrimonial hugger-mugger, and being ten years older than Jane, could have saved the marriage, especially when he knew that if you wanted to end an argument with your wife you only had to let her have the last word. Having the self-control to do it, and feel no injury to his self-esteem, he had made the attempt, but after a while she had spotted his manoeuvre, and with her taunts sent him into rages which she liked better than the peace and quiet he needed for his work. Living with someone and being in love, you imagined any problem could be worked out. It couldn’t but, all the same, he had made it to three score and ten, sound in wind and limb, the same as Jenny, showing the common tenacity of both, and that being alive was victory enough.

  Beyond the traffic lights at Sunrise Hill Arthur knew that Brian was chewing at the bits and bobs of his past, which could be unhealthy, though he knew it to be so because two brothers in the same car are like back to back houses in the closeness of their thoughts. As different as they can be, Arthur had his own and recalled how he had once seen a woman on a street corner up the road from the White Horse, looking as if she didn’t know which direction to take, whom he then recognized as his old flame Brenda, talking to an aloof adolescent girl.

  She was a bit more than forty, but hadn’t aged as much as she might have done. He put on his best smile, knowing that after so long he couldn’t look youthful either, but luckily he was togged up in a suit, wore the usual good overcoat, and had given his shoes their weekly gloss that morning.

  In spite of her brown coat and sweater he knew she could still doll up to the nines for a Saturday night out. Jack would be a manager at the factory by now, so she must have a wardrobe full of smart dresses.

  In spite of the trouble when Jack found out about their affair, she seemed glad to see him, as if she wouldn’t object to a few more of those torrid days. Nor would he mind getting in to bed with her again. ‘This is my daughter, Joan,’ she said, ‘who’ll be fifteen next birthday.’

  The girl was tall and thin, had short fair hair and grey eyes, and wore a blue and white anorak, pale trousers sharply crease
d, and trainer shoes. She stared as if hating all men, but especially him, and would have hated him even more if she knew him better, which didn’t surprise him, having Jack for a father.

  ‘I suppose you’re proud?’ Brenda said.

  The change of tone suggested she’d like to bury a knife in his back. ‘What about?’

  ‘Haven’t you got eyes to see?’

  He soon enough had, as if thumped in the chest, not a serious blow, but the reverberation yanked him sufficiently clear of himself to look at the girl again, at which stare she turned to see whether the shop display of jeans and sports clothes had anything on offer. ‘She looks well.’

  ‘A bloody handful, I can tell you, but she’ll be away in a year or two, if I know her.’

  He took a twenty out of his wallet, but didn’t give it directly to his daughter in case she smelled a rat – and a big slimy one at that. Brenda read him like a book, amused at his daft pride. ‘Don’t think you’ve got any rights over her. Understand?’ She took the money, knowing him capable of causing a fuss. ‘I’ll give it her. She’ll think I’ve decided to be nice for a change. I’m always telling her she can’t have everything, because she’s already spoiled rotten. Jack thinks the world of her, at least when he forgets she might not be his.’

  ‘How is he, then?’ – the arse-crawling bastard.

  ‘He’s a pain most of the time. Luckily I don’t see much of him. He still works every hour God sends.’

  Joan’s settled features showed in the shop window, and it was obvious from the way she stood, and her intent look at the goods laid out – as if she wanted them all, and by God she would have them – that she couldn’t be anybody’s daughter but his.

  ‘Take a good goz,’ Brenda said. ‘I’ve taken a lot of stick over it from Jack. Being so blind’s turned him bitter, whenever he thinks about us.’

  ‘Mam!’ Joan called, ‘I want a pair of jeans.’

  ‘Oh all right. Which ones this time?’

  Arthur turned to go. ‘See you, then, Joan.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ Brenda said. ‘She’s mine, not yours.’