Birthday (16 page)

‘Oh yes, come and see me whenever you like. We can talk when you do. I'd like that. We can't do it here, I realize.' She looked into his eyes. ‘We did have some good times when we were young, didn't we? I used to wish they could go on forever.'

‘So did I.'

‘Do you remember when we sat in the living room at home afterwards, and listened to Joe Loss on the wireless?'

‘I do.'

‘It's a shame such times can't come back.'

‘We had them, that's the main thing. Nobody can take 'em away.'

‘That's true.' The same old youthful glow was in her eyes, till she added that they'd had their ups and downs as well. He couldn't deny it: ‘But you only remember the good times,' he said.

‘You've got to, haven't you? It really has been a tonic seeing you.'

‘For me too.' Derek and Eileen were standing, Arthur and Avril already by the door. ‘I must be off, though. I don't want to keep the others waiting.'

‘If you've got to,' she said, in the same cool tone as when he had proposed leaving her in Ripley market and cycling alone to Matlock. ‘I suppose we should have met somewhere else, but we can next time, can't we?'

Lip-reading as much as hearing gave her words added importance. ‘I'll be sure to arrange it.'

‘I know you will.' She leaned, and he took her by the shoulders, as so often before, and drew her into a kiss, thinking one for each cheek, as she perhaps expected, but their lips pressed hard, neither wanting to let go, as if the gate latch had already clicked and her parents were on their way up the garden path, Jenny and he locked in a final passionate kiss before his long traipse home through the misty darkness.

Eyes closed as if to make the moment last, their ancient past putting sugar into the kiss, a mellowed regret at not having kept their love alight, a kiss in mourning for the chance they'd let vanish – neither caring about whoever looked on from the crowd.

‘I'll see you again, duck,' he said in the homely lingo of so long back, not knowing who had drawn off first.

Many wanted her to themselves: children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, cousins and inlaws and nephews and nieces and friends, and to give some of herself to everyone would take whatever was left of the evening. She let go of his hand. ‘I'll look forward to it. But now I must talk some more to the others.'

TEN

‘I'd never have believed it, you kissing a seventy-year-old woman like that.' They walked into more silence the closer they got to the cars. Avril felt it necessary to tell Arthur that Brian was seventy as well.

‘That's true, but he don't look anywhere near it.'

‘It was romantic,' Eileen said. ‘I hope somebody kisses me like that when I'm seventy.'

‘I will.' Derek filled his pipe. ‘I promise.'

‘Oh, you!' she laughed.

‘Anyway, you've seen her.' He put the pipe back in his pocket because Eileen wouldn't let him smoke in the car. ‘It's all over now.'

Brian couldn't think it was. ‘So it seems.'

‘I wondered what he was up to,' Arthur said. ‘Everybody was staring, but you was too far gone to notice. They wanted to hear you pop the question, though I'll bet they're laughing their heads off now you've scarpered. I've never seen such a mad, passionate kiss.'

Banter eased his emptiness, brought from it by seeing a tip of the last sunlight on a leaf as if it had been rinsed. They were in love with the past rather than each other, and if he called on her they might talk the nostalgia away, though maybe he needed to get rid of it more than she wanted it clear of herself. He couldn't say why he felt the urge to kick something so precious, because nothing was finished till the blackout came down and you were dropped into the same common hole never to see daylight again.

‘I'll see you in the morning,' he said to Derek and Eileen. ‘We'll talk for an hour, then I'll make for Trent Bridge and head south.'

Eileen sorted car keys from her pocket. ‘We'll have the coffee ready.'

‘I enjoyed the party,' Arthur turned on the ignition, ‘but that bloody noise was the limit.'

‘I heard a couple say they thought it was too loud,' Avril said. ‘I can still hear it.'

She was exhausted, and every second, when not talking, Arthur was filled with misery thinking about her illness. ‘I'll get you home as quick as I can. I shouldn't have kept you out so long.'

‘I can't stay in all the time,' she said. ‘And I wouldn't have come away earlier, even if you'd said I should.'

Mellow light gave the redbricked houses a glint of newness. It was uncanny for the district to be so quiet on a Saturday night. A westerly wind pushed clouds which would certainly throw down rain by tomorrow morning.

‘You never see anybody walking,' Brian said. ‘Maybe they're already in the pubs.'

‘People are watching the telly,' Arthur said. ‘The old 'uns, anyway. The young 'uns are downtown boozing and getting into fights. They come back with black eyes and blood all over their clothes. Shows they had a good time. Or they go to clubs and get drugged up to the eyeballs. Then some of 'em go mugging to get money to pay for a bit more. Nottingham's dangerous these days.'

‘It always was,' Brian said.

‘I don't know about that. We had fun when we were young. We got drunk now and again, but we didn't go mugging. We didn't take drugs. Whatever you do, never walk around Slab Square on Saturday night. Some blokes'd knife you as soon as look at you.'

‘I've always gone where angels fear to tread,' Brian told him.

‘You've been lucky.'

‘My father used to say,' Avril said, ‘that if you go where angels fear to tread only the Devil can lead you back.'

Basford Crossing was passed without comment. His life between leaving as a young man and meeting Jenny at her seventieth birthday party would hardly make the sitcom of the century. In the theatre it would come off after a week, to universal execration, while a painted triptych would send people away screaming. As the sound of music it would be more deafening than those forlorn lyrics at the party. Or so he imagined, though self-flattery was the first sign of the demented.

His second divorce had been of nobody's making but his own, because his previous experience of matrimonial hugger-mugger, and being ten years older than Jane, could have saved the marriage, especially when he knew that if you wanted to end an argument with your wife you only had to let her have the last word. Having the self-control to do it, and feel no injury to his self-esteem, he had made the attempt, but after a while she had spotted his manoeuvre, and with her taunts sent him into rages which she liked better than the peace and quiet he needed for his work. Living with someone and being in love, you imagined any problem could be worked out. It couldn't but, all the same, he had made it to three score and ten, sound in wind and limb, the same as Jenny, showing the common tenacity of both, and that being alive was victory enough.

Beyond the traffic lights at Sunrise Hill Arthur knew that Brian was chewing at the bits and bobs of his past, which could be unhealthy, though he knew it to be so because two brothers in the same car are like back to back houses in the closeness of their thoughts. As different as they can be, Arthur had his own and recalled how he had once seen a woman on a street corner up the road from the White Horse, looking as if she didn't know which direction to take, whom he then recognized as his old flame Brenda, talking to an aloof adolescent girl.

She was a bit more than forty, but hadn't aged as much as she might have done. He put on his best smile, knowing that after so long he couldn't look youthful either, but luckily he was togged up in a suit, wore the usual good overcoat, and had given his shoes their weekly gloss that morning.

In spite of her brown coat and sweater he knew she could still doll up to the nines for a Saturday night out. Jack would be a manager at the factory by now, so she must have a wardrobe full of smart dresses.

In spite of the trouble when Jack found out about their affair, she seemed glad to see him, as if she wouldn't object to a few more of those torrid days. Nor would he mind getting in to bed with her again. ‘This is my daughter, Joan,' she said, ‘who'll be fifteen next birthday.'

The girl was tall and thin, had short fair hair and grey eyes, and wore a blue and white anorak, pale trousers sharply creased, and trainer shoes. She stared as if hating all men, but especially him, and would have hated him even more if she knew him better, which didn't surprise him, having Jack for a father.

‘I suppose you're proud?' Brenda said.

The change of tone suggested she'd like to bury a knife in his back. ‘What about?'

‘Haven't you got eyes to see?'

He soon enough had, as if thumped in the chest, not a serious blow, but the reverberation yanked him sufficiently clear of himself to look at the girl again, at which stare she turned to see whether the shop display of jeans and sports clothes had anything on offer. ‘She looks well.'

‘A bloody handful, I can tell you, but she'll be away in a year or two, if I know her.'

He took a twenty out of his wallet, but didn't give it directly to his daughter in case she smelled a rat – and a big slimy one at that. Brenda read him like a book, amused at his daft pride. ‘Don't think you've got any rights over her. Understand?' She took the money, knowing him capable of causing a fuss. ‘I'll give it her. She'll think I've decided to be nice for a change. I'm always telling her she can't have everything, because she's already spoiled rotten. Jack thinks the world of her, at least when he forgets she might not be his.'

‘How is he, then?' – the arse-crawling bastard.

‘He's a pain most of the time. Luckily I don't see much of him. He still works every hour God sends.'

Joan's settled features showed in the shop window, and it was obvious from the way she stood, and her intent look at the goods laid out – as if she wanted them all, and by God she would have them – that she couldn't be anybody's daughter but his.

‘Take a good goz,' Brenda said. ‘I've taken a lot of stick over it from Jack. Being so blind's turned him bitter, whenever he thinks about us.'

‘Mam!' Joan called, ‘I want a pair of jeans.'

‘Oh all right. Which ones this time?'

Arthur turned to go. ‘See you, then, Joan.'

‘No, you won't,' Brenda said. ‘She's mine, not yours.'

‘She's a nice girl, though.'

‘You think so? That's because I brought her up.'

Some kids turn out to be good no matter what their parents are like, he wanted to say. ‘I expect that's true.'

‘You bet it is.'

‘Come on, mam, I want to talk about which ones you like. Then you won't complain if I pick the ones I want.'

‘She's a real sharpshit.' He was delighted, and heard her say when her mother paused at the shop entrance: ‘Who's that bloke, then?'

Brenda laughed. ‘Never you mind.'

‘One of your toy boys, I suppose. Looks like he still fancies you.'

He'd seen neither since, no point looking, in spite of Joan's face now and again vividly before him. Sometimes he wondered whether she really was his daughter, yet knew she was because she didn't have the tight miserable face of Jack. Maybe he had one or two more kids scattered around, and would turn into a doddery old man buttonholing people in the street wanting to find out, and getting kicked in every time for putting such a question.

Nowadays you can get a DNA test if you aren't sure (though it hadn't occurred to Jack) so maybe those happy fuck-a-day times are over. Soon there'll be do-it-yourself DNA booths at every service station, big signs flashing twenty-four hours a day saying: TRY DNA WITH YOUR KIDS. A POUND A GO. REDUCTIONS FOR FAMILIES! Blood all up and down the motorway. He couldn't help feeling sorry for any bloke whose wife had a kid he thought was his but wasn't. In the old days you didn't even care about catching AIDS.

He clipped another set of lights, a touch on the brake pedal passing the constabulary headquarters. ‘The cops must have your number by now,' Brian said.

‘They have. Didn't you see them give me the nod as we went by? They know me, always Arthuring me and my old ducking me when I see one in a pub. “Have a pint on us, Mr Seaton.” He's even younger than Harold. Coppers look like kids who've just had a uniform and cosh in their Christmas stockings. “I saw you pass our headquarters in your old tin lizzie, and you were doing a tad over fifty in a thirty mile zone. We have a very wide view from the second storey.” “I was only doing twenty-six and three quarters,” I say. “We clocked you, Arthur, just for the fun of it. When you're ninety and got Alzheimer's as well you'll have to slow down a bit.” They've known me so long they talk about me all the time.'

‘In the old days you wanted to hang all the coppers from lamp posts,' Brian reminded him.

‘That's when I thought they'd like to hang me, or bang me up for ten years. But we all belong to the same outfit in the end.'

Avril went down the garden path to deactivate the burglar alarm. ‘She always does it,' Arthur said, ‘because I once plugged in the wrong number. Before I knew what was happening the bells of hell sounded all up and down the street. There was a policeman at the front door, one at the back, and one coming down the chimney. I've never seen them move so fast. While they was at it a couple of fire engines covered the house in foam. Smart lads, them firemen. The only way you could tell the coppers from Eskimos was when they ran out of the house shouting into their radios. They gave me a right bollocking, so now I let Avril do it.'

He filled the empty kettle for the next mashing of tea so that Avril would only have to flick the switch with her good arm. ‘Just sit down,' he told her. He brought out bread, butter, cheese, a jar of homegrown onions, their garden tomatoes, radishes, hearts of lettuce, and a large pork pie.