Three Brothers (3 page)

Harry knew that the brick church of Our Lady of Sorrows stood at the end of this dark red avenue, opposite a small park. He suspected that the man was about to enter the park, but then he saw him vanish into the deep shadow of the church itself. He followed him through the porch, and then sat quietly in a pew at the back. The church was deserted. The man had walked slowly up the aisle and had halted at the wooden rail before the altar. It seemed to Harry that he had knelt down and, with his head bowed forward, begun to pray. But that was not what he was doing. Harry heard rustling, and noticed that he was taking something out of the bags. He walked towards him silently and cautiously; then, to his alarm, he saw two large cans of petrol. He did not hesitate. He
shouted out “Heck!” and rushed at the man, knocking him to the floor before pinning him against the rail. The man looked at him, mildly, and did not try to resist.

The cry had roused the curate of the church, who had been dozing in the sacristy amidst the mild perfume of lilies and beeswax polish. He came running out, and was astonished at the spectacle of Harry straddling the man and pressing him against the floor of the church. Harry suggested to him that he might go in search of a policeman. A glance at the cans of petrol convinced the curate. “I’m in no possible hurry,” the man said as Harry continued to sit upon him. “Don’t you think this church is rather wonderful?” It was ornate and comfortable, with candles and flowers and images; statues of the saints stood between the Stations of the Cross, and a wooden confessional box was against the south aisle. “My mother used to frequent this place a great deal. She used to sit here with me. I was only a boy, naturally. That was in ’44. When the bombing got a trifle on the heavy side.” He had a plaintive or earnest expression, as if he were trying to solve a curiously subtle problem. “I can remember the bombs very well. I was never scared, you see. It was the excitement. Glorious feeling.” His voice, echoing in the empty church, was very gentle. “I was one of the Blitz boys. Have you heard of us by any chance?” Harry shook his head. The War was, for him, very distant. “We were the ones who put out the fires. We had buckets of sand and a hand-truck. We had iron bars to force our way in. We were absolutely fierce. We were ready to
eat
fires, even if I say so myself.”

The curate came back with three policemen. Harry rose to his feet and two officers took the man away. The third remained to take down Harry’s statement.

Harry told George Bradwell the following morning. He became so excited by his own narrative that he knelt on the
floor to demonstrate the manner in which he had pinned down the arsonist.

“I think,” Bradwell said, “that we can make a story out of this.”

“But it’s true.”

“A news story.
Bugle
reporter foils arson attack upon church. Commended by the police for his heroism.”

“But I’m not a reporter.”

“You are now.” He glanced at the unoccupied desks of Aldous and of Tony. Harry sensed, then, that he did not altogether relish their company. “You know how to hold a pen, don’t you?” Harry nodded. “That’s a good start.”

Within a very short time Bradwell taught him how to construct a news story; he explained to him that he should begin with the simple fact, in a short sentence, and then gradually elaborate. He pointed out the places where Harry might acquire news—the magistrates’ court, the town hall, the police stations, the office of the coroner. He gave him lessons in typewriting, and even sent him on a course of shorthand. Bradwell seemed to be reliving the earliest stages of his own career; he saw in Harry a version of his younger self. He wished him to succeed. And Harry did. He had a natural gift for vivid description, and a keen eye for a likely story. Another messenger boy was hired.

Tony was furious at Harry’s appointment. He believed himself to have been supplanted and, in effect, humiliated. But he did not show his fury to those who had instigated it. He concealed it from Bradwell and Harry, but he vented it to Aldous. “He can’t write,” he said as they sat in a local public house. “He can’t spell. He is an ignorant little bleeder. I think he may be a pansy. What do you think?” Aldous was deeply uncomfortable about any such allusion. He merely shook his head. Tony’s anger emerged as genial malice in Harry’s presence. He was careful not to criticise him directly, but tried to
unsettle him with jokes and insinuations. Harry feigned not to notice his resentment and bitterness.

He spent most of his time, in any case, out of “Editorial.” He rushed after stories of burglaries and assaults. He attended weddings and funerals. He waited outside the local police station for the arrival of the Black Maria van. He spent hours talking to the elderly clerk of the magistrates’ court, Mr. Peabody, who was a source of local information. Mr. Peabody was a grave and dignified gentleman, with a taste for whisky. He would speak eloquently of the foibles of a certain magistrate, or the surprising conclusion of a certain case; but as he drank he grew more thoughtful, until his conversation came to a lingering end. Harry knew that, at this stage, it was time to withdraw. He would leave Mr. Peabody at the bar, glass in hand, staring solemnly at the row of bottles above the cash register.

“Hanway? Hanway?” he asked Harry one evening.

“Yes, Mr. Peabody?”

“The name is known to me. I can recall it. It is an unusual name. Most unusual.” He reflected. “There was a young woman, by the name of Hanway, connected with the court in some way. Some years ago. I seem to remember her crying.”

Who was the young woman, crying? Could Mr. Peabody have some vague recollection of his mother? But, then, what had she to do with the magistrates’ court? Harry sensed, at that moment, that all this had something to do with her disappearance.

He decided to consult the court’s files. He knew the approximate date of his mother’s disappearance. It had been in the early winter. He recalled the smog. He had been ten years old. So he turned back to the records of October 1957. It was weary work, going through the reports of cases and incidents long forgotten. But he read on through evidences and judgements—until one name arrested his wandering
attention. Mrs. Sally Hanway was brought before the court on 22 October 1957. He started to sweat, and looked away at a printed notice fixed to the wall. With an effort of concentration he turned back to the page, from which he had been momentarily distracted by a pang of anxiety so great that he caught his breath. At that instant, too, Daniel Hanway and Sam Hanway were seized with a sensation close to panic. Harry carried on reading and learned that Mrs. Sally Hanway had been found guilty of soliciting and of offending public morals. The magistrate had sentenced her to a term of three months’ imprisonment.

Harry got up from his chair and walked down the long corridor of the building. He came out of the entrance, descended the stone steps, and was then sick on the pavement. He steadied himself against a pillar, and breathed in deeply. He had a sudden image of her, standing on the steps of the magistrates’ court, with her finger to her lips. He went back to the library, and replaced the heavy volume on the shelves.

It was only when he had walked out again into the street that he realised something else. His father had known of this. That is why he had evinced no surprise. That is why he had never spoken of her disappearance. And the neighbours must also have known of his mother’s arrest. Out of pity or embarrassment, they had not remarked upon her absence to the three young brothers. He realised, too, that with this knowledge he could no longer remain in the house with his brothers.

The life of the Hanway household was not, in any case, as it once had been. The brothers had steadily grown apart. Daniel spent his evenings in study, while Harry pursued his new work. Without the company of his older brothers, Sam had become aimless. He had no friends and spent his time, outside of school, roaming through the streets—in search of what? Their father had changed his job. He gave up his post as
nightwatchman, and had become a long-distance lorry driver with a regular run from London to Carlisle; as a result he spent less time than ever at home.

Harry took advantage of his father’s absence to leave quietly and quickly. He found a small room in a street close to the offices of the
Bugle
. He had few possessions; what he owned could be carried in a suitcase.

Daniel saw him packing. He asked him where he was going.

“Now that’s an excellent question. I’m going away. I’m taking off.”

“For good?”

“Nothing is for good, clever boy.”

“Dad won’t like it.”

“Dad will like it. You will have more space. Sam can have my room.” He closed the lid of the suitcase. “Dad doesn’t even know I’m here. When is he ever at home?”

“Where are you going then?”

“Carver Street.”

It was a street of small houses and of small shops. They were some of the first buildings ever erected in the fields of Camden, in the early nineteenth century, but they did not wear their age gracefully. Their yellow brick had faded with grime and decay; the doors were peeling, and the windows were dusty. A sudden gap in the row of houses marked the spot where a stray doodlebug had flattened two houses; they had not yet been rebuilt, and the open site was covered in weeds and refuse. The windows of Harry’s room overlooked this waste-ground. He rented the room from an elderly Irish couple, the Stantons, whose son had recently died of poliomyelitis. It was the son’s room that Harry now occupied. A crucifix hung on the wall above the bed.

Harry had never been alone before. He had never thought
of himself as solitary. He had lost contact with his erstwhile school friends, but he would have denied ever being lonely. He never once used the word. But now he sat by himself in any number of cheap cafés, where the principal resource was egg and chips and brown sauce. It was the sauce, in fact, that effected his introduction to Hilda. She was sitting at the table next to his in the Zodiac Café for Working Men. He was shaking the bottle of sauce so vigorously that it splattered over her plate of spotted dick and custard.

He offered to buy her an untainted pudding, an offer that she gracefully accepted. It was the least he could do. Then they began to talk.

“I expect,” she said, “that you will be laughing at me soon.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Everything I do seems to be funny. Not funny peculiar. Funny ha ha. People laugh at me for no apparent reason. I’m
serious
.” She had a direct manner, but it was accompanied by a shy smile that Harry found charming; she had a round face, but it was a pretty one. “My name is Hilda. That makes you laugh, doesn’t it?”

“No.”

“It should do. Hilda is a stupid name.
Everyone
in Southend is called Hilda.”

“But they can’t all be as pretty as you.”

“Now that
does
make me laugh. I don’t suppose you’ve ever been there.”

“Where?”

“Southend.”

“I have, actually. I felt the need for fresh air.”

“Did you find any?”

“No. It just smelled of seafood and candy-floss.”

“That’s it. That’s
it
.”

“Yet I enjoyed it. I liked the gloom.”

“That’s where I
come
from.” Then she did laugh. Harry thought that it was a delightful laugh, an innocent laugh. “What’s your name and rank?”

“Harry Hanway. First-class.”

“Where are you from, Harry Hanway?”

“If you seek my monument, look around you.”

“A local yokel?”

“That’s me.”

So Harry and Hilda became friends long before they were ever lovers. Hilda worked in the “typing pool” of a City bank, from which she emerged every evening with stories about her colleagues. She seemed to be in a continual state of amusement at the absurdities of the world, and often began her sentences with “You’ll never guess” or “Don’t laugh, but …” Harry did laugh. He began to write a short weekly column in the
Bugle
, entitled “Don’t Laugh, But …,” in which he retold some of Hilda’s anecdotes.

“I’m a bit of an orphan, actually,” she had told him. “I was found. On a doctor’s doorstep in Tilbury. Where the docks are.”

“Was your father a sailor?”

“I don’t know. That’s the
point
. Anyway I was called after a nurse in the hospital. That was before I was taken on.”

“Who by?”

“Mum and Dad. Well,
honorary
Mum and Dad. That’s why I ended up in Southend, you see. They had an ice-cream van on the front by the pier.”

“One of those ones with a chime? A tinkle?”

“ ‘Singing in the Rain.’ Mum used to serve ices like Chocolate Melody and Vanilla Creamsicle.” She laughed. “The van was the colour of strawberries.” She suddenly had a memory of the strawberry van against the blue sea, its melody sometimes drowned by the sound of the waves. “My favourite was Raspberry Wriggle.”

She lived now in a hostel for single young women, with a strict rule against male visitors. Harry could hardly have brought her to his little room in the Stanton household, with the crucifix above the bed. So they existed on the fringes of lovemaking. They met in the park. They retreated to the back rows of the local cinemas. They were passionate but furtive. What others might have found embarrassing, they considered to be amusing. It was part of the comedy of life.

Whenever she saw love stories on the screen, Hilda wept. “I can’t
help
myself,” she said. “It’s daft, I grant you that, but there it is. But let’s face it. I’m a
girl
. And Robert Mitchum is so handsome. He looks like you.” Harry remained dry-eyed, and slightly bored, through the films that Hilda enjoyed.

One late afternoon he had spread the pages of the
Morning Chronicle
over the grass in the neighbourhood park, so that they might be protected from the damp ground. At the beginning of spring they both enjoyed this part of Camden. Harry was just about to roll on his back when he glimpsed an item in the newspaper. It announced a competition, sponsored by the
Morning Chronicle
itself, for young writers. The challenge was to complete a profile of a neighbourhood personality. “Now this is interesting,” he remarked to Hilda. “This is just the ticket.”