Judgment Day

  “Ah. You're one of those, are you?”

  “And they smashed Mr. Porter's window,” Thomas put in.

  “I know.”

  “One of what, Mum?”

  “Floggers and hangers. Never mind, love—you'll grow out of it, I trust.”

  “Well, don't you? Think they should be beaten?”

  “Not beaten, perhaps,” said Clare cautiously. “But I agree it's thoroughly disgraceful.”

  She opened the door of the mini, stowed the children away in the back, got into the driving seat.

  “Hey, what's that?”

  There was something on the passenger seat. A creamy ribbon, some long rag of plastic, a burst balloon. She went to pick it up, touched for a moment its sliminess, recognized it, gave a yelp. The children leaned forward, interested.

  Clare said, “Oh, Christ!”

  “What is it? What is that thing? Can I see?”

  “No, you can't. It's nothing, some rubbish.” She grabbed a hank of Kleenex from the parcel shelf, swept it up, deposited the lot in the bin, came back, and cleaned the seat. The children were arguing now over territorial rights. “Shut up, Tom—move over and give her some room.”

  She drove to Spelbury, surprised at the sense of violation. Just because a bunch of yobbos … While one lay in tranquil unsuspecting sleep. It was the sudden intrusion of lurking, dormant nastiness; as though the mud were stirred up. It was the stab in the back from that uncontrollable other world whose haunting presence on the fringes of bright reality it was never possible—or expedient—to forget.

  Chapter Eight

  Shirley Bryan seldom got out of bed before ten. What was the point? Martin could get himself off to school; Keith was poisonous in the mornings, they never exchanged a word anyway. She would lie frowsy in the curtained room, hearing the milkman's clink, passing cars, passing people. Quick, busy footsteps. She couldn't think what other people did with themselves: Sue Coggan, always on the go, off to the shops, baking, cleaning, bustling hither and thither. Her own days were cavernous with boredom, a long slouch from one hour to the next, with accompaniment by Radio One. The house was full of abandoned projects: half-finished garments, hexagons for patchwork cut out and then stuffed into a drawer, a junk-shop chest of drawers painted sparkling white until the paint ran out and it was too much of a sweat to go and buy some more. Occasionally she had tried evening classes: yoga, fitness, upholstery. But dropped out, always, after the second or third time. She couldn't be bothered when something became an effort; it was always like that, the dress or skirt or whatever would run into difficulties, or the recipe would turn out more of a bother than she'd reckoned, or she'd just lose interest, cop out.

  Today, she thought, lying there (the bed a bit smelly, the sheets needing a wash, curse it}, she'd wash her hair and do it in a new style. Yes. Get a rinse maybe from Boots and try something really way out. The day took on some color: yes, she'd do herself up nicely, give Keith a surprise, and finish off that pink shirt and wear it this evening. He wouldn't know what had hit him. And they'd go out for a drink.

  She got up and ran a bath. Lying there in the steam, she thought of the night before. He'd been late—but he was always late, these days—and they'd had a row, of course. And in the middle of it he said, “Christ, I wish I hadn't bloody well bothered to come back at all.” And her stomach plummeted; he means it, she realized, it could happen. But later it had all been all right again. He'd had a drink—given her one too; surprise, surprise—and they'd sat watching the telly together, first the new comedy series and then the news. On the screen, robed figures in some hot country were digging the bodies of children out of rubble: she said, “That's terrible. Isn't that terrible, Keith?” and he nodded, and she thought, he's coming around, he'll snap out of it by bedtime, thank God for that. “Another beer?” “Yeah, thanks.” There would be sunny periods tomorrow, the forecast said, and temperatures around normal. She went out into the kitchen; it's O.K. really, she thought, I mean really everything's all right.

  A blond rinse? Or one of those coppery ones?

  * * *

  He said, “My dad's taking me to the Air Show.”

  “So's mine.”

  “We're all of us going. Mum says I can take Steve.”

  “I'm going,” Martin said, “all on my own with my dad. We're having us a day out together. Just my dad and me. And he's going to tell me all about those old wartime planes and that.”

  “There's going to be a Red Devil display. And there'll be a Phantom fighter.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “Brrrr-m! Brrrr-m!”

  * * *

  Clare said, “Well, well, well.”

  “What's up?”

  “That car.”

  “The Ford Capri?”

  “That's it. What would you say the number was?”

  “KJO 520S,” said Peter.

  “That's what I think too. Well, well.”

  “Could you,” he said kindly, “expand?”

  “That bloke I told you about, that charming fellow who boxed me in for two hours in a car park, is one of our neighbors. Isn't that nice? There he is setting off to work.”

  He grinned. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing. Reserve it as an interesting piece of information.”

  “And setting off to work is what I must do, too. Bye, love.”

  “Bye. Incidentally, there was a used french letter on the passenger seat of my car yesterday.”

  “How the hell did that get there?”

  “Someone,” said Clare coldly, “bunged it in through the window, I presume.”

  “You should lock the car. It'll get stolen one of these days, which would be even more inconvenient.”

  * * *

  The vicar had called in about the arrangements for the Saturday wedding. He hung on, chatting, while Sydney eyed through the window the only bright spell that morning and thought grimly he'd be lucky if he got in half an hour with the hoe.

  “I was having a talk with Mrs. Paling the other day about the new texts.”

  Sydney said, “Ah.” He watched cloud surge up behind the trees: mean, gray cloud.

  “She's not altogether in favor. Interesting. Of course I've always had a few reservations myself, as I told her. There was a lot to be said for the old forms. But there it is—the Church has to move with the times like anything else. She took my point, I'm glad to say.”

  Sydney made a non-committal noise. He didn't much care for this new stuff himself, the old words were quite good enough as far as he could see, but it wasn't worth a lot of palaver and in any case where his own devotions were concerned, he continued to say what he always had said. Radwell, though, was in a twitch for some reason. He stood there in the hall grinding the toe of his shoe into the carpet, making balls of fluff which would have to be swept up, and going on about Series 3 and Mrs. Paling and the Appeal Fund—which was a matter for the Restoration Appeal Fund Committee and not relevant at this moment. On the other side of the fanlight, cloud was massing and darkening. George, following Sydney's glance, said, “Ah—you got your window fixed.”

  “Seventeen pound fifty,” said Sydney sourly.

  George shook his head in condemnation and sympathy. He said again, twice, that he must be getting on, and did not. Outside, raindrops pattered. It came to Sydney, all of a sudden, that the vicar was a lonely man as well as one who could never be done with what he was saying or say what he meant to any effect. He seemed, standing there with his sandy hair and his pink face, like one of those diffident small boys who lurk on the edges of a playground, not invited to join in, while all around people are whooping and shrieking. Poor bastard, Sydney thought. It was one thing to have chosen that sort of life: another to have been shoved into it by circumstance. Because you were a bit of a ham-handed bloke with a silly laugh. It was one thing to have turned your back on involvement, quite another never to have known it. There he stood, in the murky subaqueous light of the hall, nattering
on, while Sydney experienced a curious and uncomfortable combination of pity and patronage. Thus, once, in the war, he had watched the panic of a young officer during a sticky hour or two somewhere in the Red Sea, while he himself felt no fear: poor sod, he had thought, as he thought now, poor sod.

  When the vicar had at last made an awkward departure Sydney fetched the dustpan and brush and tidied up the carpet. It was gone twelve, and the rain looked set in. He went into the kitchen to put a couple of potatoes on for lunch.

  There was another knock at the door. With a sigh, Sydney turned the tap off.

  Shirley Bryan was standing there. She had a ravaged look to her, disconcerting, more blowsy even than usual. She said, “I've come to ask you a favor, Mr. Porter.”

  He led her through to the lounge, where she would not sit but stood at the french window looking out at the garden. Words tumbled forth. Sydney, in embarrassment and apprehension, sat looking at the floor.

  Her husband had left her this note. Another woman. He was clearing out; best thing. Sorry and all that.

  She stood at the window, picking at the curtain with her fingernails. “… Just stuck there all anyhow with some bills and stuff so I didn't see it till halfway through the morning … Shock of my life … Rang the office but they said he's off north for three days on an assignment, wouldn't you just know it, they must have had it all worked out…”

  Sydney cleared his throat and said something about a cup of tea. She ignored him.

  “He says he's in love. In love! Fat chance I get to fall in love,” she went on, savagely now. “Stuck here at home day in day out. Have an affair yourself, that's what they tell you in the magazines, show him you're attractive too. How do I get to have an affair, I'd like to know? When do I ever meet any blokes?” She ripped a loose thread from the curtain and twisted it round her finger. Sydney cleared his throat again and lined up the edges of the books on the table, to be appearing to do something. He felt as though some errant force were at large in the house—fire or flood or rampant rot. He wished she would go; he wanted no part of this. It was hard on her, yes, but he didn't see what he could do and other people's personal troubles are their own affair. Favor, she'd said. What favor? He shifted nervously in the chair.

  “…So I rang my sister at her office and I'm going to go up to London and stay with her for a couple of days, I can't stand it here all on my own in the house and she's got this flat, I can think things out a bit, see what I'm going to do.”

  Sydney nodded.

  “But there's Martin, see.”

  Sydney looked up in alarm.

  “…So what I was wondering was could you do me a big favor—just keep an eye on him for a day or two till I get back. I can't take him, there's not room and anyway it'd be a bind, he'd get bored stiff and I want to be on my own. He'll be at school all day. It's just for him to know he can pop in here in the evenings a bit, see? I'd be ever so grateful. You needn't have him to sleep here, it's just so he knows there's someone handy if anything goes wrong.”

  When at last she had left, the smell of her cigarette hung in the room. He opened windows, emptied the ashtray, straightened the mangled curtain. There was a sense of invasion; the privacy of the house had been violated as tangibly as by the breaking of the hall window. In agitation, Sydney went into the kitchen to make himself something for dinner; in the process he smashed a plate. But what could he have said? No, Mrs. Bryan, look after your own child, you've no business going off leaving a boy of that age on his own. He couldn't have said that. He'd had no option but to do what he did.

  The boy didn't show up till nearly six. When he came he made Sydney jump, appearing like that suddenly at the french window. He must have climbed over the garden fence. He said, “There was this note in the house.”

  For a wild moment Sydney thought he was referring to the husband's note, then he realized the mother must have left another. She'd not even waited for the lad to come home, then.

  “She said to come over here if I wanted.”

  Sydney offered a meal, but the boy had already eaten. “She left a pie. One of those frozen steak and kidneys you heat up. I had that. I'm not hungry. Can I look at your telly?”

  Sydney, who would not normally have switched on at this time, nodded. Martin settled on the sofa, his knees hunched up to his chin; a peaky-looking lad, Sydney thought, too pale, and those large gray sober eyes staring out. Presently, he left him there and went out to spray the tomatoes.

  When he came back the program had changed. Martin said, “D'you watch this series, Mr. Porter—it's good.” Sydney sat down; silly stuff, not something he'd have bothered with in the normal way, but after a minute he found himself smiling. The boy was grinning away; later, they laughed out loud, together.

  At the end, Martin got up and switched off. “There's nothing now.” He looked at Sydney, expectantly, it seemed. Sydney cleared his throat and looked away; it was only seven-thirty. What time did a boy that age go to bed?

  “She didn't say when my dad's coming back. He's taking me to the Air Show next week. Monday and Tuesday, it is.”

  “Ah.”

  “Monday we'll go, I should think.”

  Sydney got up jerkily and went over to the sideboard. He took out the biscuit tin and offered it. The boy chose a cream wafer. After a moment he said politely, “I like chocolate ones best, actually.” Then, “I watch you sometimes when you're digging your garden.”

  “Ah,” said Sydney, again.

  “You don't always know I'm there, I hide in the bushes.”

  Sydney offered the biscuit tin.

  “No, thanks,” said Martin. “It's not spying,” he added, after a moment. “It's just there's a place I use to hide in. If you don't like it. I won't do it.”

  Sydney looked at the boy. In ten years of neighborhood, he realized, he had barely exchanged a dozen words with him before. He said, “I don't mind. That's all right.”

  “I like your garden. I like the way you've got everything in rows.”

  “You've got to keep things under control, if you're doing veg.”

  “My dad can't be bothered with gardening. Nor my mum.”

  “No,” said Sydney.

  They sat in silence for a while. Sydney got up and went to the corner cupboard. He got out a pack of cards. “Like to learn how to play rummy?”

  “O.K.,” said Martin with alacrity.

  The boy picked up the game with ease. They had a couple of hands and then Sydney remembered the card tricks he'd known years ago. Martin crouched over the table in absorption. “Cor … That's good … Can I have a go…”

  Suddenly it was nine o'clock. Martin said, “Shall we have the news?” Sydney got up. “You switch on. I'll make us a cup of cocoa.”

  In the kitchen, he stood looking out at the houses round the Green: each an island unto itself, each with the cozy inhabited glow of windows. He went back into the lounge and said, “There's a bed upstairs in the back room. You could stop there tonight if you like.”

  The boy's face lit up. “Could I?” he said.

  Later, Sydney lay awake. He had not shared his roof with someone else for thirty-five years. For thirty-five years he had gone to bed, and risen again the next day, alone in a house. There was total silence: the boy might not have been there, he must have slept at once. Nevertheless his presence was absolute; it lent another dimension to the place. Sydney, disturbed, lay considering in the darkness, hearing the church clock strike midnight, and then the quarter.

  * * *

  George Radwell, making an entry in his desk diary, saw the year reach ahead in a progression of weddings and christenings, thick over the next few weeks, tailing off gradually into a barer autumn and winter. Funerals, of course, were disobliging, giving less notice. Backward, the pattern repeated itself, clustered around weekends, weekdays yawning empty, a spate at Christmas and Easter and bank holidays. An endless vista of smiling—or sober—faces; of people wearing clothes in which they did not feel quite themselves; o
f occasions detached from the normal for others but which, for him, were routine. “Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife … In the midst of life we are in death …” It had occurred to him once, staring down at the absorbed faces of yet another bridal couple, that his was an eerie presence at crucial moments in other lives: essential, yet irrelevant. There he stood, holding prayer book or cup of tea or glass of champagne, proclaiming or looking on or politely responding, while other people had emotions. The thought made him uneasy, lingering after the end of that particular ceremony; he had seen himself for a moment, walking back alone to the vicarage while chattering parties piled into cars.

  Two weddings in succession on Saturday; a christening on Sunday. He turned to the post: electricity bill, brochures, church correspondence, a letter from his mother, passing a tetchy old age in Scarborough. She wrote on alternate Sundays. This letter, like most, dwelt on weather, rising prices, some domestic worry to do with plumbing or wiring, and included a mild swipe at George's deficiencies. A neighbor had dropped in flaunting a visiting grandchild: “A lovely little fellow, what a pleasure he must be to them, well I suppose I must be grateful for what I've got. I'm doing you a gray pullover for your birthday, the same as last year's, as the elbows will be out by now the way you wear them.”

  It looked as though this line was to supplant her running commentary on his unmarried state which, over the years, had shifted from coy remarks about wedding bells to petulant criticism of his failure to “settle down with a nice girl.” He had been a disappointment to her, he realized; mediocrity in childhood had been excusable, quite a good thing indeed—“a good, quiet boy,” “no trouble, we've a lot to be thankful for,” “steady, not one of those temperamental ones.” But lack of performance in adult life was another thing; fortnightly, from Scarborough, she carped on.

  He put the letter aside. The back door slammed with the force of a bomb blast, indicating the arrival of Mrs. Tanner. George, hastily closing the desk top, prepared to flee to the church. Cornered in the hall, he had to listen to a protracted account of the death of a relative; through the window he saw the white mini, with Mrs. Paling in the driving seat, which prompted the usual unsettling feelings. “You dropped your hankie, Vicar,” said Mrs. Tanner heavily. “Put it for the wash, shall I? It's very soiled.”