The Watchers on the Shore (5 page)

'You'll be stopping on at the shop for a bit anyway, I reckon?'

'Until the bank gets everything settled, yes. I expect Fenwick's
are ready to make an offer. Mr Van Huyten told me they were interested.'

'I expect they'd take you on if you wanted it, eh?'

'They might, but I'm not interested. I'd be just another salaried
employee to them, one of scores. I probably wouldn't even get the
chance of the manager's job. They'll have a trained man ready to
take over. I think Henry's hoping he can stay on, though. I mean,
it's his trade.

'Y'know, 'I say in a minute, 'the old chap didn't do so flippin'badly with us when you think about it. Five hundred for me and two-fifty for Henry. He was a grand old feller and he couldn't help it if he got a bit soft in the head towards the end.'

'No,'the Old Feller says, 'you're right. And he's gone now, so it's no use trying to fathom what was in his mind.'Which makes all three of us go quiet, as though we're trying to do just that.

There's a great fire piled up orange and glowing in the grate and
the Old Man and I sit and look at it without saying anything, the
Old Lady going on with her mending until she finally gathers it all
up and puts it in the basket.

'I could do with a woman's work,'she says, 'but it never gets any less.'

'It ought to do,'I say, 'with our Jim out of the way now.'

'What do you think Jim does with his clothes,'she says, 'mends 'em and washes 'em himself? He sends 'em home to his mother. That's one thing she's useful for, anyway.'

I know this note in the Old Lady's voice; she's got her back up with Jim over something.

'What's up with Jim, then? Haven't you heard from him lately?'

'Oh aye, we've heard. We don't see much of him these days,
though.'

'When was he over last?'

'Three weeks since; and we had a postcard yesterday to say he
won't be home this week-end. He's going home with a friend who
lives in Cheshire.'

'Well, he goes to university to meet people as well as study, you
know. Mebbe he did come home every week-end at first, but you
can't expect him to carry on like that.'

'As long as he doesn't start to think his own home isn't good enough for him.'

'Nay, you know our Jim's not that sort o'lad, Mother,'the Old Man chips in.

'He wouldn't be the first lad to go away to university and end up having no room for his parents,'the Old Lady says. There's a couple of spots of colour on her cheeks and I can tell she's spent some time brooding about this and building it up.

'You've been watching too many television plays,'I tell her. 'Jim's at Manchester, not Oxford or Cambridge. There'll be a lot of people there from ordinary homes like his. And they're all cutting their apron strings together.'

'Aye, and a sorry state most of 'em 'ud be in if it wasn't for their
mothers and fathers.'

'Well Jim knows that, doesn't he? What do you want him to do, write you a letter every day saying how grateful he is?'

'There's no need for that kind o'clever talk.'

'I'm only trying to make you see that you can't hang on to him.
You seem to want to send him off with one hand and hold him back with the other. That's just the way to make him resentful.
He's got enough to think about without you being on at him. You'll
have to face the facts, y'know. You've lost Jim. He's gone. You'll
never have him at home like you had Chris and me. He's off early
and he's seeing a lot and meeting people that I never did. I was in a
drawing-office at sixteen and the next thing I know I'm married. I
hope he sees a bit more of things than I did before he settles down.'

'Well neither you nor our Christine seems to have done so badly out of it,'the Old Lady says.

I say nothing to this. Chris, all right. Me? What does the Old
Lady know about me? What has she ever known? Does my marriage to Ingrid look no different to her than Chris's and David's? I wonder how blind you can get.

'Anyway,'she says, letting it drop, 'I'll put the kettle on for a cup of tea.'

'Aye, and I shall have to be pushing off home.'

'Aren't you stopping for your supper?'

'I hadn't planned to. I don't know what time Ingrid'll be home.'

'You say her mother's not so well?'

'Apparently not. That's why Ingrid's gone over tonight.'

'She doesn't seem to have been right on form since Ingrid's father died,'the Old Man says.

'Well, are you stopping or aren't you?'the Old Lady wants to know.

'I suppose I might as well. What have you got?'

'Nowt so much, unless you feel like popping round to t'fish shop.'

'I'll take pot luck. I don't want to be too late.'

But it is cosy sitting in my old chair with my feet stuck out across
the hearth in front of that big fire. It's nearly possible to imagine
I'm still at home and a free man. Nearly.

'Will some brown bread and butter and a piece of fruit cake suit
you?'

'Yes, fine.'

The Old Lady goes out and leaves me and the Old Man rumina
ting in front of the fire. My heels sink into the new listing rug on the
hearth. It seems looking back to when I was a kid that we nearly
always had a listing rug on the go, the frame propped up with one
end on the table and the other on a cupboard or a chest of drawers;
my mother sitting up to it, right hand on top holding the skewer,
left hand underneath taking the lists as she prodded them through.
It was possible to buy material for lists but it was unheard of in our
house; it kind of defeated the object. We always collected the
family's old clothes for cutting up, plus what a neighbour or friends
might be throwing out. The lists would be nearly always drab navy-blue or dark brown and occasionally we might have the
brighter colour of a woman's costume to liven the mixture up.
I wonder how many listing rugs my mother and father have run
through in their married life. They look pretty shabby when they
get trodden down but there's nothing to beat them for comfort
when they're new.

'A pity,'the Old Man says, talking about Mr Rothwell;''a fine young-looking feller like that cut off in his prime. How old did Ingrid say he was?'

'Forty-eight.'

'Aye.'The Old Man nods. 'Forty-eight. No age at all. Aye... I rather liked Mr Rothwell.'

'Yeh, so did I.'

'Worth three or four of Ingrid's mother, I allus thought.'

'Me too.'

The Old Man and I sit and think about Ingrid's father, dead
eighteen months ago of lung cancer and I remember how he talked to me in that pub cafe in Bread Street after I'd left Ingrid, and made it possible for me to see her again. I've thought many a time since,
going back over that conversation, how clever he was that day; how he got to grips with the situation, saying just what needed saying at just the right time. He and Chris; they never talked to
each other about it but they did it between them while all the others
were washing their hands of it: Mrs Rothwell glad, I think, that I'd finally shown myself to be an ill-mannered pig, not good enough for her daughter (as she'd always thought), and the Old
Lady saying she didn't want to see me till I was back with Ingrid
again.

So we got back together and decided to give it a try.

'How do you get on with her these days, Victor?'the Old Man says.

'Who, Ingrid's mother?'

'Aye.'

'Oh, well enough. We have a sort of armed truce. We don't see much of each other really, and we're polite and civil when we do meet. I don't know what she says about me when I'm not there and she doesn't know what I say about her.'

'Ingrid'll get both sides of it, I reckon?'

'I suppose she does.'

He grins. 'It's a common enough situation, I suppose.'

'I suppose it is.'

My mother comes in from the kitchen with the supper and she and the Old Man start telling me they're thinking of flitting. This place is too big for them now we're all away and there's only Jim to put up when he comes home. They bought it before the war, a
solid, roomy family house, at the price ruling then, which is about
a quarter of what it's worth now. The mortgage has been paid off
for some time and the Old Man reckons he can sell for seventeen-
or eighteen-hundred and buy a four-roomed terrace house for
about nine; which will give him knocking on for a thousand to put
in the bank: a nice tidy sum to add to his savings and pension when he retires, which won't be long now. It sounds to me like a first-rate
plan, and I say so.

'Aye,'the Old Man says, 'your mother had her work cut out talking me into buying this place when things were unsettled and you could rent a house any day of the week. But it's turned out for the best. Money's dropped in value but property's gone up.'He nods. 'We had a bit o'luck.'

It's a satisfied little nod from a chap who's come through all
right. A chap who's worked hard all his life, when the work
was there to be done, in foul and dangerous conditions, and
brought three kids up and seen them go out into the world with
better chances than he ever had. I reckon he has a right to
be content.

Ingrid's already back when I get home, and not in a very good mood. She hasn't been in long from the look of it: her coat's over
the back of the settee and the fire, which I banked up earlier, hasn't
burned up beyond a few pale cold-looking flames.

'Where've you been?'she asks me as I walk in.

'I've been home, like I said.'

'I didn't think you'd be this late,'she says, as though it's three in the morning and I've kept her out of bed.

'It's only eleven,'I tell her. 'And anyway, you never asked me what time I'd be back.'

'I just thought you'd be back before this.'

I take my coat off and start to go with it-into the passage.

'I stopped for my supper.'

'You might as well hang mine up now,'she says.

'What do you mean "now"?'I say as I turn back for it. 'You weren't going out again, were you?'

'I wanted to go back and stay with Mother tonight.'

'Why?'I say from across the passage. 'Isn't she well?'

'You know very well she's not well.'

She's sitting on the edge of the chair as I go back into the room,
looking at the fire, her hands held palms together between her
knees.

'I meant is she worse?'

'She's not well,'Ingrid says and I start to open my mouth, then shut it again, thinking what damn'silly conversations people have sometimes.

'If you think you ought to go, then go,'I say in a minute. 'I'll walk you back round.'

'It's too late now. She'll already have gone to bed.'

'Well, I'm sorry if I spoilt anything, but I didn't know, did I?'

'I'll have to pop round first thing in the morning, that's all, and tidy up for her and see if she wants any shopping done. You can
ring the office for me and tell them I shan't be in, can't you?'

'I suppose so.'

It's a bit chilly in the room and I get down and give the fire a
good poking, breaking up the coal so that the flames begin to roar
up the back.