ONE
It took Mrs Didcot some time to get to the front door, partly because, as usual, she had the radio on and did not at first hear the bell, partly because, when she did, she thought it was children playing tricks again, and partly because her legs were bad and it was difficult for her to move at all, especially between the crowded furniture of the kitchen. As she supported herself round the table the knocker fell twice, gently. ‘All right, all right,’ she muttered, ‘I’m coming.’ She got into the passage and eased herself along it, hearing the letterbox flap rattle and then the bell again. ‘Who can that be? All right, I’m coming . . .’ She reached the door and opened it.
It was an overcast evening and pouring with rain, so that she shuffled back a step, half-closing the door against the deluge and the tall, dark figure which said, with white teeth, ‘I’ve come about the room.’
‘What’s that? What room? We haven’t got no room.’
‘It says on this paper there’s a room.’
‘What paper?’ She opened the door a bit and leaned forward, peering at the paper held out to her by a dark hand. The rain spattered her face and the young man coughed, hunching his shoulders.
‘I haven’t got my glasses. What’s it say, then?’
‘It says you’ve got a room.’
‘It can’t do. Here, you’d better come in.’ She moved back, steadying herself on the door handle, and the man stepped in. He began to cough again, bringing out a handkerchief and holding it to his mouth. She reached out and switched on the light, weakly harsh in its warped shade. The young man had nothing on his head and the rain sparkled on the close black hair and the shoulders of his plastic lumberjacket; his jeans were soaked dark.
‘What’s it say, then?’ she repeated.
‘It says “Room to let, no facilities, reasonable, apply Johnson 6 Wardlow Crescent”.’
‘This isn’t Wardlow Crescent. This is Wardlow Road. You got the wrong address.’
‘You don’t have no room?’
‘No, dear, you got the wrong address. Where’d you get that paper, then?’
‘The newspaper shop at the corner. I bin to two others but they said they was let. Where’s Wardlow Crescent, then?’
‘It’s the other way, up past the Conveniences and round on the left and then it’s just past the Odeon. You could take the bus.’
‘No, I’ll find it.’ He wiped his face and his head and put the handkerchief away.
She looked him over. ‘That’s a shocking cough you got there.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘You don’t look too good. Would you like a cup of tea?’
He nodded.
‘Come on, then.’ She turned and began to shuffle along the hall. ‘I’m a bit slow because of my legs.’
They came slowly into the kitchen, where the radio still chatted and a stronger light shone
down on a litter of saucepans, crockery, newspapers, ornaments. The room was warm, for the gas fire gave out a hoarse heat.
‘You sit by the fire, dear, and get yourself warm. What a night, eh? You wouldn’t believe it was August. Nice weather for ducks, my Gran always said, and I used say Well, it’s all right for the ducks.’ She moved about, filling the kettle, setting it on a roaring gas, rinsing a dirty cup and finding a second one, spooning tea into a big brown teapot with a rubber spout.
The youth sat hunched to the fire, holding out his long fingers to its heat, his knees sharp in the jeans which had begun to steam a little. His face had a mauvish tint and from time to time he shivered.
Propped up against the table waiting for the kettle to boil, she stared at him. ‘You’re looking for a room, then?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, you come to the wrong address. Wardlow Crescent’s what it says there.’
‘Yes. You know it?’
‘I know Wardlow Crescent but I don’t know no Johnsons. They’re all new people round here now, I don’t know none of them, and of course I don’t get out much, not with my legs. We used to know a nice lot of people, real neighbours they were, when my mother was alive. Lived here all her life, she had, hardly ever bin up to the West End till she was married. Not in this house, of course, in one of them little cottages got bombed in the war, round King’s Crescent. We’d moved here before that, though. When us kids started coming they needed more room, see, and you could buy one of these houses for a couple of hundred pounds. Won’t bear thinking of, will it? They earned good money too, master joiners did – that’s what my dad was, a master joiner, a real craftsman. Not what you’d call real money now, but it did us all right and we’ve still got the house. Where d’you come from?’
‘Wolverhampton.’
‘No, I mean where was you born?’
‘I told you – Wolverhampton.’
He began to cough again, sinking his head between his shoulders so that he seemed curled in over his chest. The kettle screamed and she filled the teapot, reaching across the draining-board for the milk bottle, and then easing her way round the table to her armchair by the fire.
‘You ought to do something about that cough.’
‘First I got to find a room.’
‘Haven’t you got no home, then?’
He shook his head and, reaching into his tight jeans, got out the handkerchief again and wiped his mouth.
‘You ought to undo that jacket, you won’t get the benefit else. How d’you like it?’
‘As it comes.’
As she poured out the tea and pushed it across to him, he straightened up and unzipped the lumberjacket. A striped T-shirt covered his thin chest. He took the cup and poured milk into it, the bottle clinking against the rim. She could see he was clenching his teeth to prevent them chattering. He wrapped his hands round the cup and took a sip.
‘You on your own, then?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Where you bin living?’
‘Here and there. I had a room but I didn’t like the people.’
‘But you got a bed somewhere?’ He shook his head. ‘No bed? You mean you bin running around with that cough and nowhere to sleep?’
‘I’m looking for a room.’
‘Well, you are a silly juggins, aren’t you? Fancy not having nowhere to sleep with a cough like that!’
‘Last night I kipped down in the grocery van but the guvnor don’t know and if he found out, I’d get my cards.’
‘You’re working then?
Warehouseman at Mansfield Groceries in the High Street. Started yesterday. So I need a room somewhere round here.’
‘Well, you got the wrong address.’
There was silence, save for the dialogue of the radio against which their own had been pitched and the occasional beat of rain on the window. From the sags and bulges of her chair, moulded over the years to fit her own contours, Mrs Didcot scrutinised her visitor. The tea did not seem to have done him much good but had merely heightened the glitter in his eyes and brought sweat out on the face that, as she stared at it, seemed to grow greyer and greyer. Rigidly though he held himself, he was shivering, and the cough took him again. She heaved herself forward and removed his cup, refilling it and adding several spoonfuls of sugar before setting it on the table near him. When the paroxysm was over he wiped his face and hands and leaned back in the hard chair, closing his eyes.
‘I tell you what,’ she said, ‘you sit there quietly till my hubby gets home. We haven’t really got no room, not to let that is, but you can’t go running around with that cough in this weather. Or any other, come to that.’
‘I’ll be okay.’
‘Not with that cough, you won’t. It’s my belief you’ve got a temperature. Haven’t you got no family?’
‘Not here.’
‘Well, you take off that jacket and those wet shoes and just sit there quietly till my hubby gets back. Here, you wrap this round you.’
From beneath the cushions at her back she extracted a shawl of knitted squares, brightly variegated and clumsily sewn together. He slowly took off his lumberjacket, folding it back over the wooden chair. As he bent down to unlace the canvas track-shoes, she stretched forward and placed the shawl over his peaked shoulders. There was a hole in one of his socks.
Arthur Didcot returned a
at eleven o’clock, as was his custom. He let himself in quietly and hung his cap and raincoat on the hall stand. As he did so, his wife called from the front room. ‘Is that you, Dad?’
‘Hullo?’ Her door was ajar and he pushed it open. ‘I didn’t expect you to still be awake. Anything up?’
She heaved herself up a bit in the double bed, which almost filled the room. ‘I stayed awake special. There’s a young chap in the kitchen.’
‘A young chap?’
‘Yes. He come about a room.’
‘We haven’t got no room.’
‘No, I told him. He had the wrong address. He’s got ever such a shocking cough, poor boy, so I said he could stay. Just for the night.’
He regarded her silently for a moment out of his rather prominent eyes. ‘That was a silly thing to do.’
‘It was coming down cats and dogs.’
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s dossed down in my chair under the blanket. He was ever so poorly, you couldn’t turn a dog out in a night like this. Is it still raining?’
‘No. You took a chance, Mother.’
‘He’s ever such a nice young chap. You can tell. All on his own and nowhere to sleep and that shocking cough. You’d have done the same.’
‘I don’t know about that. Well, I’d best have a look at him.’
She lifted a hand. ‘There’s just one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘He’s a darkie. ...
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