Birthday: A Novel (The Seaton Novels)

  ‘I only wish I could help.’

  He set down two mugs of tea, a shade of his old self returning: ‘I was surprised to see you back so early. I said to Avril, “He’s giving her the one-eyed spitting cobra. He’ll start living with her, and stay in Nottingham like the rest of us.” She was being tucked up by then, and burst out laughing. But I’ll bet Jenny would be delighted, if you did.’

  ‘We sat around, and talked, just nattered like old friends.’

  ‘You won’t tell me anything. I’ve got you weighed up. I know everything about you and always will. Want more tea?’

  ‘I’ll never stop pissing.’

  ‘The place is only next to your bedroom door.’

  ‘Pour me one. If I thought I’d got myself weighed up I’d be dead.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. If you’ve got yourself weighed up you’re always spot on when it comes to weighing somebody else up.’

  Such self-assurance was to be avoided, though his brothers only put on a simplicity of outlook to further their common humour. Upstairs, he looked along the shelves Arthur had carpentered, the top row tight with novels, others packed with travel and adventure books, atlases and maps, small encyclopaedias, date books and dictionaries found at car boot sales or Oxfam shops.

  On the walls were framed pictures of Clifton Grove and Wollaton Hall and an antique map of the county he couldn’t tell whether genuine or not. An enlarged photograph of their mother and her second husband Tom included Avril and Eileen, Derek and Arthur and himself, taken in a pub twenty years ago, the mother not dead nor Avril dying, pints on the table and cigars half smoked, shorts and cigarettes for the women.

  Arthur’s suits hung in the built-in wardrobe, shirts and underwear, ties and handkerchiefs folded and stacked in a chest of drawers. A chess set was laid on a table by the bed, a game Avril had learned from her father, and schooled Arthur in. Brian once found them in mid-match, each striving to avoid losing, or hoping for checkmate. He wondered whether Arthur would look at the board after Avril was dead, though his shirts would be as neatly folded in the drawers.

  The central heating dulled him, so he hung his jacket over a chair and lay on the bed, recalling how he had a long time ago tried to become a novelist, but every proud-arsed bullshitting bowler-hatted toffee-nosed publisher with his rolled umbrella, idly indulging in his parasitical occupation for a so-called gentleman, had turned lily-white thumbs down on everything he wrote, Soviet Bloomsbury’s censorship wanting none of him.

  His furnished attic room had been at 13 Cockroach Villas near St Pancras Station, as if ever ready, at such failures, to lug his suitcase down the street and get on the Puffing Billy back to where he came from. Unable to look at another page of scribble one day, he humped a television set – black and white – back to his room from a stall in Camden Town. After using his know-how to still the ever rolling screen it was obvious, on seeing the staid crap displayed, that funny scenes from his pen would have a better chance of making money than novels nobody wanted.

  The truth was, he thought, using the sink instead of walking down four flights of stairs, that talent couldn’t be talent if it took so long to bring success, while the starvo humour of childhood and youth pattering in his brainbox for much of the day and night would make good entertainment on the goggle-box. To struggle at novel-writing, when cascades of money waited to overfill his pockets, hardly bore consideration.

  In the sixties he’d had the good luck to meet Gordon Pike in a pub near the station. The Gordon Pike. The Great Gordon Pike. Gordon-fucking-Pike, mate. Well, nobody remembered him now, but why should they? Writers for television come and go, and so would he, which was why he thought it better to eat now and die later.

  Where the money was, he had to be, and when fate took the upper hand he was only too willing to dig a fur-lined grave and live with good wine, cigars and fifty quid meals till he popped his clogs. No one but a wool-head would do otherwise. Largeness of spirit meant letting fate take care of you, and only self-indulgence would give the best out of life. Seeing a rung on the golden ladder, he swung on and held tight, coming from too far away to let anyone push him off.

  Gordon Pike hadn’t had much schooling, the same for me, Brian said. Even dyslexics get into university these days, but then it was different, or maybe not so much, but a maverick had a chance. Pike, five years older, an air gunner in the war, had written concert party sketches to entertain every erk and bod at the Much Bindings and Little Wedlocks and Upper Mayhems he had flown from on his two tours of ops. Connections made got him into radio, and then writing for the box.

  He made mattresses of money, but seemed about to descend into the melancholics’ plughole when Brian met him at the bar, unwilling to get the train to his wife and four kids in St Albans after dragging his feet (in elastic sided boots) from the bed of a girlfriend on Marchmont Street. Pike sobbed on about the hard days of his childhood, not fashionable to do so, but Brian outlined, over the third pint, something of his underprivileged infancy.

  Pike, having met a man who understood, went up manic by manic steps to thinking life might be worth going on with after all, and gave Brian his card, telling him to phone if he wanted advice about his scripts.

  Brian’s new acquaintance – the inert Pike, no less – spewed his way across St Pancras booking hall, but he got him into a train, then phoned the wife to say (no news to her) that hardworking dedicated Gordon would be needing assistance at the other end, and that she ought to be there, hoping she wouldn’t turn on the big guns of justifiable invective when the poor misunderstood genius opened his bloodshot eyes in the morning and shot his fist into her long suffering face.

  Brian’s work was taken, sketches and short plays which, Pike said, were plugged into the hearts and minds (insofar as they had them) of the kind of people which those who ran the television business hadn’t a fart’s chance in a whirlwind of meeting, though they saw good money when they sniffed it. The light of magnanimity in Pike’s eyes betrayed pride at being able to overcome his loathing of everyone in the world just this once. For Brian it was enough, because Pike was God, and he learned from him, then forgot all he had learned, and became himself, as far as a self could be found.

  Material came with nothing like the effort of writing a novel. Television up to then had shown family entertainment of the drabbest kind, while as the sixties picked up steam you could write about the lowest of the low provided the decibel meters showed a high enough score of idiot laughter.

  He moved by taxi from his room in Cockroach Villas to a flat in Highgate and then, able to believe his wealth wouldn’t melt after waking from a good dream turning bad, a removal van took his accumulating chattels to a property in Chelsea. After waiting till Gordon Pike had conveniently killed himself, he sold his abilities to a company paying higher fees.

  If he knew that the sixties were different from any other time it was only because he had read it in the newspapers, unable to believe any particular decade wasn’t similar to those already lived. He was behind the time, detached from it, observing, unwilling to use drugs at parties where hooks could be hung on the stench of marijuana smoked by those of all ages. A certain amount of alcohol and a good cigar was enough for him.

  Too old to show interest in those bearded charlatans who toned down their posh school accents to a proletarian mumble, he recalled how so many people claimed to have an engine-driver as a grandfather (instead of being descended from an Irish grandmother) that the country must at one time have been chock-a-block with puffing billies going around in circles.

  No utopian nursery themes impressed him, though he wasn’t so daft as not to notice any phenomena which might be useful in his trade. As the decade went on, better and better contracts came his way, as if being in opposition to the times made it easier to exploit his sense of humour.

  During his marriage to Jane she showed him a barely comprehensible review in a weekly paper of a so-called play at the Roundhouse, a redundant engine shed in Chalk Fa
rm made into a theatre. A troupe of actors in black tracksuits scrambled up and down a monkey climber in semi-darkness for over two hours, screaming insults at the audience, so that he regretted not having a few stones to hurl back. After the show he heard a man and his wife say they’d never enjoyed themselves so much.

  His scorn brought on a quarrel that marriage could hardly sustain; either the actors’ intention had succeeded, or he used the event to undo a relationship there was no further use for. The beginning of the end, they lost their sense of irony, and humour turned into malice.

  ‘We never go out together,’ Jane said when he wouldn’t escort her to an Arts Lab. He was unable to understand, he said, how art could be produced in a place which carried out experiments on rats. Only individuals make works of art; and nothing but mechanical contrivances ever came from workshops.

  Holding such comments back, or smiling to suggest that they were harmless, maddened her when wanting an honest opinion on some ‘happening’. ‘You’re getting to be like your grandfather.’ She nodded at the old man’s photograph pinned beyond his typewriter. ‘And you’re even beginning to dress the same’ – seeing him in a suit and tie for a party, rather than jeans that reminded him of overalls at the factory.

  She took him to the LSE on the night of a ‘sit-in’, where talk of peasant revolutions and working class uprisings seemed a more exciting game to the students than Monopoly or Scrabble. He talked with someone on whom more than twenty thousand pounds of education was being wasted by a shilling copy of The Little Red Book. He wanted to know if Brian didn’t feel treacherous at having left his working class roots (as if he was an aspidistra!) instead of staying to politicize ‘the masses’ with his superior powers of understanding. Brian wanted to say fuck off and don’t be such a daft prick, but politely told him that no rural worker or factory hand with a sense of humour would listen to the exhortations of a Chinese tyrant, and he saw their talk as no more than a middle-class ploy to keep the workers in their place – for which remarks he was called a racist.

  As for sex in the sixties, it made little difference to him. From the age of fourteen the commodity had been free enough with what girls he had known, or with women whether married or not, though from the present talk he could well believe that anyone born in that decade (and surely in any other) would have cause to wonder who their real father was.

  When Jane shouted, after he’d caught her out in a love affair: ‘My womb is my own. I do what I like with it,’ he knew that if such was the case she could use it with man, woman or beast for all he cared, though he had to agree when she added that life was too short to be faithful. If he’d wanted loyalty from a woman he should have stayed with Jenny.

  In the words of Tacitus they created a desolation and called it peace, yet often mustered sufficient affection to reopen the campaign, energy bubbling up like water in a desert when they thought the well had been sucked dry. Two intelligent and otherwise tolerant people could have continued living together, but it was a time more than any other when not to nod with the herd was taken as an heretical attack on a person’s deepest beliefs, and being in love was not enough.

  The spirit of the age decided they had no common ground, though out of pride he preferred to think that with tact, skill in love, and diplomacy, he might have kept the marriage going. In bed they invariably went off like two pieces of dynamite, and no lovemaking had been the same since. After the divorce, when she went back to working on a newspaper, he long recalled (and still did) her short dark hair, lithe almost androgynous body (except when she was pregnant) and sizzling lavatory cleaner wit on which he had sharpened much of his own.

  Among people he worked with were those who enjoyed the artful self-indulgence of the decade, until the time of sending their children to schools where ‘doing your own thing’ was thought to be more important than spelling or the precision of arithmetic. Some didn’t care, while others (who had more money, including himself) found places which still believed in education. Many were later to shake their heads at the increase of single mothers, at so-called football violence, and at unemployed youths ‘shooting up’ in underpasses, who were only doing in fact what they themselves had done in their flats and houses.

  Meanwhile life in his home town had gone on as it always had. People such as those at Jenny’s party lived in the same old way, impervious to influence, sceptical, independent or ignorant (or both), engrossed in themselves and their families, taking no guff from anyone, nor talking it either. They were rowdy, went boozing, worked hard when they had to (and they nearly always had to) but skived when they could get away with it, and turned violent at times out of boredom or lack of excitement, or anger at not being acknowledged as intelligent human beings, or because a worm of unknown compounds was eating at their livers. They were themselves, and if he were to ask Jenny whether she or any of her family had taken drugs she would look at him ‘gone out’, too surprised to be offended.

  Because such people had always been his inspiration he went on earning, but should his brain turn to wet sand, and no more cheques skim through his letter box in the morning or at midday, he had enough money not to worry about the future, though working as long as he could would enable him to go on feeling younger than his age. As happy as he had ever been after a lifetime of thinking that something was wrong if he wasn’t unhappy, he was guarding his time and freedom, having won the long struggle for autonomy.

  He slept until Arthur called that supper was ready. ‘So how about coming down, and getting stuck in?’ he said at the second knock. ‘The wine’ll get cold if you don’t.’

  Among the spread was a slab of cheddar, cut by wire from a drumlike piece in the local market. Arthur stabbed through the cellophane packet of smoked fish and laid a fillet on each plate.

  A bottle of red among the edibles radiated like Eddystone Lighthouse over plates and side plates, glasses, knives and forks, and napkins in metal rings. ‘At least we eat well. I don’t know why, but I can’t remember what we used to eat as kids.’

  Brian forked stuff onto his plate. ‘The smells from the dinner centre come back to me now and again and make my mouth water.’

  ‘You remember the two women who ran the place?’ Arthur laughed as he poured the wine. ‘The big fat one was Miss Carver, and her assistant was little Miss Bradley. Miss Carver used to hit us with a wooden spoon if we didn’t keep quiet. I even saw her take a swipe at Miss Bradley when she did something wrong. Another time, she gave her a kiss while she was slicing the bread. You could tell what they were a mile off, but they were guardian angels to us. Sometimes we’d get custard and bananas for dessert, and I remember the hot milky cocoa they used to dish out. I don’t see how anybody can have mental troubles if they’ve gone hungry. If I felt myself going mad all I’d have to do was think about the next meal.’

  Brian clinked his brother’s glass. ‘I was looking at that family photograph in the bedroom, the one with Tom in it, taken about twenty years ago.’

  Arthur found it impossible to mention Tom without laughing. ‘A good thing mam married him though. He looked after her a lot better than Harold ever did.’ Chain-smoking Tom, ten years younger, was the bloke she should have had from the beginning. In the war he drove tanks from Chilwell depot to loading ramps at one of the stations, and he’d had a good time taking ATS girls to the pubs in Nottingham, a smart quiff held down under a beret. After demob he never wore a hat again, mindful of his Brylcreemed sculpture to the end.

  After his wife died from cancer he met Vera in the lounge of the Boulevard Hotel, and a few Sundays later took her to Skegness in his fifty pound banger. She felt safe with him because he never drove the old Austin faster than forty-five, nor ever did much more on the motorway: ‘I’ve seen too many pools of blood on the road,’ he told her, walking on the sands after a fish and chip dinner. Then he popped the question, and she said yes.

  He was thin and above middle height, lantern jawed, blue-eyed and jaunty, cool and dependable. They’d sit holding h
ands and looking at television, each with a fag on the smoulder, drinking mugs of strong sweet tea. Sometimes they’d go to the pub, and put back shorts or half pints, or both in rotation.

  Tom was the caretaker of a large chapel just off Slab Square, a four-roomed flat going with the job. On Saturday night, trying to sleep, Brian would hear gangs of drunks coming out of the pubs, the crash of glass sounding like bars of contemporary music, and curses when they set on each other under the chapel wall four floors below, then the clatter of boots as the shaven headed, earringed posse of Nottingham Lambs fled before the screaming sirens.

  On Saturday afternoon Tom checked the heating system of the chapel for Sunday morning, while Vera with bucket and cleaning rags wiped down the pews, helping him to get the work done so that they could go back to their snug living room, to put the kettle on and have a smoke.

  ‘They were happy enough,’ Arthur said. ‘It was a charmed life. A shame Tom had to have that heart attack while he was up a ladder polishing the organ.’

  ‘He was lucky to go so quick,’ Brian said. ‘He was only sixty-odd, but at least he didn’t take up space in the hospital for more than a couple of days.’

  Tom had been brought up by his mother, no father in the offing, and they had supposed him to be, though without prejudice, a bastard, but he told them the real story when the three brothers took him to the Trip and made him jolly with as much ale as he could sup, plus a neverending supply of fags.

  His father Leo had worked at Chilwell factory during the Great War, and on Monday July 1st 1918 the sun scorched the vast area of camouflaged roofs. People sweated to meet their quotas, in halls storing seven hundred thousand high explosive shells. Out of ten thousand people hard at work four thousand were women, and between them they filled fifty thousand a day.