After another week, Sam was fit to be tied. He was so restless in his own skin that there were moments when Ellen thought he was battling with the delayed emergence of some virulent disease caught in Burma. His temper was foul and the small downstairs room became a bear pit. Whatever Ellen and Joe said or did seemed to provoke him. He pushed away their most innocent overtures as if they had gone for his throat. Sam knew that he was behaving unfairly and badly and yet he was gripped by what he could neither overcome nor resist. He tried to stay out as much as he could but the weather was growing daily more dour and just too cold while pubs, with their obligation of public conversation, were intolerable.
Joe felt that the anger streaming from his father was directed specifically at him. He scarcely dared move about the confined space, and crept like someone chained in a cell, cowed under the impenetrable burden of what he had done wrong, flinching in anticipation of the blow.
Ellen bore it as long as she could. He had been uncomplaining since giving up his dream of Australia. It must have been hard for him. But Alex’s letter had detonated something he could not control. She watched it and at first she pitied him. In his eyes she saw the dumb torment of a beaten dog and this was not her Sam and yet it was.
Go then, she thought she should say, just go, as you wanted to. We held you back. I thought it was me at first, more likely it was Joe. He made you turn. So, go.
‘Why don’t you go?’
It was late. He had been sleeping less, going to bed later. This night she had decided to stay up with him. He was eating less, too, and in the gas-light he looked gaunt, pale skin tight on the cheekbones, lines chiselled down to the mouth, the eyes when he looked up from his dream in the fire feverish with questions he could neither ask nor answer.
‘We could save up again,’ she said.
He shook his head, to dismiss her talk. She was being loving and helpful and yet she was just stirring her finger in the open sore. He could bear no reference to himself.
lt’s no good,’ he said, eventually, bent forward in the chair, crouched in front of the embers as if yearning for a last lick of warmth.
She had not seen him so low.
He took a bus to Carlisle after the Saturday morning shift and made for the Tullie House library.
He remembered that Alex had told him about schemes for recruiting teachers. One of the librarians brought him the 1944 pamphlet. He took it into the Reading Room inhabited by five old men - all wearing cloth caps and buttoned overcoats and scarves and one wearing gloves, all validated by their newspapers.
There was a slight but undeniable lift of hope. He had once confessed to Alex that his ambition would have been to teach in a village school, given the opportunity. It had long been a shy dream, only the once confessed, but it was a true ambition.
The pamphlet opened with the list of 'Information to be obtained regarding candidates: a. School or schools attended with dates and examinations passed.’
From that opening sentence there arose immediate obstacles. Examinations passed? Two: one for the grammar school, another for a public school - a scholarship available only to Church of England village schools in Cumberland and Westmorland. His father had stamped out both. No money for uniforms and all the rest. Even when there was help on offer for one of the scholarships, he was adamant. There would be a catch in it and, besides, Sam was the eldest, the sooner he got out working the more help he would be. But those were not the examinations these people wanted. They wanted Higher certificates and college degrees. He knew that and he had always known it.
‘e. Information as to teaching work undertaken in a civil capacity either professionally or voluntarily, or any other activity with young people.’
Leading a section in the Forgotten Army? An activity with young people?
There seemed a second chance in the next part.
'In respect of candidates who are or have been in one of the Services during the War.’
Particulars of service - information about aptitude - that should be OK. But the ‘do not walk on the grass’ sign came up again.
‘i. Particulars of any course of education followed while in the Services with, if possible, reports on the candidate’s work.
‘j. Information about any work carried out while in the Services as an Instructor or Teacher.’
Nevertheless he read on until he hit the buffers. As he had anticipated.
‘We therefore recommend that the following should be accepted for interview.
‘a. Candidates who have passed an examination hitherto recognised for admission to a Training College.
‘b. Other candidates whose records as a whole furnish evidence of suitability, e.g. continued education, work as a leader or instructor in the forces or in civil life
Would corporal in the Border Regiment in Burma be counted as ‘work of a leader’?
He read the whole pamphlet so that he could always tell himself that he had done so.
There was nothing in it for him.
He sat back and took out a cigarette, struck a match.
‘No smoking allowed.’
One of the old men. He looked frightened. As if it were he who would be kicked out.
Sam returned the pamphlet, left the library and lit up on Castle Street. The castle itself looked every bit as a castle should, Sam thought, under the lowering dark grey sky, and his mind flicked back to the day of the reunion. It brought a smile to his face. How many of them had been arrested afterwards for disorderly behaviour? Just a bit of fun. Twenty shillings fine! A badge of honour, Alex had said, although he himself had been out of it.
After the reunion they had walked back past the cathedral as he was doing now and Alex had gone in to look at some feature, though which one Sam had forgotten. Staring about him, checking that no one from Wigton was there to report back, he bent his head and turned into the close and went into the cathedral for the first time in his life.
It was a place full of greatness, he thought, but his affliction was that he did not have the means to discern why. He wandered around, tentatively, not knowing the worth or history of what he was looking at - he had not noticed the little table of guidebooks tucked behind the door. He wondered what Alex had wanted to see. The ceiling? That was magnificent, and he came across a mirror, half-way up the central aisle: when you looked in it you could see a close-up of the detailed ceiling work. The big window was probably a talking point, he thought, but it looked flat in the dull winter light. Alex would have explained it. He liked the choir stalls and when he sneaked close to them he saw the goblin and demon carving underneath the raised seats and admired that carving and the zest of it more than anything else in the cathedral.
He was soon out. His visit had lasted no more than a few minutes. He felt that he had been dipped in something that ought to have done him good and refined him - but he had not been able to understand enough of it to feel that he had been altered as he ought to have been.
He walked through the Lanes to the bus station. The Lanes reminded him of Water Street. He had become fond of what its detractors called ‘the gutter of Wigton’, because of the excrement left by the cattle and sheep and horses driven down the street from the auction to the railway station, but carrying another unmistakable meaning …
It was a little village to itself, Water Street, shops and skills to call on, tinkers at one end - and squatters now - the fine Congregational church at the other end. Carlisle’s Lanes had the same kick about them. He felt more uplifted after walking through that ancient, rundown, notorious common crotch of Carlisle than he had in its crown, the cathedral. The absence of awe was a bonus for Sam. He began to relax.
Annie was on the bus and Sam sat beside her. She would have been on her weekly visit to see Jackie in Garlands, the mental hospital a few miles the other side of Carlisle - two bus journeys for Annie and a weekly challenge to her resources that she never failed to meet. She nodded but wanted a moment or two more in her own company. He lit up and waited. There was not only Jackie to worry her: the three boys were growing wilder without their father and though Sam kept a fairly close eye on Speed and would go out of his way for the other two, Alistair, the eldest, had started to get himself into serious trouble. ‘Just once more and it’s Borstal,’ Annie had told him the previous week when he had gone to see her in her damp semi-basement ruin, the barest accommodation. There was little doubt that Alistair would ‘disturb the peace’ just once more. A big-boned fifteen-year-old, he was angry at all the world. Sam, when talking him down the once or twice he had been opportunely on hand, had picked up the indiscriminate and terrible fury that was just as likely to turn on Sam himself. It would not be constrained.
And Jackie?
‘He’s looking better, I’ll give them that. He gets better feed than I could manage.’
The bus was taking them out of the city now, on the winding road between the fields that led the eleven miles to Wigton. Annie looked out of the window, and though the bus was almost empty, she spoke softly. ‘He wants to come out, Sam. He keeps saying he wants to come out and I ask the nurse but she says it’s too early.’ She lowered her voice further. 'It breaks my heart, though, Sam, him asking me to get him out and when there’s nothing you can do where are you?’
Her grief was reined-in but Sam knew her well and it got to him. He never failed to be impressed by Annie. With her plainest of looks, squat figure, lank hair held with a cheap clip, broad, tired, unmade-up face, borrowed coat, socks, and legs blue with cold, she was forever ignored and overlooked and that had been her lot. But she tried so hard to keep things together. Enduring. Suddenly Sam remembered Ian, his close friend in the war, who had sacrificed his own life for the sake of others including Sam himself. When he had told lan’s father of the true circumstances of lan’s violent, drawn-out, agonising death, the older man had been shaken but stood firm. Let it make its wound in him but he would endure it.
When they reached Wigton it was dark and he walked her up the street, quite busy despite the razoring east wind. At the top of the steps leading down to her house he said, ‘Wait a minute, Annie.’
He had manoeuvred a pound note out of his wallet while on the bus.
‘For something for Jackie.’
‘No, Sam. You’re always giving us.’
‘And the boys.’
She looked at him and tightened her lips until they all but disappeared. He put the note in her hand.
‘Believe me,’ he said, hoping his earnestness would tell of his admiration for her stoicism, ‘believe me, Annie, you’ve done me a favour today. Never mind how.’
Her expression was her thanks and she went down the steep steps slowly.
When Sam opened the door of his own house he saw that both Ellen and Joe cringed and fell silent. He had seen that on previous days and resented it. It had further twisted and inflamed him. He had regretted it but the regret had been overwhelmed by the lava of anger erupting inside him.
Now the regret predominated. He felt weak with it. How could he make them react like that? Cringe, be so much less than themselves, withdraw? What did you say to redeem that? The greetings were stiff and subdued. Joe went back to his comic. The boxing gloves were behind him on the chair. Sam noticed this with relief. They were still in favour.
‘I’ll make some tea.’
‘I’ve been to Carlisle.’
‘See anybody?’
‘No. Yes. Annie. On the way back,’
‘She has her work cut out.’
‘I’ve got a lot of time for Annie,’ said Sam, over-fiercely but with a warmth that Ellen noted. She looked at him again. Perhaps he was beginning to come out of himself.
‘Your sister came. She brought some scones.’
‘Any news?’
‘Not much. I think Ruth would like to move into Wigton but your dad seems stuck in that cottage. She said that Miss Jennings is having a very bad do with bronchitis.’
‘I suppose Ruth’s been enrolled to look after her on top of everything else.’
‘She didn’t complain.’
So it went. Picking their way very carefully. Putting their story together again through short familiar sentences. He still felt uncertain.
‘Six times eight,’ Sam shot at Joe, knowing how the boy liked this.
‘Forty-eight.’
‘Nine times nine.’
Again Joe heard the regular morning chant of tables in his head and skimmed down to ‘Eighty-one.’ A few more and then Joe said to Ellen, ‘You set them, see who wins.’
‘Eleven times seven.’
‘Seventy-seven,’ said Joe.
‘Nine times eight.’
‘Seventy-two.’ Joe looked triumphantly at his father. ‘Two-nil’ Sam won the next two.
‘First to five,’ said Ellen.
When Joe had won, Sam said to Ellen, ‘Do you think that he’ll make a teacher?’
'Funny,’ Ellen replied. ‘Miss Moffat said something on those lines when I met her in the street the other day.’
‘Miss Moffat, eh?’ Sam nodded. ‘They’re all still there, aren’t they?’
Not only Miss Moffat, but Miss Ivinson, Miss Bell, Miss Steele, Miss Bennet, Miss Täte, a long-serving regiment of teachers -spinsters of the parish, admired, devoted, in their own way uncounted casualties of the First World War.
‘I still want to be a boxer.’ Joe, so soon charmed by his father’s warmth, presented a known pleaser.
‘He’s coming on,’ Sam said, weightily, ‘there’s no doubt he’s coming on with the gloves.’
‘What’s the capital of America?’ Joe asked, cockily hoping to catch out his mother.
‘Washington,’ said Ellen. ‘We were going round to the baths for the last hour.’
‘It’s freezing out there.’
‘We’ll wrap up. Won’t we, Joe?’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Sam. ‘I haven’t had a swim for months.’
'It’ll probably be empty,’ said Ellen, concealing her warmth of reaction. ‘Just the three of us.’
‘I’ll race you,’ said Joe. ‘I can do a breadth now. But I should have a start.’
Sam wanted to pluck him from the ground and hug him but he held back and felt the weaker for it.