‘I’m not bloody-well feeling sorry for myself,’ I snapped.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m glad you’re showing a bit of spirit at last. Eat your steak and chips before it gets cold.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry? That’s new, coming from you. Still it’s a start. A thin one though.’
‘It’s all I can do at the moment,’ I said with my mouth full. She was reading the newspaper, and I went on eating.
Albert was working late, couldn’t come out with us, so we got on a thirty-nine and went down town to sit a few hours in Yate’s wine lodge. I put her on to port, while I stuck to brandy. ‘Are you and Albert really going to get married?’
She laughed: ‘Are you jealous?’
‘No, I’m not. I’ve got enough of that on my plate. It’s just that life’s so long.’
‘A good job it is,’ she said, ‘or we’d all be dead.’ She looked young enough for any devil’s work, with her perm that had come out well, and her lipstick that drew your eyes to it and away from the few wrinkles at the corners of her temples. ‘I’m not even too old to have another kid,’ she grinned, ‘if I put my mind to it.’
This remark gave me a funny feeling which, if it came about, and I couldn’t believe it would, showed me with a little brother playing uncle to any newborn bastard I might have of my own. ‘Life’s not only long,’ I said, ‘it’s a stew.’
‘As long as it’s tasty, and doesn’t get cold on the hearth. I don’t know, Michael, you’re a funny one. Sometimes I think you’re just like your father — when I remember him.’
I poured my brandy down, but it tasted like soda water: ‘You told me I never had a father,’ regretting such a stupid phrase when she replied: ‘Who do you think you are, Jesus Christ? I’ll get a cross for you from Littlewoods if you like, or maybe I’ll rent one for three days.’
‘Stop joking, can’t you?’
‘I’m in that sort of mood. Get me another port, duck.’
I called the waiter, couldn’t speak till he’d brought the drinks and I’d annihilated my brandy and asked for another. ‘You’ll go corky inside,’ she said. ‘He used to knock them back like that. And he used to buy me port. Funny. The cheeky bastard said he thought all working-class women liked port, and he was right, because I did, anyway. We even came to this place, when there was any booze, and staggered away in the blackout at closing-time. Maybe port’s good for the memory. He was younger than me, though I was young enough, God knows. A young sergeant, though he spoke like an officer. Oh, we had a good time, till he got posted somewhere else. He even wrote me a letter or two, then they stopped after I’d told him I was pregnant. I was so mad I burnt the letters and a photo.’
I felt white and avid: ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me this before?’
‘Didn’t think to, I suppose. You know me: memory like a sieve. He wasn’t what you’d call good-looking, but he was lively, and had an educated way of talking — though he used the most terrible language — awful, mixed it with everything he said.’
‘Go on. Go on.’
‘Let me get my breath, then. I don’t often talk about old times.’
‘You’re telling me,’ I said. ‘Once every twenty years, I suppose.’
‘Don’t get like that with me, or I’ll throw this drink up your nose.’
‘All right, Ma. Let’s have a good time. It’s a long while since I got drunk.’
‘You’re not very like him, though. There’s too much of me in your face. He had the funniest shape of head, and even though he was only twenty he was already going bald. But what a marvellous man he was, because in spite of his flash talk he was very gentle at times, almost shy, and maybe that’s what I liked most about him. He practically lived with me for a month, thought it a great thrill to be in a house like ours, but he’d always come with a bottle of whisky to make himself really at home. We had some good times between us. I could earn good money because of the war, and it was easy to wangle a house of my own, especially with Gilbert’s help. He forged anything. Used to get a bus from his camp and make straight for the house. Sometimes he’d wait for me outside the factory, and I remember how happy this made me, though I never told him so. He’d laugh and say I was sentimental, rubbing it into my face like broken glass, so that I’d get into a paddy and throw pots around if he didn’t stop. He often liked that sort of thing, and just sat there goading me. He was a real devil when he got started, though I was as bad. But we had some times together. It seemed to go on for ages, and now it seems like no time at all. I can’t always remember it, even. He didn’t get drunk, he just got dangerous, though at the sound of a cup smashing he’d smile and be happy again.
‘I always missed when I threw things, but he liked the sound. Some people are funny. I used to call him Blasted Blaskin, and this would make him laugh more than anything. I can’t tell you all the things we got up to, you being my son. What are you looking so white for? I thought you could take your drink?’
I felt the slab of concrete in my stomach lifting up, as if it were suddenly trying to get out of my mouth. ‘I’ve got to get into the air,’ I said, standing. ‘It’s killing in here.’
‘You do look bloody pale,’ she said, taking my arm. ‘What’s got into you?’
The concrete flagstone lifted: ‘Come on, let’s go.’
‘Oh, all bloody right then.’
We went down the stairs and the fresh air pulled me round a bit. She was flummoxed, as if I might be going odd in the head and she had no idea what was expected of her, no cups or glasses being handy to throw at me.
We walked into Slab Square, the illuminated front of the town hall looking so tall I hoped it was about to fall flat on its face and bury us. That cock-headed tripehound seemed not to have altered in all his waking life, still on a mad career from one dripping slit to another. He threw up his women left and right and centre, and just as quickly others came back to him, flocking towards the same unwholesome fate. He was a bastard right enough, a real travelling trickster if ever there was one, and if my mother’s memory served her right, this sky-licker, this grub who rubbed his prick along the bare earth so that wheat and sunflowers shot up in abundance and gave him a great and lazy life, was my one and only unsuspecting father.
We made for the Eight Bells, and managed to get a seat: ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I know this bloke you’ve told me about, and from your description of him he hasn’t altered a bit.’
‘Oh, dear,’ she said. ‘Don’t go on about it or I shall begin to get upset. It’s so long ago, but now you’ve brought it all back I’m getting sentimental. You make me feel as though I’m still in love with him, the rotten swine. I was, for years and years. When I was with another chap I used to make believe he was Gilbert, to try and bring him back to me. Not that it was much good, but it was a game that helped me to bear it. Ah, well, it’s more than twenty years, but it’s only a minute when you lost somebody you thought a lot of. I told myself he’d been sent to Egypt and got killed. I lived with that, till the war was over and I forgot him. But you never forget. For a woman to lose a man she loves is only one bit less than losing a kid.’
I was almost in tears, not only from shock and brandy, but from realizing what a hard life she’d had, all because of Gilbert Blaskin, and of having me without being married, a fact that didn’t let her forget the man who gave me to her, and at the same time made if difficult if not impossible for her to get somebody else. I thought how the world was a million times harder on women than men. Blaskin had gone his own sweet screwing way, though from what I knew he’d been miserable, except that he hadn’t really suffered in the way my mother had because he’d never had the honour and torment to really fall in love. To bring her back to life I told her a little of what I knew about him, just to give him reality and, if possible, rob him a little in her mind of the sentimental glory she attached to him. ‘I know it was only a dream,’ she said, ‘and that if we’d had much more time together we’d have started to drive each other round the bend and halfway up the bloody zig-zags.’