The Broken Chariot Read online

  ‘I ’ad it last night,’ he said to Archie in the canteen, though thinking it ungallant to say he had been with Eileen.

  ‘Took you long enough. She’s not a bad girl, though, is she? I’ve often fancied her mysenn.’

  Herbert spooned into his bread pudding. ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘What do you mean who do I mean?’ At least he leaned across so that only Bert could hear. And why not? Courting, they called it. One of the men walking by shouted: ‘You’ll need a lot o’ frenchies wi’ that one, Bert.’

  Herbert’s impulse was to grab hold of the foul-mouth fuckpig and push his head into a bucket of cold suds and hold it there till the shit showed through his trousers, as Archie had threatened someone in his hearing, but you were expected to tolerate and even half condone such ribald joshing. If you really felt bad about it you could wait and pay him back at a time and place of your choosing.

  Eileen heard it as well, her workbench close enough, though even that didn’t call for a punch-up, because neither was it the custom to be a Sir Galahad, since the girl would scorn the thought that she was unable to stick up for herself. Eileen, thank you very much, could do all that with knobs on, which she went on to prove in no uncertain terms, calling out in a voice plangent enough, in spite of ear-drumming machinery, to reverberate from one end of the shop to the other: ‘You’re jealous, that’s what yo’ are, you sex-starved four-eyed wanking sight for sore eyes.’ Cheers and laughs from the other women at least took the vapid shine from the man’s face. Bert got on with his work, having to force an impassive expression at such blistering language from a girl who on the street would look as if – to use the local term – butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

  Even on weekday nights they went hand in hand over the Ha’penny Toll Bridge (the best tuppence ever spent) and so many packets of rubbers were called for that there were few hedge bottoms around Clifton and Wilford he and Eileen hadn’t snugged into. She occasionally complained that he was a bit too rough in his speech so he toned it down as much as he dared: ‘What can you expect? I was dragged up in Radford, and you can’t get much rougher than that.’ All the same, he liked it when in her soppier moments she showed a liking for the more genteel life, though finally, like Archie Bleasby, he wondered what was the use of slogging your guts out for days on end at a machine if you had to behave yourself at the weekend. Hadn’t he left all such poxy notions behind at his school?

  Five

  Space at either end of the long table for his elbows made sure that nobody could come too close. Electricity dried the air, and he felt at ease, readers silent but for the odd cough or foot-scrape. A young girl round-shouldered herself over an open book and he wondered whether putting on his old school voice would help him to get acquainted.

  Everybody had a cold, sniffles and hacks around the compass, but compared to the factory it was a civilized atmosphere which he had to sample now and again or go off his head. He wasn’t a Nottingham lad like Archie Bleasby, so could never let on to his mates about sitting in the library. Not that they would have bothered him, or been too surprised perhaps, because most of them read, even if only comics or the Daily Mirror, but he had to keep some part separate from his labouring status, and would have needed a stint in the library even if he had been born in the area. Coming on evenings when he hadn’t enough backbone to go out with Eileen made life among the fog people more tolerable.

  Fog people had never known any other area except the one they lived in, and couldn’t see beyond the poor visibility of its enclosure. He remembered the glamour of India, had lived in Sussex and Gloucestershire, and made a perfect escape, like an initiative test, from the prison camp at school where he had learned more in the scholastic line than any of them ever could. The fog around him had been blown away from early days, though it would be dangerous to let the fact go to his head. Even coming out of the library with three books in a carrier bag felt like a betrayal of his own existence.

  He didn’t see why he should try to hide his reading from Mrs Denman, however, and sat in her parlour with his face behind a book until bedtime at half past ten. She was old enough to realize that people could have many sides to themselves. ‘It’s good to see you doing summat else, Bert, except boozing with that low life Archie Bleasby, and going out with girls.’

  ‘It teks my mind off things.’

  ‘Frank says the same. He likes to get his head stuck in a book, as well.’

  Standing in his undershirt before the wardrobe mirror, he stiffened his muscles and felt them rock hard, while Ralph dampened a finger-end and turned the pages of Health and Efficiency, gloating over the full and naked bosoms. ‘I suppose you think you’re Charles Atlas?’

  ‘They’re more like muscles than them sparrows’ kneecaps yo’ve got above yer elbows.’

  Ralph gave what he thought was a superior and enigmatic smile. ‘You didn’t use that sort of language when you first came to live here.’

  ‘That were ten years ago, surry.’ Talking to Ralph, he could gauge what progress he was making in the factory lingo. ‘Or near enough, any road up.’

  ‘Only a few months, if I remember.’

  Herbert pulled the bedclothes up to his neck. ‘If you keep on reading books like that you’ll wank yourself into a bit o’ dandelion fluff.’ The factory was rich with such phrases, but let poncy Ralph think it one of his. ‘You should get Mary to do it for you. I’ll bet she’d be on’y too willin’.’

  ‘I don’t think she would at all.’

  Herbert’s tone was as gruff as could be managed. ‘Just get ’er in the bushes, and slip it in.’

  Ralph winced, and put the magazine under his pillow. ‘Mary’s waiting until we’re married, and I must say I respect her for it.’

  ‘If yer don’t gerrit in beforehand yer wain’t know whether she’s worth marryin’.’

  He pulled the light off, seeming dead set on sleep. ‘It’s easier said than done.’

  Bert scoffed. ‘It’s easier done than said, with my lovely bit o’ stuff.’

  ‘Yes, but Mary and I are in love.’

  ‘What difference does that mek?’ Herbert sensed that some part of Ralph relished his dirty talk, so paused and put a note of menace into the tone. ‘When are yer goin’ ter bring ’er ’ome to tea?’

  ‘Never. Not here. We go to the Kardomah, in town.’

  ‘Oh, do you? Where it’s all posh, eh? Don’t yer want me to meet ’er, then, and tell ’er what a lovely looking girl she is?’

  He felt Ralph shudder: ‘There is more select company in the world.’

  Herbert felt like punching him, but thought he’d rile him more by staying good humoured. ‘You’re stuck up, that’s your trouble. I’ll bet Mary knows it, as well. That’s why she won’t let you get yer ’and at them little pearly buttons between her legs.’ It was going too far, but at the same time he sounded halfway slighted, so as to make Ralph feel even more superior and wriggle further into the trap.

  ‘Ma told me you were reading a book the other night. I didn’t believe her, but she convinced me it was true.’

  Herbert sounded disgruntled. ‘I ain’t got no secrets. I just like getting lost in a good yarn. At least I don’t read them wanking books,’ though now and again he took one from Ralph’s pillow to study the nudity.

  ‘You’ve got a filthy mind.’

  ‘Well, it’s a mind anyway. What do yer do when you’ve finished wi’ ’em?’

  ‘Every so often Ma comes and takes them away. God knows what she does with them.’

  ‘Gives ’em to Frank, I expect.’ For the moment Herbert had no more to say, and then they were asleep.

  French letters were free gratis and for nothing because Archie’s brother Raymond worked for a dry-cleaning firm, handling officers’ uniforms from army and air force camps, and searching every pocket before throwing tunics and trousers into the bins. ‘He’s got a cardboard box full in his cupboard, and he don’t need ’em like we do.’ Archie lowered his voice in case a
nyone in the canteen should hear. ‘He hangs around the theatres to get his thrills, or he goes out with sailors. Dad ain’t said a dicky-bird to him, since one of the neighbours blabbed her mouth. I don’t care, though. He lets me tek as many frenchies as I like, and I need ’em to shag my Audrey. Raymond might be a nancy boy, but he’s still my brother, and it’s got nowt to do wi’ me where he shoves his dick.’

  ‘No, nor anybody else,’ Herbert said, for which understanding remark Archie gave him more french letters than even a priapic rattlesnake could use.

  ‘The foreman ’anded me five bob last week when I got ’im some. He’s having it off with that Mrs Jennings as works a drill. She’s sitting over there, eating her pudding. But don’t look now, you daft cunt!’

  He hadn’t thought to. ‘I’m not stupid.’

  ‘I know, but ’er ’usband’s sitting next to her.’

  ‘Thanks for the frenchies, though,’ Herbert said. ‘I’ll buy you a jar o’ Shippoe’s when we go down town.’

  ‘That’s all right. They’re free for yo’. Just keep banging yer tart, like I do mine.’

  Herbert leashed his smile into a straight face, the only way to be sure of not offending anybody. ‘How old was yer when yer first ’ad it?’ he asked at the door.

  ‘Well, I musta bin fourteen.’ Archie gave a marauder’s grin, and pulled up his collar against the rain. ‘I fucked this girl in Colwick Woods. We got down in the bushes. Lovely bit o’ stuff. What about yo’?’

  ‘About the same age, I reckon, only it was on the canal bank, up Wollaton. But it was more like she had me, because she was sixteen.’

  On Saturday morning Herbert looked out of the parlour window and noted the fine spun hair and neat white shorts of Ralph’s girl Mary leaning her bike against the wall before coming up the stairs to knock. They were going on a fortnight’s tour of the Lake District, and Herbert envied her evident affection for milksop Ralph who ran to the door and went back down the steps with her so that she wouldn’t have to come in and meet Bert the lout. He watched them walk their bikes along the street towards the station, and holding each other’s hands took so much space that a milk float almost brushed into them.

  Mrs Denman let the empty bed while Ralph was away to a Royal Marine on leave, who told everybody to call him Jacko. The first thing that came out of his kitbag was an unbroached bottle of South African sherry, which Jacko placed so conspicuously on the mantelshelf that it might as well have had a big label stuck on it saying DRINK ME.

  ‘Want a swig, matey?’

  Herbert was lying on his bed for a quick read before tea. ‘Ar, wouldn’t mind.’

  Jacko used both hands to pass the bottle, as if it was a head he’d decapitated in the scramble of battle, and Herbert, after a fair glug, returned it likewise to the proprietor, who had two bigger swallows without bothering to wipe the spout – which was noted as friendly – before putting it back on its altar.

  Herbert walked the street while it was still daylight and went into a pub for a drink. His working jacket had come from a pawnshop, and he wondered who had owned it before, whether it had been sold out of destitution, or by a man who had taken a sudden step up in life. Maybe he’d even kicked the bucket. He thought a good story could be written called ‘The Adventures of a Jacket’, but spat the thought out as he pushed tall and upright to the bar and called for a pint to chase down Jacko’s oversweet sherry.

  Individual voices were crushed under the singing, and such din, mostly from women and soldiers, cheered him after being at tea with lugubrious low-browed Jacko, who tackled Mrs Denman’s food as if she was trying to poison him. Though he normally enjoyed staying in a crowded pub, where no one could possibly care who he was, he suddenly sensed danger among such numbers, as if a banshee message was trying to tell him something. His pint only half gone, he turned and saw Dennis, one of Mrs Denman’s other lodgers, a tall and thin man with a Ronald Colman moustache.

  ‘Thought it was you,’ Dennis said. ‘Have one on me.’

  ‘Ain’t finished my own yet.’ He held it high. ‘Then I’ve got to go. I’ve a nobble on.’

  Dennis called for a whisky. ‘I’ve just put my woman on a 39 bus. She lives in Radford, and she’s got to get home before her husband comes in from his shift at the Raleigh. Sure you won’t have one?’

  ‘Thanks. Another time.’ A clatter of chairs sounded, and then a scream as the door all but burst its hinges. ‘Eh, fuckin’ ’ell,’ came a shout. ‘What’s all this, then?’

  Two six-foot policemen pushed with no messing through the crowd. Dennis turned away. ‘Watch yourself. It’s Popkess’s lads, come to pick somebody up.’

  They could be checking Identity Cards, and Herbert wasn’t yet eighteen. He’d be yanked off for being under age, and charged with having a forged one. Then he’d be sent to Borstal, though maybe he wasn’t as frightened as he should have been because one of the lads at work had been in Borstal and according to his account, the regime sounded more easy-going than the one at Herbert’s school.

  Speech and laughter corroded away, and the coppers got hold of a man a few paces along the bar, fixed him in a half-nelson when he tried to dispute what was said of him, and walked him out with his feet hardly touching the floorboards.

  The pub was soon back to singing and talking, but more relaxed than before, as if those unmolested by the police were glad they’d been spared – this time. ‘It was Alf Morley.’ Dennis knocked back another whisky. ‘Still, it could have been anybody. As they say in this town: every copper’s got your number on the underside of his left boot. Old Alf will be back in six months, though, mark my words. It’s just that he gets a bit light-fingered now and again. Careless, if you like.’

  Herbert now thought there was something to celebrate. ‘I’ll have that drink you mentioned, after all.’

  When he went to change out of his overalls Jacko pointed sternly at the bottle, indicating its contents down to the halfway mark. His eyes seemed closer in, and the trenchlines across his forehead made him look uglier, if that was possible. ‘Have you been helping yourself to my sherry?’

  Bert fastened his waistcoat buttons. ‘I don’t do things like that, shag.’

  Jacko was convinced by his hard look. ‘Well, somebody has, and no mistake.’

  Only one person could have taken a secret drink, unless Jacko, who maybe was still shell-shocked, had sleepwalked it down his gorge. ‘Too much like piss for me,’ Bert said.

  ‘Piss, you say?’ Jacko poured halfway up his Navy-issue mug. ‘Let’s drink most of it between us before any more goes.’ He held it out. ‘I’m sorry I asked if it was you, shipmate, but I had to make sure.’

  Unsociable to refuse, it went down like a rat on roller skates. Jacko drank enough to leave a quarter in the bottle. ‘It’ll help us to enjoy that stuff she puts on the table. What’s it called?’

  ‘Shepherd’s pie.’

  ‘Yes, I wouldn’t like to know what part of the poor fucking shepherd it was ripped out of. She must be Sweeney Todd’s widow.’ He had the saddest face Herbert had seen, and he had passed a few on the street these last few months. In Jacko’s case such an expression could turn mean rather than easy-going, as was proved when he put the catch on the door and with his back to it slowly undid his trouser buttons, keeping the bottle in his other hand. A glaze came over his eyes at such a malicious notion of justice. ‘There’s only one way to deal with this situation.’

  Herbert assumed that was how rum-poachers were dealt with in the marines, which made him glad he intended going in the army, as he watched Jacko piss the level of the bottle back to halfway before setting it again, none the worse for colour, in its place.

  Yet Herbert, being the age he was, had never seen anything so funny. He opened the window and let out such a bellow of laughter over the backyards that a turbaned woman pushing a kid in its cot stared as if he had gone clean off his rocker. The kid began yelling, and she hurried along in case the madman at the window decided to jump overboard a
nd splash her flipflops with his life’s blood.

  He drew his head in and thought maybe it wasn’t funny at all, as Jacko the Beast calmly laid all items of his kit out on the bed as if the CO would pat him on the back when he came marching through.

  To warn Mrs Denman of her peril could be to accuse her prematurely, because it may not have been her at all, though if not, who else? He wanted to describe the intriguing problem in a letter, but didn’t know who would be interested. His father, certainly not, nor his mother. They’d be disgusted, and who wouldn’t? Yet Barney the English master used to say that a sense of humour was the first sign of intelligence, and he should know, because nobody had ever seen him laugh.

  Herbert couldn’t pen the Sherry Saga to Dominic Jones either, without blowing the gaff on his town of refuge. If he’d still been at school he could have concocted a moral issue out of the case, though Barney might not have liked such an essay, saying he had made the yarn up, and that if he hadn’t it was not a fit topic for a composition, though the boys would have laughed over it for a few days.

  Feeling it a shame to waste such material he sat in Mrs Denman’s parlour on Sunday afternoon while she was in bed with Frank, and wrote a letter to himself, no less a story than when the head and tail had suffered the fate of Procrustes’ bed. He called Mrs Denman Mrs Penman, and related how he had seen Jacko, now Mungo, go through his motions with the bottle, as if to make the alcoholic whizzbang stronger, or maybe even to take care of some ailment he’d got. All he had to do now was put the story aside and wait for the real-life ending.

  Another way of keeping contact with the hidden part of himself was to call on Isaac, shed some of the person he had become in the factory with each step up the wooden staircase.

  He carried a loaf and two pounds of potatoes, a tin of condensed milk and a few apples from a corner shop, as well as a twenty-packet of Senior Service which Isaac liked. A bag of sugar for five bob came from one of the viewers whose father worked at the refining factory near Colwick.