I went. And I came back. I could only assume he was giving me more time than I’d expected or even hoped for. The one consolation of this cat-and-mouse game was that my bank balance continued to grow. I paid the cash for Upper Mayhem station, then took the bundle of deeds and a spare set of keys to Nottingham, where I stowed them in my grandmother’s chest. Whatever happened, they would be safely hidden there. Work had slackened off. Maybe there was no more gold left on the island, though this would not stop the Jack Leningrad machinery dead in its oils because they also imported it. As fast as I took it out, others brought it back. Profits were made both ways, and everyone was happy.
So I had a few days in Nottingham. My mother wouldn’t take time off work, but I was quite happy going around on my own. On a cold windy day I was muffled up in my overcoat, and warmed by a cigar as I walked along Wollaton Road. I’d been away a long time, but none of it was foreign to me. I was born here, and it swam in my blood. All other places were a swamp I had to stop myself sinking into, but here my feet were on solid ground — even though the pavements were uneven and there were often potholes in the roads. With a place like this I didn’t need a mother or father. Say what you like, the place where you were born and brought up is bread and butter for the rest of your life, no matter where you go or what you do. If you deny it, you stamp on your own feelings. If you don’t have it, you can’t see other places with the freshest of eyes. I speak from hindsight, and I speak from youth, and I speak from myth, and the trio will always meet when you’re feeling low and desolate. At such times, if you’re far away you know you can’t go back there, and don’t even want to, but to think of that solid indestructible land soothes your eyes for a few hours.
I walked along, my thoughts spinning as if in a milk-churn making cheese. Up the hill from the weighing house and Horse Trough and White Horse pub was the railway bridge, and Radford station whose booking hall we used to raid as kids for a handful of timetables to push through letterboxes or scatter in the streets as if they announced the coming of bloody revolution. We’d hide in the timber traps of the goods yard and run from the railwayman who didn’t give a damn whether we got away or not. If I hadn’t been a long time in London I don’t suppose I’d have had all these memories flopping up into my brain like wet fish. Beyond the station was the tobacco warehouse on one side, and the Midland pub on the other, then newer houses and the Crown pub on the corner of Western Boulevard. We used to swim in the old canal on hot days, and once I remember a boy of five falling off the lock gate and hitting the concrete edge fifteen feet below which stopped him going into the water and getting drowned but didn’t prevent him from getting a savage dose of concussion that sent him running after skylarks for the next few years, though he eventually recovered so well that he went to grammar school. And when I was fifteen I remember a mate and I went up the canal one dark night with Connie Ford who sat between us on a lock gate and wanked us till we shot into the moonless dark. I laughed through my cigar smoke. This was the only place where I could feel free of all the Moggerhangers and Leningrads of the world, where sentimentality was realistic, and memory meant safety, and familiarity strength. I coined my happy phrases, not taking much notice as to where I was going but knowing that all these thoughts were false and not worth a farthing.
I turned up Nuthall Road, and smelt the first undying smell of evening mist coming down from the collieries and Pennines. I caught it so strongly in the nostrils of my heart that it even warmed my penis and made it half stand up. I’d got something very bad, but it didn’t frighten me at all, just made me know I was still prone to it and therefore still alive.
It softened my soul for when I saw Claudine coming out of the supermarket and putting a basket of groceries on top of a baby sleeping in the pram. She saw me first, but even so I wouldn’t have backed away if I’d been the one to spot her. Her face turned pale, as I’m sure mine did as well. I looked at the baby, about a year old, pink, fat, and peaceful. ‘You might well stare,’ she said, ‘you rotten bastard.’
I smiled: ‘He looks as if he’ll thrive.’
‘It’s a she.’
I took another look: ‘Are you pleased with her?’
‘Of course I am. Alfie is as well.’
My mouth dropped: ‘Alfie?’
‘It’s his. We got married over it. Just in time as well.’
‘That lets me out, then. I was on my way to ask you to marry me. I’ve earned a lot of money in London, and I’ve spent the last three months fixing up a house for us both near Huntingborough, a marvellous place in the country that I paid cash for. It’s got a marvellous garden, full of flowers, just the sort I thought you’d like. I even got a job there, as manager of a car-hire firm. But nothing goes right with me. My life’s in ruins. Always was, and always damn-well will be.’
‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘You swine. I sincerely hope so. You’re rotten with lies. I hate your guts. Alfie’s worth fifty of you, and I’m glad it’s him I ended up with. At least he loves me and doesn’t only think of himself. As for you, I don’t care how well you’re doing in London, but you’re heading for a fall, and that’s a fact. I should think even that place will get too hot for you before long, if it isn’t already. I expect you’ve only come back here to get out of trouble there, if I know you. Or have you just come out of prison? You can stop looking at her, even if it is your baby. I only hope she’ll grow up with none of your rottenness in her, though thank God I’m pregnant again, and by Alfie this time.’
I lowered my head, tried to look affectionate: ‘I’m sorry you feel that way. I didn’t mean to make you bitter. I just thought we might be able to get together again. That’s what I came up specially for. I’ve always been in love with you, you know that, and still am, even though you’ve gone and done the dirty on me by getting married to Alfie. It wasn’t my fault if you couldn’t wait.’
‘Oh,’ she wailed, ‘how rotten can anybody get?’ She shouted, and women coming by laden with fish-fingers and Miracle Bread stared at us.
‘I can get a lot rottener,’ I said, ‘to someone who’s betrayed me.’ I hated saying all this, but couldn’t stop myself, wasn’t even enjoying it, didn’t know why I was doing it, at least not then. She went away sobbing, and even the kid began kicking up a row from under the basket of groceries.
I walked backwards, watching her go, grieved at what I had done to myself more than to her, because even though I knew how lousy I’d been, and regretted it to my core, she at least had a daughter and her husband. My gall felt as if about to burst. I was sweating, and walked with the wind behind me.
When Mother came home from work she told me to cheer up. ‘You’re always full of troubles and worries. Can’t you store up that experience till later on in life?’
I split my face into a smile: ‘Maybe I want to get it over with now.’
‘Don’t hurry it. There’s plenty of time.’
‘I’m worn out.’
‘At your age? Stop feeling sorry for yourself, that’s all I can say.’