The Best in Blountmere Street (The Blountmere Street Series Book 2) (20 page)

‘Right.’

The human silence engulfs us as the train clunks through the darkness.

‘What does her … her husband do?’

‘She’s … not - um - married.’

‘Right.’

The train screeches to a station and empties a little.  We move along the aisle and grasp a strap each.  I make an involuntarily grab for Herbie’s arm with my spare hand as the train jerks into motion.

‘It’s seems ironic the Addingtons should end up living across The Common, when the last time I spoke to Angela she’d been set on one of the flats opposite.’

The irony is compounded when I long to live in a place like the Addingtons’ flat, where I can wake and see the sky stretched like a banner over a green and gold landscape.  ‘I suppose it is,’ I reply.

The photograph of Tony at Fred and Lori’s wedding rests in the centre of the Addingtons’ sideboard.  It is turned as if he’s smiling out on to The Common. 

‘It’s exactly the right place for the photo,’ Mrs Addington says when she sees me studying it.  ‘Tony always loved The Common.

‘Almost as much as his precious bombsite,’ Angela adds.

‘I know Tony would have loved it here.   This flat’s everything we could ever have wanted or dreamed of, and Bill’s a gem.’ Mrs Addington smiles.  ‘Look at the place.  It’s a palace.  My only concern is that we won’t receive his letter if Tony tries to get in touch with us, although I’ve informed the Post Office of our move.  Not that we receive any letters other than bills and regular airmails from Fred and Lori, and they already have our new address, but, you never know, one day Tony might … ’ Mrs Addingtons’ face clouds.

Angela looks exasperated.  ‘I keep telling you, Mum, if Tony hasn’t written in all these years, he’s not likely to write now.  It sounds heartless, but we all have to accept that’s the way it is.’

Mrs Addingtons’ reply is the same as it always is:  ‘Say what you like, Angela, but I’ll keep praying because prayer can move mountains.’

Angela makes a facial gesture that says if it keeps you happy, then you might as well carry on doing it. 

‘And how’re you keeping, Paul?’ she continues, diverting the conversation away from Tony.  ‘You weren’t yourself the last time you came.  I wasn’t sure you’d heard me invite you to tea.  You left like a hurricane.’

I’d debated pretending I hadn’t heard the invitation.  It is only my desire to see Maria and my loneliness that has driven me back.

‘Preoccupied with moving, that’s all,’ I lie.

‘It’ll work out.  Mum’ll pray for you.’  Angela pats her mother’s knees. Still laughing, she focuses her attention on Maria, who is kicking and gurgling on a blanket on the floor.  ‘You love that carpet your Uncle Bill’s just had laid, don’t you?  Well, young lady, are you going to let your Aunty Paula feed you while I go and fetch your Uncle Bill?’

I’d hoped Bill would be out on a measuring job or ensconced in his flat.

‘From time to time, Bill pops up and eats with us, especially when Old Selska goes to her lace making classes or wherever it is she goes.  By the by, can you smell her perishing camphorated oil?  I thought we were rid of it.   I told her to throw it away when we left Blountmere Street, but, no, she ups and brings it with her.  It’ll probably knock the demolition blokes off their feet when they come to pull the old place down.  Mind you, we might not have to put up with the reek of it for too long if she goes back to Germany, as she says she might.  Something about laying some ghosts.’

Angela hands me Maria’s bottle.  ‘Getting back to Bill, it’s daft him sitting down there in that flat of his with a bit of bread and cheese, when we’ve got toad in the hole or some such up here.  He’s been very quiet the last few days – a bit off colour - so I said he’s got to come tonight, but I know he won’t turn up unless I go and fetch him.”

When Bill arrives, he perches on the edge of the chair, pulling creases into his trousers.  It’s the first time I’ve seen him ill at ease.  He neither looks at, nor speaks to me.  I feel as uncomfortable as he obviously is.

‘If you ask me, you’re still not looking yourself.’  Angela pushes a cup of tea in front of Bill, oblivious to the strong brown liquid she’s slopped into the saucer.  ‘I know I sound like Old Selska, but you need a tonic.’

‘I’m fine.’  Bill stretches across and runs his finger down Maria’s cheek.  ‘I’ve only to see this little bundle of joy and I feel better.’

Since meeting him on the train, it seems futile to continue to avoid Herbie.  And, as Mum and Bill did years before, we’ve taken to meeting every morning at the underground station, although not as early as Mum and Bill.

Our disastrous time at the pictures is never mentioned, but I hadn’t realised how good Herbie is at making anything sound funny when he wants to, and what an excellent mimic he is.  Perhaps I’d been too intense to notice.  I remember Mum, at least I think it was Mum, saying laughter’s a medicine.  I always feel better after laughing with Herbie, even if laughing is an outrageous thing to do in a rush hour Tube train. 

If it
was
mum who said laughter was a medicine, she should have taken more of it herself, gallons more.  She should have swigged it down in great choking mouthfuls.  Her recent attacks on me, when she called me “a failure”, “a jumped up nobody” and “a worthless typist”, have wounded me like a sabre slash.

On our next visit, Mum is more humourless than ever, and her gaze is restless and flickering.  She doesn’t smile at me when I arrive.  She doesn’t smile at Dad either after his now customary pre-visit cigarette, although there’s nothing unusual about that.  She rubs the band of her cardigan between her fingers.  The action reminds me of when she used to rub fat into flour when she made pastry. 

‘How are you, Mum?’

‘Why do you always have to ask the same thing?’

I make another attempt.  ‘I thought you might be in the garden today.  The weather’s beautiful.’

Mum ignores me, and continues fingering the ribbing of her cardigan.

I look at Dad and silently plead for help.  ‘The garden looks lovely, doesn’t it, Dad?’

But Dad doesn’t answer, and Mum goes on rubbing.  Her eye movement is becoming more rapid.  I begin to fidget.  Along the corridor somewhere, I hear the rattle of teacups.  Perhaps we should call for help.  Dad walks across to the window and stares at the garden outside.  I try stroking Mum’s arm and Mum lets go of her cardigan to flick her arm free of my touch.  The sabre slash inside me reopens and stings.

Dad begins making a tuneless noise through his teeth and I stare at the floor and recall Herbie impersonating
The Goons
– “
Neddy Seagoon, here”.
  I smile at the lino.  When Herbie impersonated Eccles, I’d laughed so loud someone in the carriage had shushed me quiet.  I didn’t care.  It was wonderful to laugh.  I’d almost forgotten how.

‘Sitting on a feather, are we?’ Mum asks.

‘I was thinking of something funny that happened on the Tube.’

‘On the way to that waste-of-time school for jumped-up nobodies and stupid girls who won’t ever amount to anything?’

‘It’s not …’

‘Glorified skivvies.’

Dad rounds on her.  ‘That’ll do! There’s no need to have a go at the girl.   She hasn’t done you any harm.’

‘Don’t tell me what to do with
my daughter
.  Mine!  Not yours.  Are you listening?  Not yours!’  Mum’s voice has risen and her eyes are dancing fanatically.

“Neddy Seagoon here.”

‘You thought he was your father, your dear daddy, didn’t you?  Well, he’s not.’

She rises and pushes me in front of Dad.  ‘You thought she was premature.  You bought it all.  I fooled you, didn’t I!   Les Dibble’s been bringing up a bastard all these years.’

“I’m walking backwards to Christmas.”

‘Or did you know?  Was that why you ruined every chance we ever had?   She could be on her way to university now.  But you had to stop it.  You knew she wasn’t yours and you wanted to punish us both.  Well, it’s time
she
knew.’  Mum rams her twisted face into mine.

‘Want to know who your real father is?  He knows who he is.’

 “Across the Irish Sea.”

‘D’you want to know?’ she demands.

“Yingtong, yingtong, yingtong, yingtong yingtong yiddle eye po
.”

‘It isn’t Les Dibble.  At least you can be glad about that.’

Dad moves towards her.  ‘Shut your mouth, d’you hear.  Shut it or I’ll shut it for you.’

The tea trolley rocks and rattles into the room and as if she has pulled a veil over it, Mum’s face instantly and at will becomes expressionless, her eyes clouded and secretive.

‘Are you all right, Mrs Dibble?  We thought we heard some shouting,’ the woman pushing the trolley inquires.

‘I’m fine, but my daughter and her … her … need to go home, so I’ll be going back to my room.’  Mum’s voice is modulated, and her manner reasonable.  Without looking at us she makes for the door.  ‘Bill.’  Her voice is barely above a whisper.  ‘What we were talking about.  It’s Bill.  I thought you might both be interested to know.’

Chapter Twenty-Two

Mum never lies.  When I was a child she told me that if you so much as thought of telling an untruth, spots would grow on your tongue, large indelible ones, as a reminder that you must always tell the truth.

Dad and I walk through the asylum grounds with what seems a canyon between us.

On the way back, the train clicks and clacks a rhythmic tormenting echo of Mum’s words, while Dad smokes one cigarette after another and gazes out the carriage window.

When we cross The Common on our way home, I dare not look to my right, dare not look at the distant upholstery shop, not even furtively as I usually do, dare not, dare not, in case I see
him
, even a fleeting, faraway glimpse of
him
.

We walk through the high rise maze that is the Cigar Box Kingdom and into the emptiness that had once been Blountmere Street.  We enter our flat we’d left only a few hours earlier as father and daughter and now return to as … and return as …

‘I’ll put the kettle on.’  Dad’s voice is the same.  I’d expected it to be somehow different.

‘You’d better lay the table.’  He pushes his cap back so that it sits comically askew.  I want to run to him, straighten it, as a daughter would, laughing.

‘What we got for tea?’  He busies himself at a cupboard.

‘Sardines and salad.’

‘Let’s be getting on with it, then.’

I squeeze past him, at the same time brushing him lightly.  I hope he doesn’t mind.

We push the limp lettuce around our plates and pile the sardines to one side.

‘Bread and butter?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Right, then.’

‘About what Mum said.’  My voice wavers.

‘Take no notice of what your mother said.  The doctors can tell us she’s getting better ‘til the cows come home, but the truth is she doesn’t know what she’s saying from one minute to the next.  It’s a pile of rubbish, so forget it.’

‘You don’t … ’

‘We’ve got enough to do without worrying over a lot of crackpot nonsense. And if you need anything, don’t be daft and start thinking you can’t ask.’  Dad scrapes our untouched food into a bowl.

The evening wears on.  The air is as taut as the rope Dad binds around his ladders.  At nine o’clock, an unheard of hour for Dad to go to bed, he retreats to the lean-to and collects a white enamel bucket: his pee bucket.  If we had wanted to go to the toilet in the middle of the night, Mum and I had always gone to our outside lavatory.  Ladies always use a toilet Mum asserted, but it was different for men.  Every night I hear Dad urinating into the pail in sharp spurts.  When Mum had been at home, she brought it out of the bedroom each morning and threw its frothy contents down the lavatory.

‘I’m turning in then.’  Dad holds the bucket away from me, between himself and the wall, as if tonight it’s too private a thing for me to see, an intimacy only shared by real families.

The next morning, sunshine draws a pattern on the kitchen floor as Dad washes at the sink.  He splutters as he rubs the soapy flannel around his eyes and nose.  While I brown the toast, I look out into the back garden.  It’s crimson and gold and normal.

‘It’s a lovely day.’

‘Not bad,’ Dad answers, doing up the collar of his shirt, which he’s folded in on itself so as not to get it wet while he washes.  Globules of soap-suds still stick to his earlobes.

‘The garden’s looking lovely.’

‘Not for long.  Those bulldozers’ll make short work of it when they get started.’

It’s typical of Dad’s morning outbursts.  It’s good.  It’s a sign we’ll carry on as if nothing’s happened. We’ll ignore what Mum said as if she’d never said it.  We’ll discard it forever and always.  My burden lifts a little.

Outside in Blountmere Street, the sunshine banishes the eeriness of the dereliction all around, leaving the street’s history locked behind sooty brick facades, struggling under the early summer sky.

Across the road standing on the incline outside the block of flats in which he lives, Herbie is waiting for me.  One hand shelters his eyes from the sun, while he waves with the other.  Normal!  Dressed in my everyday secretarial suit, I wave back.  Normal!

At secretarial school, it is an ordinary day.  I improve my shorthand speed by three words a minute, type a passable manuscript, and struggle with commerce as I usually do.  I eat my sandwiches sitting outside with a few of the other girls under the tree dominating the back of the building.  Afterwards, we browse the Oxford Street shops and lick ice creams as we saunter back.  Nothing has changed.  Everything is normal.

Herbie has asked me to go to the seaside with him, and I’ve agreed.  At least it’ll be somewhere different for the day.

At Victoria Station, he eases the straps of his knapsack.  ‘I’m really glad you decided to take a day off secretarial school.  I’ve persuaded Mum to do us a few sandwiches, though I thought once we get there we could have fish and chips.  There’s nothing like eating fish and chips at the seaside.  At least, that’s what my old man says.  Not that he’s seen the sea more than twice.’  Herbie laughs and I laugh with him.  It touches something raw in my throat.

“The train now standing at platform eight stops at all stations to Bognor Regis.”

We stroll along the platform.  As we walk, I smooth my skirt.  I hope Herbie doesn’t notice me doing it and how creased it is.  Even with my painstaking ironing, after half an hour on an underground train on our way to the main line station, it looks like a piece of Dad’s scrim.  Had things been as they were, and not as they have become, I’d have asked Angela if I could borrow her blue sailcloth skirt.  If I’d gone to the Addingtons’, however, I’d have run the risk of seeing Bill.  A creased skirt was a hundred times more preferable than that.  One day soon, unless I choose never to visit the Addingtons again, I’ll have to see Bill.  I try to banish the thought, even as I attempt to banish the creases from my skirt.

‘In here.  It’s empty and it’s a non smoker.’  Herbie levers me up the step and into a carriage.  ‘It’s exciting travelling by train, though I have to confess I haven’t been on too many.  What about you?’ he asks as he settles himself next to me.  I know he hasn’t sat opposite because he wants to be closer to me. 

‘We go on the train every Sunday to the asyl … to visit Mum.’

‘I’m sorry, I forgot.’

Why do people always apologise when I mention Mum?

‘You haven’t asked why I want to go to Bognor,’ Herbie says, as the houses become fewer and the carriage window fills with blue and green.

‘Isn’t it just a good south coast place to go on a summer day?’

‘You’re right, but I chose it for another reason.  You see, there’s a Butlin’s Holiday Camp there.’

The girls at Grigham Road talked about Butlin’s as if it was the most exotic place on earth, but the photos I’d seen of it, with rows of prefabricated chalets looking like the bungalows that used to line the side of the bomb site, hadn’t impressed me.  And a voice blasting through a loud speaker calling “Wakey, Wakey” and encouraging all the holiday makers to get up, doesn’t appeal to me as the perfect holiday.

‘Do you want to look at it before you book a holiday there?’  I ask.  I hope we don’t have to walk round the place for hours.  It isn’t what I’d anticipated when Herbie had asked me to go there.

‘Nothing like that.  Actually, I want to find out about being a Red Coat.’

‘A Red Coat?  One of those people who run the knobbly knees contests or housie or whatever else they do there?  Not you!  I thought you were going to be an insurance broker?’

‘I’ll sit my insurance brokering exams first, or at least some of them - got to keep my parents happy.  And, I suppose they’re right, once I’m qualified I’ll have something to fall back on if this doesn’t work out.’

Something to fall back on!  It could have been a quote straight from a book Mum might have written.

‘Why a Red Coat?  Do you really want to be one?’

‘No, but I said one day I’d tell you what I really want to do.’  Herbie leans closer as the train enters a tunnel.  ‘I know Peter Sellers and Tony Hancock didn’t start off as Red Coats, but quite a lot of comedians have, and that’s what I want to be, a comedian.’  The train emerges from the tunnel with a rush of air.  ‘Don’t ask me why.  I suppose I like making people laugh, or more accurately perhaps I want them to be able to laugh at themselves.  To expose sham and hypocrisy, who knows.  All a bit heavy,’ he finishes and runs his finger down his lips and on to his chin.

‘Have you always wanted to make people laugh?’  I ask, trying not to say something like, “That’s nice” or “How unusual”.

‘I’ve always wanted to make
you
laugh.’  Herbie reaches a hand toward my cheek, then withdraws it.  ‘I suppose I discovered what laughing could do when Dobsie was killed in the playground on The Common.  Those weeks after his death, I spent hours in my bedroom reliving the things we’d done and I’d laugh, really laugh.  Sounds crazy; here were people saying how sad I must be and all I was doing was laughing, but the more I laughed, the more I was able to keep Dobsie alive and the less it hurt.’

The train stops at yet another station.  A woman with two children carrying buckets and spades gets in and Herbie moves further away from me.

When we arrive, we walk from the station and along the front, lined with hotels with names like
Sea Breeze
and
The Mariner. 
They are
double-fronted and painted white, which I suppose is to contrast them with the blue of the sea and sky, although neither sea nor sky are blue today, more a whitey grey.

‘I reckon it’ll only take an hour or so at Butlin’s to make the enquiries I need.  I suppose I could have sent away for some information, but I wanted to see the place for myself,’ Herbie says, as we spread a towel on the pebbly beach.  Then we undo the greaseproof paper wrapping of Herbie’s mother’s packet of sandwiches, bloater paste, like the ones we’d eaten in the gardens of Tony’s orphanage: me, Mum and Bill.

‘Look, why don’t you go on your own?  That way you could probably get a half-day pass and spend a couple of hours there without me dragging around with you.  It wouldn’t bother me at all.  In fact, if you don’t mind, I’d rather stay here on the beach.  It’s quite warm, and I’ve brought my swimming costume.  I might even go for a swim.’  I think I sound convincing.

‘Are you certain?  I mean, I didn’t invite you so that you could sit by the sea on your own.’

‘I’ll be perfectly all right.  And if you go now, we’ll have time for a walk and fish and chips before we have to catch the train back.’

‘If you’re sure.’ Herbie begins hoisting his knapsack onto his back.  ‘I’ll meet you here in two hours.’  He begins moving away.  Suddenly, without knowing why, I call after him, ‘Who am I like, my mother or my father?’ 

Puzzled, he turns and calls back. ‘Your mother, I think, not that you’re … well, you’re not … ’

‘What about my father?  Do I look anything like him?’

‘I’ve never been much good at telling who people look like.  Why do you want to know?’

‘It’s just that someone who used to live in Blountmere Street said I was … that I … looked like my father.’  I run my tongue around the roof of my mouth feeling for lie spots.

‘If they think so, then perhaps you do.’

I wait until Herbie has disappeared from view before collecting up my things, hurrying along the seafront and into the town.  Someone in a shop might know; someone who has children, or who, at any rate, might have something to do with them and who might know Tony.  After all, he always wanted to come to Bognor.  Maybe it’s where he’s ended up. I glance in various windows until, in a beach wear shop, I see a woman I estimate to be in her early forties.  She might have children who are or have recently been at secondary school.

‘Can you tell me if there’s a secondary school here?’  Bognor doesn’t seem big enough to have more than one secondary school.  The woman nods and draws a map on the back of a bag with illustrations of bikinis and sunglasses on the front.  ‘Follow the arrows I’ve drawn and you shouldn’t have too much trouble,’ she smiles.  ‘Trying to find someone, are you?’

‘An old friend who I think has moved to Bognor.’

‘Good luck.  Bognor’s not such a big place, so if she’s here you stand a good chance of finding her.”

‘It’s a boy.  His name’s Tony,’ I add.  ‘Tony Addington.’

The woman closes her eyes, then shakes her head.  ‘No, sorry.  I can’t recall anyone called Tony Addington.’

With the help of the map, I find the secondary school easily.  I enter the building and tap on the door of a small room, where an office assistant brags that she doesn’t have to look at any records to know that a Tony Addington isn’t or hasn’t ever been at the school.  In the eighteen years she’s worked in the office, she prides herself on being able to recognise the names of every one of the pupils who have attended during that time.  There’s a public school a mile or so away to the right, she says, putting a finger under her nose and raising it upwards to indicate the school is a snooty one.  ‘He might have gone there,’ she says. 

How ironic if Tony had gone to a public school, when I had been delighted not to attend one.

The grounds of the public school remind me of those surrounding the asylum and of the orphanage Tony had been in, as if all institutions employ the same gardener.  The school secretary adjusts her pince-nez.  She studies my crumpled skirt, and begins sorting through a filing cabinet crammed with grey files.  I glance at my watch.

‘Yes, here it is.’  The woman waves a file above her head.  ‘Anthony Adson.’

Something inside me rises then plummets.  ‘No, I’m looking for Tony Addington.  He’d be sixteen now.’

‘Let me see.’  She half extracts another file.  ‘This boy would be twenty-five; not such a boy, really.’  She continues for another ten minutes, grumbling about the time my enquiry is taking.  ‘It looks as if your friend isn’t or never has been at this school, a pity really because it would have done him good.  He would have learnt how to write letters and keep in touch with his friends, so that they didn’t have to come searching for him and wasting my time.’  Imperiously she dismisses me.