Merton spat on the hot bars. “This’ll soon be your second home, I reckon. Would you like to live here, you young bogger?”
“Can he sleep with you two?” Mary said to Lydia and Vi, looking up from her paper.
“He can for me,” Lydia replied. “It’ll be a bit crowded, but I don’t mind.”
That was settled. “Thanks, gra’ma. Can I play in the parlour?”
“Yes, but don’t break the gramophone, will you?”
“No,” he said. “Uncle George?”
George’s forkful of egg was reprieved for another minute: “What?” he asked, looking up.
“Can I build a Goose Fair with your dominoes?”
“Don’t break ’em then, or I’ll cut your nose off.”
“And you wain’t look up to much wi’ no nose,” Merton put in. “Will he, Mary?”
The only time he’d seen anyone in the parlour was when his grandad went in there on Saturday night to change his boots before going out, and then to take them off for Sunday dinner after an hour on the razz-mattaz in one of the beer-offs at Radford Woodhouse. Merton would lean back in a chair, and if Brian happened to be there, call for him, saying: “Unlace my boots, you young bogger.” Then: “Now pull for all ye’r worth.” Sometimes the boots would come off slowly and Brian would stagger back only one pace; often, pulling and lugging and all but twisting, they would loosen suddenly and send him crashing against the wallpaper, with Merton grinning from the chair when Brian on the rebound resentfully called out that he was fawce bogger, and boxed the curtain out of the way so that he could go into the kitchen.
Sometimes when Merton sat at ease in his high-backed chair at the fire he imperiously held out one of his long heavily knuckled fingers and called to Brian: “Hey, Nimrod, pull this.”
Mary tut-tutted: “Stop your tricks.” George and Lydia watched, smirking — or perhaps would turn away and try not to watch. Brian suspected a trick but pulled hard and strong at the finger anyway, and Merton would let out a long unmistakable splintering fart as he did so, a performance that brought the house down, and caused Brian to remark: “You dirty bogger,” and walk off.
When Merton was at the pit, or otherwise occupied around garden or toolshed, Brian was alone in the beamed parlour playing with Uncle George’s dominoes on the polished mahogany table. The dresser was covered with interesting untouchables: curios from Skegness and Cleethorpes, a porcelain war-memorial, sea-shells, a ship in a bottle. On a stand blocking the front door was an enormous horn that played tunes when the gramophone handle was turned two dozen times. A cracked voice — impossible to say whether man’s or woman’s — sometimes sang:
“O my darling Nellie Gray
They have taken her away
And I’ll never see
My darling any more.…”
And when he asked his grandmother who Nellie Gray was, she said she supposed it was some woman or other; and when he asked Uncle George, he was told it was a horse, a grey horse; so he saw a woman in a grey dress with a horse’s head whenever the maundering and cracked voice wove an arabesque through the cluttered room.
Above the mantelpiece hung a huge picture of a shy narrow-faced long-haired girl holding a posy that a waistcoated muffle-necked youth by her side had given her. They were sweethearts, he said to himself, and when his grandmother dusted the parlour he pointed to the picture: “Gra’ma, was that you and grandad?” “No,” she answered. “Who is it then?” “I don’t know.” But she must be having him on, for who else could it be but his gra’ma and grandad? Under the painting two lines were written, the last words of both sounding similar but for the first letter of them:
If you love me as I love you,
Nothing will ever part us two —
which he chanted to the click of falling dominoes, or copied on the white paper bordering indecipherable newsprint, or sang to the tune of Nellie Gray when the whining voice of the man or woman got on his nerves, building his Goose Fairs until all light had been drained into the garden and killed by some monster there, when he ran into the oil-lamped kitchen because darkness made him afraid.
A double-barrelled shotgun slung over his shoulder, Merton walked up the garden path and cut through a gap in the hedge, followed by Brian shouldering a stick, and Gyp the dog. Silently through a cornfield, they climbed a stile into a meadow, Gyp now picking a fight with stones that Brian ducked-and-draked for it over the grass. Brian stepped behind the tall upright figure of a grandad carrying a gun directly there was a feeling of birds in the blue sky, ink blots swooping to a rise in front.
Merton lifted the gun, and the persisting tune of Nellie Gray died on Brian’s lips. There was a roar, a startling explosion that imperceptibly moved the right shoulder above, and looking from behind the legs, he saw birds falling towards grass on either side of a stream.
“Go on!” Merton shouted to Gyp. He smoked his pipe, waited for the dog to lay the limp and bleeding thrushes at his feet. “Put ’em in the bag, Nimrod,” he said, “then I’ll let yer ’ev one for your supper.” Blood and feathers came off on to Brian’s hands, and he was startled by another double-crash of the busy quick-firing gun.
Merton’s hand made an eaving across his forehead. Brian saw a controlling skyscraper in halfway motion between a wave and a point, shouting: “Goo after ’em, Gyp”—as if each word were shot out by the downward bash of a piston somewhere in his chest.
Brian ran, competing with Gyp at finding peppered half-stripped birds, licking blood from fingers as he peered under a bush for what the dog might have missed. Who was Nellie Gray, grandad? (His grandad was the one he hadn’t asked, but he knew he wouldn’t get a straight answer, so didn’t bother.) “Get down flat,” he was told, “flat as a pancake, Nimrod.” And just as a nettle stung the end of his nose, another shell exploded a hundred feet above, and before he received the order to stand up, three more thrushes slapped his neck and legs. He punched the dog and took them for his own pocket, making his way through the wheat to where his grandad was lighting another pipe.
Brian and Gyp followed the swinging bird-bag to the house. “Thrush-pudding for supper,” Merton laughed, pipe-smoke drifting over them, “wi’ custard.”
“Will they be sweet then, grandad?”
“Ay, like new-born cabbages.” Merton waited, pushed the dog in front with his boot, and Brian with his open hand.
“Them’s not sweet,” he contested, looking round.
“Go on, you young bogger, you’ll be tellin’ me as rhubarb’s not sour next.” He gave a satisfied grunt as he pushed open the door. Brian pummelled Gyp on the cinder path outside, getting his ears chewed in return for being a bully and not letting the dog enjoy its own world. It freed itself, but stood by him waiting to be attacked again, tongue falling so far down between two molars that he could have tugged it like a girl’s plait at school.
“Gyp! Here, Gyp!” Merton called, appearing at the door with a bone. A fist crept to its face, then withdrew, and it waited for another knuckle-bound assault. (“Gyp! Gyp!”) “Go on,” Brian said, “grandad’s calling you.” The dog’s eyes said: If I turn you’ll jump on me. What do you think I am? When Merton called again it still didn’t run for the bone, and the next thing Brian knew was Merton striding towards them with a stick. “I’ll teach the bloody dog to come when I tell it.”