The Likes of Us (30 page)

‘Yes, it's fine if you get the right one; and hell if you pick a wrong 'un.'

‘You know,' I said in a moment, ‘she never struck me as being that sort.'

‘Nor Peter, evidently. Still, you never did know her well, did you?'

I looked at the amber dregs of my beer. Of course I was thinking – would it have been different with me? Could I have held her or would I have got the same rotten deal as Peter? And how rotten did the deal seem to her? They were things I'd never know.

‘No,' I said at length. ‘No, she was just a casual acquaintance.'

Waiting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old Thompson was seventy-four the winter his wife died. She was sixty-nine. They would have celebrated their golden wedding the following summer and they were a quiet and devoted couple. It was bronchitis that finished her, helped along by a week of November fog poisoned by Cressley's industrial soot and smoke. In ten days she was gone.

His wife's death nearly finished Thompson too. He was a changed man. Always active and vigorous, carrying his years lightly, and with a flush of ruddy good health in his face, he now seemed to age overnight. He seemed to shrivel and bend like a tree from whose roots all nutrition had been drained. His hands were all at once uncertain and fumbling, where they had grasped surely. The world about him seemed to lose interest for him. He became silent and withdrawn. He would sit for long hours in his tall wooden-backed armchair by the fire, and what he thought about in his silence no-one knew.

Bob, the Thompsons' younger son, and his wife Annie were living in the house in Dover Street when Mrs Thompson died. The Thompsons had had four children. The elder son was lost at sea during the war; a daughter married and emigrated to Australia, and a second daughter, Maud, fifteen years older than Bob, lived with her family in another part of the town.

Bob and Annie had not known each other long before they became eager to get married: Bob because he wanted Annie and she (though she was fond of Bob in her own way) because she could at last visualise a life away from her roughneck family. When Mrs Thompson suggested that they marry and live with them in Dover Street until they could get a house of their own, Annie hesitated. Her ideal of marriage had been a process whereby she acquired a husband and an orderly, well-furnished home in one fell swoop. But she soon saw the advantages in this arrangement. She would, first of all, escape from her present life into a house which was quiet and efficiently run, if not her own; and she would be able to go on working so that she and Bob could save up all the more quickly for their own house. She would also get Bob, a good enough husband for any working-class girl: good-natured and pliable, ready to be bent her way whenever it was necessary for her ends.

In time Bob became used to the silent figure in the house: but Annie, who since her mother-in-law's death had given up her job and was at home all day, began to find the old man's constant presence a source of growing irritation.

‘He gets on me nerves, Bob,' she said one night when they were alone. ‘Just sitting there all day and me having to clean up round him. And he hardly says a word from getting up in a morning to going to bed.'

‘Well, I reckon he's a right to do as he likes,' Bob said mildly. ‘It's his house, not ours. We're the lodgers, if anybody.'

But to Annie, now looking after the house as if it were her own, it was beginning to seem the other way about.

On Wednesday afternoons Annie took the bus into Cressley to shop in the market. For an hour or so she would traverse the cobbled alleyways between the stalls, looking at everything, buying here and there, and keeping a sharp lookout for the bargains that were sometimes to be had. And then, with all her purchases made, she would leave the market for the streets of the town to spend another hour in her favourite pastime: looking in furniture-shop windows. There were furniture shops of all kinds in Cressley, from those where you had to strain your neck to see the prices on the tickets to others where you could hardly see the furniture itself for the clutter of placards and notices offering goods at prices almost too tempting to be true.

One Wednesday she found a new shop full of the most delightful things, with a notice inviting anyone to walk in and look round without obligation. Annie hesitated for a moment before stepping through the doorway where, almost at once, she stopped entranced before a three-piece suite in green uncut moquette. There was a card on the sofa which said: ‘This fine 3-piece suite is yours for only ten shillings a week', and very small at the bottom, ‘Cash price eighty-nine guineas'. Ten shillings a week… Why, she could almost pay that out of her housekeeping and never miss it!

A voice at her shoulder startled her. ‘Can I help you, Madam?' She looked round at the assistant who had come softly to her side.

‘Oh, well, no,' she said, flustered. ‘I was just looking.'

‘Was it lounge furniture you were particularly interested in?' asked the young man.

‘Well, no... All of it, really.'

‘I see. You're thinking of setting up house?'

‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I am. I'm just looking round, y'know, seeing what there
–
'

‘We can supply everything you need.' The assistant took her by the elbow. ‘If you'll just come up to the showroom you'll see what I mean…'

‘Well, I…' Annie began, panicking a little at the thought of getting involved; but she was already being led to the rear of the shop and up a few wide steps.

In the entrance to the showroom she stopped and gaped. There before her, filling every corner of the vast room, was furniture of all shapes, sizes and uses; lounge furniture, dining-room furniture, furniture for bedroom and kitchen, and even television and wireless sets.

‘You know we can furnish a complete home for only a few pounds a week…'

Half an hour later Annie was on the bus, going home, with pictures of beautiful rooms floating through her intoxicated mind. All that, and for just a few pounds a week. Why, there was no reason why they couldn't have their home tomorrow. No reason except they hadn't got a house.

‘Bob, when are we going to have a house of our own? We've been hanging about for three years now and we're no nearer than when we got married.'

‘Oh, I don't know,' Bob said easily. ‘There's not a lot o' point in trying to get another place with things as they are. Besides, who'd look after me dad?'

‘Your Maud might think about doing her share.'

‘Aye, aye, I know,' Bob mumbled. ‘Happen she'd buckle to if it came to it. She's not a bad sort at bottom, our Maud. But anyway, it hasn't come to that. Where would we go if we did move? You can't get a house to rent any more than you could three year ago.'

‘What about buying one, then?' Annie said.

‘We'd better wait till we've enough brass for a good deposit.'

‘We've over three hundred pounds in the bank,' Annie said. ‘What did we save it for?'

‘You could spend all that on furniture. That wouldn't go far.'

They were walking home from the cinema after seeing a film set partly in an American house with an open split-level living-room where there was lots of space and all the furnishings looked smart and well made. Annie knew the limitations of her life and did not yearn for the impossible; but she was becoming avid now to reach out and take what was there awaiting her grasp.

‘There's always hire purchase. I was talking to a feller in a shop today and he told me you could furnish a house for just a few pounds a week.'

Bob laughed. ‘Had one o' them chaps on to you, have you? They'll tell you owt. No, we can do wi' out debts like that. Someday you'll have all you want.'

‘Someday...' Annie muttered. ‘Stopping at home after working all that time has got me wanting a place of me own.'

‘Well, I mean this place is as good as yours, isn't it? You do pretty well as you like in it, don't you? And it'll really be yours one o' these days. After all, me dad can't last
–
' He stopped.

Annie glanced quickly at him. ‘You mean he can't last for ever.'

‘Shurrup,' Bob muttered. ‘We shouldn't be talking like that.'

There was a light on in the house and they found Bob's father sitting in his chair by the fire.

‘Still up?' Annie said. ‘I thought you'd have been in bed long since.'

The old man lifted his face to them, though his eyes seemed hardly to take them in. ‘I wa' just going.'

He pulled himself up and went out without another word.

 

They went on as they were for some time. And then summer came and with the warmer days old Thompson stirred from his chair and began in the afternoons to stroll down the hill to the park where he could sit on a bench in the sun.

It was a great relief for Annie to be without him for a while each day, and she found new zest for her life as a housewife, the life she had always craved for from being a girl in a rough, overcrowded home. She tackled the work with great spirit, scrubbing and polishing until the house was always faultlessly clean.

But still there was something lacking. It wasn't like caring for her own possessions, for she was surrounded by furniture that was heavy and dark and old-fashioned and which never gave her a true reward for all the effort she applied to its care.

‘This old furniture gives me the willies,' she complained to Bob. ‘It's like living in a museum. All them chinks and crannies just harbour dust. I don't know how your mother put up with it all them years.'

‘She was used to it. It's the furniture they got when they were married. It was all the fashion at one time.'

‘It's out o' fashion now, all right,' Annie said.

‘Aye, well, we'll have some good stuff when we get a place of our own.'

‘Look, Bob,' she said, ‘why don't we get some new furniture now? Think how nice this place could look with a new carpet and a three-piece suite, and
–
'

‘Hold on a minute,' Bob said. ‘What about me dad? This is his house, y'know, and he might like it as it is.'

‘You can ask him. I don't think he'd mind. You know how he is these days.'

‘But what could we do with his stuff?'

‘Oh, we could sell it. Somebody on the market 'ud take it off our hands.'

‘We can't just sell the old feller's home up round him,' Bob said. He sounded shocked at the thought. ‘Dammit, what would he do when we left?'

‘I don't know as there'd be any need for us to leave if we had some decent furniture,' Annie said.

Bob saw her smooth round face set stubbornly in the expression which always frightened him a little. He was still surprised she had ever married him and anxious to please her in any way he could.

‘I suppose – that's to say, if me dad doesn't mind – I suppose we could put it into store. Then if he ever needed it it'd be there.'

In the event they sold the furniture, the old man offering no objection. They gave him the money, a pitifully small number of notes which he gazed at in silence for some time before closing his hand round them and putting them away.

They redecorated the living room, using a light modern paper which seemed to push the walls back, and hung new curtains. Then when the furniture came – the carpet, the dining-suite and the three-piece – the transformation was complete and startling. Annie was ready to hug herself. Here was something worth looking after, that rewarded dusting and polishing, something that was her own. The only jarring note was struck by the old man's tall-backed chair, empty more often now in the long warm afternoons when he was sitting on a bench in the park.

For a time she was at peace. And then she could not help speaking to Bob about an unfairness that had rankled before but which seemed more obviously unjust now that the house had her own stamp on it at last. She suggested that Bob's sister be approached with a view to her taking the old man.

‘We've had him for nearly a year now,' she pointed out. ‘I don't see why your Maud shouldn't take her turn. She's got as much room as we have.'

‘But this is his home,' Bob said. ‘He won't want to go.'

‘What's the difference between one place and another?' Annie said. ‘He hardly knows where he is anyway.'

‘I dunno,' Bob said. ‘There's summat not
–
'

‘Look, just promise you'll see her and mention it.'

‘Well... I don't suppose there's any harm in sounding her out.'

He came into the house a few nights later to find Annie and the old man sitting on opposite sides of the hearth, his father with his hands resting on the stick between his legs as usual, but perched on the edge of one of the new armchairs. Bob looked round.

‘Where's your chair, then, Dad?'

The old man's voice was stronger than he'd heard it for a long time now. ‘Ask her,' he said.

Annie was blushing a fiery red. ‘I... I let it go this afternoon,' she said. ‘I sold it to a chap at the door for five bob. Your dad won't take the money.'

‘You did what?' Bob said incredulously.

Annie was obviously regretting her impulse, but it was too late now.

‘It was out of place here... And I knew your Maud wouldn't want it.'

Taken off balance as he was, Bob spoke without thinking of the old man sitting there.

‘It's not the only thing our Maud doesn't want.'

No-one spoke for several moments and in the silence a quiver ran through old Thompson's body. He got to his feet, drawing himself erect as he faced the two of them.

‘You've been round there, haven't you? Trying to get rid o' me.' His voice, pitched high and thin, cracked with his anger. ‘I know what it is. You're wantin' me to die. Well, I'll tell you – I'm wantin' it an' all. There's nowt left for me sin' my Mary went. I'm waitin', just bidin' my time till the good Lord sees fit to take me to her again.' His stick rose and fell with a mighty crack against the skirting board. ‘And you'll just have to bide your time an' wait anent me.'

He turned his flushed face and glittering eyes from them and went through the door. They heard his slow feet on the stairs. Neither of them spoke. In a moment they looked at each other and then they looked away.