Key to the Door (12 page)

Brian noticed Bert limping, remembered him walking with a strange motion ever since leaving the tips. Must have a stone in his shoe—yet it didn't quite look like that. He's acting daft, I suppose. Still, he himself had often simulated a painful limp when on Goose Fair, asking people for pennies because he was hungry. It was an old and secret joke between them: “I want some money, missis, because my crutches are in pawnshop and I can't afford to get 'em out. No,
I
didn't pawn 'em. Dad did. He was short for a packet o' Woodbines. I tried to stop 'im but he knocked me down, and I couldn't chase him because he'd snatched my crutches. Mam tried to get him as he was going through the yard, but he hit her with one of the crutches as well. So it's ever so painful to walk without 'em, missis, honest it is. They're in pawn for a bob, and I only want another twopence to mek it up. Thank you, missis, ever so much.”

And sometimes when that inner urge to beg was far away, they might limp because they felt like it. Brian often did so when alone, to look different from other people due to his uppity-down progress along the pavement, and also to make himself the object of sympathy to passers-by. After a while he'd realize he didn't know whether or not they felt sorrow because it was never shown, so he changed his antics to a self-made interior tune whistled for his own benefit only. Like sometimes you thought people might at last feel sorry if you died, but you knew you'd never be able to see it, so it wasn't worth it anyway.

He was going to ask about the limp, when Bert said: “This is where we goo up. I'll nip first and yo' can foller.” At the top he gave the sack to Brian, stared hard at the wall for a second. Then the patch of neat cemented bricks turned into an all-powerful magnet, for he shot across the few-foot gap at great speed, and was pressed like a flat frog against its vertical surface. His two hands clawed their way on the window ledge, and with one heave he was up.

Brian saw a distinct hollow in the wall on which to grip, so that he, too, after throwing up the sack, was all of a sudden flattened against the bricks, aware of his boots sixty feet free above the ground. Heavier rainspots tapped coldly against his hands. “You'd better come up quick before you get drowned,” Bert advised.

His feet, like swinging pieces of iron—one of which felt dangerously heavier than the other—also found ledges. It was a fight to steady himself, and he stopped breathing to do so, pushing each finger as far as it would go into the ledge to strengthen his grip for the pull-up. He heaved, and began to lift slowly. At the same time his fingers dragged back, as if the rainspots that had fallen on to the ledge were grease instead of water. Before they could snap off and send him whistling like a bomb into the ground, he lunged forward with his elbows, swung his body at the top shelf of stone, and landed in a sitting position. “Yo' needed all day to do that bit of a job.”

“I didn't tek as long as yo' did,” Brian retorted. He looked back over swamp and tips, railway and distant factories, with not a living soul in sight, then turned to see a six-foot drop within the Sann-eye: mountains of dustbin rubbish ready for burning after the weekend, tins and boxes and cinders stretching in waves away from the wall to form an escarpment at the dozen doors of the cooling stoves. Dim light came in through high arched windows all around the great interior, and such vastness seen from the ledge he stood on made it seem like the inside of a church—except perhaps for the stuff of every dustbin piled below.

The oven-doors had been bolted and shutter-drawn; they looked harmless, not like monsters' mouths any more but corpse-grey and a bit ghostly, sinister in their temporary inaction. The only remaining signs of heat were mixed with warm ash and a nose-cutting smell like that of old vegetables and fish. Something moved in the rubbish. “A cat: they get the biggest feed of their lives here.” Bert's gruff voice echoed around the space still left between rubbish and ceiling.

“I'm off,” he said. He jumped a yard out from the window-sill and dropped into the rubbish, almost out of sight as his feet went in. “It's like landin' on a feather-bed,” he yelled. Brian held his nose and took a clumsy flying leap.

The height, twice his own, looked immense, but was reduced to nothing by the crash that pulled at his legs like an electric shock and rolled him sideways a bit too soon after the leap. Shuddering, he tried to get up, but couldn't until Bert pushed a hand out and jerked him to where it was less spongy underfoot. “It's like sinkin'-sands, if you ask me,” Bert said. A cold herring wriggled from his face. The green eyes of an angry cat speared him, outraged at the cheek of his intrusion. It's trespassing in here, he thought. We'll get sent off if a bloke comes in: there's nowt worth pinching anyway, so what's the bleeding odds? We should 'ave gone off and spent my tanner. He sat to look back at where he'd hit the rubbish and, peering through the grey of the foreclosing afternoon, used a few seconds to discover what it was piled in heaps and taking up nearly half of the whole Sann-eye. Herrings and mackerel and bloaters, he'd never seen so many, not even on the pictures when it showed you big steamboats bobbing around Newfoundland and pulling in netfuls. Where did they all come from? “I don't know,” Bert said. “I expect it's all rotten, though.”

“It don't smell rotten.”

“You can bet it is anyway.”

“What about taking some home?” Brian said. “We can fry it for supper.”

“You can't; it stinks like boggery.” Bert seemed certain, so Brian was ready to take his older word for it, except for: “It don't smell all that bad.”

“It wouldn't be 'ere if it worn't, would it?” Bert retorted. “Use your loaf.”

“I'm using my bleddy loaf. Look, the cat's eating it.” He picked up a fish and smelt it, opened its mouth, turned its tail. “It looks all right to me.” Bert was alrealy in another corner, scraping through more varied heaps. “Fish shops chucked it 'ere,” he called back.

“I've never seen this much fish in fifty fish shops.” He threw the herring back on the pile. “I suppose lorries brought 'em?” Bert said they must have. A huge black cat ran from a window, took a fish in its mouth, climbed out. Other cats were round about, fixed in the windows like bats or owls, bloated with food, hoping for enough appetite to make another dive. Some moaned like babies in the dusk, unable to move, too loaded to live, dazed at the shock of an easy life, as if filled with a nagging fear that they would never recover from it.

“I suppose they threw it away at the shops 'cause they couldn't sell it? It's old stock; like them tuffeys you find on tips.”

“Why don't yer forget about that bleedin' fish?” Bert said. “You're getting on my nerves. Come over 'ere to look for summat good.” There was boat-loads on it, enough to feed thousands: you could roast 'em over fires or fry 'em in pans, and fill your guts for a year of teas and suppers, as long as it didn't mek yer sick. “Bollocks,” he shouted to Bert, making his way on all fours over tin cans and ashes towards him.

“They've nearly orluss got this much fish in.” Bert was too absorbed to slam back. “It's bad, though.” He tore into a wall of rubbish, and Brian had never seen him use a rake with such skill. Tin cans, bottles, cardboard boxes, orange peel, and solidified masses of unnameable parts were burrowed into, while objects of doubt were hooked up to the failing light: either jettisoned or laid aside on the sackbag.

Brian looked closer to see how such quick raking came about. “That's a strong rake you've got. Did you find it 'ere?”

“On tips. It was under a load of old swarf from the Raleigh.” With a boastful gesture and a satisfied grin he held it up, meaning him only to glimpse it before bending to work again.

“I'll believe you when I see it,” Brian said, already suspecting. The rake swung, so he grabbed out and pulled it close, which brought a laugh: “What did you think I was limpin' all the way from the tips for? I couldn't let anybody see it, could I?”

“That's 'is best rake. He'll be lost wi'out it.” Brian cried indignantly: “You rotton sod. Fancy doin' a thing like that.”

Bert tried denying it, in fun as much as hope of belief. “It worn't Agger's. It was somebody else's. Honest. Cross my 'eart and cut my throat if I tell a lie.”

“I don't believe yer. I know Agger's rake when I see it. I'm not blind.” Bert gave up his act of innocence and turned on him: “What if it is? Agger found it, di'n't 'e? He di'n't pay for it, did he? We needed one, di'n't we?”

Brian admitted the truth of this barrage. “You still didn't need to nick it.”

“I didn't. I found it in his sackbag. Anyway, our Brian, when I took it I seed 'e'd got about ten more. He finds plenty o' new 'uns every day. Or else p'raps he nicks 'em like I did.”

Maybe he does at that, Brian thought, and became absorbed in Bert, who seemed to be carving a grotto from the bank of rubbish. He stayed back while the dextrous excavation went on, on all kinds of domestic residue landing not far from his feet. He'll get through to the wall soon by the look on it. That's what came of nicking such a good rake: it worked like a machine, some sort of field thresher they often have near the Nook in summer.

A tunnel opened so that Bert was half hidden. What's he trying to find? I'll go in soon to see what it's like under all that rammel. Maybe he wain't let me. Course he will: he's my cousin. My pal as well. Our birthdays are nearly the same. A large tin from the top of the mountain rolled menacingly towards him, and the instinct to kick it out of the way was curbed by a thought that it wouldn't be safe to do so. Bert, adaptable and quick, capable of looking after himself, came from a long line of colliers, and cocked his ear as if he'd heard some mythical splitting of pit-props far down in his soul. Another tin rolled, followed by jars, bottles, and wet paper, until Brian saw the whole mountain sway like an earthquake. A cat ran across the top to forage at the fish beyond, its green eyes looking momentarily to one side as if its light feet were causing the subsidence.

Bert jumped to safety while Brian was distracted by the cat. The collapse was almost soundless. Hundredweights of rubble settled back into place, and Bert was out of range, rolling down the bank, shouts and laughter chasing around the high ceiling. Brian leapt clear, disappointed that Bert's monument had been squashed out of existence. “That was good sport, our Brian”—Bert brushed ash from his clothes. “It didn't get me, though.”

His hands were empty, black, and scratched, an unbleeding cut between the first and index fingers. “Where is it?” he demanded of Brian in a warlike way.

“Where's what? What yer talking about?” Bert looked around, felt in pockets—but only knew the rake was lost when convulsed by a bout of swearing that shrunk his world to a black and thwarted brain. Brian looked at the flattened hill of refuse. It would take all night to delve: “I'll help you.”

Bert could neither get over it nor act. “A rake like that,” he kept saying. “Would you believe it? A rake like that. Agger's best 'un.”

“It'll get shoved in the ovens with all that other stuff right enough.”

“I know it will.” There were tears between Bert's curses. “I'm daft. I'm batchy. Nicked it and carried it right across the bleeding tips. For nowt. For bleeding nowt.”

Brian turned away, because four loud words hammered against the inside of his head—trying to get out. But he couldn't say it, except to himself, and even then he felt treacherous, as well as foolish. “God paid him out,” they said. “God paid him out for nicking Agger's best rake.” There ain't no God. God is a bastard, his father had often roared in response to his mother's taunt that God would pay him out as well. So maybe there is one. He scraped at the wall of refuse with a piece of stick while Bert sullenly loaded his sack.

And 'appen there ain't, because where will poor owd Agger be tomorrow when he finds his rake missing? He'll goo off 'is nut, 'aving to use old 'uns that break easy, and not getting such good stuff to sell. Maybe he'll think I nicked it. I'd better not go back for a while in case he does. What a bleeding look-out! Where'll I get wood for the fire? All through our Bert, the loony bastard. And then he went and lost it. I'm sorry for Agger, though, I am. I'm sorry for 'im. Out o' wok and living off the tips. I don't know. Nowt but an overcoat and an old pram to his name; and not even his posh rake any more. I'm fed up, I am. God-all-bleedin'-mighty, I'm fed up.

They climbed through the window, too morose to think of safety during the high drop on to the path. “I'm 'ungry,” Bert grumbled, trudging alone. “I ain't 'ad a bit t'eat since that chocolate.”

A straight road led from Sann-eye to the bright flares of Wollaton Road. Lorries, cars, buses were crotchets along bars of music, drumrolls as they roared by in the distance, loud and frequent because people were going home from work. “I don't suppose there'll be any snap at our house,” Brian said, “and that's a fact.”

“Nor at ourn, either.”

There was a smell of spring, a lightness of moss and grass and fresh nettles that stung their legs when they went too far into the hedge. Westwards the sky had reddened, as if a nightwatchman behind the clouds had lit his fire for the night, sitting there to keep out intruders from what paradise lay beyond; and a glow from it was cast against the sheer grey-plated walls of looming gasometers, making them seem taller as they walked by. Brian felt in his pocket: “I've still got that tanner Agger gen me for the wood, so we can get summat to eat. We'll buy some Nelson Squares and crisps, and stuff our guts on that.”

“Marvellous,” Bert said, putting his arm around Brian's shoulders, and they walked more quickly.

CHAPTER 6