‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ she said. ‘Remember it was me who drove you to the top.’
‘Whit dae ye mean?’ – like a bull wounded in the arena.
‘You were lazy, that was what was wrong with you. You’d go out ferreting when you were here. You liked being with the boys.’
‘Nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong wi that?’
‘What do you want? That they should all wave flags? That all the dirty boys and girls should line the street with banners five miles high? They don’t give a damn about you, you know that. They’re all dead and rotting and we should be back in Africa where we belong.’
He heard the voices round him. It was New Year’s Eve and they were all dancing in a restaurant which had a fountain in the middle, and in the basin hundreds of pennies.
‘Knees up, Mother Brown,’ Jamieson was shouting to Hannah.
‘You used to dance, too,’ he said, ‘on New Year’s Night.’
‘I saw old Manson dying in that room,’ he said, pointing at a window. The floor and the ceiling and the walls seemed to have drops of perspiration and Manson had a brown flannel cloth wrapped round his neck. He couldn’t breathe. And he heard the mice scuttering behind the walls.
She turned on him. ‘What are you bringing that up for? Why don’t you forget it? Do you enjoy thinking about these things?’
‘Shut up,’ he shouted, ‘you didn’t even have proper table manners when I met you.’
She stalked out to the car and he stayed where he was. To hell with her. She couldn’t drive anyway.
He just wondered if anyone they had known still remained. He climbed the stair quietly till he came to the door of their old flat. No gaslight there now. On the door was written the name ‘Rafferty’, and as he leaned down against the letter box he heard the blast of a radio playing a pop song.
He went down again quietly.
He thought of their own two rooms there once, the living room with the table, the huge Victorian wardrobe (which was too big for the bedroom) and the huge Victorian dresser.
As he looked out of the close he saw that his car was surrounded by a pack of children, his wife, sheltered behind glass, staring ahead of her, an empress surrounded by prairie dogs.
He rushed out. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘don’t scratch my car.’
‘Whit is it?’ a hard voice shouted from above.
He looked up. ‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘I was just telling them not to scratch my car.’
‘Why have you goat it there onyway?’
The woman was thin and stringy and wore a cheap bracelet round her throat. A bit like Mrs Jamieson but less self-effacing.
‘I was just paying a visit,’ he said. ‘I used to live here.’
‘They’re no daeing onything to your caur,’ said the voice which was like a saw that would cut through steel forever.
‘It’s an expensive car,’ he said, watching his wife who was sitting in it like a graven image, lips firmly pressed together. Another window opened. ‘Hey, you there! I’m on night shift.
Let’s get a bit of sleep. Right?’
A pair of hairy hands slammed the window down again. Two tall youngsters chewing gum approached.
‘Hey, mister, whit are you on about?’ They stared at him, legs crossed, delicate narrow toes.
‘Nice bus,’ said the one with the long curving moustache.
‘Nice bus, eh Charley?’
They moved forward in concert, a ballet.
‘Look,’ he began, ‘I was just visiting.’ Then he stopped. Should he tell them that he was a rich man who had made good? It might not be advisable. One of them absently kicked one of the front tyres and then suddenly said to his wife, ‘Peek a boo’. She showed no sign that she had seen him. They reminded him of some Africans he had seen, insolent young toughs, town-bred.
‘All right, boys,’ he said in an ingratiating voice. ‘We’re going anyway. We’ve seen all we want.’
‘Did you hear that, Micky? He’s seen all he wants to see. Would you say that was an insult?’ Micky gazed benevolently at him through a lot of hair.
‘Depends. What have you seen, daddy?’
‘I used to live here,’ he said jovially. ‘In the old days. The best years of my life.’ The words rang hollow between them.
‘Hear that?’ said Micky. ‘Hear him. He’s left us. Daddy’s left us.’
He came up close and said quietly, ‘Get out of here, daddy, before we cut you up, and take your camera and your bus with you. And your bag too. Right?’
The one with the curving moustache spat and said quietly, ‘Tourist.’
He got into the car beside his still unsmiling wife who was still staring straight ahead of her. The car gathered speed and made its way down the main street. In the mirror he could see the brown tenement diminishing. The thin stringy woman was still at the window looking out, screaming at the children.
The shops along both sides of the street were all changed.
There used to be a road down to the river and the lavatories but he couldn’t see anything there now. Later on he passed a new yellow petrol-station, behind a miniature park with a blue bench on it.
‘Mind we used to take the bus out past here?’ he said, looking towards the woods on their right, where all the secret shades were, and the squirrels leaped.
The sky was darkening and the light seemed concentrated ahead of them in steely rays.
Suddenly he said, ‘I wish to God we were home.’
She smiled for the first time. But he was still thinking of the scarred tenement and of what he should have said to these youths. Punks. He should have said, ‘This is my home too. More than yours. You’re just passing through.’
Punks with Edwardian moustaches. By God, if they were in Africa they would be sorted out. A word in the ear of the Chief Inspector over a cigar
