Get Carter (4 page)

I walked along Jackson Street. Now at the end the railings were still there and some of the grass, but the dyke wasn’t, it had been filled in and there was a small light engineering works, yellow brick under the street light with a lathe on overtime inside.

I got to number forty-eight. The curtains were drawn, of course, but there was a light on in the hall illuminating the frosted glass panels and the privet hedge four feet away from the bay windows.

I opened the front door.

There was new wallpaper on the wall, contemporary, with lobster pots and fishermen’s nets and grounded single masted-yachts, all light browns and pale greens. He’d hardboarded the banisters in, and painted the hardboard and put pictures going upwards below the rail. There was a crimson fitted carpet on the hall and going up the stairs and the light fitting was triple-stalked in some fake brassy material.

I went into the scullery.

On either side of the chimney breast he’d built units in tongue and groove. On one side there was the T.V. neatly boxed in and some little open compartments with things like framed photos and glass ornaments and fruit bowls in them. One compartment had newspapers the
T.V. Times
and the
Radio Times
neatly slotted into it. The unit on the other side was for his books.

There were rows of
Reader’s Digest
, of
Wide World
, of
Argosy
, of
Real Male
, of
Guns Illustrated
, of
Practical Handyman
, of
Canadian Star Weekly
, of
National Geographic
. They were all on the bottom shelves. Above were the paperbacks. There was Luke Short and Max Brand and J. T. Edson and Louis L’Amour. There was Russell Braddon and W. B. Thomas and Guy Gibson. There was Victor Canning and Alistair MacLean and Ewart Brookes and Ian Fleming. There was Bill Bowes and Stanley Matthews and Bobby Charlton. There was Barbara Tuchman and Winston Churchill and General Patton and Audie Murphy. Above these were his records. Band of the Coldstream Guards, Eric Coates, Stan Kenton, Ray Anthony, Mel Torme, Frankie Laine, Ted Heath,
This Is Hancock
, Vaughan Williams.

His slippers were on the tiled hearth. A black leather swivel chair was angled to face in the direction of the television.

There was no fire in the grate.

I looked through into the kitchen. It was tidy. The cherry red formica-faced sink unit had been given a wash down. There was no rubbish in the rubbish bucket. There was an empty dog bowl on the floor.

I went back into the scullery and opened the adjoining door to the front room. On the mantelpiece there was a small lamp with a crimson shade and I switched it on.

There were not many flowers. There was my wreath, and a lot of flowers from Margaret, and another wreath from Doreen.

The head of the coffin was dead centre to the middle of the bay window and the coffin cut the room in half. Next to the coffin and facing it was a dining-room chair. I went over to where the chair was and looked into the coffin. I hadn’t seen him for such a long time. Death didn’t really make much difference at all; the face just re-assembled the particles of memory. And as usual when you see someone dead who you’ve seen alive it was impossible to imagine the corpse as being related to its former occupant. It had that porcelain look about it. I felt that if I tapped it on the forehead with my knuckle there would be a pinging sound.

“Well, Frank,” I said. “Well, well.”

I stood there for a bit longer then sat down in the dining chair.

I said a few words although I don’t know what I said and bowed my head on the edge of the casket for a few minutes, then I sat up and undid my coat and took out my fags. I lit up and blew out the smoke slowly and looked at the last of Frank.

Looking at him I found it hard to realise I’d ever known him. All the things about him that I remembered in my mind’s eye didn’t seem real. They seemed like bits of a film. And even when I saw myself in the flashbacks, as you do, you get outside yourself, I didn’t seem real either, neither did the settings or the colours or the way the clouds rushed across the sky while we were doing something particular underneath them.

I took the flask out and had a pull. I looked back at Frank. I stayed there for a minute, looking at him like that, then I screwed the cap back on and walked into the scullery, closing the door behind me.

I went into the hall and up the stairs. I opened the first door on the landing. It was Doreen’s room. It used to be mine and Frank’s. The wallpaper had guitars and musical notes and microphones as a pattern. There were pictures of the Beatles, and the Moody Blues, and the Tremeloes and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich; centre-spreads from beat magazines Sellotaped on the walls. There were records and a record player in a cupboard unit next to her single bed which was made up to look like a divan, pushed against one wall. There was a whitewood dressing table opposite the bed and next to that a rod and curtain across the corner made a wardrobe. A drawer of the dressing table was open and a stocking was hanging out. I went into Frank’s room. It used to be Mam and Dad’s. There was a pre-war bed and a prewar tallboy and a pre-war wardrobe and patterned lino on the floor. Everything was very tidy. On the mantelpiece was a framed photograph of me and Frank as lads in our best suits outside the Salvation Army. We hadn’t been Salvationists but we used to go on Sunday mornings and sing because we used to enjoy it as a change.

I sat down on Frank’s bed and it creaked and sagged. The lino was green and cold. I dropped my cigarette on the floor and put my foot on it. I sat there for quite a time before I went downstairs and got my hold-all and brought it back upstairs with me.

I began to get ready for bed when I remembered something. I looked round the room and wondered if he’d kept it. Why should he? But then, why should he give it away? I walked over to the wardrobe and opened the door just on the off-chance.

The stock gleamed beneath the hanging line of Frank’s clothes. I squatted down and reached inside and took hold of it just above the trigger. The barrel clattered against the back of the wardrobe. The sound was hollow and it echoed coldly on the patterned lino. I pulled the gun out of the wardrobe. Where the stock had been, tucked behind
a pair of shoes, there was a box of cartridges. I took that out too. I carried the gun and the box over to the bed and sat down again.

I looked at the gun. Christ, we’d sweated to save up for it. Nearly two years, both of us. No pictures, no football, no fireworks. We’d made a pact: if one of us broke it, the other was to take all the money and spend it on whatever he wanted. I knew Frank wouldn’t break the pact. But I thought I might. And so did he. Somehow, though, I’d stuck to it.

And then we’d sweated when we’d finally got it. Sweated in case our dad ever found out. He would have broken it in two and made us watch him do it. We used to keep it round Nezzer Eyres’s and pick it up on Sundays when we wanted it. But once we’d collected it we never felt safe until we’d biked at least half a dozen streets away from Jackson Street.

We used to take turns at carrying it. When it was my turn, I always used to think my time went quicker than when Frank was carrying it. We went all over with it. Back Hill, Sanderson’s Flats, Fallow Fields. But the best place was the river bank. It was a nine-mile bike ride but it was worth it. The river was broad, two miles in parts and the banks were always deserted, and we used to like it best in winter when the wind raced up the estuary under the broad grey sky, and we were all wrapped up, striding along in front of the wind, carrying the gun, popping it off at nothing.

Those times were the best times I ever had as a lad. Just alone with Frank down on the river. But that was before he’d begun to hate my guts.

Not that I’d exactly been full of brotherly love for him before I’d left the town.

He’d been so fucking po-faced about everything. Siding with our dad all the time, although never hardly saying anything. He’d just let me know by the way he’d looked at me. Maybe that’s why I’d hated him sometimes; I could tell how right about me he’d thought he was. Well, he
was
right. So bloody what? There’d been no need for him to be that way. I’d been the same person after he’d started hating me as before. It was just that he’d got to know a few things. And just because he didn’t see them my way that was it as far as I was concerned. The less said about me and to me the better. He couldn’t see that the dust-up I’d had with our dad was mainly because of the way Frank was towards me.

But all that was past history. As dead as Frank. Nothing could be done about it now. But there were some things that I’d be able to put straight. Just for the sake of the past history.

Friday

I
COULD TELL IT
was windy out before I could hear the wind. It was the daylight, what bit that was getting through the cracks of the curtains. I knew it was windy because of the kind of daylight it was.

I rolled onto my back and looked at my watch. It was quarter to eight. I reached out and grabbed a fag and smoked it looking up at the reflected light on the ceiling getting depressed with the greeny brown gloom, getting impatient with myself for not getting up but laying there anyway, just smoking, balancing the packet on my chest for an ashtray.

Finally I swung out of bed and went into the cold bathroom and got ready for the day. The wind swished about outside beyond the bright frosted glass.

I went downstairs and switched on the wireless. While
Family Choice
warmed up I went into the kitchen and found the tea caddy and put the kettle on the gas. I made the tea and began to put my cufflinks in.

The back door opened and Doreen came in. She was wearing a black coat, a nice looking one, short, and she had something on the Garbo lines on her head. Her pale gold hair was long and some of it was placed so that it fell
down in front of her shoulders, between her shoulders and neck, almost on her breasts.

She looked at me for a minute before shutting the door. After she’d shut it she didn’t move except to take her hat off and put it on the drainer and then just stood there with her hands in her high pockets and feet together looking at the floor. She looked more bad tempered than unhappy.

I finished doing my cufflinks.

“Hello, Doreen,” I said.

“ ’Lo,” she said.

“How are you feeling?” I said.

“How do you think?”

I began to pour out the tea.

“I’m very sorry about your dad,” I said. She didn’t say anything. I offered her a cup of tea but she turned away.

“Enjoying the music, are you?” she said.

“The house seemed cold,” I said. “Besides …”

She shrugged and went into the scullery and sat down on Frank’s chair, her hands still in her pockets, her feet still together. I followed her in and sat on the arm of the divan, sipping my tea.

“I really am sorry, Doreen,” I said. “He was my brother, you know.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I don’t know what to say,” I said.

Silence.

I didn’t want to ask her anything outright before the funeral so I said:

“I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t believe it. He was always so careful.”

Silence.

“I mean, he only drank halves.”

Silence.

“And not turning up for work.”

Two tears began rolling down Doreen’s face.

“He wasn’t worried about anything, was he? I mean, something on his mind, like, that’d make him careless, through worry, like.”

Silence. The tears rolled further.

“Doreen?”

She whirled up out of the chair.

“Shut up.” she shouted, the tears coining faster. “Shut up. I can’t bear it.”

She ran into the kitchen and stopped in front of the sink, head bowed, shoulders heaving, her arms by her side.

“Can’t bear what, love?” I said standing behind her. “What is it you can’t bear?”

“Me dad,” she said. “Me dad. He’s bloody dead, isn’t he?” She turned towards me. “Isn’t he?”

I put my arms up and she fell against me. I pressed her to me and let her get it over with.

After a while she straightened up and I poured her a fresh cup of tea. This time she took it. I sat down on the red leatherette-topped high stool next to the sink unit and watched her alternately drinking out of and looking into the cup. I wondered if it had all been just because her dad was dead through in the front room or was there something else. I couldn’t really tell. Last time I saw her was eight years ago and then she’d been seven so I didn’t know what she was like. I could guess though.

She was older than her fifteen natural years. I could have fancied her myself if she hadn’t been who she was. You could tell she knew what was what. It’s all in the eyes. I wondered if Frank had known she was no virgin. Probably, but he’d never have let on to himself. And if anything had been worrying him he wouldn’t have let on to her either. That was the way Frank was. So there was no reason why she should know anything unless she’d seen something or heard something that Frank didn’t know she heard. If she had I’d find out, but not today.