The Night Following Read online

  “I’m not getting caught up in any monkey business,” Evelyn sniffed.

  “ ’Course not,” Daphne said.“It’s just summat to watch. It’s a good spin out to Hayfield on the bus and it’ll be nice round there at daffodil time.” She picked up Evelyn’s knitting and began working a row. “You can bet your Stan’ll be going. You can bet tomorrow night he’ll saunter back to his Mam’s expecting you there with his tea ready.You surprise him. Show him if he can go marching up Kinder Scout, so can you.”

  The needles clicked. “He takes you for granted, does your Stan.”

  Evelyn sighed again.“All right,” she said.“I’ll catch my death like as not, but I’m going.”

  Dear Ruth

  I know it’s been a while but I’m not myself in some ways. Hand bandaged. Plus I’m very busy plus leg ulcers-no fun I can tell you.

  Also no fun-bloody nurse, two of them now and you never know which, meddling with legs, now interfering with hand on almost daily basis and they don’t care how much they hurt me. Plus Carole and Mrs. M barging in.

  And NOW that woman from your little writing group keeps coming. They’re working on a memorial, she says. Della, that’s her name-she seems to be the ringleader.

  I haven’t mentioned your story to her, that’s between you and me. You put in Kinder Scout! I have to correct you though, on that bit about it being cold up there. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. You get the shelter of the hill if the wind’s in the right direction. Overdale Lodge itself I grant you could be on the Spartan side but you have to admit it was quite cosy after the storage heaters went in. 1978 or thereabouts.

  Had a few photos down to look at. Happy days.

  Anyway back to these women turning up on doorstep. They’ve all got a look in their eye. They’re all in it together, they think I can’t see that. Usually they wake me up-on top of that they bully me about my clothes, too.

  EG-Mrs. M appeared uninvited with what she called a complete hot dinner and without so much as a by-your-leave sticks it in oven, fusses about setting the timer but she didn’t know how to work it, neither did I. She said it’d take 30 minutes and that was just enough time for a bath, wouldn’t it be a good idea if she popped up and ran me one. I spoke quite sharply.

  I think she’s definitely after me.

  She said she’d be calling back for the dish and she’d better find it empty, wag wag goes the finger, she thinks she’s funny. Well, forewarned-I just won’t answer the door.

  Though the dish IS empty because I flung the whole lot into the back hedge.

  Gave me an idea though. If you ask me the bloody council’s messing about with the bin day and not telling me so I’m not bothering putting ours out now. Anything for chucking can go in the hedge. Or it can stay here, plenty space in the hall-I’ll get round to a big sort out when it suits me.

  All these people. They all still ask how I am and I say nothing and I have nothing much to contribute on other subjects either. What difference does it make if I agree it’s a nice day or not? It’s not long before I see their mouths squirming around for something to say. Throats get cleared and looks flit from one pair of eyes to another. No wonder I lose my temper.

  Mrs. M: Am I sure I’m not a big casserole fan? It’s just good plain English food-no garlic!

  Della: She’d be only too pleased to make me a cup of tea to have with the cake she’s brought. Ruth liked Earl Grey, didn’t she? Della likes camomile of an evening but she can’t get along with peppermint, it repeats on her.

  Nurse: Isn’t Arthur a naughty old lazybones, not cutting his nails, she’s got people who’d love to be able to cut their nails for themselves.

  Carole: Is the pressure cooker perhaps standing for something else? Is the pressure cooker maybe not really about the pressure cooker? Is it symbolic of earlier times?

  See what’s going on? They think they can get me via toenails and tea and tributes.

  And not a word these days about how it’s all right for me to be angry.

  Example-I told Carole in no uncertain terms what I’d do to that bastard driver if I got my hands on him.

  Oh, she pretended to understand, but I wasn’t fooled. “Oh. Oh, Arthur, yes I see, well, but, oh dear, you don’t think maybe justice is best left to the police? Of course it’s understandable…”

  The police are useless! Fucking useless! I told her. Scared her, I think. Obviously she doesn’t think the anger’s all right at all-first sign of it and she wants it all bottled up again. Stupid bitch in my opinion (as I pointed out).

  Relieved to see the back of them all

  What makes these people tick?

  I don’t even know them.

  And I like garlic, as you know.

  NO WONDER I LOSE MY TEMPER .

  Arthur

  Inside the house, Arthur was roaming upstairs. But there was a change. He wasn’t properly dressed. He was wearing only a raincoat that wasn’t completely buttoned and I could see he was naked under it. His wandering seemed more urgent and erratic. He would pause, then suddenly stir and start up to another room and once there, stand and do nothing. Or he would conduct frantic searches in this room or that, and abandon them without finding anything. He walked about with a tea towel over his shoulder and a pen and a bundle of papers in his hands. There were papers stuffed in the coat pockets, too. When he made his way up the ladder to the attic I shuddered to see that his feet were bare on the sharp metal rungs. When the attic light came on I made my way straight into the house, impatient to get started.

  I worked by the light set into the hood over the cooker, as golden and soft as candlelight. There was plenty of hot water, at least. The washing up didn’t take so very long and once I’d scrubbed the grill and stovetop and found bin bags and bagged the rotten scraps I began to see my way. The stink subsided. The countertops polished up nicely. I found bleach and cleaning spray and went around again twice, both in the kitchen and the conservatory, and the smell disappeared altogether, or rather was replaced by a much better one not unlike the smell of the house in Beaulieu Gardens.

  Ruth would be a fiend of a housekeeper, I was sure of that. She would be pleased to have her place put back to rights, and I worked with some notion of carrying out her wishes and surpassing even her standards; I scrubbed with a desire for reparation and praise. Resting for a moment, I looked around, not with satisfaction-that was for Ruth to accord or deny me-but with a wish that she should see and judge. Quickly I told myself-no, I told her-that of course this was only a quick cleanup. After so many weeks’ neglect there would be, I explained, deeper layers of filth and chaos than I could erase in one go. By now there would be dirt settling in here, there, and everywhere, feeling its dark way into the house’s fabric rather than merely across its surfaces, and that would take more time and effort to penetrate and correct. As I measured out another capful of detergent, I assured Ruth that I had only just begun. I extinguished the light over the cooker and, starting at the conservatory door, I set about the washing of the kitchen floor in the manner of my grandmother, on my hands and knees with a coarse cloth and a bucket of soapy water, in darkness.

  I worked my way across the floor to the door that led into the hall. I stood up and opened it, and borne in with the silence from the rest of the house came also another, even worse smell. I shouldn’t have been surprised, I suppose. If he had let the kitchen get into such a state, why would he have been any more careful about the bathroom? I shuddered, for Ruth. She would be mortified.

  The hall was littered with papers and piles of rubbish but I didn’t take time to look at them closely. The downstairs lavatory was next to the front door. I didn’t need to see any more than I was shown by the glow of orange through the window from the street lamps of Cardigan Avenue. I felt rather sick before I had improved matters to an acceptable standard. It did not occur to me not to flush the lavatory as I was finishing with the bleach. So ordinary a sound in a daytime way, in the darkness it roared, and I was afraid it would bring Arthu
r hurrying down the stairs, calling out. But the torrent of noise had already begun to subside, and then it stopped altogether, and still from upstairs nothing stirred. I walked calmly back into the kitchen. I was surprised by how slippery the floor felt under my shoes, and how the newly clean smell sprang to my nose. I wanted to clap my hands but instead I put on the kettle, humming a tune.

  I scraped a foot here and there across the floor as I waited for the water to boil. I like a task with visible results, achieved by straightforward means. I like not just the fruits of my labours but also evidence of the expenditure of that labour. Here was a lovely clean floor and not only that, a bucket of filthy water to show for it as well.

  And soon the floor would need its next wash, and once it got it, all it would be was clean again, and that was all: a floor neither more nor less clean than it always was after a good scrub. It was reassuring, this act of maintenance with no expectation of development. Nobody was waiting for the floor eventually to advance and blossom under my care, nobody hoped for any conceptual, breaking insight from me into the cleanliness of floors in general. I liked the certainty of the repetition that would never produce anything more surprising than a clean floor, a pleasing smell, and a gallon of water swooshing down the sink.

  In that sense Arthur would be a bit like a floor; it would soothe me just to keep him nice, and judging by what I had so far seen, that would be a not entirely trivial achievement. And apart from any advantage to him, there was Ruth to consider. She was distressed by the state he had got himself into; she conveyed that loud and clear. I would henceforth enter Arthur’s house with ease. I had Ruth’s approval; more than that I was, quite possibly, acting under her instruction. All three of us would benefit.

  Moreover, I had already found in myself a dedication to the task quite independent of any consideration for Arthur and Ruth, though I didn’t like to think of either of them knowing this.

  But we would all see eye-to-eye. Already I detected something habitual and self-preserving in Arthur’s absence from the scene of any domestic operations. Once he was safely up in the attic, I sensed that by silent and mutual agreement he would stay there, leaving me to get on elsewhere in the house. And while we were both occupied we would be respectful of each other’s need for peace and quiet. Neither of us would make any unnecessary noise.

  I made tea and drank mine in silence. Then I poured out a cup for Arthur and carried it upstairs. Shadows from the open hatch to the attic crossed the landing carpet like tiny patches of rapid, passing cloud. From the foot of the ladder I could hear, among the thudding of objects, Arthur’s voice rising in a muttering, plaintive monologue. I took the teaspoon from the saucer and tapped it against the cup, five times. The sounds from the attic stopped. I tapped another five times, and placed the cup and saucer gently on the floor. I went downstairs and into the conservatory. Already there was the merest threat of light in the sky and the garden walls and chimneys and roofs of Arthur’s neighbours’ houses were beginning to emerge out of darkness. Again it was time for me to go.

  Dear Ruth

  Been thinking and thinking.

  It was you.

  I know that doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t make sense that it wasn’t you, either.

  Can’t have been anyone else, can it? Nobody else tings on the cup like that.

  Tried to tell leg nurse about it-there’s a new one, foreign, name’s full of sounds like “brushes” or “shooshes’”all strung together. English not up to scratch, she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.

  Better kept to myself, anyway-to ourselves, rather.

  Thank you, dear.

  Arthur

  Ps I’m leaving this where it’ll be easy to find. Hope you get it.

  THE COLD AND THE BEAUTY AND THE DARK

  1932

  Chapter 8: The Walk

  The day following, Evelyn was up long before Stan’s Mam and was knocking on Daphne’s door at half past seven. She had popped into Woolworth’s on her way home from Daphne’s after their comfortable Saturday afternoon the day before and bought a bag of biscuits, her contribution to the picnic, even though Daphne had told her not to bother. On arrival, Evelyn could see why! There were enough sandwiches for a dozen, packed in an enormous basket.

  “We’ll never eat all that! We’ll never carry all that!” she exclaimed, aghast.

  Daphne hooted with laughter. “You don’t know Paul! Besides, everybody gets hungry out of doors. It’s the fresh air.”

  But the basket was very heavy. Daphne’s mother sided with Evelyn and sent Daphne to fetch another basket. They unpacked the first and divided its contents between the two, while Daphne’s mother clucked around them.

  “It’s a shame you’ve not got your pram yet,” she said to Evelyn,“or you could’ve pushed your picnic along in that and saved your arms.”

  Evelyn nodded. She didn’t like to say that she couldn’t see how she was going to get a pram at all unless Stan started saving a bit more. At this rate she’d be carrying that baby in a shawl on her back until it was ready to walk.

  The three of them set off happily. Paul was dressed in a strange but practical getup of knickerbockers and thick boots that brought hoots of laughter from the girls. Evelyn and Daphne took a basket each and Paul carried, slung over one shoulder, a special case containing a spirit stove, paraffin, kettle, and all the tea things. He wasn’t going up Kinder Scout without getting a hot brew at the top, he said. He also carried a stout walking stick and a pair of binoculars.

  They walked down to Aldbury High Street and caught the tram into Stockport, from where they had to catch the bus out to Hayfield. The tram had run a little late and now they were cutting it fine, and the bus station was milling with people. Paul said he’d never seen such a crowd on a Sunday. There were several extra buses laid on as well as hired charabancs and in the confusion Paul took off into the melée to find out where their bus was leaving from. After a minute he reappeared to say it was way over at the other side and they would have to run. Then he was off again, followed by Daphne, and Evelyn had a hard time keeping up. Puffing after them with the heavy basket, she fixed her eyes on Daphne’s bright green headscarf, bobbing ahead of her. It was lucky Daphne was so big and liked bright colours, she thought, or she’d have lost her by now. Just then she saw a frowning Paul coming towards her through the sea of people. When he caught sight of her his face broke into a grin.

  “Eh, lass, you’re struggling! Give us that here.” So saying he took the basket from Evelyn’s aching arm and steered her towards the bus. She could have cried with gratitude.

  They clambered aboard and got the last seats. The bus would wind its way through Stockport and on out towards New Mills before going on to Hayfield. From there it would go down to Chapel-en-le-Frith and on to Castleton and end up in Sheffield. Along the way it picked up more passengers and soon it was crammed with people, many of them standing, some with rucksacks and sticks, others in working jackets and caps. There were children, dogs, and numerous picnic baskets. A group of five men tried to board with a furled banner mounted on two tall poles, but the conductor refused to let them on.

  As the bus rolled away, leaving them behind, Paul gazed after them and said,“Never seen the like. Going to be a big do, this.”

  With its full load the bus went slowly. Sometimes a hired charabanc overtook them, with flags flying from the windows. Evelyn was not quick enough to read what they said, but Daphne reported excitedly, “Ooh! Workers for something or other! Anti-fascist Federation of-oh, it’s flapping, I can’t see what! Oh, Paul, that one’s got ‘Communist’ on it!”

  She turned to Evelyn, wide-eyed. “Is that the sort of thing your Stan’s getting up to these days?” Evelyn shrugged. She didn’t know and she didn’t want to know. Daphne pulled at Paul’s sleeve. “Paul, Evelyn’s Stan might be one o’ them! He’s forever at meetings. ”

  “More fool him, then,” Paul said tersely, “and you still newlyweds.”

  “He�
��s one of the regulars,” Evelyn said. “He tires himself out on it.”

  “Plain daft if you ask me,” Paul said. “Plain bloody daft.”

  Evelyn wasn’t sure if he meant Stan was daft to go to all the meetings, or daft to stay away from her, but she flushed with pleasure.

  “It’s that Alan O’Reilly’s doing, really,” she said demurely.

  Daphne hooted with scorn.“Ho! I wonder if he’s brought a picnic, your famous Comrade O’Reilly? Bet they won’t! Well, they’re not cadging off us, that’s for sure!”

  “No fear!” Paul cried, making them all laugh.

  After that they settled down to the bus ride. Paul got into conversation with others on board, chatting about other walking routes and scenic paths that Evelyn had never heard of. She was content to watch out of the window. Trees and buildings looked different on Sundays, especially around Eastertime, cleaner than on weekdays. She had said that to Stan once and he hadn’t had a clue what she was going on about. She was looking out, trying to explain it again to herself but at the same time thinking Paul would understand what she meant. She wouldn’t have to explain it to him. She gave herself a shake. What funny thoughts she was getting, now she was pregnant! Why, Paul was at least eight years younger than she was, just a nice decent lad. She turned her thoughts to Stan and wondered if she would see him later. It seemed unlikely, she’d never find him among so many people. She nearly cried right there and then, and that too must be because she was pregnant. Things could come over her so suddenly these days.

  There was a cold wind blowing when they got off the bus, Paul said, on account of Hayfield being that much higher. Evelyn didn’t mind once she had got her jerkin buttoned and a scarf on. Daphne had packed a couple of spare cardigans, at her mother’s insistence. Paul met up with some of his regular walking companions and so they all went along together in a friendly, loose straggle up the main street. There were lots of people, mainly young folk, and a lot more men and boys than women and girls. For a moment Evelyn felt awkward, surrounded by the laughing Daphne and Paul and his band of high-spirited lads. What was she doing here? Maybe Daphne’s mother had only let Daphne go on condition Evelyn went, too. Maybe she thought if there was a respectable married woman in tow, expecting a baby what’s more, it would keep Daphne and Paul from getting too giddy.