England's Lane Page 2

  And so we went along. I had more or less forgotten that I was a married woman: it didn’t seem real to me. Often Eunice and I would go to a Lyons’ Corner House or maybe a matinee at the pictures with a couple of lads—but they were very nice fellows: never a hint of monkey business, nothing of that sort. You could trust a boy in those days. Eunice, of course—she could have had any man she tipped her hat at, but she was never really very interested, much to all the soldiers’ very visible disappointment. It would happen one day, she said. One day, Milly, when I’m not even looking, then the right man for me will come my way, and I’ll know it—I’ll just know it, the moment I look at him. And that, you know, is just exactly the way it happened.

  David, his name was—a very nicely educated young man just two years her senior. He taught English and history at a boys’ preparatory school in Fitzjohn’s Avenue. I took to him immediately—and although the schooling that Eunice and I had had was nothing particularly special, nothing too out of the way, I have always upheld the supreme importance of a good education. Youngsters, they need to be led out of themselves—they need to be astounded by possibilities. I always did vow that if ever I were to be blessed with children (a thing I yearned for—and the only point of getting married in the first place, so far as I could see) then I would move heaven and earth to make sure that they got off to the very best start in life. David lived just a few streets away with a couple of bachelor pals, both of them teachers—and one of them, Thomas, made it perfectly clear that he regarded me as something rather out of the ordinary. We had picnics on Primrose Hill in the shadow of the guns, the four of us. Thomas would read us poems—Clare, Keats, that sort of thing. It was a happy time, in the midst of dangerous days. Then the war, it just came to an end. I don’t know that we truly believed it ever would. And suddenly now it was VE Day—and oh that was a time, that was a time and no mistake. All the emotions you’d expect: the laughter, the happiness. And then the crying. Confusing—it confused me, and I suppose I could hardly be alone in that. It was then that I told Thomas that I was in fact married. It had not occurred to me to do so earlier, just as I am sure it had not so much as crossed his mind that I might be. He was very civil about it all, I must say. Such a very nice young man. Frightfully handsome. Still think of him sometimes. So anyway, that was the last I ever saw of Thomas … and then I got a telegram from Jim. He was coming home the following Tuesday from Minehead. When he would reopen his ironmonger’s in England’s Lane and we both would live (“so very cozy,” is the way he put it) in the flat above, as man and wife. I stared at the telegram for such a long time. It contained no fewer than three errors of spelling. When I saw him again, I realized I had not thought of him at all. He had very recently grown a sort of mustache, which was repellent. He wears it still. His demob suit, gray pepper-and-salt, was rather too small. He puts it on when people get married … he puts it on if someone should die.

  David and Eunice were married in 1947, and one year later little Paul was born. David by this time was a deputy housemaster at a small private school just outside of Reading, and they all lived in the dearest little cottage there. Eunice and I, we didn’t see nearly so much of each other as I would have liked—but there: she had a husband, a home and a little boy to look after, so I quite understood. I never really had a chance to get at all close to little Paul, not at first—saw him only at Christmas and a few odd days over the summer holidays when I’d go down and stay with them. In a way that was maybe a good thing because by this time it had been made clear to us that Jim was not able for fatherhood. There had been tests. So that was that, really. No point crying about it. Many during the war had to overcome far worse things than that. So you just muck in and carry on, don’t you? Nothing else for it.

  David and Eunice had been out for a spin in the brand-new dark blue Humber that David was paying for on the hire purchase scheme. In her letters, Eunice told me how every Sunday morning he would be washing and then waxing it, buffing it up with a shammy to a bright and mirror shine. I was in the cottage taking care of Paul; Jim was back in London in the ironmonger’s, doing whatever it is that Jim habitually does there; I never did ask him to accompany me, and he had never offered. I had not before been in the cottage all on my own, and I was admiring all of Eunice’s little knickknacks and the way she had made each of the rooms so very welcoming and gay. They had a gramophone and everything. Soon they were going to put a down payment on a refrigerator. I was nervous, I remember, about being in sole charge of an infant—because Paul, he could only have been eighteen months, not even eighteen months old in those days. But Eunice had told me not to worry—that once he was fed and changed, he was as good as gold. And he was, he really was—good as gold: no trouble at all.

  When I answered the door, the policeman—he had tears in his eyes. He asked me to sit down, and he seemed himself upon the brink of collapse. In the days that followed, those terrible days and nights that followed, I was given a few more dribs and drabs of awful information. The car had veered off the road—some said to avoid an oncoming lorry, though other reports suggested defective steering on the Humber—and careered into the parapet of a bridge across a river. The car just hung there, literally in the balance, as the local police had tried to locate the necessary machinery and expertise to right and steady it so as to be able to cut the passengers from amid the twist of the thing. They both, dear souls, had sustained injuries: more than that I was not told. And then the balustrades just suddenly crumbled—buckled, gave way, the car pitching over the edge in the full sight of the despairing and helpless police and ambulancemen. After far too long, frogmen were sent into the water, but by that time, of course … but I pray, you know—I still do pray that Eunice, my dear dear sister Eunice, was no longer conscious as the car just teetered there. Her thoughts, otherwise, would have been far too terrible for me now to even contemplate. To know that Paul was to be left all alone … and that the child within her would now never be born; she had been hoping for a little girl, and she was going to call her Margaret. When the policeman had left the cottage … I decided to postpone the welter of tears, to close the door, if only for a short time, on all the racking agony to come … and I went to look at Paul, asleep in his cot. And although I neither touched him nor made even the slightest noise, he woke up immediately. He looked full at me, and smiled. It was Eunice’s smile, and I had fallen in love with him.

  Adoption in those days was a quick and relatively simple formality, particularly in the cases of relatives: so very many families had been recently rent asunder, one way or another. The reassembling of differing approximations had become an abiding process. And so Paul became my own. And now, well … he is quite the young fellow. Eleven years old, not much away from eleven years old, and so very handsome and strong. The three of us still are living above the ironmonger’s in England’s Lane. Paul, when he was still an infant, he once looked up at me and called me Mommy. My heart was raw with the ring and then the tug of it. And Jim said “No, Pauly—no. That ain’t right, see? That’s your Auntie Mill, that is. And I’m your Uncle Jim. See? That’s how it is.” Another time, I had stooped to kiss his little head, and Jim, who had been eyeing me sidelong, he said this very slowly: “You would, wouldn’t you? I reckon you would. You’d give your life up for that little kid, wouldn’t you Mill? Ay? Yeah, I reckon you would.” I just smiled, and turned away. That “little kid,” I was thinking … that “little kid,” Jim … he is my life. He is its beginning, its core, and he will carry me unto its end. The rest I merely tolerate. The rest I stoutly bear. I can do this. I can do this, yes. For I am a capable woman.

  CHAPTER ONE

  You Are Mad and I Am Right

  My name is Paul. I’m eleven, nearly, and one day I’d really like to kill my Uncle Jim. I live with Auntie Milly who is lovely to me, and him, who smells of fags as well as some quite bad other things—don’t know what, don’t want to. He is a fool. Sometimes he asks me what I want to be, and although I don’t say it, all I e
ver want to be is old. Older, anyway. Twenty-one would be really good, that would be the best … but that’s ten whole years away, which means it’ll be 1969, and that’s just never ever going to come, is it? Stands to reason. But if I was twenty-one I’d have the key of the door and I’d be able to tell him, my stinking Uncle Jim—and I’ll be so much taller than him, then—I’d be able to say to him: listen you, you are a fool and you’d better watch out, see, because now I’m going to kill you.

  This is my favorite time of the day. It can sometimes be better than today is though, because today Uncle Jim, he’s still here on the settee in the sitting room. Drinking his beer. Often he goes downstairs after our supper and sits on a giant pile of rags in the back of the ironmonger shop just talking to this budgie he’s got there, called Cyril. Cyril’s a lot unluckier than I am because whenever Uncle Jim starts talking to me and is maybe thinking I’m going to listen or something, I can just go up to my room and read or do a bit of prep, if I’ve got any. But Cyril, he can’t. Just has to nibble on millet and blink at Uncle Jim, who sits there for hours, smoking fags, drinking beer, and going on and on and on.

  We had Spam and sort of macaroni with tomato on, which I like, quite like, but not nearly so much as I like when Auntie Milly does chicken on Sundays. That’s just the best food in the whole wide world—and you get crunchy potatoes and bread sauce and some sort of green muck which isn’t actually very good, in fact it’s really horrible, but Auntie Milly says if I eat it all up it will make me grow to be big and strong. After, we have jelly and Carnation, and it’s best when the jelly is the red sort. In the week, though—like tonight—there’s Jacob’s Cream Crackers and Auntie Milly and Uncle Jim, they have Cheddar, but I get two portions of Dairylea because I really really like it. I’m sitting on the rug which Auntie Milly made in front of the gas fire which is blue, and keeps going pop-pop-pop. I’ve got my Matchbox toys and I’m making a road for them out of cardboard. Auntie Milly’s knitting. She knits all the time—V-necks for me and Uncle Jim and also things like cushion covers and a tea cozy. She was humming a tune, but she’s stopped now. She’s looking at Uncle Jim. Because she can see—and I can see it too—that he’s now going to open his great fat stupid mouth.

  “Nice bit of Cheddar. You ever eaten human cheese, have you? I daresay not.”

  Auntie Milly, she just looked at him, the way she always does. Like he’s dead, or something. He went on, my Uncle Jim, like I knew he would. Always does. Pointing a finger at her now.

  “They do make it, you know. Oh God yes. I ain’t saying it’s a common thing, because it ain’t. Not by a long chalk. It’s very out of the way. Very out of the way. Whole point. Why I’m asking, see? But oh yeah—they make it all right. No doubt on that score. Mongolia, round there, could very well be. I had it in Kilburn. Odd I never mentioned it before. Mind you—they only told me after, the devils. Now listen to me, Pauly—you might learn something. You want to know how they go about it? How it’s, like—sort of done, do you? The whole great gubbins?”

  Auntie Milly glanced across at me, and closed her eyes quickly. That was one of her warnings. A reminder to her dim and stinky husband that there’s a young boy in the room. That whatever horrible thing he was about to say next, I was far too young to be hearing it. But I never feel that. Too young for anything. It’s not what I feel inside. The only thing I really want to be now is old. No one else—nobody at school, anyway—wants this, but I do. And people say it’s not, um—don’t know what they say, can’t remember the word. But it means I shouldn’t think it. Well so what? I do. Eleven’s no good. It’s no good to be eleven years old, no good at all. There’s no point to it. Twenty-one is what I want. If I was old, older, then I could turn round and tell people what to do. Not in a bossy way, I don’t mean—but just to explain to them. How stupid they are. Because they maybe don’t know. How everything they do, they do it wrong. Like my idiotic Uncle Jim. His eyes, when he’s going on like this, they’re always so wide open. It’s like he’s egging you on into believing him. It is, you know—it really is like he expects you to listen.

  “Whassamatter? What’s wrong with you now, Mill? Boy you’re worried about, is it? Well don’t. Pauly—he can look after himself. Can’t you, Pauly? Quite the young man about town now, aren’t you Pauly? Hey? Yeh. That’s right. Course you bloody are.”

  “Jim …!”

  “Sorry. Sorry sorry sorry. Bad word. Forget you heard that—hey Pauly? Pretend I never said it. And don’t go telling on me down that la-di-da school of yours, Gawd’s sake. Never hear the end of it. Now where was I? What was I on about?”

  “I think you’ve had quite enough beer now, Jim. It’s bedtime,” Auntie Milly said—and I knew she was going to. She’d put down her knitting. “I’m tired. And I’m sure Paul is too. Aren’t you, Paul? Early start in the morning, yes? I’m going up, anyway. Can hardly keep my eyes open. And there’s nothing la-di-da about it. Just happens to be a very good school, that’s all. A proper school is what it is.”

  She wasn’t tired. Not really. I knew when she was tired. It was just that she was trying to shut him up. For my sake.

  “Weren’t like my school, I can tell you that much for free. He went to my old school, he wouldn’t hardly know what hit him. It was Charlie, the beggar, what give it me. That cheese. I’ve remembered now what I was … yeh. And it was only after, he tells me. Else I don’t reckon I would’ve. Mind you—I’m not saying it weren’t tasty. Because it were. Not a flavor you forget in a hurry. Weren’t, like—moldy nor nothing. What they do is—they get together all of these women, right? And then they’re—”

  “God’s sake, Jim …!”

  Auntie Milly, now—she’s got me by the shoulders and up on to my feet. I was waiting for this. She knows he won’t stop. Not after the beer. The only way—poor Auntie Milly—is to quickly get me out of the room. Leave him to it. And he’ll open up another bottle of Bass. Put another Senior Service between his hard and orange fingers. One night, his fag caught the edge of the evening paper: lucky I was around to see to it—got it down on the floor and stamped it out. He didn’t even know what he’d done. Offered me a beer. I think he must have thought he was still in the pub with Charlie, his horrible friend. He smells of sweat and old wet tweed and Christmas whisky and his mustache is the color of the cat we used to have before he choked to death on a wishbone, and it’s got all bits in it, usually. He’s disgusting. Eric, the cat was called. I used to feed him, but I don’t know why. He’d look at me, and then just walk away. Auntie Milly, she loved him a lot. Always had him on her lap. Talking to him like he was a person. Let him play about with her ball of wool. But I didn’t. Love him. How could you? He was only a cat. A woman—a proper grown-up woman, that’s the only thing worth loving. When you’re married and you’ve got a big bed and everything. I’m trying hard to think of that now. Auntie Milly, she’s just turned off my light (still makes me say my prayers out loud—God bless my Mommy and my Daddy who residest with Thou and Auntie Milly and Uncle Jim and please God make me a good boy). It’s freezing in here, as per usual, but I’m really trying to think of the woman I’m one day going to marry. She’ll be very beautiful, warm and kind to me. Like Auntie Milly says my mother was. Before she was killed. Don’t know. Can’t remember. But I expect it’s true. I cut out a photo of Elizabeth Taylor who is a film actress but I’ve never actually seen her in a film from the Evening News and I’ve put it in my missal at the back with all the holy pictures, which I know is a sin. But she is very beautiful. And I’m trying to concentrate hard on her now, and how she would feel to me if I was ever to touch her. But all I can think of is cheese.

  He knows nothing, Uncle Jim, and he always goes on as if he understands the lot. Some subjects I do at school he’s never even heard of. He is an ignorant pig. If I say anything—and it’s not even him I’m talking to—then it’s wrong. Got to be. All wrong. If I was twenty-one, I’d point my finger dead at him, like he does with Auntie Milly, and I’d say to him—Listen, i
gnorant pig: you are mad, and I am right. Got it? And then I’d biff him on the nose, just before I killed him.

  Sleepy, now. And awfully cold. I’d really like it if Elizabeth Taylor was here—to be beautiful and warm, and kind to me. But all I can think of is cheese. And how it can be human.

  *

  I always wake up just a second before Auntie Milly turns the squeaky handle on my door and comes in to tell me that it’s another lovely day, even if it’s foggy or the rain’s all streaming down the window—and she smells of what I think she says is Lilian Valley, which I like very much. Then she draws open the curtains and I pretend to sort of hide under the eiderdown and go all squinty when the light comes in, but it really doesn’t bother me, the light or anything. I only don’t want to get up when it’s freezing like it is now because there’s a rug just by my bed which is a half circle and Auntie Milly made that one too in front of the fire every single evening last winter with a great big hook and different colored wool from a kit and there’s a thatched cottage on it with flowers and this smoke coming out of the chimney—but otherwise it’s all brown linoleum that’s meant to look like wood but where it’s cracked and coming up in the corners you can see it isn’t really. So I get my slippers on really fast, but the bathroom’s even worse. It always smells of Palmolive shaving soap when I go in there because of stupid Uncle Jim and there are sticky little bristles in the sink. He never shaves above his mouth though, so there’s always this lump of fuzz there that looks and smells like hamster. I have to brush my teeth with a powder which is Gibbs but it’s only a powder when we get a new tin because when you wet it it goes all sort of crumbly.

  Auntie Milly lays out my uniform on my chair the night before. My school is a good school, a proper school, is what she keeps on telling me, but I can’t see anything very special about it: it’s just a school. Uncle Jim goes on about what it costs him and I say well I don’t mind if I don’t go and then you can save the money and spend it all on disgusting beer and disgusting fags you disgusting and ignorant pig, except I don’t really say that. I don’t like my uniform because it’s got short trousers, and apart from looking stupid you get really freezing knees. They’re very thick and they look like Spam, only gray. There are stockings which itch and you have to keep the little green tabs on the garters showing when you fold them over. The blazer’s okay, though—I quite like the blazer because of the eagle on the badge and it’s got heaps of pockets for your diary and biros and a Matchbox and sweets which you’re not supposed to have because they’re against the rules and I always take my newest free gift from the cereal packet with me as well as some others for swaps. It’s Dogs of the World at the moment (I don’t think I’ll ever get the Dobermann Pinscher) and they’re from Rice Krispies which I don’t much like, or not as much as Frosties anyway which Tony the Tiger says are grrrreat, but Auntie Milly says they’re bad for my teeth.