Opposite the Cross Keys (7 page)

The room to which we returned still smelled awful; probably, after my contribution, worse than before. But it no longer signified. I was immune, initiated. I came in from the open air without even having to catch my breath.

The room, as I now saw, was dirty. Not, be it said, ‘dirty' uttered as a moral judgment, but purely as a style of interior decoration. With a father who was an architect
manqué
I had, even at that age, come to know a lot about architecture and household furnishings. I knew about round Norman arches and pointed Gothic ones. I could recognize Jacobean and Palladian and Victorian and point out the differences between them.

Now, with an instant and instinctive understanding, I added to my infant expertise a style in which my father had neglected to instruct me, though its characteristics, once identified, were as unmistakable as any Regency striped satin, or the marble and ormolu of Louis Quatorze.

It was called Poverty.

The room was dirty because, as I was later to discover for myself, the fire of coal dust which burned day-long in the mean little grate smoked when the wind was in any direction. When there was no wind, it stopped smoking but instead, every few minutes, with the regularity of a striking clock telling the quarters, let out a fart of pure sulphur. When that happened, Gyp, the smelly old mongrel who spent most of his day stretched out on the rag rug in front of the hearth, would raise his head, growl petulantly, and fart back before sinking afresh into his geriatric trance.

The walls of the room, as I have already mentioned, were covered with a wallpaper which had a pattern of baskets of roses and lilacs set between panels of trellis where small birds perched, their tails cocked, their throats opened wide in song. The trouble was that the walls, full of strange bumps and hollows, were not really suitable for papering, and the roses and lilacs, the trellises and songbirds, flapped loosely over large areas, or else curled up at the seams. It could have been that the dirt acted as a kind of adhesive, for otherwise it was hard to understand what kept the paper up at all. As for its original coloration, that could only be guessed at, for all was now reduced to a uniform khaki, except over the fireplace, where it had turned coal black.

The low ceiling – once, at a guess, distempered white – was a paler shade of khaki, except for a ring of dense brown sited over the table which took up a good part of the room. Until I found out that this was caused by the oily deposit which ascended from the paraffin lamp which was the sole lighting, the circle appeared to me mysterious and frightening. When I came to know that room after dark, its daytime Poverty style converted into a velvety richness which enfolded everything except for the people seated round the table, their faces lovely in the lovely lamplight, it seemed even more mysterious, a sign planted on the ceiling as it might be a rainbow: a promise of grace.

The furniture at Opposite the Cross Keys matched the décor with an exactness to gladden the heart of the perfectionist. Apart from the sofa and the table, it consisted of a number of kitchen chairs, an old rocking chair which had long ceased to rock, and a high chest of drawers made of some yellowish wood. It had knobs, of which several were missing, instead of handles, and three bun feet, the place of the missing fourth being taken by a small pile of
Old Moore's Almanacs
. The mantelshelf was draped with a swag of green plush finished off with bobbles, every fold heavy with enough coal dust to bank up the fire for the night.

As for what are known in the trade as decorative items, these consisted of a pair of green glass vases painted with a design of a pierrot and a pierrette, and, in the centre of the mantelshelf, a model of a WC in white ceramic with, on the open lid, the legend:
When you're passing, do drop in
. Variously disposed about the walls were several out-of-date calendars displaying pictures, mostly of simpering children holding simpering cats and dogs. The only other pictures were the two large photographs over the sofa.

There were three people in the room I had not met before.

Mr Fenner sat in the rocking chair reading
Old Moore's Almanac
. He was a small man with blue eyes and a lively look almost eclipsed by a wide-brimmed trilby hat, black but so misused by time as to look, in the dim light, greenishly iridescent. When Maud brought me over to him, he said, without waiting for an introduction, ‘I heard a lot about you, gal.'

Good or bad? I longed to ask, but didn't dare.

Mr Fenner poked a finger at the open page of his
Almanac
and went on without waiting for me to say anything.

‘Ma's always on about how you read her the paper a treat. What you make o' that, then? There!' Handing me the
Old Moore's
with another poke to make sure I knew where to look.

Though the sight of his black-nailed forefinger distracted me, the words themselves presented no especial difficulties: I had been reading since I was four.

‘“May 25th to 27th,”' I read aloud. ‘“An explosion on board a large passenger ship will result in its sinking with considerable loss of life. A Welsh climber will break all records for –'”

‘Bugger the rest,' said Mr Fenner, which I took to be instructions to stop. He took his
Almanac
back. ‘What you say to that? I never heard o' no ship goin' down in May. An' now we're well into June. You see anything in them papers o' yours?'

I shook my head. I had seen nothing. Mr Fenner observed gloomily, ‘Never knew Old Moore to get it wrong afore.'

‘It doesn't say an
English
ship,' I pointed out, trying hard to be helpful. ‘They might not bother with putting foreign ships in the paper.' And indeed Mr Fenner brightened up considerably. Jolly little puckers appeared at the corners of his eyes.

He reached up to the mantelshelf and selected a clay pipe from among a number lying there. It was hardly used, with only a small stain of yellow down one side.

He thrust it towards me.

‘You know how to blow bubbles? There's something for you to blow bubbles with.'

‘After she's had her dinner!' Maud peremptorily interposed a hand, confiscating the gift, which she placed on top of the chest of drawers. But I could see she was pleased I had hit it off with her father.

Ellie Fenner, in a discontented voice, from the other side of the room, asked, ‘You forget my bonbons?'

‘When do I ever forget your bonbons?' answered Maud, in a tone from which I immediately deduced that, bonbons or no bonbons, Ellie Fenner and I were destined to be rivals, if not outright enemies.

In a sense we were that already, before we had ever met. Every Saturday, on the Market Place, Maud paid out fourpence for a quarter of cream bonbons, which were brown, sausage-shaped sweets rolled in something white – icing sugar, perhaps, or ground rice. I never did know exactly what, because I was strictly forbidden to eat any of the candies piled up in gorgeous abundance on the Market sweet stalls. ‘Flies!' Maud would pronounce, if the suggestion was made that a pennyworth of jujubes or pear drops would not come amiss. ‘Germs!'

Yet there was Maud herself, Saturday after Saturday, buying her quarter of cream bonbons regular as clockwork! Why? For Ellie, I was told: for Ellie, the beautiful sister, who specially needed them, and the Market Place was the only place you could get them. I was given the impression they were vaguely medicinal, and that when Maud bought Ellie's weekly supply it was the equivalent of going to Boots the Chemists and getting a prescription filled.

When Ellie spoke, therefore, I was not surprised to see Maud open her handbag and take out the bag which contained the sweets. I expected her to put it on top of the chest of drawers next to my clay pipe.
‘Not before dinner!'

Instead, to my chagrin, she handed the bag over with the kind of smile I hated to see her wasting on others. Ellie snatched it without so much as a thank you, peered inside as if seeking a particular cream bonbon, and finally settled on one which to all outward view differed in no way from its fellows. This, to my amazement, she did not pop into her little round mouth for a suck and a chew, as I, salivating jealously, had expected, but – with the aid of a small hand mirror which she produced from somewhere – proceeded to rub vigorously over her cheeks and up and down her pudgy nose. It took a little while to realize that Maud's fourpennyworth was the snip of the week: not only sweets but face powder. It took three of them to coat Ellie's face and neck to her satisfaction, after which the de-powdered sweets were returned to the bag to await their final ingestion.

It might have been expected that, unsympathetic as I was from the start to the very idea of the lovely Ellie, the belle of Salham St Awdry, I would have been cockahoop to discover there was no such animal, only this blowsy creature with drab hair. On the contrary, it distressed me greatly. I felt guilty and inadequate at what I took as a failure of my own perceptions, that I could not perceive a beauty which – it was plain from the others' admiring homage – was there to be acknowledged by anyone else with eyes in his head. What was the matter with mine?

Ellie admired herself in the mirror, turning her head on its short neck. She looked across at me with contempt, and demanded, ‘Can you sit on
your
hair?'

Since my hair, cut short with a centre parting and fringe, barely covered my ears, it was not really a question calling for an answer. Nevertheless, I answered in a small voice, ‘No. I'm afraid I can't.'

‘I thought not,' remarked Ellie, sitting back, well satisfied.

Tom, on the other hand, the elder of Maud's two brothers,
was
beautiful; or would have been, if something – as a child I had no idea what it might be – had not happened to him.

That night, on our way home on the bus, nestled blissfully between Maud's left arm and her bony hip, I asked sleepily, ‘Why is Tom like that?'

Maud drew away, making me sit up, pouting.

‘Like what?'

Me, faltering as I perceived that once again, all unmeaning, I had put my foot in it: ‘Like the way he is.'

Maud repeated fiercely, ‘What you mean, the way he is? He's the way he is like everyone's the way they are. Why are you the way
you
are, little Miss Swankpot, I'd like to know?'

Tears of disappointment welled up in my eyes. Up to that moment it had been such a lovely day.

‘I didn't mean anything –'

‘It's that nose of yours!' Maud looked sideways at the offending organ as if she couldn't stand the sight of it. ‘It's turning up again, I can see it.'

‘It isn't! It isn't!'

Maud appeared not to have heard.

‘If you had the sense to use the eyes God give you 'stead of that stuck-up nose of yours, you'd 'a seen what coat he was wearing.'

‘I
did
see it, so there! An old Army one.' Comprehension dawning: ‘You don't mean he was in the War and got wounded, and that's what it is?'

Maud answered cryptically, ‘People who know how to put two an' two together an' make four, wouldn't need to ask.'

‘But the War was so long ago. I didn't think –' I dropped that line quickly as Maud's face began to darken again, and anyway being quite unequal to figuring out how old Tom would have needed to be to have fought in the Great War. Instead, I asked placatingly, ‘Did he get gassed like the man who sells matches outside Woolworth's? Is that why he's like that?'

Maud's wart quivered, a dire portent.

‘There you go again! Like what?'

I could not bear the day to peter out in ill will. Out of the bus window, behind my reflection and Maud's, I could see that we were just coming up to Horsford Point, where the mighty lozenge was doing its balancing act against the setting sun.

‘Ma gerto o ca,'
I mouthed silently, knowing it was hopeless, but hoping just the same.

‘Like
what
?' Maud repeated ominously.

‘Like – an angel,' something made me say. Something magic.

1. Norfolk for a floorcloth.
   

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Tom had a face like an angel in a medieval picture except that it was unfinished. It looked as if the painter had got so far – only a very little further to go – when he put his brush down. Perhaps the glory had suddenly become too much for him. All the usual features were there and in their accustomed places – two eyes, a nose, a mouth, a chin with a cleft down the middle – but the outline was smudged, it lacked definition. Something was missing, just as something was missing from the way Tom's arms and legs were joined to his body, the way he moved, the way he spoke.

At first, that first day, except for ‘Sylvie', which he sang rather than spoke, I couldn't make out a single word he said. Nobody else seemed to have any such difficulty as the table talk went on between the absorbed business of eating, Tom's mouth opening, now to take in vast shovelsful of food, now to let out sounds whose significance escaped me. My contribution was to smile and nod my head vigorously to show I was taking it all in. Every now and again I caught Tom looking at me puzzled and a little pitying, as well he might: one of those cracked city folk, sitting there grinning like an idiot, with a brain to match.

I sat facing the two photographs, the old men on the wall over the sofa. One of them particularly – the other looked sad but accommodating – regarded me sternly over the top of his high, stiff collar. I dropped my eyes and tried to get on with my dinner, which wasn't easy. I am sure now that Maud, knowing my finicky ways, had deliberately selected for me the most chipped and crazed plate out of the motley pile she had placed on the table. It was a kind of test, like the gritty cabbage, potatoes and bits of gristle she spooned out of the soot-caked saucepan which had been simmering on the fire, dumping the mess on top of my portion of roast chicken and thus, from my point of view, rendering the whole inedible. The whole day was a kind of test.