Arthur
It feels like ages since I knocked. Long enough. I put my face up against the glass in the front door. There’s no movement inside. No sign of May. All I can smell is the roses. The bushes all staggered and spaced in the border around the lawn. Not the wild kind that used to grow in the hedges by the canal. Nothing like the ones Mum used to pick rosehips off in the autumn. These buggers have been pruned and coddled to within an inch of their life. The branches all stumpy where they’ve been cut back. More thorns than flowers. I check the bar of chocolate in my pocket. Move it across to the shady side so it doesn’t melt. Pull my jacket down, make sure my shirt is tucked in right. Knock again. I risk a postman’s special. Loud enough to wake the dead. Or, at the very least, Mrs Pye on Bird Street who’s deaf in one ear and drinks so much she doesn’t surface till the middle of the afternoon. And then I see her – May – coming to the door. The shape of her warped through the bubbled glass. Ask and ye shall receive, Mum used to say whenever we had a bit of good luck, taking the piss in her pretend posh voice, knock and it shall be opened unto you.
‘What are you doing here?’ she says opening the door just enough to hiss at me through the gap. Her eyebrows are all creased up. I want to laugh, or even better – kiss her and give the neighbours something to talk about. I hold up the chocolate like it’s an official pass.
‘I got sick of waiting for an invitation.’
She lets out a big breath. ‘I told you it wasn’t the right time, Arthur. I told you.’
‘Patience isn’t my strong suit.’
‘Who’s that?’ The voice comes from the back of the house, ‘who’s at the door?’
‘You’ve gone and done it now.’ She throws her hands up and opens the door wider. I step into the porch. The smell of furniture polish is so strong I have to hold my nose to stop it twitching.
‘It’s just a friend,’ May answers, and her voice is all high and polite, ‘I’ve asked him in for tea.’
There’s no reply. Just the sound of the clock ticking in the hall. The staircase winding up. The flowers on the carpet all faded and threadbare. If we were alone I’d get her to give me a tour. Just the thought of it. On our own upstairs.
‘Friends now is it?’ I lean in. My lips right against her neck.
She turns and puts a hand against my chest to push me back. Snatches the chocolate out of my hand, points to the front room.
‘Stop it, Arthur. Just wait in there, will you?’
I listen out for their voices but there’s nothing. I’m starting to think this whole thing might be a bit of a cock up. I should’ve waited for her to be ready, to let me take her for a drive again or catch an early film in town. It’s all Jimmy’s fault. Him all gung-ho – puffed up and proud of his new little family.
‘If you’re sure about her don’t drag your feet,’ he said, ‘it’s not as if either of you are getting any younger.’
Christine passed him the baby then and Jimmy propped him into the crook of his arm. Little Billy’s eyes started to droop, his lips still warm and milky. All three of them the picture of bloody contentment.
I whistle a little tune. Run my finger over the books in the alcove. Shakespeare and Wordsworth, the Book of Common Prayer. A shelf full of cricket almanacs and a photo of her father standing outside the police station and clutching his hat. I lean in to get a better look. The photograph is all creased and ripped at the edges. Like someone screwed it up by mistake and then tried to flatten it back down. There’s one of May as a baby too. Pristine. She’s laid out on a lacy blanket. Smothered in frills. I try to find her in it, her face as it is now. In the photo she’s bald as a coot. But her expression’s the same. All deep and serious. I’ll tease her about it some time. But not today. I’m on thin enough ice as it is.
There isn’t a speck of dust anywhere but it still feels closed and unlived in – a museum piece just for show. Mum could always spot them a mile off, the people with money, the ones who had proper cabinets for the good china and special rooms saved just for visitors. On Blackpool prom they’d be counting out the pennies before going in the shops, the children looking miserable because they had to choose between an ice cream and a go on the donkeys. No wonder they never run out, Mum said once, it’s cause they never bloody spend any of it.
I look out of the big bay window onto the roses and the village green. There are children playing games on the grass, a little boy in shorts running in and out of the trees to try and get away. Then the voices from the hallway. The clink of teacups. I sit down on a perfectly plumped cushion and wait.
‘Tea?’ May offers, she pulls a table out from a little nest of them by the window and puts the tray on it.
‘That’d be lovely.’
Her mouth is tight, the smile forced. I’ll be in for it later. Her mother sits down in the armchair in the corner and I have to stop myself from staring. She’s nothing like I imagined. Small and pale and absolutely ordinary. She’s wearing a paisley dress, a knitted cardigan, stockings that are far too dark for her skin. She looks frail and harmless.
‘This is Arthur, Mum. I met him at the post office when he was covering the village round.’
‘Nice to meet you, Mrs Matthews.’
‘I remember you from the field day,’ she says glancing over, ‘you visited the tea tent. May never mentioned you’d formed an acquaintance.’ She holds out her cup, ‘a touch more milk in mine please.’
May’s cheeks are all flushed. When she pours her hand is unsteady.
‘We don’t usually have visitors on Sundays,’ her mother says and her eyes settle somewhere on the wall just behind me as if she’s talking to my shadow. It makes me wonder about her eyesight. I glance over to May but she’s still messing with the tea things. It makes me wonder if there’s something wrong with my face.
‘We stay at church till one, setting up for the evening service. If you’d come any earlier you’d’ve had a wasted trip.’
‘You’ll have to excuse me for dropping in like this Mrs Matthews,’ my voice comes out all strangled and clogged, I clear my throat and swallow a couple of times, ‘I became a godfather today, you see.’
The tiniest of nods.
‘The christening was in town but my friend Jimmy – he’s the father – well he grew up out here, on a farm just down the road. There’s a get-together afterwards at the old family place. Just a little dinner. I couldn’t pass by without saying hello.’
‘Catholic?’ she says and for a minute I can’t think how to answer. I look at May but her face is unreadable.
‘Church of England,’ I say, although it’s not as if I’d really know the difference.
She nods. I’ve said the right thing. ‘Was it a nice service?’
‘Lovely,’ I take some shortbread from the tray and try to think of a way to keep the conversation going, ‘the hymns were… particularly rousing.’
May smiles. Just a little one. It’s gone so quickly I can’t really be sure. I hold the saucer under my chin to catch the crumbs. Lick the sugar off my lips. The silence is painful.
In the church I couldn’t really hear the hymns at all. Not properly. Christine was next to me on the front pew holding little Billy. He wriggled and squawked through the whole service, drowning everything out. Jimmy tried to stroke his cheek but there was nothing doing. When we stood up by the font it was worse. His face was bright red. Little legs kicking at the vicar. I nodded in all the right places. I made promises. There was something about Satan, about helping to cast out the devil. And when the vicar dripped the water on his forehead he was quiet for a blessed minute. He went still, his eyes wide in shock. He took a big breath and closed his eyes and the scream sounded worse than ever after the silence. All the saints in the stained glass windows covering their ears. We laughed when the final prayer was over. The relief. I slapped Jimmy on the back.
‘Nothing wrong with his lungs,’ the vicar said, filing out behind us down the aisle.
‘Your father,’ May’s mother says out of the blue, ‘what did he do in the war?’
I put my cup down on the table. ‘Never had a chance to do anything,’ I say, ‘he died when I was a baby.’
‘And was he a redhead too?’
I put my hand up to my hair, ‘my mother always liked to call it auburn.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with red hair,’ she says, ‘Nothing whatsoever. May’s father had hair the colour of a fox’s tail. It was so bright they used to say the criminals would see him coming in the dark. Not that that there was ever much call for chasing criminals round here.’ She points over to his photo. ‘Killed in forty-two. He was a stretcher-bearer. May will have told you?’
I nod but it’s all news to me. She’s never mentioned that he served in the war. Never talked about him much at all now I come to think of it. I look at her but she won’t meet my eye. I always thought the police was a reserved occupation.
‘Threw himself across an injured man when a shell came down. Greater love hath no man. Do you know where that’s from?’
I take a stab, ‘the Bible?’
‘John chapter five, verse thirteen. Greater love hath no man but this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. That’s the sort of thing that’ll get you straight in through the gates no matter what went on before.’
I look at May again. The rash on her neck. Rising up. The music will be starting at Jim’s place by now. All the bottles of beer and cider ready for the real head wetting to begin. I want to grab her hand and run to the car. Drive away and sod the consequences. Now her Mum’s got going on this topic I have a feeling there won’t be any stopping her.
‘Here–’ she reaches into the pocket of her cardigan and brings out a crumpled envelope. She hands it to me. A letter.
‘I keep it on me always. It’s from a soldier from the same company who witnessed it all.’
The paper is yellow and starting to go brittle. I open it because I have to, because she’s watching me. So many years of being warned off reading other people’s post. I can’t do any more than scan through. He was a good man, it says, he was a man who always thought of others before himself. It’s all too private.
‘He was very brave,’ I say because I can’t think of anything else. I hand it back to her and wonder how on earth I’m supposed to change the subject. There’s no polite way to do it, but time is running out.
‘I was wondering, Mrs Matthews, if you could spare May for a couple of hours this evening. She could join the celebrations. It’s just a quiet dinner, but my friends would love to meet her.’
May squeezes my hand and I can’t tell whether it’s excitement or a warning.
‘Oh!’ her mother says and bends forward clutching her stomach, the cup and saucer starting to slide off her knee. ‘Oh!’
May stands up and rushes over. She catches the cup and hands it to me.
‘What’s the matter?’
She shakes her head at me. ‘It’s ok, Mum,’ she says and rubs her back, ‘just breathe as deeply as you can.’
She’s groaning and rocking now. The sound is like nothing else.
‘What can I do?’
‘Nothing,’ May says, ‘you’d better go.’
‘I could help you get her upstairs.’
‘Go, Arthur.’
She has that look on her face – as if it’s all my fault, as if I should’ve known better.
In the farmhouse there’s nothing but noise and dust. Muddy boots propped in the corner, the smell of mince and onions mixed up with the sour air from outside. I haven’t seen half these people in yonks. Not since Mum died and Jimmy started bringing me back for lunch on a Sunday.
‘What’s up with you?’ he says handing me a beer, the baby asleep somehow in all this noise, sprawled against his shoulder.
Old Jim is hovering behind him, already half-pissed. ‘He’s in love, son that’s what,’ he gives me a look, as though he’s daring me to say otherwise, ‘being dangled on a string by a famous local jezebel.’ He laughs then and it all gets mixed up with coughing, the rasping, phlegmy sound of it, as though he’ll spew his guts up any minute.
‘Alright Dad,’ Jimmy says, thumping his back, ‘it’s not that funny. It’s not a joke worth dying over. Bugger off over there and get Aunty Betty another drink will you?’
Old Jim stumbles across the room and Jimmy shakes his head at me, ‘some things never change.’
‘I think I might have buggered everything up – with May, I mean.’
He jiggles the baby up a bit and little Billy raises his head, stretches his wrinkled neck like a blind tortoise, takes a long, shuddering breath and settles back into Jimmy’s shoulder.
‘No,’ he says, ‘you’re taking it too hard, Arthur. You’re right to take matters in hand. Mum says Mrs Matthews is a right piece of work. Always has been. Thought she was Queen of the village until all that funny business–’ He looks uncomfortable. Like he’s said more than he planned to.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ah, nothing. Just village talk that’s all. Mum’s been in my ear ever since she found out you were sweet on the lass.’
‘Well you have to tell me now.’
He shrugs and moves in closer. ‘Hasn’t May ever mentioned it, her dad and that?’
‘What about him?’
‘It’s before my time, but I’ve heard things. People round here were surprised they even let him go off to war. He went to pieces. All those years opening village fetes, and dealing with the odd burglary. Then there was that little boy who drowned. Right tragic it was and he just couldn’t handle it. They had to bring in the coppers from across town to sort it out.’
‘What little boy?’
‘Some farm lad from across the way. Funny little thing. Not quite right in the head. Wandered off one day and they found him drowned in a ditch, or was it a slurry pit?’ he puts his free hand over Billy’s head to shield him, ‘doesn’t even bear thinking about either way.’ He opens his mouth to say something else and then thinks better of it.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Go on, Jimmy. You may as well get it all out.’
He shrugs. ‘There was talk, that’s all. Some people thought there was a bit more to it. The boy’s mother was a sweet, pretty little thing. Her husband always half-cooked. A bit of a brute. Kept her in poverty. People didn’t see her for months at a time. And the little boy had a look about him, if you see what I mean. They say it was hard to see any of the father in him at all.’
I light a cigarette and stand looking out towards the fields, the line of fells looming dark against the sky. The sun is going down now. The first signs of autumn in the air. I can never get used to the emptiness. I don’t quite know what to do with myself. If I could get May out of here and into town things would be better. All the voices from inside. Jimmy’s sister going for it, playing Daisy, Daisy on the old honky-tonk. I don’t feel like singing.
And then she’s next to me. May. She’s here like a bloody dream.
‘Look at you,’ I say like an idiot, ‘you’re all covered in mud.’
Her shoes are caked in it. Her stockings spotted right up to the hemline.
‘I got a bit lost in the fields.’
‘What are you doing walking around here in the dark?’
‘I wanted some fresh air. And it was such a nice evening. I walked and walked and then I was by the crossroads. I thought I may as well pop along and see you.’
I take a breath. I want to pinch myself. Her face is all flushed. The air has done her good. She doesn’t seem angry at all.
‘Thought you’d be glad to see the back of me after today.’ I drop the cig and crush it into the dirt.
She shakes her head and leans against the wall. Her shoulder against my shoulder.
‘Is your mum any better?’
‘She’s asleep anyway.’
‘What was it?’
‘Gallbladder. She doesn’t like doctors. It comes on suddenly sometimes.’
‘Right.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she says and reaches up to touch my face. She pauses for a minute and I just wait. Drinking her in. Then she’s kissing me. Really kissing me. Not like the other times, not pushing me away or taking my hand off her back. This time she’s pulling me closer, until there’s no space between us. Her nose against mine, her body pushing me back against the wall, her hands in my hair. I can’t think. My hands are everywhere. I can’t get enough. She pulls away and we’re both breathing like we’ve done the hundred-yard dash. The craggy stone digging into the back of my head. I laugh. The surprise of it. In the house they’re singing Lassie from Lancashire and May starts humming along. She can’t hold a tune to save her life.
‘You should never have come round in the first place,’ she says.
‘Well, I’m bloody glad I did now.’ I reach for her.
She laughs. ‘Arthur,’ she says.
‘Why don’t you come in for a minute and say hello?’
‘Look at me, I’m a right state.’
‘They won’t care.’
‘I have to get back. Mum doesn’t know I’m here.’
I want to ask her about her dad and the boy but her face is so peaceful right now. I want to ask her to run away with me and never come back but this isn’t the time for it. In years to come I don’t want the memory to be poisoned by the smell of cow shit.
‘Come on, I’ll walk you home.’
‘Alright.’
We miss the last chorus of the song running round the corner of the house, jumping over the puddles in the farmyard. I help her up, over the gate and into the lane. The hedges are all overgrown, big long branches waving around above us in the dark. She takes my hand and I don’t care about her mother or her father. I don’t care about a single thing before this moment. Everything else is just history.