The Watchers on the Shore

Penguin Book 2777

The Watchers on the Shore

Stan Barstow, the only son of a coal-miner, was born in 1928 in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He was educated at the local council school and Ossett Grammar School, and began his working
life in the drawing office of a local engineering firm. It was the success of
A Kind of Loving,
his first published novel, which was a Book Society Choice in 1960 and later filmed, that allowed him
to become a full-time writer in 1962. His later books are a collection of short stories,
The
Desperadoes
(1961), and the novels
Ask Me
Tomorrow
(1962), and
Joby
(1964). All four books
are now available in Penguins.
The Watchers on the Shore
is a sequel to
A Kind of Loving.

Stan Barstow, who is married and has a son and
a daughter, has also written for radio, television
and the theatre.

Stan Barstow

The Watchers on the Shore

Penguin Books
Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,
Victoria, Australia

First published by Michael Joseph 1966 Published in Penguin Books 1968
Copyright © Stan Barstow, 1966

Made and printed in Great Britain by
Cox & Wyman Ltd
London, Reading and Fakenham
Set in Monotype Times

This book is sold subject to the condition that
it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without
the publisher's prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser

For Alfred Bradley

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking.

And now he's dead.

It must have been too cold for him his heart
gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.

Stevie Smith

Not Waving but Drowning

(by permission of Andre Deutsch Ltd)

Part One

1

Lying back in the chair I swing young Bobby off my knee and high
over my head, holding him at the end of my stiff arms, my hands
round his deep little chest and shaking him. He giggles with helpless
delight and a great blob of dribble rolls out of his wet open mouth
and falls into my left eye.

'Aagh, you mucky little tyke!'I lower him on to my lap again and fish my hanky out. 'You've spit in me face. What d'you mean by that, eh? Come on, speak up. What d'you mean by that?'

'You'll frighten the life out of him, talking to him like that, 'Ingrid
says from her chair across the room, and my sister Chris, on her
knees warming nightclothes at the electric fire, turns her head and
laughs. 'No, I don't think he will.'

''Course I won't. He knows me, don't you, Bobby? Don't you, old lad?'

And he's already up again, feet kneading into my thighs, his
wide-open eyes - Chris's eyes
and
my eyes, people say - close on
my face.

'Do dat 'gen. Do dat 'gen. Do dat 'gen.'

'Do it again? All right, but no more spitting. Understand?
Here we go, then.'

Up he goes again, giggling like before, happy to go on as long as
I'm willing, nearly everything he does under command, no deci
sions, no worries, switching from happy to sad, sad to happy,
laughter to tears and back again, life just a moment - now. A
kid with good parents, and a future, as long as he doesn't get
vaporized before he has a chance to taste it. And I wonder if he'll
grow up happy and content like his dad or make a mess of things,
take a wrong turning somewhere, like his mixed-up, half-miserable Uncle Vic.

'I know who'll tire of that first,'Chris says.

'So do I. I'm puffed. I'm puffed, young Bob. Enough! Down
you come. I think I'll have apiece of Bobby's bottom for me supper.'

He squeals and wriggles in my hands and as I reckon to take a bite
out of his firm little behind I catch Ingrid, her head lifted from the
woman's magazine on her knee, with her eyes on the two of us, her mind somewhere deep in thought. She comes out of it as she notices me looking at her, and speaks to Chris.

'Aren't you scared of him catching cold, playing about with
nothing on?'

'No, it's warm enough in here. Anyway, he can have his pyjamas on now.'

She gets up and comes over with them. 'Want me to take him?'

'No,'I say, 'I'll put 'em on for him.'

'You are a glutton for punishment.'

'I don't mind as long as he doesn't pee on me,'I say, and Ingrid says 'Vic! 'in that shocked prissy voice she uses when she thinks I'm being vulgar.

But Chris just laughs. 'Oh, he'll warn you if he wants to do it.'

'C'mon then, lad; let's have you into these.'

I get him into his nightclothes, pale-blue winceyette stuff with
little nursery-rhyme characters parading over it, and he plucks
at his jacket with his podgy fingers.

'Pajamas.'

'Yes, pyjamas. And very smart they are, too. I wish I'd a pair like 'em.'

'And a sight you'd look,'Ingrid says, smiling.

'Make a change from Marks and Spencer's.'

'I'll run you up a pair on the machine,'Chris offers.

'Aye, you do that. Only I'll have dancing girls instead of Little
Jack Horner.'

'You're frisky enough without having dancing girls on your pyjamas,'Ingrid says, and I look at Bobby, pretending to be shocked.

'Did you hear that, young Bobby? Your Auntie Ingrid's telling tales out of school.'

'I think it's time he was going down,'Chris says. 'I hope you haven't got him too excited to sleep.'

'He'll go. Won't you, Bobby lad? Robert Victor Lester, Esquire,
dead-horse and donkey buyer, will now retire to his room.'

Ingrid puts her magazine aside and swings her legs out from under her.

'Can I take him?'

'You can see if he'll go for you,'Chris says.

Ingrid holds out her arms to Bobby. 'Can I take you to bed, Bobby?'

He pulls himself up on my knee straight away.

'Oh, you're deserting your Uncle Vic now, are you? Give us a
kiss, then, before you go.'

He turns round and makes a great business of giving me a sloppy
kiss on the face before going to Ingrid, who stands with him in her
arms, Chris and I watching and probably pretty much the same
thing going through both our minds. Our first, the reason we got
married, would have been older than Bobby if Ingrid hadn't fallen
downstairs and brought on a miscarriage at six months. The
second, started on a night when we weren't bothering to take care, would have been born just about now, except it didn't last even as
long as the first and there was no accident to cause the trouble.
We hardly knew Ingrid was pregnant before it was all over and the
doctor was saying perhaps she ought to see a specialist at the infirmary.
He
said there was no real reason why she shouldn't
carry a baby the full term, but the next time it happened she'd have
to be on her guard from the beginning and take care not to do
anything at all strenuous. Which made everybody sorry for Ingrid
and brought another touch of frost into my cold war with Mrs
Rothwell; though why me giving Ingrid the first baby before we
were married should make me responsible for everything that's
happened since is something only her mind can work out. And I've
stopped trying to reason with it.

'Night night to everybody, then,'Ingrid says and Bobby, tiredness come over him all of a sudden, flops with his head against her shoulder and sucks sleepily at his thumb.

'Everything's ready, Ingrid,'Chris says. 'You can pop him straight in.'

For a minute it looks as though he's going; then he decides that
things aren't as they should be and
at the door to the bedroom he
twists round in Ingrid's arms and looks for Chris.

'Mummy come.'

Chris smiles. 'Hard lines. I shall have to do it after all.'

She goes and takes him from Ingrid and carries him into the other room. Ingrid comes back and sits down again and reaches for her magazine without saying anything to me. We haven't a lot of small talk and what we have she usually starts. I light a fag and as Chris comes out of the bedroom saying, 'There, let's hope we hear no more from him for a while,'the door from the hall opens and David comes in carrying bottles from the off-licence in a leather shopping bag.

'It's taken you a long time, David,'Chris says.

'I was just wondering if you'd stopped off for a crafty pint,'I say.

'You know I wouldn't have done that without you, Vic,'he says.

'I should hope not.'

David takes his raincoat off and hangs it up then comes back in
and takes half a dozen pint bottles of pale ale and a bottle of gin
out of the bag and puts them on the sideboard.

'You should have let me come with you and pay for some of that,'I say to him.

'Nonsense. We'd run right out anyway, and I like to have a drop in the house... Would you like a drink now or later?'

'Later,'I tell him. 'It's a bit early yet.'

'As a matter of fact,'David says, 'I've been having a short discussion about the state of the world with my esteemed colleague J. C. Fothergill, Senior History and Lower School Maths.'

'Where was he?'Chris asks and David smiles.

'In the off-licence, buying a drop of the stuff that cheers.'

'But he doesn't live round here, does he?'

'No, he doesn't. But J.C. is a man with a devious mind and also a
pillar of his local chapel. If he wants to buy his booze where he isn't
known then presumably he has his reasons. He seemed a bit taken
aback when I walked in and caught him stuffing the whisky and
gin into his bag. Now I suppose he'll be wondering just when I'll let it drop in the staff room that I've seen him stocking up for the cold nights.'

'But it doesn't matter, does it?'Chris says.

'Oh no. Only in his own mind.'

'He always was a two-faced old hypocrite, Farthingale,'I say. 'I remember him of old.'

David gives me a little smile.

'He treated me to an analysis of Mr Khrushchev's motives in the
Cuban affair which I thought was very subtle. The only thing is there's no foundation for believing it's true. By the way, let's not
miss the News. We didn't hear it at six.'