The Undertow (8 page)

In the kitchen it is stuffy-hot. The range is glossy with black-lead; she has stirred the fire up and boiled the kettle and made porridge. Sometimes there is sugar, sometimes salt. Today, because it is a special day, there is jam. A dark blob of it sinking into the centre of the bowl as he sits down at the table.

“Thanks, Ma,” he says.

“Mother,” she says.

She leans down and offers her lips for a kiss. He stretches up and touches their soft coolness with the dry scratch of his own. Then she puts her arms around his neck and holds him and he waits until she’s finished, smelling her clean cool smell. When she lets go, he starts to pull the blob of jam apart with his spoon, teasing out the scrolls of plum skin that look like little quills.

“Eat up,” she says. “I’ve had mine.”

She gives him a pat, and then a rub of the hair, and then tidies it for him with her fingers as she watches him eat. She murmurs the kind of thing she always says, but with the added emphasis of the day: such a big boy now, starting his morning job, his very own delivery round before school, and who’d’ve thought it, all grown up, and how proud of him his father would have been. All that kind of thing. He concentrates on the spoon, on the careful portioning of jam to each mouthful.

He doesn’t mind the hair-fussing, though from the way she pauses from time to time he knows she’s considering whether a bit of scurf might be a nit, and he hopes to God she won’t find any because that means a day stuck at home with his head wrapped up in paraffin and cloth, and his hair raked through a million times with that scratchy little comb because she won’t buy the powder from the chemist’s because then everyone will know that he’s got a dirty head. She’s telling him about when he was tiny, and he loves to hear about when he was tiny,
it gives him that little bright coal in his chest, the sense of his own story weaving around other stories in the world. She tells him about the time she set him down on his feet when he was ten months old, a prodigy for standing and walking, never seen the like of it with such a tiny child. She’d set him down on the kitchen floor and turned her back to fetch his bread and milk, and when she turned round again she found him sitting on the tabletop, poking at the butter, having climbed up there from the seat of the chair: only ten months old, what a little marvel he was, just like his father, a busy, active man. Then she reminds herself of something, and takes her hands off his head, and goes to reach a little parcel down from the mantelshelf.

“That’s for you, son.”

She puts the small cardboard box down in front of him. He lifts it, tilts it. The thing inside rolls down the slope and hits the end of the box with a satisfying thunk. He knows what it is and a grin spreads across his face. He smiles up at her.

“Thanks, Ma.”

“Mother,” she says. “Go on.”

He unpicks the end panel and lets the car slide out onto his palm. Racing green; a Jaguar, long-snouted as a lurcher; and with its little driver there, all gauntleted and goggled. The yellow-painted headlamps are tiny and perfect. Straight from Atkinsons’ window. He runs it across the tabletop. He picks it up and studies the ripples in the India rubber tyres, like the creases in tiny lips. The undercasing is unpainted lead.

He reaches up to kiss her.

“It’s smashing, Mother,” he says. “Thank you.”

He traces it around the table one-handed as he finishes up his porridge, trying to swerve the car round his teacup as the soft grains and swirls of jam spread out between his tongue and the cave-roof of his mouth. The car’s axles are fixed, so it judders at the corners. He wonders if he could do anything about that. He picks at a screw with a thumbnail. He’ll have a bit of a tinker after school.

The sound of the water hitting the enamel bowl makes him look up. He watches as she tops the bowl up with water from the kettle to take the chill off. She’s saying that he has to remember to stand up straight and say his please-and-thank-yous and she knows he’ll do all that, because he’s such a good boy, a wonderment.

“Well,” she says. “Well. Come on then.”

He scoops up his last spoonful of porridge, with its faint trace of sweetness. School dinner on Monday is liver and onions and potatoes and you can pick out the green bits and purple bits and black bits in the potatoes. And then plain cake for pudding. It’s good the way you feel full afterwards. He rolls his sleeves as he gets up from the table. Leaning over the bowl, he slaps the lukewarm water to his face, puffs and blows; she leans over him and scrubs at his neck with a wrung-out cloth.

When he is washed and dried, she buttons up his jacket for him. She looks him over.

“I’ll be good. I’ll do my best.”

“I know you will,” she says. “My little man.” She does up his top button, tucks his canary muffler in around his neck, kisses him. He scoops the car up off the tabletop, slides it into his pocket.

It is still dark. At the corner, under the lamp, Mr. Bell’s horse Rosie stands steaming between her shafts, the milk churns clustered cold and grey on the flatbed behind her.

“Hello, my lovely.”

Billy runs his hand along her flank as he comes up beside her, his knuckles bumping over her ribs, and she turns her head and looks round at him, blinks her great glossy eyes. The lovely warm smell of her huffing breath. He rubs at her jaw, and she blows with pleasure, great clouds of warm steam in the cold fog. He gives her a kiss and her nose is so soft and warm and alive, greyish-velvety, blotchy-pink, bristly.

“Morning, Mr. Bell.”

The dairyman clambers back up into the seat and offers him a lift, but Billy says no and thank you, that he’s off to Cheeseman’s, starting work today, and Mr. Bell asks after Freddy who used to do the deliveries, and Billy says he’s started work at Price’s, so—and Mr. Bell wishes Billy good luck, and Billy says thanks, and he’s near the end of the street now, keeping pace with Mr. Bell and Rosie, and then waving goodbye as they turn into Battersea High Street and he ducks down the back alleyway, boots clattering along the cobbles, his arms wrapped round him and his horse-scented hands tucked under his armpits and his lips faintly tingly. He bumps his way in through the back gate into Mr. Cheeseman’s yard.

Mr. Cheeseman is at the back door of his shop. He has a box of parcelled groceries held out from his hip. There’s an oil lamp hung from the wall. It casts a warm orange glow, filled with grainy fog.

“Ah, Billy,” he says. He sets down the box by the back step.

Billy stands up straight. “Good morning, Mr. Cheeseman.”

Mr. Cheeseman brushes his hands. “Your mother well?”

Billy nods. “Yesser.”

“Good good. Well then. So. You can ride a bike, then?”

“Yesser.”

In fact, he’s only had a couple of goes, standing up on the pedals, on this very bike, Freddy having marked him out some months ago as his successor. Freddy himself had set him going with a hand under the saddle, then a final push and laughing when he let go and Billy looped round in the street and found he couldn’t make the turn and couldn’t stop and yelled and wove about, and then banged the front wheel on the kerb and came off sideways and took the skin off his knee, which made Freddy dash over all concerned and examine the solid tyre and go phew with relief when he found it was undamaged. Billy’d also had a ride from time to time in the grocery box when he was small, but you’re not supposed to lark about with Mr. Cheeseman’s bike.

“Well this ol’ girl won’t give you any trouble.”

Mr. Cheeseman heads over to the lean-to shed and drags open a door that needs its hinges redoing; the bottom is scraping itself away against the flagstones.

“Let’s see you give it a try.”

He reaches into the dark space and half lifts, half pulls out the bike. Billy feels a fierce delight.

It’s an Alldays & Onions. There’s a wooden box fitted above the front wheel; and down the side of the box the words
Cheeseman’s Quality Grocer’s
and
Established 1873
picked out in gold and white lettering against the black. That’s where Billy’d sat, knees buckled up, backside numb, rattling over the cobbles with Freddy cruising along and singing behind him.

Billy crouches down, admires the mantrap pedals, thumbs at the solid rubber tyres. He rests a hand on the sprung leather saddle. His face breaks into a grin.

Mr. Cheeseman shifts in his nice boots, he has to be getting on. Billy stands up. He brushes the dirt off his hands, rubs the oil away.

“Give her a go, then?” Mr. Cheeseman says.

The smile spreads further, making Billy’s cheeks bunch up, ache. This is a
job
. This is
work
. Mr. Cheeseman’s going to
pay
him to do this.

“She weighs a fair bit herself,” Mr. Cheeseman says. “So we’ll try it first without a load.”

Mr. Cheeseman holds the saddle while Billy punts along with one foot, and then hops it up onto the pedal and Mr. Cheeseman lets go. Billy dips back and forth through the frame like a wind-up toy.

“Watch it,” Mr. Cheeseman calls. “Try and stay upright. If you had a load on that, you’d topple right over.”

A few more yards, passing the backyard gates of the houses, and he’s picking up speed, whipping through the cold cobwebs of fog. The pedals taking him up and over and down, up and over and down, his back up straight and the cold needling in through the weave of his jacket. The sheer breathless joy of it. Then the alley ends—opens out onto Simpson Street, a pool of lamplight—and he careens out, swings the bike round. He’s taking it too wide and is going to hit the kerb—he tightens the turn, slows off, but he’s lost it, balance almost gone, and he’s going to fall, crunch the bike onto the cobbles and wreck it, splintered wood and bent spokes and scored paintwork. He can’t let that happen. Billy drops a foot off the pedal, and clatters his boot toe over the cobbles, slowing, dragging the bike round, finds his balance, and he’s got away with it. He’s back between the backyard walls, into the alleyway, all the world is good. The wet fog whips past him and whistles through his teeth, gritty and wet and sour, and he is happy.

Mr. Cheeseman stands by his back gate, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his duster coat, his muffler pulled up over his chin. Billy slows down. He drops a foot and drags it bump bump bump over the cobbles, bringing him to a stop at Mr. Cheeseman’s side, in the edge of the backyard lamplight. He slips down off the pedals, stands astride the frame, not ready to get off yet. His face glows. His fingers throb with cold. He doesn’t want ever to get off.

“Good chap,” Mr. Cheeseman says. “But watch those boots. Your ma will have both our hides.”

Billy steps off and wheels the bike, following Mr. Cheeseman into the yard. He leans the bike up against the wall, and cranes to look at the slip of paper Mr. Cheeseman’s taken from his pocket. It’s an old Lifebuoy soap wrapper, still smelling of soap, with a list of addresses
pencilled on the inner side. Billy knows the addresses—they are the streets that crisscross between Westbridge Road and the railway. Mrs. Goldman is the lady that his ma doesn’t say hello to, though she always smiles at Billy. She has a blue overcoat. Mr. Clovis rides a Marston Sunbeam to work.

“This all make sense to you?” Mr. Cheeseman asks.

Billy nods.

Mr. Cheeseman pockets the list and lifts the first package from the crate by the back door. He dips the package so that Billy can read the pencilled name and address.

“Right,” Billy says.

“Last one on your list,” Mr. Cheeseman says, brandishing Mrs. Goldman’s package of rolls, butter and cheese. “So it goes in first.”

He places it carefully in the bottom of the box. Billy bends to help.

“Next time you can load it up yourself,” Mr. Cheeseman says. “And Mrs. Cheeseman will give you a cup of tea and a bun when you get back.”

Billy stops. Mr. Cheeseman continues loading. There is stubble on his chin, and his neck hangs loose above his collar. Mr. Cheeseman looks up from his work. Billy offers his hand to be shaken. Mr. Cheeseman’s hand is thick and warm around his.

“Good chap,” Mr. Cheeseman says, bumping his hand up and down.

Good chap. Billy likes this. He feels entirely happy. He doesn’t like being called son.

Mrs. Goldman gives him an Everton Mint. She leans out into the street in her red satin wrap and asks how Freddy’s getting on down at Price’s. Billy hasn’t got a bleeding clue, but he grins at her, sweet bulging in his cheek, and says he’s doing famously, thanks for asking. Freddy’s day is over and it’s Billy’s day now, and the world is his lobster.

He pushes off, one foot on the pedal, one on the pavement. Inside his mouth, the taste changes from bed-sour and porridge and plum jam to cold mintiness. He pedals hard, building speed. There’s a satisfying rasp at the edges of his breath, his chest just ever-so-slightly raw, and his legs faintly trembly. He’ll get strong. He’ll get great strong legs, strong chest, strong as a horse’s.

The clock chimes seven forty-five, and he’s due back at Cheeseman’s at eight. Job done and fifteen minutes to himself. He rides in great
looping curves, his breath puffing out into the foggy air. He is a locomotive. He pounds up the hill, ploughs slowing onto the crest, and then creeps up the final yards, his heart hammering, breath catching. He’s almost stopped, wavering, a foot about to meet the ground, but then the slope catches him, the bike begins to roll, the weight of it and the pull of gravity and then it’s downhill, in a long wondrous swoop, the cobbles rattling him, eyes wet, eyes streaming, the mist whipping past. His legs and his chest and his belly clenched for each push and he is just body and machine and it is good. He lets the speed cruise itself away—rounding the bend into Orbel Street clean and perfect. Then he’s out onto the High Street and the fog is lighter here, and the new business of the day is unfolding—the joy and clatter of it, the speed—and Mr. Hartley is unfurling the awning on the butchers, the new girl at Palmer’s emptying a bucket into the gutter, Leibmann’s clerk taking down the blinds. At the greengrocer’s the boys are unloading sacks from the wholesalers’ wagon, and the horses stand blinkered and half asleep and Billy turns his head to halloo the lads, to show off, but just then a man steps out into the street in front of him. Billy swerves, brakes. The man steps back just in the nick of time.