Ellen was so happy she did not know what to do with herself. The room had never felt so good. She tidied it unnecessarily yet again. She checked the time, needlessly rearranged the plates on the table, and calculated precisely where Sam would be on his walk up from the factory - past Harry Moore’s garage by now, surely, and the Blue Bell, across to Johnston’s the shoe shop, into Water Street. He opened the door only a few moments before her mind had mapped him home.
She smiled as she had rarely smiled over the past months. For Ellen, any wholly unguarded expression of the deepest feeling was laying yourself too open. Even alone with Sam she could feel under examination as she had so often felt since the desertion of her father and the death of her mother when she was still a child. She had been schooled to feel grateful, bred into a repressed world, and learned for herself that the value of restraint was high. Ellen aimed at anonymity and although her prettiness, her energy and the bubbling quiet confidence pulled hard against it, anonymity was the goal, anonymity was a prized virtue and she thought she had achieved it.
Yet so much about her provoked the attention she sought to evade. Had she realised how highly she was thought of by so many in the town that meant so much to her - how idealised by the girls she taught the dancing for the carnivals and by the older generation whose family histories she knew in flattering detail - she would have concluded that she must unknowingly have become a show-off.
Showing-off was unforgivable. Show-offs should not be given the time of day. Show-offs got above themselves and who had the right to do that? Showing-off was so bad it made you blush for those who did it. In the confused constrictions of her childhood this had bitten deep, bitten into her character and bitten into her behaviour, seized the heart of her feelings and held them suffocatingly tight however often and deeply she would long to be free.
But today, in the afternoon room already darkening under the gathering clouds of the long promised snow that had been laying siege to the rest of the country and now threatened to capture the last redoubt of the white-free North-west, on this gloomy dull winter day, she was as open as a wild rose in high summer. Her gaiety - expressed in every move she made - infected Sam instantly. He had to smile. His spirits were lifted by the lightness, the zest, the unconcealed happiness that poured out of her.
He did not ask. Biding your time for good news was a nice rare pleasure. She would tell him when she was ready. But for a few minutes she was truly lost for words. So with Ellen bursting to talk, it was Sam who chatted away, factory talk, town talk, who was doing what, like the river, always the same, always different.
How easy he can be, Ellen thought, how easy he is. Not much of a tea after a day’s hard physical work. Powdered eggs. Two small slices of poor bacon; fried bread to make up for it - always more or less like this, never a complaint. Often as not he would thank her and declare how good it was even though she knew it was average fare. She did not appreciate him enough, she knew that, in this full alertness, this shock of happiness.
‘Sam,’ she began, but so dry-throated. She sipped the strong tea. ‘I don’t know how to start.’ She appealed for help but what could he say? Silence was his best contribution.
It’s all a bit sudden.’ She shook her head, dispelling the dizziness that had confused it. ‘Colin’s down with Leonard and Grace. He just turned up. This morning. He just announced himself. Colin,’ she said, and she drew in a full breath, ‘is my half-brother.’
There was triumph in her voice, there was the tremble of loss, there was unsustainable excitement.
Sam waited. So this radiance, this burnished Ellen, was not on his account, not connected to him in any way at all. He realised that he had taken it as a personal tribute and rued his mistake, which was unfair on Ellen and so he waited for more with a determined air of enthusiasm. How stupid of him to have broken the ancient rule - not counting your chickens.
Ellen was fighting hard.
‘Dad,’ she began, and stumbled on the word but held herself and even repeated it to show resolution. She could not say ‘Daddy’ as Joe did. She could not say ‘Father’ like the Snaith sisters. ‘Dad, when he went away, just after I was born, met somebody else. Then he got married.’ She paused. ‘After Mam died, but Colin was born before that.’ She flushed at the implication but it was out now. ‘He died, Dad, just over a year ago Colin said, and then Colin’s mother went south with somebody else and Colin said Dad had always wanted him to meet up with Grace and Leonard - they’re his aunty and uncle as well as mine - and so he’s come up for a visit.’
There was something passionate and child-like in this account - in the gestures as well as the words - that irked Sam. It was not true to her real character, he thought. It was new.
He took a grip on himself. She had every right.
‘What do you make of him?’
Ellen shook her head in slow motion. It was the question that had saturated her thoughts over the last few hours.
'I want you to judge for yourself,’ she said, eventually. ‘I want to know what you think about him.’
‘We’ll go down now. Joe’ll find us,’ he said.
‘Yes.’ On her feet, darting to scoop away the plates and wash them and wipe down and tidy and get herself ready and all with that sure light rapidity which elated him. ‘Joe’ll be going there anyway,’ she said, ‘for his piano practice.’
She looked moon-struck, Sam thought, altogether out of herself.
Grace sat in her usual chair in the bay window inside the large drawing room made solid by the bulky furniture she had inherited from Leonard’s parents. With the upswept splendour of her bodkin-fixed helmet of hair and the vast bosom secured under an unyielding black blouse, she was a true descendant of Queen Victoria, whose public attitudes she still stood by, almost fifty years on. This was how Sam had first seen her, this was how she liked to be seen and, as a girl, Ellen had been in no doubt that her scurrying and helping were executed in homage to this majesty. To be exploited by Grace was to be brought into civilisation. Sam had resented Grace’s grip on Ellen. After Ellen herself had rebelled against her overseer by marrying such a common man as himself, he had tested Grace to agitation by his refusal to moderate what he knew she despised as his coarse manners. She had noted that the war had improved him, but the old battle lines had not been eroded. Leonard, whose inheritance had hoisted his wife to the imperial state, had become Sam’s subversive ally, but their defiance of the crown took place well away from home, in snug bars and Henry Allen’s betting shop and now and then in a billiard room. Within her realm, Grace, whom Ellen still dared call nothing but Aunty Grace in her presence, within the gleaming heavy furniture of her domain, Grace was sovereign.
But a troubled one, Sam thought, as he entered the room, and it was the first thing he noticed. Everything outward was as it had ever been. But Grace was disturbed. Not with the high giddy confused love and loss and excitement of Ellen. Darker anxieties possessed her, although, Sam noted admiringly, she was putting a good face on it.
‘Colin,’ said Ellen with shy pride, ‘this is Sam.’
Sam put his best foot forward and shook hands and offered a cigarette, accepted, took one himself, sat in the chair next to the younger man - and contrived to fall silent while Colin and Grace and Ellen steered a precipitous course as if just learning to ride the new bicycle of conversation.
Ellen, it was painful to see, was mesmerised by him. It was as if he were conducting her, so minutely and adhesively did she follow every nuance. When Colin said something even remotely clever or witty, she appreciated him disproportionately, Sam thought: when he listened to Grace, she listened with him. When he looked a little worried, her brow creased, smiled, she smiled with him, glanced at Sam, she too glanced at Sam, reassured, she was reassured, spoken to, spoke back in a manner that would please, seeing him pleased, was herself pleased. Sam had never seen her like this. Not anything like this.
Grace’s reaction was much more concealed. Sam was not certain he was judging it rightly, but he would have bet on it - Grace was unnerved. He could see that the eruption of Colin, son of her disgraced brother, into a court beyond all reproach could be catastrophic. As if a rebellious subject had marched on her, gained access and, worst of all, claimed legitimate authority. What would Wigton make of her when it knew about him? Sam could have smiled as he intuited that anxiety but he set his face steadily to the attentive.
Sam fought hard to be fair. There was a distinct look of Ellen about the young man, although his face was rather narrower than her heart-shaped face, the skin much poorer, even sallow, the nose a weak little thing, but the eyes, the whole formation and structure of his face around the eyes - these were the clear kinship. His black hair was almost glued to his skull and the quiff perched on top of his forehead looked unstable.
What was it he did not like? The fawning repetition of ‘Aunty Grace’, said in a plangent Lancastrian accent, but said too often, ingratiating and, Sam could see, uncomfortably intimate for its recipient. But that was unfair. The new man had to walk carefully. He had no clue what reception he would get. It paid to be over-polite. Sam made himself accept that Colin could be too easily dismissed for seeking to make a treaty with Grace.
His attitude to Ellen, though, was not as easy to excuse and yet what was the lad doing that was wrong? He seemed too amused at Ellen’s earnest curiosity and too careless of her doting. When she screwed up the courage to ask a question about their father - where he had worked, what he had done with himself, stiff little questions, all of them transparent excuses for the big questions - What was he like? Did he ever refer to, talk about my mother, about me? - he would dole out a meagre portion or say, ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ and laugh, showing his bad teeth, and Ellen, helpless and tormented, would laugh along with him. Still, Sam reasoned, keeping calm, these were early days, allow the lad more rope. He was probably every bit as dislocated as the two women.
Save that he was basking in it. He was like a seal being fed fish. Up he leaped and every time more indulgences would be given. Ellen kept his cup full. Grace had brought out a valuable fruit loaf. The sandwiches were soaked in syrup. His every remark was weighed.
When Sam entered the stumbling conversation, Colin drew himself up in his chair rather as a boy would have stiffened his back as the teacher addressed him. A certain wariness. A certain preening. No, he had not been in the army or anywhere else for his National Service. Weak chest - Ellen looked alarmed. Failed the medical. Tried three times. Failed three times. Trouble holding down a job. Get a start. Do well. In line for early promotion. Chest played up. Out on his ear. What he needed was a job that did not get to his chest and a boss who would give him a real chance.
Sam sympathised. Rotten luck. His attitude softened. Without irony, he offered another cigarette. Accepted. Tucked behind his ear for later.
It was when Joe came in that Sam switched to full alert.
‘This,’ said Ellen, unwrapping the biggest present of all, ‘is your uncle Colin.’
Joe just looked. It would mean no piano practice and that was a relief, although he did not mind the piano. He liked the praise it could bring.
‘Colin.’ The young man leaned forward, arms outstretched. ‘None of this “Uncle”. You just call me Colin.’
Joe looked to Ellen, who did not shake her head. He moved towards the waiting cage of embrace. Calling a grown-up by his first name! And a new uncle! He allowed himself to be hugged, rather winded by it.
‘What a great lad! Here.’ He fished in the pocket of the shiny navy blue suit. ‘This is for you.’ It was a shilling. Again Joe looked to Ellen and again she did not shake her head.
‘Thank you, Uncle … sorry, thank you …’
‘Colin, say Colin.’
‘… Colin.’ Joe stalled for a moment at the strangeness of it.
‘Can you do this?’
Colin winked with his left eye, then his right, then his left eye again and again the right, slow to start and then quickening the pace. Ellen laughed aloud.
Joe could only wink with his right eye.
‘I’ll teach you,’ said Colin. ‘And what about this?’ He stuck out his tongue and touched the tip of his nose with it. Again Ellen laughed, though not so warmly, but Joe was delighted.
‘I’ll have to teach you that an’ all,’ Colin said, when Joe’s best efforts failed. ‘What you going to be, then?’
Joe weighed up the form.
‘A boxer,’ he said, but quietly.
‘Good lad!’ Colin raised his voice and raised his arms in the classic English pose. ‘Straight left - bang, bang! On the nose! That’s the one - bang, bang! I could have been a boxer. This chest.’ He hawked and swallowed. It was not a welcome sound.
He looked around for the applause he had so quickly got used to but the smile of Ellen was not as full and the stillness of Grace was plain disapproval.
‘Daddy told me about the straight left,’ said Joe.
‘Always know your left from your right and right from wrong, that’s what my daddy said to me, Joe.’
‘Did he?’ Ellen’s question was so eager.
‘One of the things. This is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, Joe. Will Freddie Mills ever win a world title?’
‘Yes,’ said Joe, loyal to the British champion.
‘No is the answer.’ Colin reached out, grabbed Joe’s arm and hauled him to within inches so that their faces almost touched. ‘Always respect your mammy and daddy now. Won’t you? I want you to promise.’
Joe attempted to look for support but Colin had him in a grip.
‘Promise,’ he said.
‘Good lad.’ Colin let him go. Joe smiled at his mother as if he had given her a present with the promise and she looked so happy he knew that he had.
‘We’d better be off,’ said Sam.
‘Joe hasn’t done his practice,’ said Grace, swiftly.
‘He plays the piano,’ Ellen explained to Colin, trying to neutralise her tone. ‘Well, he’s starting to.’
‘A musician in the family!’ Colin looked amazed.
‘I can play three scales and two tunes,’ said Joe, flustered with the excitement of it all. The moment the boast left his lips he was aware of the ice blast from Ellen.
‘Give us a listen then.’
With a glance of what he hoped was sufficient apology to his mother - but she would not satisfy him with a forgiving look - he went to the piano and performed the scale of C major with both hands.
‘That’s terrific!’ said Colin. ‘No flannel. Can you do another?’
Sam went out. They would think he had gone to the lavatory. They could think what they wanted. Two more minutes of Colin and he would have hit the ceiling.
In the cobbled yard he leaned against a wall opposite the row of run-down cottages from each of which came a glow of gas-light intimating a luxuriance of cosiness. He took his time over a cigarette and damped down that sudden flare of intense dislike. The man would go soon enough, he reassured himself. A visit was a visit. He would just have to shut his eyes and his ears and block out the effect the man had on Ellen and Joe. Sam shook his head to rid himself of the images of his wife and son, the one clinging admiringly to this worthless man, the other straining himself to please.
He ground the butt into the cobbles with an over-emphatic twist of his heel. He could drag it out no longer.
Only Grace was in the room, in the same seat, forlorn, her subjects all deserted her.
‘Colin wanted a walk up the street,’ she explained.
Sam felt a rare sympathy for her.
‘So what did you make of him, Grace?’ The boldness of tone and question caused no offence. She was deep in the well of her past.
‘He is my nephew,’ she said, separating one word from the other with a pronounced gap that made them sound like a forced confession. ‘He is my only brother’s son. Whatever I make of him.’
‘What did you think of his father?’ It was a question that Sam had wanted to ask in his first weeks with Ellen. Not then. Not since. But now.
‘I thought the world of him.’
Her voice was low and it vibrated with sorrow. Her head was bent and she seemed to be talking more to herself than to Sam. And that proud imperial figure lowered her head.
‘I always understood,’ said Sam, after a pause that indicated she would say no more unprompted, ‘that he was a bit of a black sheep, Grace. Word was you were glad to get rid of him.’
‘He was a black sheep.’ She nodded grim assent. ‘But I would have done anything to stop him running away.’
‘Why did he?’
‘Because he was weak!’ She was abrupt. Her head lifted. ‘He couldn’t face up to the consequences of what he’d done.’
She breathed in deeply and he knew that there was only this opportunity.
‘What had he done?’
She looked square at him again but now the beseeching had faded. Yet there was a sense that having gone this far it was only fair …
‘There was a history to it.’ Grace was regaining her caution. ‘Father was bad with him. And he couldn’t handle drink. There were a couple of scrapes. Leonard managed them but it couldn’t go on. He should never have married her. A pleasant little body, from the Newcastle side, sent over here to live with some aunt up in the hills. She was a very good-looking lass - you couldn’t deny that. And there was something about her - quiet, but she had Ellen’s smile about her. He fell hook, line and sinker, of course, and he could charm the birds off the trees when he wanted to. Leonard thought she would be the making of him because he did adore her at first and there was such a lot that was good in him.’ Her head tilted back, just slightly, as if she were swallowing imminent tears. She looked at Sam as if he were an inquisitor. ‘I’ll tell you no more. Leonard tried his best. But he ran away. A card now and then at Christmas and that was it.’ She looked out of the window but by now her poise was recovered. 'I never even knew he’d passed over until that Colin of his marched in. He’s very like. Very like.’ She paused for a while and by straining Sam heard the music from a wireless in one of the guest rooms - a sound that barely rippled in the silence. Finally she looked directly at Sam, her eyes glazed with unshed tears, and added, ‘But I fear he hasn’t his father’s … good heart. No mind that he was weak.’
The words were murmured and Sam pursued it no further. He stayed on just for a while, as if he were visiting a patient in hospital and wanted to make sure that everything was settled before he left.
The cold outside caught him by the throat and a few flakes of snow twisted and swirled in the bitter wind. He clutched his jacket collar around his neck and bowed his head into the weather.