‘I do enjoy it, mate,’ he said loudly. ‘Just because I’m not like you, don’t think I don’t. Yo’ve got your life an’ I’ve got mine. Yo’ stick ter your managin’ and the races, an’ I’ll stick to the White Hoss, fishin’ an’ screwin’.’
‘I’ve got my way, and you’ve got yourn,’ Jack acknowledged.
‘That’s right. And they’re different.’
Jack stood in silence.
Arthur said: ‘I’ll get crackin’ to’t first-aid before I bleed to death.’
‘And I’ve got to go to the stores for some spares,’ Jack said with relief. ‘I’ll see you again sometime.’
‘Maybe,’ Arthur said, walking away.
* * *
On Friday night he went home with thirty pound notes in his pocket: bonus and wages. On Saturday he bought toys for Margaret’s children, and presents for the rest of the family, returning from downtown with full arms and a cigar between his teeth. A bet on Fairy Glory in the two-thirty won him twelve pounds. He hid twenty in his room and stuffed his wallet with what was left to see him through Christmas.
As he walked across the market square on his way to Aunt Ada’s a blanket of dark cloud lay low over the city as if, were God to pull a lever, it would release a six-foot blanket of snow.
He pushed his way in through the defective back door and Aunt Ada launched into him because he had missed the midday meal, saying that now it was stone-cold in the scullery and fit only for the cats to eat. Arthur dipped his hand into his overcoat pocket and threw sixpenny bits to the children and gave cigars to Bert, Dave, and Ralph, so that the four of them filled the already warm room with clouds of smoke. All that day, Ada told Arthur, they had been expecting a coloured soldier from the Gold Coast. Sam was his name, a friend of Johnny’s who was with the REs in West Africa. Johnny had told Sam to visit them while on his mechanics course in England. A telegram came the day before saying: ‘Arrive twenty-fourth Sam’ — and Ada pictured him wandering about the cold city like a lost soul, unable to find his way to the house.
‘He thinks all telegrams are sent by tom-tom,’ Bert said, his face bursting into a laugh at his own joke. ‘You wain’t be able to miss him though. All you have to do is look for a black head wrapped up in a khaki coat.’
Arthur went with him to search the railway and bus stations, and an hour later they stood at a tea-stall near the market without having seen him. It was late, and cold, and they wanted to hear the football results at home on a full belly and a fag by the roaring fire. ‘It’s gone five,’ Arthur said, pushing his cup aside. ‘If he gets lost it’s too bad. I’m not going to freeze to death running around after a Zulu.’
They went back to the house. Sam was already there, a stocky negro with a calm intelligent face, who explained that he had come in on a morning train and spent the day exploring the city. Dressed in well-pressed khaki, with three large stripes prominent on his battledress arm, he sat stiffly in a cane-bottomed chair by the fire looking as if about to stifle in the hot crowded kitchen. His blancoed webbing belt, neatly folded, rested on the sofa beneath the window. He was the centre of attention, and stood up to shake hands with Bert and Arthur when they came in, Arthur noticing the tight warm grip of his black hand as he said: ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’ Two ginger-haired daughters were trying not to laugh at the ordeal of numberless introductions that Sam was undergoing, for Dave came in five minutes later from the football match and pretended to jump with surprise on seeing for the first time in his life a Negro sitting in the living-room. The two girls shouted that the second battalion would be in any minute now, and Ada threatened them and told them to be quiet. Ralph, hudged-up by the fire, ignoring the noise, locked in his own warm world, turned only to ask Dave what team had won.
‘County lost four none,’ Dave said. ‘Everybody’s talking about it. They’ve never had such a run of rotten luck.’ He threw his cap at the girls who were now laughing at him, then lifted a neatly folded football Mirror from his pocket and tossed it across to Ralph, saying: ‘You’ll get the half-time results from there.’ The paper unfolded in mid-flight and Ralph caught it near the range as it was about to land in the fire.
Arthur sat at the table with a cup of tea, enjoying the banter, and the questions showered on simple and unselfconscious Sam. Could he read and write? Who taught him, then? Did he believe in God? How was Johnny going on in Africa? Did Johnny look well in such a hot place? Was he enjoying himself? Did Sam miss West Africa? (Of course, Bert said in a loud whisper, he misses the tom-toms. Ada gave him a stern look.) How long had Sam been in the army? Seven years! Did it seem a lifetime? And wasn’t he glad he had only another three to do? How old are you, Sam? Only thirty-two! And do you like England? Well, I expect you’ll get used to it soon. And do you have a girl-friend on the Gold Coast? Is she nice? (Is she as black as the ace of spades, Bert whispered in Arthur’s ear.) Will you get married at church? Arthur dug his fork into a piece of meat-pie, glad to be in Ada’s house for Christmas and showered under by jokes that fell like sparks on the relaxed powder-barrel of each brain. He went with Dave and Bert to lounge in armchairs by the parlour fire, smoking, listening to people walking by outside whose feet punctuated the empty weekend hours between football matches and opening time. The door-knob rattled, and Jane came in, a thin-faced ginger-haired woman of thirty who balanced herself on the arm of Dave’s chair. ‘I want half a crown from everybody towards a crate of ale, for when we come back from the pub tonight.’
Uncomplaining, they dug their hands into their pockets. ‘What about Sam?’ Dave asked.
‘He ain’t giving owt,’ she said. ‘He’s a guest.’
‘It’s just as well,’ Bert remarked. ‘He’d on’y pay in beads.’
She turned on him fiercely. ‘You shut up. He’s going out wi’ yo’ lot ternight, and you’d better be nice to ‘im, or Johnny’ll gi’ yer a good thump when ‘e comes ‘ome from Africa.’
Later the house functioned like the neck of an egg-timer: visitors came in through the back yard, and were disgorged with gangs of the family by the front door. Ada, Ralph, Jim and Jane went out with the first batch. The under-sixteens were despatched to the last house at the pictures.
Arthur left with Bert, Dave, Colin, and Sam. All wore overcoats, though Sam shivered. They walked up the bridgeslope in twos and a boy coming in the opposite direction carrying a parcel of fish and chips was swept off the pavement. The marshalling yards below were covered in mist; ascending sounds of jangling trucks were enveloped and dulled by its dampness before floating up to the lighted road. Over the opposite parapet orange lights glowed around the great station clock, and black outlines of grain warehouses stood up around it.
The Lambley Green was almost empty. Dave ordered pints and they played darts, Arthur siding with Sam against Colin and Bert, Dave keeping scores. Sam possessed an uncanny eye and hit whatever he aimed at — Bert accounting for this as a legacy left over from throwing assegais. In the next pub, more crowded because it was nearer the town centre, Sam offered to buy a round of drinks but was shouted down. Arthur caught hold of the brass rails and called for five pints. While passing them back one by one over his shoulder some beer trickled on to a woman’s coat, and she turned on him menacingly: ‘Can’t yer look what ye’r doin’?’
‘Sorry, missis,’ he said gaily.
Her husband stood nearby, a tall man with thick lips, black moustache, and hair swept back from a low forehead until it touched the white scarf tucked into his black overcoat collar. ‘Butterfingers,’ he exclaimed. Arthur ignored him and continued passing the beer. ‘Are yer deaf?’ the man demanded. Arthur clenched his fists, ready to smash him.
‘He must be,’ the woman put in, showing bitter lips and haggard vindictive eyes. Arthur said nothing. Dave pushed his way to the man’s side: ‘Looking for trouble, mate?’ Sam and Colin looked on from the wall. ‘Drop him one, Arthur,’ Ben called out.
‘I’m not looking for trouble,’ the man said, turning away from Arthur?
??s cold stare, backing out with maximum belligerence. ‘He just wants to look what he’s doing, that’s all.’
‘It was an accident, worn’t it?’ Dave said loudly, standing over him, his face red and tight with anger.
‘Bash ‘im, Jack. Why don’t yer bash ‘im?’ the woman said, sipping her port.
‘It’s yo’ as wants bashin’, missis,’ Dave said. ‘It’s your sort as causes all the trouble.’ The publican moved up from the other end of the bar. ‘Now then, I don’t want any fights in here.’
‘What’s the matter?’ Sam asked Arthur.
‘I don’t like people spilling ale all over my wife’s coat,’ the man said truculently.
Arthur relaxed his fists.
‘If it’d a bin whisky she’d a lapped it up,’ Bert said. ‘This place’s like a graveyard. It’s full o’ dead-pans.’
They crossed Slab Square and, fresh from a pint in the Plumtree rolled to the Red Dragon and from there pushed into the Skittling Alley and the Coach Tavern and finally elbowed through the squash of people packing the Trip to Jerusalem, a limpet of lights and noise fastened on to the carcass of the Castle Rock.
Sam tried to count those jammed into the parlour, but gave up at twenty, when he thought he was counting people already counted. Jane poured beer into cups and glasses. ‘Come on, Arthur, grab hold of this. Having a good time, Sam?’ — she swung around as he came into the room. ‘This is good beer, Sam,’ she told him in her bright intoxicated voice. ‘Jim and me got it from the pub next door. A couple of years ago,’ she told Sam, ‘Bert and Dave went down into our cellar with a hammer and chisel and knocked a few bricks out of the wall and got two crates of beer out of the pub cellar next door. Then they cemented it up again so that nobody found out. We had a good booze-up from that.’
Arthur’s great laugh ran out with the others at the memory of this because he had been in on it, remembering the bricks that he had numbered with a piece of chalk as they were passed to him.
Ada came in with a large white meat dish heaped over with leg-of-mutton sandwiches. ‘Come on, Tribe, get summat to eat. We want you to ‘ave a good time, Sam,’ she said to him. She turned abruptly to Colin: ‘Where’s Beatty? I thought she’d be up tonight, being as it’s Christmas Eve.’
‘You shouldn’t fill her up so often, Colin,’ Dave said to him.
‘You’ve only got to look at Beatty and she drops a kid,’ Bert said, filling his glass and helping himself to a sandwich. Ada wore a gaily coloured dress. ‘How do you like my parlour, Sam?’ He looked around at the walls and up at the ceiling, at the Christmas cards on the marble mantleshelf that hid the clock but for a walnut dome. ‘Arthur and Bert papered it for me a couple of years ago. It’d ‘ave cost me five quid with a decorator, and they did it just as good.’
‘Except for them big creases,’ Arthur said, coming out of a long mistletoe kiss with one of his ginger-haired cousins. Ralph, wearing a coloured paper hat, and Jim in his pilot-officer’s uniform also wearing a paper hat, did a song-and-dance movement into the room, with the second ginger-haired cousin behind flaunting her brother-in-law’s airforce cap. ‘Don’t be leary,’ Ada said to her.
‘I want some ale,’ she cried.
Ada said she would bat her tab if she touched a drop. Sam sat on the settee and someone pulled a pink paper hat down over his black grizzled hair. Tubercular Eunice came in with Harry, her young man with a broad sallow face and brown curly hair combed back flat over his head, who worked as a welder in one of the Meadows factories. Eunice wore a maroon coat padded at the shoulders to hide her thin body, betrayed though by hollow cheeks and stick-like wrists. Mutton sandwiches and drinks were thrust into their hands, and Arthur, by now well-soaked, started the whole room singing, while Bert, Colin, and Dave played desultory rounds of Solo at the table. Ada told Sam to sing louder, but he said he didn’t know these songs. ‘Do you know “Everybody Likes Saturday Night” Sam?’ Bert shouted from the table, and Sam beamed with happiness at the universal sympathy around him. One by one they went into the kitchen, until Harry and Eunice were left alone. They switched off the light and sat in the bay of the window watching traffic pass along the road.
When the fire died out in the kitchen everyone went to bed, and doors could be heard slamming all over the house. Arthur, feeling his way up the unlit stairs behind Sam, was to sleep in the big bed with his two cousins, while a special camp bed had been made-up for Sam by the window. The others went immediately to sleep, but Arthur was kept awake by noises in the house. He heard a door bang, the laugh of a female voice, an animal cry of protest, the snore of his cousins. A dull heavy jangle of trucks, like the manacled advance of some giant Marley over Trent valley, came from the nearby railway line. Window-panes rattled as a car went by. A man’s footsteps passed the door, and from the city centre a few melancholy clocks struck the half-hour.
Sam was awakened by curses from Bert and Dave as they fought to pull the bed clothes from each other. Children were running barefoot about the corridors, and sun shone through the windows. Sam was left to dress in privacy, and the smell of fried bacon became stronger as Arthur, Bert, and Dave descended to the kitchen. Jane and Jim were talking in their bedroom, and Ralph turned over with a snore behind his closed door. They washed one by one at the scullery sink. Sitting down to breakfast Bert joked about Sam: ‘Hey, mam, there’s a Zulu in my room.’ Ada told him not to be daft and to leave Sam in peace. When Sam came down he was served with three eggs, and the girls grumbled and said this wasn’t fair. But Ada showed them her fist and told them to shut-up. They sat in the parlour after breakfast, roasting themselves before the fire. A wire from the kitchen wireless was run through to a speaker, and the whole house was shaken by the chosen blasts of Family Favourites, part of a Bach concerto roaring like the tumult of a sea into every room.
They walked into town. A bitterly cold wind came from the east, and Dave prophesied snow, teasing Sam who had seen it on postcards but never in the streets. The pub noises were subdued and reflective, as if people were spending two hours of silence in memory of the previous night. One moment the sun was in their eyes, the next they were almost blown over by the wind. They had a pint in the Horse and Groom, and Arthur took five minutes explaining to Sam what an ‘awker was: ‘A man who sells fruit from a barrer on the street.’ Back at the house a special table was set in the parlour, and the fire had been kept blazing for them. They were served by the girls with baked potatoes, roast pork, and cauliflower, and no one spoke during the eating of it. Plates of Christmas pudding followed, rivers of custard flowing down the escarpments of each dark wedge. A noise like a dark seatide came from the kitchen, where the family was feeding under the stern dictatorship of Ada. Everyone gathered in the parlour to play Ha’penny Newmarket, the kitty of a glass fruit-dish set in the middle of the table, soon filled with money as the games went on. A dozen played, including Sam and Ada whose big arms rested on the table. Orders were snapped out when cards didn’t fall fast enough, coins slid across the polished table-top to start a new round, and some gleeful hand scraped the kitty-dish clean when the round was over. A ten-year-old girl scooped up the three-and-nine-pence. ‘Dirty little twister,’ ‘Rogue,’ ‘Dead lucky.’ She refused to chance the money back into play, said she was going to see a pal now, and the air was filled with threats. ‘I don’t have to play if I don’t want to,’ she shouted. And the door slammed. Ada turned to one of Beatty’s children and asked when her mother would come. Dave fanned out his cards and threw down a two of hearts: ‘She’s got too many kids to look after,’ he said sympathetically. ‘It’s impossible to feed ‘em all at one time. I don’t know where they all sleep in that house. Colin must ‘ave rigged bunks up in the cellar.’ ‘I’ve never seen such a tribe,’ Bert chipped in. ‘Whenever you go in by the back door you squash a couple of kids against the wall.’ Sam was puzzled at their private jokes, though laughed with them. Tea was served in three relays, with Ada the dominant organizer, lording it over her two unmarried sist
ers. Annie was small and pinched after too many years in a lace factory, a woman of forty with fading and braided hair, wearing a dusk-green frock and a coal-black cardigan. Bertha was taller and older, with a full bosom, a booming voice, and more becoming clothes. Ada came in from the scullery with a dish of salad followed by Bertha with a bowl of trifle and Annie with a Christmas cake whose pink band made a crown for Ada. Bert reached out for a slice of bread and butter, shouting to Annie for the ham. ‘Tek yer sweat, our Bert. You can see I’m busy mashing the tea.’ Arthur heaped salad on to a plate, balancing slices of tomato on his fork across the white cloth. Bertha was stationed at the table-end with teapot poised, ready to bear down on anyone whose cup was empty. Her eyes rested on Sam: ‘Sam knows how to eat. He’s filling his belly all right.’ Sam looked up and smiled. ‘Do you get snap like this in the army?’ Bert asked. ‘I’m sure he don’t,’ Ada said before he could answer. ‘Do you Sam?’ ‘No, but sometimes the food is good in the army,’ he replied with an instinctive sense of diplomacy.
‘When I was wi’ the army, in Belgium and Germany,’ Bert called out, reaching for the mince-pie plate that Annie laid down, ‘we ate pig-swill.’ Dave laughed: ‘When I was in the army I got bread and water, when I was lucky.’ ‘Do you know what regiment he was in?’ Bert said to Sam, who answered: ‘No.’ ‘He was in the RCDs,’ Bert went on. ‘Do you know what the RCDs are, Sam?’ Sam asked what regiment the RCDs were. The Royal Corps of Deserters,’ Bert boomed across the table. ‘We’re all going back into that regiment as soon as a war starts, ain’t we, Arthur?’ Dave called out for another cup of tea, and Ada shouted that they should make haste because another two sittings were still to come. So they filed back to the parlour, and while Sam went across to the lavatory, Jane entered and held out her hand for more half-crowns. ‘It’s for beer,’ she said. When they paid she demanded: ‘Where’s Sam?’ Arthur told her, and Bert added: ‘Wi’ a blanket round ‘im.’ ‘He’s got to give half a crown as well.’ ‘I thought he was a guest?’ Dave said, throwing two lumps of coal on the fire. ‘Well, he’s got to pay up, just the same,’ she said indignantly. ‘He’s got enough money.’ ‘What about Annie and Bertha then?’ Dave said. ‘Have them two spongers paid?’ ‘Yes,’ Bert cried, ‘what about them Bible-backs? They’re allus there wi’ their ha’penny. They put enough money in the church kitty every Sunday.’ ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘they’ll pay.’ She waylaid Sam in the corridor and collected half a crown.