The Yellow Houses

  ‘Of course, Mrs Anstruther. I . . . I . . . took that for granted.’

  As Wilfred followed the helplessly captive Miss Turner across the hall he suddenly decided that to go home at eleven in the morning would be unbearable. Thirteen hours before bedtime and the world of sleep. No. He would go and see his father.

  Old Mr Davis, now aged eighty-five, lived on the east side of the town; in the low part across the railway.

  So back across Torford walked Wilfred, his thinning hair blowing in the cold wind. Occasionally he nodded and smiled at an acquaintance.

  Soon people would begin asking where Mary was. That must be expected because Sandra Bailey and the rest of the schoolfellows would talk. Not that Mary was what you might call popular. Sandra lived in the Davises’ road, and her father was their dentist; Wilfred had always suspected that the friendship was one of propinquity rather than mutual attraction. Well, one friend, or perhaps two, was enough; girls who had what Pat had called a full social life and nice friends weren’t necessarily happy.

  That – happiness – was all that he wanted for Mary.

  Blinking against the wind, he crossed the road and went down Lesley Street, where the shops still looked bright and clean; tottering on the edge of insolvency, possibly, but putting up a gallant fight, as Pat had always said about anyone or anything struggling against odds.

  She had always made an allowance of majestic proportions for Wilfred’s father. Old Mr Davis lived half in the street, with the front door permanently open, and three or four of the street’s children, for whom there were not enough pre-primary schools in Torford, sitting on the floor watching the television (also permanently on).

  This morning, there were two little girls in the dusky, crowded little room, dressed alike in scarlet maxi-coats to their ankles. They were sitting on the mat in front of the fire smouldering in the basket grate; and Mr Davis, a large, stout, rosy old man with remnants of curly dark hair, was stirring a saucepan balanced on the fire, and addressing them.

  ‘. . . then, when yer caught ’im, know what yer does? Yer ketches hold of his skin and yer pulls it over his head. Right over his ’ead, see? and he’s all ready for the sarsepan. In he goes – see? with a shake of pepper and a bit of salt, and a bit o’ parsley and an ongyon or two wot you as by you, and then what does yer do? You tell me, young Kelly,’ pointing at one of them with the spoon.

  A silent shake of her head, with its fall of long fair hair.

  ‘Hullo, Dad,’ said Wilfred, appearing at the door.

  ‘’Ullo. Don’ know? I never see such gels fer don’t knowing. Yer stews ’im, that’s what, stews ’im very slow, so he comes out as tender as a babby and his flesh fair falls off his bones.’ Four eyes were fixed on him, entranced.

  ‘Morning, young ladies,’ said Wilfred, coming into the room and, having lifted off a pile of Daily Mirrors and TV Times, he sat down in an ancient springless armchair (an old enemy of Pat’s, and still in use, while all her energy and cheerfulness had gone).

  The children’s eyes turned to him, but they said nothing.

  ‘I’m just a-showing these two ’ow to stoo a rabbit,’ his father said, standing upright with a hand on his back. ‘Two o’ young Ginger’s, they are,’ he added in a lowered tone. ‘She’s got a job up your Mary’s school – re-abiliting ’er or summick. Funny ideas people ’ave nowadays, I will say – carn’t leave anyone alone. But funny ideas – I don’t know.’

  He opened a drawer in the old wooden dresser and took out two cleanish pieces of rag, and supervised the tucking of them into the necks of the scarlet coats.

  ‘Regular little images they look, don’t they?’ he murmured. ‘Out of the Ark.’

  The little girls were standing by the fire peering down into the saucepan. ‘That’s right. Now ’ere’s yer mugs.’ He took down from the dresser one made of blue plastic, and an earthenware one decorated with those pale magenta flowers seen only on cups made when Victoria was Queen. ‘And ’ere’s yer broth,’ ladling out the rich creamy liquid. ‘Samantha, you put that bit o’ mat on the doorstep. Don’t want yer ketching cold in yer little bums, do we? And eat up. And don’t let’s ’ear a word out of neether of yer.’

  When they were seated side by side in the doorway and supping the broth, and their attention was fixed on the people passing in the street, he settled an old tin kettle on the hob.

  ‘I wonder you could –’ his son was beginning, beguiled by the familiarity of his surroundings into making a comment that was also familiar, but Mr Davis caught up the sentence and carried it on.

  ‘– Wonder I could use a sixpenny kettle, what I got from Woolworths when it was Woolworths? Well, I like what I’m used to and no thenks I don’t want you wasting your money buying me a ’lectric one. Boil over before you can turn round, fuse up, and cost the earth having it repaired. Going up again, too. I ’eard it this morning.’ He moved his head towards the television, glaring and flickering soundlessly away in its corner. ‘And if it wasn’t for the football I wouldn’t ’ave that. I don’t trust ’lectricity.’

  Wilfred felt no impulse to retort or argue. The dust and clutter in the little room, and the reek of ancient Old and Sweet tobacco (which had celebrated its centenary last year), and the narrowness and obstinacy of his father’s opinions, no longer irritated him. He himself – though Pat disliked him recalling the fact – had been born in one of the two rooms upstairs, and had been carried to the window in a shawl to have his first view of the world outside.

  As for Old and Sweet – his hand strayed absently towards the pocket where he had kept his pouch. He had given it up at Pat’s repeated entreaties. She had brought out the word cancer with such difficulty and fear that he had been touched to his heart. She had been frightened. Giving up had been a sacrifice, but worth it, because he had been able to comfort her, and that was something he was hardly ever asked to do.

  Nevertheless, he still missed the peppery-sweet taste of Old and Sweet.

  ‘Yerss. Yer ought to start again.’

  He stared at his father. ‘What?’

  ‘Yer pipe. I saw yer feeling for it. You don’t want to notice what they say. Where’s the ’arm? Be afraid to go outside yer own front door if yer took any notice of some of ’em . . . I was listenin’ the other night,’ and he nodded towards the television, ‘round about twelve midnight it must a bin . . . nice thing to send yer to bed on, I don’t think . . . some bloke goin’ on about eatin’ fat. Eyes fair coming out of ’is ’ead, and that solemn – might a been preaching a sermin. And another bloke up there with ’im, to be the example. ’Ad a stroke, seemingly. All along of eating fat. Don’t tell me. Why, a nice bit o’ crispy brown an’ white inside – that’s good fer yer . . . Same as yer pipe. – ’Ere.’ He handed Wilfred a cup of tea.

  ‘Me and Kelly don’t like fat,’ came a piping voice from the doorway.

  ‘You and Kelly don’t know what’s good for yer. ’Ave yer soup and shut up.’

  Mr Davis put his upper lip and moustache into his cup, sucked, and sucked again, shutting his eyes.

  ‘Nex’ thing,’ he announced, emerging, ‘you’ll ’ave ter think about getting rid o’ that great ’ouse.’

  Wilfred felt too wretched to put forward sensible remarks.

  ‘And you’re in with the council, aren’t yer? They’ll ’elp yer . . . ought to go off quick, too, a great place like that wi’ a bit o’ garden, get a good price, I shouldn’t wonder. Set yerself up in a little place. Comf’able.’

  Wilfred did not answer. What would Pat have said to the imputation that Lamorna, with oil-fired central heating, double-glazing in the bedrooms, fitted carpets and a fridge, and electric blankets, was not comfortable?

  ‘Might get married again,’ his father added casually, packing his pipe with Old and Sweet, and giving full attention to the task.

  ‘Dad! That’s unfeeling! Pat hasn’t been dead three months . . . besides, at my age . . .’

  ‘Sixty-five’s no age nowadays, besides .
. .’ But here Mr Davis recollected the presence of the virgins on the doorstep, and checked himself. He suddenly shouted, loudly but unalarmingly: ‘Samantha! Young Kelly! You be off. And say thenk-you-Mr-Davis-for-the-soup.’

  ‘Thank-you-Mr-Davis-for-the-soup . . . Mum said can we come in after dinner ’cos she’s goin’ out?’ they said, in chorus.

  ‘Yer can knock on the door . . . I may be asleep . . . enough’s enough. Be off, now.’

  They contrived to delay their going by rinsing their cups and putting away their rag bibs, and the mat on which they had been sitting, but ran off at last.

  ‘Be in trouble, the pair of them, before they’re fifteen, unless someone frightens the vests off of ’em,’ Mr Davis said grimly. ‘Young Ginger’s no use to ’em – not in that way, tho’ she do spend a bit o’ money on their backs . . . no – it’s me as will ’ave to.’

  Mr Davis never called Slutty anything but Young Ginger, having known her, so to speak, before she was born. Her baptismal name of Gloria he ignored.

  ‘Soon as they’re turned eight, I’m giving ’em a talk,’ he went on.

  ‘Haven’t they . . . isn’t there . . .?’

  ‘No there ain’t. Gawd only knows ’oo their dad is – a rozzer, I ’ave ’eard, but I don’t believe it – rozzers ain’t that ’uman . . . Young Ginger’s mum and dad snuffed it, couple o’ years ago . . . their aunties and uncles is all bad lots . . . well, layabouts, I don’t say outside the law . . . so it’s up to me. Merrige or nothink, I’ll tell ’em. ’Bout the clap, too. No use in ’ushing anythink up,’ Mr Davis ended severely, and poured out more dark red tea.

  ‘Oh well . . . I must be getting along, Dad.’

  ‘Wot’s the ’urry all of a sudden? Stay and ’ave a bit o’ rabbit along o’ me.’

  ‘All right – thanks.’

  What was there to do, anyway? The room was warm, it smelt of Old and Sweet. The news, pre-digested to a kind of curried pap by a young man with a Liverpool accent, babbled on in its corner, ignored by them both, and Wilfred remembered the plain green hills that used to smile through the cottage’s windows in his childhood.

  ‘Besides – about the house, Dad. There’s Mrs Wheeby.’

  ‘Mrs Wheezy? She’s had a good run for her money – it won’t hurt her to go into a ’ome.’

  During the trying hours of last Christmas Day, while his father was paying his obligatory yearly visit to Lamorna, it had become plain that he disliked Mrs Wheeby. Not because he wanted to live with Wilfred and Pat, occupying the room that she now filled; indeed, he would ‘sooner go on the road’ than do so. No, it was because in Mrs Wheeby old Mr Davis had instantly detected one who liked her own way, and, in so doing, was a rival of anyone else who liked theirs.

  ‘It’s not her, Dad, it’s me. I shouldn’t like to turn her out, not after Pat going to all that trouble.’

  ‘Yer can’t let some old basket stop yer selling yer own house. Don’t be so soft.’

  Wilfred drank more tea and decided not to answer. Other sentences sounded in his memory. You old softie. How do you ever expect to get anywhere if you’re soft? You let anyone put on you.

  ‘Yer a good lad, Wilf,’ his father said suddenly, stooping over the saucepan with his back to the room. ‘Too good for some, if you arst me.’

  Wilfred knew that his reply to this should have been sharp, because some was Pat. But the truth was that his father’s words were so comforting that he could do nothing but drink them in, settle them into his bruised heart, and thank god in a shamefaced muddled way that the ‘low’, obstinate old man was still in the land of the living.

  As Wilfred was an Englishman, the immediate result of these thoughts was that he got up, saying that he thought he must be going, accompanied by coat-buttoning.

  ‘Sit down – sit down – ’ere’s yer dinner,’ said his father soothingly, and poured half the saucepan’s contents into an ancient soup-plate, ‘dumplings and all. Out of a pecket, but ’oo cares so they tastes all right?’

  It was like eating beside a campfire; like being a Scout again. The savoury taste, the warmth, the company familiar as his own right hand – which asked nothing and gave approval and affection. Wilfred at last felt enabled to say what he had come to say. ‘Mary has run away from me. She has left me. She’s gone to London.’ And when their plates had been wiped clean with bread, Mr Davis had ended the visit by saying exactly the right thing to round off the half-hour of peace.

  ‘Mary! She’ll be married before yer can turn round . . . that stout quiet sort always is. Let ’er get on with it.’

  Here was the second person that morning to tell him that Mary was the marrying kind. Who could be more different from his father than Mrs Anstruther? . . . yet, from both came the same comforting verdict.

  4

  Mary

  When Mary got out of the train and walked down the platform at Liverpool Street station, she was not awed or confused by its noise and crowds, because she had been there before. Once with the school, and twice with her parents, to see some of the sights of London.

  And she knew exactly where she was going.

  On her last visit, eighteen months ago, she had noticed, immediately outside the station and situated on a corner where it would catch the attention of passers-by, a shop window full of pink-and-green, purple-and-orange patterned dresses. Some of them had overflowed the window and were hanging in the doorway, fluttering in the wind among strings of coloured beads, glittering chains set with pearls, and large broad-brimmed hats of bright felt.

  Mary, having given up her ticket, went straight towards this shop.

  A little woman wearing black, nearly bald beneath a frizz of hair dyed bright brown, with a flat face and shrewd eyes, was sitting behind the tiny counter, surrounded by more dresses, beads and hats, and working at some figures. She looked up as Mary’s solid shape appeared in the doorway between the blowing shifts.

  ‘Hullo, dear – vant a frock?’ Her eyes travelled over Mary. ‘Size eighteen, it’ll be . . . what colour?’

  The pink-and-purple patterned dresses drifted against the dim blue autumn sky and the people – Londoners – hurried by with their heads up, not looking at anything. Mary could feel their stir and haste going past her back as she stood there.

  ‘Good morning . . . thank you. I don’t want a frock yet, though I shall later on. I want a job. I remembered your shop from the last time I was in London, and this is the kind of shop I want to be in, so I thought I’d ask you.’

  Mary was what is called well-spoken. Her words came out slowly, for so young a girl, and her voice sounded placid. Her dark green coat, her gleaming knee-high black boots, and her thick well-brushed hair suggested that behind her was a respectable home. It was all these things, as well as some surprise, that caused Mrs Sadie Levy to moderate the righteous indignation, which she felt on hearing Mary’s statement, into a mere tartness, rather than give the shriek in which she had at first meant to indulge herself.

  ‘I daresay you do,’ she snapped, flinging down her pencil. ‘I-dare-say-you-do. And how many girls in London vant the same, you think?’

  ‘Thousands, of course,’ Mary answered calmly. ‘But I’m me, not them. And I’m good at arithmetic and I can spell and––’

  ‘Where you from?’ demanded Mrs Levy.

  ‘Torford. That’s––’

  ‘And you vant twenty pounds a week and commission, I suppose –’

  ‘I’d start at twelve, but I’d certainly want commission . . .’

  ‘Vell you can’t come here,’ Mrs Levy interrupted, ‘because there isn’t room for two. You see that, I think. Besides, I don’t need you or anyone. I’ve had some. You all want the same. In Hamburg where I grow up, I start at age thirteen. Up at six, vork all day and just fifteen minutes for lunch until nine at night. And for how much I do this?’ demanded Mrs Levy, at last permitting herself the shriek. ‘For ten of your shillings – gone now – a veek. Und then the war come, und ven ve lose it, of course–??
?’

  ‘Did you lose it when the Russians came?’ Mary interrupted, wishing to prolong a conversation which seemed, to her, to have taken a not discouraging turn (at least she hadn’t been dismissed in a sentence) and remembering her mother’s remarks about old folks liking to reminisce.

  ‘Russians?’ Mrs Levy stared. ‘Vot Russians? Is before the war I’m talking about. Is 1920.’

  ‘Oh.’ To Mary, 1920 and 1220 were equally remote.

  ‘Yes, Oh. So we all starf, my mutter (she yet alive, thank Gott), my sisters, me, until things better. Gott in His Heffen, how we work! You girls, you don’t know you’re born. Layabout. Vot you all are nowadays, layabout – vere you off to?’

  ‘Oxford Street,’ breathed Mary, half out of the door, and all her common sense could not keep a note of excitement from her voice.

  ‘Und vot chance you haf there, you tell me?’

  Mary halted in the doorway, unhurriedly pushed aside a purple shift that had blown across her face, and stood looking steadily at Mrs Levy.

  ‘Listen . . .’ Mrs Levy struggled up from behind the counter. ‘I just got new grandchild; fourth one; the first boy – a lofly boy. I can’t see him all I vant because I must be in the shop . . . You a loose girl? You go vith boys?’ She leant across the counter, resting her hands on it, and studied Mary.

  Mary shook her head.

  ‘Vell . . . I take a chance. You haf boys in my shop, and out you go . . . Mr Foster across the road selling cigarettes alvays keep an eye on you . . . just like you alvays feel you can go back home if you don’t like to live in London, hein?’

  Mary looked down. The thought was like an anchor at the back of her mind.

  She looked up. ‘Oh yes,’ and her eyes became long, smiling slits. ‘But not till I’ve got a job.’