‘But to tell you the truth, mam, I was too tired to talk politics after I’d done a hard day’s graft, and then she started to ask questions, and would get ratty after a while when she began to see that I couldn’t answer what she wanted to know. She asked me all sorts of things, about my bringing up, about my dad, about all the neighbours in the terrace, but I could never tell her much, anyway, not what she wanted to know, and that started a bit of trouble. At first she packed my lunches and dinners and there was always a nice hot tea and some clothes to change into waiting for me when I came home, but later on she wanted me to have a bath every night, and that caused a bit of trouble because I was too tired to have a bath and often I was too fagged out even to change my clothes. I wanted to sit in my overalls listening to the wireless and reading the paper in peace. Once when I was reading the paper and she was getting mad because I couldn’t get my eyes off the football results she put a match to the bottom of the paper and I didn’t know about it till the flames almost came into my face. I got a fright, I can tell you, because I thought we were still happy then. And she made a joke about it, and even went out to buy me another newspaper, so I thought it was all right and that it was only a rum joke she’d played. But not long after that when I’d got the racing on the wireless she said she couldn’t stand the noise and that I should listen to something better, so she pulled the plug out and wouldn’t put it back.
‘Yes, she did very well by me at first, that I will say, just like you, mam, but then she grew tired of it all, and started to read books all day, and there’d be nowt on the table at tea time when I came home dead to the wide except a packet of fags and a bag of toffees. She was all loving to me at first, but then she got sarcastic and said she couldn’t stand the sight of me. “Here comes the noble savage,” she called out when I came home, and used longer words I didn’t know the meaning of when I asked her where my tea was. “Get it yourself,” she said, and one day when I picked up one of her toffees from the table she threw the poker at me. I said I was hungry, but she just told me: “Well, if you are, then crawl under the table to me and I’ll give you something.” Honest, mam, I can’t tell you one half of what went on, because you wouldn’t want to hear it.’
(Not much, I thought. I could see her as large as life licking her chops.)
‘Tell me it all, my lad,’ she said. ‘Get it off your chest. I can see you’ve had a lot to put up with.’
‘I did and all,’ he said. ‘The names she called me, mam. It made my hair stand on end. I never thought she was that sort, but I soon found out. She used to sit in front of the fire with nothing on, and when I said that she should get dressed in case a neighbour knocked at the door, she said she was only warming her meal-ticket that the noble savage had given her, and then she’d laugh, mam, in a way that made me so’s I couldn’t move. I had to get out when she carried on like that because I knew that if I stayed in she’d throw something and do damage.
‘I don’t know where she is now. She packed up and took her things, saying she never wanted to see me again, that I could chuck myself in the canal for all she cared. She used to shout a lot about going down to London and seeing some real life, so I suppose that’s where she’s gone. There was four pounds ten and threepence in a jam-jar on the kitchen shelf and when she’d gone that was gone as well.
‘So I don’t know, our mam, about anything, or what I’m going to do. I’d like to live here again with you if you’ll have me. I’ll pay you two quid a week regular for my board, and see you right. I can’t put up with any of that any more because I can’t stand it, and I don’t suppose I’ll ever leave home again after all that little lot of trouble. So if you’ll have me back, mam, I’ll be ever so glad. I’ll work hard for you, that I will, and you’ll never have to worry again. I’ll do right by you and pay you back a bit for all the struggle you had in bringing me up. I heard at work the other day as I’m to have a ten bob rise next week, so if you let me stay I’ll get a new wireless and pay the deposit on it. So let me stay, our mam, because, I tell you, I’ve suffered a lot.’
And the way she kissed him made me sick, so I got down from my monkey-perch.
Jim Scarfedale stayed, right enough, the great big baby. He was never happier in his life after getting the OK from his old woman. All his worries were over, he’d swear blind they were, even if you tried to tell him what a daft sod he was for not packing his shaving tackle and getting out, which I did try to tell him, only he thought I was cracked even more than he was himself, I suppose. His mother thought she’d got him back for good, though, and so did we all, but we were off the mark by a mile. If you weren’t stone-blind you could see he was never the same old Jim after he’d been married: he got broody and never spoke to a soul, and nobody, not even his mam, could ever get out of him where he went to every night. His face went pudgy-white and his sandy mouse-hair fell out so much that he was nearly bald in six months. Even the few freckles he had went pale. He used to slink back from wherever he’d been at twelve o’clock, whether the night was winter or summer, and never a bloke would know what he got up to. And if you asked him right out loud, like as if you were cracking a bit of a joke: ‘Where you been, Jim?’ he’d make as if he hadn’t heard a sound.
It must have been a couple of years later when the copper came up our yard one moonlight night: I saw him from my bedroom window. He turned the corner, and I dodged back before he could spot me. You’re in for it now, I said to myself, ripping lead from that empty house on Buckingham Street. You should have had more sense, you daft bogger (frightened to death I was, though I don’t know why now), especially when you only got three and a tanner for it from Cooky. I always said you’d end up in Borstal, and here comes the copper to get you.
Even when he went on past our house I thought it was only because he’d got mixed up in the numbers and that he’d swing back at any minute. But no, it was the Scarfedales’ door he wanted, and I’d never known a happier feeling than when I heard that rap-rap-rapping and knew that this time they hadn’t come for me. Never again, I sang to myself, never again — so happy that I got the stitch — they can keep their bleeding lead.
Jim’s mam screamed as soon as the copper mentioned her name. Even where I was I heard her say: ‘He’s never gone and got run over, has he?’
Then I could hear no more, but a minute later she walked up the yard with the copper, and I saw her phizzog by the lamplight, looking set hard like granite, as if she would fall down and kick the bucket if you as much as whispered a word to her. The copper had to hold her arm.
It all came out next morning — the queerest case the yard had ever known. Blokes had been put inside for burglary, deserting, setting fire to buildings, bad language, being blind drunk, grabbing hold of grown women and trying to give them what-for, not paying maintenance money, running up big debts for wireless and washing machines and then selling them, poaching, trespassing, driving off in cars that didn’t belong to them, trying to commit suicide, attempted murder, assault and battery, snatching handbags, shoplifting, fraud, forgery, pilfering from work, bashing each other about, and all sorts of larks that didn’t mean much. But Jim did something I hadn’t heard about before, at least not in our yard.
He’d been at it for months as well, taking a bus for miles across town to places where nobody knew him and waiting in old dark streets near some lit-up beer-off for little girls of ten and eleven to come walking along carrying jugs to get their dads a pint. And sucky Jim would jump out of his hiding place near pieces of waste-ground and frighten the life out of them and get up to his dirty tricks. I can’t understand why he did it, I can’t, I really can’t, but did it he did, and got copped for it as well. He did it so often that somebody must have sprung a trap, because one hard-luck night they collared him and he was put inside for eighteen months. You should have heard the telling-off he got from the judge. I’ll bet the poor sod didn’t know where to put his face, though I’m sure there’s many a judge that’s done the same, if not worse, than Jim. ‘We’ve got to put you in clink,’ the judge said, ‘not only for the good of little girls but for your own good as well. People have to be protected from the likes of you, you dirty sod.’