Remembrance Day Page 7

  Still, all families have their differences, I suppose. I was lucky. Good husband, nice couple of girls, Ruby and Joyce. Well, Joyce was nice till she married that builder. All through the war, I was terrified Bill was going to be killed, him being at sea, but he came through safely. Never torpedoed.

  First thing I ever remember was the war. I’d be, let’s see, about seven. That was the Great War … And I was asleep when there was this terrific bang. I remember sitting up in bed. We were living down in Southampton then, of course. I got up and went through to Mum’s room and the far wall was missing. There was the sky and our garden where the wall used to be, and the early morning sun shining in. Mum and Dad were sitting up in bed looking surprised. And what I thought was … sounds silly now … ‘How beautiful!’ I was clutching my golliwog.

  So we went to live with Auntie Flo down the road from us. Poor old Auntie Flo, I liked her. She was fun. It would be 1917. Yes, that’s it, because she had lost Uncle Herbert the year before, fighting in France, so there was plenty of room in her house. I was as proud as punch, telling the kids at school as we’d been bombed out.

  Years later, perhaps that was after I married Bill, Mum heard me telling someone we’d been bombed out when I was a kid, and she corrected me, saying it was a gas main blew up and not a German bomb at all. But I always somehow connected it with the Germans. The entire wall, gone like that, and the sun shining in, lighting up the room …

  Bill and I had a lot of fun … Purser on a P & O liner, so he was away a lot of the time, and I pretty well brought up Ruby and Joyce on my own. But when he came home, well, we always had parties and presents. The thirties … Looking back, I reckon they were the best time of my life. Somehow, after the war, the second one, Bill wasn’t quite the same. He used to be very depressed at times … I suppose we were getting older by then …

  Ruby was always our pet. We ought to have made more of Joyce, but she was more difficult. I suppose she’s paying us back now by never having me to stay with her and her husband in their posh house in Norwich … Still, things could be worse. It’s quite nice here, and Ray really isn’t such a bad chap. At least Ruby likes him, and that’s half the battle …

  Although Ray had dismissed Agnes’s remark over breakfast, he took her advice and went to his bank.

  He always felt apologetic in the bank. Even the modest Fakenham branch oppressed him with its pretence that money was easy to acquire, easy to spend. He looked at the posters on the wall, offering him huge loans so that he could buy a new car or house, or take a holiday in Bermuda; immune to such seductions, Ray nevertheless felt that he was the only man banking here who could not afford to take advantage of such offers.

  It had to be said, however, that none of the other customers looked particularly rich, though some wore suits and ties. I’m glad that someone’s keeping up the country’s standards, he told himself and, slightly amused, went up to one of the girls behind the counter. She explained to him in some detail why it was impossible for the manager to interfere with any credit card transaction, which did not go through the bank but through a central accounting system in Northampton.

  Was she sympathetic or condescending? he asked himself, returning to the comfortable anonymity of the streets. The little bitch had probably just come off a training course in Purley or somewhere.

  He drove slowly out of town and along the road to Hartisham but stopped before reaching East Barsham. Other traffic roared by as he pulled up in the gateway to a field.

  By the side of the road a phone-booth stood knee-deep in cowparsley and alexanders. From it he could ring Mike. It would save him the embarrassment of a personal encounter. He sat for a while, thinking over what he would say. As he walked back to the booth, he could hear Mike’s voice clearly in his head. Oh, hello, Ray. I’m sorry you had to ring me. Jean and I were just going to pop over to see you and Ruby – you know Jean has always had a bit of a crush on you. Yes, I’ve got the money, of course. I had a slight problem or I’d have been in touch sooner. We’ll be over in about an hour, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for getting me out of a hole. You know what an awkward cuss Joe Stanton is – trusts no one.

  The Linwood number was ringing. It was Jean who answered.

  Immediately she spoke, the sound of her voice, the intonations she used, conjured up her face, her figure, and the way she stood. Ray saw in inner vision her dark old kitchen with the portrait of her father-in-law above the grate, and Jean with her dark hair about her cheeks. He also heard the change in her voice when he announced himself.

  ‘Oh, Jean, hello. How are you? Could I speak to Mike?’

  ‘Mike’s still over at Pippet Hall. What exactly do you want?’

  ‘Well, it’s something really between the two of us.’

  Her tone was unyielding. ‘It’s about the money, is it?’

  ‘Jean, it’s about the three hundred quid I lent Mike at the beginning of the week, and I didn’t want to bother you—’

  ‘I’ve got quite enough problems here, Ray, thanks very much, without being pestered for money just now.’

  ‘Look, Jean, it’s not a case of—’

  In the same undisturbed voice, she cut in, saying, ‘Michael will repay you that money next week, OK? Does that satisfy you, because right now we’re involved with the suicide at Pippet Hall. Goodbye.’

  Suicide? Tebbutt said to himself, as he replaced the receiver. What was the cheeky woman on about? Inventing excuses not to pay, rather as he had invented excuses not to stay with Noel Linwood; but at least he’d been drunk on that occasion. What a misery! She was lying – well, forced to lie, of course, because the Linwoods were dirt poor and still keeping up a middle-class façade. Bloody suicide, indeed: ‘bankruptcy’ was the word she was looking for.

  Ray took a walk in the field to try and calm down. The sheep moved grudgingly out of his way, as if, he thought, they too had borrowed money from him.

  He could write a book about being poor, except that it would be so awful that no one would read it. The poor would not read it. They could not afford to read, they had an increasing contempt for reading, being slaves to the video machine; in any case, they knew all about the miserable subject. The rich would not read it. Why? Because being rich they did not want to know. And why should they?

  Every day, almost every hour, brought a humiliation unknown to solvency. He did not want to have that conversation with Jean. Moreover, looked at coolly, the situation was such that she probably did not want to have that conversation with him. She liked him, and maybe more than that, though not a word on the subject had ever passed between them. She too was in bad financial straits, poor dear.

  He did not want to be walking about this field, trudging through sheep shit. He did not want to be wearing these clothes – in particular, not these boots and these trousers. He did not want to be wearing his patched underclothes. He would not want to eat whatever it was he was going to have to eat for lunch (nor did he want to call it ‘dinner’, as did most of the people with whom he associated). He did not want his poor wife to work in a cake shop, a sign of genteel poverty if ever there was one.

  This evening, he would most probably go out and get pissed at the Bluebell. He did not particularly want to do that, but there was little else to do in North Norfolk on a Saturday night if you had not got two pence to rub together.

  When he had walked round the field three times, he went back to his car. He did not want to be driving this clapped-out old Hillman.

  What he really wanted was a brand-spanking-new red BMW from the dealer in Norwich. He would whizz over in his sporting clothes to see the Linwoods in their eroded old house in Hartisham. Mike would be out, taking holy orders or something they could laugh about. Noel and the boys would be out of sight. Jean would be there on her own. And he’d say, as he put his arm round her waist, Sorry about this morning. Just testing. Look, forget about that three hundred. Have it as a present. And now you and I are going to scud down to Brighton for a dir
ty weekend.

  That Saturday evening he went as usual to get pissed at the Bluebell. As he left home, Ruby kissed him tenderly and said at the gate, ‘Don’t have too many, darling. Remember Jenny’s coming with her Czech boyfriend tomorrow, and we’ve got lots to do to get ready.’

  He always left the car at home and walked to the Bluebell. It was four miles to Langham, but he preferred to walk both ways rather than drive after he had downed a few pints. His mood was cheerful. You generally had a laugh in the Bluebell. True, the company was not exactly out of the top drawer, but they often had good raunchy tales to tell. The incidence of adultery and grosser sexual offences must be higher in Norfolk than anywhere, if the tales they told were to be believed.

  As he came to the crossroads and turned right, he overtook old Charlie Craske hobbling in the same direction.

  ‘Rain’s holding off still,’ Tebbutt said.

  Charlie squinted up at him. ‘What you think about Tom Squire’s fruit-packing business failing, then?’ he asked, more in the way of a statement than a question. ‘It’s a bugger, ent it?’

  ‘What’s that then?’

  ‘Well, it’s a bugger, ent it?’

  Entering the Bluebell, where several drinkers had already gathered, Tebbutt found that the same state of gloom, and the same opinion that it was a bugger, prevailed. They were eager enough to divulge the bad news to Tebbutt, on the principle that there was always enough misery to be shared.

  Sir Thomas Squire at Hartisham had an orchard and a fruit-packing business on his grounds. It had rated as a small local success in the late seventies, to be written up in the local papers, shown on Anglian TV. Squire had extended the business and packed for a number of Norfolk fruit-growers. There was even a rumour at one time that he might build a private rail-link from Pippet Hall to Norwich Thorpe BR station. But imports of fruit from the European Community had cut into the trade. Local growers were undersold by the French, Spanish, and Italians.

  After losing money for two years, Squire had closed the enterprise down. Ten men had lost their jobs.

  A man named Burton, who sometimes brought tame ferrets to the pub, said, ‘That weren’t no reason for young Lamb to go and hang himself, to my mind. Blokes have been kicked out of jobs before this.’ He laughed. ‘It’s always happening to the likes of us.’

  ‘Very like being sacked crushed his hopes,’ someone remarked. ‘Don’t forget young Lamb were on the verge of matrimony.’

  ‘Which is a form of suicide,’ old Wilkes remarked slyly. Everyone laughed.

  ‘What’s this about suicide?’ Tebbutt asked, suddenly recalling Jean Linwood’s remark over the phone.

  ‘They say Tom Squire found him himself, barely cold, hanging there from a metal beam in the store, among all the crates. Just this morning, it was. A terrible thing to do to yourself, and this young girl he was about to marry from over North Walsham way.’

  They all put on solemn Sunday faces and shook their heads before taking another drink.

  The landlady, who had been polishing glasses and listening behind the bar, said in her smoky voice, ‘You gentlemen want to get your story straight. As I was told by someone who knows, Mr Billy Lamb did not kill himself because he lost his job. He didn’t even know he was to be declared redundant.’

  Her statement was immediately challenged, but she went on unperturbed, resting her fists on her counter as if prepared to take them all on in physical combat if necessary. ‘Reason he done what he did was because the girl, Margy Sulston, who once worked for my cousin at the Ostrich, threw him over. Margy’s quite a decent girl – no chicken, mind you – and as I understand it she couldn’t put up with some of Mr Lamb’s obnoxious habits.’

  ‘Such as?’ Craske asked.

  ‘I’m not one to gossip,’ said the landlady with finality, turning away to polish another glass.

  To ease himself into the company, which had not yet settled down properly, Tebbutt went over to the counter and bought everyone a round of bitter. They all drank it, except for old Craske, who was reckoned strange for sticking to cider, and Georgie Clenchwarden, who preferred ginger beer shandy.

  Swallowing their pints, the company cheered up and began to tell stories of the unfortunate Billy Lamb. The only man there who knew him at all was Pete Norton, a dark-complexioned brickie and plasterer in his forties who worked for a Fakenham builder. He was soon holding them spellbound with details of Lamb’s sex life.

  ‘There’s a girl works in Boots as I took out a time or two. She’d been with Billy Lamb when he was working in the DIY. She reckoned as he had a problem. Some problem it was too. Seemed Billy was keen enough to get it in but he couldn’t stand the sight of women.’

  They all roared with laughter, agreeing he certainly had a problem.

  ‘So what he done, he borrowed a sheet of hardboard out the DIY, and he’d stick that between them, so’s he could just see her legs and twot, and the rest of her was covered. Bit like screwing a fence, if you ask me.’

  This revelation caused much discussion, some debating how long a girl would put up with such treatment, others dismissing the story as a complete fabrication, though later agreeing that nothing to do with sex could be either believed or disbelieved. Only Georgie Clenchwarden, reputed lover of Pauline Yarker, said nothing, sitting back on his bench with his shandy, smiling and listening over the top of his glass.

  The Bluebell was a curious pub, with a collection of ornamental shoes on display upstairs. Tebbutt felt himself to be something of a curio in this company, displaced rather like the old shoes.

  He took a certain interest in the hollow-chested young Georgie Clenchwarden, whose reported exploits with Mrs Yarker had earned him the sack. This crestfallen lad, who squirmed when he caught Tebbutt’s eye on him, lived over in Saxlingham with a decrepit aunt.

  Tebbutt had wondered idly how so insignificant a youth as Georgie could bear a resonant name like Clenchwarden, guessing the family had come down in the world, much as he had himself; this he later found to be the case. In the eighteenth century, the Clenchwardens had owned a large house and estate the other side of Hartisham. Captain Toby Clenchwarden had been a compulsive gambler. One night, playing cards with a group of cronies that included a novelist and pamphleteer, he had staked his mansion on a hand at brag – and lost. The novelist won.

  After which, Clenchwarden had ridden his mare back to Hartisham at dawn and roused his wife – so it was reported – with the cheering words, ‘Get up, you sloven, it’s the poorhouse for you today!’

  The novelist had taken over on the following morning. The two men, so the story went, shook hands at the gates, one going, one coming.

  Since then, it seemed, the Clenchwardens had never lived more than a stone’s throw from the poorhouse.

  The company at the Bluebell was three or four pints along the way when in came Yarker with Pauline. Yarker had abandoned his Wellingtons for a pair of trainers – his way of smartening up. Pauline dressed in a common way, in a tight red satin dress which the men admired; as the men often agreed among themselves, she was welcome as the lone female in their group because she had good big tits on her. Pinned over these assets was a white carnation from the garden centre. She wore large bronze earrings made in an obscure country which rattled when she laughed.

  Yarker bought them all a round of beer and sat down next to Tebbutt. Clenchwarden sank back on his bench, unwilling to catch his ex-employee’s eye, and tried to drown himself in his shandy.

  ‘I done well this afternoon,’ Yarker told his employee, genially. ‘Bought a whole load of furniture off of an old girl Dereham way who didn’t know no better. Drove it round to a mate of mine in King’s Lynn and sold it all for ten times as much. Well, eight or nine. Not bad for one afternoon, hey, bor?’

  ‘Who was that then, Greg?’ asked Burton.

  ‘Woman name of Fox, whistles when she talks, looks at you out of one eye, keeps an old dog who smells like a bit of used toilet paper.’

  The ferre
t man laughed heartily. ‘That’s my missus’s aunt, Dot Fox. Funny thing happened to her some years back when she was married. She used to live over Happisburgh way, woke up one morning and found her back garden had fallen over the cliff. Apparently she’d been drinking so heavy the night before, she slept through one of the worst storms on the coast for twenty years. What was funny, was her husband Bert had gone out in his nightshirt to see to the chickens, what they kept in the garden shed, and he went over the cliff edge with the rest of ’em. Three in the morning, it was.’

  Everyone present roared with laughter. The ferret man followed up his success with a postscript. ‘They found Bert washed up on Mundesley beach a week later, they did, still wearing his nightshirt. Old Dot Fox kept that nightshirt for years as a souvenir. She’s probably still got it, ’less you bought it off her, Greg.’

  More laughter, and more drink called for.

  Yarker said to Tebbutt, when they were comfortable, ‘You know that line of poplars where you been digging this week? Me and Pauline been thinking. They’re getting on a bit, must be ninety year old, and poplars don’t last that long. We reckon they best come down.’

  Tebbutt frowned. ‘They look all right to me. They aren’t that old, are they?’

  ‘Ah, I can see the notion ent very poplar with you,’ Pauline said, leaning revealingly forward and bursting with laughter at her pun. Soon the whole table was laughing and making puns about trees. I knew a gell but she was a bit of a beech. I ent going to die yet ’cause I ent made no willow.

  It was quite an uproarious evening. The suicide was soon forgotten.

  Old Craske was unfolding a familiar tale about how, when he was a lad, he had seen a naked woman run through the village with a dog on a lead, and maybe it was a ghost or maybe it wasn’t.