Alfie Read online

‘Tell Sister to send the Redhead,’ I said, ‘the one who’s a good dart thrower.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘That can’t be the bell!’ Harry said to Lily. You soppy git, I thought, you just heard it. ‘You seem like you’ve only just got here,’ he went on. ‘Don’t go yet, wait for the others to go.’

  ‘I’ll have to go, darling,’ she said, ‘or I’ll miss the coach to the station.’

  I could feel the misery of those two across from where I lay in bed. Thank God I’m not involved with anybody, I thought. Horrible, ain’t it, saying good-bye.

  ‘You won’t forget to write, will you?’ said Harry.

  ‘I’ll write you a long letter the first thing in the morning,’ she said, ‘when they’ve all gone to school. I’ll sit down and write before I clear the breakfast things, I promise you.’

  What the hell would she have to write about by tomorrow morning, I thought. And what does he want a letter for?

  ‘Don’t be frightened of putting little things in,’ said Harry. ‘You know, anything that strikes your mind. I mean like what Phil said when Rover was missing that night. I enjoyed that bit in your last letter.’

  ‘I’ll put everything in,’ said Lily; ‘and be sure you write if you need anything special.’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ said Harry. ‘Give my love to the children.’

  ‘Are you sure you’ve got plenty of stamps?’ said Lily.

  ‘Oh I must have about half a dozen,’ said Harry.

  ‘See you eat your eggs,’ she said. ‘They’re special – from free-range hens.’

  ‘You will be careful, won’t you!’ he said.

  I’m only telling half of it. On and on they went, about being careful, until the final bell sounded.

  ‘I must go now, darling,’ she said.

  ‘All right,’ said Harry. ‘God speed.’

  ‘God bless,’ she said.

  And the next thing he’s only broken out into a great fit of coughing, and you’d think he was going to choke. It’s the way they have of drawing attention to themselves, see. They can’t help it. Anyway either I’ve got a soft heart or I’d had enough of it, but I got out of bed and slipped my dressing-gown on: ‘Come on now Harry boy,’ I said, ‘easy up there. Breathe in and out slowly, and control yourself. You’ll be all right. Your missus has to go.’

  He seemed to ease up at once when he heard me speak so firm to him. Lily looked at me, ‘I don’t like leaving him,’ she said.

  ‘It was only a bout, I said. ‘Off you go, I’ll look after him. He’ll be all right.’ Know what, I sometimes think this world would be a happier place if all the sick people and whatnot dropped dead. When you get down to it they’re only an encumbrance to themselves and everybody else.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Elkins,’ she said. ‘Do cheer him up if you can.’

  They clutched their sticky little hands together once more and she kissed him on top of the head, and I saw her off to the ward door. ‘Leave him to me,’ I said. ‘I’ll give him a good talking-to.’

  She went walking down the corridor. She looked a lonely little woman. They do, don’t they? She hadn’t a bad figure when you came to look at it closely – a bit homely, but none the worse for that. If she unloaded herself of that C & A coat, I thought, and got some proper clobber she wouldn’t look too bad. She turned at the far end of the corridor and looked back and held up her hand and gave me a little wave. I didn’t expect it. I turned up both my thumbs to her to tell her everything would be all right. Then off she went. She left a little spot of herself in my mind.

  I went back inside the ward. Doris, the ward maid, was just wheeling in the teas. I felt badly in need of a cup. ‘There’s a gal,’ I said. ‘I’ll pour his out. Snaffle me an extra bit of bread an’ butter if you will – I feel peckish.’

  ‘You can have mine,’ said Harry, ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. I began walking about as I was eating. I think your stomach works better if you eat standing up. You can certainly talk better. ‘Now look here, Harry,’ I said to him, ‘I don’t want to be hard on you – but these visiting days aren’t doing you no good. You’ve got to do something about them.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ he said.

  ‘It takes you a week to get over one,’ I said, knocking back his jam. ‘You know how you’re going to leave here, Harry, if you go on like this – you’re going to leave here in your wooden suit. Now why don’t you write and tell your missus the doc’s put you on silence?’

  ‘Silence?’ he said.

  ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘No visitors. Tell your missus not to come. Then you’ll be like me, you’ll have nobody to worry about but yourself.’

  He looked at me as though I’d gone mad: ‘It’s the one thing I look forward to all week,’ he said. I could have understood it if they’d let her pop in between the sheets with him for ten minutes. I mean, that would have done him some good, but to sit there talking about drains and dogs and kids! What good could that do any man? He looked up at me with those big innocent blue eyes of his: ‘Alfie,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t live without seeing Lily.’

  ‘Talk sense,’ I said, ‘you’d have to live without her if she was knocked down and killed on her way home. Or say she fell on the railway line in front of the train and crash’ – and I demonstrated with my fist hitting up against the palm of my other hand what would happen to Lily if an express train hit her. I felt he needed a bit of shock treatment.

  ‘Don’t say things like that, Alfie,’ he said. ‘Not even in fun.’

  ‘I’m not being funny,’ I said. ‘Accidents do happen. Here, Harry,’ I went on, sitting down beside his bed and talking to him in a bedside manner, ‘how do you know she ain’t got one geezer outside there waiting for her? I mean after all, you’ve been in here a good six months, ain’t you, and in all that time she’s not had a bit of cracker. She’s only human like any other woman. You couldn’t blame her.’

  ‘You say another word about my wife,’ he said, ‘and I’ll get out of this bed and knock your bloody head in.’

  I looked at him and I realised he would have done if he could. So that’s what you get for trying to help people. It don’t never do to give anybody advice. Those who are most in need of it are the least likely ones to take it.

  ‘All right, all right, mate,’ I said, ‘don’t get aerated.’ What harm if she had, I thought – they say a slice off a cut loaf is never missed. Nor is it. And a woman’s body needs to be kept fresh. I mean the old glands are very quick to pack in if they feel they’re not wanted.

  I went to Harry’s locker and picked up his packet of cigarettes, since I’d smoked all my own. ‘Here you are, Harry,’ I said, ‘have a fag and cheer up. And I’ll take one for myself at the same time if you don’t mind.’

  He didn’t know whether to take it or not. ‘The doc says I’m not to have more than five a day,’ he said.

  ‘Take no bleedin’ notice of the doc,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to get yourself better. He won’t get you better. He can only advise you. But the real get well spirit must come from inside you. You’ll get nowhere in this life, Harry, if you depend on others.’

  ‘I’ll just have one,’ he said, ‘it can’t do no harm.’

  ‘It’ll do you good,’ I said. ‘Don’t think of harm, think of good.’

  I got him smoking and generally cheered him up with my chirpy manner. Then I picked up the picture of his wife that he kept on his locker. ‘All I said to you was that you never know with a bird where it’s been, or what it’s done. And even when they’re talking to you, Harry, they’ve got this skin over their forehead and these two eyes all covering up what’s going on underneath.’ If many a man only knew what was going on inside his wife’s head whilst he was talking to her, or even doing the other, what a bloody shock they’d get! ‘That’s one thing you never will know – what a bird is thinking,’ I said. ‘It don’t even know itself half the time.’

  ‘Would you mind saying she?’ said Har
ry. ‘You’re talking about my missis.’

  ‘She or it,’ I said, ‘they’re all birds. Just because she’s your wife you think she’s different but she’s not.’ Old Harry looked at me as though I knew something, but not as much as he knew.

  ‘What you don’t understand, Alfie,’ he said, ‘is the bond between husband and wife.’

  ‘No, but what I do understand,’ I said, ‘is human bloody nature. All the birds ever made have to give way to that. You never want to let yourself get attached to anybody or anything in this life, Harry.’

  ‘Why not?’ he said.

  ‘If you’re going to talk like that,’ I said, ‘I’m not going to tell you.’

  ‘I love Lily,’ he said.

  ‘It doesn’t follow you love somebody just because you’re attached to them,’ I said.

  ‘How do you mean?’ he said.

  ‘Here, I once knew an old woman, lived in Lambeth, an old spinster or something,’ I said, ‘what used to wheel a dog about in a pram. She had a little knitted shawl up to his chin, and as she was wheeling him about the other neighbours used to stop and chat to her and say “How’s Charlie this morning?” just as though he were a child. He used to look an ugly little sod, now I come to think of it. “Oh my little Charlie’s not so well this morning,” she’d say, “Are you Charlie love?” This is gospel, Harry, every word of it. I remember chatting her one day and she said to me, “I’ve lost my husband, so I’ve got to have something to take his place. Little Charlie sleeps on my bed and he’s better company than any husband. He knows every word I say as I’m talking to you. He costs me twenty-five bob once a month to have him done over at the dogs’ place at Stockwell. He has cornflakes for breakfast and boiled chicken for lunch. Don’t you Charlie, love? It takes more to keep him than it does myself, but little Charlie is worth every penny of it – he’s my own dear boy. I wouldn’t part with him for all the money in the world.”’

  ‘She sounds a nice old dear,’ said Harry.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Just as she’s having this good rabbit about little Charlie, some kids are going by with their mongrel dog that was yapping and barking away and suddenly this little Charlie spots him and he jumps clean out of his pram and joins in. Now the old woman started a-screaming her head off. “He’ll strain his heart,” she kept shouting, “somebody stop him!” And there was her little Charlie chasing this mongrel up and down the street, and he was having the time of his life. Now when she got hold of him she didn’t half scold him, and she put him back in the pram and covered him up to the chin and wheeled him off.’ I turned away from Harry. ‘She was like you, Harry,’ I said, ‘she wanted the dog to have a good time – but only with her.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ said Harry.

  ‘I mean if Lily was having it off with a bloke you’d feel—’

  ‘Get on with your bloody tale,’ said Harry.

  ‘Where was I? Oh yeh, the next thing the old woman falls downstairs and has to go into hospital, where she soon snuffs it. “What will Charlie do now?” they all said. “It’ll break his heart,” they said. “He’ll never survive without her.” Know what, Harry, that dog took on a new lease of life when it got the old woman out of the way. It became young and frisky you wouldn’t think it was the same dog. And people will still tell me she was devoted to her dog!’ I picked up a little bunch of Harry’s grapes. ‘You don’t mind if I help myself to your grapes, Harry?’

  ‘Carry on,’ he said, ‘I won’t eat them.’

  ‘“Devoted! Devoted,” I used to say, “she was devoted to her bleedin’ self. The same as everybody else is.” I reckon if you’re devoted to somebody the best thing you can do for them is to get out of their bleedin’ way and let them stand on their own two feet.’

  ‘Don’t talk daft,’ said Harry. ‘If people did what you say, we’d all be alone in this life.’

  ‘We are alone in this life, Harry,’ I said, ‘if you could only see it.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Harry. In a way I suppose he had me there, but he didn’t follow it up. Nice bloke Harry. ‘And what about man and wife?’ he said.

  ‘It’s all the same,’ I said, ‘man, wife, or mother and son, or father and son, come to that. Now don’t get depressed, mate, because once you see this truth – that man and wife ain’t one but two, you’ll organize your little life something lovely. You’ll know the truth, see, and you’ll be happy in the truth, mate, because you’ll soon be out of here once you learn to live for your bleeding self like I do. See what I mean.’

  ‘I never worry about Lily,’ he said. ‘I’m the only chap she’s ever had and I’ve no doubt I’ll be the only chap she ever will have, even if I was in here another six years, let alone six months. But I do miss the kids, especially young Phil. I miss him a lot, Alfie.’

  ‘When you lie back in bed at night,’ I said, ‘do you start thinking about him? – Do you start imagining what he’s been doing all day and who he’s been talking to?’

  He looked at me quite surprised. ‘Come to think of it, I do,’ he said. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I’ve had experience,’ I said. I had too. Of course in time every memory wastes away. ‘A man should never allow too much from outside to get inside his nut. It don’t do him no good. You’ve enough on your plate thinking about yourself. It sounds hard, mate, but that’s only because the truth is hard. I’ll bet you’ve been planning your little future lying back on that bed, but it don’t do, Harry, because it only gives you the idea that what goes on in your head will one day come to happen. But it won’t. It never does.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ he said.

  ‘I’ll bet you’ve got the notion in your mind that your little family couldn’t live without you,’ I said. ‘But suppose you was to snuff it tonight, Harry. See what I mean?’

  Harry had a laugh. ‘Go on, mate,’ he said, ‘I can take it.’

  ‘I’ve got you giggling, Harry,’ I said. ‘You’re halfway to being cured. That’s all life is – a bleedin’ giggle. But if you go taking it serious you’re bound to come a cropper.’

  ‘Carry on with me kicking the bucket,’ said Harry. ‘Say it’s happened – move on from there.’

  ‘There’s my old son,’ I said. ‘Now say in a month or two your missus picks up with some new geezer and takes him home. Got me, Harry?’

  ‘I don’t think Lily would,’ said Harry.

  ‘Off you go again,’ I said, ‘refusing to see reality. She ain’t bad’. I pointed at Lily’s picture on his locker. ‘She’s got a fair little figure, Harry,’ I said. ‘It might look nothing to you because you’re used to it. And I’ll admit it ain’t exactly my cup of tea – it’s a bit on the staid side, if you see what I mean?’

  ‘I see,’ said Harry; ‘carry on.’

  ‘Well there’s many a bloke getting on in years might fancy a wife like that, kids and all, a ready-made family. Course I prefer the old do-it-yourself method. But you get a retired grocer say, or some old boy who’s a widower and manager of a shoe shop, and if he’s lonely and he likes kids he might go for a little set-up like your’n. He might even be a church warden or something—’

  ‘Get down to the gory bit,’ said Harry.

  ‘Nah, listen,’ I said, ‘he could be one of these blokes who would have liked a wife but didn’t fancy the bed stakes, so he’s not bent but he’s a sort of uncle geezer. Got me, Harry?’

  ‘I’ve got you,’ said Harry.

  ‘Now let’s say, Harry, let’s say she goes round with him for a bit, and then takes him home and introduces him to the kids as their Uncle Donald. You’re at peace in your grave, mate, so it’s no skin off your nose. Now I’ll bet them kids would get a real kick out of him.’

  ‘They might and they might not,’ said Harry. ‘But certainly not young Phil.’

  ‘He’d be the first,’ I said. ‘He’s missing his Daddy, he’d be longing to find another. That’s a child’s nature. Now say this Uncle Donald wants to make an impression he’s going to
take your kids some toys and chocolates. I’m not depressing you, am I, Harry?’

  ‘He wouldn’t buy young Phil with toys and chocolates,’ said Harry. ‘No, you’re not depressing me.’

  ‘Good. Now the next thing your missis will start telling people, The kids have got to have a Dad. Women always put it on to the kids. They won’t come out with it straight and say, I’ve got to have a man about the house. No, the kids have got to have a Dad, that’s what they say. Like as not the kids will have settled down dead peaceful and happy without a man in the home. Kids don’t like men around as a rule.’

  ‘What are you getting at, Alfie?’ said Harry. ‘Come out with it straight.’

  ‘I’m getting at nothing,’ I said. ‘I’m only trying to get you to see life, mate. Once you do that the road’s clear for you to start getting better.’

  I felt he needed a good shock to stir him out of himself. In fact we all do. ‘The wife and kids might go along to the cemetery every Sunday with flowers for the first month or two,’ I said, ‘unless she decides it might work out cheaper in the long run to have you cremated. At least you get rid of the whole bloody lot in two seconds with that game – but once she’s married again, and the kids are calling Uncle Donald ‘Dad’, they’ll stop thinking about you, and that little grave of your’n will be just a mass of weeds, with an old broken Woolworth’s vase in the middle. Yes, Harry, you’ll be totally forgotten by your little family, except for the odd time in the night when old Lily can’t sleep or something, and she gets this odd little touch of memory about you – with this Uncle Donald lying beside her – and like as not she’ll shed a tear or something in the dark.’ Harry was looking a bit tense, but once you’ve got the picture glowing in your mind you can’t stop just for the sake of somebody’s feelings.

  ‘But as for you, Harry,’ I said, ‘if you was to walk into your own kitchen six months later, they’d all run to him and shout, “Daddy – who is it? Send him away!”’

  I thought Harry could take it, but the fact is people can’t. Nobody can. Harry was already trying to get out of bed to lay hands on me. It’s better never tell anybody anything. ‘What’s up, Harry,’ I said, ‘what’s up?’