Her Victory (11 page)

Bert spoke hurriedly. ‘We're desperate for a bit of work, George. Any old job. It'll only be for a while, because the week after next there's a couple of things that'll keep us busy. Ain't that right, Harry?'

Alf nudged him viciously. ‘Wake up, dozy bastard!'

Harry leapt from his stupor and looked murderously at George, as if holding him responsible for the pain in his ribs. ‘We're fucking desperate.'

Despite his fearlessness and relatively prosperous, self-employed status, George knew there would be trouble if he didn't promise something. When faced with all three of them he couldn't believe he was a grown man, for in their own way they knew how to reduce him in seconds to feeling like a kid. He recalled when, at the age of ten, a neighbour had given him a box of chocolates for doing a week's errands while his wife had been ill, and his brothers had waylaid him at the man's door to snatch the lot.

Knowing why Harry had knocked over the ashtray, Pam came back quickly, and hoped George at least was happy to see her. She scooped up the mess and laid the pan in the hearth till later. ‘There's nothing we can do for you. The house won't need painting for another three years.'

George's left hand twitched. ‘She's right. Not as far as I can see, either.'

She imagined the three brothers setting up ladders and scaffolding, part of an army of occupation that would mark the house by leaving its quiet dun-coloured intimacy a complete ruin. They would move from room to room mixing paints, stubbing out their cigarettes, and leaving a litter of beer tins and pie wrappings. In sheltering from the rain they would tread their plaster-covered boots on her carpets, and use her kitchen to fry their dinners and make tea.

George's picture showed them taking clothes from his wardrobe and searching pockets for anything they could slip into theirs, knowing he wouldn't say anything in case a fight started that he was unable to finish. The word must have been passed around town that they didn't take care in their work, which was why they had few jobs. He saw them dabbing their thin and doctored paint over the woodwork, and swinging planks and ladders so that door panels got split and panes of glass shattered. They would lark about and fall out of windows, holding him responsible because they knew he was insured, and would get sufficient compensation to stay six months in bed at a private clinic while their families lived in luxury on the strength of what extra compo they would receive after taking skinflint George to court. It was a watertight plan. They wouldn't fail to prise more money out of him and get their own back for wrongs he couldn't imagine having done to them.

He was businesslike. ‘Ring me tomorrow, and I'll let you know if I have any ideas.'

‘I don't think you know how bad things really are,' Alf said, seeming remarkably fit and lively, she thought, compared to a few minutes ago. ‘I can't put it into words. My voice croaks when I try to tell people, and it ain't only because I want some tea – though I wouldn't mind another bucketful. It's good tea, duck!' he said to her with a smile and a wink.

‘I'm dying o' thirst, as well,' Bert said.

She didn't respond, not yet willing to be their slave.

George cleared his throat. ‘I'd be quite happy to put you in the way of earning a few hundred if I could, so that you'd be able to pay back what you owe me from before. If you'd like to decorate the house inside and out for that tidy little sum, then that's all right by me.' He turned to Pam. ‘I'd like some more tea myself, love, if you wouldn't mind.'

‘That ain't what we mean.' The veins stood out on Bert's temples.

Harry tore a patch from his overalls at the knee and put it into his jacket pocket. ‘You're too fucking clever,' he said to George. ‘That's your trouble.'

‘All of us could do with some tea, and that's a fact.' Alf didn't want to be seen hanging back in the common effort. He looked pale again, deprived, as if he'd had no sustenance for a week. They ate plenty of food, she knew, but it was cheap and rotten, though neither she nor George had any doubt of their strength and tenacity. ‘But we also want the right to work,' Alf added, after a knowing look from Bert.

Pam washed cups and waited for the kettle to boil. Alf's description of George as having been hatched rather than born revealed that he was disliked far more by his brothers than he ever could be by her. They lacked the sense to realize that whatever they said behind George's back was bound to reach him before a few days were out. Or perhaps they knew it, but didn't care. Their opinions, being totally unconsidered, had to be put into hurtful words at the soonest possible moment, which proved to her that words weren't important to them, since they had no sense of control.

Because they didn't think before they spoke, and distrusted anyone who did, their views on themselves and others, and on anything at all, could never alter. They had always treated George as if he had left them in the lurch by becoming a toffee-nosed bleeder who wouldn't give them two ha'pennies for a penny. On the other hand they could be pleasant enough when it suited their purpose.

Alf, between jobs, once came on a friendly call, hoping they would send him away with a few pounds in his pocket. While drinking his tea he informed her and George what his brothers thought of them (after he had taken the money) though she knew (and so did George) that he would tell the others later what mean bleeders they were for not giving him even a cup of tea at a time when he was on his uppers.

The silent room was thick with cigarette smoke, and she didn't suppose she had missed much more than her imagination supplied. She opened the window. ‘I thought you'd have sorted yourselves out by now.'

‘It ain't so easy,' Bert said.

Her headache was so intense she thought her period was about to start, though there wasn't much chance while
they
were in the house. Not even George said thanks when he took his tea. ‘Some people have to go to work tomorrow,' she said.

‘The lucky ones do,' Harry said glumly.

Bert pretended to scrape something from the end of his nose, then made a vicious flicking motion across the room towards George, who half closed his eyes as if expecting a fist to follow. ‘So you'll see us go down the chute,' he said scathingly, ‘before lifting a finger?'

Pam noted that it was nearly ten, and that if George didn't get to bed by half-past he would be tired and upset in the morning. ‘There's nothing I can do,' he told them. ‘If there was I'd do it, but there isn't. And that's the cold truth.'

Harry held out his cup, and sighed.

‘Why do you always come to us when you're stuck?' She was so angry she even poured him more tea.

‘There's no one else,' Alf said.

Which was true, and she was filled with guilt and pity, but how they used the fact to hold her and George over a slow fire! Even so, it was impossible to send them away without help, which they very well knew, and she was hoping for an idea that would be acceptable to all when Bert turned to George with one that must have been in their minds from the beginning. ‘I passed your factory the other day.'

This did not sound plausible, since it was in a cul-de-sac, and little more than a glorified brick shed backing on to a canal.

‘And it seemed to me – didn't it, Alf? Our Alf was with me, because we'd just took a load o' rammel on Dunkirk tips – that your factory wanted painting. That wall looks terrible. It's the worst bit o' wall on the street.'

‘It'll do for a while,' George said mildly.

‘We'll paint the lot: doors, roofs,
and
walls for three hundred quid. You won't get a better price anywhere.'

The slight creasing of skin around George's eyes told her that he was considering the offer. So was she. Apart from the fact that they had to do something, it was far better that his brothers should dab over the outside of the workshop than devastate their home. George would be there to watch them, and maybe they'd be able to see how hard his own workmen got stuck in. But what amazed her, when it shouldn't have, was how they had cunningly driven her and George to discussing exactly what they had wanted to talk about since first coming into the house an hour ago. Perhaps their business wasn't slack at all, and this was their normal method of drumming up trade.

Bert sensed her thoughts. ‘We did a job like that a month ago for five hundred. We should have got six, but beggars can't be choosers. We'll do yourn for three hundred, George, not for profit, but as a favour, just to keep our hands in between jobs, because it'll only cover the cost of the paint. It don't look good that your factory's like a slum. People might wonder why it's in need of a lick of paint when you've got brothers in the decorating trade. They'll think we've fallen out, and say we're not much of a family if we can't stick by each other.'

The confidence tricks they had worked on George had only been successful due to the amount of blackmail and general mayhem which had been threatened, though after each stunt she had told herself that she should love them and make allowances, because hadn't her father said it was their duty to help less fortunate people, since the Bible said so?

But George's brothers did not seem to fit this condition, especially after they had openly robbed you. To help those who couldn't help themselves was laudable and necessary, because they might then co-operate so that some good would come; but to subsidize those who continually complained, telling you to shut your trap and mind your own business and that when they wanted your sanctimonious advice they'd bloody well ask for it but in the meantime what the bleeding hell were you doing not suffering under the same irritations that they were forced to complain about – was not feasible. Why, they'd want to know with all moral conviction, should
you
get away with it when they had to put up with it? It's all very well you standing there – they'd say – and telling us to get out of difficulties by our own efforts, but in the meantime you're a lot better off than us, so what the bloody hell are you going to do about it, eh?

To complain was not only their life-blood but as often as not a tactical manoeuvre for getting something they wanted but had no right to. All they could do about an irksome situation was complain, as if that were the only way of tolerating it. They grumbled in the face of adversity, whereas real hardship would never have left them time for complaining. After a general election, when there had been a change of government, she recalled that Alf had said to her: ‘Now let's see what this bunch of robbing cut-throats do for us. The last lot did bogger-all.'

She asked what he would like them to do.

‘Well,' he said, ‘they could drop the council house rents for a start, couldn't they? Then they could tek summat off beer and fags.'

‘What about road tax?'

He had forgotten that. ‘They ought to halve it. It's a bleeding shame how they never do ote for yer, in't it?'

She asked what he and his brothers intended doing for them.

‘Well, I suppose yo' would ask that, wouldn't yer? It's all right for yo' and George.'

‘Why is it? You've got a house and a car, just like us.'

‘Ar,' he said, ‘but you
own
your house.'

‘We might in twenty years. We're paying off a mortgage at the moment.'

‘And your car's new.'

She laughed. ‘It goes wrong just as often as yours.'

Those who didn't grumble generated sufficient energy to get clear of their difficulties. The best thing was to keep your sense of humour, though she and George had been unable to laugh on being trapped in their sitting-room by his three brothers and realizing there was no way out of giving them some work to do.

Yet George was sensibly horrified at the idea of them being set on to paint his workshop, a situation to be avoided even if they sat in his front room half the night before agreeing to leave. ‘I'll think about it in the next few days. But I'm sure I'll come up with something for you to do,' he said, as if this generous promise would satisfy them.

But it was seen as a weakness, and instead of getting up to go home Bert signalled the others to stay where they were, and then found himself with a further suggestion to make: ‘While we was passing' – he put the empty cup to his lips for the third time, and paused to spit tea leaves into the ashtray, some of which went on to the rug – ‘I saw that your factory yard was full of ruts. That paving's in a shocking condition. Must be a proper swamp in winter. If one of your employees broke his ankle on a pot-hole you might have a nice whack of compo to pay. I know you're insured, but you'd lose your no-claims bonus, and that'd come to a packet with a factory like yourn. Don't look glum, George. It need never happen. The three of us could repave your yard. Dead easy. We ain't done that sort of work before, I know, but we was only looking at some blokes the other week laying a car park at some offices in Mansfield. We'd do it a treat. I know a chap who's got some hardcore. We'd hire a roller. And in no time at all your yard would be smoother than a school playground. That'd be extra from the painting, though, but it would only cost you about two hundred on top. It's got to be done sooner or later. Next year it'll cost more. Have it done now, and it's a bargain.'

Alf and Harry indicated they would like more tea, otherwise they wouldn't get home, with their throats in the state they were. Pam said she had run out of water, not to mention tea leaves. If they were so dry they had better get to the pub, where they might be in time for a pint before it closed. Beer was the only liquid that would slake such a thirst, she said, providing they tipped enough into themselves for it to slop out of their ears.

Oh she had a way of getting at them, they laughed, but they knew she wasn't as stiff-necked as they'd heard. She was really a good sort who didn't mean half of what she said, otherwise their brother George would never have married her.