Key to the Door (3 page)

“Yes.”

“Well, I'm not, are you?”

“No.” But Seaton lifted him down, dragged him roughly out of the crush.

“Is that the end, dad?”

“Stop asking bleddy questions, will yer?” Brian caught his mood, and the bomb that had lodged itself inside his chest suddenly burst, scattering more blind havoc in him than the actual grenades sent from the flight of planes. “Stop cryin', will yer?” Seaton tugged at him angrily. “Come on, if you stop cryin' I'll buy you an ice-cream cornet.”

“I don't want one,” he roared, thereby creating a big puzzle, its depth measurable only by Seaton's inability to solve it. “Then what
do
you want?”

And without giving the question any thought, he answered: “Nowt”—and went on crying till he stopped.

On a wet afternoon two tall men wearing raincoats and nicky hats knocked at the front door. Vera led them into the room where Seaton sat. Brian, sprawled on the floor playing with a box of dominoes, noticed that she was almost in tears, something that never failed to touch off the sea-controlling springs at the back of his own heart. She stood with folded arms, and the two men stayed by the door. “They've come for you, Harold,” she said. He turned his head and looked up from the fireplace.

“We don't want any trouble,” one of the men said, seeing desperation in his ashy face.

He looked at them for some time. “You'll have to keep me,” he remarked at last, forcing a smile.

“We know all about that.”

Seaton hadn't moved from his chair. “And my family as well you'll have to keep.”

“That's nothing to do with us,” he was told.

Vera unfolded her arms, ran a finger along one of her eyes. “Shall I get you your coat, duck?”

“Aye, you might as well,” he answered, standing up. “I'm going on holiday, and I suppose I'll see a lot of my pals there as well.” This witticism amused him, and he laughed, his face relaxed. The two men said nothing. “Got a car?” Seaton asked them.

“No,” one said, “it's not far; we'll walk you down.”

“Well, I don't suppose it matters if the neighbours guess what's going on. It might 'ave been them if they did but know it. If I'd 'ad a job to wok at I wouldn't a done this. But when yer kids ain't got no grub, what else can you do?” He'd run up too many food bills at too many shops. It's a big country, he thought. There's grub in the shops for everybody, so why ain't there wok? I don't know, it beats me, it does.

Vera came back with his coat. “Will you want your mac as well?”

“No,” he said, “keep it. You'll have to pawn it when you get short.” Brian felt himself lifted from the dominoes and kissed; then quickly put down. “Don't let the kids get at my tools, Vera, will you?”

“No,” she said, “they'll be all right.”

A watch was looked at, and Seaton realized aloud that he'd better go. “I'll see you in a couple o' months then. It's nowt to worry about, duck. I'll be all right, and you'll be all right. They've got to keep you all, so they'll be the losers in the end.”

“Come on, young man,” the eldest said. “We haven't got all day. We're busy.”

“I expect you are,” Seaton said.

Brian was too involved in his collapsing line of dominoes to wonder what was going on, and his mother must have been crying for some time before he joined in, without knowing why. Not that she knew why she was crying, because, as Seaton had truthfully said, none of them would starve while he was in Lincoln; and it would be as much of a holiday for her as it would be for him, and this thought lifted her from despair as she set the table and put on the kettle to boil and sat wondering however she'd come to marry a bloody fool who got himself sent to jail—and was a rotter to her in the bargain. She could hardly believe it had happened like it had, and that she was in such a fine bleddy mess; and it was impossible not to spend the next hour brooding on it, going back over the last few years and picking them to pieces as if they were the components of a complex lock that, once opened, might solve something.

CHAPTER 2

Merton had scratched his head. He drew back at the sound of some far-flung twig or half-hearted gate rattling from outside, hoping to hear the door-latch lift and Vera make her way across the kitchen to say she was sorry for being late.

Which is too much to expect, he thought, from any man's daughter since the war. Leaves made a noise like the erratic beginning of a rainstorm: October: if she comes in wet she'll get my fist, he promised himself, turning back to the fire, and no mistake; I can't have her getting her death o' cold and then not being fit for wok; she manages to get enough time off as it is. But he knew it wouldn't rain because he hadn't yet noticed the pause between the end of leaves falling and the commencing tread of mute cats running lightfoot through them; so he swung a watch from his waistcoat pocket in pursuance of another reason to be angry, and saw with satisfying indignation that it was eleven o'clock. What a bloody time to be coming home, and me having to get up at five in the morning because they're bringing a dozen ponies up from the Deep Main. They'll be hell to pay getting 'em out of the skips—and all of 'em to be shod before they're turned loose by the tip-field. Allus the same when you want an early night.

He spat forcefully at the fire-bars and his spit didn't sizzle with the alacrity to which he was accusomed, thereby reinforcing his often-said conviction that nothing in life could be relied on. By God she'll get the stick when she comes in for keeping me up like this. Yellow flames from a darkening unstable fire-bed blazed full-tilt upwards, and with the self-made poker he pushed a lump of prime pit coal into the last effort of the inferno. God bugger it, there was no doubt about using the stick, and he turned, while thrusting back his watch, to make sure it still leaned by the pantry door. It was bad luck for Vera—the last of Merton's brood young enough to be disciplined in this way—because she shared his anger with the dogs now barking in the yard, was the wall to his violent and frequent upstarts of passion, which usually—though not always—coincided with signs of defiance in what animals or humans happened to be under his control; and whereas the dogs would lick his hand a few hours after one of his uncouth godlike flings of rage, Vera took days before she could force herself into the kitchen for a meal. Such domineering reached beyond the borderline of family, for Merton was recognized as the mainstaying blacksmith of the pit he worked at, where, no matter how obstinate or too-happy the horses and ponies became, they were soon broken into docility by his strong will; hence shoes hammered on to tranquil hoofs by Merton only loosened when nails could no longer support the thinning metal. A lit pipe signalled a good job done, and no chafing butty or gaffer begrudged him the loud smack their horses got on the arse as an indication that it should be taken clip-clop back to its shafts outside the shed door; they'd better not, either, because that was the on'y way to deal with 'em; a clout for the hoss so's the rest on 'em would do as they was towd.

Vera's footsteps came quickly up the path, crunching lightly on cinders as she crossed the yard. By God, he told himself, straightening up against the chair-back to make sure he was hearing right, if she brings trouble to this house by her running around with lads, she'll be out of that front gate and on the road for good and all with every tat she's got. The leaves had stopped racing, and both dogs whined in a duet as she passed the kennel: about time, he muttered, but I'll teach her to stay out so long at the tuppenny hop, when she should a bin in at half-past nine. I'll put a bloody stop to this—his mental peroration cut off by the rattling door-latch.

She had been to the Empire, was still happy at remembering the antic-clowns and unclean jokes and the pink ribald heads shaking with laughter as seen from a front seat of the fourpenny gods. Her new scarf had slid from the rail, and after the last curtain had dropped and closed (she was half-sick from the heat and cigar smoke that rose through the show from pit to sweating ceiling), she had wheeled down the slippery steps with Beatty and Ben and Jack and invaded the deserted dress-circle to get it back. A tripe-and-onion supper revived all four, piled them, after custard pies to follow, on to the last tram that rattled its way towards Radford. Beatty and Jack were jettisoned into the darkness of Salisbury Street, and Vera began to wonder whatever in the world her father would say at her getting home so late. She already pictured herself trying to borrow the fare to Skegness so as to find a living-in job at some boarding-house, chucked out of the Nook with a heavy heart and a light bag holding her belongings, with Merton's words that she could bloody-well stay out for good stinging one ear, while the fact that she wouldn't be able to get a job now at Skeggy because the season had long since finished made an ironic tune in the other. Well, perhaps he would already have gone to bed and locked the door on her. She hoped so, for then enough sleep could be had in the wash-house curled up on sacks next to a still warm copper, and by tomorrow he may have forgotten how mad he'd been. Ructions, she thought, that's what I'm sure it'll be; even though I've been working seven years I can't do a thing right as far as the old man's concerned. One bleddy row after another just because I come home late; and I don't suppose it'll alter a deal either until I'm married; and then I wain't be able to go out alone at night at all, with some big husband bullying at me for his supper.

She ignored the silent Ben beside her and ruminated on her previous runnings-away from home, and twice she came back because she'd lost her living-in job at the end of a season and couldn't earn enough at shop or factory to pay for her board. There wouldn't be a third time, her father had promised, which she knew to be true: “And you wouldn't be sitting at this table now,” he'd bellowed, “if your soft-hearted mother hadn't let you in last night when you called up to the bedroom winder and asked if she'd have you back. Next time it'll be
ME
you'll have to ask, and I'll say
NO
.”

Still, it might not be so late, she thought, Ben having set out for Wollaton—morosely because she'd refused to descend to the canal bank with him. Turning down the lane towards Engine Town, she was terrified at the twig-shadows, and leaves rustling like the thin pages of a hundred well-hidden Bibles caught in the wind, and stepped softly into the pitch-blackness wondering: Shall I be murdered? Is there a man behind that tree? as she did on every dark night coming back to the Nook. I'll run by it anyway, and walk when I come to the lit-up houses, because if anybody stops me there I can knock at a door for help. In the split-running of terror she laughed, remembering the man dressed up as Charlie Chaplin, and imitating the leg-work of a dancer on reaching the long railway tunnel, hardly knowing she was under it until a goods train came out of the fields like a cannonade of coronation guns and made her run with all speed to the other side with coat open and mud splashing her ankles, afraid the train might weigh too heavily on its sleepers and crash through underneath, or that some unknown evil would stifle her in the complete silence of its noise.

With no breath left, she walked along the sunken lane, elderberry and privet hedges shaking softly above, black night split only by a melancholy old man's whistle from the distant train.

She patted the dogs before the kitchen door, as if thankful for the happiness they must feel for her safe return. The latch gave easily into a safe refuge, and the suspended oil-lamp in the corner dazzled as she took off her coat. She saw her father sitting by the fire, legs stretched out towards the hearth, his long lean body stiffening. “Wheer yer bin?”

He's mad, right enough. So what shall I say? His “wheer yer bin?” turned the first spoke of the same old wheel, with every question and answer fore-ordained towards some violent erratic blow. “Out,” she replied, pouring a cup of tea at the table.

“If yer don't answer me you'll get a stick across yer back.”

She was unable to meet the glare of such grey eyes. His clipped white hair, lined and tanned face, and white moustache above thin lips, made up a visage from which all her misery emanated. “I've been to the Empire,” she admitted.

He was unappeased: “What sort o' time do you call this, then? It's past eleven.”

“I had to walk from Nottingham.” The tea was cold, so she wasted no sugar and pushed the cup aside; an effort of kindness by her mother come to nothing. “I dare say you did,” he shouted, “but you could a got 'ome earlier.”

From experience she knew that arguments in this house were too short; afterwards they were seen as illogical explosions from which reason had been excluded by their inborn force. It was impossible to say: All right, I should have been in earlier, so please don't hit me now; and just as out of the question to defy him by force, for he was the unassailable father of more than fifty years, whom she couldn't dream of defeating. Only a craving for his extinction seemed possible and good enough, a hooked thunderbolt to lift him out of the house but leave her unharmed. The impossible was not on her side and she knew it, sensed rightly that it never would be. So she cried out in rage, which only made things worse, as she had known it would before the row began: “I couldn't leave the show until it was finished, could I?” implying that he lacked sense to think so.

“You should a come out earlier, you cheeky young madam.”

“I did,” she conceded, beyond hope. “But I had some supper wi' Jenny and Beatty.” She fell into a chair, choking on tears of hatred and bitterness. Who knows? Merton's temper often wavered with his own children, hid contrition and a peculiar gruff kindness that sometimes turned to their advantage at the last moment. But the reins of compassion were rarely in his hands, had to be hoped for by those who had broken his rules. He might have been softened up to this point by Vera, been satisfied merely to wave the stick from the corner where he now stood; but the verifiable boundary of this was passing—too well disguised for her to see it, too faint for her to take advantage of it in such confused distress. She saw what was coming and hurried towards it, her wish to escape thrust out of the way by an uncontrolled defiance that could bring nothing but defeat. “Leave me alone, you rotten bogger. You aren't going to hit me like you hit your dogs!” She didn't move. He would hit her the same as he'd hit anything else. The weight of his hammer at the forge was heavy, and burning metal was moulded without trouble; he drank beer by the pint tankard on Friday night, but always woke from his stupor with an urge for more obedience, more work, more beer at the weekend, and to tame the defiance that sprang as much from him as anything else. All his blows seemed made for life and self-preservation, which afterwards he sometimes felt, mistaking his resentment of it for a pang of conscience.