Key to the Door (15 page)

Few people were fond of Doddoe, that tall sandy-haired muscular ex-bombardier sergeant of artillery who played a tempestuous forty-year centre-forward for whatever team could be persuaded to take him on. Navvy, collier, poacher by turn, he swung from job to job, content that his wages should leave him a bob for booze, allow him to sit taciturn in the pub and drink a few pints that came as his due either by treat or credit after his meagre shilling was exhausted. Doddoe placed himself too often at the mercy of bum-baliffs, coppers, publicans, gamekeepers, and bookies, mostly to the damage of himself and always to the detriment of Ada and their underfed children. Yet butties and chargehands were glad to call on him when work was going, because Doddoe, once set on, had a knack of harnessing his energies into careful prodigies of labour that outshone all other workers and often encouraged them. He toiled within a slow-moving pantomimic world of his own, behind a barred mind that had to be told the time before he would bring himself to cease work in the evening. For him, overtime was like free money: unfortunately it came too rarely, and when it did his children clamoured in such a mighty voice that he could not but give them a good share of what he had earned.

One Friday when Doddoe was ably labouring at a semi-detached row near Wollaton, Bert was told by Ada to take him a parcel of shirt, suit, and bowler hat. The message was clear, though Brian was also forced to memorize it: Doddoe was to change on the job, after finishing work, and come into town without stopping at any pub, to meet her for the first house at the Empire. “Mam thinks I'm daft and can't remember owt,” Bert grumbled, carrying the enormous parcel, arms holding it in front so that Brian had to lead him by the hand to stop him burying both face and parcel in some thorn hedge. “I'll tell people I'm blind and maybe somebody'll gi' me a penny,” Bert said. “Hey, missis,” he bawled to a woman, “I'm blind,” but she walked on without looking, so he passed the load to Brian.

Wet trees overarched the road, and they kept well in so that cars and buses wouldn't splash their legs with mud and water. Fields stretched away on one side, and high moss-covered park walls on the other. Brian suggested he'd carried the parcel far enough, complained it made his arms ache, so Bert walked bent double with it on his back for a hundred yards. Brian found it harder work to help him stop it falling than to carry it himself, so he shouldered it for good. The too-long pressure on his arms made him relax unwittingly, and Doddoe's bowler rolled into a hedgerow.

“Christ,” he exclaimed, “we'll cop it now. Doddoe wain't be able to put it on.” But, undismayed, Bert lifted it from the mud with a piece of stick, scrubbed it clean with sleeve and spit, and carefully refolded the parcel.

Doddoe was up a ladder with a hod of bricks, and they hung around till knocking-off time, kicking their feet in fresh-pared shavings and inhaling the ominipresent tar-smell that came from them. “If we wait a bit, Doddoe might give us a penny out of 'is wage-packet,” Bert said. “Besides, we've got to tek 'is wokkin' clo'es back 'ome.”

Doddoe slung his jacket on a heap of ochred bricks, bent to swill his face at a tap. “Got them bleeding clo'es?” he called, wiping himself on a piece of old rag.

Bert handed them over. “Mam says you've got to go straight there.”

“I bleddy-well know that. She's towd me fifty times already,” he said, and went behind a lorry to change.

“And not go in no pubs,” Bert added, ready to duck and run. But Doddoe was singing “Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow-wow”; jacket, cap, and shirt thrown on to an empty cement bag, boots and socks and trousers following, until he stood in clean shirt and bowler hat, about to don his handsome well-pressed blue-black trousers. “How's yer mother?” he called out, laying bricks on the cement bag to stop it taking off in the wind. “Is she still grumblin' at me?”

“She was getting ready when I left,” Bert told him.

“What was she wearin'?” Doddoe asked.

Bert came nearer. “A red coat and 'at, I think.”

“She would,” was the deprecating comment. “You'd think she'd got nowt else to wear. Whose lookin' after t' young 'uns?”

Bert ticked the kid-register off in his mind. “Beryl.”

Doddoe grunted. One leg was over one foot, and his shirtflap waved in a sudden breeze, showing a bare arse. “It's bound to bleeding-well rain,” he swore. Brian noticed someone in the lorry-cab, and the roar of an engine sent heavily rubbered wheels spinning in ruts of sand and shavings.

“Bleedin' 'ell!” Doddoe shouted, his screen moving away. It churned up a circular cement-making bed and turned by a brick stack, from where the driver could see what he'd uncovered. “What the bleedin' 'ell der yer think yer doin'?” Doddoe bawled.

The engine roared loud, then decreased in sound for the Irish accent: “You should 'ave changed in one of the houses, then you wouldn't be showin' us everything you've got.”

Doddoe belched obscenities so quickly that the man hadn't time to drown them with his motor. He then shuffled into the rest of his trousers, pulling his shirtflap violently in as if blaming it for all the trouble. “You leary bleeder,” he threw at the driver, massaging his sandy scalp before a pocket mirror. It was dusk before he gave Bert the parcel of old clothes, and tuppence between them for their trouble. “Now get off 'ome, you little boggers. Keep out o' them allotment gardens and gas-meters or you'll get a clink across the ear'ole wi' my fist.”

They went off into the dusk. “Yer know what I'm goin' ter do when I grow up?”

“What?” Brian asked.

“I'm goin' ter find a big wood and right in the middle o' this wood I'm goin' ter build an 'ut. An' I'm goin' ter grow all my own grub in a garden, and shoot rabbits and birds so's I'll live like a lord wi' lots to eat.”

“Smashin',” Brian agreed. “Can I live there as well?”

“You can if you want.” Brian pondered on the geography of it, brewing pertinent questions: “Where will yer put this 'ut?”

“I ain't thought about it yet—somewhere in Sherwood Forest, I suppose, near where Robin 'Ood lived. Then when I pinch stuff from shops in villages, or poach rabbits like our dad does sometimes, I can do a bunk back to my 'ut in this wood, and the coppers wain't be able to find me. They wain't if it's far enough in, anyway. And if I pinch stuff I'll hide it away, and live off it in winter when grub don't grow and it'll be hard to shoot it.”

“What about fags, and bullets for your gun?”

“Easy. I'll just 'ave ter pinch enough to last me all I want. And maybe I'll pinch ale as well so's I can get drunk now and again like dad does. But I'll eat rabbit stew, and tomatoes and bacon if I can, and bread with best butter and strawberry jam on it, and I'll sit in my hut in winter when it's snowin' outside, and I'll have a big fire in the grate and put the kettle on, and I'll just sit there day in and day out mashin' tea and readin' comics. That's what I want to do when I grow up: live in an 'ut all on my own, wi'out a thousand kids swarming all over everywhere. It'll be smashin', our Brian, I'm tellin' yer. When I'm in this 'ut I shan't care if it rains every day, as long as I'm inside with the winders and doors closed. Nobody to bother me, that's what I want when I grow up. That's why I want to find an 'ut like I'm tellin' yer and fix it up just fer me. Then p'raps yo' can get an 'ut like it not far off, and you can come and stay with me now and again, or nip in fer a jamjar o' tea when you're passin' with your gun to shoot rabbits or summat, and I'll see yo' in your 'ut sometimes. It'd be smashin' if that's how we could both live when we grow up.”

“Wouldn't yer want to go to t' pictures?” Brian asked. “Or go down town for a walk?”

“Not me. If I'd got this 'ut I wouldn't want to do owt like that. I'd 'ave too much work to do. I'd be out wi' my 'atchet every day choppin' wood for the fire, or plantin' lettuces, or settin' nets and traps for rabbits. If you lived in an 'ut on your own you'd 'ave plenty to do and wouldn't bother wi' goin' to the pictures. That I do know, our Brian.”

A dominating question had to be asked. “What would you do if it thundered?”

“Nowt,” came the ready answer. “I'm not frightened o' thunder like yo'. It wouldn't bother me a bit. In fact, the more it thundered the more I'd like it. I shouldn't bother if it thundered and rained and snowed for months, as long as I'd got plenty o' grub and wood inside the 'ut. That's what I'd like more than owt else to 'appen: to be stuck in my 'ut for months and months wi' plenty o' grub so's I'd never 'ave to worry about nobody or nowt: just listen to it pissin' down and thunder goin' like guns, while I drank tea and puffed at a Woodbine.”

“Smashin',” Brian said. “That's what I'd like to do. And I'll do it, as well, when I grow up. I shan't go to wok when I'm fourteen like mam says I will. I'll run away from 'ome and go to Sherwood Forest and live there. I don't want to work in a factory, do you, Bert?”

“Not me. If I 'ave to wok I'll wok on a farm or summat like that. Out in the open air. That's what Doddoe says: it's best to be a navvy or wok on a farm, then you wain't get consumption. That's the on'y wok I'd bother to do—diggin'. I like wokking wi' a spade, diggin' taters up, or shiftin' sand, or shovellin' coal into t' cellar grate, or chuckin' rubbish about. A spade is what I like because it's easy an' yer've got to be in the open air wi' a spade. And blokes as wok wi' spades aren't on dole as much as other blokes are.”

“My dad's allus on dole,” Brian informed him, “and 'e's got a spade. It don't mek no difference, 'cause when there ain't no wok there ain't no wok. Doddoe's often on dole as well, an' yer can't say 'e ain't. Nearly all the kids at school 'ave got dads on dole.”

“Well, if they can't get wok,” Bert said, “then they've got to go on t' dole, ain't they? It's better than nowt, though it ain't enough to manage on, is it? That's why I want to get an 'ut when I grow up, because then you can get your own snap and you don't need to go to a factory or some new 'ouses to get a job because you can grow all your own grub. And then if you do that you never 'ave owt to do wi' gettin' the dole. That's why I'd like an 'ut. It's the best way to live, if yer ask me.”

“It is an' all,” Brian agreed. Lights gleamed along Wollaton Road, a double line of mist-dispersers with traffic roaring between them into town. “It's cowd,” Brian felt, so Bert set the parcel down and took out Doddoe's working jacket, passing it to Brian, who put it on and folded it around him like a topcoat. Bert wrapped his father's trousers around his arms and shoulders, topped his head with the too-big cap, rolled the newspaper into a ball, and kicked it before them to the goal of home, passing with quick footwork to Brian and screaming “
GOAL
!” every time he shot it along the pavement. “Doddoe says he's going to mek me a jockey when I grow up because I'm little, but I'd rather be an outside left for Notts Forest. I'm getting quick as lightning with a ball. A crack shot when I get near a goal. I'll never be as good as Doddoe, though.”

“You might,” Brian put in, booting the ball of paper back.

Bert pulled him to a stop, gave the ball a final slam away. “There's a lemonade lorry outside Deakins' shop—look.”

A weak roof of light came from a gas lamp farther down. “It's loaded,” Brian said, “with bottles. Do you think they're all full?”

“Some on 'em,” Bert said, “so let's walk by quiet, on the outside, and grab a bottle as we go. Then we can drink it in our house.” They sauntered along the middle of the road and closed in towards the lorry. The street was empty, not a footfall or murmur anywhere. A door banged far away and did not matter. Brian looked into the lorry cab, but no one was there, so he stepped back a few paces and closed his hand around the neck of a bottle and drew it from the wooden crate.

“Round the back,” Bert said when they reached the house. Once inside and safe, Bert put two bottles on the table, Brian one. All dandelion and burdock. Bert cursed: “I wanted lemonade.”

“This is better than nowt,” Brian screwed the wooden top off, lifted the bottle to his lips. Three younger children clamoured for a drink and Bert gave them an open bottle, which they took into a corner to fight over and spill. “It's a good job Colin and Dave ain't in,” Bert said, “or we wun't a seen much o' this lemonade.”

“They wun't get my bottle,” Brian affirmed, who had no elder brothers to lord it over him.

“Let's drink up and go out to the Nag's 'Ead,” Bert said. “I went there las' Sat'day an' 'elped to collect glasses and the bloke gen me a bar o' choc'late and tuppence.” They buried the empty bottles in the garden with one of Doddoe's spades. “We'll tek 'em back to the shop in a week or two,” Bert said, “and get a penny each.”

Still sharing Doddoe's cap and coat, they clambered over five-foot boards on to the railway, crossing it as a mighty train took the bend out of Radford Station. They kept together in the pitch-black fields, calling out when marsh became blood-sucker pool and flooded their shoes. A railway signal-box stood like a lighted watchtower, a man walking to and fro between banks of levers as they drew near the drier path and went through allotment gardens, a route high-bordered by privet and thorn. “Me and Dave came up here last week and scrumped a load o' taters and lettuces,” Bert told him. “We was 'ere till twelve at night, Dave diggin' 'em up, and me loadin' 'em in a sack. Nobody seed us, but we nearly got run over by a train when we was crossin' the lines.”

“I went scrumpin' once,” Brian said, “up Woodthorpe Grange, for apples, but on the way back we found they was all sour, so we pelted the high school kids wi' 'em on Forest Road. Jim Skelton was wi' me, 'e can tell yer. 'E's in my class at school.”