The Likes of Us (12 page)

She could have cried out then. Better in future! Oh, why hadn't she listened? Why, why, why? If only she had listened and heard him in time! For now this moment was all she had. There could be no future: nothing past the morning when he would go out and find the rabbits slaughtered in their hutches.

The Living and the Dead

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He picked his way gingerly between the graves like a man stepping through a pit of snakes. Yet the only serpents he feared to disturb were those from his own distant past, and surely they were fangless after all this time...

He found now that memory had played him false. The cemetery had changed. It was bigger, for one thing; the gravestones that, seen from the station entrance on the other side of the river, had seemed to him like litter on a park slope, were set out now almost to the boundary fence, and it occurred to him that soon another field must be purchased. Waste, he thought. He himself believed in cremation, when he thought of death at all. Or, better still, burial at sea: no memorial, no mess.

So he went on, putting his feet carefully into the long wet grasses until he reached the asphalt avenue on the other side; and as he stood there, looking uncertainly about, trying to reorientate himself, the sexton came up the slope, walking with long easy strides, clay-streaked spade over his shoulder. As he drew abreast the man spoke to him.

‘I'm looking for William Larkin's grave,' he said. ‘He'd be buried ten days or a fortnight ago.'

The sexton swung the spade down and leaned on it, wiping his neck with a dark blue handkerchief.

‘New grave?'

‘No, family. I thought I could go straight to it, but the place has changed.'

‘Larkin... aye.' The sexton was an elderly man. He glanced at the other now, but without recognition. ‘Aye... up here.'

He shouldered the spade again and they strolled up the slope together, exchanging commonplaces about the weather. And when they had gone only twenty yards the man's memory cleared and he found the grave without further direction.

He looked at the marble headstone, resting one foot lightly on the kerbstone until he realised and stepped off it. It was this same unexpected but unignorable sense of propriety that, a few moments later, arrested his hands as they fumbled for cigarettes and matches. There were two inscriptions on the stone, the upper one more than twenty years old: ‘In memory of Jane Alice Larkin, dear wife and mother...' and below this, newly chiselled into the marble: ‘and of William Henry Larkin, husband of the above... a beloved father, greatly missed…' ‘Greatly missed…' That was a good one. He wondered which of them had thought of that. Still, it would never do always to put the truth on a gravestone. Imagine seeing it: ‘Not before time' or ‘Glad to see him go...'

So they perpetrated the last sham.

He stood there looking at the stone, not seeing the inscriptions now, his mind looking back over fifteen years and more. And so she found him, the woman who hurried down the path between the laurels from the water-tank near the sexton's cottage, brimming flower-holder in hand, red and yellow heads of tulips bobbing at the rim of her shopping-basket. She stopped, seeing him so, and watched him for several minutes unobserved. In his navy-blue raincoat, shabby blue serge suit, and roll-necked blue jumper he carried an unmistakable tang of the sea. He was a tall man, but thin, fined down, the brown skin taut over the high-cheekboned face, with the big fleshy nose and slightly protuberant blue eyes. He had changed since last she saw him, but she knew him for her younger brother.

‘Well,' she said, and her voice startled him half-round to face her, ‘you came after all!'

Her sudden appearance threw him off-balance for a moment, so that when he spoke it was with a note of gently patronising amusement which was, however, more of a defence than anything else, for there was real affection and pleasure in his slow smile.

‘Well,' he said, his voice echoing hers; ‘well, well, well – Annie; little Annie.'

‘I thought you weren't coming,' she said as she came between the graves towards him. ‘We broadcast for you...

‘I was at sea,' he said. ‘I was surprised. I wondered why you'd bothered.'

‘It was Henry's idea.'

‘I should have thought I'd be the last person Henry wanted to see.'

‘It was Father... He wanted to see you.'

‘Him – see me!'

She knelt and pressed the flower-holder firmly in place among the marble chips and began to insert the long stems of the tulips.

‘There's no need for bitterness, Arthur. We've got past all that... Anyway, you've had the last satisfaction of knowing he went without you being here.'

‘Bitterness!' he said. ‘Satisfaction! He cursed me out of the house... stood on the doorstep and told me never to cross his threshold again. You know what happened, Annie. You were there. Anyway,' he went on when she did not answer him, ‘I was at sea. Coming back from Cuba. I couldn't charter an aeroplane.'

‘How did you know he was dead? How is it you didn't come straight to the house?'

‘A feller down in town told me. I didn't know him, but he remembered me. He told me, so I came straight here.'

He stood with his hands deep in the pockets of his raincoat and watched her arrange the flowers, breaking a stem here and there until they were balanced to her satisfaction.

‘You look after it?' he asked. ‘Is it your job?'

‘It's always been my job,' she said. Then, without malice, ‘The others come at Easter: I come all the year round. I've looked after it for Mother all this time and it's no more hardship now there's two of 'em here.'

‘There's room for another, isn't there?' he said. ‘What about it then? Will you enjoy looking after Henry or Cissie?'

‘It might be me,' she said. ‘What then?'

‘You'll outlive those two.'

‘Perhaps,' she said. ‘Then it might be Lucy: she's the oldest.'

‘Lucy?'

She gave a quick glance up at him. ‘Father's second wife, I mean.'

‘You mean he married again?'

‘Eight years ago.' She got up and looked at him across the grave. ‘You wouldn't know about that, never having let anybody know where you were.'

He shrugged, uneasy under her direct gaze. ‘Ah. You know how it is. I've been all over the place: Canada, Australia, Singapore. South America now... Besides, why should I make excuses? There's never been anybody I wanted to hear from; or who wanted to hear from me. Except you, Annie. I've often wondered about you.' His gaze fell to her naked, virginal left hand, then lifted again. ‘It is nice to see you again, you know, Annie.'

Her eyes on him had softened. ‘And you, Arthur,' she said. ‘I didn't know what could have become of you. I thought when you didn't come that perhaps you were –'

‘Dead?' He laughed. ‘Not me, Annie. You know what they say – only the good die young.'

‘And you're not good, is that it?'

Her picking up of his lightly spoken words put him on the defensive again.

‘I've never pretended to be better than I am.'

‘Like some you could mention, eh?'

‘I didn't say it.'

‘But you meant it.'

‘Look' – he stirred uneasily – ‘what is this? First you accuse me of being bitter, and now you put the words into my mouth. I haven't seen you for fifteen years, Annie; let's not be like this.'

‘No, you're right.' She picked up the basket and slid it along to her elbow. ‘I'm sorry, Arthur. I was just so disappointed when you didn't get here in time.'

‘What was it?'

‘Bronchitis. The old complaint. Been troubling him for years. The last cold spell finished him.'

They made their way back to the avenue and turned up the slope, walking towards the gate.

‘Well,' she said after a silence, ‘what did it feel like coming back to the place after all these years?'

‘A bit queer…' He frowned. ‘I couldn't see that it had changed much – a few estates about – but it was sort of different somehow.'

‘That'll be all the years away.'

‘Aye, everything seems different when you've been away a time.'

She looked at him with a swift sideways and upwards glance. ‘Everything?'

‘Well, no,' he said, hesitating, ‘perhaps not everything.'

She sighed audibly and his voice when next he spoke had sharpened slightly with irritation. ‘We're all the same people, y'know, Annie. Did you think when you saw me of Henry and Cissie killing the fatted calf? I've been away and they've stayed here – but we're still the same people.'

‘He wasn't the same.'

‘Who?'

‘Father... You'd never have believed the change in him. You couldn't credit what the woman did for him, not having witnessed it. But I saw it all. I watched it happen, month by month; day by day, even.'

‘How did she change him?'

‘She softened him, Arthur. Mellowed him. He was a different man when he'd been married to her a few years. All that hard sourness and bitterness seemed to drain steadily out of him. And he wanted to see you again. It was his dearest wish that he might make his peace with you before the end.'

‘I was at sea,' he muttered. ‘What could I do?'

‘But you did come,' she said, ‘as soon as you could.'

‘Aye, as soon as I could.'

He did not tell her that it had taken him a week after the ship docked to make up his mind, but he felt somehow that she guessed the truth. Anyway, he would have been too late. He felt for and lit now the cigarette he had denied himself earlier and they walked on in silence to the gates.

‘You'll be coming –' she began as she made to pass straight out into the street. But he took her arm and restrained her.

‘Let's sit down for a minute,' he said. ‘Let's talk for a while.'

She allowed him to lead her to a near-by bench where they sat down together, he leaning back, legs crossed, pulling at his cigarette, she sitting straight-backed, hands resting on the handle of the shopping-basket on her knee.

Now it seemed that neither of them had anything to say, and they sat in silence for some minutes until he shivered suddenly and pulled up the collar of
his raincoat.

‘Cold?'

‘It is a bit chilly up here.'

‘I thought it was quite warm,' she said. ‘A nice spring day.'

‘Spring!' he said with a scoffing laugh. ‘English weather! Every time I come back from a trip I'm half-frozen.'

‘You'll be used to used to hotter parts, I reckon?'

‘I love the warmth and the sunshine,' he said. ‘It can't be too hot for me. Some blokes I know can't stand South America, but I just lap it up. I reckon I'll end up there for good, or some place like it, before I've done.'

She was silent for a moment before she said, ‘You've never thought of coming back, I suppose?'

‘What,' he said, ‘here? What is there here for me?'

‘Same as there is anywhere else.'

‘Ah, I'm all right as I am for a bit: going places, seeing things. Deck-hand. No responsibility; no trouble. Sign on for wherever suits me.'

‘And then?'

‘What?' he said.

‘When you've been everywhere and seen everything. What then?'

‘Well, like I said: South America, or somewhere else far off.'

‘It's the same all over, Arthur,' she said. ‘There's people and things, just as there is here.'

He threw the end of his cigarette across the path. ‘I had all I wanted of this place a long time ago.'

‘And you got out.'

‘Yes, I got out. And not before time.'

She started to speak again, then stopped and turned her head.

‘That's half-past eleven striking,' she said. ‘I shall have to be off. It's half-day closing and there's one or two things I must get.'

They stood up and moved out together into the street.

There she said, ‘Anyway, there's no need for you to trail round the shops with me, unless you want to. You can go and wait for me at the house. Lucy's out, but you can take my key.'

He shook his head, ‘No, Annie. The visit's over. I've seen all I want to see now. I was too late for anything else.'

‘But you've only just got here... You can't go now. Lucy'd be ever so pleased to see you.'

‘Why barge in on her?' he said. ‘She doesn't know me. Why bother her now?'

‘And there's Henry and Cissie.'

‘Ah, dear old Henry and Cissie. How are they these days, by the way?'

‘Oh, doing well enough. Henry has his own plumbing business and Cissie's husband's manager of the Co-op grocery. Henry's thinking of standing for the council this time.'

‘All nicely settled and going steady. All good sober industrious citizens. No, they've nothing for me, Annie. And I've nothing for them. They've no need ever to know I've been here at all if you don't tell 'em.'

‘But, Arthur –'

‘No,' he said, ‘I mean it. I want you to promise me you won't tell 'em you've seen me. Let 'em think of me as they always have. Don't have 'em trying to reckon me up all over again.'

‘Oh,' she said, ‘but, Arthur –'

‘Promise,' he said, and suddenly smiled. At her puzzled look, he said, ‘I'm just thinking of a long time ago. Remember how Father used to make us go to bed early, and I used to slide down the coal-house roof so's I could get out to see that lass over Newlands way?'

‘I remember. And I remember the last time you did it, that night in December, with a fall of snow on the ground.'

‘And I lost control and shot clean over the edge into the yard and brought Father out to me. You stuck up for me, and Henry spilled the beans.' He looked reflectively past her shoulder. ‘He leathered me black and blue, and I leathered Henry. That was the night I finally made up my mind to get out. I told nobody of my plans but you. You didn't give me away then, and you won't now, will you, Annie?'