I felt in such a good state of mind that I showed the man over the house as if I’d spent my childhood there, and even as if my parents had grown up in it, but that now I wanted to sell it, though only with the most piercing regret, because my sweetheart lived in the delectable countryside, and I was gallant and loving enough to go and live there when we married each other. The story would have been as full of holes as the spout end of a watering-can, so I let it die a silent, undignified death.
On the way back I didn’t speak, so that the client could make up his mind whether or not he wanted the house, my rhapsodies either to sink in or push him away from it for good. The fact was I had thoughts of my own, wondering when Wainfleet was going to come into the office and make his offer for Clegg’s house at Farnsfield. It should already have been done, and I rehearsed an appreciative smile for when I came face to face with that hundred pounds Clegg had promised. A momentary uncertainty flitted into me now and again, and I cursed as I nearly had my lamp taken off by a delivery van moving too quickly out from the kerb.
It was expected of me that as soon as I left work I should make my way up by the post office and meet Claudine outside the Elite cinema, the point she would reach after leaving her place at the same time. It was an easy and pleasant rendezvous to keep, for a while. We would kiss and, if the sky was dry, walk up Talbot Street, leaving the city centre behind and below. Sometimes we would go by the Ropewalk, stopping to look over the houses of the park and, on a clear day, gaze at the smoky valley of the Trent.
On one such evening, when the nights of autumn were drawing in, I felt the urge to get away from Claudine and go back home. This sensation of wanting to make a sudden escape confused me, because it was only part of my real desire at that moment, the other half of which was to go with Claudine and make love in her house. Our arms were fast and affectionately locked as we walked, and she was telling me some woe-tale of how the tyrant of a manageress at her office was threatening to make them work late as from next week if they didn’t get through their day’s quota by knocking-off time — or some such thing I was meant to drink in as if I were her twin sister. But I felt a definite twinge of panic drawing me towards my home, and when we reached Canning Circus I said: ‘Look, sweetheart, I’ll put you on a bus here. I’ve got to go.’
It was the simplest wish in the world, but she suspected a trick: ‘Where are you going?’
‘I’ve got to go home,’ I told her.
Something was frightening me, but it only seemed to her as if I was up to no good: ‘Why, what’s the matter, then?’
I was foolish enough to be honest: ‘I don’t know, duck. I’ve just got to get home’ — mad at myself for not knowing what was ratting at me.
‘You’re going to see somebody else, aren’t you? Aren’t you?’
I should have admitted that I was, in order to get away quickly, but I couldn’t lie at that moment, because I was too disturbed, and I hated being like that, as if I were letting myself down at not being able to lie. ‘Come home with me,’ I said, ‘then you’ll see. We’ll go on to your house after.’
But she wouldn’t do this. I’d asked her before to come to where I lived, but she always made up some excuse not to, the truth being that having spent most of her life on an open-housing estate she was afraid of the dark cobbled streets of Old Radford. I might just as well not have spoken.
‘All right,’ I said, ‘let’s go on to your place. I won’t go home.’ In any case, the fear had left me, and I no longer felt the great alarm of a few minutes before. But every tack and move was the wrong one, because she now thought I’d really tried some deception on her, and that I’d only backed down when she had opposed it so firmly. All the way to Aspley she worried at me and wouldn’t let go, trying to find out why I’d wanted to go off without her all of a sudden. The walk worked it out of her, yet it poisoned the whole evening so that neither of us enjoyed it. Even the kisses were tasteless, though at the last one outside her back door we both said how much we loved each other. She insisted on walking me to the bus stop, as proof of her love, but I knew it was because she wanted to make sure that I got on the right one, and didn’t go off to see some other girl, even at that late hour.
When I arrived home my mother was at the table, still wearing her coat. There was a look of desolation on her face I’d never seen before.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, sitting opposite without even bothering to take my mac off. She didn’t answer, so I just looked, and tried to guess. The anguished premonition of my stroll through the Ropewalk with Claudine came back to me, and I held her hand.
She drew it away: ‘My father’s dead.’
As soon as I knew what it was my heart and stomach became normal again. My sense of wanting to die on the spot vanished absolutely and did not come back. ‘Grandad?’ She said nothing. ‘What happened?’
‘Had a heart attack at half past five. The police came and told me when I got home from work.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Grandma’s. At Beeston. She’s breaking her heart. I nearly fainted when I saw him.’ She didn’t say anything for a few minutes. ‘They’ll be taking him to Callender’s funeral parlour tomorrow.’
I got up and put the kettle on: ‘If you’re going there in the morning I’ll go with you,’ I said, slashing three big spoons of tea into the pot.
‘All right. You might be a help to us.’
‘When are they burying him?’
‘On Thursday.’
I felt fine, wonderful, and saw Grandad stretched out in the parlour next morning before they carted him away. He was sixty-five (or had been) and I considered he’d had a good life to reach such an age. From being a big man he now seemed like a doll, as if I could lift him up and sit him on my knee, speak for him like a ventriloquist. But his sternness was having none of it. He lay like an age-old soldier in a horizontal tailor-made sentrybox, but ready to get up at the split-fart of an Army bugle, or the smell of the rag they used to wipe up spilt beer on the bar with. His eyes were closed, so that he couldn’t see where he was going, and though it looked as if some dreams might still be tail-ending behind his life, I knew he was surely as dead as I would ever see anyone and that God’s heaven was not for the likes of him or me. We were both of us cut out for finer stuff than God’s own heaven. I held his cold hand, hoping that I too would get the royal privilege of stepping into the be-all and end-all as soon as my heart stopped and the lights went out. I tweaked his ice-cold nose, kissed him on the stone forehead, and went out, to have Grandma throw her soft arms around me and wet my silk shirt through to the skin. She sobbed that I was just like him, and that no doubt I’d be as good as he ever was when I grew up. My mother was also weeping, but I thought: what the hell he lived to be old, and that should be enough for any man unless eaten up with the greatest greed of the world. They thought I had no heart and almost drove me away, till Grandma in all her soft wisdom said I was too young to let it tear me up, and that taking it like I did was the only way to show my grief.
And who knew that she wasn’t right? Because in this frame of mind I did various useful errands connected with Grandad’s sudden drop-out. There were payments to make and collect, various people to tell, as well as odd messages to carry to those who might come to the funeral, food to order for the party afterwards.