After a moment or two, he said, “D’you mind if I smoke?”
“I’d rather you didn’t, actually.”
George nodded, slowly, and without lifting his head said, “I’ve been in the British army for fifteen years. I came out a month ago. I survived Dunkirk. With seven other blokes and only a Thompson submachine gun and a rifle between us, I marched two thousand Italian prisoners out of Benghazi. I had dysentery and had to stop the whole ruddy column every time I needed a shit. I was at El Alamein, and a German 88 hit the unit next to us and the blood came down on us like rain. In forty-six, when the heroic ruddy conscripts came home to parades and free beer and women, I was sent to Palestine. I was sitting with my mates in a bar a hundred yards from the King David Hotel when the bloody Irgun blew it up. We spent forty-eight hours digging stinking bodies out of the rubble. The flies were unbelievable. I’ve come home to a . . . a hovel I share with the wife and our three-year-old son and her evil mother. It’s got no running water, no light, and stinks of paraffin; the roof leaks, and we pay rent to a ruddy farmer who lives in a manor house and owns half the flamin’ county. It’s like I’ve fought a war and ended up living in the Middle Ages or summat. What does the G stand for?”
“Pardon?”
George leaned forward and tapped the nameplate. “G. ROAKE. What’s the G stand for?”
“Oh, right. It’s Gordon, actually.”
“Give me a new house, Gordon. I fucking deserve it.”
Roake rested the lower part of his face in a cup of skeletal fingers.
“Yes,” he said, “you do.” He slid the form across the desk. “Fill this in, Mr. Ackroyd. I have to tell you, however, that, of itself, national service does not give you any special advantage.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No.”
George folded his arms and sat back in the chair.
“How about you, Gordon?”
“Sorry?”
“The war. Were you in it?”
There was a sneer in the question.
Roake blinked at him through his spectacles.
“Yes. However, unlike you, Mr. Ackroyd, I didn’t see a great deal of action. I spent almost three years in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. Well, labor camps, to be accurate. In Burma, mostly.”
“Ah,” George said, embarrassed, enduring that familiar feeling of being outranked and outflanked. He cleared his throat. “That would’ve been tough, I should think.”
“Yes,” Roake said, “I think it would be fair to say that. Of the one hundred and eight men under my command, only eleven survived. Not all of us are glad of it.”
He held out the form.
“Fill this in, Mr. Ackroyd. I’ll do my best for you.”
“Thanks,” George said, adding, out of habit, “sir.”
It took George almost a month to deliver the form back to the town hall. For reasons he did not want to share with himself, he had decided to keep it secret. He filled it out, carefully and only slightly mendaciously, at his bench at Ling’s during the second week of his work there. Then, when he thought it was done, he discovered that he would also have to produce his marriage certificate and Clem’s birth certificate. He had no idea where these were and could think of no plausible reason to ask. So in stolen moments he hunted through the nooks and crannies of Thorn Cottage. He found his marriage certificate in the front room, his mother-in-law’s dark museum. It was scrunched up double in a drawer in the coffin-black sideboard, behind a canteen of cutlery that had not conveyed food to a human mouth in a century. Evidence of his son’s birth was harder to find. In the end, in bed, he asked Ruth where it was.
“Why, George?” Sleepy question.
“I’ve never seen it.”
“He’s a lovely boy, George. Don’t you worry. That’ll be all right.”
The next morning, in the kitchen, yawning, she handed the certificate to him. Win saw it.
“What yer want that for?”
George put the paper into his overall pocket and smiled at her.
“Forms to fill in, Win. National Insurance. The welfare state. What we voted for. Everything down on paper, fair and square.”
Win looked at him, drying her red hands on her apron.
“Welfare state, my arse,” she said.
WHETHER OR NOT ex-Captain Gordon Roake interceded, George waited only two years and a bit for his council house. The letter arrived on a bright June morning in 1950. Win had already left for work. (Willy’s electric road-boat had been replaced by a petrol-engined van, which Willy drove as though it were a high-spirited and unpredictable stallion, never trusting it enough to risk third gear.) Clem, as a treat, had been allowed to eat his porridge sitting on the back step in the sun. George used his bread to wipe the marge from his knife and slit the envelope open.
Ruth watched him, holding her cup with both hands. Outside of birthdays and Christmas, the postman paid rare visits to Thorn Cottage. She suspected trouble.
“What is it, George?”
He didn’t answer her but read the letter through again, then handed it to her. She studied it, squinting. (Soon, she will be able to read only through round-framed National Health glasses, which will make her look owlish and somewhat foolish.)
“Whas this mean, George?”
“It means, Missus Ackroyd, that in three months we are going to be out of this dump. That we’ll have a place of our own.”
“You put us down for a council house?”
“Damn right I did. That’s the least we deserve.”
“Whyever dint yer say nothun?”
George shrugged. “There’s a waiting list. It might’ve been years. I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”
Ruth sat down. “Bloody hell, George.”
He grinned at her.
“Where’s 11 Lovelace Road, anyhow?”
“The Millfields estate. Off the Aylsham road.”
“What, in Borstead?”
“Of course in ruddy Borstead. You noticed a new council estate in Bratton Morley?”
She gaped at him. “You expect us to move to Borstead?”
He put his cup down. “No. I don’t expect. There’s no expecting about it, Ruth. There’s a nice new house waiting for us. It’ll be ours from September, and we’re going to go and live in it. I thought you might be pleased, to be honest.”
“Well, I . . . Thas all a bit sudden, George, is all. I dunt know what mother’ll make of it.”
“It’s nothing to do with her.”
“Of course that is, George. She’re lived here all her life.”
He smiled hugely. His mustache stretched itself toward his ears.
“Well,” he said, “she can live here the rest of it an’ all, as far as I’m concerned. If you take another look at that letter, you might see that 11 Lovelace Road is down for Mr. George Ackroyd and his dependents. Who are, if I remember correctly, Mrs. Ruth Ackroyd and Master Clement Ackroyd. No mention of a Mrs. Win Little.”
“George, you can’t mean . . .”
He finished his tea and stood up.
“George, we can’t leave mother here all on her own.”
“Why the hell not? Listen, it’ll be the happiest day of her life when I walk out of that door for good. She’ll hang flags out. Mind you, she’ll miss having me to bitch about.”
“George!”
Clem had turned to watch them, licking his spoon. Ruth saw and rolled her eyes at George, who understood. He took the letter from her, folded it, and put it in his overall pocket. He went and sat on the step next to his son, ruffling the boy’s hair. He laced up his work boots and then, whistling, walked down the garden path. At the decrepit shed he stopped and studied it as if it were a man improperly dressed on parade. Smiling, he stepped forward and kicked the door until it was reduced to kindling.
Clem, thrilled and frightened, turned to his mother. “Whas Dad doing that for, Mum?”
In stolen moments and in muted voices, Ruth and George argued throughout that summer
. George, most of the time, maintained a dogged, bland resolve. But on a Saturday night in early August, he lost his temper. They were at the end of the garden, splashed by the moonlight spilling through the elms. He aimed his finger at her face.
“Listen,” he said, “this is bloody stupid. This is our chance to have a life. I didn’t fight a war to live with your ruddy mother. I didn’t marry you to live with your ruddy mother. I was in charge of men who died, in case you’ve forgotten. What I went through you can’t even imagine. And I end up back home being treated like something she trod in. I won’t have it, Ruth. I won’t sodding have it, you hear me? You and me and Clem are going to have a life of our own whether you like it or not. And that’s an end to it.”
“Thas all very well for you to say, George, but she’s my mother. I can’t just —”
He’d heard it all before and couldn’t bear it again, so he hit her. He slapped her face. The sound was a wet plop. She turned her face away and stared down for several seconds, as if she were inspecting the rows of vegetables close to her feet.
“Ruthie,” George said. “I . . .”
Then she looked up, her eyes silvered by tears, and hit him back. It was an awkward upward swing of her fist that surprised the corner of his jaw, and he staggered backward and sat down among the carrots. He gawped up at her and she began to cry. He got to his feet and moved toward her. Ruth retreated.
“Dunt you touch me,” she said, thick-voiced.
She wiped her eyes on the backs of her hands.
“I hent never hit anyone afore in my life. I can’t believe the first person I do hit is my own husband.”
She sobbed horribly.
George’s self-pity expanded until it included her, and he put his arms around her.
After a while she said, “I’ll tell her tomorrer, after she come home from the chapel.”
“Right,” George said.
“And you make yerself scarce. I can’t stand the thought of you and her tearun inter each other. Take Clem round to Chrissie’s or somethun.”
“Why would I take him to Chrissie’s?”
“I dunno. Think of some reason. Thas not like she ent always pleased to see you.”
He smiled. “You reckon she fancies me?”
“Chrissie fancy anythun in trousers, as well you know.”
“I’ll take ’m off before I go, then.”
Ruth snuffled a sort of laugh. The back door opened and a rhombus of mean yellow light fell onto the yard.
“Ruth,” Win called. “Ruth? Whatever are yer doin out there? I thought yer’d gone to make the Horlicks.”
While Ruth stumbled through her rehearsed speech, Win stood as still as a monument in her chapel clothes, at the sink, holding the tea strainer out in front of her like a pessimist’s begging bowl. Her black Sunday hat on the draining board. Her back to her daughter.
Eventually she said, “An when’s this, then?”
“First of September, Mum.”
“What, this September? Next month?”
“Yes.”
Win inhaled deeply. “Yer kept this quiet, Ruth. How long’re you known?”
“Not long, Mum. It come up sudden. Thas nice, though, ’cos Clem’ll be able to start up at the new school.”
It sounded feeble. Ruth felt sick.
“You seen this house?”
“No, but George say they’re very nice. Up off the Aylsham —”
“I know where they are. Two of the mawthers at work live there — Dorothy Eldon and Jane Whassername, who ent no better than she oughter be. Always gorn on about how they’re got the indoor toilet, as though thas somethun to be proud of, doin your business insider the house and stinkun it up.”
Ruth said nothing.
“Breed like rabbuts up that estate, by all accounts,” Win went on. “Dorothy moan about how she can hear next door at ut, the walls are that thin. An thas a laugh, seeing as how she’re up the spout agen herself.”
She banged the strainer against the side of the sink, dislodging the tea leaves.
“I’re lived here aller my life, Ruth. Born an grew up here, like my father and his father. Back beyond that, I dunt know. This come as quite a shock. I ent sure I can just up and move to Borstead jus like that.”
“Well, Mum,” Ruth said, “we . . . I mean . . . That ent . . . You dunt . . .”
Win turned and surveyed her primitive kitchen.
“Nemmind, though. My Father’s house hath many mansions. We stay who we are, no matter where we go. I can walk to work from the Aylsham road. That’ll save me heven to listen to Willy Page’s squit mornin and night. Though I dunt know how we’re gorna get everythun there. Hev George thought about that?”
Ruth gazed at her mother, stricken.
“Mum,” she said, “the house ent . . .”
She made an enormous effort to say what had to be said.
“Mum. You dunt hev to come. You can stay here if you want. George . . .”
“No, Ruth,” Win said. “Thas all right. I daresay that’ll be all right. That can be a struggle livun here. I can see how for Clem and gettun to work that might be better to be in Borstead. I’ll get used to ut. I ent so stuck in the mud as you think I am.”
Defeated, Ruth hung her head.
The gate banged against its post.
She heard Clem say, “Tommy said I could, Dad. Why can’t I?”
Then they were all together in the kitchen, which suddenly felt as small as a shoe box.
George looked from one woman to the other. Win smiled at him. It was a shocking event.
She said, “Well, yer a dark horse, ent yer?”
Ruth wouldn’t meet his eye. She looked down at the floor, and he knew.
The first of September was a Friday. Bill Ling gave George the day off and lent him the flatbed Morris lorry. George spread a tarpaulin over its oily floor and drove to Thorn Cottage. It took an unimaginable amount of time to dismantle the cast-iron beds and bring them down the narrow staircase. The stuff from the front room weighed a ton. He didn’t want any of it; he wanted them to lie on bare floors, eat off bare floors, until he could afford new things, modern things made of bright metal and plastic and Formica that had no miserable history. At midday Willy turned up, grinning, at the wheel of the laundry van, and they loaded that, too, with sheets and towels and table shrouds and the Sparling dinner service, the pieces clad in newspaper, like gray abandoned nests.
They unloaded it all at 11 Lovelace Road just before the weather changed. George drove the lorry back to Ling’s yard and collected his bike. Rain fell as yellow beads from a sallow sky. He rode back into Borstead and stopped at the Feathers. He shook himself in the entry like a wet dog.
The landlady lifted her painted eyebrows at him and said, “The usual, George?”
“No,” he said. “A whiskey. Make it a double.”
“Celebrating, are we?”
“Aye,” he said. “A new life.”
He lifted the glass and drained it.
The landlady expressed mock disapproval.
“If I’d’re known it was that important, I’d’re joined you.”
George pulled a half-crown out of his pocket. “Do, then,” he said.
She poured two more drinks but refused his money, laying her fat hand on his.
“Thas on the house, George. Cheers. Here’s mud in yer eye.”
When he got back to Millfields, the rain had drifted out to the North Sea, leaving the sky a tipsy festival of russet and bruised purple. He got off the bike and admired his new house from the other side of its glossy wet hedge. Its bland face was drenched in evening color. His young son was standing on the path. He picked the boy up and planted him on his shoulders.
“What say, young Clem? You like it here?”
The child said, “When’re we gorn home?”
He carried the boy to the front door and found it locked. They went around the back. Ruth was at the kitchen sink, rinsing unpacked plates. There was a faint roaring fro
m somewhere.
“Clem,” she said. “Come’n feel this! Hot water from the tap!”
George jockeyed Clem to the foot of the stairs and paused to look into the larger of the two front rooms. It had been turned into the Sparling Museum. Win, with a yellow cloth duster in her hand, stood inspecting it: the glass cabinet of grim ornaments; the mausoleum sideboard surmounted by the long-dead squirrel; the murky oleograph of Christ as The Light of the World; the squat occasional table obdurately awaiting an occasion.
On Monday a man from the council came to see that they were settled and to hand over the rent book. From him Ruth learned that Lovelace was pronounced, correctly, as “Loveless.”
ILIVED IN that house for the next thirteen years, and in all that time I spent a total of maybe ten minutes in that front room. For some reason, Win lit a fire in its grate every Christmas morning; otherwise, it went unheated. In the bitter Norfolk winters, the room radiated cold like the exhale of a grave. Eventually, George rigged up a heavy curtain on a pole over its door, sealing Win’s past more firmly in its modern exile.
Gradually, as I made cautious friendships on the estate, I came to realize that almost all the other houses had front, or “best,” rooms similar to ours. And always the same one — on the right as you came in the front door. (Not that anyone used the front door; in accordance with rural custom, we were a backdoor community. A knock on the front door was always an occasion for alarm.) One or two families did not conform. The Rileys, fecund Roman Catholics, notoriously used their front room as an extra bedroom. As did the Moores, but they had a son with polio who had an iron frame on his leg. The Parkers, around the corner from us on Dryden Road, actually spent evenings in their best room. We’d see light seeping from the edges of their curtains and wonder what they could be doing in there.
Best rooms were museums. But unlike conventional museums, they did not commemorate the past. They denied it.
The inhabitants of the Millfields estate — with only a very few exceptions, among them my father — belonged, and knew it, to the rural working class. We had been, until comparatively recently, peasants. The world we lived in was still recognizably feudal, and we knew our subordinate places in it. So, if our best rooms had been museums in the traditional sense, they would have contained hoes and spades, jars of hoof oil, yokes for carrying pails, cracked boots stinking of dung, unworn christening gowns, wonky milking stools, superstitious medicines, rusted bayonets, crutches.