The Undertow (11 page)

“You all right, old fellow?” the old man whispers.

“Yes, Grandpa.”

“Good, good.”

Billy listens to the old man make his way to his own room. He can hear the chink of the ewer, the clank of his belt buckle as he washes and undresses. Then the creak of bedsprings, and then again, as he turns to get comfortable. Lying down makes his lungs trouble him: he coughs hard, wet coughs. From downstairs, Billy can hear the dark rumble of the One-Eared Man’s voice, though he can’t make out the words. Next door the old man falls asleep—Billy can hear the thick, phlegmy breathing. He lies awake until he hears his ma and the One-Eared Man in the hallway—the man saying how wonderful, what a delight, though the circumstances of course, what a smart young man Billy has grown up to be, what a lucky man William was in this, if not in other matters. Quiet affirmations from his mother. The opening and closing of the door, and a farewell in the street. It is only then that Billy turns onto his side and lets himself soften into sleep.

The next day, after school, when Billy gets back from climbing trees in the park and being shouted at by the parkie, the One-Eared Man is there.

He stays to tea again, talking about himself, and eats three eggs and half a loaf of bread as Billy watches, biting his lip, wanting to ask what there will be to eat tomorrow.

In bed, Billy lies awake, hot and seething, listening out for the voices in the hall, the opening and shutting of the door that means he’s gone. Why is she being so kind to him? Why is he allowed to eat up all their food? He can’t make sense of it.

In the morning, loading up the bike at Cheeseman’s, he yawns so widely Mr. Cheeseman boggles his eyes at him and asks if he’s been burning the midnight oil. Midnight oil must be really beautiful, Billy thinks; blue as ink and rich as treacle and full of shivering colours. He says sorry, shakes his head clear of cobwebs, and swings up onto his bike and lets the cold November morning clear his head, and for a while is lost in the joy of the bike, and speed, and the buffetting of the cold damp air. But on the High Street he spots the One-Eared Man trudging along, collar up, hat down, slumped over to one side with the weight of his suitcase. He looks like he could have been walking all night.

And that evening, while the One-Eared Man is pretending to read the paper, and Grandpa has taken himself out for a walk down to the wharves to see what ships are in, even though it’s November and dark and freezing and he could have done that earlier on his way back from the factory, she gestures Billy into the hall and asks him quietly to give her the money from Cheeseman’s round.

“No,” he says.

She looks startled. “What do you mean, no?”

“I’ve not been paid yet.”

“When will you be paid?”

“Tomorrow morning, I think. I don’t know, really.” In fact, he hadn’t even thought about it. He’d forgotten that it was the point.

She turns to get her coat. “I’ll call round there and ask for it now.”

Billy catches her arm. “Don’t.”

She glances down at his hand, then back up at his face, her eyebrows raised. He releases his grip.

“Sorry,” he says.

“I should think so.”

He scuffs his toe into the matting. “But, please don’t, Mother.”

“Mr. Cheeseman won’t mind.”

“It’s not that,” Billy says. Though it is partly that. But it’s more that she doesn’t care what Mr. Cheeseman thinks of her going round there asking for wages before they’re due, and she doesn’t care because it’s for the One-Eared Man. Billy shuffles, resentful, conscious of his smallness and youth, and queasy with the sense of not being quite so very important any more.

She slips an arm down her coat sleeve, tugs the yoke up onto her shoulder. “Then what is it?”

“It’s him,” he says, and gets suddenly hot and flaps his arms around. “It’s that man. He’s, I don’t know—”

“Shush.” She glances back to the kitchen door, leans in close to hiss. “For goodness’ sake.”

“Why’d you like him so much?”

“He was your father’s friend.”

“Do you believe that?”

“What?”

Billy straightens himself up to her. “I don’t.”

“Do you think he’d lie?” She flinches back, coat still hanging half off. Her throat is going blotchy.

“He can say anything,” Billy says. “How can we know that it’s the truth? We only have his word for it.”

“No we don’t, Billy. We have your father’s word too; the postcard, you remember? He entrusted Mr. Sully with it.”

“That’s what he says.” Billy shrugs. “He’s a liar, though. Bet he is.”

She smacks him, open palm whack on the bare back of his leg. Her coat swings round like a pigeon’s tail, grey and shabby.

He rubs at the sting. It doesn’t hurt, not really. His eyes water. It’s just the suddenness, the shock.

“A little respect, Billy.”

“He just eats our food and drinks our tea and sits in our warm—” his voice is rising, almost a wail “—and I don’t like it. I don’t want it any more.”

“That’s enough. I’m not standing for this.”

Her voice is like a water biscuit, parched and brittle. She fumbles her other arm into her sleeve, plucks the buttons through the buttonholes one after the other. Her lips are set. She doesn’t look at Billy.

“Why now?” Billy asks. And it makes sudden, brilliant sense. “It’s been years and years. Why didn’t he come before?”

Then she looks at him.

“I see him walking the streets,” Billy says. “First thing, when I’m on my rounds.”

“So what? What are you suggesting?” But she’s faltering now, he sees it, presses harder.

“That he’s got nowhere else to go.”

Her lips press tighter. “He’s here because of your father.”

“He doesn’t give tuppence, you know he doesn’t. If he did, he would have come soon as he could; he could have posted the blooming card if he’d really wanted you to get it. If he cared, we’d know him already. We’d have known him for years.”

She blinks, shakes her head. But she’s coming round to him, he sees it. He pushes his point home.

“He just needs somewhere to be, that’s why he’s here. One night, you’ll let him stay, and he’ll be here for ever. Or till it suits him to move on.”

She goes white. He actually sees the pink fade from her cheeks.

“How dare you.”

“It’s
true
.”

“Go to your room.”

“I won’t.”

“Right.”

She grabs him by the arm and yanks, clatters him up the stairs. He stumbles, his feet barely touching the treads; his shin bangs against a wooden edge. She pulls him to his room and opens the door, then pushes him in. He stumbles to a halt. It’s angry crying, not sad.

“Don’t let him stay, Ma,” Billy says. “Please. Don’t.”

She slams the door.

Amelia puts on her hat and goes out of the front door and walks to Cheeseman’s through the evening dark. Her breath plumes in front of her. Her feet clip on the paving slabs and the cold air cools her cheeks. Her palm stings. It will freeze tonight, she thinks: when she gets into bed later, the sheets will have that faint slick of dampness about them, which never seems to go away no matter how she washes and dries and airs the bedding.

The words worm through her head:
He’s got nowhere else to go
. She can see him, in her mind’s eye, standing in the lamplight, with his suitcase and his broken boots.

One night, you’ll let him stay
. His suitcase tucked in beside the card table. His hat dropped on top of the picture book. Without a thought, without a word of apology.

When she goes into the shop, with its warm familiar smell of ham and tea and brown paper, Mr. Cheeseman is at the door, just twisting the cardboard sign round to
Closed
. But when he sees her there he lets
go of the sign and stands back and opens the door to let her in. He smiles, his face dimpling and folding, and rubs his hands together, and greets her and asks after her health and what he can do for her, and she replies without even knowing what she’s saying, and comes into the shop, and watches as he moves back behind his counter and stands there, smiling at her expectantly, and she should ask him for the wages, for cheese and bread and maybe a pie, but instead she’s marooned in the middle of the polished floor, not quite knowing what to do with herself.

He’s a liar, though. Bet he is
.

Billy couldn’t know what it would mean, not the adult bedroom things that it would mean, that one night she would let him stay. But really, might she have done that, if it would have meant she didn’t have to face the years ahead alone? What exactly is she capable of?

Mr. Cheeseman is speaking.

“Sorry?”

“That boy of yours,” he says, and shakes his head in admiration. “Legs on him like pistons, that boy has.”

She nods. Her head is full of twisting tangled threads, of postcards drifting across a bright blue sea, of a row of steady, solid suitors parading past for her to choose from; of Sully lying between her cold sheets, his pale freckled arms reaching out for her.

longing to see you, and the child

Her palm still stings. She hit Billy. She feels a jolt of shame: she never hits him; she never has to. Billy bounds through her days, bringing a cloud of cool outdoors; his skin is barley sugar and fog and soap.

“You must be very proud of him,” Mr. Cheeseman says.

“I am,” she says. “I’m very proud.”

“He’ll go far, that lad, you mark my words.”

She smiles carefully at him. Edwin Cheeseman, who had been in love with her all those years ago. She wonders if he still is, a little bit. “Thank you.”

“A great consolation to you, he must be.”

He nods complacently, rubs his fat hands together again. Maybe he thinks she regrets it, choosing William over him. Maybe he thinks, given a second chance, she’d do differently. But it is only William, always William. That’s what she should remember. It’s the words he sent that matter, not the man who brings them.

She has been such a fool.

“So,” he says. “What can I get for you?”

She glances round at the shelves, the jars and tins and packets. She realises that there is nothing here that she wants at all.

Back home, she drops the packet of tea onto the hall stand while she sheds her coat and hat. She had to get something, couldn’t ask for Billy’s wages of course, and an ounce of tea was all she could bring herself to ask for on tick. She will settle up as soon as Billy’s paid. She sweeps her hands down her skirts, takes a big breath, and opens the door into the kitchen.

Sully is sitting at the table. He looks up expectantly, smiles. Shows his long yellow teeth.

“Everything all right?” he asks.

“Fine, yes, thank you.”

She sets the tea packet down on the table, goes over to the range and opens the burner, grabs the old singed pan-holder to shove the kettle onto the flame.

“Difficult age, that,” Sully says.

She flushes, not just from the heat. Was he listening? What did he hear?

“He’s a good boy.” She folds the pan-holder, then folds it again, then unfolds it.

“A credit to you.”

“Thank you.”

“It can’t have been easy.”

He means, bringing him up all by herself, without a man around. He is working his way up to something, she senses, towards some kind of statement or question or confession. She looks down at her hands, the snags and cracks from washing, cooking, cleaning. And her clerical work has left her fingers faintly crooked, flattened at the tips, from the hours spent every day hitting the heavy stenograph keys.

“There’s his grandpa,” she says.

“The old man. Yes.” Sully flicks out the newspaper and folds it, then lays it down on the table, and smiles again, as though settling in for a good long chinwag, but Amelia just can’t bear to look at him now—his strange bony face, his ragged ear, sitting where William could so easily have been. She turns away to the range, and ducks down to open the firebox. She pokes at the coals unnecessarily.

“And there’s plenty of boys growing up without their fathers,” she says.

“But what a shame, though, don’t you think?”

“Billy’s father’s dead,” she says briskly.

The kettle begins to hiss. She closes the fire door, straightens up.

“Still, it’s not easy on you,” he says lightly. “Shall I have a word?”

He shifts his chair away from the table to get up.

“No.”

The word comes out too quick, too sharp. It shocks her, how afraid she is. She turns away to the cupboard, to fetch the teapot.

“What did you do, Mr. Sully?” she says, her back to him. “After the
Goliath
sank?”

“Please, do call me George.”

“George. What did you do?”

“Like I said, the
Cornwallis
picked me up—”

“No,” she says, “I mean, after the war?”

She stands, hand on the open cupboard door, looking up at her scant array of crockery. She hears him creak forward in his seat, leaning his elbows on the table. A pause. The kettle’s hiss narrows to a whistle. She thinks, he will have known that this would come eventually. He will have prepared for it. Once the shock has passed,
Why now?
is, after all, the obvious question, if you think to question anything at all.

“I stayed in the navy, until the year nineteen. Then I went into the merchant fleet.”

“And you were at sea, all that time.”

“Africa, the East Indies, all over really.”

And you never passed a postbox, not once, in all those years, she wants to ask. Not once in ten whole years?

She reaches down the brown teapot. She is such a fool.

“This is your first time back in England then,” she says.

“Yes,” he says. “No. I mean, a few days’ shore leave, of course, yes. Sometimes Liverpool or Bristol. But no time for anything, not really. Hardly been in London at all.”

She sets the teapot down on its trivet, on the table in front of him.

“So you’ve left the merchant fleet now, have you?”

The kettle’s whistle builds into a scream behind her. She looks at the angular face, the white-rimmed stub of his ragged ear. She sees the calculation in his eyes. And she knows, with perfect clarity, that she has to get rid of him.