Key to the Door (41 page)

There were rare occasions when no books interested him, and once, so firm was the procedure fixed in the ammoniac smell of the shop that he nevertheless came out with a French hymnbook, a Hindustani grammar, and a set of nautical tables, feeling as relieved and happy with his load at the bus stop as if they were books he had wanted to get his hands on for years.

He browsed through the boxes, looking at each title, opening the covers of some, knowing that sooner or later he must slide out the books he wanted—three, and sometimes as many as four or five if they were thin ones—and make off with them. In the far-off days when he paid for the books—no more than threepence each, though—he came one Saturday morning with Bert and browsed while his cousin impatiently flipped through the magazine table. Brian took his time, was at the mercy of his title-chasing eyes and page-checking fingers, so that the minutes ran into Bert's brain and needled him to find Brian and say: “Got owt yet?” “These two”—he held them up, also picked out a guide to Belgium: “I'd like this as well, but it's half a dollar.” “Let's get going then you're ready,” Bert said, “or we'll miss the picture.” Hold on a bit, Brian was going to say—but his mood broke and he turned: “Let's scram, then.” At the picture-house queue Bert handed him the book he'd wanted but couldn't afford. “You're my favourite pal,” he said, gripping his shoulders tight. “Here y'are: I'd do owt for yo'.” Brian was overjoyed, clutched at the small red book, bent its flexible gold-lettered covers, and saw its marbled pages. “Thanks, our Bert. I sha'n't forget a favour like this.”

He didn't: from that moment he never looked back as he stood by the shelves in the bookshop cellar department. Though feeling as if he were visible to all, since the tremble of hands and knock of knees seemed to give him a luminous shining quality, his fingers nevertheless hooked slyly out to the target his blue eyes fixed on. He stood without courage but with the gamble of a green-eyed cat on his shoulder, set in the circle of irresistible temptation, his fierce and quietly burning purpose to augment the bookshelves in his room while leaving the reading of them to whims of boredom and curiosity. His eyes were lights of panic, though kept quiet by an inner will which made his hands accurate in their sly split-second motion of simple extension and drawing-back loaded with a prize towards his shirt. One, two, three—they were safely in, and he walked up the stairs, not thinking about what was hidden between shirt-cloth and chest-flesh for fear he would fall top-heavy back and break his neck with guilt crash-bang at the stair bottom. With an abstracted air, as if dazed legitimately by the jewelled sight of so many books, he handed his pair of threepennies to the girl assistant, mumbling: “How much?” “Sixpence,” she said, and he thanked God at the first whiff of outside fresh air and petrol fumes, letting himself free into the roar and shoulder-knocks of Saturday crowds.

It was too good to last. Not that he became careless, he always had been. It was simply that his luck ran out and he was more ashamed afterwards at the thought of what a loon he must have looked to the girl assistant who saw him stuffing maps and books into his shirt, than for the crime, now revealed because he was caught, of stealing. At the cashbox he asked how much for a couple of mouldy Walter Scotts, and heard her say, the biggest shock he'd had for a long time: “You'd better take them books from up your jumper.” He did so, silent and white-faced: three books and two cloth-backed maps. “What's your name and address?” No one was by the cashbox at that moment. He told her, but she didn't write it down. Borstal, borstal, borstal were big words drum-beating against his brain. You'll get sent to borstal for three years, and not the same one Bert's bin in for the last six months, you can bet, so you'll have no company. He stood. She looked at him. She was thin and bloodless, too, in a blue overall, young and old, eighteen and sixty, dying eyes and hands that slid the pile of books away and back on to the table when the manager emerged from a not-too-far-off doorway. Her heart he only knew the value of when she said softly: “Go on out, and don't ever come in here again.” If the coppers had searched the house and found his book hoard he'd have been up for five years solid, but luckily the girl knew whose side she was on, and afterwards he wondered how much better the world would be if everybody stuck up for each other in that marvellous fashion.

He whistled a tune from “The Arcadians,” getting dressed on a Friday night in the full blood of his sixteen years, not thinking of a criminal life but gazing at his books. The cupboard they stood in was a present from his grandparents when they decided it wouldn't fit into the new abode of the Woodhouse. It still carried a smell of spices: curry and cinnamon, thyme and mustard seed, camomile and sennapods and pepper, not yet killed by the more pungent odours of damp and aging paper.

White shirt flew on to him like a bird of peace, drawn together at the neck by a blue-dotted tie. He felt spruce and warm in his suit, the garb of a labouring man whose face was pale but whose muscles were hard enough to carry him along with confidence anywhere. He slammed the doors of his bookcase, put on his jacket, and ran downstairs. “Don't be late,” his mother called as he let the back door of the scullery clatter to.

It was spring in the street, late sun coming from the tops of snow-clouds, children running in and out of air-raid shelters that blocked any clear view from up to down. The mass of close-knit factories and houses was spread on the steady slope of a hillside, though this was hardly noticeable with feet firm on cobblestones taking him energetically towards his meeting with Pauline. He lit a fag and flicked the match on to a window-sill (a notice within said:
WREATHS AND CROSSES MADE TO ORDER AT SHORT NOTICE
), catching sight of his greased-up quiff that made him look, he laughed, as handsome as the day was long. People were still rolling home from work by the time he hit the boulevard. A toffee paper blew towards him in the wind, fastened itself like a badge on a tree trunk.

She'll be out any minute, he thought, approaching the factory, because the machines were switched off, leaving the high-sided street calm and quiet. It was a long, red-bricked, and straight-windowed building, a hundred years old though still in its prime. This sort of workpile had driven a nail of terror into him when he passed it as a child, not knowing what all the noise was about; but he knew now right enough, and wasn't afraid of it, though on nearing any strange enormous factory at full blast he still felt a curious memory of half-fear stir in him at such compacted power that seemed pressing at every window ready to burst out like some fearful God-driven monster. Funny, he thought, how once you got in one it didn't bother you, was peaceful almost because then you were on its side.

He stood by the clocking-out machine, eyed but not bothered by the commissionaire in his Home Guard uniform, a grey-haired old ramrod about seventy wearing a fish-and-chip hat, and smiling at a mirror in his bogey-hole to adjust a row of medal ribbons. England's last hope, Brian grinned, the old chokka. I bet he got them medals mowing down fuzzy-wuzzies. “Waiting for the girls, I suppose?” he called.

“Waiting for a pal,” Brian responded after a pause. “Yo' goin' on p'rade, dad?”

“'Appen,” the man said, turning huffily away. Brian knew him to be too old for it now, felt a bit sorry he'd spoken. Poor bastard. He wasn't the only one around. Nottingham's Chelsea Pensioners, they called them, doing part-time work to eke out their ten bob and joining the Home Guard while there was still time to get themselves a winter suit and topcoat, going to the drill-hall now and again to meet younger pals and listen to lectures, but mostly standing in pubs and swilling beer out of those who'd treat them. I wonder if he'd give a cup o' tea to a deserter? Brian thought.

He saw Jim Skelton on the stairs: “Hey up.”

“How do.”

“Where's Pauline and Joan?”

“Int' lavatory dolling up,” Jim said. “It's tekin' 'em long enough as well.”

“Fag?” Brian offered. “Fag, mate?”—to the old man.

“I don't mind,” he said. “Thanks very much.”

“Ta,” Jim said. The three of them lit up. “It's still 'ard to get 'em,” the old man chipped in, “even if you've got munney.”

“It is an' all,” Brian said. See all, hear all, say nowt. Eat all, drink all, pay nowt. There were a dozen cartons in the house, hidden in a wooden box under the coal, a present that crept in one night on his cousins' backs. They'd not long since been lifted from a shop up the street, swiped from a shopkeeper who'd told Brian only the night before when he went there on the hunt for tobacco-hungry Seaton that he hadn't a fag in the place. It was true right enough next morning after a visit from Colin and Dave. They'd not only cleared him out of fags, but silk stockings, a bottle of whisky, stacks of grub, cash.

They savoured their cigarettes. “A couple o' sixteen-year-olds like yo' two ought to be in the Home Guards,” the chokka said. “Do you the world o' good.” Brian went numb at this, as if somebody had called him bone-idle or a copper's nark. “That's what yo' think, mate.”

“I'd rather enjoy mysen than shoot a gun,” Jim told him. He was the same height as Brian but stockier, with a broad Tartar face, well-rounded dimpled chin, squared teeth and a squashed nose, ginger hair well flattened back from his forehead. He was a mechanic and looked after the girls' sewing machines, saw that the khaki uniforms ran smoothly through so that everyone could get a share of that weekly bonus. Brian, though highly regarded by Jim for his store of books, respected him for his handiness with machines and electricity and the making of traction engines.

The girls were down already, and out of the door before a word was spent between the four of them, spread in a line across the street. “Where are we going, then?” Pauline wanted to know.

“Out,” Brian told her.

“Clever bogger”—she thumped him.

“Leave my mate alone,” Jim said.

“Men,” Joan exclaimed. “Allus stick together. Where're we goin' anyway? That's what I'd like to know as well.”

Brian hoped he wouldn't be contradicted: “Up Cherry Orchard.”

“It's too far,” Joan said. “I don't know what you want to go up there for anyway.”

“I do,” Jim laughed.

“Well, you wain't catch me going,” Pauline said decisively. Brian winked at him: we'll go in that direction anyway. “You can stop that, fawce dog,” Pauline said. “I saw yer winking, Brian.”

“You want your eyes testing, then.”

“You'll get yourn blacked if you aren't careful,” she threw back. “He don't half think he's a clever dick,” Joan said, ganging up with her pal.

“Go and get dive-bombed,” Brian said. “I only wanted you to come up Cherry Orchard.” Pauline was as tall as Brian: long brown hair spreading back over her buttoned-up, dark brown coat, which hid a ligher overall dress he'd glimpsed as she came down the stairs. She had white skin, and large brown eyes that seemed to see everything as a defence against the fact that she saw very little. Jim said she was one of the fastest at her machine and wasn't so dreamy as she appeared, though both agreed that you wouldn't think so to look at her. On some evenings, when left to their own thoughts or emptiness, undisturbed by the lack of talk, they walked arm-in-arm along sunlit lanes and streets that were silent between knocking-off time and dusk. Brian felt her largeness when she was with him, noticed how delicate was the expression of her hands and face when seen against the gracelessness of her general movement. She had a good figure—he knew it well by now—fine pear-shaped breasts, noticeable hips, and legs a bit heavy. It was almost obtrusive—but not quite, for she was just below the stature that could have given her the label of a “strapping girl.”

She was arm-in-arm with Joan in front, and they went down Ilkeston Road, followed at fifty yards by Brian and Jim. “They don't seem in a good mood tonight.”

“P'raps they've got the rags on,” Jim laughed.

“I hope not,” Brian said. “I like Pauline, though. She's a good sort, and passionate. How yo' going on with Joan?”

“All right.
She
don't say a deal either. Never says a dicky-bird sometimes all night. I asked her what was wrong once. We'd been tot' pictures, and I thought she was fed up and ready to chuck me. I said: ‘What's up, duck?' when I was walking her home later. ‘A penny for your thoughts,' I said, and she burst out crying. She never told me what for either. I'd thought she looked a bit funny earlier on when she was in our house 'aving a cup of tea and some toast. When I kissed her good night, though, she was ever so passionate; so it blew over and she was as right as rain next day at work.”

Brian saw Jim's courting as a more intense affair than his own. Not only did Jim work near his sweetheart—often called over to fix the belt on her machine, or to clean and oil it—but she spent most of every evening helping Jim's mother, or sitting with him to guard his sisters and brothers while his parents were at the pictures. Pauline had never been to the Seatons, and neither did Brian have the intimacy of being with her all day at work. They met on many nights of the week, but whereas Jim and Joan had a physical closeness about them like any young couple a year married, Brian and Pauline were still at the hit-and-run stage, would melt away and almost forget each other until the next date because only the need to make love drew them together. He had never asked her to come home and sit in with his mother and father, Fred and Arthur and Margaret and Sammy, as if she belonged there. He envied this state between Joan and the Skeltons, but was somehow unable to build up a similar relationship between himself and Pauline. He spent many evenings at her house, and the two families had at one time known each other, but Pauline had never in any case suggested that she come to his home. Brian thought that maybe she was too shy to ask this, and he used her shyness—if it existed—as a way of preventing her from doing so. The idea of Pauline at home with his father and mother gave him spasms of embarrassment, and he was unable to say whether this was because he thought he would be ashamed or whether it was because he knew Pauline would dislike it and feel out of place. He didn't want his mother and father to know he was courting, wanted to keep his second life a secret from them, as if, should they know, it would result in their sharing this love and intimacy and making it less real to him. But when his mother once said: “I met Mrs. Mullinder today and she says you're going out with their Pauline,” he didn't feel at all embarrassed, though he still wouldn't ask Pauline home. “I go out with her now and again,” he told his mother. “Well,” she said, “that's all right. She's a nice gel. Only don't come here, though, if you get anybody into trouble.” And that was that.