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  When, finally, they went to fetch his mother he felt frozen all over. It was as if everything had been numbed. He sat with his hands clenched on his knees, staring out of the bus window, past his father’s shoulder. He couldn’t remember what his mother looked like, or what kind of person she was.

  He had on his suit, and before they had left his father had washed him. He had tidied the house, pushing most of the rubbish into piles, setting a chair in front of it. He had put on his own suit and his cheeks were bright red where he had shaved.

  ‘Ah, we’ll be all right now, when we have her back,’ he said.

  Colin nodded, gazing at the fields. In one some pit ponies had been let out to graze, their heads still blinkered against the light. ‘See, now,’ his father said. ‘They’ve been let up on holiday,’ turning in his seat to watch them pass.

  At the hospital he waited in a small lodge at the gates. Wooden chairs were set against a wall and behind a glass shutter in the wall a man in uniform sat reading a newspaper, occasionally looking out into the drive.

  He didn’t see his mother come down the drive. A door at the end of the room opened and she appeared wearing her coat, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shining, almost shy, as if she had been away on holiday. In her arms she carried a bundle wrapped up in a white shawl.

  ‘Oh, now,’ she said, ‘and how are you, Colin?’ turning to his father who put down the case he was carrying.

  She stooped down then and said, ‘Now then, love. Have you missed me?’

  He nodded his head and as she leant against him he began to cry.

  ‘Now then, I’m coming home. We’ll be all right.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, hiding his face against her arm.

  ‘Are you having a taxi?’ the man in the uniform said. He had come out from behind the glass partition and stood with his newspaper in his hand by the door.

  ‘Aye,’ his father said. ‘Ring us a taxi, will you?’

  He was smiling, almost laughing, nodding his head as he gazed at the man.

  ‘Here, now,’ his mother said. ‘Have a look at him if you like.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and looked down at a tiny face sticking out at one end of the bundle.

  It was sleeping, its eyes closed, a tiny fist clenched by its cheek, the thumb nail showing, almost white.

  ‘What shall we call him?’ his mother said

  ‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head, gazing at the face.

  ‘We’ve thought of Steven. But you choose one. We’ll think of one when we get home.’

  When the taxi came his mother’s case was put into the boot and the driver held the rear door for her to climb in with the baby. Colin sat beside her and his father got in front with the driver.

  ‘Where to?’ the driver said.

  ‘The bus stop,’ his father said.

  ‘Nay,’ the driver said. ‘That’s less than two hundred yards.’

  ‘I can’t afford any more,’ his father said. ‘It’s six miles to where we live.’

  The driver looked up a moment, his eyes closed, and said, ‘I can do that for ten bob.’

  ‘Ten bob,’ his father said. ‘Do you know how many hours I work for that?’

  They got out at the bus stop and the driver stayed behind the wheel. They had to get the case out themselves; Colin held the door for his mother.

  ‘We ought to have paid it,’ she said. ‘This once.’

  ‘I would have done,’ he said. ‘I didn’t like him, that’s all. I’m damned if I’m going to pay all that to somebody like him. I’ll walk back if you like and get another.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘We’ll get the bus.’

  She held the baby to her, occasionally looking down into its face, shielded by a fold of the shawl.

  ‘We should have had that ambulance,’ his father said. ‘I pay all that every week into the Hospital Fund and we can’t even get an ambulance.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t know,’ his mother said. ‘I’ve been looking forward to the ride.’

  In the bus he sat behind his mother and father, his mother’s case in the locker by the door.

  Occasionally they turned round to glance at him. ‘Are you all right?’ his father said.

  He nodded, his hands clenched in his pockets.

  ‘You ask Mrs Shaw: he’s been a good lad while you’ve been away,’ he said.

  The other passengers in the bus turned round to smile, stooping down whenever they got off to look under the fold of the shawl.

  ‘He’s a lovely one,’ the woman said. ‘What is he, then, a girl or a boy?’

  ‘A boy,’ his father told them, looking down at the face himself.

  ‘He makes enough row, I suppose, for a lad.’

  ‘Oh, enough’, his father said, ‘to be going on with.’

  When they reached the village his father sprang off the bus, whistling, lifting down the case, calling out to the conductress and looking round.

  As they walked down the street the women came to the doors and his mother stopped, pulling back the shawl from the baby’s face.

  ‘He’s after his dinner,’ the women said. ‘We better not keep him.’

  ‘Aye, another bloody mouth,’ his father said.

  Colin walked behind them to the door, carrying the case, setting it down when they stopped, looking off down the street, still feeling strange at having his best suit on on a week-day.

  At the door his father said, ‘You mu’n never mind the mess,’ putting the key in the lock. ‘Just sit yourself down and I’ll make some tea.’

  He put the kettle on the fire which he had stoked up before they left. On the table he began to get out the pots and the teapot.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ his mother said. ‘It’s so good to be back.’

  She sat gazing round at the kitchen, her eyes shining, her cheeks still flushed.

  ‘I better get this seen to,’ she said, talking to the baby, making sounds into its face then taking off its shawl. Its legs were tiny and curled up, red like its face from crying. ‘Now then, what do you think to your new home?’ she asked it.

  Its colour deepened and it cried more loudly, its face disappearing in folds and wrinkles. His father had taken it from her while his mother took off her coat. She sat down then by the fire and took the baby back, calling to it, and began to unfasten her dress.

  ‘Here,’ his father said, ‘run down to the shops and fetch us some cigarettes.’

  ‘He doesn’t have to go,’ his mother said.

  ‘Nay,’ he said. ‘I’ve run out and I’m dying for a smoke. You can buy a bar of chocolate for yourself.’

  Colin went out with the half-crown his father had given him clutched in his hand. It was still hot from his father’s pocket.

  It was almost lunch-time. The street was deserted. From the colliery came the soft panting of the winding engine and the voice of a tradesman calling from a cart.

  His shoes squeaked in the silence and in the window of the shop at the next corner he caught a glimpse of his figure, the dark suit, its trousers ending at his knees, his stockings pulled up beneath his knee-caps and folded over, his neatly brushed hair.

  ‘How’s it feel, then, to have a baby in the house?’ the man in the shop had said. He was cutting up a piece of cheese with a wire, his tongue sticking out between his teeth.

  ‘Thy’ll have to teach it a trick or two. How to stand up and brush its hair.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, taking the cigarettes.

  ‘Nay, have it on me,’ the man said as he made to pay for the chocolate. ‘It’s not every day it happens.’

  He walked back slowly along the street, eating the chocolate, then putting most of it away in his pocket. He wondered if they would want him back so soon and for a while stood on the kerb kicking his shoe in the dust.

  From the school he heard the bell ring for lunch and a moment later, from behind the houses, came the roar of voices of those children who were going home.

  He waited until they crossed the e
nd of the street, running and shouting, then he went on towards his door.

  Mrs Shaw was leaving the house as he entered.

  ‘You must be feeling proud,’ she said. ‘A lad like that in the family.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  His father was in the kitchen, pouring out some tea.

  ‘It’ll make all his waiting seem worthwhile,’ Mrs Shaw said from the door.

  ‘It will that.’ His father nodded.

  She ruffled his hair and said, ‘We’ll miss having you, I can tell you. It’s been like having one of your own.’

  ‘Aye,’ his father said. ‘We’re very grateful to you.’

  ‘What with the garden dug and him cleaning my brasses.’

  His father nodded, laughing.

  ‘He can get stuck into our garden now,’ he said. ‘These last few weeks it’s gone to ruin.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ she said. ‘You’re all back now, thank God, and a re-united family.’

  ‘Aye,’ his father said. ‘We’ve a lot to thank Him for.’

  When Mrs Shaw had gone his father put one of the cups of tea on a saucer with a biscuit and went to the stairs.

  ‘I’ll just take this up,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll see what we have for dinner.’

  ‘Is my mother coming down?’ he said.

  ‘Aye,’ his father said. ‘When she’s finished.’

  He sat in the kitchen, gazing out at the overgrown garden and the shelter. Overhead he heard his father’s steps then his voice followed by his mother’s.

  At the colliery a buzzer sounded.

  He put the cigarettes on the table. At the end of the garden, between it and the back yards of the next street, was a narrow field. It opened out on one side on to farm fields and at the other was enclosed by the converging houses. Several children were playing, waiting for their dinners, jumping in and out of a hole.

  When he went out he shouted to them, trying to avoid the patches of clay and soil either side of the path.

  ‘Hey,’ he said from the fence. ‘We’ve got a baby.’

  ‘What’s that?’ they said.

  He indicated the house behind.

  ‘What is it?’ they said.

  ‘A boy.’

  They jumped back into the hole, disappearing a moment then suddenly climbing out, running off down the field then back again, their arms stretched out. Every now and again they made a stuttering noise in their throats.

  He stood watching them for a while, holding the railings.

  Then, his hands in his pockets, he turned back to the house.

  Across the yards a woman was hanging out washing. She stood on her toes, reaching up to the line.

  ‘Is you mother back?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said and nodded.

  ‘What colour’s its eyes?’

  ‘Blue,’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Just like his father’s.’

  When he went in his father was stoking up the fire.

  ‘Now, then, let’s see about some dinner,’ he said, stooping down and setting the pans against the flames.

  Part Two

  6

  The boys he played with were slightly older than himself. Some of them already wore long flannels. Their leader, when he wasn’t in hospital or didn’t feel too tired to come out, was a boy called Batty. He was very tall and had bright red hair. It was because of his height that he was always having trouble with his feet. They stuck out sideways and when he ran his legs were flicked out sideways too, his knees knocking against one another and causing him such discomfort that usually when he was out playing he spent most of his time calling to the others, ‘Hey, come on. Let’s walk.’ He was sometimes called Walkie-Talkie, other times Lolly, though usually Batty seemed to do.

  He came from a large family farther along the terrace: there were seven brothers, all with red hair. ‘Our kids’ll bash you,’ Batty would say whenever his authority was questioned and he would indicate the windows of his crowded home.

  The centre of Batty’s life was the hut he had built in the Dell, half a mile away. It stood between the high, fenced walls of the gasworks on one side and the sewage beds on the other.

  After the birth of the baby Colin spent a lot of his time in the hut. He would go down there after school, or in the dinner hour. Sometimes, getting up early and hearing his mother feeding the baby in the bedroom, he would get dressed and go out, taking a piece of bread with him. His mother would sometimes call out and when he went in she would be sitting up in bed, the baby held over her shoulder. She would ask him if he would like some tea, straighten his tie with her one free hand and look at his ears and neck. His father worked mornings now and got up like Mr Shaw next door, though an hour sooner because of the ride. Sometimes when he came home from school he found his mother in bed, white-faced, her cheeks sunken, his father busy in the kitchen with a brush, or washing-up.

  ‘It’s all this getting up at night to feed him,’ he would say. ‘She’ll be all right once he settles.’

  ‘Can I go out?’ he would ask him.

  ‘Yes,’ he’d say. ‘Just clear this bit up first.’

  In the hut, when Batty wasn’t there, he usually found Stringer. He was Batty’s deputy: he was small and squat with black hair, and whenever they were alone he would sit in the armchair normally reserved for Batty and bite his nails, gazing with an abstracted look at the glow of an old oil lamp, which stood on a table immediately inside the door and, on hearing the slightest noise outside, rushing for his gun which he always brought with him.

  It was an air-gun Batty himself had given him and which, once he was in the hut, he fired at anything that moved. One night by mistake he had fired at his own father, who had come to fetch him, a man as squat and as black as Stringer himself. Mr Stringer had taken the gun from his son, bent it in two, first one way then the other, then finally wrenched the halves apart. The next day, however, Batty had provided Stringer with another. ‘I’m glad he broke it,’ Stringer said. ‘That o’d ’un wasn’t any good.’ Outside the door he would hang up the birds he had shot, their feet strung up to a rafter, the blood collecting in beads around their beaks and eyes.

  Stringer didn’t like the hut a great deal. But for Batty he would gladly have moved it to another spot. There was always the smell of the gasworks lying there, mingling with the smell of the sewage pens. ‘The pong’s all right,’ Batty told him whenever he complained. ‘I picked it because of that. It’s a good defence.’ Beyond the sewage pens were the swamps. Tall reeds obliterated the view in every direction. If anyone entered they had to walk on the piles of bricks and sods of earth that at some time in the past Batty had placed there. Amongst the bulrushes were still, brown pools about which Batty had invented stories. Into them bodies had fallen never to be retrieved. They had no bottoms. They opened out directly into the centre of the earth. It was here that Stringer hunted for rats, hanging them up by their tails along with the birds he had shot.

  Once or twice, when Stringer was busy elsewhere, Colin would be left on his own in the hut. He would light the lamp and sit in Batty’s chair, the door barred, one of the windows which were normally shuttered open so that he could see anyone approaching along the path.

  There was a small stove in the hut on which Batty made cocoa or cooked chips in a broken pan. On the walls hung bows and arrows, the arrows tipped with rusty wire. There was also a cupboard which Batty kept locked and inside which he kept his secret possessions – a rope with a noose on the end, a tin called his ‘In-it’ tin, for no one knew what was inside, and a hammer.

  It gave Colin a dull ache to sit alone in the hut, looking round at the wooden walls and the weapons, listening anxiously for any sound or signal from outside. Often he was glad even to see Stringer.

  ‘What do you come down here for?’ Stringer would ask him: there were two or three years difference between their ages.

  ‘To look after it,’ he would tell him.

  ‘I mean,’ Stringer would sa
y, ‘why do you come so much?’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ he said.

  ‘Not even the pong?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  Sometimes he would add, ‘In any case, there might be an attack.’

  ‘Aye,’ Stringer would say, looking at him slyly.

  An attack was what Batty most longed for. It was in anticipation of an attack that all his weapons and the various booby traps outside had been prepared. The latter were a series of deep holes covered by grass that they had to walk around when they arrived.

  The attack too would bring a light to Stringer’s eyes and invariably, when it was mentioned, he would check his gun, pushing in a pellet if by some rare chance it was unloaded, and go to the window, narrowing his eyes to peer out. A pair of binoculars, another of Batty’s possessions, facilitated his watch.

  Yet the attacks never came; the only intruders who approached the hut were miners from the Club and Institute who came to relieve themselves behind the wall as they struggled home at night.

  His father was a little sceptical of the time he spent with Batty. ‘Nearly all their lads have been in prison,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to get mixed up with that. What do you do in that hut, anyway?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Play around.’

  ‘If he asks you to go thieving you better tell me straight away.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve enough worries with your mother being unwell, without us adding another.’

  Yet in the evening his father would go into the field at the back of the house with Batty’s father and some of his sons, and sometimes Stringer’s father and Mr Shaw, and play cricket. The women would come out into the yards to watch, their arms folded under their aprons.

  The men would set up two sticks for a wicket, Batty’s father – who was tall like Batty and almost completely bald – swearing at his sons whenever he was out, his own father laughing, standing with his hands on his hips, his head thrust back, or sometimes bowling, running up with a slow, stiff stride and flicking the ball out of the back of his hand. Whenever one of the men hit the ball towards the houses they would call out, as if a tree were falling, and if a window were broken they would run off and hide behind the fences and in the doorways before coming back, laughing, to hand out the money. Later, as the sun set, they would lie in the grass by the worn wicket, talking, their wives calling from the doorsteps as it grew dark.