England's Lane (23 page)

But what I really wanted, of course … well I didn't know. I didn't know, did I, what I was wanting. Because I didn't know what had been happening. All that had been going on while we'd been out. And Milly, for all I knew—well, she could be dead on the
floor. Janey, she might've jumped out the window. And I know I shouldn't even be thinking any of all that sort of thing. Or possibly, I don't know … they're both still up there, do you think? Chatting away, normal as you like. Or Milly—here's a possibility—Milly, maybe at the very last minute she thought better of it and left well alone. I know I would've. That's what I would've done if I'd been in her shoes, no question about it. But then she's ever so determined, isn't she? Strong. Very determined woman, Milly is. So, then … whatever the truth of the matter, well I had to now, didn't I? Find out. What had been occurring. And so that's when I was rummaging around in the sideboard. Black & White—barely an inch out of it: I maybe poured it over the old Mrs. Peek's Christmas pudding, that tot, did I? Tried and failed to set fire to it, who's to say? Anyway, it was just that one little nip out of it that saved it, I suppose, from being donated along with the gin and the port and the Bristol Cream to the Servicemen's Widows and Orphans or whoever else had come rattling their tins in my face, last springtime. So I had a little dram—and it's funny how it helps you out. Get a grip, sort of style. Makes you numb, just like I wanted it to. My ears, though—they were straining, I can tell you. Any little noise, I would've heard it. Moaning, breakages, anything of that order. Seemed normal. All seemed quiet. So I quickly knocked back just one more little noggin, and then I braced myself: right then, I was thinking: no more messing about—time to go and see.

I stopped on the landing like I always do. Had another little listen. A creak up above me from Anthony's room—and he'd got his little transistor on, sounded like. Ever so pleased he was, when I got it for him. Says he likes to listen to Radio Luxembourg or Radio Lichtenstein or whatever he said it was. Why he can't be happy with the BBC like the rest of us I couldn't tell you. Kids, isn't it? But it's only the size of a packet of twenty Player's, and so there's no sort
of a speaker on the little thing—for all that it cost me the best part of six quid, I am not joking. John Barnes. Five pound nineteen-and-eleven, and it sounds more like a bit of fish you've got frying in the pan than any sort of music, if you want me to be honest. But Anthony, well—more than content, he seems to be. Everyone at school's got one—that's what he went on telling me, one of these tinny little transistors. Well, that's all of it really, isn't it? Wanting what all the other lads have got. And anything I can do to make the poor little blighter feel like he's more a part of things—you know, not to be out of it at all—well, more than happy. You owe it, don't you? You owe it, you do. So anyway, that was little Anthony upstairs, but on this floor … and I was standing ever so still … nothing at all. No sort of movement. So I open her door—easy, like I do—and I'm not really knowing what it is I'm expecting … but I can tell you this: I was ever so relieved when I see her just sitting up in her bed, like she does. Arms out all stiff across the counterpane. Staring at something. Staring at nothing. I don't know.

“All right are you, Janey love? Oh dear—you never touched your tea, look. And the sausage roll—go off the idea in the end, did you? Fancy trying a little bit now, maybe …? I can cut it up small. No? Well let me get you a nice fresh cup, anyway. Anthony … Anthony, yes? He had a lovely day. Zoo. Remember I told you, Janey? This morning, before we went off? Yeh. Zoo. That's where we were. Lovely day. Back now. Cushions all right, are they? Your pillows? Plump them up a bit? No? Sure? No trouble … All right then, Janey. I'll just pop off and make that tea. Shan't be a jiff. And when I come back, if you've changed your mind about wanting a little bite of something to eat, well you can tell me then. All right? All right, Janey? Hear me, can you? Well—like I say, I'll be back in no time.”

And then I shut the door behind me. And I just closed my eyes.
The fizzing of Anthony's transistor, that was the only noise, the only noise in the whole of the world. So there it was, then. She was in exactly the same position as I'd left her in the morning. Hadn't so much as shifted. So if Milly did come, that's what she'd had to cope with. Just like I do—day in, day out. So now she maybe knows what it's like. What I was on about. If she did come. Don't suppose I'll know now, will I? Not till the morning.

So I got Anthony his tea: fish finger, few peas, bit of bread and a Kit-Kat. Nice big glass of gold top. Brought it up to him. Thought I would. And I didn't trouble with a brew, no I didn't. I didn't fancy any—which is odd for me, I can tell you that. So I had a Scotch. And Janey? Make a cup for Janey, should I? No point. Is there? Bring her a cup of tea, she's just not going to drink it. More than half … it's true, you know: more than half the PG Tips I buy, I'm pouring down the sink. Criminal. So I just sat there in the front room. With my Black & White. And it was the light that woke me up. Gave me ever such a start. Couldn't work it out, not at first. And then I twigged: it was daylight, coming through the gap in the curtains. Been on the settee for the whole of the night, then. My heart was in my throat till I looked at my watch: no, it's all right—still got plenty of time to get Anthony all ready for school: only just gone six. So I thought I'd have a bit of a wash and a brush-up—but when I went to get up, though … ooh, I did feel it. Right above my temple, there. Heck of a throb. And the bottle of Black & White—wasn't that much left in it, so it's hardly a surprise.

It's just after twelve now, and I'm down in the shop. Of course I'm down in the shop: where else am I going to be? Milly, she telephoned me earlier. Asked her a hundred questions before she could even get a word in: What went on? Did you come? What did she say? Did she say anything? Did you come? What went on? She just said she'd pop in at dinnertime, have a bit of a chat. Not sure I'm
looking forward to it, really. Yeh and then I remembered who else was due to pop in at dinnertime: Sally from Lindy's, to do the window. Hippo is what Anthony's taken to calling her now. Ever so cheeky, but it did make me laugh. I'd laugh right now if I was in the mood. Phoned her, Sally. Tried to put her off. Not a great time if I'm honest, I said to her—maybe another day Sally, eh? Wouldn't hear of it: couldn't let you down Mr. Miller, is what she said to me, what with Christmas just around the corner and everything: don't forget, Mr. Miller, this is the season when we've got to display all the Cadbury's and Fry's selection boxes and the chocolate snowmen and all those little bags of gold coins and the really big gift boxes of All Gold and Terry's and Black Magic with all the ribbons! Then there's the special Christmas packs of cigarettes and cigars. Jingle Bells, Mr. Miller! See you soon! Yeh … and never mind jingle bells—my head now, it was going like a pair of bongos. Christ Alive.

It's what I call patchy in the shop—just cigarettes and tobacco, very largely. Saturday mornings the smokers will stock up fairly heavily because they know I'm closed on Sundays—and then on a Monday morning, bright and early, back they all come, poor devils. Kiddies are at school, of course, so I won't see them till soon after four. And me, my mind, it's not really on the job. That Mr. Hoskins, he gave me ever such a look when I slid across to him twenty Woodbine. Can't imagine what I was thinking: he's been a Weights man ever since I can remember. And so now that she comes in the door—Milly, she's coming in the door—it's that much of a relief, I can hardly tell you. My head, it's not too bad, but the old stomach now—that's in the middle of giving me a bout of merry hell.

“Milly. Hallo. Good to see you. All right, are you …?”

And Milly, despite just everything, she had to smile at the question, as well as the sight of him. He seemed to her at that moment
to be the very embodiment of helplessness—eager yet defeated: his beaten face and questioning eyes vying for the upper hand in a hopeless, forgotten and eternal war: an abandoned Jap in the jungle, with everyone else gone home. And now he wants to know, Stan, whether or not I'm all right. Well—quite a question. Shall I tell him? Shall I say to him well actually no, Stan, since you come to ask me—I'm not. All right. Not at all all right: all right is very far from the way I am feeling. Of course he doesn't really mind either way—but even supposing he did, where on earth to begin? Stan, all he wants to hear about is Jane, of course. Well naturally—Jane makes up his entire concern. While for my part … well—is there anyone I have not been thinking of, all the terrible way through a thoroughly sleepless night? Because everyone I come into contact with begins straight away to affect me. They seep in under the skin and quickly become a part of my center. I do not know why this should be so, but it is. I wish it were not, but it is. And then there are the abstractions to consider—the nebulous concepts. Such as marriage, to take just the most insistent of them. I was, as three o'clock this morning edged toward four, confronting quite squarely what it is all of it meant to mean. Is it, at base, merely a matter of convenience? Why do people do it? Pledge themselves to just this one person for the duration of their natural lives. Custom. For it is not natural. Can't be. Not … how can I say …? Humanly natural. It is custom—society's need for apparent conformity. The need for children as well, of course. In most cases. But all this nonsense you see at the pictures and read in these romances and so on about meeting Mr. Right … the love of your life. And it is nonsense, of course it is. Because by definition, the people you know are the people you have met. The others … you simply haven't. And from that pool, this motley selection of drifting souls into whose shoulders you have glancingly collided, you plump for the least noxious; or, in my own
particular case, you quite cavalierly discard every hope for the sort of future that any girl dreams of on perfectly literally the very first man who comes along. And if there truly is a Mr. Right, the colossal thing, your one great dazzling destiny, the key to all the love in your heart … well then he could easily be living in Borneo or somewhere, and you'd simply never know. And so to the realities of what now we are faced with: Jim and myself. Stan and Jane. Jonathan … and Fiona. Three very different situations, I think that's totally plain, though ostensibly identical: married couples, each with an only child. All of us living in the same little street, England's Lane, and all busy running our respective families and businesses. Though I think I am the only one of us who has insight into the lives of all the others, whether or not I want it. Jim and I … well we exist in a state of just about suspended toleration. He would be aware of all I do for him only were it ever to cease. He pays the bills. An arrangement, you see? I hold him in contempt, while he, I often imagine, believes me to be insane. Or at the very least irrational. But then of course I am but merely a woman, am I not? And so it is hardly to be wondered at.

Clearly, I have needed more. And what thinking person wouldn't? Which has led me to Jonathan. A man who should not really be here at all. He is not the butcher. Is he? He is an enigma—and yes I know that I find that, oh … infinitely more alluring than any plain and simple logicality. But however this gentleman came to be chopping meat, for whatever reason he finds himself here (and no I haven't asked him, because whatever it was, I couldn't bear the answer), he has seen fit to consort with me. Why, though? I never before questioned it, and now I can't stop. For his wife, Fiona … is, I have grudgingly to admit, a fine-looking woman. Beautifully dressed. She speaks very nicely—although I know this only from having overheard her in various shops in the Lane from time to
time: I have never addressed her. And it would seem that they still have union. They share a room. They share a joke. And they happily will share a glass of Benedictine. And so in Jonathan's eyes … I am what, now? Merely a matter of convenience? Solely that? To an outsider, of course I can see that that is how it might appear. No—more than that: this would be the sole and quite patent conclusion. And I can smell and practically taste on my lips that outsider's disdain. For me. Yet when I am with him, Jonathan, I know that it is so much more. I am not delusional. The outsiders, they do not know. The outsiders, they have not even the slightest idea. For they have never seen a couple alone. No one, ever, has seen a couple alone: your very presence annihilates the possibility. And with Jonathan, you see, I am the only one there. I am half of that couple. I know it to be real, and I feel it very deeply.

And all these truths are hardly confined to just this little handful of marriages, you know. It seems … well it sometimes seems to me that every single one of them in the world is a separate kind of gated estate from which casual ramblers are strictly barred unless by prearranged invitation—though they may, over years, glimpse the occasional treetop or pasture through a chink in the towering wall, a gap in the thick and encircling hedges. For the facade is all: “Business As Usual” is what the hastily erected notices are reading, though behind the shattered shopfronts there is nothing remotely usual occurring: every sort of unconsidered drama is being played out in the presence of no audience whatsoever: a two-handed play of a thousand acts, existing solely to generate for its unwitting cast an unstoppable invasion of agonies and rapture, rapidly supplanted by the simmering stew of an ugly complacency—yearning then, and wistfulness, or else a darkly secret and utter disintegration. Unthinkable examples are frighteningly everywhere: this very morning on my way here to see about Stan, I went into Dent's. Everyone says that
you should never buy fish on a Monday, but Mrs. Dent had told me ages ago that she receives a special delivery each Sunday afternoon from Lowestoft because it's the only day of the week the fisherman is not working and can make the journey to London. And it breaks her heart because for the whole of Monday his entire catch will be sitting there on ice in her window as passers-by do just that very thing and pointedly ignore it. Then just before she closes she tries to sell it off cheaply. By Tuesday she is thinking of it as catfood and she more or less gives it away—and that is when all the elderly women living alone will swoop upon it and have it for their tea. Since she told me, I make a point of going in early on a Monday morning—for I wouldn't want her to think I was in any way exploiting her confidence, nor seeking to profit from her misfortune. This morning I bought from her three good-sized trout—glistening, eyes bright and smelling of the sea: I love that, and the coldness in there—so very clean and bracing. She has terrible problems with her feet, Mrs. Dent—bunions: and her shoes, she says, have to be specially made, this is what she was telling me, in some little cobbler near Chancery Lane. She said I wouldn't believe the prices they charge. But her feet—and this is when she lowered her voice, even though it was just the two of us there—they got much worse, so very much worse, she said, after her husband died. They had no children because Mr. Dent, and I've known this of old, hadn't been at all well since the day she'd met him—something to do with his lungs, and then, she said, it was other things too. And please don't ask me why she chose to tell me all this—I never invite any such intimacies, nor particularly do I relish them—but it had been his pleasure to massage her feet every single evening, just after he had bathed and then anointed them with a peppermint balm. I miss that, she said—deftly wrapping up the trout in yesterday's
News of the World
: yes I know it might be selfish of me, Mrs. Stammer, but of
all the things Mr. Dent and I used to do together, it's that I miss the most of all.