The Broken Chariot (11 page)

From the heights above the forest a dusty mist lay like a pancake over a thousand lights trying to pierce but merely glowing through. He walked down the slope from the bus stop with Eileen, and Sheila her workmate, into the sodium atmosphere of frying and candy floss. If there was a place where nobody would be able to pick him out it was among the jam-packed crowds of the Goose Fair, yet in such pushing phalanxes he felt perilously unsafe, couldn't explain why every glazed look seemed like a threat to his wellbeing. It was illogical, ludicrous even, and he forced a smile of protective inanity back on to his face.

Eileen on one arm, and Sheila taking the other, he guided them among the roundabouts – wondering what his school chums would say if they saw him now – and pulled them up the steps on to the slowing caterpillar. When the hood went down he'd be able to kiss them both, but would Eileen allow it? Well, she didn't stab at his bollocks with her elbow, though maybe she was too dim to cotton on to where his hands were straying, and she laughed with the rest of them as long as he let his fingers creep in her direction now and again.

He threw a penny to a couple of kids who were begging, and bought sailor hats to amuse the girls before pulling them in for a circuit on the ghost train. On coming out, it was as if an invisible cloud of depressing gas flowed between the Saturnalian wailings of delight, and the rhythmical thump of traction engines. He had caught a fit of anxiety full blast, stood as if pinioned by the different coloured lights maggoting at his eyes, and by the people pushing around him, some malign force dividing him more than at any time since running away from school, as if a patient and eagle-eyed Inspector Javert in the crowd had been set on to get him.

Such paralysis couldn't be explained, and fear even less. ‘Come on, come on,' Eileen said, ‘get a move on, slow coach. What are you standing there for as if you've lost your way? We want to go on summat else, don't we, Sheila?'

One moment lost beyond any hope of getting his senses back into the atmosphere of the fair, the next he felt the usual grin forcing its way on to his face, as if someone pulling strings had him under control. He lifted a wrist to sniff at flesh, as if the swarf smell of the factory might still be there, which it was, in spite of the thorough White Windsor swill he had given himself at the sink. The thrill of being at bay buoyed him all his waking hours. Even when unaware it fuelled his senses and fed his alertness.

They got into a swingboat and, pinned a moment at the top, Herbert saw the whole area of smoke and lights, the tents for a king and his army celebrating a victory over some nation only a little less barbaric than themselves. Then down went the swingboat, and up again into a whole sky of shrieks which made the scene more eerie. Back on the ground, Sheila jerked forward and was sick. Disgusted, he stepped away rather than ask if she was all right and mop her chalky brow, though not before a splash of vomit spewed over his shoes. To prove she was again ready for anything she led them on a climb up the helter-skelter, and they followed on the sedate corkscrew down. Herbert began to hate such spinning and jolting, but when they'd handed their mats back forced himself to say: ‘Now let's go on summat else. I can't have enough fun like this.'

‘You're spending too much munny on us, duck,' Eileen said.

‘That's all right.' Thank God it was only once a year. Anyway it was his money to do what he liked with. Did she think he was going to save it up so that they could one day get married? Not with anyone, and certainly not with trash like her – which sentiment shamed him, and he immediately sent it back to where it came from, though she had mentioned too often lately that another of her friends at work had got engaged.

He occasionally had a horror of sinking among them forever, as if he had lived years in the last three months, school so far away it might never have existed. And suddenly, as they stood at a stall eating brandy snap, he felt he had come out only for a night and would be going back next morning. Such vacillations of mood were alarming, more dangerous than he liked. The screech and rattle of the fair seemed a threat from which he must escape, just as he had from school. He was a caged bird wherever he was.

Eileen tugged his arm. ‘We ain't bin on the cakewalk yet.'

He wanted to say fuck the cakewalk. ‘Let's go to the pub, and I'll buy you some drinks.' Standing erect, the most confident smile irradiated, he put thumbs firmly in the pockets of his waistcoat. ‘I'm parched. I want some ale.' To be skint for the rest of the week was a small price to pay, and the girls must have read his thoughts, they were good at that, on their own level anyway.

‘Only a few more rides,' Eileen said. ‘We'll fork out for 'em, won't we, Sheila?'

Sheila nodded, but after another go she was sick again, a signal that they'd had enough of roundabouts, so went up Radford Road to the Langham, where the first pint of the evening took Herbert out of his puzzling insecurity and into a roistering Bert whose thoughts were his and nobody else's.

‘I don't know who this bloke was,' Archie said as they walked into the canteen, ‘but yesterday he asked about you. He wanted to know how long you'd worked here.'

‘What did he look like?'

‘How would I know? Just a bloke.'

He kept down the fear that went through him, half forgotten since the Goose Fair, just as lively, however, on coming back at Archie's revelation. ‘I mean, did he look like Charles Laughton? Was he a beanpole with a mardy face or just stubby and miserable?'

Archie picked up a dinner from the counter, and laughed. ‘Bit o' both, I suppose.'

‘And what did you tell 'im?'

‘I towd 'im the truth.'

Herbert sorted through the gravy to get at his pasty. ‘That's all right, then, but what was that?'

‘That yer'd started 'ere the same time as me, when we was fourteen.'

‘Did 'e say owt?'

‘'E just pissed off. He sounded like a copper's nark. If 'e'd asked owt else I'd a cracked 'is shins wi' me boots. On the other hand he could have been a chap from the offices wanting to mek sure yer insurance cards was up to press.'

Herbert pushed the rest of his food away. ‘It tastes like shit.'

‘It allus does,' Archie said, ‘but I enjoy it because I'm hungry. As long as you shake lots o' pepper on it. Do you know, Bert, the first thing I noticed when I came in this canteen at fourteen was that they had pots o' pepper on the tables. We'd never 'ad pepper at home. We still don't. I didn't know what it tasted like, but I love it now.' He leaned across the table, voice turned lower. ‘What was 'e after? Did yer do a job? Are you on the run?'

Herbert smiled. ‘Ar, course I am, from a wicked uncle.'

‘Yer can tell me. I shan't nark, not me. I 'ate coppers.'

‘I know yer do. Same 'ere.' Herbert considered packing up, going to the station and getting on the next train to anywhere – but decided it was safer and more comfortable staying where he was. It wasn't done to panic, or change plans till you had to. ‘I absconded from school. It was more like a borstal, though.'

‘I thought it was summat like that.' Archie winked. ‘You'll be all right with us, Bert. Tek a tip from me. If anybody asks yer owt, just tell lies. That's number one. Lie till ye're blue in the face, and they'll end up believin' yer. I'll back yer up if yer need me to, though I don't expect yer will. People allus want to believe yer, even when they know you're tellin' lies, as long as yer go on long enough wi' a straight face.'

Herbert pulled the plate towards him, finished every stain and crumb. Work called for all the food he could get. Telling lies was wrong, even cowardly, done only by inferior people who were afraid. So he had been drilled into thinking. He felt uneasy at his ready agreement with Archie, who wasn't cowardly or inferior at all: Herbert's life at the moment could be considered one big lie, but it was no more than an actor's performance on stage who for two hours was entirely in the skin of someone else. And if you do it for two hours, or even for a year, what's the difference?

‘Another thing,' Archie came back with pudding for them both, ‘why don't you introduce me to Sheila? The four of us could go out for a drink.'

Herbert pushed a hand forward for his spoon. ‘Yeh, that's a good idea. I'll talk to Eileen, and see what she says.'

‘We can go to the White Horse on Saturday night. They've got good ale there, and you can sing if you like.'

People coughed their way to work through the first frosts of October, an enclosing visibility giving Herbert more confidence in his role as a man on the run, except that he would rather die than run. He walked quickly, however, all-round glances keeping watch at every angle, obtuse or acute, thinking that if anyone followed they'd need to be fit to maintain his rapid pace, and that if anybody tried to get him on the street he would kill them as they deserved, using the strength put into his arms by lifting and carrying in the factory, and the survivor's force grown in him since birth.

Such reflections, he felt, were risible, knowing that he was often split between desperate speculations and a delightful sense of having no cares in the world, and that at Mrs Denman's he was one of the family. He was safe, and looked after in a way beyond his experience. How she made any profit on his few pounds bed and board he couldn't fathom, but Archie said that was her worry, and he should bless his luck at having fallen into such a cushy billet.

Her friend Frank was more often at the house now that the war was over. He worked at the tobacco factory as a machine supervisor, and Mrs Denman told Herbert he had ‘lost' his wife from cancer ten years ago. She met him in a pub when he was trying to swamp his bereavement in too much poisonous booze, and when he took a fancy to her she got him to put a stop to it.

Herbert wondered whether Frank was to be trusted, but knew he was because he didn't ask personal questions. His talk had a serious side in that he could go on about books by H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, and John Galsworthy, to name a few. He was also a firm Labour Party man. ‘I know everybody's having a hard time these days, though nobody's as badly off as before the war. It's going to be a long struggle but I know we'll win through with Labour, don't you worry. We'll end up living in a country with more equality in it than there's ever been. It's marvellous to think we'll both be able to see it, Bert.'

Herbert agreed, and felt privileged to hear such views, though wasn't sure about equality ever being possible, or even whether he wanted it, knowing he had always felt himself different from everybody around him, to which Frank said with a laugh that he hadn't lived long enough yet to know that, basically, everybody was more or less the same in that they all had a right to happiness and a roof over their heads, something Herbert had no option but to agree with.

As well as politicians Frank showed an intelligent interest in the war, maybe due to his having missed active service by being in a reserved occupation. This was more to Herbert's taste, who could enthuse about the Battle of Britain, Stalingrad, D-Day, and the Battle of the Bulge. Mrs Denman was happy to see them huddled by the fire – ‘talking the hind leg off a donkey,' she said, setting down cups of tea.

They were still talking when Ralph came in, fagged out and shifty-eyed from seeing Mary. ‘Still getting yer oats?' Bert said, when they were in their room.

‘It seems to upset you.'

‘Well. I always reckon it's too good for some people.'

There was a catch in Ralph's voice. ‘I'm not getting anything, as a matter of fact. I can't think why, all I know is she doesn't let me do it in Nottingham. She says it's too common to do it here, that it isn't right.'

Herbert knew that his laugh would be loud enough to wake Mrs Denman, or even the dead, so Bert had to manage with a snort. ‘You mean to say you've got to go all the way to the Lake District for a bang?'

‘Maybe. Seems so. But it's more romantic up there. Well, that's her daft idea, anyway.'

‘Your lady-love don't seem very accommodating. What do you think it's going to be like when you're spliced? She'll twist you round her little finger.'

Ralph's laugh was sinister. ‘No, she won't. I'll have her when I want her. I'll get my own back. I'll make her sit up. But in the meantime, I love her, and I don't know what to do.'

‘Well, I can't tell yer.' Bert got his head down for sleep, after murmuring that if he was in that situation he would read the Riot Act, and no mistake.

After a darts match one evening Archie supposed, when they got to their pints, that the factory would be needing less hands now that the war was over and done with. Young ‘uns like them wouldn't find much work when they and everybody else came out of the army. ‘It'll be like before the war, if we aren't careful, back to the dole, no matter what government we've got in.'

Herbert passed his cigarettes across. ‘Nah, we'll be working flat out for years on reconstruction.' Every time he called at the library he read
The Times
and the
Daily Telegraph
, a habit not lost from his interest when they were laid out in the reading room at school. ‘The Labour Government'll keep everybody at work, don't you worry. They're pledged to it.'

Grumbling went on all the time, and though Herbert listened, and sometimes took part because much of it was humorous, he couldn't basically see what anyone had to belly-ache about, unless they did so because otherwise they would be silent, and that such talk was a device for helping them to breathe. It was one grouse after another, about work, rationing, the weather, the government, the gaffers at the factory, but the patina of liberty made everything palatable to Herbert.

Work took the strain of what he saw as his previously unreal existence: the rations were enough, and the weather – foul though it mostly seemed to be – enclosed him with friendliness and protection. He was clad in an old army topcoat dyed navy blue to keep himself warm, and out of his earnings bought a utility-style suit for second best. He had a roof over his head, as well as a girlfriend who let him have it whenever there was an opportunity. What more could he want?