There were rows of Reader’s Digest, of Wide World, of Argosy, of Real Male, of Guns Illustrated, of Practical Handyman, of Canadian Star Weekly, of National Geographic. They were all on the bottom shelves. Above were the paperbacks. There was Luke Short and Max Brand and J. T. Edson and Louis L’Amour. There was Russell Braddon and W. B. Thomas and Guy Gibson. There was Victor Canning and Alistair MacLean and Ewart Brookes and Ian Fleming. There was Bill Bowes and Stanley Matthews and Bobby Charlton. There was Barbara Tuchman and Winston Churchill and General Patton and Audie Murphy. Above these were his records. Band of the Coldstream Guards, Eric Coates, Stan Kenton, Ray Anthony, Mel Torme, Frankie Laine, Ted Heath, This Is Hancock, Vaughan Williams.

  His slippers were on the tiled hearth. A black leather swivel chair was angled to face in the direction of the television.

  There was no fire in the grate.

  I looked through into the kitchen. It was tidy. The cherry red formica-faced sink unit had been given a wash down. There was no rubbish in the rubbish bucket. There was an empty dog bowl on the floor.

  I went back into the scullery and opened the adjoining door to the front room. On the mantelpiece there was a small lamp with a crimson shade and I switched it on.

  There were not many flowers. There was my wreath, and a lot of flowers from Margaret, and another wreath from Doreen.

  The head of the coffin was dead centre to the middle of the bay window and the coffin cut the room in half. Next to the coffin and facing it was a dining-room chair. I went over to where the chair was and looked into the coffin. I hadn’t seen him for such a long time. Death didn’t really make much difference at all; the face just re-assembled the particles of memory. And as usual when you see someone dead who you’ve seen alive it was impossible to imagine the corpse as being related to its former occupant. It had that porcelain look about it. I felt that if I tapped it on the forehead with my knuckle there would be a pinging sound.

  “Well, Frank,” I said. “Well, well.”

  I stood there for a bit longer then sat down in the dining chair.

  I said a few words although I don’t know what I said and bowed my head on the edge of the casket for a few minutes, then I sat up and undid my coat and took out my fags. I lit up and blew out the smoke slowly and looked at the last of Frank.

  Looking at him I found it hard to realise I’d ever known him. All the things about him that I remembered in my mind’s eye didn’t seem real. They seemed like bits of a film. And even when I saw myself in the flashbacks, as you do, you get outside yourself, I didn’t seem real either, neither did the settings or the colours or the way the clouds rushed across the sky while we were doing something particular underneath them.

  I took the flask out and had a pull. I looked back at Frank. I stayed there for a minute, looking at him like that, then I screwed the cap back on and walked into the scullery, closing the door behind me.

  I went into the hall and up the stairs. I opened the first door on the landing. It was Doreen’s room. It used to be mine and Frank’s. The wallpaper had guitars and musical notes and microphones as a pattern. There were pictures of the Beatles, and the Moody Blues, and the Tremeloes and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich; centre-spreads from beat magazines Sellotaped on the walls. There were records and a record player in a cupboard unit next to her single bed which was made up to look like a divan, pushed against one wall. There was a whitewood dressing table opposite the bed and next to that a rod and curtain across the corner made a wardrobe. A drawer of the dressing table was open and a stocking was hanging out. I went into Frank’s room. It used to be Mam and Dad’s. There was a pre-war bed and a prewar tallboy and a pre-war wardrobe and patterned lino on the floor. Everything was very tidy. On the mantelpiece was a framed photograph of me and Frank as lads in our best suits outside the Salvation Army. We hadn’t been Salvationists but we used to go on Sunday mornings and sing because we used to enjoy it as a change.

  I sat down on Frank’s bed and it creaked and sagged. The lino was green and cold. I dropped my cigarette on the floor and put my foot on it. I sat there for quite a time before I went downstairs and got my hold-all and brought it back upstairs with me.

  I began to get ready for bed when I remembered something. I looked round the room and wondered if he’d kept it. Why should he? But then, why should he give it away? I walked over to the wardrobe and opened the door just on the off-chance.

  The stock gleamed beneath the hanging line of Frank’s clothes. I squatted down and reached inside and took hold of it just above the trigger. The barrel clattered against the back of the wardrobe. The sound was hollow and it echoed coldly on the patterned lino. I pulled the gun out of the wardrobe. Where the stock had been, tucked behind a pair of shoes, there was a box of cartridges. I took that out too. I carried the gun and the box over to the bed and sat down again.

  I looked at the gun. Christ, we’d sweated to save up for it. Nearly two years, both of us. No pictures, no football, no fireworks. We’d made a pact: if one of us broke it, the other was to take all the money and spend it on whatever he wanted. I knew Frank wouldn’t break the pact. But I thought I might. And so did he. Somehow, though, I’d stuck to it.

  And then we’d sweated when we’d finally got it. Sweated in case our dad ever found out. He would have broken it in two and made us watch him do it. We used to keep it round Nezzer Eyres’s and pick it up on Sundays when we wanted it. But once we’d collected it we never felt safe until we’d biked at least half a dozen streets away from Jackson Street.

  We used to take turns at carrying it. When it was my turn, I always used to think my time went quicker than when Frank was carrying it. We went all over with it. Back Hill, Sanderson’s Flats, Fallow Fields. But the best place was the river bank. It was a nine-mile bike ride but it was worth it. The river was broad, two miles in parts and the banks were always deserted, and we used to like it best in winter when the wind raced up the estuary under the broad grey sky, and we were all wrapped up, striding along in front of the wind, carrying the gun, popping it off at nothing.

  Those times were the best times I ever had as a lad. Just alone with Frank down on the river. But that was before he’d begun to hate my guts.

  Not that I’d exactly been full of brotherly love for him before I’d left the town.

  He’d been so fucking po-faced about everything. Siding with our dad all the time, although never hardly saying anything. He’d just let me know by the way he’d looked at me. Maybe that’s why I’d hated him sometimes; I could tell how right about me he’d thought he was. Well, he was right. So bloody what? There’d been no need for him to be that way. I’d been the same person after he’d started hating me as before. It was just that he’d got to know a few things. And just because he didn’t see them my way that was it as far as I was concerned. The less said about me and to me the better. He couldn’t see that the dust-up I’d had with our dad was mainly because of the way Frank was towards me.

  But all that was past history. As dead as Frank. Nothing could be done about it now. But there were some things that I’d be able to put straight. Just for the sake of the past history.

  Friday

  I COULD TELL IT was windy out before I could hear the wind. It was the daylight, what bit that was getting through the cracks of the curtains. I knew it was windy because of the kind of daylight it was.

  I rolled onto my back and looked at my watch. It was quarter to eight. I reached out and grabbed a fag and smoked it looking up at the reflected light on the ceiling getting depressed with the greeny brown gloom, getting impatient with myself for not getting up but laying there anyway, just smoking, balancing the packet on my chest for an ashtray.

  Finally I swung out of bed and went into the cold bathroom and got ready for the day. The wind swished about outside beyond the bright frosted glass.

  I went downstairs and switched on the wireless. While Family Choice warmed up I went into the kitchen and found the tea caddy and put the kettle on the gas. I made the tea and began to put my cufflinks in.

  The back door opened and Doreen came in. She was wearing a black coat, a nice looking one, short, and she had something on the Garbo lines on her head. Her pale gold hair was long and some of it was placed so that it fell down in front of her shoulders, between her shoulders and neck, almost on her breasts.

  She looked at me for a minute before shutting the door. After she’d shut it she didn’t move except to take her hat off and put it on the drainer and then just stood there with her hands in her high pockets and feet together looking at the floor. She looked more bad tempered than unhappy.

  I finished doing my cufflinks.

  “Hello, Doreen,” I said.

  “ ’Lo,” she said.

  “How are you feeling?” I said.

  “How do you think?”

  I began to pour out the tea.

  “I’m very sorry about your dad,” I said. She didn’t say anything. I offered her a cup of tea but she turned away.

  “Enjoying the music, are you?” she said.

  “The house seemed cold,” I said. “Besides …”

  She shrugged and went into the scullery and sat down on Frank’s chair, her hands still in her pockets, her feet still together. I followed her in and sat on the arm of the divan, sipping my tea.

  “I really am sorry, Doreen,” I said. “He was my brother, you know.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said.

  Silence.

  I didn’t want to ask her anything outright before the funeral so I said:

  “I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t believe it. He was always so careful.”

  Silence.

  “I mean, he only drank halves.”

  Silence.

  “And not turning up for work.”

  Two tears began rolling down Doreen’s face.

  “He wasn’t worried about anything, was he? I mean, something on his mind, like, that’d make him careless, through worry, like.”

  Silence. The tears rolled further.

  “Doreen?”

  She whirled up out of the chair.

  “Shut up.” she shouted, the tears coining faster. “Shut up. I can’t bear it.”

  She ran into the kitchen and stopped in front of the sink, head bowed, shoulders heaving, her arms by her side.

  “Can’t bear what, love?” I said standing behind her. “What is it you can’t bear?”

  “Me dad,” she said. “Me dad. He’s bloody dead, isn’t he?” She turned towards me. “Isn’t he?”

  I put my arms up and she fell against me. I pressed her to me and let her get it over with.

  After a while she straightened up and I poured her a fresh cup of tea. This time she took it. I sat down on the red leatherette-topped high stool next to the sink unit and watched her alternately drinking out of and looking into the cup. I wondered if it had all been just because her dad was dead through in the front room or was there something else. I couldn’t really tell. Last time I saw her was eight years ago and then she’d been seven so I didn’t know what she was like. I could guess though.

  She was older than her fifteen natural years. I could have fancied her myself if she hadn’t been who she was. You could tell she knew what was what. It’s all in the eyes. I wondered if Frank had known she was no virgin. Probably, but he’d never have let on to himself. And if anything had been worrying him he wouldn’t have let on to her either. That was the way Frank was. So there was no reason why she should know anything unless she’d seen something or heard something that Frank didn’t know she heard. If she had I’d find out, but not today.

  I got off the stool and went into the scullery and turned the wireless off. It was half past eight. Outside, a milk trolley was whirring by. I went back into the kitchen.

  “Would you like a fag?” I said.

  She nodded and put the cup down. I lit us up. She didn’t smoke too badly even though she was conscious of it. After a few drags, I said:

  “What do you intend doing now?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Well, you won’t be staying here, will you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Look,” I said, “I know you don’t know me very well and what you do know you don’t like, but I’m going to suggest something to you. You probably won’t be very keen on the idea, but I want you to think about it over the next few days: I’m off to South Africa next week. With a woman I may or may not end up marrying. We’re flying on Wednesday. I’ve got three tickets. Why don’t you come with us?”

  She looked at me. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

  “Think about it. I’d like you to come. If only to square certain things with your dad.”

  “Charming,” she said. “You make me feel real wanted.”

  “I’ll be here all over the weekend,” I said. “So you’ve time to think about it.”

  “No thanks.”

  She carried on looking at me. I looked at my watch.

  “They’ll be here at quarter to,” I said. “Do you want five minutes with him before they come?”

  She looked away. She was her fifteen years again.

  “No.”

  “He’d want it,” I said.

  She sobbed, once.

  “Go on,” I said. “You’ve just time.”

  She put her cigarette down on her saucer and went through. Five minutes later she came out. Her face was wet and her eyes were red.

  I put my jacket on and went into the front room. I stood next to the casket. The face looked up at the ceiling. There was never anything so still as that face.

  I heard a motor outside and then there was a knock at the door.

  “Ta-ra, Frank,” I said.

  I turned away and walked out of the room via the door that led into the hall. I opened the front door. The man in the tall hat was there.

  “Good morning, sir,” he said, in that voice they all have.

  We left the church and got into the car again. Doreen and I got into the back and the Vicar got in next to the driver. We drove along the back streets. At one point an old josser on a bike just as old gave us right of way at a junction and slowly and gravely raised his hat.

  After a bit the Vicar leant his arm on the back of his seat and looking around him said:

  “You’ll see some changes in the town since you’ve been away, Mr. Carter.”

  “A few,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Things are changing. But not quickly enough to my mind. One day, though, all this will be gone. And then, thank heaven, people will have somewhere decent to bring up their children. Somewhere they’ll want to go home to instead of the street.”

  I said: “Always assuming what they replace it with will be better.”

  “Oh,” he said, “but it must be. It’s bound to be.”

  “Is it?” I said.

  I looked at him. He had sandy hair and glasses and a yellow face. It was impossible to tell how old he was.

  We rolled down the hill to the cemetery. The day was bright and windy and low grey fluffy clouds raced across the thin sun.

  At the graveside apart from the Vicar and the digger and the undertaker’s men there was me and Doreen and two blokes who’d been waiting near where the coffin had been unloaded. One of them was about fifty, the other about twenty-two or -three. They looked like barmen and no mistake. They were neatest around the neck, with their clean white collars and neat knots, but the smartness tapered off the lower down their bodies you got and they were scruffiest round their feet. They stood there with their heads bowed and their hands clasped in front of them, a bit behind me and Doreen.

  I held her hand while the Vicar said the words. The grave-digger was unshaven and wore a big ex-army greatcoat with the collar turned up and all through the Vicar’s spiel he kept looking at Doreen, the dirty old sod.

  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust …”

  I reached down and picked up a handful of earth and gave some to Doreen. The barmen stepped forward and got some as well and we showered the lowering coffin. The barmen stepped back. The older one put his hand to his mouth and coughed and stood to attention and the younger one shot his cuffs.

  The Vicar led us into “Rock of Ages.” Doreen got past the first few words then shook and didn’t sing any more. The grave-digger went to work with his shovel. Wind whistled through my black mohair. A dozen or so rows away two middle-aged women in grey hats paused to watch as they picked their way among the headstones.

  And then that was it.

  I guided Doreen away from the grave. She stumbled as she took one look back at what she didn’t understand. The barmen stepped back to let us by. I nodded to them.

  We got to the cars. I looked towards the gates. A woman with blonde hair wearing a bright green belted coat was standing beyond the railings.

  “Is that Margaret?” I said.

  Doreen nodded.

  I looked across at the woman. She didn’t move. Doreen got in the car still crying.

  “Hang on a minute,” I said. I turned to the barmen who were walking in the direction of the cars, lighting up.

  “Can you wait?” I called.

  They looked at each other. The older one looked at his watch and nodded. I walked over to the gates. Margaret was still there and she didn’t attempt to move. She wasn’t bad looking. The only thing being that she looked exactly what she was: a singing room belle.

  “I thought you said you weren’t coming,” I said.

  “I changed me mind,” she said.

  There was a trace of a London accent on top of her broad Northern.

  “I’m glad,” I said. “I want to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  “Doreen,” I lied.

  She looked across to the waiting cars.

  “Did—did everything go off all right?” she said.

  “Fine. The arrangements were fine. Thanks.”

  Her eyes were just as wet as those sort of eyes will ever be.

  “I want to talk to you,” I said again.

  She carried on looking at the cars.

 

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