Her Victory (17 page)

Bert was unnerved by the silence, and said: ‘There is one more way.'

George knew.

‘You advance us,' Alf put in, ‘another fifty quid.'

George's clipped tone impressed no one. ‘Never.'

‘And we'll go in our own dinner hour to buy paint so that we can carry on this afternoon, with no time lost.'

‘Never. I told you.'

Bert knew when to conciliate. ‘That's the best solution I can think of to our difficulties. It's the only reasonable one, in fact. And it's
our
money you'll be giving us, after all.'

‘Can't be done.'

‘Well, George,' Alf said, as if heart-and-soul were on his side, ‘it's up to you.'

It was. He felt as if his face had been blown off by the wind, his feet about to go the same way. He was helpless. They were right. ‘The robbing boggers had me over a barrel,' he told Pam, ‘so I paid up. But families!' he cried, in the only real anguish she'd ever heard from him, going on to describe her own feelings in a more vulgar manner: ‘I've shit 'em, before bloody breakfast!'

Bert solemnly pocketed the ten five-pound notes, and went away with promises to come back soon, spoken as airily as to suggest that they were in no way necessary. The three of them returned some days later, bearing sufficient paint to keep going for a few hours, after which Harry came into the office and said they needed more money.

George felt as if he'd eaten an apple and got maggots in the head. ‘I don't believe it.'

Even Harry seemed to know he was trying it on once too often, and became sullen. ‘Well I'm telling you.'

‘Go outside,' George said, after some thought, ‘and tell Alf and Bert I want to see them as well.'

His sleepy-lidded eyes became alert. ‘What for?'

‘Because,' George said, ‘I don't believe you've run out of paint – again.'

‘I didn't say that, did I?'

Harry was the next one up in age to George, and they had occasionally played together as children, which made Harry more violently grudging towards him than to the others, and always likely to lose his temper with him in an argument. Knowing that clever George who had got on must realize this, and be afraid of certain consequences (because being ‘better off meant you were scared of getting your skin damaged in a fight), Bert had chosen Harry as his emissary in the task of squeezing more of the money out of him that they had not yet earned but had a more than perfect right to because they
would
earn it if only he would act like a real brother and let them.

Harry had been a fussed-over and spoiled child until the appearance of George, a shock which rendered him henceforth inarticulate except in anything to do with getting what he thought the world owed him. In such a family there was always one kid treated as a pet no matter how hard the life, by way of persuading the others that there must be some kindness in them. Such pampering, however, could only weaken an already vulnerable child, for when he grew older and they got tired of the spoiling they either kicked him around even more than if they had so far treated him normally, or ignored him altogether, so that the victim – which by now he had become – saw that the world wasn't kind after all, and could in fact be bloody barbarous. Hankering in the fibres of Harry's system therefore was an ache for revenge on George whom he saw as responsible for his troubles.

‘You didn't say you'd run out of paint,' George said, ‘I know, but you're going to, aren't you? You'd better tell the others to come in, then we can get things straight, once and for all.'

Harry dropped his half-smoked cigarette and stamped on it. He even made me waste a whole fag, he would say. ‘You think you own the fucking world, don't you?'

‘Not really' – it was hard at times not to boast – ‘only a little bit of it.' His desk was laden with bills, letterheads, die-samples, nuts, callipers, an ashtray, a carborundum wheel, rolls of blueprint, two teacups without handles, a depth gauge, a stamp box, a faded starch tin filled with cutting blades and broken drills, and an old table lamp kept lit all day. This
was
his world, which he did in fact more or less own – and he was proud of it.

He stood up. ‘Just the same, Harry, I would like a word with the others. You can understand that, can't you?'

While the upper guttering of the wall above the canal was being painted George had opened a window outwards to get some air into the workshop, and had seen Harry's face mirrored in the water, seeming to look up at him in crosswise fashion, showing a wide waggish grin, pot-eyes and a bristled head, the face shimmering when a breeze caught the water or perhaps a minnow thrust its nose up for air. His face had seemed almost friendly.

Harry looked at the wall-safe behind George's head. ‘We've got no paint, so we want some money.'

George hoped for friendship with his three brothers even though they were older, an amity equal and respectful on all sides, but he was only ever presented with their united hugger-mugger front, which left him no alternative except to crave their annihilation. He saw the direction in which Harry's eyes were darting, but Harry didn't see Bill Clawson the tool-setter standing behind him in the doorway, until he stepped between Harry and the lintel to get inside.

‘What is it, Bill?'

‘I'm wondering what to do with that spindle, Mr Hargreaves. I've got it down as fine as I can, and if I use your centre-lathe I might be able to do it better, but I wanted to ask you about it first.'

George looked at his brother, whose only purpose on earth was to bleed him to death. Then he observed the other man who, as skilful as himself in the shaping and use of tools, deferred to him as one human being to another. ‘I'll be over in a moment to look at it, Bill. But in the meantime would you ask half a dozen of the biggest chaps to do me a favour and throw any ladders or paint-pots they can see out into the street?'

‘Yes, Mr Hargreaves.'

‘And Bill, send a couple of 'em over here first to get rid of this chap, before they deal with the others. They'll know who I mean.'

‘Will do, Mr Hargreaves.'

Harry showed him his fist. ‘You fucking wain't. We'll come back and
smash
you! We ‘ate your guts.' But he sagged from the shoulders: ‘You'd do this to your
brothers
!'

‘It's nothing to what you lot would do to me if I let you. You'd better leave while you're still in one piece. I'm fed up to the tits with the lot of you.'

He felt upright in spirit, but wasn't quick enough. Though he had been prepared to dodge, a savage lam of Harry's fist flew at his face.

Their materials were laid along the walls and must have been collected during the afternoon, because when George went to his car after the men had gone home, there was nothing to be seen, unless a totter had taken it all away.

He held a steel bar by his trouser-leg in case they waited in the dark, meaning to do at least one of them an injury before they put their six boots into him.

They hadn't smashed his headlamps or let the four of his tyres down, but in case they still had such ideas he would keep them quiet by getting a letter sent on the firm's paper saying that unless they returned the two hundred pounds owed to him, through default on work arranged for, he would put the matter into the hands of his solicitors.

He told Pam about it when he got home with a bruise down the side of his face. He should have let the matter drop and forgotten the money, she said. ‘It's cost you far more in worry and lost time. They take advantage of you.'

‘I know,' he admitted. ‘I'm as soft as shit.'

‘Forget it,' she told him. ‘Don't bother with them any more.'

‘I shan't,' he agreed. ‘If I see them again at the factory I'll call the police. There's nothing else I can do.'

Then he added that there were a lot of other things in his life that needed sorting out. She asked what that funny remark was supposed to mean, and he said it signified that he got fed up coming home night after night, with a hard day's grind to his backbone, to find her looking as glum as if he had just sneaked in from a three-day booze-up at Skegness with another woman. So she said what did he expect her to be, a mother and dancing girl all in one? He imagined it was possible, she was sure. He laughed and said he wouldn't mind, so she put his boiler-suit in the washing machine while he went upstairs for a bath. Then she got Edward to bed, and cooked supper, waiting for George to come down and tell her the rest of the story.

A bottle of beer from the fridge made him more cheerful. In fact he was in such unusual fettle after the blow at his face that she dreaded going to bed that night, though being his wife she knew there was no way out.

20

Edward was eighteen, and didn't need her any more, but if he came to London and found her, and wanted her to go back home, she wouldn't know what to do.

George had always called him Ted and, for as long as Edward could tolerate hearing the sound, his father would sing-song his little Ted-Ted-Teddy-Bear-baby-name as if he really was such an animal to George's sentimental heart, being thrown so high that his curly head went to within an inch of the ceiling. He once touched the plaster too hard but didn't cry and then, thank God, George caught him as he came down. Sometimes, to make the thrill greater, George would catch him almost at ground level, which needed terrific strength if Edward weren't to break his ankles. From an early age Edward had become used to his father taking such risks with him, so that for years he was unable to take any of his own.

George, strong and always able to catch his son on the descent, was a father any child could trust and love for as long as he acquiesced in being hurled to the sky or ceiling. And sensing how much it pleased the father – and what child doesn't enjoy making daddy happy, especially when he spends little time with him? – he took to it stoically until he became as addicted to the experience as George.

She was pleased to hear them enjoying their evening hour together, when neither noticed her presence in the house while she cooked, made Edward's supper, filled his bath, and heard the laughter of delight and terror as he played the jumping-jack aviator in the custody of George who hardly stopped his Ted-Ted-Ted-Teddy-Bear larking about. With infinite energy and love, after his long day at work, he had only to feel Edward's warm hand in his to be born again.

The word ‘Ted' would not shape itself on her lips, and she called him Edward. The difference between the words was so great that Edward had two names. He felt himself to be two people. A totally other sound out of their vital mouths led him to assume that he was one person to his mother, and somebody else to his father, causing him to adopt a certain stance to the first and, of necessity, another attitude to the second.

So Edward was two children, until he grew up, when he became both at the same time, which meant neither, and then he could no longer live with his parents because he was unable to tolerate not knowing who he was.

After the high-chair age, when he sat with them at table, he was Ted whenever George had anything to say to him, and Edward to his mother when something crossed her mind worth mentioning.

She once overheard him on the kitchen floor while engrossed with his teddy bears: ‘You're Ted, bad boy,' he said to one, and: ‘You're Edward,
good
boy.'

After he'd been put to bed that night she said to George: ‘Why do you call Edward “Ted”?'

‘Because that's his name, isn't it?' he said from behind the newspaper.

‘“Edward” is what's written on his birth certificate. Or was, when I last looked.'

‘What's wrong with “Ted”, then?' The newspaper was still between his face and hers.

‘It isn't his name, that's all.'

He looked at her, and pondered on her meaning. ‘It is to me, because that's what I call him. To me he's “Ted”, and always will be.'

‘And to me he's “Edward”,' she said patiently, ‘because that's his name.'

He lifted the newspaper. ‘Have it your way.'

‘It's bad for him to have two names,' she said.

He laughed. ‘When I was a kid I was called everything under the sun!'

‘That was in your family. I like to think that Edward's upbringing is going to be different.'

The paper shimmered, and he turned the page. ‘And we should thank God for that,' he said. ‘Let's have some coffee. But I still don't see anything wrong with calling him Ted. And if he does have two names it won't do him any harm. He's lucky. Two is always better than one!'

She plugged in the kettle, and put two spoons of powdered coffee in the mugs. ‘I don't suppose he'll find it funny when he grows up.'

‘It won't worry him, unless you make a big issue out of the matter.'

Everything was a ‘big issue', and impossible to talk about calmly. But George was right in that it didn't matter whether Edward had one name or twenty as long as they stayed together and he never forgot what any of them were; and she had no intention of leaving George until Edward was old enough to fend for himself, and able to do without either name if he didn't like them, though it often seemed that by such time she would be too dead in the head to care, and Edward wouldn't think it mattered how many names he had.

But she hadn't been too dead to care, and here she was in her own room, and Edward had stayed as two people, though it was still hard to say whether any damage might come of his having been Ted to his father, or if it would manifest itself because he had been Edward to her. Either way didn't signify, since it was too late, and everyone sometime or other had either to sink or swim, and nine times out of ten they had enough resilience to do the latter.

George occasionally thought of him as the Edward seen by Pam, and so looked on an altogether alien person. Not liking his conclusion in the least, he would quickly change the picture back to the Ted he wanted him to be for ever.