Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Read online

  He stood up straight, rigid, swaying slightly, his eyes gleaming, his overcoat open. Automatically he felt for another cigarette, but remembering in time what his attempt to smoke the last one had caused, gave up the search and dropped his hands by his side.

  ‘Look what yer’ve done, yer young bleeder,’ the woman was shouting at him. ‘Spewed all over Alf’s bes’ suit. And all you do is jus’ stand there. Why don’t yer do something? Eh? Why don’t yer’t least apologize for what yer’ve done?’

  ‘Say summat, mate,’ an onlooker called, and by the tone of his voice Arthur sensed that the crowd was not on his side, though he was unable to speak and defend himself. He looked at the woman, who continued shouting directly at him, while the victim fumbled ineffectually with a handkerchief trying to clean his suit.

  The woman stood a foot away from Arthur. ‘Look at him,’ she jeered into his face. ‘He’s senseless. He can’t say a word. He can’t even apologize. Why don’t yer apologize, eh? Can’t yer apologize? Dragged-up, I should think, getting drunk like this. Looks like one of them Teddy boys, allus making trouble. Go on, apologize.’

  From her constant use of the word apologize it seemed as if she had either just learned its meaning — perhaps after a transmission breakdown on television — or as if she had first learned to say it by spelling it out with coloured bricks at school forty years ago.

  ‘Apologize,’ she cried, her maniacal face right against him. ‘Go on, apologize.’

  The beast inside Arthur’s stomach gripped him again, and suddenly, mercilessly, before he could stop it or move out of the way, or warn anybody that it was coming, it leapt out of his mouth with an appalling growl.

  She was astonished. Through the haze her face clarified. Arthur saw teeth between open lips, narrowed eyes, claws raised. She was a tigress.

  He saw nothing else. Before she could spring he gathered all his strength and pushed through the crowd, impelled by a strong sense of survival towards the street-door, to take himself away from a scene of ridicule, disaster, and certain retribution.

  He knocked softly on the front door of Brenda’s house. No answer. He had expected that. The kids were asleep, her husband Jack was at Long Eaton for the races — dog, horse, motor-bike — and not due back until Sunday midday, and Brenda had stayed at the pub. Now sitting on her front doorstep he remembered his journey to the house: a vague memory of battles with lampposts and walls and kerb stones, of knocking into people who told him to watch his step and threatened to drop him one, voices of anger and the hard unsympathetic stones of houses and pavements.

  It was a mild autumn night, a wind playing the occasional sharp sound of someone slamming a door or closing a window. He lay across the doorstep, trying to avoid the pavement. A man passed, singing a happy song to himself, noticing nothing. Arthur was half asleep, but opened his eyes now and again to make sure that the street was still there, to convince himself that he was not in bed, because the hard stone step was as round and as soft as a pillow. He was blissfully happy, for he did not have the uncomfortable feeling of wanting to be sick any more, though at the same time he had retained enough alcohol to stay both high-spirited and sleepy. He made the curious experiment of speaking out loud to see whether or not he could hear his own voice. ‘Couldn’t care less, couldn’t care less, couldn’t care less’ — in answer to questions that came into his mind regarding sleeping with a woman who had a husband and two kids, getting blind drunk on seven gins and umpteen pints, falling down a flight of stairs, and being sick over a man and a woman. Bliss and guilt joined forces in such a way that they caused no trouble but merely sunk his mind into a welcome nonchalance. The next thing he knew was Brenda bending over him and digging her fingers sharply in his ribs.

  ‘Ugh!’ he grunted, noting the yeast and hop-like smell of her breath. ‘Yer’ve bin boozin’!’

  ‘’Ark at who’s talkin’,’ she said, gesticulating as if she had brought an audience with her. ‘I had two pints and three orange-squashes, and he talks about boozing. I heard all about what happened to you though at the pub, falling downstairs and being sick over people.’

  He stood up, clear-headed and steady. ‘I’m all right now, duck. I’m sorry I couldn’t get back upstairs to you in the pub, but I don’t know what went on.’

  ‘I’ll tell you some day,’ she laughed. ‘But let’s be quiet as we go in, or we’ll wake the kids.’

  Got to be careful, he said to himself. Nosy neighbours’ll tell Jack. He lifted the band of hair from her coat collar and kissed her neck. She turned on him petulantly: ‘Can’t you wait tell we get upstairs?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted, with a mock-gloating laugh.

  ‘Well, you’ve got to wait,’ she said, pushing the door open for him to go in.

  He stood in the parlour while she fastened the locks and bolts, smelling faint odours of rubber and oil coming from Jack’s bicycle leaning against a big dresser that took up nearly one whole side of the room. It was a small dark area of isolation, long familiar with another man’s collection of worldly goods: old-fashioned chairs and a settee, fireplace, clock ticking on the mantelpiece, a smell of brown paper, soil from a plant-pot, ordinary aged dust, soot in the chimney left over from last winter’s fires, and mustiness of rugs laid down under the table and by the fireplace. Brenda had known this room for seven married years, yet could not have become more intimate with it than did Arthur in the ten seconds while she fumbled with the key.

  He knocked his leg on the bicycle pedal, swearing at the pain, complaining at Jack’s barminess for leaving it in such an exposed position. ‘How does he think I’m going to get in with that thing stuck there?’ he joked. ‘Tell him I said to leave it in the backyard next week, out of ‘arm’s way.’

  Brenda hissed and told him to be quiet, and they crept like two thieves into the living-room, where the electric light showed the supper things — teacups, plates, jam-pot, bread — still on the table. A howl of cats came from a nearby yard, and a dustbin lid clattered on to cobblestones.

  ‘Oh well,’ he said in a normal voice, standing up tall and straight, ‘it’s no use whisperin’ when all that racket’s going on.’

  They stood between the table and firegrate, and Brenda put her arms around him. While kissing her he turned his head so that his own face stared back at him from an oval mirror above the shelf. His eyes grew large in looking at himself from such an angle, noticing his short disordered hair sticking out like the bristles of a blond porcupine, and the mark of an old pimple healing on his cheek.

  ‘Don’t let’s stay down here long, Arthur,’ she said softly.

  He released her and, knowing every corner of the house and acting as if it belonged to him, stripped off his coat and shirt and went into the scullery to wash the tiredness from his eyes. Once in bed, they would not go to sleep at once: he wanted to be fresh for an hour before floating endlessly down into the warm bed beside Brenda’s soft body.

  It was ten o’clock, and she was still asleep. The sun came through the window, carrying street-noises on its beams, a Sunday morning clash of bottles from milkmen on their rounds, newspaper boys shouting to each other as they clattered along the pavement and pushed folded newspapers into letter-boxes, each bearing crossword puzzles, sports news and forecasts, and interesting scandal that would be struggled through with a curious and salacious indolence over plates of bacon and tomatoes and mugs of strong sweet tea.

  He turned to Brenda heaped beside him, sitting up to look at her. She was breathing gently; her hair straggled untidily over the pillow, her breasts bulged out over her slip, a thick smooth arm over them as if she were trying to protect herself from something that had frightened her in a dream. He heard the two children playing in their bedroom across the landing. One was saying: ‘It’s my Teddy-bear, our Jacky. Gi’ it me or else Is’ll tell our mam.’ Then a low threat from the boy who would not hand back his plunder.

  He sank down contentedly into bed. ‘Brenda,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Come on,
duck, waken up.’

  She turned and pressed her face into his groin.

  ‘Nice,’ he muttered.

  ‘What’s time?’ she mumbled, her breath hot against his skin.

  ‘Half-past eleven,’ he lied.

  She sprang up, showing the crease-marks of crumpled sheets down one side of her face, her brown eyes wide open. ‘You’re having me on again,’ she cried. ‘Of all the liars, you’re the biggest I’ve ever known.’

  ‘I allus was a liar,’ he said, laughing at his joke. ‘A good ‘un an’ all.’

  ‘Liars don’t prosper,’ she retorted.

  ‘It’s on’y ten o’clock,’ he admitted, lifting her hair and rolling it into a ball on top of her head.

  ‘What a time we had last night,’ she grinned, suddenly remembering.

  It came back to him now. He had put away more swill than Loudmouth, had fallen down some stairs, had been sick over a man and a woman. He laughed. ‘It seems years.’ He took her by the shoulders and kissed her lips, then her neck and breasts, pressing his leg against her. ‘You’re lovely, Brenda. Let’s get down in bed.’

  ‘Mam,’ a small plaintive voice cried.

  She pushed Arthur away. ‘Go back to bed, Jacky.’

  ‘It’s late,’ he crooned tearfully through the door. ‘I want some tea, our mam.’

  ‘Go back.’

  They heard the shuffling of a small foot behind the door. ‘I want to see Uncle Arthur,’ Jacky pleaded.

  ‘Little bogger,’ Arthur muttered, resigning himself to the disturbance. ‘I can’t have a bit o’ peace on a Sunday morning.’

  Brenda sat higher in the bed and straightened her slip. ‘Leave him alone,’ she said.

  Jacky was insistent. He kicked the bottom of the door.

  ‘Can I come in, Uncle Arthur?’

  ‘You little bogger.’

  He laughed, knowing now that it was all right.

  ‘Go down to the parlour,’ Arthur said, ‘and get the News of the World that’s just bin pushed in the letter-box. Then I’ll let yer come.’

  His bare feet went thudding softly on the wooden stairs. They heard him hurrying through the parlour below, then running back and climbing the stairs with breathless haste. They drew apart as he burst in and threw the paper on the bed, jumping up and crushing it between his stomach and Arthur’s legs. Arthur pulled it free and held him high in the air with one hand, until he began to gag and choke with laughter and Brenda said he was to be put down or else he would go into a fit.

  ‘Young Jacky,’ Arthur said, looking up at his animated face, five years old, with pink skin and fair hair, fresh in his shirt and clean from bath-night. ‘You little bogger, young Jacky, you young jockey.’ He let him down, and the child burrowed up against him like a passionate rabbit.

  ‘Listen,’ Arthur said to him, blowing in his ear between each word, ‘go and get my trousers from that chair and I’ll gi’ yer a bob.’

  ‘You’ll spoil him,’ Brenda said, touching him under the blankets. ‘He gets enough money as it is.’ She lifted herself out of bed and picked up a skirt draped over the bottom rail. Both Arthur and Jacky watched her intently as she dressed, deeply interested by the various secrets of her that became hidden with the donning of each item of clothing.

  ‘What does it matter?’ Arthur demanded at being forced to justify his generosity. ‘I give ‘im money because I was lucky to get a ha’penny when I was a nipper.’

  She was slovenly and easily dressed for Sunday morning: a white blouse open at the throat, a wide grey skirt, a slip-on pair of shoes, and hair pushed in strands to the back of her neck. ‘Come on, get up, Arthur. It’s nearly eleven o’clock. You’ve got to be out of the house before twelve. It wouldn’t do for Jack to see you here.’

  ‘That bastard,’ he said, holding Jacky at arms’ length and pulling a face at him. ‘Who do you love?’ he shouted with a laugh. ‘Who do you love, young Jack Blud-Tub?’

  ‘Yo’, yo’,’ he screamed. ‘Yo’, Uncle Arthur’ — and Arthur released him so that he fell with a thud on to the rumpled bed.

  ‘Come on, then,’ Brenda said impatiently, tired of watching, ‘let’s go downstairs.’

  ‘Yo’ goo down, duck,’ he grinned, ‘and cook me some breakfast. I’ll come when I can smell the bacon and egg.’

  Jack’s head was turned and she bent over to kiss Arthur. He held her firmly by the neck, and was still kissing her when Jacky lifted his head and looked wonderingly at them.

  At half-past eleven Arthur sat at the table with a plate of bacon-and-egg before him. He tore a piece of bread in half and dipped it in the fat around his plate, then took a long drink of tea. Jacky, already fed, stood on a nearby chair and followed every move with his blue eyes.

  ‘It’s thirsty work, fallin’ downstairs,’ Arthur said. ‘Pour me some more tea, duck.’

  She held the newspaper against her midriff with one hand. ‘Plenty of sugar?’

  He nodded and went on eating. ‘You’re good to me,’ he said after a while, ‘and don’t think I don’t appreciate it.’

  ‘Yes, but it’ll be your last breakfast in this house if you don’t hurry. Jack’ll be home soon.’

  Tomorrow is work, and I’ll be hard at it, sweating my guts out until next weekend. It’s a hard life if you don’t weaken. He told her what was on his mind.

  ‘No rest for the wicked,’ she laughed.

  He passed a choice piece of bacon to Jacky. ‘A present from Uncle Arthur.’

  ‘Ta!’ he said, relishing the honour before his mouth closed over the fork.

  Brenda suddenly stiffened in her chair and half turned her ear to the window, silent like an animal waiting to spring, an alertness that transformed her face to temporary ugliness. Arthur noticed it, and swilled down the last of his tea. ‘He’s coming,’ she said. ‘I heard the gate open.’

  He picked Jacky up and kissed him on the lips, feeling his arms curl tight around his face and ears. He then stood him on a chair while he kissed Brenda.

  ‘So long,’ he said. ‘See you next week’ — and walked towards the parlour. He stood by the bicycle for a moment to light a cigarette.

  ‘Get going,’ Brenda hissed softly, seeing her husband open the gate and walk down the yard.

  Arthur unlocked the front door and pulled it towards him, sniffing the fresh air of a bright Sunday morning as if to decide whether the day was fine enough to venture out in. It was. He clicked the door to and stepped into the street, as Brenda’s husband Jack opened the back door and came in through the scullery.

  2

  He lifted a pair of clean overalls from the bed-rail and pulled them over his big white feet, taking care not to disturb his brother Sam who, while still in the depths of sleep, rolled himself more advantageously into the large mound of blankets now that Arthur had left the bed. He had often heard Friday described as Black Friday — remembering a Boris Karloff film of years ago — and wondered why this should be. For Friday, being pay-day, was a good day, and ‘black’ would be more fitting if applied to Monday. Black Monday. Then there would be some sense in it, when you felt your head big from boozing, throat sore from singing, eyes fogged-up from seeing too many films or sitting in front of the television, and feeling black and wicked because the big grind was starting all over again.

  The stairfoot door clicked open.

  ‘Arthur,’ his father called, in a deadly menacing Monday-morning voice that made your guts rattle, sounding as if it came from the grave, ‘when are yer goin’ ter get up? Yer’ll be late fer wok.’ He closed the stairfoot door quietly so as not to waken the mother and two other sons still at home.

  Arthur took a half-empty fag-packet from the mantelpiece, his comb, a ten-shilling note and heap of coins that had survived the pubs, bookies’ counters, and cadgers, and stuffed them into his pockets.

  The bottom door opened again.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I’eard yer the first time,’ Arthur said in a whisper.

  The door
slammed, by way of a reply.

  A mug of tea was needed, then back to the treadmill. Monday was always the worst; by Wednesday he was broken-in, like a greyhound. Well, anyroad, he thought, there was always Brenda, lovely Brenda who was all right and looked after you well once she’d made up her mind to it. As long as Jack didn’t find out and try to get his hands around my throat. That’d be the day. By Christ it would. Though my hands would be round his throat first, the nit-witted, dilat’ry, unlucky bastard.

  He glanced once more around the small bedroom, seeing the wooden double-bed pushed under the window, the glint of a white pot, dilapidated shelves holding Sam’s books — rulers, pencils, and rubbers — and a home-made table on which stood his portable wireless set. He lifted the latch as the stairfoot door opened again, and his father poked his head up, ready to tell him in his whispering, menacing Monday-morning gut-rattle that it was time to come down.

  Despite the previous tone of his father’s voice, Arthur found him sitting at the table happily supping tea. A bright fire burned in the modernized grate — the family had clubbed-up thirty quid to have it done — and the room was warm and cheerful, the table set, and tea mashed.

  Seaton looked up from his cup. ‘Come on, Arthur. You ain’t got much time. It’s ten past seven, and we’ve both got to be on by half-past. Sup a cup o’tea an‘ get crackin‘.’

  Arthur sat down and stretched his legs towards the fire. After a cup and a Woodbine his head was clearer. He didn’t feel so bad. ‘You’ll go blind one day, dad,’ he said, for nothing, taking words out of the air for sport, ready to play with the consequences of whatever he might cause.

  Seaton turned to him uncomprehendingly, his older head still fuddled. It took ten cups of tea and as many Woodbines to set his temper right after the weekend. ‘What do you mean?’ he demanded, intractable at any time before ten in the morning.