New and Collected Stories (25 page)

‘Take your sweat,' Bob said. ‘This is a mystery trip.'

Ernie agreed. ‘I'm glad there's no racing on a Sunday. It's good to get out a bit like this.'

‘It is, an' all. Missis well?'

‘Not too bad. Says she feels like a battleship with such a big belly' – and went silent. Bob knew him well enough: he'd never talk just to be friendly; they could drive for an hour and he'd stay shut, often in an icy far-off mood that didn't give him anything to say or think of. They worked a dozen feet from each other all week, Bob on his precision jobs, Ernie watching a row of crankshaft millers. ‘What guns you got then?' he asked.

Bob peered ahead, a calm and measured glance along the lit-up wastes of the road to Ollerton. ‘A twelve-bore and a .303.'

‘I wish you had,' Ernie laughed. ‘You never know when you're going to need a .303 these days. Best gun out.'

‘Keep your trap shut about it though,' Bob said. ‘I got it in the army. I wouldn't tell you except that I know I can trust you by now.'

Maybe he wasn't joking, Ernie thought. Bob was clever with hands and brain, the stop-gap of the shop with micrometer and centre-lathe, a toolmaker who could turn off a candlestick or fag-lighter as soon as look at you. ‘Do you mean it about a .303?'

Bob pulled into a lay-by and got out. ‘Keep clear of the headlights,' he said, ‘but catch this.' Ernie caught it, pushed forward the safety catch, the magazine resting in the net of his fingers. ‘God Almighty! Anything up the spout?'

‘I've a clip in my pocket. Strictly for rabbits' – Bob smiled, taking it back.

‘A waste,' Ernie said. ‘The twelve-bore would do. Mixermatosis has killed 'em all off, anyway.'

They drove on. ‘Had it since I left the army,' Bob told him. ‘The stores was in a chronic state in Germany at the end of the war. Found myself with two, so kept one. I have a pot-shot with it now and again. I enjoy hunting – for a bit o' recreation.'

Ernie laughed, wildly and uncontrolled, jerking excited shouts into the air as if trying to throw something out of his mouth, holding his stomach to stop himself doubling up, wearing down the shock of what a free-lance .303 meant. He put his arm around Bob's shoulder by way of congratulation: ‘You'd better not let many people know about it, or the coppers'll get on to you.'

‘Don't worry. If ever they search, it's a souvenir. I'd get rid of the bolt, and turn another off on the lathe when I needed it.'

‘Marvellous,' Ernie said. ‘A .303! Just the thing to have in case of a revolution. I hope I can get my hands on one when the trouble starts.'

Bob was sardonic: ‘You and your revolution! There wain't be one in our lifetimes, I can tell you that.' Ernie had talked revolution to him for months, had argued with fiery puritanical force, guiding Bob's opinion from voting Labour to a head-nodding acceptance of rough and ready Communism. ‘I can't see why you think there'll be a revolution though.'

‘I've told you though,' Ernie said loudly. ‘There's got to be something. I feel it. We wok in a factory, don't we? Well, we're the backbone of the country, but you see, Bob, there's too many people on our backs. And it's about time they was slung off. The last strike we had a bloke in a pub said to me: “Why are you fellows allus on strike?” And I said to 'im: “What sort o' wok do you do?” And he said: “I'm a travelling salesman.” So I said, ready to smash 'im: “Well, the reason I come out on strike is because I want to get bastards like yo' off my back.” That shut 'im up. He just crawled back into his sherry.'

At dawn they stopped the car in a ladle of land between Tuxford and the Dukeries, pulling on to a grass verge by a gate. A tall hawthorn hedge covered in green shoots bordered the lane, and the bosom of the meadow within rose steeply to a dark skyline, heavy rolls of cloud across it. Ernie stood by the gate: ‘The clouds smell fresh' – pulling his mac collar up. ‘Think we'll get owt 'ere?'

‘It's good hunting country,' Bob told him. ‘I know for a fact.'

They opened flasks and tore hungrily into sandwiches. ‘Here, have a swig of this,' Ernie said, pouring some into his own cup. ‘It'll do you good.'

Bob held it to the light. ‘What is it?'

‘Turps and dash. Here's the skin off your lips.'

‘Don't talk so loud. You'll chase all the wild life away. Not a bad drop, is it?'

‘A rabbit wouldn't get far with a .303 at its arse.' A sort of loving excitement paralysed his fingers when he picked up the rifle: ‘Can you get me one?'

‘They don't grow on trees, Ernie.'

‘I'd like one, though. For the next war. I'd just wait for somebody to try and call me up!' They leaned on the gate, smoking. ‘Christ, when the Russians come I'll be liberated.'

‘It's a good job everybody ain't like you,' Bob said with a smile. ‘You're a rare 'un, yo' are.'

Ernie saw a movement across the field, beginning from the right and parting a diagonal line of grass, ascending towards the crest on their left. The light from behind showed it up clear and neat. ‘See it?' he hissed, ramming a shell in the twelve-bore. Bob said nothing, noiselessly lifted the .303. No need to use that, Ernie thought. It'd bring a man down a mile off; a twelve-bore's good enough for a skinful of mixermatosis.

A sudden wind blew against the dawn, ruffling the line of their prey. Bob's eye was still on it: a single round went into the breech. ‘I'll take it,' he said softly. It was already out of buck-shot from Ernie's twelve-bore. Both lost it, but said nothing. A lull in the wind didn't show it up. ‘I expect it's a hare.'

Bob lowered his .303, but Ernie signalled him to be quiet: it seemed as if a match were lit in the middle of the field, a slow-burning brown flame moving cautiously through shallow grass, more erratic now, but still edging towards the crest. The cold, star-flecked sky needed only a slow half turn to bring full daylight. What the bloody hell is it? Ernie wondered. Fields and lane were dead quiet: they were kings of the countryside: no houses, no one in sight. He strained his eyes hoping to discover what it was. A squirrel? Some gingernut, anyway.

A smile came on to Bob's face, as when occasionally at work his patience paid off over some exacting job, a flange going into place with not half a thou' to spare. Now it was more heightened than that: a triumph of hunting. Two sharp ears were seen on the skyline, a hang-dog tail, a vulpine mouth breakfasting on wind – with Ernie's heart a bongo drum playing rhythms on his chest wall: a fox.

The air split open, and from all directions came a tidal wave of noise, rushing in on every ear but that to which the bullet had been aimed. Together they were over the gate, and speeding up the slope as if in a dawn attack. Gasping, Bob knelt and turned the dead fox over: as precise a job as he had ever done. ‘I always get 'em in the head if I can. I promised one of the tails to a neighbour.'

‘Ain't this the first fox you've shot, then?' Ernie couldn't fathom his quiet talk: a fox stone dead from a .303 happened once in a lifetime. They walked down the hill. ‘I've had about half a dozen,' he said by the car door, dragging a large polythene bag from under the seat and stuffing the dead fox into it. ‘From round here most on 'em. I'll knock off a bit and go to Lincolnshire next time.' The fox lay as if under a glass case, head bashed and tail without colour. ‘It never stood a chance with a .303,' Ernie grinned.

He took the wheel going back, flying down lanes to the main road, setting its nose at Mansfield as if intent on cutting Nottinghamshire in two. Bob lounged behind using a pull-through on the .303. ‘I've allus liked hunting,' he shouted to Ernie. ‘My old man used to go poaching before the war, so we could have summat to eat. He once did a month in quod, the poor bastard. Never got a chance to enjoy real hunting, like me.'

‘I want the next tail, for the kid that's coming,' Ernie said, laughing.

Bob was pleased with himself: ‘You talk about revolution: the nobs around here would go daft if they knew I was knocking their sport off.'

It was broad daylight: ‘Have another turps and dash,' Ernie said, ‘you clever bleeder. You'll find the bottle in my haversack.'

The road opened along a high flat ridge through a colliery village, whose grey houses still had no smoke at their chimneys. Silent head-stocks to the left cowered above the fenced-off coppices of Sherwood Forest.

The Firebug

I smile as much as feel ashamed at the memory of some of the things I did when I was a lad, even though I caused my mother a lot of trouble. I used to pinch her matches and set fire to heaps of paper and anything I could get my eyes on.

I was no bigger than sixpennorth o' coppers, so's you'd think I wasn't capable of harming a fly. People came straight out with it: ‘Poor little bogger. Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.' But my auntie used to say: ‘He might not be so daft as he looks when he grows up' – and she was right, I can see that now. Her husband had a few brains as well: ‘He's quiet, nobody can deny it, but still waters run deep. I wouldn't trust him an inch.' At this the rest of the family got on to him and called him bully with neither sense nor feeling, said I was delicate and might not have long for this world – while I went on eating my way through a fistful of bread-and-jam as if I hadn't heard a dickybird and would last forever.

This match craze must have started when, still in leggings, I was traipsed downtown by my mother one day midweek. The streets weren't all that crowded and I held on to her carrier-bag, dragging a bit I should think, slurring my other hand along the cold glass of shop windows full of tricycles and forts for Christmas that I would never get – unless they were given to me as a reward for being good enough not to pinch 'em. As usual my mother was harassed to death (on her way to ask for a bit more time to pay off the arrears of 24 Slum Yard I shouldn't wonder) and I was grizzling because I couldn't share as much as I'd have liked in the razzle-dazzle of the downtown street.

Suddenly I left off moaning, felt the air go quiet and blue, as if a streak of sly lightning had stiffened everybody dead in their tracks. Even motor cars stopped. ‘What's up, mam?' I said – or whined I expect, because I could only whine up to fourteen: then I went to work and started talking clear and proper, from shock.

Before she could tell me, a bloody great bell began clanging – louder than any school or church call – bowling its ding-dong from every place at once, so that I looked quickly at the up-windows to wonder where it was coming from. I felt myself going white, knees quaking. Not that I was terrified. I was right in the middle of another world, as if the one and only door to it had a bell on saying
PRESS
, and somebody was leaning his elbow spot-on and drilling right into my startled brain.

The bells got louder, so's I couldn't any longer hope it was only the cops or an ambulance. It was something I'd never seen before nor dreamt of either: a flying red-faced monster batting along the narrow street at a flat-out sixty, as if it had been thrown there like a toy. Only this weighed a ton or two and made the ground shake under me, like a procession for the Coronation or something – but coming at top speed, as if a couple of Russian tanks were after its guts and shooting fire behind. ‘What is it, mam? What is it?' I whined when it got quiet enough to speak.

‘Only a fire,' she told me. ‘A house is on fire, and they're fire-engines going to put it out.' Then another couple of engines came belting through the deadened street, both together it seemed, turning all the air into terrifying klaxons. I started screaming, and didn't stop until I'd gone down in a fit.

Mam and a man carried me into the nearest shop and when I woke up there was nothing but toys all around, so's I thought I was in heaven. To keep me calm the shopkeeper gave me a lead soldier which I was glad to grab, though I'd rather have had the toy fire-engine that caught at my sight as soon as I stood up. It was as if my eyes had opened for the first time since I was born: red with yellow ladders and blue men in helmets – but he turned me away to ask if I was all right, and when I nodded walked me back into the street out of temptation. I was a bit of a bogger in them days.

The long school holidays of summer seemed to go on for years. When I could scrounge fourpence I'd nip to the continuous downtown pictures after dinner and drop myself in one of the front seats, to see the same film over and over till driven out by hunger or God save the king. But I didn't often get money to go, and now and again mam would bundle me into the street so's her nerves could have a rest from my ‘give-me-this-and-I-want-that' sort of grizzling. I'd be quite happy – after the shock of being slung out had worn off – to sit on the pavement making wrinkles in the hot tar with a spoon I'd managed to grab on my way through the kitchen, or drawing patterns with a piece of slate or matchstick. Other kids would be rolling marbles or running at rounders, or a string of them would scream out of an entry after playing hide and seek in somebody's backyard. A few would be away at seaside camp, or out in the fields and woods on Sunday treats, so it worn't as noisy as it might have been. I remember once I sat dead quiet all afternoon doing nothing but talking to myself for minutes at a time on what had happened to me in the last day or two and about things I hoped to do as soon as I got either money or matches in my fist – chuntering ten to the dozen as if somebody unknown to me had put a penny in the gramophone of my brain as they walked by. Other people passing looked at me gone-out, but I didn't give a bogger and just went on talking until the noise of a fire-engine in the distance came through to my locked-in world.

It sounded like a gale just starting up, an aeroplane of bells going along at ground level with folded wings, about ten streets off but far enough away to seem as if it was in another town behind the big white clouds of summer, circling round a dream I'd had about a fire a few nights ago. It didn't sound real, though I knew what it meant now, after my downtown fit a long time back in the winter. Hot sun and empty sky stopped it being loud I suppose, but my heart nearly fell over itself at the brass-band rattle, it went so fast – sitting in my mouth like a cough-drop or dollymixture getting bigger as the bells went on. Most of the other kids ran hollering to where the noise came from, even when I thought they were too far off for anybody else to hear, went clobbering up the street and round a corner until everywhere was quiet and empty except the bells now reaching louder all the time.