The Likes of Us (9 page)

Somewhere along a back street on the outskirts of town he lurched into the doorway of a newsagent's shop, failing against the door and sliding down into a sitting position. He uncorked the bottle of rum and took a deep swallow. He shook his head then and shuddered, making a wry face and breathing out, ‘Aagh!' A moment later through the pool of light shed by the street-lamp opposite the doorway there slid the lean shape of a mongrel dog, its rough coat yellow in the dim light. It came into the doorway and pushed its cold muzzle into Scurridge's hand. He began to fondle it under the ears, talking to it as he did so: ‘Nah then, old feller, nah then.' And the dog responded by licking his hand. ‘Yer shouldn't be out on a night like this,' Scurridge said. ‘Yer should be at home, all nice an' cosy an' warm. Haven't yer gorra home, eh, is that it?' He felt for a collar. ‘Yer don't belong to nobody, eh? All on your ownio… all on yer own.' The dog sat down close to him, all the while nuzzling his hand. ‘I used to have a dog once,' Scurridge said. ‘Looked summat like you, he did. A long time since, though. He was a lovely dog... grand. He used to come an' meet me from t'pit. He got run over one Sat'day mornin' just as I wa' comin' out. A coal lorry got him. A full
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un. Rotten mess. I couldn't even pick him up and take him home to bury him. The driver shovelled him up an' took him off somewhere. I don't know where. I wa' that sluffed about it. A real pal to me, that dog was. I called him Tommy. An' eat! That dog wa' t'best eater
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at I ever saw. Scoff a beefsteak while you wa' lookin' at it.' He ran his hand along the dog's spare flanks and over its ribs. ‘Long time sin' you had a beefsteak, old lad... Aye, well never mind. Happen yer'll get yer bit o' luck afore long. I've had a bit o' luck tonight, I'll tell yer. Best bit o' luck I ever had, on'y bit... never had any afore. Except maybe marryin' my missis. I didn't do bad there. She's not been a bad wife to me. An' now I'm goinna make her rich. Rollin' in it, she'll be. One in the bloody eye for that skinflint father of hers. Left all his brass to the chapel when we were near starvin'. Said I wa' no good an' never would be. Well I wish he was alive to see me now. I hope he's watchin' where ever he is. Never had a good word for man nor beast, that old devil. Not like me. I allus had a soft spot for animals. Like thee. Tha're a grand old lad even if tha are a stray
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at nobody wants. What's it feel like when nobody wants thee? Lousy, I'll bet. Here!' he said suddenly, lifting the dog's jaw on his hand. ‘I'll tell thee what – here's thy bit o' luck. Tha can come home wi'me. How'd yer like that, eh? How'd yer like that?'

He put his hand to his forehead and mumbled to himself. It occurred to him that he was not feeling well; not well at all. ‘Time we were off home, lad,' he said to the dog. ‘Can't stop here all night.' He tried to get to his feet and fell back with a thud that shook the door. He sat there for a minute before making another effort which took him reeling out into the street. ‘C'mon, lad,' he said to the dog. ‘C'mon, boy.'

He was a long time in coming to the path through the wood, for he walked slowly and unsteadily, staggering about the pavement and making occasional erratic detours on to the crown of the road, and sometimes stopping altogether while he slouched against a wall, the rum bottle tilted to his mouth. The steep path under snow was like narrow frozen rapids – difficult enough to anyone sober, and next to impossible to Scurridge, in his condition. After falling on his hands and knees several times in as many yards he left the path and made his way up the slope through the black, twisted, snow-frothed shapes of the trees, the dog, with infinite patience, following at his heels. Near the top of the slope he caught his foot in a hidden root and sprawled headlong, striking his head heavily on the trunk of a tree before coming to rest face down in the snow. For several minutes consciousness left him; and when it returned he was mumbling to himself and shaking his head in a dazed manner as he got up off the ground and went unsteadily upwards and out of the trees.

He was almost at the back door before he realised that the house was in darkness. He groped for the latch and pushed at the door, thinking at first that it was stuck, and then realizing that it was locked. What the hell was she playing at! He knocked, and then, in a spasm of temper, drove the side of his clenched fists at the door panel. ‘Hilda!' he shouted. ‘Open up an' let me in!' But there was no sound from within and in a few minutes he wandered round to the front door and tried that. As he had expected, that was locked too. It was always locked: they had not used the door in over fifteen years. He came back along the side of the house, swearing softly and thickly to himself. She hadn't locked him out on purpose, had she? She couldn't have locked him out! She wouldn't do a thing like that to him. Not tonight, after he'd been so clever. The dog stood some way off and watched him as he stood there in the snow, his head bowed as though in deep thought, wondering what next to do. He felt ill, terribly ill. It was a fit of sickness that hammered in his head and made him sway on his feet. He put a cold, shaking hand to his brow, remaining like that in a coma of illness, during which time his memory seemed to cease functioning. So that when at last he stirred himself again he could not remember what he was doing there alone in the darkness and the snow.

He slumped down on the doorstep, huddling into the corner to get as much protection as possible from the wind, and took out the bottle of rum. He drank deeply, feeling the spirit sear his throat and spread in a warm wave inside him. For a moment it seemed to revive him, and then all at once the sickness came back to him, worse than ever this time, almost engulfing him in a great black wave. He dropped the bottle and put his head in his hands and moaned a little. What was it? He wanted to get in. He had to get in to Hilda. He had something to tell her. Something good. Something she would be pleased to hear. But he couldn't get in. Couldn't get to her to make her happy. And now he couldn't remember what he had to tell her. He only knew that it was something good, because he could recall being happy himself, earlier on, before he came over badly. He couldn't remember ever feeling as bad is this... Suddenly he reared to his feet and bawled it the top of his voice, ‘Hilda! Hilda! Let me in!' and the dog, startled, ran off into the trees.

There was only silence. Perhaps she'd gone, he thought. Hopped it. She'd said she would, many a time. He'd never believed her, though. He'd never wanted her to go. She was his wife, wasn't she? He'd never wanted any other woman. He couldn't live by himself. Who'd look after him? How would he manage? And if she'd gone he wouldn't be able to tell her. Tell her what?...Something good. Something to make her happy... He turned and rambled off across the patch of unkempt land that had been the garden and looked with aimless curiosity into the mouldering outhouses with their damp and rotten timbers. The thought came to him that he might shelter there. But it was too cold and he was very ill. He had to get into the house where it was warm. He returned across the snow and looked at the house which stood out plainly in the sharp, clear light shed by the new moon. And after some moments he thought of the window.

He lurched across to the wall of the house and put fumbling hands on the stones. With some difficulty he managed to get one knee onto the sill, his fingers feeling for holds in the interstices of the weathered stonework. He pulled himself up till he was standing upright and felt for a gap across the top of the window. He moved his foot and it slipped away from him across the icy stone of the sill and he lost his balance and fell sideways, his hands clawing at the wall. His right hand described an arc against the wall and the wrist hit the rusted needle-sharp point of the clothes-line hook jutting out some inches from the stone, and his falling weight pulled him on to it, so that for a few seconds he hung there, impaled through the arm. He felt the indescribable agony of the hook as it tore out the front of his wrist and he cried out once, a cry that ended in a choking, sobbing cough, before falling in a huddled heap on the snow, to crouch there, moaning and gibbering senselessly, his good hand clawing feebly at the gaping wound and feeling the warm gush of blood spouting from the severed arteries. And then the pain swamped his already befuddled senses and he rolled slowly sideways and was still.

As he lay there the dog returned to nose, whimpering softly, about him before turning again and loping away to the wood. A few minutes later snow began to fall, swirling down in fat feathery flakes all across the valley and the town and the hillside. It fell soundlessly on the roof of the house, over the room where Mrs Scurridge lay in her drugged sleep, and on Scurridge, melting at first and then slowly, softly, drifting and falling, covering him from sight.

The Drum

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘I allus reckon you can't judge by appearance,' said Sam Skelmanthorpe, apropos of a casual remark I'd just made about someone we both knew slightly. He pushed his glass across the bar counter. ‘Gimme the other half o' that, George lad. Don't know why they ever invented gills. Gone in a couple o' swallows…'

‘Now you take Fred Blenkinsop,' he said, turning to me again.

‘Who's Fred Blenkinsop?'

‘Y'know – our librarian. I must ha' mentioned him afore.'

‘Oh, yes. The chap who works on the farm.'

‘That's him. Now you'd never ha' thought there was any more to him than you could see…'

With his replenished glass before him, Sam began to talk about Fred, sketching in his background. They called him Short Fred in Low Netherwood, Sam said, because he stood no more than five-feet-three drawn up to his full height; and if the name came off their lips with dry familiarity it was because he'd lived in the village for the best part of his sixty-odd years and they naturally thought they knew all there was to know about him. But most men have little dreams and secrets locked away in the private corners of their hearts, and Fred was no exception. With him, Sam said, it was an ambition: a small enough ambition at that, but one that had troubled and pestered him for years, sometimes lying dormant for long periods, only to spring into life again without warning, like the itch comes to the born gambler, or the thirst to a man with drinker's throat.

‘Aye,' Sam said pensively, ‘an ambition.' He took a drink and licked his lips, then looked down at the tobacco pouch I'd slid across as I saw him reach for his pipe as though wondering where it had come from.

‘An ambition,' I said, prodding him, but gently. ‘It's a curious thing, ambition –'

‘Aye,' Sam said. ‘He wanted to play the big drum.'

‘You mean in the band? But why didn't he, then? Surely all he had to do was –'

‘Ask?' said Sam. ‘Aye, I suppose so. He'd have had to ask. He was our librarian an' there was allus some strappin' great lad tackling the drum. He'd have had to ask; an' he couldn't bring hisself to do that because, y'see, in his heart of hearts he thought that wantin' to play the drum was a bit daft – more for a lad than a grown man of his age. So he never did ask.

‘A good lad, Fred is; we'd be lost without him. He was our librarian when I joined the band, an' he'll be handing out music when I'm under t'sod, I'll bet. On'y one time he ever let us down and that was one night in Cressley Park. Trombones found they had the parts for ‘Poet and Peasant', while t'rest of us were crackin' through Lists's Hungarian Rhapsody.'

Fred had been a miner, Sam told me, but since retiring from the pit he'd done odd jobs for Withers, who kept the farm on Low Road. There was a bench in a garden at the end of High Street – the traditional gathering place of old-age pensioners. But this was not for Fred. And Withers, knowing a good worker, had been only too happy to relieve Fred of the miseries of idleness. And in addition to his natural zest for work, Fred was of value to Withers in another way. He was one of the few men in the district who could handle Samson, Withers's valuable pedigree Friesian bull. Samson was a vicious and bad-tempered beast with as much love for the human race as a boa constrictor. Withers had considered getting rid of him until Fred came along; and it was with surprise and relief that he found, after a time, a positive affection springing up between the little man and the bull. To see Fred stroking Samson's nose and whispering in his ear while the great beast stood in something approaching ecstasy was a sight that, until the novelty wore off, brought the hands from the fields to stare in wonder.

This then was the uneventful pattern of Fred's life: the days on the farm, the evenings in the Fox and Ferret with a glass of ale, and his duties with the band.

‘And then one day,' Sam said, ‘he got his chance. Day o' the Sunday-schools' Whit-walk, it was. I remember it well. Boilin' hot. We were all sittin' round in the band-room chatting and smoking, and Fred had his head in the cupboard sortin' the march sheets out. All at once in comes Thomas Easter, our solo euphonium player. His face is as red as his tunic, an' he goes straight to Jess Hodgkins, our conductor.

‘“Jess,” he says, “we're without a drummer. Young Billy Driver's tum'led off his delivery bike this mornin'. I've just seen his mother in t'street. It looks like a broken arm, Jess.”

‘Well, Jess's conducted our band for nigh on fifty year an' he's grown used to misfortune, as you might say. So this bit o'news didn't bowl him over.

‘“Well now,” he says, when Thomas is catching his breath. “You'd ha' thought he'd ha' done it yesterday an' given us time to get another man.” An' he sighs. “I don't know,” he says. “If it in't a cornet player wi' a split lip, it's a drummer wi' nobbut one arm.” He looks at Thomas. “Wes'll have to do wi'out drummer, Thomas, that's all, lad.”

‘“Nay, Jess,” says Thomas, “wes'll sound awful.” Thomas, y'see, has played engagements with some good bands in his time, an' he's allus particular about fieldin' a full side.

‘“Then some'dy else'll have it to do,” says Jess. An' he has a look round the room. He can't spare any of us, an' his eye falls on Short Fred, still busy with the music. He hasn't heard a word of this an' when Jess gives Thomas the wink an' calls him over he comes up as innocent as you please.

‘“Tha's been servin' thy apprenticeship in t'music-sortin' department o' this band for forty-five year
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at I can remember, Fred,” he says, his face never slippin'. An'

Fred, mystified, says, “Aye, Jess?”

‘“Well I've been thinkin”
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at it's about time tha made a noise, just to let fowk know tha're still with us,” Jess goes on. “An' to make sure everybody hears thee, I'm goin' to give thee t'biggest noise in t'band. Does tha think tha could play t'big drum for us this afternoon?”

‘Fred's heart must ha' taken a crotchet rest then. Here's his big chance, straight out of the blue. But not a sign of this shows on his face. “I'll do me best for thee, Jess,” he says.'

They rolled the drum from the cupboard, Sam said, and adjusted the straps to suit Fred's short stature. He looked down at the drum, an eager light beginning in his eyes. It was a beautiful instrument, painted in glossy scarlet and gold, with white cords, and the words LOW NETHERWOOD SILVER BAND inscribed on it in gold letters.

‘Tha're sure tha can carry it, Fred?' asked one of the players, in mock anxiety, and Fred said scornfully, ‘Carry it? Give us ho'd on it an' I'll show thee!'

So they hoisted the drum into position on Fred's chest and fastened the straps. He had a little difficulty in seeing over it, but there was no doubt of his ability to carry it.

‘Just give us a steady beat, lad,' Jess instructed him as they formed up in the lane. ‘No fancy work, an' tha'll be all right.'

At a blast from Jess's whistle a few stragglers emerged, fortified for the afternoon, from the Fox and Ferret and filled the gaps in the ranks. Fred moved to his place at the rear of the band and made a few practice swings with the drumsticks. He hitched the drum up higher on his chest and as Jess sounded the whistle for off he wielded the sticks with all the enthusiasm of a school-boy. This was the life!

One two three – boom boom boom. They were off down the lane.

‘We joined the procession at the bottom of the lane in High Street,' Sam said. ‘A lovely sight, it was: all the kiddies in their new clothes and the banners. We get to the head of 'em an' wait till they're in order. Then Jess blows his whistle an' we're off up High Street, with all the fowk watching, and the banners flying and us blowin' fit to burst. I allus did like a schoolfeast. And there's Fred havin' the time of his life, hitching the drum up higher an' higher an' leaning over backwards to balance it, till he can't see in front of him at all an' he has to rely on his view to either side to tell him where he's goin!'

‘We were on the way to Withers's big meadow an' it was just on the corner of the lane that it happened. Only the day before the council had dug a deep trench in the road, to check if the water pipes were still there. There's red flags an' lamps all round it. We swung out an' made a detour; but Fred, not seeing a thing in front of him, marches straight on, knocking the tar out of the drum an' generally havin' the time of his life.

‘They shouted to warn him, but it was too late. He put one foot into fresh air an' so they say as saw it, sort of pivoted round on his other foot an' fetched up on his back in the bottom of the trench with the drum sittin' on his chest like a great playful dog.'

And he lay there, Sam said, swearing feebly, while the band, unconscious of his plight, marched on and into the meadow. Anxious faces appeared over the rim of the trench and strong arms reached down to haul him to the surface. The drum was unstrapped and Fred examined for injury. Finding that he was only shaken, he sat on the edge of the trench under the laughing eyes of the village folk and waited for his breath and composure to return.

‘How much for t'drum, Fred?' somebody called, and Short Fred writhed with discomfiture. They'd be laughing over this in the sewing circles and the pubs for evermore. The devil take the drum! Why he'd let himself in for this he'd never know.

Meanwhile, the procession had entered the meadow. The children, bursting from restraining hands, ran free on the grass, the girls in their pretty frocks, and straw bonnets, the boys in their stiff new suits. The uniforms of the bandsmen were a bright splash of colour against the more sober dress of the rest of the throng, and perhaps it was this that caught the eye of Samson as, disturbed by the noise, he nosed his way out of his unlocked stall and stalked peevishly across the yard.

‘They say bulls are colour blind,' said Sam. ‘Well, mebbe they are. But they can tell a bright colour from a dull
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un and they can hear noise. An' if it's a bull like Samson that's enough to get its rag out. You can nearly imagine him thinkin' to hisself, “Who do they think they are, these fowk, all dolled up an' makin' their noise in my field? Time they had a lesson.”'

Short Fred was, by this time, coming down the lane by the meadow, carrying the heavy drum (he'd curtly rejected all offers of assistance), and wishing himself anywhere else in the world. His thoughts ran on in miserable confusion, the predominant theme being the folly of childish fancies in the old.

‘Summat then – some sixth sense – made him turn his head and look up towards the farm. He stopped then as though he'd turned to stone as he saw Samson there, working hisself up to do murder.

“Heaven help us!” he whispers.

‘He sizes up the position at a glance. There's the bull at one end of the field, and a crowd o' fowk – mostly kiddies – at the other. And even if he yells they've to come half-way up the field to reach the gate. He didn't think for a second
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at there being all these fowk
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ud put the bull off. Not Samson!

‘Well, Samson stirs and Fred lets out an ear-splitting yell. Then he throws the drum over the hedge and jumps after it, his bruises playing merry hell with him. From where he's standing now the ground slopes away fairly sharp, and he's looking straight across Samson's line of attack.

‘Samson launches hisself and charges breakneck down the field. Fred gives a hasty prayer and stands the drum on its rim and gives it a mighty old push, sending it bumping and rolling down the slope. Has he mistimed it? Is it going wide? And just when it seems Samson's gone by, the drum bounces right between his legs and brings him crashing down.'

I looked over my shoulder. The audience had grown during the telling of Sam's dramatic tale and now they were all agog for more, though surely several of them must have known the facts of that day.

‘What then, Sam?' asked a thin-faced man on the other side of Sam. ‘What happened then?'

Sam, conscious that he had them, took a pull at his beer and nonchalantly pressed down the dottle in his pipe. ‘Anybody got a match?' he said, and several boxes were thrust towards him. He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and found one of his own. He lit up in a leisurely manner, timing their patience to a nicety.

‘Well,' he went on, his head in a cloud of smoke, ‘Fred dashes across the field afore Samson can get his legs out o' the drum. And then he puts the old charm on him, stroking his nose and whispering sweet nothings in his ear, his heart in his mouth all the time, wondering if Samson'll turn nasty again. And when he thinks Samson's calmed down a bit he cuts a length o' cord off the drum and passes it through the ring in Samson's nose.

‘Then he gets him up, ever so easy like, stroking and talking to him all the time. And Samson gives a few snorts and shakes his head a bit, and lets hisself be led up the field. When he's safely shut away, and the stall locked this time, Fred goes into the house with Withers, telling him he's right sorry about what's happened. He can't imagine, he says, what made him act so careless as to leave the stall unlocked. A proper day of it, Fred had had.

‘“Nay, there's no need for you to apologize, Fred,” Withers tells him. “Cause you weren't to blame, lad.” And he pulls his seven-year-old nephew out from behind his chair. “Here's the culprit,” he says. “Just confessed to me. He thought it'd be a lark to let Samson out. Well he's had the fright of his life for it anyway.”