Bert jumped to safety while Brian was distracted by the cat. The collapse was almost soundless. Hundredweights of rubble settled back into place, and Bert was out of range, rolling down the bank, shouts and laughter chasing around the high ceiling. Brian leapt clear, disappointed that Bert’s monument had been squashed out of existence. “That was good sport, our Brian”—Bert brushed ash from his clothes. “It didn’t get me, though.”
His hands were empty, black, and scratched, an unbleeding cut between the first and index fingers. “Where is it?” he demanded of Brian in a warlike way.
“Where’s what? What yer talking about?” Bert looked around, felt in pockets — but only knew the rake was lost when convulsed by a bout of swearing that shrunk his world to a black and thwarted brain. Brian looked at the flattened hill of refuse. It would take all night to delve: “I’ll help you.”
Bert could neither get over it nor act. “A rake like that,” he kept saying. “Would you believe it? A rake like that. Agger’s best ’un.”
“It’ll get shoved in the ovens with all that other stuff right enough.”
“I know it will.” There were tears between Bert’s curses. “I’m daft. I’m batchy. Nicked it and carried it right across the bleeding tips. For nowt. For bleeding nowt.”
Brian turned away, because four loud words hammered against the inside of his head — trying to get out. But he couldn’t say it, except to himself, and even then he felt treacherous, as well as foolish. “God paid him out,” they said. “God paid him out for nicking Agger’s best rake.” There ain’t no God. God is a bastard, his father had often roared in response to his mother’s taunt that God would pay him out as well. So maybe there is one. He scraped at the wall of refuse with a piece of stick while Bert sullenly loaded his sack.
And ’appen there ain’t, because where will poor owd Agger be tomorrow when he finds his rake missing? He’ll goo off ’is nut, ’aving to use old ’uns that break easy, and not getting such good stuff to sell. Maybe he’ll think I nicked it. I’d better not go back for a while in case he does. What a bleeding look-out! Where’ll I get wood for the fire? All through our Bert, the loony bastard. And then he went and lost it. I’m sorry for Agger, though, I am. I’m sorry for ’im. Out o’ wok and living off the tips. I don’t know. Nowt but an overcoat and an old pram to his name; and not even his posh rake any more. I’m fed up, I am. God-all-bleedin’-mighty, I’m fed up.
They climbed through the window, too morose to think of safety during the high drop on to the path. “I’m ’ungry,” Bert grumbled, trudging alone. “I ain’t ’ad a bit t’eat since that chocolate.”
A straight road led from Sann-eye to the bright flares of Wollaton Road. Lorries, cars, buses were crotchets along bars of music, drumrolls as they roared by in the distance, loud and frequent because people were going home from work. “I don’t suppose there’ll be any snap at our house,” Brian said, “and that’s a fact.”
“Nor at ourn, either.”
There was a smell of spring, a lightness of moss and grass and fresh nettles that stung their legs when they went too far into the hedge. Westwards the sky had reddened, as if a nightwatchman behind the clouds had lit his fire for the night, sitting there to keep out intruders from what paradise lay beyond; and a glow from it was cast against the sheer grey-plated walls of looming gasometers, making them seem taller as they walked by. Brian felt in his pocket: “I’ve still got that tanner Agger gen me for the wood, so we can get summat to eat. We’ll buy some Nelson Squares and crisps, and stuff our guts on that.”
“Marvellous,” Bert said, putting his arm around Brian’s shoulders, and they walked more quickly.
CHAPTER 6
Brian watched two pigs near the coal heap, nibbling black bits from under the dust. “Grandad, why are the pigs eating coal?”
Merton was mixing bran in a tub near the copperhouse door. “Because they’ve got nowt better to do, Nimrod.”
Brian thought he wasn’t getting the whole story. “Is it because they’re hungry?”
“Pigs is allus ’ungry.”
“But they eat bran, and taters wi’-their-jackets-on.” Merton stirred the soggy mess with a steel scoop. “Ay, they’d eat owt. They’d eat yo’, yer cheeky young bogger, if I served yer up in their trough!” He turned his back on questions and emptied a sack of potatoes into the tub. Brian saw Uncle George wheeling his bike up the path, a tall thin man wearing a cap, a wavy-haired god who worked at the Raleigh.
“Where yer bin, Uncle George?”
“To t’football match.”
“What for?” he asked, thinking: to play, or watch?
“Don’t ask questions,” George told him, putting his bike in the shed, “then you’ll ’ave no lies towd yer!”
With a laugh he followed him into the kitchen, where his grandmother was mixing flour for cakes and bread. “Did yer see owt on the placards?”
George bent to pull off his cycle clips, then looked up with them in his hand. “They’ve captured Addis Ababa. It looks like the Abyssinians is finished.”
His mother tut-tutted in sympathy. “Aren’t them Italians rotters? Fancy gassin’ poor black people as ’ave never done anybody any ’arm.”
“They reckon they were fightin’ wi’ umbrella sticks against machine-guns,” George said.
“Them Italians’ll suffer one day,” she prophesied, spreading jam over a flat sheet of paste. Brian listened with such interest that he unknowingly screwed a button off his shirt. “Now look what yer’ve done!” she cried. “Fancy piggling a button off like that.” He was given the jamjar and spoon, and after scraping sucking licking came the prelude to further questioning:
“Gra’ma?”
“What?”
“Who won the war?”
“Which one?”
He was puzzled. “The war.”
“The last war, do you mean?”
He stood, not knowing what to say, not wanting to be fobbed off with any war. “Was the last war the one where Uncle Oliver was killed?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“Well, who won that war then?”
“Nobody,” she said, taking the sticky jamjar from him. “Now go and wash your ’ands, there’s a good lad.” He walked to the sink, puzzled. For how could nobody win a war? Nobody ever answered his questions, he brooded. Nobody. Nobody wasn’t a word, it was a trick. There couldn’t be a war without somebody winning it. Somebody won; somebody lost. That’s how it was. And, washing hands and face from a bowl that his grandmother filled, he could hear them still talking about the war in Abyssinia.
Doddoe’s spirit passed to his children. Merton saw them once, a straggle-lined caravan coming over the Cherry Orchard, bearing misshapen apple-bosoms grown during a foray into someone’s garden. They kept well clear of his waving stick, knowing who he was and fearing him for that reason. The close-browed demon of bull-Doddoe seemed more desperate in his offspring due to the fact that they often had to find their own food, which meant putting themselves in the way of fences to be climbed, palings and barbed wire having good enough reason for being there: apples, potatoes, cabbages, or perhaps even more luxurious stores.
Sometimes a brace of them visited the Nook, hoping Merton was still at the pit. Mary would bring a jam pasty or piece of bread to the door, making them divide it fairly before they went away, which they did quickly, fearing the sudden expostulating wrath of Merton, regarded as more terrible than that of their father because they were less familiar with it.