The Likes of Us (3 page)

Emily's behaviour reassured him further. For when he told her of poor Charlie Lofthouse lying stiff and cold in his lonely room, his laughter silenced for ever in this world, she displayed what seemed to him to be no more than an appropriate interest and concern. People were born and people died. Life went on...

Especially did life go on, for as they sat by the fire after supper a cry from upstairs brought Emily to her feet with an exclamation of annoyance. ‘Your son has been behaving badly all day,' she said. ‘I've been able to get hardly anything done.'

They went up together and Freestone peered into the cot. The crying ceased.

‘Ah!' said Freestone, ‘he knows his father is here now and that he must be good. Yes he does, doesn't he? Yes he does. Tchk tchk, tchk…'

He bent over the cot and chucked dotingly to the child.

Later, sitting once more by the fire, Freestone paused in the act of reaching for the evening paper.

‘You look to have something on your mind.'

‘I was just thinking of poor Charlie Lofthouse,' Emily said.

‘Oh?'

‘Yes. You know, he wasn't really a bad sort of fellow.'

‘No, no, not a bad sort,' Freestone said generously. ‘Not our type, of course.'

‘You remember that day we all went to the fair together,' Emily said, ‘and you and he had your palms read?'

‘Oh, yes, yes, I do recall it.' Freestone looked keenly at Emily.

‘He mentioned afterwards that she'd told him he would have a long life, and children.' Mrs Freestone's eyes met her husband's. ‘And the poor man didn't have either, did he?'

For perhaps five seconds their glances were locked. Then Freestone lifted his paper and shook it open.

‘Haven't I always said that fortune-telling is poppy-cock?' he said.

 

The End of an Old Song

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He was already awake on Christmas morning when she went in to draw back the curtains. He watched her from the prison of his bed and his first words were: ‘D'you think t'band'll call this mornin'?'

‘I should think so,' she said in an off-hand tone as she admitted the grey half-light into the room and then came bustling over to tidy the bedclothes about his wasted form. ‘They said they would, didn't they?'

‘Aye,' her husband said. ‘Aye, they said so.'

She stood by the bed, looking down at him with fretful concern in her eyes. ‘Haven't you slept?'

He stirred sluggishly under the sheets. ‘Oh, on an' off,' he said listlessly. His eyes wandered. ‘I wonder what time they'll come,' he said in a moment.

Anticipation of the band's visit had been the only thing in his life during the last few days, outside herself and his bed and the four too familiar walls. But she no longer resented his pre-occupation: he was helpless now and this was all that was left to him of his lifelong passion. She was in command.

He had been in his uniform when she first met him, while strolling through the park on a summer Sunday afternoon. She was nineteen then and thought how handsome and military-like he looked in his scarlet tunic and shiny-peaked cap with its gold lyre and braid. But his playing had become a constant source of friction between them during the forty years of their marriage before the accident. What had first attracted her to him became anathema to her and she never grew used to taking second place to his music.

‘But it i'n't a case o' taking second place,'
he had said to her shortly after their marriage. ‘You know I played wi't band afore you wed me.'

‘I thought when you were married your wife 'ud be more important to you than your banding,'
was her reply.

‘But you don't want to look at it like that,' he said. ‘Don't make it sound as though I don't think owt about you!' He told her that she should go with him and mix with the other bandsmen's wives; but she had notions of gentility and liked to choose her company.

‘I can't stand that crowd wi'
their drinkin'
an'
carryin' on,' she said.

He tried to persuade her that she would find grand women among them if only she would take the trouble to be sociable and get to know them. But she saw it as a test of strength and refused to give in. He went his own way and in the days and evenings without him she knew her defeat.

And then two years ago, twelve months before he was due to retire, a careless step on a muddy scaffolding had given him to her. She had devoted herself to his care, agonising for him with a feeling she had thought long dried up and finding a bitter satisfaction in the knowledge that he would be dependent on her for the rest of his days, and that the hated music could never take him away again.

Once more when she gave him his breakfast, and yet again when she went up to wash and tidy him for the day, the focus of his thoughts was revealed.

‘Have you heard owt on 'em yet? Can you hear 'em anywhere about?' And at her negative reply: ‘I wonder if they've decided to leave it till Boxin' Day.'

The excitement showed in two dull spots of colour in his pale cheeks. It was the only sign of spirit in him and it disturbed her.

‘Nah don't you go gettin' all worked up about it,' she admonished him. ‘They'll come all in good time. Why, they'll hardly have gotten out of their beds by now!'

He lay back weakly among the pillows while she sponged his face and hands and chest. He had been a big man once and quietly proud of his physique; but now the flesh was gone and the skin taut across the cage of his ribs. She wondered vaguely, as she had wondered so many times before, how long it could go on. The doctors could not tell her. He might last for years, they said; or he might go at any time. She must be ready for that. The only thing they were sure of was that he would never leave his bed again.

But she had a strange feeling about him lately. She felt that something was going to happen and she had prepared herself for the worst, which, she told herself, could only be a mercy for him. He had not been himself these past few days. He had no interest in anything but the band's expected visit and he made no effort to do even the small things he had always insisted on doing for himself, but rested passively, listlessly between the sheets while she hovered about him with brisk and dedicated efficiency.

‘Don't you feel well?' she asked him as she put aside the bowl of grey, soapy water and drew the blankets up round him.

‘I'm all right, I reckon.'

‘You don't feel any pain anywhere, do you?' she said. ‘No more than usual, I mean. You wouldn't like me to ask the doctor to call?'

He moved his cropped grey head against the pillows. ‘No,' he said. ‘I'm just tired, that's all. I feel tired out.'

He closed his eyes and she sighed and left him, going downstairs shaking her head.

It was almost half-past eleven before she heard from her kitchen the distant strains of the band as it played its first piece in the street. She wondered if her husband could hear it too and she went to the foot of the stairs and called out to him to listen. Some twenty minutes later there was the sound of voices and shuffle of feet in the entry, and when she peered out through the lace curtains she saw the score or so of musicians forming a circle in the yard.

They struck off with Christians, Awake! and followed with Hark! The Herald Angels Sing and Come, All Ye Faithful. They stopped then and during the ensuing mumble of conversation there came a knock on the door. When she opened the door the conductor, in mufti, was on the step. He leaned forward across the threshold, his breath like steam.

‘Is he listenin'?' he said in a low, hoarse tone, as though he and the woman shared some secret kept from the man upstairs. His eyes swivelled skywards as he spoke.

‘Aye, he's listenin',' she said, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘He's been on edge all mornin', wonderin' if you'd forgotten him.'

The conductor's eyes opened wide with ingenuous surprise. ‘Nay, Missis, he ought to know we'd never let him down.'

‘I told him as much.'

The man leaned closer and she recoiled slightly from the smell of whisky that always awaited the band on Christmas morning at the mill-owner's house up the street. His voice sank to a hoarse conspiratorial whisper. ‘Will you ask him if there's owt special he'd like us to play for him?' He nudged her arm. ‘Go on, Missis. Nip up an' ask him. We'll give him a Command Performance.'

She went through the kitchen and up into the bedroom. He watched her come in with eyes that were brighter than before.

‘I thowt they'd come,' he said. ‘I thowt they wouldn't forget me.'

‘Didn't I tell you so?' she said. ‘Gettin' yourself all worked up like that…'

‘How many on 'em?' he said.

She told him, about twenty, and he nodded. She could see it pleased him.

‘A good turn-out.'

‘They want to know if there's owt special you'd like 'em to play for you.'

He thought for a moment, then said slowly, ‘I think I'd like 'em to play Abide with Me. That's all, I think.'

‘All right.' She turned to go. ‘I'll tell 'em.'

Then as she moved through the doorway he called softly to her, ‘Ey!' and she stopped and turned back into the room. His expression was quietly eager and at the same time curiously bashful as he said, ‘D'you think...' He stopped. ‘D'you think you could get me cornet?'

She was taken off balance and surprise put an edge on her voice. ‘Whatever for?' she said. ‘You can't play it.'

‘I know,' he said. He looked away from her. ‘I'd just like to have it.'

There was an expression in his pale eyes which she could not fathom, but it made her cross the room and rummage in the bottom of the built-in wardrobe till she found the instrument case. She took the cornet out of the case and put it on the bed beside him.

‘Is t'mouthpiece theer an' all?'

She took the mouthpiece from its pocket and fitted it into the cornet, then watched him, suspicious and puzzled, and somehow disturbed.

‘All reight,' he said then. ‘That's all.'

When she had gone downstairs again he brought one arm from under the sheets and took hold of the cornet, his fingers feeling for the valves. He lay waiting and in a little while the band started the hymn in the yard below his window. He listened as the treble instruments followed the long-drawn-out and solemn melody, the soprano cornet adding its soaring sweetness to the melodic line, while below the bass instruments filled out the texture of sound with deep, rich, organ-like chords and the bass drum marked off the rhythm with its slow and ponderous beat. He thought of many things as he listened: of his days as a boy with the band; of the first world war and playing through French towns on the way to the front line. He thought of bright peacetime afternoons of concerts and on the march; and contests all over the country – Huddersfield, Leicester, Scarborough, and the finest of them all at the Crystal Palace and Belle Vue. It was as though his whole life, irrevocably bound up with music, passed through his mind as the music swelled and filled the yard and his room with a sound so noble and so moving that his eyes brimmed over and the tears rolled softly, silently down his cheeks.

Downstairs in the kitchen the woman hummed the hymn to herself as she peeled potatoes for the Christmas dinner. She thought as she worked of her husband and how many times he had ‘played out' with the band at Christmas; and guiltily she savoured the bitter sweetness of her triumph.

When the music ceased she wiped her hands and took her purse before the knock came again.

‘D'you think he'd like one'r two on us to pop up an' have a word with him?' the conductor asked.

Some of the old resentment stirred in her. She looked down at the man's dirty shoes and thought of them on her stair carpet and she said:

‘No, I think not. He's not been too well these last few days. Best leave it a day or two.'

The man nodded. ‘Just as you like, Missis. Well, I hope he liked it. It allus war his favourite.' He stood musing for a moment as the last of the bandsmen made his slow way out of the yard and down the entry. ‘I got to thinkin' when we were playin' on how many happy times we've had together, us an owd John…' He sighed and shook his head. ‘Ah, well, it comes to us all, I reckon. We'd best be gerrin' about us rounds. Wish him a happy Christmas thru all on us. An' the same to you, Missis.'

She felt in her purse as he moved away from the door. ‘Here…'

He turned and recoiled, shocked. ‘Nay, Missis, we don't want owt thru you! We didn't come here for that. This is a special call.'

She saw that she had offended him but she persisted, pressing the shilling into the mittened hand. ‘We can pay for all we get yet,' she said. ‘We're not in need o' charity.'

He avoided her eyes, the sympathetic friendliness gone from his face, leaving only a painful grimace of embarrassment.

‘Just as you like, Missis,' he said.

She carried on with her work when they had gone and more than an hour passed by before she went upstairs again. There was something about the silence in the room which stopped her in the doorway. She knew at once that this was deeper than the silence of sleep and though she had thought herself prepared for it, the shock was like a blow to the heart.

She stepped into the room, her eyes falling on him as he lay there, his head deep in the pillows, the cold cornet under his hand. The moisture of his tears was gone from his cheeks and it was a new expression which stopped her short again. It was a smile, a smile of such happiness and deep contentment that it seemed to her that at that very moment he must be hearing down the rolling vaults of the Great Beyond the soaring of the cornets, the thunder of the basses, and the throbbing of the drum.

And she knew that to the very end she was defeated.