The Likes of Us (15 page)

I shook my head. ‘No, Tom.'

‘Damn it,' Tom said again, ‘it serves 'em right for bein' so flamin' mean!'

He wrapped the paint-brush in a piece of rag and put it in his pocket. ‘They can have the paint.' He looked at me. ‘C'mon, then, let's be off. Take your last look at this place. You won't be seein' it any more.'

We went out, he closing and locking the door behind us, and walked away together. It was about half-way down the street, that, to Tom's confusion and distress, I began to cry.

‘What's up, Janie?' He stopped and peered down at me. ‘What's wrong, love?'

But I could only shake my head in reply. It was going to be all right. I just knew it was. But I couldn't help but cry.

The Years Between

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At fifty-three, when nostalgia could be borne no longer, Morgan Lightly turned his back on the sheep-farming land of his adoption and returned to Cressley, sick for the sight of his native county, which he had not seen for thirty years, and of the woman who had jilted him all that long time ago. With no more announcement than a brief letter to his brother Thomas, his only surviving relative, with whom he had corresponded spasmodically over the years, he came back.

He came in winter and for several days he curbed the impatience that would have hid him rush off it once to find her whom he hid loved and lost, and wandered the dark town and the countryside, drinking in the sight and sound and smell of all that which, though changed, still held the savour of his youth. And then, when nearly a week had passed, he decided that if he were not to allow the prosaic reporting of the weekly Argus to rob his reappearance of its drama it was time for him to appease his other yearning.

Driving up out of the town he felt as nervous as a boy on his first date and on the crest of the hill he stopped the hired Ford and relit his dead pipe. He sat there for a little while, with the window down, enjoying the tobacco in the keen air. Before him the road fell into the narrow valley of the stream, then twisted upwards to the village which, not much more than a double row of stone-built cottages in his youth, now carried a pale fringe of new corporation houses and several architect-designed bungalows and villas sited in such a way that, through a deep cleft in the hillside, they commanded a view of the town. Above the village was the winter-brown sweep of the moors and beyond, in the west, pale sunlight touched the thin snow on the Pennine tops.

Morgan got out of the car and walked across the road to look back the way he had come, at the town. His town. How often had memory conjured it up thus when he was thousands of miles away! There were changes visible – the twin cooling towers of the power station by the river were strange to him – but the hard core of it was the same. And it satisfied him to note that most of the changes were for the better. ‘Muck and brass', they had said in his youth; ‘they go together'. But not everyone accepted that now. Light and space and clean untrammelled lines were what they went in for nowadays. The new estates, covering the playing fields of his youth on the fringes of the town, with their wide streets and well-spaced houses; and the lawns and gardens in the public squares and streets that had known no colours but grey and soot-black. The smoke was still there, fuming from a thousand chimneys, but when you planted grass it came up fresh and green every spring. He liked that. It was good. It was good too to see well-dressed people thronging the streets, and the market and to notice the profusion of goods behind the plate-glass windows of the new shops: for he had left the town at a time when men hung about on street corners, their self-respect as worn and shabby as their clothing, idle, eating their hearts out for want of work to keep them occupied and feed and clothe their families decently.

He returned to the car, the feeling of nervousness and apprehension returning to him as he reached the floor of the valley and changed gear for the climb into the village. He turned the green Consul into the steep main street where the windows of the parallel terraces of cottages winked and glinted at other across the narrow cobbles, and he noticed lace curtains flutter in some of them as the car moved along, taking up almost the entire width of the roadway and darkening the downstairs room of each house in turn. An elderly woman, standing in a doorway with a shawl over her shoulders, stooped and stared with frank curiosity into the car. He stopped and lowered the window.

‘I wonder if you can tell me where Mrs Taplow lives – Mrs Sarah Taplow.'

The woman directed him farther up the hill, still gazing intently at him as he thanked her and moved on. He had a feeling of knowing the woman and he wondered if she had recognised him. Down in Cressley he could walk about largely unknown but here in the village some of the older people were sure to recall him – and the details of long ago. And standing on the pavement outside Sarah Taplow's house he hoped that no one had stolen his thunder and deprived him of the pleasure of surprising her as he had looked forward to doing. But when she opened the door to his knock and faced him, gaping at him with all the astonishment he could have wished for in her blue eyes, he could only shuffle his feet like a bashful boy and say sheepishly, ‘Well, Sarah?'

Without speaking she ran her eyes over him and he felt them take note of every detail of his appearance: his tanned cheeks, his hair – greying fast now and cropped shorter than when he was young – and the good thick tweeds on his heavy, solid frame. And when at last it seemed there could be no doubt left in her mind, her eyes returned to and rested on his face and she said, ‘It is you, then, Morgan Lightly?'

Morgan chuckled, but a little uneasily, ‘It is indeed, Sarah. I didn't think I'd startle you quite as much as that; but you'd not be expecting me to pop up at your door after all this time, eh?'

‘I never thought I'd see you again,' she said. She took a deep breath as if to take control of her startled self, and turned to go into the house. ‘You'd better come on inside,' she said. ‘No need to fill the neighbours their mouths.'

‘You've given me a turn,' she went on as they entered the living-room through the in-door. ‘I never thought to see you again,' she said once more. She turned and faced him, standing by the square table which was laid for a solitary dinner, and her eyes, still disbelieving, roved ceaselessly over his face.

‘You've come back, then,' she said. ‘After all this time.' The words were spoken half-aloud and seemed more of a statement to herself than a question addressed to him.

‘Thirty years, Sarah,' Morgan said. ‘It's been a long time.'

She nodded and echoed him softly. ‘A long time.'

He noted the changes of that time in her, but saw with approval her smooth, clear complexion, the soft, still-dark hair, the full mature curve of her bosom, and the proud straight line of her back. He knew her: she was Sarah. He felt warmth and hope move in him, as though only now had he reached the end of his journey, and for a moment he forgot his earlier doubt and uncertainty.

She stirred, seeming to come to, and motioned him to one of the armchairs by the fireside. ‘Well, sit you down, Morgan. I was just getting my dinner onto the table. You'll join me in a bite, I suppose?'

In this swift transition from astonishment to what seemed like a calm acceptance of his presence it seemed to Morgan that the years fell away almost as though they had never been, and he was relieved. The reopening of their acquaintanceship had been easier than he had expected.

‘Don't put yourself out for me, Sarah,' he said. ‘I can get lunch at my hotel.'

But it was a token protest, for it had been comparison of hotel meals with his memory of Sarah's cooking that inspired him in his choice of this rather odd hour for visiting her.

‘It's no trouble,' she assured him. ‘It's all ready.'

She went off into the kitchen and Morgan looked round the little room: at the well-worn but neatly kept furnishings and the open treadle sewing machine against one wall, with a half-finished frock over a chair beside it. They told their own story. His eyes fell on two photographs in stained wood frames on the sideboard and he left his chair to look more closely at them. One of them, a portrait of a thin-faced balding man, he recognised as being of Sarah's dead husband. And the other, a young army officer, remarkably like Sarah, could only be her son. He turned to her, the photograph in his hand, as she came back into the room with cutlery for him.

‘Is this your boy, Sarah?'

There seemed to be something of reserve, a barrier, in her glance, then it was lost in pride as she looked it the photograph.

‘Aye, that's my boy, John. He's in Malaya with the Army.'

‘He's a fine-looking young chap, Sarah. How old is he?'

Again that unfathomable flash of something in her eyes. ‘Going on thirty. He's a doctor, y'know. He wanted to be a doctor and he wanted to travel, so he joined the Army and got a commission.'

‘A doctor, eh?' Morgan replaced the picture, impressed. ‘You must be very proud of him.'

‘Aye, he's a grand lad and a good son. He wanted to resign his commission when Mark died but I wouldn't let him.' She shot him an inquisitive look. ‘Have you no children, then?'

Morgan shook his head. ‘No, I've none.'

‘But you did marry, I expect?'

‘Aye, when I'd got settled a bit, I married.'

He returned to his seat in the armchair and looked into the fire. Strange, but even after all this time he did not find it easy to look at her and speak of marriage.

‘She was a fine lass, Mary was,' he said at length. ‘But not one of the strongest, you know. The hard times seemed to take all the strength she had and she didn't live to enjoy many of the better years.' He looked up at her now. ‘And you lost your man, Sarah.'

She looked away and he sensed in her a similar discomfort to his own. ‘I've been a widow this past five years,' she said briefly, then left him to return to the kitchen, reappearing in a few moments with two plates of steaming food.

‘Here it is, then. There isn't a lot because you caught me unawares. Just as well I had the stew as well. It'll stretch it a bit further.'

‘A mite o' your cooking was always worth a deal of anybody else's, Sarah,' Morgan said as he took a seat at the table. A faint flush coloured Sarah's cheeks and he looked down at his plate.

They ate in comparative silence. There seemed so much to say and at the same time so much to be wary of speaking of. At length Morgan laid down his knife and fork and sat back. Sarah had already finished for she had given him by far the bigger portion of the pudding and stew. Now she watched him and smiled faintly.

‘You haven't lost your fondness for Yorkshire pudding, I see,' she said dryly. ‘Nor all your Yorkshire talk, for that matter.'

‘Do you know how long it is since I tasted a pudding like that?' he asked her. ‘It's half a lifetime, Sarah. I'm still a Yorkshireman, y'know, even if I have been away all that time. I always had an idea I'd come back one day.'

‘It seems like no time at all, seeing you sitting there,' said Sarah, watching him as he felt for pipe and tobacco. ‘Though I'm sure I never expected to see you again.'

He glanced at her as he fiddled with his pipe, trying vainly to read her thoughts. He became aware that no matter how quickly now the time might seem to both of them to have passed there still was thirty years of unshared experience between them; and those years could not be bridged by the sharing of a meal and a few scraps of conversation.

He felt suddenly slightly ill-at-ease and he pretended to sigh, laying one hand flat on the front of his waistcoat in what, considering the amount of food they had shared, was an exaggerated gesture of repletion.

‘It was worth coming home just to taste that meal,' he said. ‘You were always the best cook for miles around, even as a lass.'

Her expression darkened without warning. ‘And as I remember you always had the smoothest tongue.'

He pressed tobacco into his pipe, frowning, dismayed at this sudden antagonism. Surely, after all this time, she could forget, if he could?

She brought in the pot and poured tea. ‘How long have you come for?'

‘For good, Sarah.' He put a match to his pipe. ‘I've sold up and come home to stay. Australia's a fine country, but this is my home. I want to settle where I can see the hills and feel the wind and the rain come down off the moors.'

‘You didn't talk like that thirty years ago,' she reminded him, and he shook his head.

‘No, but times change, and a man changes in some ways.' He looked into her face. ‘In some ways he never changes though.'

She did not hold his look but sipped tea from her cup, looking past him through the lace-curtained window into the narrow street. He wished once again for the power to read her mind.

‘So you must have made that fortune you were always talking about?' she said abruptly and Morgan smiled at her bluntness.

‘Hardly that, lass,' he said. ‘But enough to live on quietly for the rest of me days.'

They talked on in a desultory manner for another hour, until Morgan became aware that she could not work properly with him there. He left her then, promising to call again soon, and he went away still uneasily aware of the undercurrent of antagonism which had showed itself in that one remark of Sarah's. He visited her several times in the next few weeks and took her for drives in the country and once to dinner and a theatre in repayment for her hospitality. But always he was conscious of the barrier of reserve through which he could not seem to break.

At last he could stand it no longer. He was sure now of what he wanted. He had known it before starting for home and it had needed only the sight of her to confirm it. She was still the same lass he had courted all those years ago, and he was still the same chap in his feelings for her. This thrusting and parrying which continued through their every meeting was getting them nowhere. If memories of thirty years ago still rankled they must be brought out into the open and examined and given the importance due to them and no more. And he knew the way to bring that about.

Yet when he came to broach the subject he did not find it easy. After all, he thought, she had preferred someone else before, and why should she feel differently now?

Sitting by her fireside, he made a great show of cleaning his pipe, screwing himself all the while to the point where he could say what he wanted to say. Abruptly, but with a studied casualness, he said, ‘I've bought Greystone Cottage, Sarah. You remember the place. We used to fancy it in the old days when old Phillips lived there. Well his son's been occupying it apparently and now he's dead – he wasn't married – and the place was put up for auction. I bought it yesterday... gave 'em their price...'