‘Can’t we share your room, and I’ll pay half? What do I need one for myself for?’
‘You can for me.’
The floor was better than a bed too short to stretch on. He suffered now and again with twinges of cramp, as did many blacksmiths because of too much sweating, and even large intakes of salt didn’t help. ‘We’ll go, after this,’ George said, on his second jar. ‘I’ve got to save the pence so’s I can send a florin or two back to Sarah. Six young ‘uns are a lot to feed. Did you see ’em before you left?’
‘They were in bed when I called. Except Sarah. She was at the washtub.’ At forty she looked an old woman. No man should leave his wife after they were married. ‘She wondered when you’d be coming home.’
‘I’ll send another money order, then she can stop wondering.’
‘It’s a hard life for her.’
George’s Adam’s apple worked down the last drop of ale. ‘It is for me, as well.’
Nothing more to be said, Ernest followed him to the door. Clouds rushed from somewhere and brought a drift of rain, but the air was fresh and sweet, a few stars showing as they tramped along the rough clinker-covered road, potholed and worn from the traffic of drays and wagons. You had to take care where you put your feet. Ernest filled one of the holes with a long piss. Pictures closed in from the day’s trip and his encounter with Minnie, her forlorn goodlooking features less clear now than those he had left her with, the memory of her warm arms such that cheeky John Thomas chafed at his trousers.
Lights showed faintly from farms and cottages on the hillsides, trains whistling from all directions. Dimly-lamped drovers’ carts trundled towards the red and coppery sky.
‘It’s always busy round here.’ George didn’t find it easy to keep up with Ernest who, descending to a crossroads, noted the post office. A left turn beyond a narrow river took them by another public house into a street of raw houses, and faint odours of iron and sulphur.
George’s room was small but neat, his best suit covered in brown paper on the back of the door, shaving materials laid out on the fireplace shelf before an oval mirror with a brown stain in the middle. Seeing the single bed, Ernest didn’t have to wonder where he would sleep, though unsure that any man could do so with the clink of bottles, shrieks, and breaks into song from next door. ‘Is somebody getting married? Or are they just back from a funeral?’
‘It’s like that often.’ George put a match to the fire laid before setting out for work that morning, and took off his jacket and belt. ‘But you can’t tell ’em to be quiet. They’re Bible-backed Taffies, and like a drink now and again. It’s live and let live around here.’ He took a loaf and two plates from a cupboard on the wall. ‘The bread’s a bit hard, but it’ll have to do. The bacon’s good, though, and there’s a bottle of ale each. A Hebrew pedlar comes from Newport, so I got a couple of penny bloaters. He’s an obliging chap. Anything else you want and he’ll bring it up on his cart.’
They sat on the bed and, with the remains of what their mother had packed, ate fish, meat, and cheese by the light of a candle in front of the mirror. An argument from next door, as if the walls were made of cardboard, caused Ernest to look up. ‘People have got to sleep after their work.’
‘It’s nothing to do with us,’ George told him. ‘Work is what I want to talk to you about. If you’re lucky you’ll earn a guinea a week, maybe more at times. We get farmers’ trade, and the odd thing or two from the pit or railway. If you aren’t lucky you might draw less than a quid, but you’ll be better off than at home. Our work’s got a good reputation, and people know where to come.’
Ernest was willing to work if he could put the odd shilling by for when he got back to Nottingham. ‘Everything’s arranged, then?’
‘As much as I can make it. I’m not God. Anyway, we’d better look to our sleep. We need to be up by five.’
Ernest took the suit from his bag and smoothed out the creases, hanging it behind George’s on the door. The inability to hear his brother’s words may have been no bad thing at times, but was not to be tolerated now.
George noted the direction of his gaze. ‘You might have the key to the door at home, but you don’t have it here, so leave them alone. They’ll be done in an hour. It don’t bother me. I can sleep through anything.’
A man’s head slamming against the party wall was followed by a cascade of cheering. ‘Doesn’t the landlady put in a word?’
‘She daren’t, I think.’
He took off his neckcloth and, before George could tell him not to be such a fool, set off across the landing. His shins caught a large iron bucket which, going by the stink, was for use should anyone feel a call in the night. Punching the door open, he bent slightly to get through.
Such a pack of scruffy dwarfs he had never seen. He with the banged head sat on a box, pressing his temples as if to hold in whatever bit of brain lay between. Another man with uptilted bottle was getting rid of the beer quite nicely, while a third who was lighting his pipe by the fireplace asked what Ernest interpreted to be: ‘What might you want?’
‘I’m from next door.’ He spoke in as reasonable a voice as could be mustered. ‘We’ve got to be up before five, and want to get some sleep.’ He stood a moment, to be sure his message was understood. ‘So I’d be obliged if you’d make less noise.’
Thinking he could safely turn, a bottle hit the lintel by his head with the force of a shotgun. Thanking God they were half-drunk, he faced them again. ‘Any more of that, and I’ll lay you all out.’ He was ready, but no one came for him. ‘All I ask is that you keep a bit quieter.’
‘You’d better sleep in your clothes,’ George said when he closed the door. ‘It gets cold around here, even in May. There’s a bit of blood on your cheek.’
‘It’ll dry.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t have it all your own way.’ George sometimes disliked the sort of person his brother had turned into, who at times seemed reckless and needed watching. He was young, and just didn’t think, though whether he would ever be capable of that he wouldn’t like to prophesy. ‘It’s all right threatening violence but you’ve got to think well beforehand, and not do it out of temper.’
Ernest lay on the floor, a blanket over him, and his folded bag for a pillow. ‘I did think about it, but I think quick.’
George didn’t want to feel responsible for what scrapes Ernest got into in Wales, but knew that brothers must never stop caring for each other.
They traipsed through a deep and ghostly mist between hedgerows. ‘I forgot to tell you,’ George said. ‘I’ve got a chap coming from the village today who’s going to take a photograph of me at the forge. I fancy getting something back to Sarah showing me earning my bread. Otherwise she might think I’m living the life of Riley.’
‘How much will it cost?’
‘Only six-and-a-tanner, because he’s glad to do it for that price. He likes taking photos of blacksmiths. Don’t ask why. He wanted to know if there was a tree outside, and when I told him there wasn’t he looked a bit put out, but then said he’d do it, just the same. He only hopes it won’t rain, in case his camera gets wet.’
A thin man of middle height, a cigarette under his clipped moustache, ash flaking into the greying Vandyke beard, Ashton gaffered them into place like a sergeant-major. Ernest was surprised at the latitude allowed to such a shortarse, till the picture began to compose around George as the star. Then Ashton had to wait till a placid carthorse was brought to be shod, and George took the hoof firmly between his legs. Sleeves rolled up, he was told to look towards the camera, as was everyone in the scene, head tilted uncomfortably to show full face.