Key to the Door (36 page)

By dinner-time he'd cleared soot from the first half of the left-hand flue. The length behind was now too long to push the soot out with his shovel so he went in with a couple of deep pans, and when both were filled he dragged them to the opening. Near the far turning behind the stoke-hole, soot drifts went up as far as the ceiling, and the heat was fierce under him. Sweat became mud on his face, ran to his mouth to be blown away when it chafed, or wiped if he had a free hand. He rested after every six pans, curled up on his side like an experienced collier, craved a cigarette or a mug of tea. Accustomed to the work and heat, confined space and lack of air, he grew to like his temporary double-pay job. There was a feeling of toughness, even danger to it, and if his mother or aunt Ada or grandad Merton could have seen him now they would have said: “It can't be good for him, in that hot tunnel. Still, he's a hard worker so it wain't do him much harm.” Also it was good to be on his own where no gaffer could see how much shovelling he did—though for one thing he was doing a good share of work, and for another, he grinned, burying his spade again in the soot, they wouldn't dream of coming up here to see how I was getting on.

Most of the foremen and chargehands had been at Robinson's anything from twenty to forty years, for the firm had a fixed reputation in the neighbourhood: if you get a job there, even though the pay would shame any union into calling out a strike, you could be sure of being kept on for as long as you worked like a slave and touched your cap to the gaffers every time you passed. It was one of those firms that had a tradition of benevolence behind it, meaning hard work and little pay to the right sort of people—those who would serve the firm through their thick and your thin. And before the war, when men were scrabbling for work, those at Robinson's were careful not to give offence to the gaffers and get pitched on to the dole, even though it would have meant a mere few bob a week less, with no work or arse-kissing or danger of getting sacked into the bargain. Wage rates at Robinson's had been carefully regulated—set at a fraction above the dole money, enough to give the incentive of a regular job, but hardly enough to keep its employees far from a harrowing exercise in near starvation. Brian laughed to think of it. Thank God there was a war on: I can allus go somewhere else if they try to come the hard gaffer with me, though I'm not much of a lad at swapping jobs and would rather stay at one place a couple of years to get my hand in and make a few pals. I can't understand people being here forty years—worse than a life sentence—especially when they can get better money at other places. And what do they end up wi' if they plod on here for that long? A cup o' cocoa, a copy of the Bible, and a five-bob pocket-watch to time out the days of idleness left to them. Not even that, though: I'm making it up. They're lucky to get a thank you, and become hot and bothered with gratitude if they do, or only spit the smell of thank you out when it's too late to do much else about it, such as drop a nub-end on a heap of paraffin rags, or trip one of the gaffers into a manhole. It's too late then, no matter how they feel. Earlier on they thought they'd got a trade and wouldn't turn to labouring—put up with blood-tubs telling 'em what to do as if they was skivvies. But forty years is a lifetime, a waste of breathing in which you could have lived in every country in the world, seen everything, done everything, instead of staying a cap-touching loon in Robinson's rat-warren.

Talking to Bob Thorpe the other day, I said that old Robinson was a Bible-backed slave-driver, a two-faced twisting dead-head who'd sell his grandmother wholesale if they came more than two at a time. Old Thorpe said I shouldn't talk like that, and had better not let Robinson or any of the other gaffers hear it. “What would happen if they did?” I asked, laughing to myself. “Why,” he said, an almost terrified look on his long face, “you'd get the sack.” He's a pasty little bloke of sixty. “That'd be terrible,” I said. “I'd have to get another job, wouldn't I?” Then he brightened up and said: “You won't be so cocky after the war, when jobs is hard to get again.” “Don't bother,” I said, quick off the mark. “Old Fatguts with the big cigar will be out when the war's over, on his neck with the rest of his government. It wain't be the same again. Them days is over.” At least they'd better be. Yet nobody could be sure, and neither was Brian, despite the look of dead certainty on his face; for he dreaded the return of his father's means-test fate on himself. I'll shoot myself first, he thought. No, better shoot the other bastards, then maybe it'll alter before I do it to myself.

After three months' general work at Robinson's, the foreman set him on as a paste-boy, mixing water and flour into brown paste at the bins, a sprinkling of alum added as the whole mass came to the boil. He carried hundredweight sacks of flour from a nearby stack and poured it in from the encrusted wooden rim of the bin. There was only one thing to compare the stench to: and his spit at the end of a day's work was coloured orange. A plug under the bin could be released by a lever from the rolling-room in the cellar where the cardboard was made. When both vats were full he would stand in the spare minutes at the top of the steps and watch the three or four sheets of paper being drawn into the set of old-fashioned trundling rollers. Bob Thorpe was in charge of the whole operation, a master cardboard-maker who had been thirty years with these same machines, an old bald bachelor, gentle and quiet-spoken, said to read books, only ferocious when enough paste from the bins in heaven above wasn't available to feed his beloved and all-powerful rollers. Then a cornered gleam would come in his eyes and fear of the sack would make him shout to Brian all the filthy words under the sun. Brian cursed back, though set to making more paste. The rollers ran only two days a week, and it was pandemonium in the cellars and around the pastebins, the antiquated machinery jangling and shaking the cellar roof, and even the ceiling of the department above that. Brian became strong in carrying sacks and mixing paste, felt his body and muscles hardening so that what had been almost intolerable burdens were now easily tackled. The heavier the work, the more he revelled, drew both physical and spiritual elation from it, going home in the evening tired and dead to the wide on the surface, yet feeling alive and glowing with a sort of interior energy that kept him vivid and active for his long walks with Pauline in the fields and woods.

For the rest of the week he transported trolleys of wet cardboard up on the hoist to the steam-heated drying-rooms at the top of the factory; hanging the sheets to dry with a row of other boys, then wheeling them back to the presses, and from there to the cutting-room; finally to the women packers, and stacking the bales for railway vans to take away. There was often a time lag when the last wet sheets were finally clipped up and weren't yet dry, a recognized perk that allowed the boys on the job to lounge around until the boards were crisp and so razor-sharp at the ragged edges that they had to be careful not to slice their fingers in taking them down. It was a pleasant relaxed greenhouse atmosphere that reigned, the half-dozen of them sprawled on the warm and dusty floorboards talking or reading comics, far above the drone of traffic and engines working below, left in the heaven of the factory that Brian—from the black flues of the boiler-room—realized was the opposite of constriction and soot.

Now and again in his underground burrow he put down his spade for no reason and stared open-eyed, unseeing, at the darkness, too aware of the roof an inch or so above his head, and the wall on either side nudging at his elbows. The sensation that it was getting smaller struck him like a knife across the eyes: he lay flat on his belly and drew his arms in, stiff and silent to create the illusion of more space around, slowing his blood by an act of will, whistling a made-up tune in the hope that the theme music from a recent film he'd been trying to remember all day would come back to him. When bored with being calm, he resumed work. Sometimes the attack was too quick, and he was in a panic before any control was possible, so he wriggled back to the opening with the speed of a snake, fell out on to the stoke-room floor, and stood five minutes for a breather and smoke, laughing at the shock he had given the others. He spent much spare time in the drying-rooms teaching Bill Eddison map-reading. Sixteen-year-old Bill was a corporal in the Army Cadets who had been promised a third stripe when he passed his Cert A examination. He was a strong, forceful, bull-like youth, quick on the draw with wit when talking about jazz and women, but dense on such mathematical subjects as cartography. He played knick-knacks to accompany his dirty songs, jumping up and down to the ballad of “Eskimo Nell” or swinging away to a neatly worded march of Sousa.

When not courting with Pauline, Brian would go on the pick-up with Bill, starting off of a Sunday night in the fourpenny gods of the flea-pit Grand, watching a show of some trash film until bored even with the ironic loud laughter at the old-fashioned style of it; then they'd sneak farther up and find a couple of girls to slide their arms around. Sometimes the girls were out for a thrill as well and they'd soon be locked in mouth-to-mouth combat from which no quarter was given. It was the kind of sport Brian liked, and he often tried to go the whole way while still on the back row so that even Bill Eddison was shocked. One night Brian had a girl's blouse undone and her breasts exposed to his roaming hands, and was bending her so far over the seat that a little girl to the left became more fascinated than at the movements on the screen and asked, in a bright enquiring voice: “Mam, what's that man doing to that woman?” Bill prodded him, piqued at not getting half so far with his girl. “Let's get cracking before you get thrown out.” At which the four of them clattered off for fish and chips before the usherette came back with the manager.

Mostly, though, Brian spent his evenings with Pauline. They liked going out with each other, and she had come to him the first time out of the dark back seats of the Savoy picture-house: when the cheap war film was winding to a shindig finish and all interest had gone (Why didn't the hero, who you knew would live, get killed? And why didn't those who had death in their sad eyes live?), he turned and saw her, isolated among seats, face set on the screen, quietly looking at it, though without the intent fastening he often felt in his own gaze. He moved over, a lone wolf tonight, sat by her side and talked. “I can't stick pictures like these: they give me a gut-ache.” After a pause she said: “Why do you come, then?” “Cause I thought it'd be good.” “Well, now you know, don't you?” At least she was talking: a good start. “I do an' all. I wain't come again, thou, unless yo' do. There's a better film on next week: a musical. Kay Kaiser and his band.” “I like Harry James best.” “I do sometimes. That big trumpet makes me feel as if I've got frogs in my tab-'ole, though.” “Wash 'em out, and then it wouldn't, would it?” His arm was around the shoulder of her seat. “I'll walk home with you, if you like,” he said. “I've got somebody,” she told him. While “God Save the King” played, they made for the exit, and a youth came down the aisle and took Pauline's arm. “Lay off, mate,” Brian said. “I'm seeing her home.” “That's what yo' think,” the youth said. “That's what I know,” Brian told him. There was some disappointment in him at the girl's not coming over to his side, though he grinned at the fact that they didn't even know each other's names. So why should she? He had one arm, and the other was taken by the tall youth, who looked brawnier than the picture he carried of himself in the wallet of his heart, though that might have been because of his heavy dark overcoat and the white muffler around his neck. Brian thought he knew him from some factory or other.

The black-out blinded him. She didn't try to shake the youth off, nor get rid of Brian, but walked calmly between them both, as if knowing that it would resolve itself somehow and that when she ended up with only one of them, she'd then decide whether or not she wanted him. I suppose I should scram, Brian thought. If they are courting, I ought to leave them alone. They might even be engaged, for all I know. His instinct was to undertake himself into the darkest part of the black-out. Maybe they're childhood sweethearts and I'm breaking it all up. But he kept a grip on her arm (later they were able to laugh over it), his mind blank with stubbornness, walking with her and the youth across the dark main road and into a quiet street.

The youth pulled them to a violent stop, and Brian was treated to a blood-red oil-gusher spouting before his eyes, a multicolour flash that made him let go of Pauline and stagger backwards to a chapel wall, roaring at the shock. The blow carried the seed of retaliation; he swung his fist against the youth's head, clenched fingers ringing with pain as if he had struck concrete or iron. Pauline stood in the middle of the road like a shadow, waiting for one or the other, and Brian decided it would be him, his mind changing to not-so-sure as he wheeled again into the wall from a strong thump in his chest. He gasped, realized that it was no play-acting, that this was a total fight from which there was no running away. He lost his nerve and drove wild, made to the left of the youth as if to give the impression of cunning, feeling for some weak spot in his perimeter before returning a blow. With head down he charged, under the fists and coming up too close to be struck, gripping him around the waist and pulling tight, knowing his strength would be able to bend him down double and drop him to the kerb. Both hands locked, he squeezed inwards, the youth's arms fastened safe, Brian's chin grinding his chest bones, working the strongest pitch of a sack-carrying strength into his adversary—until the youth gave way and dropped. Brian let go, unable to control the dead weight of him, but the youth was up before he could sink his boots for the grapefruit crush. Brian kept close, and after a quiet grunting scuffle he found a head under his arm. In a split second he saw what had come about, tightened the vice of his arm muscles, held the head and beat his other folded hand unmercifully into it, thankful for such good luck—as the pain from the youth's first blows began burning his own face.