She looked at me narrowly.
'But you made progress?'
'Yes. Do you want the detail of it?'
'No,' she said, walking over to the larder and pulling back the thin curtain that hung there.
'I've been quite housewifely over the past two days,' she said.
There were some new items in the larder: in pride of place were about a dozen plums and four tins of pineapple rings. The wife explained that the plums were all for Harry. A vegetarian diet was recommended for a weak chest. Everything that cost money was recommended for it
'As for the pineapple,' said the wife, 'I thought we'd have it on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the day after Boxing Day. What do you think of that as a plan?'
'I would like them with custard,' I said.
She ignored that (for she couldn't make custard, and refused ever to learn), saying instead, 'I'm dead set on making jam roly-poly.'
I pictured her about it. She would start enthusiastic, and then turn silent. It was best to be out of doors when the wife cooked. She was looking at me.
'You're all in, our Jim. You'll have to go to bed.'
'I don't think I'll get off,' I said. 'I've too much on my mind.'
She was still smiling. She had no inkling that I might be out of a job by the end of tomorrow.
'I'll bring you up a bottle of beer if you like.'
'I'll tell you what - I haven't had a fuck for a little while,' I said.
'I should think not,' said the wife. 'You've been in Scotland for a little while.'
She stepped back and leant against the cold kitchen wall, saying, 'What were the women like up there?'
'I didn't really see any women.'
'That is a very good answer,' she said, grinning again.
I followed her upstairs. On the bed, I got the wife's dress up. She wasn't going to take it off because she had to take some letters across the road to the post office for the two o'clock collection ... but it did come off eventually, and we were in the middle of a rather hot tangle, with the church clock striking two, when I asked:
'Now, are your boots upstairs or downstairs? The elastic-sided ones, I mean?'
'Why on earth do you ask?' said the wife, stopping what she was about.
'Well
'They're by the stove, I think. I was hoping you'd have a go at them with Melton's cream.' 'Oh.'
'I was going to wait until Christmas Eve,' I said, '. . . only I thought of Uncle Roy, who would sort of make Christmas come early. About a week before, he'd come over from Stafford with a couple of pounds' weight of sugar balls, you know, and it struck me that—'
'Sugar what?' said the wife.
'Sugar balls,' I said.
'But what have they got to do with boots?'
A sudden reversal occurred at that moment, so that she was looking down at me as she asked:
'What have they got to do with anything?'
I couldn't come out with it.
'Nothing,' I said. 'Nothing at all - let's just carry on.'
And we did; and afterwards, when she was getting dressed, the wife said, 'I'm going to see Lillian this afternoon. I'm going to ask if you can wear Peter's suit for the interview. He's about your size.'
'Not the suit he digs graves in?' I said.
The wife was backing towards me with her hair pulled up. As I fastened the hooks of her dress, she said, 'Peter Backhouse has three suits. One for digging graves, one for attending the important funerals and one for getting drunk in the Fortune of War. The point is that the mourning suit is of quite good broadcloth, and I think you should wear it on Friday.'
If she wanted me to wear it, I would wear it. It wouldn't matter what I thought or what Peter Backhouse thought. Lillian Backhouse would go along with the wife's scheme; she would do anything for Lydia and vice versa. They were both New Women, and that sort came with an uncommon amount of push. The wife was now 'doing up' the bedroom, and the sound of rain beyond the window was fainter, so that I couldn't tell whether it was falling from the sky, or just trickling away in the gutters.
Finding a comfortable position for sleep, I said, 'You can't really have jam roly-poly without custard, you know.'
'Custard needs lemons and we haven't got any.'
'Why not?'
'Because I didn't choose to buy any.'
'I don't see what you have against custard.'
'Have you never tasted a jam roly-poly so good that it didn't need to be drowned in pints of the flipping stuff?'
'No.'
'Well then, I feel very sorry for you, I really do.'
But she really did not.
'If the rain stops,' the wife said as she was quitting the bedroom, 'we'll go for a walk with Harry after school. We're to give him a turn in the fresh air whenever possible.'
Lydia woke me at four, by which time the rain had stopped.
Harry was not a bit exhausted by his first day at school in a long while, and once he'd had his cup of beef tea, a bit of bread and cheese and one of the plums (which was more than he'd eaten in weeks), he was keen to walk along the river a little way for a look at the swing bridge that brought the London expresses over Naburn locks and into York.
It was a beautiful blue evening, if cold. We walked along the river towards the little village of Naburn, which was a strange business. The way took you through dripping trees, across a couple of silent fields ... and then you struck the huge iron bridge with signals riding above and flashing lights. As we stood alongside it, an unruly goods came over - mixed cargo, going on for ever. It was as if a whole factory had been dismantled and entrained.
'What do you reckon to that?' I asked Harry.
'It's eeenormous,' he said.
He was sitting on my shoulders and kicking my chest - which hurt. We were about to turn around and go home, when the high signals shifted.
'Eh up,' I said, 'another one's coming.'
It was a big engine that brought the carriages - the biggest of the lot. I could scarcely credit it, but it was a V Class Atlantic that was coming riding over the locks of the Ouse.
'Now you don't normally expect to see that on a London run,' I shouted up to Harry, as the thing came crashing over. 'It's called the Gateshead Infant!'
'Why, our dad?'
'It's called "Gateshead" because it was shopped out of Gateshead, and "Infant" ... well, because it's big.'
'Are you trying to confuse the boy?' said the wife.
'What do you think, Harry?' I shouted up, when the last of the carriages and the brake van had finally gone over.
No answer.
'Better than an aeroplane any day, wouldn't you say?' I craned around to see his face, and I could tell he was thinking it over. The question, like many another just then, was rather in the balance.
Chapter Thirty-three
The next morning I walked through to see the Chief, who waved at me to sit down, which might have been good or bad. His office was full of cigar smoke. The great shield his team had won in the shooting match was propped on the mantelpiece, which was barely wide enough for it.
'What do you think this place is?' said the Chief, with the cigar still in his mouth. 'A bloody boxing ring?'