Arthur walked over and kissed her damp forehead and mouth. ‘You’ll be all right soon, love.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, I know I shall. You’re a good-hearted lad, Arthur.’ Never again, he said to himself, and wondered whether such fuss was necessary, unable to understand how they had let such a thing happen. Never again.
‘Come on, duck,’ Em’ler said in a voice of anguish, ‘drink this.’ Brenda put it mutely to her lips, then thrust it aside without tasting it.
‘Drink-up, duck,’ Arthur called out. She obeyed, sipping it slowly. Em’ler talked, to stop Brenda closing her eyes and being sick, asking her when she had last had her hair permed and where Jack was, saying that this was his job and that he should be here at a time like this. Brenda opened her eyes and lifted her head: ‘No he shouldn’t,’ she argued. ‘It wouldn’t be right. Tek the hair from my eyes, my owd duck. Jack likes to be at wok when this goes on.’
‘It’s not right, though,’ Em’ler said angrily. ‘Men think they can get away with murder.’ She glared wickedly at Arthur, her grey eyes filled with a rancid hate. He grinned, and she dropped her glance, passing more gin to Brenda.
‘How much left?’ Brenda asked.
Em’ler looked into the pot. ‘Half a glass,’ she lied. Brenda’s skin turned salmon-pink below the water-line, and she drank slowly. She rolled her head back but, finding nothing on which to rest it, brought it forward again, finally leaving it a little to one side. Arthur could not worry any more. The fever of his cold put him into a half-sleep. Brenda’s face was hidden by steam, and the air was so warm and gin-smelling that for minutes at a time he did not know where he was. The stumpy table-supports under the checked-cloth looked like a cook’s legs below an apron, and the heavy dresser, whose mirror was steamed over, resembled the back of a coal-barge disappearing through the evening mist. The chairs, the sofa on which Brenda had spread out her clothes, became beads of moisture on the window panes. He woke up as the gin-glass slipped through Brenda’s perspiring fingertips, and Em’ler, in a mad dash that scattered a frail chair in her way, saved the gin from falling on to the rug, wiped Brenda’s fingers dry with a towel, and gave the glass back to her. ‘You haven’t got much more to drink now, duck,’ she said kindly.
Brenda pushed her hand away. ‘Don’t want it. I’ll be sick.’
‘It’s for your own good,’ Em’ler insisted firmly.
‘Drink it,’ Arthur said gently. ‘A drop more, duck.’ The smell of gin penetrated the barrier of his cold and made him feel slightly ill.
‘I’m going dizzy,’ Brenda said.
Em’ler poured more water into the bath. ‘Keep your eyes open,’ she said, watching her closely, ‘then you won’t feel dizzy, duck.’
‘I can’t keep ‘em open.’ She tried to drink more gin, but it spilled from the corners of her mouth. ‘My mother didn’t teach me this,’ she drawled, repeating the phrase until it became unrecognizable. Then she began to sing in a thin caterwauling voice.
‘Shut up, duck,’ Em’ler said gently. She turned on Arthur: ‘You bastard. You dirty bastard.’
‘Who’s a bastard?’ he cried, jumping up with surprise. ‘You’re daft, you ugly bitch.’
‘Drink this, duck,’ she said. ‘Come on. Just a drop more. Keep your eyes open, then you’ll feel better.’ Brenda tilted the glass upwards and drank, then stared blankly before her, saying nothing, face pale and mouth set hard. Em’ler wiped sweat away with a towel, pushed back strands of hair from her forehead, then poured more hot water into the bath. ‘Only this left,’ she said, passing the rest of the gin.
‘I thought it was all gone!’ Brenda’s lips twisted. ‘I’m getting out,’ she wept. Em’ler looked at the drop of gin left.
‘Let her get out,’ Arthur said. ‘It’s done the trick by now.’
‘You shut up,’ she said cuttingly, ‘this is my job.’
‘Then get on wi’ it,’ he said, and lit another cigarette. Brenda stood up suddenly, her pink steaming body unfolding before him like a rose in full bloom. She swayed, as if about to fall, then stepped with a splash on to the rug. Em’ler wiped her dry with one hand and held her up with the other.
‘Want any help?’ Arthur volunteered.
The retort was quick: ‘No thank you. I can manage all right without your help, thank you very much.’ She reached for a dressing-gown on the sofa back, and when she turned the towels fell from Brenda, leaving her naked, swaying towards the fire.
Arthur reached her first, then Em’ler pushed him jealously away and caught up Brenda’s formidable weight, holding her upright and trying at the same time to get the dressing-gown on her. ‘Hold still, Brenda. Please hold still while I fasten this.’
‘Tell me if you want any help,’ Arthur said, sitting relaxed in his chair.
‘Shirrup, you bastard, you,’ Em’ler snapped back. ‘I’ll pay you out one day.’
‘Christ, I’ve never known anybody as daft as yo’, you crosseyed gett,’ he said in an even voice.
Brenda rolled slightly, closed her lids over the staring eyes and slipped down on to the rug unconscious. Em’ler ran into the scullery for a cup of cold water which she sprinkled lavishly until Brenda’s eyes opened. With tremendous strength and skill she lifted Brenda back on her feet and walked her to the stairfoot door, which she pulled open so that they could climb the steps. ‘Come on to bed, duck,’ she coaxed. ‘It’s all over now. Come on to bed and sleep it off.’ They went up the stairs with snail-like slowness. At times Em’ler had to lift Brenda’s feet and legs and place them on the steps above, cleverly economizing her strength, and Arthur, watching from behind, thanked God that Em’ler had done all this for them, and in one sentimental moment forgave her all the times she had called him a bastard. ‘Come on, Brenda,’ she kept saying. ‘Come on, duck. Just another step. That’s right. Now one more. Now another. We shall soon be at the top. I’m sure we’ve brought it off. Just one more step.’
A clear laugh came out of Brenda’s drunkenness: ‘I don’t care whether it comes off or not. I don’t care now.’
Em’ler sat her down on the bed. She fell back and lay perfectly still, giving a sigh and going immediately to sleep. Arthur stood in the doorway, watched Em’ler shaking her head and pulling the sheets over Brenda. ‘Is she all right?’ he asked.
Em’ler’s face came closer to a smile than he had ever seen it. ‘Nowt to worry about,’ she told him.
He took a pound note from his pocket. ‘Buy yourself something with this, Em.’
She pushed his hand away. ‘I don’t want your money. You keep it. You’ll need it one day.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ he retorted. ‘Buy yourself a blouse or some stockings. Yer’ve done us a good turn tonight.’
She smoothed her hair back. ‘No, I don’t want any of your money’ — her voice becoming hard again. He pushed the pound note into her apron pocket but she thrust it back into his coat.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘If you won’t let me thank you.’
She leaned over to switch off the light. ‘Who do you think you are? Trying to thank me for this? You’ve got a cheek, mate, I can tell you.’
‘Bogger you then,’ he swore, and turned to walk out of the room. He changed his mind and went back, kissing her on the lips. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
She lifted her fist to hit him, but he caught the strong wrist and stopped her. ‘You touch me,’ he said, ‘and see what you get.’ He pressed her arm back until the pain of it showed in her face.
‘Let me go, you bastard,’ she said. ‘Somebody’s coming down the yard.’ He heard a knocking at the back door, and released her. The light out, they ran downstairs.
‘Brenda?’ Jack called out. ‘Let me in. I forgot my snap.’
Arthur caught hold of Em’ler and whispered: ‘Keep ’im talkin’. I’m going out by the front door.’
‘I’ll do as I think fit,’ she answered in her normally loud, idiotic voice. ‘I might keep ‘im talkin’ and I might not. You can?
??t make me. It’s up to me to say whether I’ll do it or not, let me tell you.’
‘You bastard,’ Arthur hissed. ‘Keep quiet.’
‘I’m not a bastard,’ she cried.
‘All right then. But for Christ’s sake don’t yap so loud.’ Jack hammered on the door, shouting: ‘Open up, Brenda. Who’s in there with you?’
‘You might be a bastard,’ Em’ler went on, as if she hadn’t heard the knocking, ‘whatever your name is, but I’m not one. If you think I’m a bastard I’ll show you my birth certificate to prove it.’
‘You’re worse,’ Arthur said, and left her talking and fumbling in her apron pocket as if she really did carry a birth certificate with her. He walked quietly through the parlour, and heard Em’ler lift the latch and ask Jack gruffly what he wanted saying that she couldn’t find her birth certificate now but would show it him tomorrow. Holding the parlour door open, Arthur laughed as he heard Jack stammering out his excuses to the fierce Em’ler who continued to bar his way for reasons best known to herself. Brenda slept obliviously upstairs, and Arthur did not care now whether the night’s work had been successful or not. Feverish and weary, he couldn’t have cared less — standing on the doorstep trying to decide on the best direction to the nearest pub — if he had made twenty thousand women pregnant and all their husbands were at his back, brandishing sickles and after his blood.
He walked down the long empty street, his head clearing with the sudden onset of fresh air, his mind lighter, his troubles weighing less since he was no more face to face with them. Market Square lights danced around him. Each pavement threw back the sound of his shoes walking. Draughts of beer and smoke-smells came out of pub doors. He dodged between tall green buses that scooped up loads of darkness as they went by with all lights shining, pushed his way through crowds gathered around Slab Square Bible-punchers and soap-box orators. The evening dug a slit-trench in his brain, and he couldn’t throw off the vivid and blood-like scene of Brenda’s white body reclining in the bath, and Em’ler’s idiot face passing glass after glass of gin until Brenda was hopeless and helpless in her swill-tippling and unable to speak or recognize anybody in the room. It’s her fault for letting such a thing happen, he cursed. The stupid bloody woman.
He stumped on to the Peach Tree and sat down to a double rum, feeling easier, his cold giving less trouble. Someone sang in a wailing, off-key voice, a snake-head swaying before a microphone on a stage at the room’s far end. He stared glumly at the backs lined at the bar, listened to the business-like clink of the till, and the crisp brandy-snap tone of the barmaid. The floating demoniac voice sent into the microphone came through smoke-haze and wheeled around Arthur so that he wanted to get his hands at the insane throat causing all the noise. Other people felt likewise. Arthur watched a man make his way through the crowd. ‘Pardon me, Pardon me’ — and walk up to the youth who was singing. They spoke to each other like two friends meeting on the street, the singer holding a cigarette, the other man his lapel. The singer’s cigarette was unlighted, and he seemed to be offering it to the man. Then, suddenly, the man who had seemed so meek hit the singer, dealing him a violent crack on the lower half of his face. The singer’s feet caught in the microphone wires, and when he tried to get up and retaliate, he fell down again.
Arthur was glad it had happened, laughing so loud that he began to choke from the pain in his ribs. Perhaps the singer hadn’t realized he was making such a terrible racket, thinking he sounded like Gene Autry or Nelson Eddy. Anyway there was no need to make a noise like that and it served him right that he had been clobbered. With a red, bruised, and bewildered face the singer walked by Arthur, out through the swing doors. The same doors were pushed inwards while his eyes were still on them, and in came Winnie, Brenda’s younger sister.
She looked around the bar and at the tables near the wall, opening her black coat because of the sudden heat. Arthur noted a coloured scarf like a turban, high-heeled shoes, stockings, and a black handbag.
‘Hey, Winnie,’ he called out, ‘are you lost?’
She didn’t hear him. He had met her once before, at Jack’s birthday party last year, which she broke up at two in the morning by flying into a temper at Jack and smashing every pot and bottle on the table with a poker because he accidentally spilled half a pint over Brenda’s best dress. Such an act of destruction fascinated Arthur. He had wanted to get to know her. She was a small woman of twenty-five who seemed to Arthur only half the size of himself. At Jack’s party he had called her Gyp because of her long black hair, a nickname that enraged her, and she threatened to biff him one if he didn’t stop. He asked her to come outside and do it then, so that they wouldn’t make a mess of Jack’s party, but she refused and said that if he didn’t behave himself she’d tell her husband about him when he came home on leave from Germany. ‘All right, Gyp,’ he had answered, and this remark was the cause of her temper that led her to smash up the party, using Jack’s spilled beer as an excuse.
He stood up and walked across to her. ‘Hey up, Winnie,’ he said. The Gyp would come later.
She turned to him and smiled, giving no sign of the fire for which he was prepared. ‘I’m looking for a friend of mine,’ she said.
‘Maybe he’s in the Trip,’ he suggested.
‘It’s a she, cleverdick,’ came the retort.
He took her arm. ‘Come and have a drink then.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I’ve got to get going. I haven’t finished cleaning the house up yet for when Bill comes home. He’ll be in tomorrow night, and if the house’s scruffy he’ll have a fit and black my eyes.’
He persuaded her to sit down. ‘I’ll have a gin-and-orange,’ she said.
‘How long’s he got?’
‘Ten days this time, but he’ll be back again next month. He’s a sergeant now, in the MPs.’
He watched her drink; her full small lips seemed spiteful and changed with trouble; her breasts, large and out of proportion in size to the rest of her body, pushed the folds of her purple jumper forward. You touch me, they said, and see what a smack you get. Mounds of mischief. You’d never think she was Brenda’s sister, he said to himself. A bit of funny business went on in the family twenty-odd years ago. Some gypsy selling clothes pegs got hold of her mother and gave her what for, I’m sure, when she offered him a cup of tea. You’ve only got to look at her eyes and them high cheeks and that coal-black hair and the beaky little nose. A nice change though from a bread-pudding face with spotted-dick eyes and ginger-pink tabs.
‘When does Bill get his ticket then?’ he spoke out.
‘Only another ten months. And I’ll be glad as well. He’ll be better out of it. I might just as well not be married, with him in the army.’ She had a tiny endearing gap between two front teeth, which intensified any emotion showed on her face, making her look more annoyed than she really was, or sadder, or happier, a physical accretion to her personality that fascinated Arthur.
‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s no life for a woman. Nobody to look after her and take her out when she feels like a good time. It must be miserable for you. A woman wants a bloke to look after her, not to be stuck in Germany. I can’t understand a bloke, as signs on for the army, especially when he’s married, and never could. And when he’s got a nice sweet little woman like you I reckon it’s even barmier. Leaving you behind in Nottingham. I don’t know what the world’s coming to, I don’t an’ all. Have another drink, duck, then you’ll feel better. You will, I mean it. Being in the army’s no life even at the best of times. I know, because I’ve been in. No, duck, the sooner he’s home the better, then he can look after you as a bloke should. He can get a job and settle down, and bring a regular pay-packet into the house every Friday. There’s nowt like it. You write and tell him to get home as quick as he can, and to get out of the army for good. Gin-and-orange? I’ll have a black-and-tan.’ He talked in a low voice, his tone suggesting that he did not know he was being sympathetic. It was as effective as the drink, his words rolling out a t
heme of pity for a deserted woman until she felt sorry for herself, at which he began to cheer her up with crude jokes and slapstick actions, so that when he called her Gyp she was so happy that there was no objection to it.
‘How’s Brenda?’ he said later, when she was sipping her third gin-and-orange.
‘You should know,’ she laughed. ‘You’re her fancy-man.’
With a mutual grin the subject changed. He felt happy. Whether Brenda’s trouble had been resolved or not did not matter: he was relieved that she was asleep and that it was settled one way or another, and this sense of relief made him unquenchable in his tenderness to her sister Winnie. By ten of the pub clock he was holding her hand and merely looked up to order a last round before ‘tune’ was shouted. The more he talked the less he noticed the noise, and they sat in a magic ring of quiet speech that no disturbance could enter.
‘I’ll see you home, duck, if you like,’ he said, when the last drinks had gone and they stood up to fasten their coats.
‘All right,’ she answered. Locked in the fevered fastness of his cold he could hardly remember Brenda, thinking that perhaps he had dreamed about her sometime, but nothing more. She had vanished behind a veil of fever, sunk beneath the steaming waters of a zinc bath, gone to extinction carrying a bottle of boiling gin, arm-in-arm with batchy Em’ler. He was happy enough with Winnie, walking her up Derby Road towards home. She took his arm, having forgotten that she should have been cleaning her house for Bill tomorrow night, and Arthur didn’t remind her. Loaded buses passed them. At Canning Circus she told him to walk across quickly so that they wouldn’t be recognized by any of her neighbours also on their way home from long errands to public houses. He knew then what he was in for, telling himself what a lucky bastard he was, yet hoping with the same inward breath that his premonition would turn out well. She was small by his side, like a little girl. You bleedin’ kidnapper, he laughed to himself as they swung into Winnie’s street. They stopped talking, lightened their footsteps. ‘I don’t want the neighbours to twig anything,’ she whispered, pressing his arm.