Key to the Door (16 page)

“Well,” Bert said, “a mate o' mine got sent to 'prove school for breakin' into gas-meters. That was two years ago, an' 'e ain't cum back yet. 'Is mam says he'll be back this summer, though.”

“I'd rather not pinch than get sent to borstal,” Brian said. “Anyway, dad'ud kill me if I got sent away. He says so. So if I pinch owt I'll mek sure I wain't get found out, that's all.”

“Sometimes yer can't 'elp gettin' found out,” Bert informed him. “Our Johnny pinched a bike lamp last year, an' a bloke seed 'im an' towd a copper. So 'e got put on probation for a couple o' years, and 'e's still on it, though it don't mek any difference, 'cause 'e still can't keep 'is 'ands to hissen.”

“A lot o' my pals is on probation,” Brian said. “All they do is go down town every Thursday, and get their bus-fare paid, as well. Our dad goes down town every Thursday to get his dole, but he don't get his bus-fare paid.”

The path widened to Bobbers Mill Bridge. Across the tarmac fork shone the Nag's Head, where people crowded at tables set out between parked cars and a children's playground. Bert and Brian decided on a visit to the fish-and-chip café nearby. Hunger gnawed as it always did, even after a Sunday dinner, or during a week of inexplicable surfeit. They gazed inside from the half-open door, at tables reaching far back into the large saloon. Few people were eating, but at some tables were plates not yet gathered by the waitress.

They advanced into the hall, went from table to table, scooping each plate clean, gathering up cold chips, tasty cod-shells of yellow batter, or crusts of bread and butter. Neither spoke, and the whole operation went on in silence. A man digging into a pile of steaming fish and chips stared at Bert, who was composed enough to take up the vinegar bottle and sprinkle it over what was in his hand, giving the impression either that he worked in the place collecting scraps like this, or that this was a form of super-cheap meal served by the café to unobtrusive waifs and tramps. Bert cleared another table, glancing now and again at the chatting waitresses nearby. A blonde-dyed, heavily painted woman passed Brian half a cup of still hot tea, which he drank too slowly for the job he was out with Bert to do. He set the cup down, and a man who had seen him drink the tea covered his meal protectively. Brian had never done this before, might normally have been afraid to come into a café and play locust to its cast-off food, but he was too surprised at finding such edible nutriment set out plainly for the getting to worry about who was looking on.

They sat under a wall, their findings spread on a newspaper that Bert had collected with the same insouciance as the food. Both ate hungrily, sorting minuscular chips that had been fried as hard as fishbones and using them to stab big soft ones, but liking the batter best—which meant a scrupulous sharing out. Some had fried fish left in the folds by fastidious eaters, and these prizes were scooped with thumb into ever-ready maw.

Brian dragged Doddoe's coat sleeve across his mouth and stood up. “Why do people leave such smashing grub on their plates? That batter was marv'lous. I never knew you could get snap for nowt like that.”

“Well, I've got lots o' things to show yer yet,” Bert boasted. “Colin an' Dave tell me 'ow ter goo on. Yer should see the things they get up to. Last week they pinched a box o' reject fags from Players and when they got 'ome Doddoe batted their heads and said they shun't pinch things like that. Then 'e sat down to smoke 'em 'issen. I bet 'e sowd a lot on 'em later as well, because 'e got drunk that night and 'ad a big row with mam, and they was swearin' and bawlin' till two in the morning. The next day mam 'ad a black eye and Doddoe 'ad a big bump on 'is 'ead. It's allus like that in our 'ouse.”

“Our old man's a rotten sod as well,” Brian contributed. “I wish we was rich, don't you?”

“I do an' all. If I was I'd buy a bike and ride off on it wi' my pockets full o' pound notes. I'd go to Skeggy an' never come back.”

“I'd get on a ship and go to Abyssinia,” Brian said.

“What do you want to go there for?” Bert wanted to know. “There's a war on.”

“I'd go to India then, and ride about on elephants, and shoot at tigers.” Bert pulled the over-large cap down to his eyes. “Let's go to the Nag's 'Ead and 'elp 'em to get empty glasses in. People often drop dough when they're drunk, so don't forget to look under the tables, will yer?”

“I'm not lucky at findin' things like yo' are,” Brian answered. “I don't think I've ever found owt like that in my life.”

“Keep on lookin', though,” Bert said, “because you never know what you'll find. If you see any big nubs pick 'em up and put 'em in your pocket so's I can smoke 'em later, see?”

People sang beneath dim lights, and Brian's ear caught the hypnotic clash of money as some table paid for its beer. “I'll never waste my dough on booze when I grow up,” he said. “I'll save all I get and buy a bike.” Bert's eyes were elsewhere. White-coated waiters were unable to cope with the flood of work, so he hooked up half a dozen glass-handled jars and carried them to the counter.

The rhythmical often-beating pub piano thumped and jangled as Brian went from table to table with thread-looping fingers, making his route back to the counter when a maximum load of wet and slippery handles was reached. In darker corners men and women kissed, arms folded into well-coated bodies—for the night was fresh—double heads flush against the wall, undisturbed at the rattle of glasses as phantom Brian stole up to collect—wondering what they found in it all. A man sitting alone was seen to have a tiny pus-filled wound above the bridge of his nose at which he occasionally picked and dabbed with a handkerchief. Brian stared at it every time, and Bert said the man came there often, knew Doddoe in fact, who'd said that the hole had been shot there by the Jerries and wouldn't heal. Bert pushed a chocolate biscuit into his hand: “The waiter gave me a couple.” Near ten, few glasses were left to look for, and both stood by the seesaw, hawk-eyed for put-down empties and ready to leap at any snatchable tankard. Brian was tired, wanting to go home. “So'm I,” Bert said, “but let's wait a minute. They might gi' us a tanner for what we've done.”

A cold wind blew, as if each gust were fitted with grappling hooks to scale walls and search out those without vests and jerseys. “I hate wind,” Brian said. “And rain and snow. I like it most when the sun shines.”

Bert pointed to a table. “Summer'll be 'ere soon, then we wain't need coats. Get them glasses in, and I'll do the next lot.”

Fair was fair. They were at the far end of the yard, two halves left on an empty table, hooked with an easy experienced swing while pushing the rest of the biscuit into his mouth. The pub was about to close—towels overspread the three-handled beer pumps inside—and he walked quickly through the last-stand inebriated bawlers. A chair was pushed into his track by someone too drunk to get up slowly, and Brian skidded on a banana skin he had seen from a distance and meant to avoid.

The glasses went out at arm's length, hooked too firmly to be thrown off in time. No one looked up at the musical crash, too busy swigging final drops, reaching for handbags, fur coats, walking-sticks, and Brian lay with orange sparks flicking and jumping before his eyes. Then in one sick flood he knew himself to be the cause of two priceless glasses having been destroyed, that could never be paid for because he had no money. Prison, borstal, his father's big fist flashed before him in a bloody picture, and impelled him in a mad bullet-like charge towards the gate and clear of the pub.

A car came one way, a bus advanced with calm assurance from another, but he ran between them to the dark side of the road, back among the safe high hedges of allotment gardens, then into a ghost-ridden funereal zone of pathways that he wouldn't otherwise have taken. Mud splashed him, thorn bushes scraped his face and pointed a way to drier land by the railway.

A goods train went slowly by and he watched the blaze from its engine cab, feeling more comfort with the dynamic unknowable monster than with the ordinary overalled men wielding shovels within. It went under the bridge to the colliery, leaving him wishing for a ride even though it was heading back for the pub. He kept its sound in his ears as long as possible, until it slid into a murmur, swallowed and killed by the bigger and all-embracing fog-dragon of night.

A voice replaced it, coming from paths he had traversed, rose gruffly and stayed high for a second, then tapered off. Blackness won a further round, voice dead as well as train gone. A hand tingled as if biting-ants were running over and, holding it up, he saw two jar handles firmly fixed into his middle fingers. With the other hand he forced them open, pulled off the glass and threw it as far as the blackness would allow.

The voice lifted again, nearer this time: “Brie-ie-e-errrn!” He sucked blood from his cuts and stayed quiet, listening for footsteps to back up the voice but hearing only frogs leaping in a nearby stream. “Brian, where are yer?” the gruff voice called from nearby. They weren't chasing him, because it was only Bert. Why weren't they? He'd smashed two glasses, hadn't he?

He answered: “I'm over here,” gripped a blackened handkerchief in his teeth, held the other corner with his good hand and bound it around the cuts.

“Are yer orright?” Bert asked, by his side. “'Ere y'are, I'll tie it up”—snapping it so tight that no blood could leak. “Why did you run away?”

Brian was surprised at the question. “I broke two glasses. Didn't yer see me?”

“It didn't matter,” Bert said. “Nobody said owt.”

“I thought they would. And I couldn't pay for 'em.”

“Glasses often get broke.” By the railway embankment he gave Brian three pennies. “Your wages. The publican handed me a tanner for what we'd done.” In the streets of Sodom it was late, most doors closed and few people about, the dandelion-and-burdock lorry gone. Brian wanted to get home quickly. “I'll see yer tomorrow night,” he said, outside Bert's front door. “Is the
Count o' Monte Cristo
on your wireless?”

“No, it's nex' Tuesday, I think. We'll listen to it then, because mam likes it as well. Let's go on t'tips tomorrer, eh?”

“O.K. So long.”

“Abyssinia.”

CHAPTER 8

Mr. Jones was a gett, a four-eyed twopenn'orth o' coppers, a sludge-bumping bastard who thumped Brian six times across the shoulder with a hard knotty fist because he didn't open a book quickly enough. “The Merch-chant of Venn-niss,” he screamed, each syllable a synchronized crash of pain on Brian's bones. “Got it?” he demanded. “Got it, you oaf? When I order you to open your book, don't spend five minutes over it.”

A parting bat on the tab for good measure left him more or less in peace, staring at a coloured picture on which his searching had stopped. A man called Shylock it was, tall and with a beard, a knife in one hand holding them at bay and a pair of taunting scales in the other, grey eyes set hard on a pack of getts like Mr. Jones, the same puffed-up bastards after a poor old man that were after Brian—and all because he wanted some money back he'd lent them. Old Jones was against Shylock—you could tell from the way he read the story—and Shylock was good then because of it, a poor old—Jew was it?—holding the world's scorn from him, standing there with his knife and scales—as though he'd just stepped out of the Bible like that other bloke going to carve up his son because God told him to—while some posh whore in the court talked about rain and mercy. (Jones liked her; you could tell from the way he read that, too.) Shylock was clever and brave, an old man who in the end lost money, pound of flesh, daughter, while Jones and his side got everything and went on thumping and being sarcastic and batting tabs with nobody to say a word to 'em. Only Shylock had defied these cock-sucking persecutors, these getts and clap-rags. When Jones made them sing hymns about all things being bright and beautiful/I vow to thee my country/green hill far away, Brian and Jim Skelton turned every word to a curse. Brian knew that if he had to choose between Jones and his copper's narks who had recently sent Bert's elder brother to approved school after knocking the living daylights out of him so's he'd tell them where he'd hid the gas-meter money, and poor done-down sods like Shylock, then he knew whose side he was on and who would be on his side if he could suddenly come to life and step out of the printed book before him.

Mr. Jones was enemy number one, a white-haired tod who stalked the corridors during school hours, peeped his white moustache and purple face over the glass partition that he could reach only by standing on tiptoe. His steel-grey eyes looked in at the class, moving left and right to make sure the teacher had the boys well-controlled. Signs of slack discipline would bring him bursting in, arms flying at unlucky heads as he marched between rows of desks, a navy-blue pinstriped suit sagging as he got thinner and thinner through summer and winter so that soon, everybody hoped, he would kick the bucket in some horrible way. If Brian were lucky enough not to feel the stab of his random fist, he could tell by his jumping nerves when Jones was coming close, and when he had passed, Brian glimpsed his white collar and putty-coloured spats over his shoes: “If I had old Shylock's knife,” he thought, “I'd bury it in his bony back.” He laughed to himself: “I'd get my pound o' flesh, half a stone in fact, and no posh whore would stop me.”

Headmaster Jones was never without a ball of plasticine, an all-year everyday possession rolled between thumb and finger, furiously moving yet keeping shape as he bashed the drum of somebody's back with his free hand. Once, the plasticine rolled under a desk to unhoped-for liberty, so he stopped hitting the boy and walked up and down to make sure the rest were still “paying attention” to the teacher's droning lesson but actually fixing his eagle eyes on the floor, hoping to see his precious ball of plasticine, which was, as it turned out, squashed and held under the boot of a raging boy he had recently thumped.