Soon after Alistair had been sent to Borstal, Speed, at Joe’s urging, went down to Greenacres. A few days earlier Joe and his parents had taken advantage of a fine dry spring evening to go and look over the property.
The first dozen houses were well begun, including theirs. Joe had looked at the piles of sand, the scaffolding and the barrows lying about and saw it as a great playground. Speed had to be introduced to this. He had exaggerated its attractions quite a lot. Speed was bored in minutes. They wandered across the empty distant fields on which people of Wigton would be resettled, taking the great majority out of the bounds of the town in which its inhabitants had been secure for centuries. When they came to the railway line they encountered a gang from Western Bank. They had a big mongrel dog, which was unwearyingly chasing sticks.
At first Joe feared there might be a fight, partly because of Speed’s moods these days. His daddy had muttered something about Speed going through the mill but Joe had not really understood. He did appreciate Speed’s temper, though. But the moment passed and they set about conquering a particularly big and difficult beech tree. Joe was soon stuck about a third the way up. By then, Speed was making for the crow’s nest.
One of the boys had stayed on the ground and threw sticks for the dog, threw one on to the lines even though he could see the train coming around the corner under the little bridge. He yelled, which alerted the other boys but not the dog, which dashed alongside the track and went for its stick, saw the train on him and sank flat, snaked out into a stretch. The boys shouted at the driver and he waved back. He had not seen the dog. When the train had gone past, the dog stood up, bit on to the stick and trotted back with it.
‘I could do that,’ Speed said, and saw that they doubted him.
One of the boys climbed up on to the bridge on the lookout for a train. Joe felt electric with fear and excitement because - unlike the others who doubted - he knew that Speed would do this.
When, finally, the boy signalled that a train was on its way, Speed went to the spot he had chosen, nearer the bridge than the dog had been so that there would be no chance of the driver spotting him and stopping the train.
Joe trailed behind him. One of the gang held the dog by the collar. The others were ready to run.
When the noise was loud and the train certain, Speed slid himself between the rails and stretched like the dog, put his arms flat out, pressed his face down between two sleepers. When the train came near and nearer and then went over him, Joe was so bottled up with his frenzy of alarm and thrill that he swayed on his feet, his stomach churning to the beat from the track, stared at the big wheels piston forward, squinted to see Speed and tensed his thighs hard. The steam flowed back like a heroic plume, the wheels outcharioted those vehicles of war, the carriages drew by in superior splendour and there were kindly passengers who waved at the little boy so intently watching the train go by.
Speed waited, to be sure, and then he got up and walked back towards them, hands hanging by his side, white fists fiercely clenched.
‘See?’ he said, and walked on and when Joe joined him - walking proudly behind him, squire to the knight - he knew absolutely that Speed might still be a sort of friend to him and would always be a hero, but it would never be the same. Something else had happened, something unmistakable. He knew and felt but could not explain it. Speed had passed over into legend.
There were times when Ellen felt an all but unendurable revulsion in cleaning the common lavatory in their yard and this was one of them. She had volunteered for the job soon after their arrival, volunteered without telling anyone but the message was soon out and the others left her to it.
One reason for doing it in the first weeks after they had moved in was to assuage the guilt that came from her deep dislike of the rundown, poverty-struck, dead end little yard. Other people had to put up with it, what was so special about her?, and at least it was a house, one-up, one-down never mind, it was their house, many couples were still in rooms or with their family, Sam was pleased enough, Joe never complained, it must be a terrible sort of snobbery on her part, lady of the manor after living in Grace’s mansion, a sort of showing-off, the lavatory would be the punishment.
By now, after several months, she longed for somebody else to take a turn, just now and then would do, to untie her from the daily obligation, the bracing of the stomach muscles, the attempt to minimise breathing, the bad thoughts provoked by the bad smells and sights and the whole doing of it, just the doing of it. Her life. There she was, Ellen Richardson, cleaning up other people’s sh—. She could not bear the word.
And this was one of the worst days. The heavy rain had driven in under the door, somebody had left the paper on the floor and it was sodden, Kettler had too obviously been … Ellen wanted to be sick and stepped outside to breathe the less ripe air in the well of the claustrophobic yard. Bella at the window, a tender tearful wave, she looked ghostly now. Kettler’s broken window still stuffed with brown paper after weeks. Her own home, in truth, a woeful little thing, bare accommodation. The sooner the new house in Greenacres was built the better. She breathed as deeply as she could but the pain in her stomach did not ease. It felt as though she herself had to go.
She walked, unsteadily, across the yard to get paper for lining the seat. Another shower began and the rain was welcome: she held up her face to it for a moment or two as if seeking a sign, a help - until, conscious that it might seem a pose, she hurried on.
She bolted herself into what Kettler called the Winston Churchill. She felt better at first but something was not right. It was dragging out of her. It was thick gouts of darkest blood.
The miscarriage extended over four days. It was not difficult to hide it from Sam. She told him she was ill and he enquired no further and was solicitous. Her severe paleness and her unusual tearfulness worried him, but she would say nothing.
He had been so violently against having another child when she had suggested it, just after the war. It all went back to Burma, she thought, and Alex’s letter has confirmed that. Ellen knew, beyond any doubt, that the war marched on and on inside his skull, on many a night and in the full daylight too. So she never told him about the miscarriage. She told no one. But she remembered the date of it. She would not let that pass. And she dreamed, sometimes, about the child who never formed.
Joe ran everywhere. To school, to choir practice, even to church in his Sunday suit, to the Cubs, to Vinegar Hill, to the baths, to his piano lessons. He ran to the Show Fields, to the park, to Market Hill, to the shops, to the library, to his friends, sometimes humming, sometimes agitated, set up games after school, chasing games in and out the labyrinth of alleyways, got into fights and was caned more at school, but Miss Snaith told Ellen that she was entering him for an examination. Sam smiled at the domestic wildness of the boy and encouraged more exploits with the gloves on, while Ellen waited patiently and the boy flew like a shuttle between these two strong people, warp and woof, male and female, parents, power, fear, love, and Colin who paraded and teased him until the boy was all but maddened by it. ‘Sam’s lad.’ ‘Ellen’s boy.’ ‘What’s your hurry?’ the men would say, those who leaned against the Fountain and chronicled the town. ‘Where’s the fire?’ He ignored them all.
He ran.