We children were excited that Uncle Eddie was going to stay at such a time, because nobody had done that before. In spite of his greasy raincoat, and cap the colour of ancient nicotine, and the fact that he’d come to us like a broken-down tramp, he had money on him, and the sum he mentioned so far exceeded the amount of my father’s dole that we hoped he’d bring us comics and toffees on his way back from the baths. Being a gentle and quiet-spoken person who looked at us with respect, almost as if he were afraid of us, there was a chance he wouldn’t forget. We also admired him because he’d got a trade, though at the same time it didn’t seem much good to him.
He returned with two quart bottles of beer, plus sweets and comics, and a piece of meat wrapped in newspaper. His dark hair was neatly combed under his cap, and he’d had a shave at the barber’s, a sprucing up which turned him back into a passably handsome youngish man of forty.
That night he slept on the sofa, and a bit of fire glowed in the grate for him. The next day there was cheerful talk of staying for good and paying a small amount for his board and lodging. He would have regular meals and be provided with a clean shirt every week, while the money he contributed would help us.
In the afternoon my sister and I sat at the table with pencil and paper, and Eddie amused us by drawing pictures of German soldiers, complete with the traditional helmets and rifle. A frosty wind was blowing up the valley of the Leen, but the house was warm and for us four children it was a good place to be.
But on Boxing Day some inexplicable quarrel erupted between the two brothers, and my father threw him out. Both my parents were glad to be rid of him, as if he’d been with us six months, though my sister and I were in tears because we knew he had nowhere to go in the bitter cold.
So he lived alone, and never washed or changed, in order perhaps that the sharp and pungent smell would give him a clearer sense of his own identity, and at the same time protect him from those who did not need him. During the Second World War, when money was easier to come by and he took his earnings into the noisy pubs — the Albany, the Eight Bells, or the Trip to Jerusalem, built snug against the sandstone sides of the Castle — he was a somewhat lugubrious free-spender, treating and tipping as if he thought it unlucky to get change from notes or silver, though nobody could seem as down on his luck when it was all gone and he was walking around the pubs and cinemas for more seating to mend or recondition.
His reputation for skill was well known on the circuit he had built up, and he could have jobs for the asking, though those who employed him were careful not to hand out any payment before he had finished. On moneyless nights he would occasionally receive a pint at the bar from some generous American soldier, who clearly saw a free-born Englishman down on his luck — odd gifts which Edgar gratefully accepted, for he too would treat soldiers when he had money.
I often earned good cash on piece-work, so when we met I’d give him a few bob if he was broke, which I usually knew him to be by the depressed look of his lips. Sometimes I was mistaken, and if he had money he would take nothing, and even with delicate frankness ask if I needed anything.
I last saw him on the top deck of a bus going from Radford into the middle of Nottingham. When we got off at Chapel Bar I gave him a copy of my first book of poems, called Without Beer or Bread, and he smiled at the title as he put it into his mackintosh pocket. I was about to go when, from an inside waistcoat, he brought an old fob-timepiece which he wanted me to have in exchange for the poems.
‘I can’t take your watch.’
He smiled, the few teeth left in his mouth gone rotten. ‘It’s only gold-plated zinc. It was with me at Gommecourt, and in Germany. Went all the time I was under fire. Would you believe it? Hasn’t gone for years now.’
I looked at its clean Roman numerals on a round white face, a plain style I’d always liked, its two hands stopped at four o’clock. ‘I often meant to get it going,’ he said, ‘but the pawnshop was closer than the watchmaker! They’d let me have a few bob on it but I’d allus redeem it before the time ran out.’
‘Let me give you some money for it,’ I offered, knowing this wouldn’t insult him if he was broke, and that he’d be offended if I didn’t take the watch. He tapped his pocket with my book in it: ‘Exchange is no robbery. Buy a chain for it, and get it ticking. I’d like to think the old thing’s going to go again some time.’
A year later I had it mended, and bought a chain from a Polish watchmaker at the top of Drury Lane in Nottingham. I still wear it, and it keeps fair time. I never knew why Edgar’s soul had been so much battered, and at times I disliked his better-off brothers intensely for not helping him more. They hadn’t been exactly generous, and my father was all but ignored by them during his hard-up days. Only at Christmas did they give us a few toys left from the previous year. None of them came to my father’s funeral, though an announcement had been put in the newspaper to give the date. Yet they had helped Edgar from time to time, and he usually sold or pawned the clothes they gave, spending the money on drink. So they got fed up and didn’t bother with him.
He was knocked down by a bus and died alone in hospital at sixty years of age, worn out by his life. It was a miracle he survived so long.
51
The hardworking, self-righteous faction of the Sillitoe brothers — whom I shall lump under the generic name of Joseph — did not like the free-roaming, feckless Eddie nor the fly-by-night Frederick who called himself an artist. He considered these two, whom I give no common label because they were individuals right to the end, to be lax and rotten limbs of the clan. Fighting hard not to be like them, Joseph did not care to be reminded of their existence in case it impaired his upright resolution.
Despite Frederick’s vicissitudes, and Edgar’s hand-to-mouth life, they were thought to have it too easy. By similar standards my father should also have been disliked, but his unemployed state was known to be no fault of his own, and in any case Joseph Sillitoe saw him as being backward in the head, and more to be pitied then blamed — as it was superciliously put.
I call these brothers ‘Joseph’ so as to cloak them under the anonymity of fiction, the only fashion in which truth can be protected against the inclement sky of fact. As a name it suits their common image, and because it came to me without thought I accept it to be pictorially true. Joseph of Genesis stood by his brothers in times of famine and stress, and so there is no connection between him and the present Joseph. But just as Joseph would not have been highlighted had his brothers never been born, neither would the composite Joseph Sillitoe have been at all vivid in his idiosyncrasies without the other three, less righteous males of the family.
Not that I’m drawing parallels. Two such lines do not meet even in infinity, and without a meeting there can be no truth. The only use of parallels is that you can see one from the other, and see it clearly, and in this alone they might be useful.
52
Eddie and Frederick should know better, Joseph thought. They realized all too well what they were on about, damn and blast them, but just didn’t care to alter their ways, both to spite their family first, and to ruin themselves second. To Joseph they possessed Free Will, and he thought them wrong not to use it so as to dispossess themselves of it, as he had been forced to do.