Breaktime

  ‘You could be right about that,’ said Jack, his pint once again raised to help on its way the pie he had consumed in two bites.

  ‘Do you want yours?’

  Robby pushed his pie towards his friend. ‘No, take it. Your need is greater than mine. We can’t have you losing your figure.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ said Jack, and consumed the second inadequate refection.

  Robby drained his glass, placed it on the table and stared at me with that kind of brass-faced grin that means ‘your turn’.

  ‘You’d like another?’ I said.

  ‘Thanks, kiddo,’ said Jack.

  When I sat down again, wet-handed, Robby and Jack were finishing a muttered conversation all too obviously about myself.

  ‘On a hike?’ asked Robby nodding at my pack lying by my stool.

  ‘A few days.’

  ‘On your own?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Till tomorrow.’

  Robbie: ‘Meeting someone?’

  ‘A friend.’

  Jack’s scatological laugh.

  Robby: ‘A girl, eh?’

  ‘Once aboard the lugger and the girl is mine,’ Jack sang, the beer fomenting a tune and an uninhibited performance. ‘I’ll bet you’re a bit of a horizontal champion in your quiet way, bonny lad.’ He guffawed and wagged a prim finger. ‘Be careful, kiddo, or you’ll dip your wick once too often.’ He reprised his bawdy outburst.

  ‘Looks like you missed out,’ said Robby to Jack.

  ‘O, aye?’ said Jack, draining his glass. ‘That depends on what I wanted in the first place, doesn’t it, Sunshine?’

  ‘Idiot,’ said Robby and laughed.

  Neither laugh nor conversation included me.

  ‘All right now then are we?’ said Jack.

  ‘Champion, man,’ said Robby, mock-Jack. ‘Much relieved.

  And it’s time you were making tracks.’

  Jack looked at his wrist watch. ‘It is an’ all. Are you going to have a word with kiddo here?’

  ‘I’ll see to that. You get to work.’

  ‘See you.’

  ‘So long.’

  Jack said to me as he stood up, ‘Maybe we’ll get together later on. So I’ll just say tarra. Thanks for the pint.’

  I had suspected for the past few minutes that I was becoming inane. Suspicion now was confirmed. To Jack’s goodbye I could do no better than smirk and wave a collapsing hand. It was at that very second I realized the cause of my disintegration: the same as my urging desire to visit the lavatory. With some surprise I heard my voice speaking my ponderous thoughts to Jack’s retreating figure: ‘I’ve had five pints.’

  Jack turned at the door. ‘Down but not out,’ he said and was gone.

  ‘He’s a nice bloke,’ I was saying to Robby. ‘I like him.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ said Robby, tolerant as a barmaid. ‘I think he likes you too.’

  His tone was sobering.

  ‘You’re extracting,’ I said, but with careful effort.

  ‘Never!’ said Robby. ‘But listen. What are you doing tonight?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘I’ve got something to do this afternoon.’

  ‘I think I’ll have a sleep.’

  ‘But tonight, after six, Jack and me have an amusement planned. Would you like to join in?’

  ‘What you going to do?’

  ‘Come and find out. Don’t want to spoil things by telling. It’ll be a surprise. How about it? You game?’

  ‘It’ll all be experience, won’t it?’ I said.

  ‘It will for sure,’ said Robby smiling.

  ‘Where’ll I meet you?’

  ‘Let’s say here at six-thirty. Okay?’

  ‘Okay, but listen, I’ve nothing else to wear but what I’ve got on.’

  ‘You’ll do just fine. Just beautiful.’

  ‘I really have to go out the back.’

  ‘Enjoy a good splash. I’ll see you tonight.’

  ‘Half-six. Here.’

  ‘You’ve got it. And one thing I will tell you. I bet afterwards you’ll really know where you stand.’

  ‘Nigmatic.’

  ‘And irresistible!’

  Robby went through the street door. I went through the door labelled

  Graffiti

  Ponderoso

  Beer has made me tired plus getting up early and being in open air so much not used to all that I’ll have a kip in the sun in the castle just where I was before just here out of the way nice out of the wind too but can see up the valley nice pretty ah

  Don’t know what to make of them two, those two, are they? Dunno. Interesting. What do they do? if?

  Skylark. Pretty view. Thought that before. But still true. Skylark. All that energy, larking about in the sky, all that work, flying like demented, like in love. Ah. Sex more like. Larking in the sexy sky.

  I can’t even sing, never mind fly. What hope for me with sex?

  England: lark, liquid, above a hill, verdant, blue sky dazzled with pillows of clouds. Wordsworth and Vaughan Williams, though I prefer Benji-the-jazzman Britten myself, who is English enough too thank the lord.

  And what’s this they’re up to tonight? Getting brave aren’t I, accepting such uncertain invitations from complete strangers. What would Morgan say! Ah, Morgan, thou shouldst be with us at this hour. Crap. He’d say I was a timid sod. Mayhap he’d be right. How do you get like that? The prisoner is of a nervous disposition, m’lud, and when attacked by five armed warders cowed in a corner of his cell in a cow hardly way. Man’s a fool. Yes, m’lud. I sentence you to eternal anxiety and don’t let me hear from you again. Or is it learned? Mother always worrying. Was she worrying when I was born? Was she at that mystic moment wondering whether Dad had remembered to leave a message for the milkman? Two pints today, please, we have an extra mouth to feed. Was she, even, Shandy-like, unnerved by some mundane distraction at the climactic moment of my conception? Or maybe Dad’s right: that I know nowt except from books, am a pseud. Wonder how the old bloke is, poor chap. Always loathed being ill. Incapable. Like a hobbled animal. Raging against the indignity, the frustration, the loss of control. Rage, rage against the dying of the light, old man. With nowhere else to live except in his body what else do you expect? But that’s an insult. To say he can’t think. He can think. But he thinks by feeling and knows what he thinks by seeing what he does. Me, I know what I think by seeing what I say, like the poet said. Is that the difference, the real difference between us? Is that why I can’t understand him and he can’t understand me? Not the generation gap—crap that is—but the education gap? The thinking gap. Is that why he can’t explain him to me and I can’t explain me to him? He wants me to show him what I am, I suppose. Wants to see I’m like him by acting like him. Is that it? God knows. And He isn’t too chatty. Is that why I’m here now doing all this? To try and show him? To try and convince myself I am more than he says? Could be all he wants, if I want? And are Robby and Jack what he wants? Jack reminds me of him a bit, as he was before his illness, as he must have been, judging from photographs, at my age. Good boozer, hard worker, one of the lads, a bit of a joker, good looking. A handsome feller, they say my dad was when he was young. They say that about Jack, I don’t doubt. But there he is having a hard time with his dad, so what’s his dad want of him? And Jack says Robby is always rowing with his father. Though in his case it sounds like he wants his father to be something different from what he is instead of t’other way about. A flipping father trio. Morgan doesn’t have

  Salutation

  ‘A penny for them.’

  Helen. In full flesh bloom. Better than the photograph. I could hardly look at her but in snatched glances. Shyness is an illness and ought to be medically treated.

  ‘Hey! What . . .?’

  ‘Meeting you, chump.’

  ‘But I thought . . .’

  ‘To get here I had to tangle a web. Officially, by which I mean parentally speaking, I’m here on a three-day state visit to my father’s brother, otherw
ise known as my uncle, and his family who live in Gunnerside. I told you I’d find a way.’

  ‘Very convincing.’

  ‘In one hour I embark on United’s three-o service going forward to Reeth, where I shall be picked up by father’s brother’s wife, a child-weary mother of eight, one more being imminent, a prolific breeding record I regard as more suitable to rabbits than human beings. On arrival and after a suitable time has passed, I shall casually mention to my bucolic uncle that I met by chance here in Richmond, as indeed I have, an old friend, verily a school pal from my Darlington years, who invited me to a social evening (ahem ahem) . . . well, go on, invite me . . .’

  ‘O, of course, please join me for an ahem social evening tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank you kindly, kind sir. Tomorrow it shall be. And, I shall continue, I would appreciate it if they would allow me to accept and keep the appointment. They, of course, only too glad to be spared an evening of my stay without my adolescent presence, will say yes, but be careful. And I shall meet you where’er you will. Okay?’

  ‘Do you really have to strain the truth so brazenly?’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Touché.’

  ‘Maybe I should go out and come in again?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  He had had a picture in his mind of how this meeting would go and it was not like this. She talking so much, he tongue tied. He hated being taken by surprise, unprepared. Surprises always turned him sulky. He did not know why but called it shyness.

  Helen knelt at his side, bent down, and kissed him. A gentle caress; unmistakably inviting.

  ‘I haven’t come sixty miles for a discussion about morality,’ she said. ‘And you’ve been boozing. I can smell it. And taste it now.’

  ‘Further apologies. I met a couple of blokes and had to keep my end up in the pub.’

  ‘Masculine crap. And that wasn’t exactly the end I thought you’d come here to keep up.’

  ‘Thank you for your confidence in my abilities.’

  They laughed at last.

  ‘Why is it always so difficult to be natural when you’re meeting someone again after a long gap?’ she said, settling herself at his side.

  ‘Any prizes for the answer?’ he said, shifting on to his side so that he could keep her reclining figure in view.

  ‘You never know your luck.’

  ‘Try fear.’

  ‘Silly! I’m not scared of you.’

  ‘O, yes, you are. Just as I’m scared of you.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘In case you’ve changed. Not what I remembered. Or expected.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Better than.’

  ‘Thanks, kind sir.’

  Castle-gazing tourists ambled by, pretending the two recumbent figures they had surprised themselves by discovering were not there. They looked pointedly at the view.

  ‘Are you over your fear yet?’ she asked, her eyes closed to the sun.

  ‘I’m recovering fast.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Are you okay here or do you want to go somewhere else?’

  ‘The sun is warm, we’re out of the wind and nearly out of sight. The grass is soft enough. Why move?’

  ‘There are people about.’

  ‘My, what a private soul you’ve got.’

  She sat up, supporting her body with her arms, her head hanging back full-face to the sun. Beautiful. Provocative. Unknowing? or coy design?

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I really do have to get to my uncle’s. Mother knows my e.t.a. and will telephone to be sure I’ve arrived.’

  ‘I know the feeling.’

  ‘Cloy cloy.’

  She sat cross-legged; plucked at the turf between her knees. ‘Why must they?’

  ‘Yours always seemed pretty easy-going to me.’

  ‘A front. In public they affect a liberal nonchalance.’

  ‘At home?’

  ‘They have three different locks on each of the outside doors, burglar-proof catches on all the windows, and they keep a chromium-plated fire extinguisher under their bed.’

  ‘The latter necessary to douse the ardour of your father’s passions.’

  ‘Which explains, no doubt, why the extinguisher has never been used.’

  They laughed.

  ‘So they’re running scared,’ he said.

  ‘For them life is an obstacle course littered with booby traps.’

  ‘And their little girl is always in danger.’

  ‘That’s how it used to be. I was ten before they stopped worrying about baby-snatchers.’

  ‘And now they worry that you’ll get raped.’

  ‘Wrong. They could almost cope with that. I’d be the injured party, you see. All their expectations about life would be confirmed and they’d have me at home to nurse and coddle all day.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘They think I’ll do the raping. They don’t say so in as many words, naturally. That’s the infuriating thing. They pretend to be concerned, and warn me about men who are after only one thing, as they put it. But they can’t hide what they are really thinking, that I’ll go out and lay any man who takes my fancy.’

  ‘And get yourself pregnant.’

  ‘No, no. You still don’t understand. That’s just what a man would think.’

  ‘So I’m a man!’

  ‘And cute with it. I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m all stewed up about them at the moment.’

  ‘Join the club.’

  ‘There was a row, you see, about my coming away.’

  ‘So what should I know that men never do? Tell me, I’m truly interested.’

  ‘Sure? I don’t want to bore you. We both came here for some fun, remember.’

  ‘Which is just what you’re telling me your parents are worried about, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re getting warm, I’ll give you that!’

  ‘Fun and games. Hanky-panky. And actually I’m boiling with frustrated passion.’

  ‘I should have brought the aforesaid extinguisher. Actually, they use phrases like that: hanky-panky and fun-and-games. Would you believe? You see, if I got preggers that would confirm their beliefs about life. Another of the traps. And if I liked the bloke and married him that would make it all right. I’d be properly trapped, paying for my mistakes, taking the consequences of my actions—all that guff. And I’d be there, lumbered, for them to cluck over still, giving advice, and, what’s best, with a baby for them to feel sentimental about.’

  ‘And all forgiven.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But if you had fun, played hanky-panky and didn’t get with child?’

  ‘I’d be a loose woman. I’d be promiscuous and, worst of all, I’d be enjoying it. I’d be an unpaid whore, a happy hooker, a woman of easy virtue. Etcetera. That’s what bothers them most.’

  ‘Ugly words.’

  ‘Ugly sentiments.’

  ‘But never said straight out?’

  ‘O, no. That’s what makes it so horrible. I don’t think I’d mind if they came straight out and said what they think. Trouble is, I suspect they don’t even know that they think it. So it all comes out in innuendo, by implication. And somehow, that makes everything worse. Dirties everything.’

  Ditto thought of his father; their rows; their straight words. And of his mother, with whom he rarely discussed or argued about anything. (He had promised to telephone home this evening and must not forget; he owed them that, and was glad to discover he wanted to keep his promise.)

  ‘The other way can be as bad sometimes, you know,’ he said. ‘People say wounding things in anger. And words said can’t be unsaid.’

  ‘I’d take my chances.’ She stood up. ‘My bus leaves in a few minutes.’

  He stood up too and leaned back against the wall. He felt an impulsive desire to probe her presence with him now, to hear her reason it. He knew before he spoke that his question was a mistimed curiosity. But could not help himself.

  ‘Just tell
me one thing before you go.’

  She looked at him, her face still betraying the feelings their conversation had revived. But he could not hold back.

  ‘Why did you send that letter and your photograph?’

  ‘Ask no questions and you’ll get no lies,’ she said. ‘But if it bothers you—’

  She turned and all but ran from the castle.

  ‘Helen!’ he called.

  But she did not stop; and he did not follow.

  He pressed his back against the wall. Hard. Bruising stone on brittle bone. Till it hurt. Sharp, clean pain.

  His eyes guarded the castle gate against her return. (She must return.) While his mind picked himself to pieces.

  Fool. Idiot. Clod. There is about you an instinct to disruption. I have noticed it before, often. I could list a number of such occasions but it would be tiresome. Cloth-head. Why don’t you just shut up sometimes. You like to get something going nicely and then upset it. You have few talents but your skill in this is consummate. Like a small child building sandcastles and then smashing them down because the sea might get them. You pole-axed or something. What chance again. Stupy. Why. To stop anything coming too close. Is that it. Afraid to be known. To be vulnerable. It’s so. Admit. Foolarse. Afraid what you’ll learn about yourself. True. It is. Pity ’tis. Twit.

  Unthought conclusions sent him sprinting from the castle, belongings left abandoned by the wall.

  In the market place he stopped. The Reeth bus was there by the cross, its engine running.

  He reached it, panting, searched the windows in panicky haste for Helen’s face. He found her in the middle of the farther side, sitting on the inner seat, a solid farmwife between her and the window. She was staring straight ahead, her face impassive, but tears coursing her cheeks. He knew she knew he was there, agitated in the road. He reached up and placed both hands flat against the window. ‘Helen!’ he called and slapped the glass with his hands. The farmwife turned a fierce, embarrassed face to him. ‘Helen!’ he called again. But she would not look. The bus door closed, the engine revved, pumping exhaust about his feet. He scrabbled in his anorak pocket, found a ballpoint pen, the slip of paper they had given him at Walter Willson’s checkout. The bus’s brakes blew off; he heard, as he scribbled, the gear engage. Licked the slip of paper across his writing, slapped it on to the window just as the bus accelerated away.