A Man of his Time Page 21

  ‘It’s no use getting off with him,’ Albert said. ‘He’d fall over his own toes to get to France. But I’m in no hurry, and our camp’s just up the road, so what are you doing tonight, duck?’

  ‘I’m not a duck,’ eyes glistening at Oliver as she placed the shorts on a weather-worn table under the window. ‘I’ll be serving in the bar for you, though.’

  He stood erect, arm held out, and brought the jar in for a well-earned measure in the throat. It had been drummed into them that a hussar was ever on duty, so they must be on their way. ‘We’d better not have the whisky, though it’s bad manners to hand them back.’ He drew out a letter to his mother. ‘Will you post this for me?’

  ‘I’d like to,’ she said, ‘but there’s people in the pub waiting to be served.’

  ‘It’s to his sweetheart.’ Beardmore lifted his ale. ‘Every girl in Nottingham’s hanging on his coat tails.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ she said. ‘But there’s a box just round the corner, by the gate. You can’t miss it.’

  ‘Look after the horses,’ he told Albert. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to drink the whiskies?’

  ‘We daren’t,’ Beardmore said. ‘It’s bad enough if the officers smell beer on your breath, but if it’s neat stuff we’ll be for the high jump.’

  ‘Our boss will be ever so disappointed. What shall I tell him?’

  ‘Just pour them on the ground where the horses have done their business. They’ve made such a flood already. Then you can take them back empty and tell your gaffer how much we appreciated it.’

  As he turned to knock ash and dottle from his pipe she slopped the whiskies into the remaining half-bucket of water, then went indoors.

  Oliver came back and picked up the same bucket to give the awkward horse a last drink before the final half-mile to camp, pleased to see it drink so avidly. Jenny returned for the tray, and he put an arm around her, a quick kiss on the cheek before she could break free. ‘You’re red like a beetroot.’ He smiled at her excitement. ‘It was only a kiss! But you look lovelier than any beetroot. I’ll come and say hello when I can get half an hour off from my duties. Perhaps we’ll go for a stroll.’

  ‘I’m living in,’ she said. ‘I can’t come out till a week next Sunday.’

  Burton had courted a barmaid, but he wouldn’t let that put him off. ‘I’ll see you, unless we’re packed off to France. I’m not so sure I want to go now.’ He steadied the spiralling horse, deciding to ride it instead of lead. ‘Hold still, you damned Tishbite!’ He apologized to Jenny for such language, saluted her, and rode out onto the lane.

  ‘Looks like you got off with her,’ Albert called from behind.

  ‘A lot of good it’ll do me. But she’s a lovely girl.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind getting her under a bush, either.’

  ‘Don’t be filthy.’ The horse reared, and he saw only a troubled moiling of grey cloud. ‘This mount’s a swine to look after.’ A touch of the spurs might bring it to order, but that was a mark of failure. Bad treatment could only make a horse worse, and in any case spurs were discouraged in the regiment, except at certain times.

  ‘It wants a bat across the arse with an iron shovel,’ Beardmore cried. ‘We’ll get it back as quick as we can, then it can torment the colonel.’

  The crinkle of the letters on moving his arms called Alma to mind. Perhaps he should have burned them after all, to obliterate her memory. Love died bitterly, and you lived in limbo till another person came along who, in all freshness, you began to love more. He was twenty-four, and hoped to cut all ropes that held him to the past. He felt old, as if he had lived two lives already, yet everything was vividly reflected in the mirror of the past, constantly forcing him to look in and see faces he fought to forget. He wanted strange and open landscapes yet thought what heaven to walk up and down the High Street with Jenny or someone like her, whether or not it delayed his going to France.

  Perhaps she flirted with every hussar who called for a drink, though he preferred not to think so. Her blue eyes, like corn-flowers plucked from the edge of a wheatfield in August, held the promise of seeing her again. A few minutes’ chat across the bar would obtain her full name, and permission to write while on active service. Letters would be a way of falling in love, and if he was alive and in one piece by the end of the war they could marry, and live till death did them part.

  Fresh leaves fell on the mottled ones of last year, spots of rain clattering to help them down. ‘We shall get drowned in this,’ Albert said, ‘but we’ll be there soon, so it’s no use unrolling our capes.’

  At the first view of tents Oliver was pulled from his dreams by so forceful a lunge that he jumped before being thrown, disorientated but on his feet. The horse neighed and reared again, galloped through a gate into a field of stubble.

  Albert leapt down. ‘I’ll hold the bogger.’

  ‘You won’t do much good. Leave him to me.’ If a horse goes mad on you, Burton once said, in his rasping self-assured voice, the only thing is to shoot it. But if you care to risk your life, walk backwards till you’re by its side, only don’t touch. Talk gently to see if you can calm it. I did once, to see whether or not I could, but swore I’d never do so again. No horse is worth a man’s life, or any injury, so get out of the way of a mad horse till you have a gun in your hand, then shoot the devil.

  Oliver went forward, but the coal-burning eyes lifted before him, hooves uprising, a pair of neat shoes terrifyingly outlined. He ran, at its feet drumming down and circling the field.

  Burton’s advice might be good, but he didn’t know everything. The horse was an awkward cuss, not much worse than others he had known. Albert watched as Oliver went close, using all caution, talking in as gentle a tone as a fast-beating heart would allow. ‘Come on, then, Neddy, the world’s not such a bad place. We’ll get you to the lines and give you a good feed. You can roll about in a sandbath up there, though it’s only for horses who behave themselves.’

  The horse charged. The escarpment of its chest frightened them both. ‘We’ll have to tackle the brute, or we’ll be late getting back,’ Oliver said, running after it.

  Such a horse gave no warning. The power of its curving chest came down, a hoof glancing his forearm. He saw no reason for it to be unsatisfied with its existence, but some malevolence against mankind, and him in particular, lodged in its brain. It couldn’t have been well cared for, and whoever had sold the swine to the army must have been happy that day. Maybe it had been some gentleman’s horse and, on being taken away, could not adapt to new surroundings.

  Albert stood well aside and said fervently: ‘Oliver, leave the fucker. It ain’t worth it.’

  His Burton will was up. He would not be beaten. He would pacify the beast, but with ever more caution, as he imagined his father would have shown, and relying on agility to avoid whatever viciousness played in the horse’s mind, he went forward. The earth spiralled to a few square yards of conflict, the horse a falling monument. He swivelled to avoid the hooves, power under his feet to jerk clear, saw nostrils widened with emotion, snot and rain running down, as if more in terror of the world than even he was, but such a dangerous animal he’d never been close to, the mouth open showing a flash of teeth not much worn, evil in the eyes – he was frightened and knew the time had come to get out of the way.

  A building on legs, of sheer muscle and flesh coming down, he hoped the horse in its madness would fall over on trying to kick, but a hoof as big as an anvil splayed wide with lightning suddenness on an unforeseen trajectory, unthinking tons of angry flesh behind. He misjudged the speed, and with a cry fell to the ground. Blood spurted, covered a whole side of his face by the time Albert reached him. He left the three horses, and set off in a gallop to the camp.

  SEVENTEEN

  Verses read to children from the Bible came out of days when she had been happy and in control of her life.

  ‘The vapour of fire wastes the blacksmith’s flesh,
and he fights with the heat of the furnace; the noise of the hammer and anvil is always in his ears, and his eyes still look on the pattern of the thing that he makes.’

  No idlers around the entrance, one glance into the forge was enough to show Burton wiping sweat from a face more lined than when they had been in Matlock. Talking to a man who hammered and shaped at the anvil as if only that gave meaning to his life would be futile. Unseen, she stayed a moment, since no one would notice.

  Burton, lucky to be out of the cold rain, was never one to let another’s troubles concern him. The hiss of fiery metal in water by his side overcame the sound of rain striking slate tiles, and the slam of hammers followed her up the lane and by the church, head down as if not to be blinded by what she must face, tormented by no longer seeming to know who she was, yet so solid in mind and body that the anguish was unbearable.

  A convoy of army wagons rattled on before she could cross the road. Letters to Oliver had gone to waste, a heartbreak written into each, but requests for forgiveness or understanding could not be expected from someone so stiffnecked. The son was like the father in refusing to soften her misery.

  Yet she remembered his blameless features when he had taken her to Misk Hill, a memory now too spoiled to give comfort. To enjoy such a poignant vision was a romantic indulgence from days which could never come back. The madness with Burton could not be undone. People looked at rain mixing with her tears as they went by – just another woman crying. She wanted to be dead, but whatever you wanted wouldn’t happen. The simple wisdoms of the world were hard to learn, and God alone made the rules.

  Lydia was the only person to talk to, or so she hoped, standing by the step, rain washing off traces of soap and pumice. By custom she should have gone down the entry way to the back door but couldn’t move, and after a while knocked again, with her fist. If her aunt wasn’t in she would go to Trent Bridge, climb the parapet before anyone could pull her back, feel her flight through the air, and then an unbreakable envelope of cold water would welcome her in.

  Two bolts were unshot, and her aunt stood in the doorframe, peering through steel-rimmed glasses. ‘What a surprise! I thought you were at work.’

  ‘I felt too ill to go in.’

  She stepped aside. ‘You’re all soaked. Why didn’t you bring an umbrella?’

  She had known Lydia’s parlour, even as a young child, to be unlike the smelly untidiness of the one at home. Everything was still in place, familiar and comforting, the round table covered by a lace cloth, an aspidistra plant of outcurving leaves in a laminated metal bowl set in the middle, a small Bible close by, brass clasps always shining, a book she used to open and try to read. A sewing machine in a black case stood on the dresser, and a corner what-not was crowded with seaside pottery figures and coats of arms from trips to the coast and countryside. Alma had played at putting them in ranks on the rug and, not yet able to read, speculated on where they came from.

  A framed photograph of her father as a smart soldier in dress uniform, with a pillbox hat and swagger-stick, was far from the wreck of his appearance now. After seven years in the army he was without rectitude of any sort, never able to profit from his work and business, perhaps because he had no sergeant-major to bully him, so turned into an idler only happy after a few pints. Sitting in the pub, he would lament his bad luck, till the beer began to inspire, then tell stories about his service in India.

  She followed her aunt into the kitchen-living room, with its piles of lace which Lydia, with other women in the district, fetched as outwork from the factory at the end of the street, collecting her load every few days in an old pram. Working all hours without complaint, she made a living, did so much every day, and if she was unwell and couldn’t, laboured into the night to make up for it when she was better. Instead of a ten-hour shift in the mill she preferred working at home, even if it took far more of her time, unable to tolerate the heat and dust in the factory, and the foulmouthed women who title-tattled from going in to coming out about how they were up to no good.

  Alma saw her busy every day with her mending at the table, time too valuable to waste, unlike her father who hadn’t the backbone to go out and find work, and grumbled against whatever prevented him making a living. Yet she could no longer despise or condemn him, having fallen lower than was ever possible for a man.

  In her trouble she had come to Lydia because there was no one else, Lydia who took care of herself because, she said, no one would do it for her, and she didn’t want any man to do it either, having too often seen how young and happy women were turned into fearful mouse-like drudges soon after getting married.

  Alma put a hand to her breast as if to stop the heart breaking through, and didn’t see how anyone could help, though watching the care Lydia took at placing a kettle on the half-dead fire increased her hope.

  ‘I’m economizing on coal, but it’ll boil in a bit.’ She was tall, sallow-faced and thin, arms sinewy below the elbows. Black hair was dappled with grey, and the stern line of her lips contrasted with signs of humour in her eyes. She took crockery from a glass-fronted cupboard. ‘Get your coat off, and sit by the fire. You look half-dead, and it’s not just the rain, either. Is it because your father’s murdered your mother? Or have the bum-bailiffs been and chucked your furniture onto the pavement because my feckless brother hasn’t paid the rent? Neither would surprise me.’

  The kettle boiled, and she fetched a seedcake from the scullery. ‘Have a slice of this. I made it myself. I’ve never seen you in such misery, so tell me what’s the matter.’

  Alma put a hand around the cup to warm her fingers, and to stop it rattling against the saucer. ‘On my way here I thought the best thing would be if I chucked myself off Trent Bridge.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve been sick every morning this week. A woman at work said I must be having a baby.’

  Lydia faced her from the rocking chair. ‘That went through my mind when I saw you at the door.’ She put her cup on the hearth. ‘But I couldn’t believe it.’

  ‘I wish I couldn’t.’

  ‘Stand up, and let me have a look at you.’ She pressed the stomach, and turned her. ‘The woman at work must be right, though trust her to know. Who was it?’

  She had dreaded the question. ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘Eat your cake.’ Anger flashed across her dark eyes. ‘You’ll be needing all you can get soon. So how many men were there?’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘I should hope not. He’s married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was it a teacher at that Sunday School?’

  ‘No.’

  She sat down, as if exhausted. ‘I suppose I shall have to be satisfied with that for the moment. But whoever it was you can stop thinking about chucking yourself in the river. You’d go straight to hell if you did a thing like that, and I don’t think someone like you would want to be in such a place. In any case it won’t be necessary to kill yourself because your father will save you the trouble. I know Les. You can’t have told him yet, or you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘I thought you might want to kill me, as well.’

  ‘I would if you hadn’t always been my favourite. But how can you have been so daft as to get pregnant? It’s a shock, I can tell you. But you looked after me when I had pleurisy. Nobody else did. But your father will have to know about it.’

  ‘I’d better go and tell him.’

  ‘Not on your own. Finish your tea, and we’ll go together. You won’t get drowned on the way because we’ll take the big umbrella I use to cover the pram when it’s raining and I don’t want to get the lace wet.’

  Lydia held her hand along the straight and narrow street, every door shut firm as if all inside were dead, water splashing from disordered drain pipes onto the pavement. ‘We’ll go by the Raleigh. It’s quicker that way.’

  Alma’s footsteps slowed, wished herself far from trainsmoke coiling above the bridge. Low clouds were moving, and she won
dered if one would pull her along if she put up a hand, taking her to anywhere but where she was. The rain stopped, and Lydia brought the umbrella down to fold. Lights glowed yellow at the factory windows, a heavy smell of oily disinfectant from rows of machines going full pelt inside. ‘They’re on war production,’ Lydia said, ‘though they still make a few bikes. A lot of women have been set on because of all the men joining up, but I’d never work there.’

  Alma hoped only her mother would be home, but Les opened the door, the sleeves of his striped collarless shirt rolled to the elbows. The unlit pipe in his mouth was a bad sign. Once tall and slender on his soldier’s rations, a stomach bulged under his belt. Having heard them coming, he stood on the step. ‘I thought you were at work?’

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask us in?’ Lydia said.

  He moved aside. ‘I suppose that’s the least I can do for my only sister, who’s always been too stuck-up to come and see me, and never even lent me a couple of bob when I was in need.’ He grasped Alma’s wrist. ‘I asked why you weren’t at work.’

  Half a loaf and a dish of butter stood on the table, an aluminium teapot, cups and saucers, not a good day, they were always short of something, the money she gave them never going far. An empty firegrate smelled of cold soot, and a floorcloth hung over the lip of a half-filled bucket.

  ‘I didn’t go in.’

  ‘I can see that. I’m not blind, am I? Why not? Do you want to lose your job?’

  ‘I wasn’t feeling well.’

  He knew all about malingering. ‘You look well enough. You’re on your feet, aren’t you?’

  ‘She’s going to have a baby,’ Lydia said.

  Hilda came in from the parlour, a small round-faced woman whose eyes could never, or did not dare to, focus on her husband. She looked at her sister-in-law, having heard the revelation, and thought that for everyone’s benefit it might have been spoken less directly.

  Les made a fair job of bringing himself to full height, and called from the wreck of his parental authority. ‘I could tell. It’s obvious already. I had my suspicions a week or two ago, and said as much to Hilda, but that wet fish told me I must be wrong. She said I was a man and didn’t know about such matters.’ He turned to her: ‘Well, you did say it, didn’t you?’