He picked Jacky up and kissed him on the lips, feeling his arms curl tight around his face and ears. He then stood him on a chair while he kissed Brenda.
‘So long,’ he said. ‘See you next week’ — and walked towards the parlour. He stood by the bicycle for a moment to light a cigarette.
‘Get going,’ Brenda hissed softly, seeing her husband open the gate and walk down the yard.
Arthur unlocked the front door and pulled it towards him, sniffing the fresh air of a bright Sunday morning as if to decide whether the day was fine enough to venture out in. It was. He clicked the door to and stepped into the street, as Brenda’s husband Jack opened the back door and came in through the scullery.
2
He lifted a pair of clean overalls from the bed-rail and pulled them over his big white feet, taking care not to disturb his brother Sam who, while still in the depths of sleep, rolled himself more advantageously into the large mound of blankets now that Arthur had left the bed. He had often heard Friday described as Black Friday — remembering a Boris Karloff film of years ago — and wondered why this should be. For Friday, being pay-day, was a good day, and ‘black’ would be more fitting if applied to Monday. Black Monday. Then there would be some sense in it, when you felt your head big from boozing, throat sore from singing, eyes fogged-up from seeing too many films or sitting in front of the television, and feeling black and wicked because the big grind was starting all over again.
The stairfoot door clicked open.
‘Arthur,’ his father called, in a deadly menacing Monday-morning voice that made your guts rattle, sounding as if it came from the grave, ‘when are yer goin’ ter get up? Yer’ll be late fer wok.’ He closed the stairfoot door quietly so as not to waken the mother and two other sons still at home.
Arthur took a half-empty fag-packet from the mantelpiece, his comb, a ten-shilling note and heap of coins that had survived the pubs, bookies’ counters, and cadgers, and stuffed them into his pockets.
The bottom door opened again.
‘Eh?’
‘I’eard yer the first time,’ Arthur said in a whisper.
The door slammed, by way of a reply.
A mug of tea was needed, then back to the treadmill. Monday was always the worst; by Wednesday he was broken-in, like a greyhound. Well, anyroad, he thought, there was always Brenda, lovely Brenda who was all right and looked after you well once she’d made up her mind to it. As long as Jack didn’t find out and try to get his hands around my throat. That’d be the day. By Christ it would. Though my hands would be round his throat first, the nit-witted, dilat’ry, unlucky bastard.
He glanced once more around the small bedroom, seeing the wooden double-bed pushed under the window, the glint of a white pot, dilapidated shelves holding Sam’s books — rulers, pencils, and rubbers — and a home-made table on which stood his portable wireless set. He lifted the latch as the stairfoot door opened again, and his father poked his head up, ready to tell him in his whispering, menacing Monday-morning gut-rattle that it was time to come down.
Despite the previous tone of his father’s voice, Arthur found him sitting at the table happily supping tea. A bright fire burned in the modernized grate — the family had clubbed-up thirty quid to have it done — and the room was warm and cheerful, the table set, and tea mashed.
Seaton looked up from his cup. ‘Come on, Arthur. You ain’t got much time. It’s ten past seven, and we’ve both got to be on by half-past. Sup a cup o’tea an‘ get crackin‘.’
Arthur sat down and stretched his legs towards the fire. After a cup and a Woodbine his head was clearer. He didn’t feel so bad. ‘You’ll go blind one day, dad,’ he said, for nothing, taking words out of the air for sport, ready to play with the consequences of whatever he might cause.
Seaton turned to him uncomprehendingly, his older head still fuddled. It took ten cups of tea and as many Woodbines to set his temper right after the weekend. ‘What do you mean?’ he demanded, intractable at any time before ten in the morning.
‘Sittin’ in front of the TV. You stick to it like glue from six to eleven every night. It can’t be good for yer. You’ll go blind one day. You’re bound to. I read it in the Post last week that a lad from the Medders went blind. They might be able to save ‘im though, because ‘e goes to the Eye Infirmary every Monday, Wednesday, an’ Friday. But it’s a risk.’
His father poured another cup of tea, his black brows taut with anger. Short, stocky Seaton was incapable of irritation or mild annoyance. He was either happy and fussy with everybody, or black-browed with a deep melancholy rage that chose its victims at random. In the last few years his choice of victims had grown less, for Arthur, with his brother Fred, had been through the mill of factory and army and now stood up to him, creating a balance of power that kept the house more or less peaceful.
‘I’m sure it never did anybody any harm,’ Seaton said. ‘Anyway, yer never believe what the papers tell yer, do yer? If yer do then yer want yer brains testin’. They never tell owt but lies. That’s one thing I do know.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that,’ Arthur said, flipping a dead Woodbine into the fire. ‘Anyway, I know somebody who knows this kid as went blind, so the papers was right for a change. They said they saw this kid bein’ led to the Eye Infirmary by ’is mam. It was a rotten shame, they said. A kid of seven. She led ‘im along wi’ a lead, and the kid had a stick specially made for him, painted white. I heard they was getting him a dog as well to help him along, a wire-haired terrier. There was talk o’ standin’ him outside the Council House for the rest of his life wi’ a tin mug if he don’t get better. His dad’s got cancer, an’ ‘is mam can’t afford ter keep him in white sticks an’ dogs.’
‘Ye’re barmy,’ Seaton said. ‘Go an’ tell yer stories somewhere else. Not that I’m bothered wi’ my eyes anyway. My eyes ‘ave allus bin good, and allus will be. When I went for my medical in the war they were A1, but I swung the lead and got off 3C,’ he added proudly.
The subject was dropped. His father cut several slices of bread and made sandwiches with cold meat left from Sunday dinner. Arthur teased him a lot, but in a way he was glad to see the TV standing in a corner of the living-room, a glossy panelled box looking, he thought, like something plundered from a spaceship. The old man was happy at last, anyway, and he deserved to be happy, after all the years before the war on the dole, five kids and the big miserying that went with no money and no way of getting any. And now he had a sit-down job at the factory, all the Woodbines he could smoke, money for a pint if he wanted one, though he didn’t as a rule drink, a holiday somewhere, a jaunt on the firm’s trip to Blackpool, and a television-set to look into at home. The difference between before the war and after the war didn’t bear thinking about. War was a marvellous thing in many ways, when you thought about how happy it had made so many people in England. There are no flies on me, Arthur thought.
He stuffed a packet of sandwiches and a flask of tea into his pocket, and waited while his father struggled into a jacket. Once out of doors they were more aware of the factory rumbling a hundred yards away over the high wall. Generators whined all night, and during the day giant milling-machines working away on cranks and pedals in the turnery gave to the terrace a sensation of living within breathing distance of some monstrous being that suffered from a disease of the stomach. Disinfectant-suds, grease, and newly-cut steel permeated the air over the suburb of four-roomed houses built around the factory, streets and terraces hanging on to its belly and flanks like calves sucking the udders of some great mother. The factory sent crated bicycles each year from the Despatch Department to waiting railway trucks over Eddison Road, boosting post-war (or perhaps pre-war, Arthur thought, because these days a war could start tomorrow) export trade and trying to sling pontoons over a turbulent unbridgeable river called the Sterling Balance. The thousands that worked there took home good wages. No more short-time like before the war, or getting the sack if you stood ten minutes in the lavatory reading your Football Post — if the gaffer got on to you now you could always tell him where to put the job and go somewhere else. And no more running out at dinnertime for a penny bag of chips to eat with your bread. Now, and about time too, you got fair wages if you worked your backbone to a string of conkers on piece-work, and there was a big canteen where you could get a hot dinner for two-bob. With the wages you got you could save up for a motorbike or even an old car, or you could go on a ten-day binge and get rid of all you’d saved. Because it was no use saving your money year after year. A mug’s game, since the value of it got less and less and in any case you never knew when the Yanks were going to do something daft like dropping the H-bomb on Moscow. And if they did then you could say ta-ta to everybody, burn your football coupons and betting-slips, and ring-up Billy Graham. If you believe in God, which I don’t, he said to himself.