Key to the Door (10 page)

Brian pushed it away. But his “Go on” was too late, and the dog knew it, lost the look of playful complacency and shrunk its black and white patches to escape Merton's wrath. “I'll teach you to come to me when I shout,” he said, holding his breath back at each blacksmith's swipe.

“Don't hit it, grandad,” Brian shouted, wondering why the dog didn't run. Head to one side, then under its front legs as if to bite its own tail, then up and sideways, until suddenly it winged across the yard, squealing on cinders because it couldn't get through a hole in the hedge fast enough. Merton threw his stick down and went into the house.

After dinner the dog wasn't back, making the difference between a full and an empty yard, for the others were shopping in Nottingham. He trod his way through the wheatfield, skirted the well, crossed into the Cherry Orchard, and came up out of the lane to capture the gigantic tree whose bole was burnt out, making a room so big that he could walk inside and sit down.

When this novelty had worn he walked the five-mile half-mile over humps and hollows towards the Arlingtons' cottage by the wood, and met Alma when almost there.

“I've got a joke to tell you,” she said, wiping grass-juice on her white frock.

“All right then, tell it me,” he said impatiently.

She clarified her claim: “It ain't a joke; it's a piece of pointry,” then sat down.

He sat by her. “I like pointry. Go on and tell it me.”

Her face saddened. “I've forgot it.”

He was disappointed, liked to be told poetry and stories, except when he was made to learn them by heart at school. “You're daft. You forget everything.”

“I'm not daft, Brian Seaton,” she pouted. “If you say I'm daft I wain't tell you my pointry.”

“Did you make it up?”

Proudly: “Yes.”

She's fibbin', he told himself, but didn't say anything because he wanted to hear it. “Tell it me, then,” he said again. “I didn't mean it when I said you was daft.”

She was happy at this. “I've remembered it now”—and recited the poem.

“That's a good 'un,” he said, laughing. She waited for him to stop: “Now you tell me one.”

“I don't know any.”

“Mek one up then,” she ordered, “like I did.”

“I can't,” he said defiantly.

She ran off across the field, slammed the rickety wooden gate, and went into the cottage.

The fire-scooped hollow of the tree smelled of charcoal: who made such a big blaze to scorch out all this wood? Must have searched days for twigs and leaves to get it going. But what a fire, to burn yet carve a black hooded hollow big enough for a good many to hide in from rain or chasing gang, though it wouldn't make such a good hiding place because every kid in Radford knew about it. He went in, plucked a layer of charcoal and stamped it into the soft wet soil; picked off more to crush in his fingers and turn his flesh black. Must have smoked for days, everyone walking by and nobody thinking to piss on it even. Colliers riding past on their bikes, and laughing at it, letting it burn its heart into a hide-out and shelter for when it rains, though it wouldn't be a good place if it thundered and lightninged because trees often get struck. Grandma ought to know because she's older than mam, and even she knows. But p'raps somebody had chucked a bucket of water at the tree to swill it down, watched it sizzling and steaming and gone off thinking it was finished, but as soon as it stopped steaming it starting smoking again until it got red and went back to burning, which served the bloke right for trying to kill it out. He should have minded his own business and let it burn, because once fires start it ain't right to bother 'em, especially if they're in a field like this one was: you've got to let them get on with it and burn red hot, as any daft sod knows. Tons and tons of wood must a bin burnt in this tree and I'd like to a seen it. Mam says it's allus bin like this, that even she can't remember how it was before it was black and hollow.

By Sunday dinner Gyp hadn't come back. Merton was in an amiable mood, bland with a few pints of soothing brown ale inside him, and asked at the table if anybody'd seen Gyp. They hadn't. And no wonder, Violet said, after such a pasting as he'd given the poor bogger. For nothing, as well. Can you blame him for not coming back? Well, it should do as it's towd, Merton maintained, then it wouldn't get stick so often. I expect he's roaming the fields, though. A forkful of mutton fat went into his hatch. He turned to Brian: “Shall you come wi' me, Nimrod, and see'f we can find 'im after dinner?”

“O yes, grandad.”

They rounded to the house-back and set off up the sloping path, passing the sentinel well and making a bee-line for Serpent Wood. Was the stick he carried to help him on his walk, or to beat Gyp with for desertion? Yesterday he hated him for hitting the dog, but now, trailing behind in the heavy-clouded silence of green fields, he was unable to. Maybe they'd seen Alma, he thought, hands deep in his pockets when his grandad had told him a thousand times to take them out, though he didn't suppose they would because she went to Sunday school as a rule.

They turned south from the wood, towards the railway. Merton stopped now and again, calling: “Gyp! Gyp!” each gruff cannon-ball shout met only by an echo, or by an uprising bird that didn't know how lucky it was Merton hadn't a gun with him. Two partridges took off from a bank, flap-winged over an elderberry bush, turned high in a steep curve, and vanished beyond the railway.

Great clouds were piled high in the distance like a range of mountains suspended in space. Merton leaned on the iron railing as if wondering whether to cross the railway and search there. Bush leaves swayed with a noise like waves against sand when you put a sea-shell to your ear, and tree branches creaked. “We'll climb the bank, Nimrod, and see'f we can see owt in Farmer 'Awkins' field. If we can't we'll goo back and see'f your gran'ma's mashed. It looks as if it'll piss down soon.”

Brian was already over and halfway up to the railway, then jumping from one steel rail to another, Merton close behind. He looked beyond, saw nothing but silence. Wheatfields swayed with the wind but made no noise, and smoke from a grey-roofed house went obliquely into the sky. It was funny, he thought, how soil smelled of rain when you'd think it'd be the air it came from. A steel-grey cloud-base stretched for miles, and there was no sign of the dog.

He shielded his eyes from an imaginary sun: “Can't see 'im, grandad.”

“We'll go back 'ome then. 'E'll cum when 'e's 'ungry.”

Brian turned to recross the railway: the long stretch of track disappeared round a bend to the right, no trains flying. Then he turned his head leftwards and, about to face front and leap over the lines, saw something white tucked into one of the sleepers.

He knew what it was before beginning to run, stared at the splashed blood on the ridge of each parallel track. It's been run over, he said to himself, it's been run over.

“Grandad,” his wavering voice called. He detached the bloodstained collar and folded it into his back pocket. They walked to the house without speaking.

Merton came later with a spade and buried Gyp in the field. While he was away Brian heard his uncle George and aunt Violet talking in the kitchen. “He led the poor dog such a life,” she said, “that it must have done itself in by laying on the lines till a train came.” Brian was sorry she said this because he'd been with his grandad when the dog was found and, walking back with him, noticed how he hadn't said a word all the way, which was, he knew, because he was sorry he'd hit the dog. George agreed with her: “He's got too much of it.” Too much of what? Brian wondered. But they said nothing to Merton when he came in.

Brian went home that evening, for it was school in the morning. His small figure walked quickly along, waving a stick, his pockets jingling with pennies and ha'pennies that his grandad, uncles, and aunts had given him.

CHAPTER 5

Eight-wheeled lorries came by the motorworks and followed each other towards the high flat tongue of land that had been raised by months of tipping and was slowly covering a nondescript area of reedgrass and water. From nearly every precipice men walked to where they hoped the loads would be dumped. Empty sacks flapped over their shoulders, and they called to each other, waving sticks and rakes. Brian, having already used his judgement, was scraping into a heap of swarf and scrap steel picked clean days ago, but which still gave off a pleasant smell of aluminum shavings and carbolic, oil and the brass dust of big machines his father had sometimes worked. He kept one eye on the rapid movements of his flimsy rake, and the other on a small pile of wood covered with a sack nearby. Bert had promised to be at the tips later, and Brian hoped he'd come soon to get something from the four lorries—and the convoy of high-sided horsecarts trailing at walking pace behind.

“Where's it comin' from, mate?” Brian asked. Steelpins were popped out and the back ascended slowly. Half a dozen men, waiting for the avalanche of promise, watched the heavy handle being worked by a driver who rarely spoke to the scrapers, as if he were ashamed of being set within the luxurious world of hard labour. Even uncommitting banter was rare, and the scrapers looked on, waiting, never offering to help so as to get the stuff rolling sooner to their feet. “Prospect Street, young 'un,” the driver answered.

Them old houses. A few bug-eaten laths. Wallpaper, dust, and brick was already streaming down the bank, filling up oil-stained swamp-pools and crushing rusty tins at the bottom. A piece of wall made a splash like a bomb, and that was that. The back was wound up, and the lorry driven off. Brian rubbed pieces of cold water from his ear. Men were scraping systematically at the rammel, though expecting little from those poverty-stricken, condemned, fallen-down rabbit-holes on Prospect Street. Yet you never knew: such exercise in hope may gain a few brass curtain rings, a yard of decayed copper-wire (from which the flex could be burned over the flames), or perhaps a piece of lead piping if it was a lucky day. A man whistled as he worked: speculation ran too high for speech.

Brian, having netted a few spars of wood, rubbed grit from his knees and stood up, gripped by a black, end-of-the-world hopelessness: Please, God, send a good tip, he said to himself. If you do, I'll say Our Father. “What's up, kid?” Agger called from the top of the bank.

“I'm fed up,” Brian said gloomily.

Men looked around, grinning or laughing. “Are yer 'ungry?” Brian said no, scraped a few half-bricks to reveal a fair-sized noggin of wood. “Sure? There's some bread and jam in my coat pocket if y'are,” Agger said.

“No, thanks. I've got some snap as well.”

“What yer fed up for then?” He couldn't answer. Like the old man often said: Think yourself lucky you've got a crust o' bread in your fist. Then you can tek that sour look off your clock. But Brian couldn't. “What does your dad do?” Agger wanted to know.

“He's out o' work”—already forgetting despair.

Agger laughed. “He's got a lot o' cumpny.” Agger came on the tips every morning—in time for the first loads at nine—pushing an old carriage-pram, an antique enormous model that may once have housed some spoon-fed Victorian baby and been pushed by a well-trimmed maid. There was no rubber on the wheels; all paint had long since blistered from its sides, and a makeshift piece of piping served for a handle. Another valued possession of Agger's was a real rake unearthed from a load of brick and tile tippings, an ornate brass-handled tool of the scraper's trade with which he always expected to pull up some treasure, good reaching under the muck for good, but which he used with relish whether it made him rich or not. Other scrapers envied it: Brian once heard one say: “Lend's your rake five minutes, Agger. I'll just get some wood for the fire.” The men around stopped talking, and Agger stayed mute: just looked at the man—a faint touch of contempt at such ignorance of the rules of life—though the blank look was forced on to his face mainly because the request was unexpected, and unanswerable if he was to maintain his sharp gipsy-like dignity. The man got up and walked away, beyond the fire's warmth. “The daft fucker,” Agger said loudly. “What does he tek me for? He wants chasing off the bleddy premises.”

Agger often referred to the tips as “the premises”—a high-flown name as if “premises” was the one word and only loot he had carried off under his coat from some short term of employment—at being ordered off them himself by a despairing gaffer. “Premises” to Agger was synonymous with some remote platform of life where order might have been created from the confusion within himself, if only he could be respected as king for some qualities he hadn't got—but wanted because he knew them to exist.

Winter and summer he wore a black overcoat that reached to his ankles and flapped around his sapling body. On the morning when his weekly gatherings had been sold to the scrap-shop for a few shillings, each deep pocket of his coat held a quart bottle of tea, panniers that steadied the folds of an otherwise voluminous garment. Each morning he coaxed a fire from the abundant surface of the tip, stoked it to a beacon with old oil cloth, tar-paper, and arms of brackenish wood that had laid between the floors and walls of back-to-back houses during generations both of people and of bugs.

On fine days, Brian noticed, some scrapers worked little, stood talking by the fire, and only ran madly with coats waving when a lorry came; others scraped industriously every minute of the day whether there was a fresh tip or not, working solidified rubble on the off-chance of finding something that might have been missed. Brian belonged to the latter sort, searching the most unpromising loads because hope was a low-burning intoxication that never left him.

While the damp wind—seemingly foiled by jersey and coat—concentrated on Brian's face, he forgot it was also reaching into his body. He whistled a tune through a mixture of brick, wood-chippings, and scraps of slate, feeling snatched only when the division between an unreal cotton-wool dreamland and the scratches on his numbed fingers broke down and flooded him with a larger sensation: “snatched”—eyes and face muscles showing what the innermost body felt even though he hadn't been aware of it, perished through and through, so that a blazing fire would only bring smarting eyes and a skin thicker though not warmer.