Key to the Door (28 page)

“Not for a long time, Nimrod. They've got to finish clearing yet. Then there's the drains to be put down. It might be a couple o' years before they get the first one up.” But Merton was wrong. Allotment gardens, football pitch, and wheatfields were soon under the hammers of annihilation. Brian looked one Saturday from the bedroom window to see enormous lorries unloading drainage pipes not far from the Nook. The bricked-out foundations of houses were already visible near the boulevard.

Seaton was able to get a job on a factory site down town. There was even an urgency for overtime, and he would be out of the house for twelve hours in fine weather. On the first day Brian took him a can of tea, saw him among a gang of other men shovelling sand from a lorry. He waved and came over to the fence, wearing a workjacket too big for him, his black hair hidden by a new cap. Having subbed a pound from the gaffer, he was able to push money into Brian's hand: “Here y'are, my owd flower. Tell yer mam there'll be a lot more on Friday as well.” He turned back to his work. Brian shouted out a goodbye and walked off, unwilling to look at his father, who, he thought, might for some reason be angry if he did so while he was working. To Brian, he was captured, taken from being king of the house and set among strangers where he seemed insignificant.

Yet it was worth it, everyone agreed, for there was more food in the house. There was also more money, and though it had been supposed up to then that the lack of it had been the cause of all their quarrels, it was soon clear that they went on anyway from force of habit. Seaton was born with his black temper and would die of it, and Vera had never been able to express and defend herself, first against her father, then against her husband. The only thing she could do with any thoroughness was worry, which probably sprang from thinking she hadn't had the best out of life and never would. If there was nothing tangible to worry about she was bored, so there was always something to be harassed into a problem. The house was too small to keep her busy all the time, and rather than make or repair clothes, she found it easier to buy cheap new ones. Her hands were clumsy and without confidence: patches and rips to be sewn were swiftly bodged, and in spite of washday and family meals, there was still time to worry, often over lesser things of the house that didn't really matter. Now and again the whole family became embroiled in explosive quarrels about nothing: pots flew and fists struck out, and everyone from mother and father down were isolated by bitterness and misery, until the violence of it, after several hours, thinned itself out into their bloodstreams and brought them happily together again.

By another long bout of saving, this time more open, Brian bought his second book:
Les Misérables
. He'd heard it as a serial on the wireless, had been enthralled by the grandiose surprises of its plot. “Nineteen years for a loaf of bread!” was a cry rising like a monolith of burning truth from the placid waters and unruffled jungle that hid the murderous go-getters of Treasure Island, and stifled the inane parrot-cry of “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!” Hounded by the police, impervious to bullets at the barricades, carrying a wounded man on his shoulders through the serpentine arteries of the Parisian sewers, Jean Valjean's life-long fight and death seemed an epic of reality. It was a battle between a common man and the police who would not let him be free because he had once stolen a loaf of bread for the children of his starving sister. And after such terrifying adventures of this man who did not want to be an outlaw, death was the only freedom he was allowed to find by the author of this bitter and sombre book. Good and bad were easily separated. On one side were Thénardier and Inspector Javert—both against a society of equals because Thénardier needed the rich to thieve from, and Javert the poor to persecute. On the other side were Fantine, Gavroche, Jean Valjean, Marius Pontmercy, Cosette—the weak, the young, the revolutionaries—those who could not live with the former in their midst. The barricades were stormed, the insurgents killed, but the novel was read and re-read, and read again.

There was no fight when he brought the book into the house: “Why,” Seaton said with a laugh, “the little bogger's gone and bought another book. I don't know. I wish I was as clever as he is. He beats me at being a scholar.” He gave him fourpence to see the film of the book, and made him tell all about it when he came home. The last creditor of the weekend had been fobbed off with a shilling, and Seaton sat by the fire with a basin of warm tea beside him on the hob. Vera switched off the noisy row of a football match and went back to darning a pair of socks. The light was on, and Arthur could be heard up in the garret-bedroom playing with a hammer.

“And when Jean Valjean came back to the bridge to keep his promise,” Brian was saying to his father, “Javert worn't there any longer. And when he looked over the bridge into the water he saw that Javert (Charles Laughton played 'im) had chucked hissen in and was drowned. That's where the picture ended, but the book goes on for a long time after that. Shall I tell you 'ow the book ends?”

“'E don't want to 'ear it,” Vera said, a tone that made Brian uneasy because he couldn't see whether or not it was meant as a joke: “Do you, dad?”

“Course I do, my lad.” He finished his story, pronouncing the French names in the imitated accents of the radio serial. Margaret stood before him, her long straight hair framing a mischievous laugh. It wasn't long before her gaze penetrated: “I could die at our Brian saying them funny words.”

“If yer do,” Brian said, “I'll bash yer.”

“I'll bash yer back as well, wi' our dad's bike pump.” She edged towards the window, to observe in safety his increase of rage. “He thinks 'e can talk French; I can talk it better than 'im.” She gabbled quickly, imitating a foreign language.

“I'm tellin' yer,” Brian threatened.

“Pack it up,” the old man said.

Margaret stopped a moment, but the more afraid she grew, the more something inside her said he knew she was becoming afraid and that she should continue taunting to prove him wrong. “Booky!” she cried. “Allus reading books.”

“Leave 'im be,” Vera said to her, “or I'll start.” Brian felt the flesh at his mouth jumping, such a high twitch he imagined all could see it. Maybe there
was
something shameful in reading books, in imitating French, in writing, in drawing maps, that he was putting himself beyond their reach. He couldn't quite grasp or understand the sense of betrayal, though its connection with books had been clearly seen and picked out by the others as his most exposed nerve. He knew he should show indifference to their taunts, but they touched something too deep for that. He stood by the table, a few feet from his tormentor. “Look,” Margaret sang out, “'e's goin' ter cry!”

“I'll mek yo' cry if yer don't shurrup,” he exclaimed. Seaton came out of his huddle by the fire: “Now stop arguin' or you'll get sent ter bed out o' the way. You're allus on, the pair o' yer.”

“She started it,” Brian said bitterly. “She's allus causin' trubble.”

“No, I didn't, our dad,” Margaret threw back. “It's 'im: 'e reads all them books till 'e's daft.” She had heard her parents say this, and it cut into him like a knife.

Brian ran, sent a couple of quick thumps to her shoulder, and made for the door before his father could get at him. He was in the street, and heard Margaret crying as he went by the window, and his father saying: “Wait till the little sod comes back, then 'e'll get it.”

But he didn't return for two hours, by which time everybody had forgotten his attack, except Margaret herself. The parents were out, and she clenched her fist on the other side of the table, showing it to him menacingly while he cut himself some bread. Soon they were playing Ludo.

Some mornings Seaton turned a deaf ear to the knocking-up man, and even to Vera when she railed by his side: “Come on, Harold, if you don't get up you'll be late. The knocking-up man's bin a long time ago.”

At the third nudge he mumbled from the sheets that he wasn't going. “Don't be idle,” she said. He went back to sleep with: “I'm not effing-well going in”—meaning that if he was to lose a day's pay he was certainly intending to get the bliss of a lie-in. Later, downstairs and eating, he would say: “They did without me for six years, they can do without me today. I'm at no effer's beck and call.”

“You'll get the sack,” she said, taking the pots away.

“Not any more. There's a war coming. And bring that cup back: I want some more tea.” These days and mornings off weren't so frequent as to cause alarm. Vera knew he wasn't idle, and Seaton knew it, too. Work had always been blood in his veins, but since his life-sentence to dole and means-test he didn't find it so easy to climb down from the scrap-heap. On those days when he hadn't been to work Brian would come home from school and find him in a blacker, fouler, and more vicious mood than he'd ever got into even on the most desperate of penniless dole days.

One Monday morning Mr. Jones didn't turn up at school and word was tom-tommed around that he was ill, had caught a cold going home in the rain on Friday. The lessons went on as before, only more relaxed. Why can't 'e allus stay away? Brian wondered. There don't need to be a head teacher. He liked learning, but now and again during the free week he somehow expected Mr. Jones, by a supreme effort of spite, to come, still sick like a phantom from his bed, and scare the happy class merely by showing his gargoyle face above the partition. In any case, after a weekend gang fight Brian was apprehensive lest some parent whose boy had been cut above the eye by a flying stone should have reported the skirmish, and that Mr. Jones would break in during the scripture lesson and read out names from a list he waved in his hand—Brian Seaton being at the head of it.

He didn't return the following week either. There was a lack of desperate noisiness in the yard at playtime, which meant more laughter and less nose-bleeders. Brian went early to school one day because it was his turn to enter the temperature and barometric readings on the wall-graph. Several boys were already in the classroom talking softly, and something was obviously up, for two looked as if about to weep, and one actually was making silent and helpless tears as if somebody had blown cigarette smoke into his eyes. This was the prefect, and the others were favourites of Mr. Jones who had never been under his wrath. They tolerated Brian's company, however, because his examination results were often as high as theirs.

“What's up, Johnnoe?” he asked, entering the readings.

“Mr. Jones's dead,” Johnson told him.

The thought gave him pleasure, extended the vista of easy lessons. “Don't kid me.”

“He's dead. I'm not fibbin'.”

“It's true,” somebody else said. “It was last night: from pneumonia.” The graph finished, Brian dashed from the room and met Jim Skelton coming into the playground. He hugged him, pulled him into an embrace, and tried to dance.

“What's up?” Jim asked. “What's up, Brian?”

“Jones 'as snuffed it,” he said. “He's stone dead and kicked the bucket. Honest-to-God and cut my throat if I tell a lie.”

Jim's ginger hair blew in the wind: “You bleeding liar. Stop 'aving me on.”

Brian laughed: “That's what
I
said to 'em, but it's true. He got pneumonia and kicked it. Johnson just towd me. If yer don't believe it, go into the classroom and see 'im and 'is pals blubbering.”

It sank in; they seemed ready to cry at the good news, just as the others were crying at the bad. “Well, owd Brian, it's about time, ain't it?” He brought out a packet of marbles. “I'll share 'em wi' yer, then we can play.”

Prayers were said, and collections made for a fitting wreath: Brian dropped a ha'penny into the box. Any boy wishing to attend Mr. Jones's funeral, it was said, would be given half a day off. Brian measured the pleasure of a break from lessons, and decided it wasn't worth it. Three teachers went to the funeral, and under the lax discipline there was a subdued air of rejoicing.

CHAPTER 15

Water, gravel, cement, and sand were shovelled and poured into the circling cannonlike mouth of the concrete mixer. With these ingredients well shaken to a grey pulp, the mouth lifted upwards, still turning, stayed there for a time as if wondering whether to let itself go and spit its cement up at the cloudless sky. Then, as if remembering its humble fixed purpose in life, it gave a shudder of regret, and turned its mouth over to the side opposite Brian to pour its cement-guts dutifully into a huge vat.

He walked on, weighed down by four blue mash-cans of scorching tea. Fresh-planed wood planks slanted from doorways and windows, clean-smelling of resin and tar, giving off newness even more acceptable to the blood that buds in spring. A man, hosing down a stack of bricks, called: “Yo' got my tea, young 'un?”

Brian stopped: “What's yer name then, mate?”

“Mathews. That's it, that one there.” Brian had found it hard at first to remember who owned what mash-can. Four or five faces were fixed in his mind when he collected them, but when he got back he stood desperately trying to distinguish between them while at the same time looking as if he'd merely stopped for a moment to watch the progress of work—until a man would call out for his can. Brian would give it to him, and no mistakes were made, though by the time he caught on to the ease of this system he knew most of the faces anyway. Mathews slid the can from his wrist: “I'll pay yer grandma Friday, tell 'er.”

“All right, but if she says no, I'll cum back an' c'lect it.”

He looked around. “Will yer now? You're a bleddy sharp 'un, an' no mistake.”

“I've got to be, ain't I?”

“Wi' some, I dare say you 'ave. 'Ow much do yo' get for this, anyway?”