England and Other Stories

  Or would it be more tragic still if I go and have a smoke all by myself and feel all the better for it and meanwhile Mick here slumps forward and croaks. Slumps forward, with his tea unfinished, onto his newspaper with the word tragic dotted all over it.

  ‘If you say so,’ I say.

  Mick thinks quitting smoking is wise. It goes with the glasses, maybe. But I know he only started trying to quit because of Ronnie. It wasn’t because he’s wise. It was because he was scared.

  When Ronnie dropped off the fork-lift onto the yard floor he was still in a sitting-down position. It must have been a zonker of a heart attack.

  I thought: Mick’s wrong. He’s talking cobblers. None of those deaths would be tragic.

  I’m not a newspaper reader, I’m not any kind of reader, but when I was at primary school and it rained and we couldn’t go out to the playground, there’d be this big box of old Beanos and Dandys brought out for us to read. I used to love reading them—because it wasn’t reading at all. How they used to make me laugh. Biff! Bam! Kerrchow! I never thought then I’d end up being a warehouseman at Macintyre’s, dying for a smoke in my break.

  Mick did his nose-shift thing again. He looked very pleased with having won his argument, if that’s what it was, or with me not understanding and just giving up. Or with him getting away—we’d run out of time now—with not having a smoke. If that’s what this was really all about. His little score on that.

  Not exactly mountain climbing, Micky.

  I thought: Okay, Mick, you’re my mate, if you’re really giving up, then that’s up to you, but next time I’m going out by myself, I’m leaving you here, matey. And don’t you ever start preaching to me, with your new glasses, about how I should give up myself. Don’t you ever start that.

  Then I saw, in my head, Mick slumped forward over his spread newspaper, dead as a sack of cement.

  And of course I understood. Of course I understood that tragic was a word people used when they didn’t know what else to say—about people dropping dead. But I thought: It’s not because they don’t know what to say. It’s not that at all. It’s because they can’t say the other thing, they can’t ever say it. The thing that goes with tragedy and happens on the stage too, and doesn’t have much to do with Macintyre’s warehouse either.

  Biff! Bam! Kerrzang! How I laughed. How I’d love to get out a copy of the Beano in the canteen. Though I’d look a bloody idiot, wouldn’t I? The word you ought to use about that mountaineer in the Lake District, or about Ronnie dropping off the fork-lift still sitting down, or even about Mick here, slumped over his newspaper with his neat little new half-rims all scrunched up against his face, is comic.

  Comic. That’s what you ought to say. But you can’t.

  AS MUCH LOVE AS POSSIBLE

  HE’D BEEN EARLY and Sue had still been upstairs, getting ready, as Alec ushered him in. Her voice had floated down, through a half-opened door, from above. ‘Hello, Bill.’ Then a hurried and apologetic, ‘I’m not decent.’

  ‘You’re always decent,’ he’d called back.

  What did that mean? And the word stuck with him: decent.

  Alec had phoned days before and said that Sue was having a night out with the girls, so he’d be all on his own. Why didn’t Bill come over?

  ‘I’ve got a bottle of Macallan. Fifteen-year-old. It fell off the back of a lorry.’

  Alec didn’t say that he knew Bill would be on his own too—Sophie and the boys being away for half-term at Sophie’s parents while he soldiered on at the office. Bill reckoned that it was Sue who knew this, not Alec, so this was really Sue’s idea, Sue’s invitation. But Alec was Bill’s oldest friend.

  ‘Come over. I haven’t seen you for ages. Don’t bring anything, just yersel.’ Alec could get all Scots when he wanted.

  So there he’d been, a little early, and Alec was giving him a cardiganed hug and there was the smell of the shepherd’s pie in the oven that Sue had cooked for them. He’d driven, which was easiest, but also stupid—given the bottle of Macallan. But he’d told himself that if he drove then he’d have to go carefully on the whisky, and if he had his car outside then he’d avoid any pressure as things got late to stay the night, which was all false upside-down logic. It wasn’t that he didn’t like being with Alec and Sue, quite the opposite.

  Alec had flicked his eyes upward and said, ‘Making herself beautiful.’ Then said, ‘How dastardly of me, there’s no making about it.’ And Bill had smiled and thought nonetheless how women made themselves beautiful for nights out with other women. For a boys’ night out, or in, men hardly bothered. Witness the pair of them, like two adverts for woollens.

  They’d hardly settled when Sue had come down and appeared in the doorway. Many years ago Bill had thought that Sue was just the sort of dumb and ditzy blonde Alec would end up marrying, then find the novelty wearing off. It had been his own reason for not marrying her, or rather for not making any move at all, though he might have done. He’d given precedence to his friend and felt he’d been shrewd.

  He’d been best man, naturally, at Alec and Sue’s wedding, but by then he’d met Sophie and she and he had been the first pair to get hitched. And to have kids, pretty quickly, one after the other. Alec and Sue had waited several years. Perhaps there was a difficulty, but they hadn’t seemed unhappy at the time. So much for shrewdness. Maybe they’d waited simply because of that: because they were happy and wanted to have time just with each other. Then they’d gone and had twins. A boy and girl.

  They’d be upstairs right now, still only four years old. Or was it five? He ought to know, he was their godfather.

  Bill had said to Sue as she appeared in the doorway, ‘Sue, you look fantastic.’ He should have allowed Alec to say something first, perhaps. Anyway it was true. She was wearing a dress that wasn’t quite a party dress, but it had a shimmer. Or it was more that she had a shimmer, a kind of ready, default-mode excitement.

  It was only a girls’ night out, he’d thought, it wasn’t a ball.

  She said, ‘You look pretty good yourself, Bill.’ He said, ‘Rubbish,’ and had got up to meet her embrace which was always full-on and generous, as if she had arms for everyone. She’d been holding a black coat and a cream scarf but had slung them momentarily over the banister at the foot of the stairs, on top of his own undistinguished Puffa thing.

  She picked up the coat again and looked at her watch.

  ‘Alec, you did ring for the taxi, didn’t you?’

  Alec was already fetching two whisky tumblers. He thumped his forehead with his free hand.

  ‘Oh shit! Shit! I’m sorry, sweetheart. Let me drive you.’

  Sue had said, ‘No, you have to look after Bill.’ There wasn’t any hint of anger or dramatics, just the small practical quandary. So, while Alec had done more breast-beating, he’d said, ‘I’ll drive you, Sue.’ It seemed a neat and diplomatic solution. His car was still warm. Alec would have to get his out of the garage. And he didn’t want Sue to be late.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Hathaway’s. Park Street.’

  ‘I know it. Good choice. No problem.’

  Sue had protested, then finally said, ‘You’re an angel, Bill.’ And Alec had said, ‘The man puts me to eternal shame.’

  Alec had put the tumblers down and helped Sue on with her coat. There was no reproachfulness. She said, ‘Don’t forget about the shepherd’s pie. And the twins are sparko. I looked in.’

  Alec had draped the scarf round his wife’s neck then kissed her tenderly by the ear. ‘Sorry, precious,’ he said. ‘You better give this man here a decent tip.’ That word once more. Then, to him, he’d said, ‘I’ll see you later, buster. I’ll try not to open the bottle.’

  So now here he was—it was only a ten-minute drive—sitting beside Sue in the car opposite Hathaway’s, and Sue, though she was several minutes late, didn’t seem in a rush. All through the short journey he’d felt inevitably that they were like some couple going out on a date themselves??
?particularly at the start as they got into the car, he holding the door open for her, chauffeur-fashion, she swinging her legs in and gathering up her coat, and Alec watching contritely from the front porch, like some stoical father.

  Sue had spent the few minutes saying how sweet it was of him and he’d spent it establishing that the ‘girls’ were Christine and Anita and that all three of them had been at the hair academy together and now they each had salons of their own.

  He wondered what a hair academy was and had his bizarre mental pictures, but didn’t ask. He’d long since stopped thinking it obvious that a fluffy blonde whose principal feature was her hair would go into hairdressing. Nothing was obvious any more.

  He knew Sue’s salon was called Locks and that it had been set up—funded—by Alec. For all Bill knew, Alec might have among his many business interests a small chain of hair salons which involved funding Christine and Anita as well.

  Bill had often passed Locks but never entered. He’d sometimes wondered how it would be if he were to walk in and ask to have his hair cut—by Sue herself of course. It seemed the most innocent yet intimate of requests.

  Salon. Hair academy. These were easily scoffed at, bogus expressions. But he no longer thought like that.

  Sue said, as if she hadn’t thanked him enough, ‘Why don’t you come in for a moment? I could introduce you to the girls.’ It was a strange impetuous suggestion and was perhaps only meant jokingly.

  ‘It’s a bit late in the day for that sort of thing, isn’t it?’ He smiled. He hadn’t meant to sound rueful.

  She said, ‘All okay, with you and Sophie?’

  ‘Yes. Fine.’

  ‘And the kids?’

  He snorted. ‘I hardly think of them as kids any more. They’re eleven and twelve.’

  There was a little weighty pause. She could just get out. It didn’t need a speech.

  ‘You know, Bill, all I’ve ever wanted, all that’s ever made me happy, is to do something for other people that makes them feel nicer. That’s all, nothing special, nothing more than that. They come into my salon, they walk out again a little later—feeling nicer.’

  His hands still held the steering wheel. He hadn’t had a drink yet. He thought of Alec, waiting for him, staring at a (still virgin?) bottle of Macallan. He thought how many months since he last saw Sue? When would he see her again? And when would he again, if ever at all, sit beside her like this, just the two of them, in the convenient bubble of a car?

  Across the road, Hathaway’s was lit up, but curtained. If Christine and Anita were inside waiting, they couldn’t be seen.

  He said, ‘I love you, Sue. I love you. I could say something like “I’m very fond of you”, but I love you. I don’t mean I don’t love Sophie. I don’t mean I don’t love lots of people. But I love you. Don’t you think there should be as much love as possible?’

  There. He held the steering wheel. He held it, looking straight ahead as if he were still driving.

  He heard, eventually, the slow punctilious creep of a woman’s clothing as she moves deliberately to kiss a man. It was barely a touch against the side of his face, by his ear, as if she wished to say something that could only be whispered, but he felt just the brush of her lips and a small expulsion of warm breath.

  ‘Well,’ she said, drawing away, ‘I better not ask you in then. You better not meet the girls.’

  She could never have been so suave years ago.

  She opened her door and got out, but then lingered on the pavement, despite the cold, one hand on the open door, her coat unbuttoned, leaning in while he leant across, constrained by his seat belt.

  What was there to say? It was as if it was late and he was dropping her off.

  ‘Enjoy your evening,’ he said like some polite stranger. Like a cab driver.

  ‘And you. Don’t get sloshed.’

  ‘Nor you. I’ll see you later.’

  ‘Yes. But—’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Don’t wait up.’

  What did that mean?

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘It’s cold. The girls are waiting.’ To puncture the mood and effect a disengagement he added, ‘I can see down your top when you lean like that.’

  It was a fifteen-year-old bottle, to be treated with respect, so they sipped slowly, both acknowledging how they couldn’t cane it like they’d used to. And there was the shepherd’s pie to mop it up. It was a very good shepherd’s pie. Perhaps he praised it too much, but Alec had simply said, waxing Caledonian, that short of a decent haggis there was no finer accompaniment to a good whisky. Decent haggis. That word again.

  All the same, after a certain point—he could recognise the symptoms—he knew he should start to put his hand over his glass or ask for a coffee. And he really didn’t want, now, to have that moment when Alec would say, ‘There’s a spare bed upstairs, mon. No problem.’ He didn’t even want, now, to be around when Sue returned. Don’t wait up.

  The point should come, before Alec launched off on some other topic, when he should say, ‘Look, if you don’t mind, I’ll head back now.’ And make whatever feeble excuses. He’d already told Alec that, strictly speaking, he was under doctor’s orders. It wasn’t true, though he’d had a fairly schoolmasterly doctor’s warning.

  On the coffee table were two abandoned plates and the dish, with an encrusted serving spoon, that had contained the shepherd’s pie. They’d eaten like slobs, on their laps. He wondered how the table was looking at Hathaway’s with Christine and Anita.

  He should make a move before he lost his power of decision—he was near that—and, yes, definitely before Sue returned. He needed a pee, so he went upstairs, resolving that when he came down and while still on his feet he’d mouth his garbled adieus. It had gone eleven. No, he was okay to drive. He had work to do tomorrow.

  But he made the mistake, when he came out of the bathroom, of peeping into the room with the just-open door along the landing. Why did all kids want to sleep with the door just open? Had he once? He peered in, even crept in a little, and stood inside the doorway. There was that barely-lit atmosphere of utter peace, utter immersion in sleep—sleep like no grown-ups have. There were the two little concentrated forms beneath blankets, each in their own small bed. A guarding clutter of inert toys.

  He knew about this from his own experience. It was a primal parental joy. But here there was an extra magic, an extra harmony and rapture: twins. He stood and looked, as if these were his own children. His heart turned over.

  He stood there long enough, if it was only seconds, to hear the noise of a car creeping up the quiet cul-de-sac outside. He felt sure it was a taxi bringing Sue home. So she, at least, had kept her power of decision and made her departure before things got late and disorderly. Or—they all had their salons to think about—there’d been a general sensible dispersal.

  He hurried downstairs, if only to get to the living room before Sue could reach the front door and to avoid the awkwardness—was it an awkwardness?—of coming face to face with her as she let herself in. And of course as he re-entered the living room Alec poured him another slug, even as they both heard a car door close outside, and Alec said, ‘That must be Sue. Rather early. The good wee lassies.’

  Half past eleven wasn’t exactly early and there was a tiny touch of tension in his voice. Was he still smarting from his earlier blunder? He went through to be at the front door.

  ‘Hello, precious,’ Bill heard, holding his topped-up glass and feeling the edge of the waft of February air that Sue brought in with her. He knew now he had no control over how things would proceed. He saw himself in the spare room—further along the landing—in solitary inebriated confinement in a house of couples.

  She appeared in the doorway, just as before, Alec behind her now, removing her coat. Yes, the shimmer was all hers. There was a light inside her. It was only a girls’ night out, he thought again, it wasn’t a ball. Life wasn’t a ball.

  ‘All well here?’ she said, quickly stooping to release
her high-heeled shoes. One hand on the door frame, leaning in.

  ‘Yes,’ Alec said over her shoulder. ‘Look how much whisky we haven’t drunk.’

  Alec slipped back into the living room, touching Sue’s bottom with his palm as he did so.

  Bill said, ‘And how was your evening?’ It sounded, again, absurdly polite.

  She smiled. She drew herself up, smoothed her skirt, shook her hair a little, then took a deep and, so it seemed, utterly thrilled and pure breath, like someone on a mountain top.

  ‘Oh, I’ve had the most wonderful evening.’

  YORKSHIRE

  NOBODY SPOKE, nobody said anything. They spoke about the dead who couldn’t speak back, they stood around with poppies, but the ones still alive, they shut up and got on with it. Wasn’t that the best way, anyway, of being grateful to the dead? It’s what you did, it’s what everyone did.

  And what did she know or care, a schoolgirl, a teenager on a bicycle whizzing down Denmark Hill, flashing her underwear? It had all been over before she was born, it had all been over for nearly twenty years. Her mother called her ‘flighty’, as if it was her new name, though her real name was Daisy. Daisy Leigh. She said, ‘You’ll end up in trouble, Daisy, one of these days.’ But her father said nothing, he shut up and got on with it. He coughed.

  She quite liked ‘Daisy’, she liked being a daisy, but she liked ‘flighty’ too. She told Larry it was her middle name, it was what her mum called her. He said, ‘Flighty? Well, that settles it then, doesn’t it?’

  And now Larry was sleeping in the spare room. What did it mean? They’d been married for over fifty years. Her name wasn’t Leigh, it was Baker. What was flighty about that? But Larry was sleeping in the spare room.

  Her hair flying and her skirt too. Well if they saw it wouldn’t be for long, would it? Sometimes she’d let go of the handlebars, just because she knew she could do it, and hold out her arms like wings. Wheeee! She must have been saved up for Flight Sergeant Baker.

  Trouble?