Now, who should come in this morning but my sister Myrtle, looking for me. She was in a terrible state. She was three years older than me and she had this sherry-coloured hair, copied from the heiress Bobo Sigrist, done in a bingle. Manzanilla was the colour the hairdresser called the sherry-colour Myrtle had. But she looked ill and terrible. She said:
'Oh, there you are. Look, I can't stand it any longer. I won't stay in that house one day more with him. Please let me come and stay with you for a bit.'
'It's Michael, is it?' I said. 'What's he been up to now?'
'Oh,' she said, 'it's not the drinking I mind, nor his swearing either. Last night he tried to beat me. And this morning he tried to have a crack at me before he went out.' Her husband, Michael Sadler, worked in some shop where they sold typewriters and what were called office accessories. A very moody sort of a man, but handsome and knowing it.
'What does he want to beat you for?'
'He says he can't stand the sight of me nor the sound of my voice.' Now Myrtle was a pretty girl, though less perhaps than me, though of course her marriage had worn her down and made her mouth droopy and given her bags under the eyes. But I could understand that about the voice. Myrtle had one of these scratchy high voices, always going nya nya nya nya nya, and I could see that anybody might get fed up living with that, but it seemed no excuse for beating her up.
'Where did he beat you? Show me.'
We were in a sort of bay, all tins of soup, mostly cut-price mulligatawny, and there was nobody about, but Myrtle looked prim both ways, as if she was going to cross the road, then she turned round and lifted the bottom of her jumper and showed me her back. You could see the marks of fingers there in a kind of fingery bruise, all blue and brown.
'That's a beauty,' I said. But I wasn't satisfied with her reasons. I felt sure there was something more in it than just her face and her voice. I said, 'I don't think you're telling me the truth. Not the whole truth.' That was like a court scene on the TV. I knew Myrtle, you see. I knew that Myrtle must have been up to something. Not that I altogether blamed her, knowing Michael. Michael had as good as driven her more than once into the arms of another man. It was a terrible marriage they had.
Myrtle pouted a bit. She had on this Golden Frost lipstick. 'Well,' she said, 'he reckoned I'd been carrying on with Charlie Evans.'
'And you have been, haven't you?'
'Well, there was nothing in it. And, anyway, there was Michael carrying on himself, wasn't there? And getting drunk on top of it. And swearing.' She sniffed in a sort of ladylike way. We never liked swearing much in our family.
'Well, what do you want to do?' I asked.
'Teach him a lesson,' said Myrtle. 'Let him fetch and carry for himself for a bit. And I'm not getting a wink of sleep neither. Let him try getting rid of his nasty temper on the kitchen stove, say. I want to come and stay in your spare room for a bit. But he mustn't know, see. Get him worried. Besides, I'm not going to let myself be bashed about like that.'
'You could go and stay with Mum and Pop for a bit, couldn't you?'
'Do me a favour. With her going on about I told you so and all that jazz?' Myrtle had some of these expressions, having been to our school also. 'Gloating about me making a mess of things and she never liked Michael anyway and all that jazz.' She repeated herself a lot. 'Bring him to his senses, that's all. Get him worried. Besides--' Then she was on again about not letting herself get bashed. Poor Myrtle. She never did have much sense. I think she really thought she was so attractive and Michael loved her so much really that he'd break his heart with her being away and would go mad like a quiz audience when she came back to him again. Anyway, I said:
'All right, bring your things along at dinner-time.' What we did at dinner-time was to go home and have a cooked dinner, something I'd left in the oven like a casserole or a bacon-and-egg pie. I knocked off at twelve-thirty and Howard at one o'clock, so the table was laid when he got in at ten-past and as his boss used to let him drive himself home in one of the used cars with an advertisement on it he was able to drive me back to the Supermarket at about twenty to two, this being a bit late but nobody saying anything about it. Then Howard would go back to our house and do the washing-up, then be ready to go back to the Used Car Mart at two o'clock. In the evening we'd have tea - pie and cake and jam - and later on, as you've seen, we'd have something fried like bacon and egg or sausages or something like baked beans on toast. At least, you've seen me getting supper ready and it was baked beans. At the end of the day for both of us, both places closing at six, Howard would walk round fairly quickly to the Supermarket and I'd have time to have made up and put my coat on before we walked back, if it was a fine evening, or else took the bus. It wasn't very far. Oak Crescent was off Yew Tree Road and that was off Whitgift Road, at the other side of Whitgift Road were all these roads with the names of historic battles, of which Hastings Road was one. Then you passed Waterloo Street with Naseby Crescent leading off it, then the bishops started and we were the third of these bishops. Anyway, I said:
'All right, bring your things along at dinner-time.'
'Bless you, kid,' she said. 'Just for a few days. And I've not been sleeping very well, either.'
I didn't see how she thought she'd be able to sleep any better at our house than in her own flat, which was the other side of town, because Howard could be very noisy at night and very likely to be heard all over the house, not so much snoring as groaning in his sleep and shouting things out. Sometimes also he would walk in his sleep and I did not dare to wake him up, that being dangerous. Anyway, she'd see for herself, wouldn't she? Not that Howard really disturbed me all that much, as I was used to him.
Well, anyway, Myrtle came along with her things and I'd fixed up the spare bedroom (what we called, in joke of course, the Nursery) for her and we'd set the table and Myrtle had made herself look very smart with more of this Golden Frost lipstick by the time Howard got in. He looked a bit surprised to see Myrtle there, but she simpered at him and made a bit with the eyelashes, so he just grunted. Myrtle would not have minded making a bit of a dead set at my Howard, but Howard was still very serious and I, though I say it myself, was the only woman for him. Myrtle tried to make it very clear to both of us, but to Howard especially, that if her husband Michael came round looking for her we were to say she was not there and that we didn't have any idea of her whereabouts. Howard said:
'Lies, you see. Life's all telling lies nowadays. All cheating and being a stranger to the truth. It's what those horses of Dean Swift say, that you've got a tongue in your head in order to tell people things to their advantage and not to deceive them. That what language is for is communication.' And he went on a bit longer about these talking horses, so that Myrtle looked at him as if he was a nut-case. I could see myself that Howard was thinking of some cowboy programme or other for kids. Dean Swift perhaps being in it. He liked to watch these kids' films in a kind of gloomy sort of way on Thursday afternoons while I was getting ready our special half-day-off tea, Thursday being early closing day in Bradcaster. Myrtle said:
'I don't call it really lies, saying that I'm not in when Michael calls. If he calls, that is, though I think he's bound to. If it is lies it's only what they call white lies.'
'Look,' said Howard, looking very smashing and fierce and putting down his knife and fork, for we were eating cheese-and-onion pie, plenty for three. 'I don't like lies and I don't like cheating, no matter how small it is. Now I've had a row this morning with old Watts who's my boss about cheating. Now I come home for my dinner and I find proposals for cheating put forward in my house by my own sister-in-law.'
'Oh,' said Myrtle, and you could see she was ready to do the old serviette-throwing-down act and get up and run upstairs snivelling. So I said to Howard:
'Why, what was it all about, Howard?' Howard said:
'Oh, it was with a Yankee car, about mixing oil and sawdust into the crankcase so that you can't hear the sound of the gears being worn. He's been talking
to somebody somewhere, you could see that.' And then Howard went on about dirty tricks being played in the used car business. Old Watts his boss had talked about painting the tyres to make the treads look a lot better than they were, and then Howard had insisted that some customer or other should try out the second-hand car he thought of buying on a good stretch of road, anything under ten miles, according to Howard, being no good. Moreover, Howard said that you should drive also on a rough stretch because that tested the steering and you could hear the rattles and squeaks better that way. And he said it was up to a customer to check the oil pressure, because if the oil pressure got low when the car heated up to normal that meant something had to be done about the rings and the valves or something, and if there was smoke that meant the car was using oil. And if there was too much oil on the outside that meant a cracked block, and it also meant a cracked block if the stick came out with a lot of gravy in the oil, because there was water in there. And the customer ought to check the transmission and the rear end for grease leaks and cracks, and so he went on and on, so that Myrtle just stared at him. Then Myrtle said:
'But I thought you sold cars, not bought them.'
'Buy them and sell them,' said Howard, 'and try to be fair to the buyers and the sellers. I hate cheating, as I've said, and I won't cheat for old Watts or anybody like him, and if old Watts doesn't care for that approach to the bloody work, well, he knows what he can do with his job.'
Anyway, he said no more about letting on to Michael that his wife was staying in our house, so the rest of our dinner was fairly peaceful. Myrtle said she'd do the washing-up and have a bit of tea ready for us when we came in if we liked. So I said it was a smashing idea and I'd leave it to her. I envied her really, having the nice cosy house all to herself all afternoon, a nice read by the fire of my woman's paper and then Music While You Work at 3.45 and then Mrs Dale at 4.30. A nice life for any woman, and one that Myrtle had had ever since she got married and didn't really appreciate. There's nothing like a winter's afternoon when you're all dozy and have got nothing to do, just sitting by the fire and dreaming a bit, romancing about who you might have married instead of the one you did, seeing yourself in dark glasses and a playsuit in Bermuda or somewhere and a handsome rogue with white teeth and a bronzed Tarzan torso leaning over you with a cigarette-lighter and you giving him a sort of mysterious look as you take the light, though of course you've got your sunglasses on and he can't see the look. The dream's better than the real thing, though. You take it from me.
Chapter 3
Howard celebrated Myrtle coming to stay with us for a bit by putting on a really big sort of midnight matinee which scared the daylights out of Myrtle and made her take sleeping tablets. At about five past twelve by the luminous alarm-clock Howard woke me up by laughing very loud and nudging me hard as though we were watching something which he thought very funny at the pictures. Then he started burbling a lot of nonsense words, then he seemed to settle down again to sleep and I said 'Thank God' to myself. But I said it a lot too soon, because almost right away Howard was at it again, but this time not laughing, just the opposite, howling out loud, though it wasn't real crying. From her room next door Myrtle called in a frightened voice:
'Is he all right?' I replied, kind of soothing: 'Yes, yes, take no notice, he's often like this. You get back to sleep.'
'Oh,' she went, a bit worried. Then Howard cried out, in a very clear voice, 'If you can't clean the window, then smash it.' And then he laughed in a nasty kind of way, as it might be in a horror film. I wondered what he meant by that, because it seemed to mean something, but I found out soon enough, of course, what it meant. Then he groaned and then he bawled out more nonsense and then he started to get up. Now I knew it was no good stopping him doing that, and I knew that it was really dangerous if I tried to pull him back into bed, because that might wake him up and the shock might kill him, but what I was frightened of was Howard going next door and getting into Myrtle's bed, without meaning to of course, and that causing a lot of trouble one way or another. So I thought the best thing to do was to follow him. Anyway, Howard, sort of humming to himself, tottered all round the room in the dark, but not banging himself too much against anything, more like a bat really, and put the light on. It was amazing how he could do that, with far less fumbling than he would have done it with when he was awake. When the light was on I could see him standing by the door in his pyjamas, kind of smiling and humming away still, with his eyes open but glazed, sort of. Then Myrtle called again:
'Are you sure everything's all right there?'
'Yes,' I called back. Then I thought. I called, 'That door of yours won't lock, but you'd better put a chair behind it or something just in case he takes it into his head to pay you a visit.' Then you could hear her dashing out of bed going 'Oh oh oh' and padding in her bare feet to do what I said.
By this time Howard was on the landing, switching all the lights on he could find, as though it was a party. Then he was going downstairs, singing away this time, a sort of long song with no words and no real tune to it, it would have got nowhere near the top ten, but that's being a bit silly, really, and cruel. Poor old Howard. I followed him downstairs, having put my dressing-gown on, and he switched on all the lights downstairs, doing it so properly that you'd have sworn he was awake. Having got all the lights on, he decided he'd go into the living-room, that is, the room where we used to sit most of the time and eat and watch the TV and so on, only using the best room on special occasions like Christmas or if anybody called. I followed him into the living-room and there he went to the sideboard, opened the cupboard part of it and took out the bottle of port we had there and put this on the dining-table, also two glasses. Then, you can believe this or believe it not, just as you please, it makes no difference to what actually happened anyway, he opened the top drawer and took out the packet of playing cards, opened it, sat down at the table, still sort of singing to himself and with the smile on his face, and dealt out, believe it or not, four hands for a game of cards. He took one of these hands himself and seemed to look at it in a glazed sort of way. Then he seemed to look at the other people who he was supposed to be playing cards with, then he waited. When nobody else seemed to play a card Howard threw down his cards on the table and began to cry like a little child. Then he went over to the fireside chair he used to sit on and picked up the Daily Window and looked as if he was reading it, though his eyes were all screwed up with crying. But you couldn't see any tears. He was holding the paper in both hands, sort of stretching it out, so that the back page was in his left hand and the front page was in his right, so you could see both the front page and the back page at the same time. On the back page you could see where it said about eighty-nine people being killed in an air crash, an air-liner having come down somewhere in America, and on the front page you could see just the picture of this film-star Rayne Waters showing a lot of bosom and holding up the baby she'd just had (her second one, and the whole world was supposed to know about it, it was so important) and the headline was MY ITSY BITSY BOOFUL. And there was Howard crying away. It seemed funny, somehow, as if he was crying away at what was on the front page and back page of the Daily Window, because I suppose there was really nothing to cry about there, the two pages seeming to say that even though eighty-nine people get killed, still that's put right by a little child being born, and it was right to have the child being born on the front page and the people dying on the back page. I could see nothing wrong with that. But of course Howard couldn't either, being asleep and not being able to see a thing, but crying away with a really loud boo hoo noise as he held the paper in front of him.
Then all of a sudden Howard gave a kind of sigh, put the paper down, got up sighing and walked straight out of the room, not putting anything away or turning the light off. I followed him and saw him going straight upstairs, not touching any of the lights, leaving them there to burn away all night for all he cared, but I put them off as I followed him. He went into our bedroom peaceful a
s a lamb and got into bed and was soon breathing away quite peaceful, leaving it to me to turn all the lights off. He made no more trouble that night, but it must have scared our Myrtle silly, what he'd done already or rather the noises he'd made. Anyway, Myrtle seemed to have taken a tablet or something, because she was breathing quite peacefully now and there was only me left awake, which in a way wasn't fair, as I had my work to go to the next day and Myrtle could lie in bed like a lady if she wanted to.
But in the morning Myrtle was up with the two of us, coming down to breakfast in a very snazzy housecoat, quilted turquoise, with her sherry-coloured hair done up in a ribbon, while Howard and I were fully dressed for going out to work. Howard, of course, didn't remember a thing about the night before and he looked quite bright-eyed and rested. We used to get up at seven to give us plenty of time. I'd always got the dinner for the oven ready the night before, and this time it was a sort of hot pot, chops and onions and sliced potatoes in layers, and I put this in the oven, with the timer fixed properly, so as not to forget it, before I did the breakfast. Howard always believed in what he called a good breakfast - egg and bacon or sausages, just the same as it might be supper, breakfast and supper calling for the same sort of thing to eat, which is funny when you come to think of it and needs thinking out. I did two slices of gammon and a fried egg for Howard and for me cornflakes was good enough. Myrtle had ideas of her own and had brought with her a bottle of PLJ and she had a glass of this and then made herself some very thin toast and she lowered herself enough to drink some of the tea I'd made for Howard and me, but without milk or sugar. When we'd sat down to breakfast the postman came and there was a letter for Howard. He frowned over the envelope a long time, letting his egg and gammon get cold, neither opening the letter nor eating his breakfast. 'Come on,' I said, 'let's know who it's from.'