Sadler's Birthday (18 page)

In the summer Tom became an inquisitive rat, pink feet squelching up and down the river banks. Several times it got too dark to find his shoes. He'd come back with his shirt tied round his waist, telling Sadler that he should have stayed and never mind the Colonel's tea.

‘Because it was great when the sun went. Some ducks came . . .'

But if he had the time Sadler followed him, the apprentice in river lore where Tom was master. And one afternoon, when Madge and the Colonel were in London and there was no tea to serve, they decided to walk fast, not stopping too long to look at things on the way, and go further up river than they'd ever been before. They walked for three hours. Tom mocked Sadler for being out of breath. Then they found the boats. They were tied to iron moorings, the property of a white painted pub. A neat notice informed the public that the landlord would rent out the boats at sixpence an hour.

‘Cor!' said Tom. ‘Could we?'

‘Take a boat?'

‘I got sixpence.'

‘Then we could.'

Tom had learned to row on funfair lakes. Deftly, he put the oar into the rowlock and steered the little boat out into the stream, his eyes as bright as the water. Sadler watched and revelled in his pleasure. Suspended on the quietly moving river, the green banks sliding past, he experienced such an absolute contentment that he tried to hold his breath, frightened that the least motion might shatter it.

‘Wheee!' Tom laughed out. ‘Watch me, Jack! Look, we're going ever so fast. Watch me!'

Well, he'd watched hadn't he? For five years, every movement, every grin, and passionately for every sign that Tom loved him. Now and then, Tom came to his bed, never guiltily, often oddly amused by Sadler's little rituals of passion, discovering his own sexuality with surprise and without emotion, then to fall asleep without a word while Sadler, tremblingly awake, held him. If he leaves me, Sadler thought then, what will be left? But each time that he'd held Tom he'd known that it would come soon enough, the parting. The war wouldn't last for ever.

And so one day it came.

Thirty-one Tom had said she was, Mrs Trent, Dolores, Dolly to all – Tom's Ma. She came driving down in a sports car one Sunday morning, a man at the wheel beside her, a Jack Flash of a man, shoulders padded, hair brilliantined, Charlie Ackroyd all over again. It was May 1945.

Madge was in the garden, going round in her linen hat, picking early roses, stooping before she picked to smell each one. She always chose roses for their scent, not for their colour or the arrangement of their petals. The scent of certain roses filled her with a sadness that she found exquisite.

‘Just smell this, Sadler,' she called as she saw him cross the lawn towards her. ‘Do just smell!'

Sadler bent to sniff the flower she was holding.

‘Isn't that perfect, don't you think?'

‘It's lovely, Mrs Bassett.'

‘And now the war's over I can
believe
in the smell of a flower again, do you know what I mean?'

He did, he supposed. The funny things Madge said were occasionally rather pleasant. Looking up at her, he noticed that under the ridiculous hat she was pinker than her rouge.

Sadler cleared his throat.

‘We've got visitors, Madam.'

‘Oh?'

‘Tom's mother and a gentleman friend.'

‘Good lord!'

‘Yes. Quite unexpected isn't it? She didn't even write after the first year.'

‘What does she want, Sadler?'

‘I didn't ask, Mrs Bassett. I imagine she wants to take Tom home.'

The Colonel was in London. As Madge took off her hat and patted her hair she thought how extraordinary it was that he always seemed to be away whenever something cropped up. Not that he, who had once handled his men so superbly, was very good at talking to people any more (in fact he didn't really talk, he growled), but he remembered for her all the things she wanted to say and had forgotten. And she knew that there was quite a lot that ought to be said to Tom's mother, if she could only think of it.

‘What can I say, Sadler? I mean . . .'

‘It depends why she's come, doesn't it?'

‘Well, yes, but I do feel she ought to be reproached. I mean, it's terrible the way she's treated him, isn't it?'

‘We don't know the circumstances, do we?'

Madge touched Sadler's arm.

‘You're always so ready to be kind, Sadler aren't you? It's very nice. But there's no doubt in my mind that she's behaved very badly, very selfishly. I can't let Tom go without saying something, I really can't. I mean one owes it to Tom, don't you think?'

Madge handed Sadler her basket of roses as they crossed the lawn to the house.

‘Shall I take your hat too, Madam?'

‘Oh, my hat. Yes, would you? I look a fright in that don't I, but it does keep the sun out of my eyes. Now Sadler, tell me, what am I going to say?'

‘Well, if I was you, Madam, I'd wait and see. There's two sides to most things, isn't there?'

To Madge's not particularly discerning eye there was only one side to Mrs Trent: she was a whore. Madge used the term loosely, of course, she didn't literally mean that the woman was ‘on the streets' or wherever it was that these kind of people paraded themselves. What she meant really was that Mrs Trent was ‘that type'. It seemed to be written not only over her face, but over each curve of her body, each tiny movement of her limbs.

She was standing by the drawing room mantelpiece, looking at the ornaments that stood on it. Her ‘friend', hands in pockets, nudged her as Madge came in. Sadler, who had opened the door for Madge, heard her say nervously: ‘Good morning, I'm Mrs Bassett.' He waited, listening, but this one remark seemed to be followed by silence.

Sadler went straight up to Tom. There was bright sunlight in his room coming through the thin, flowered curtain, but Tom still slept. Sadler sat down on a corner of the bed and looked at him. Tom was sixteen. His hair had grown darker. His body was still thin, but now it was strong. Sadler knew every part of it. He had kissed and caressed it, held it and penetrated it, believing that his love shaped its growing, that Tom needed him as much as he, released from what now seemed like years and years of death by this passion, needed the boy.

‘Tom,' he whispered, ‘my love.'

Tom turned over. He shielded his eyes from the sunlight with a hand and looked at Sadler.

‘Did you bring some tea?' he asked.

Sadler shook his head.

‘Why 'you staring at me, Jack?'

‘Because I love you.'

‘What's the matter though? You look all miserable.'

‘Yes.'

‘What' ser matter, Jack?'

Sadler walked to the window, drew the curtains and looked down at the orchard.

‘Your Ma's here,' he said without turning.

‘Go on!' Tom sat up and swung his legs out of bed.

‘She is. She is here.'

‘How d'you know it's my Ma?'

‘She told me.'

Tom thought a moment, then laughed. ‘
She
wouldn't come!'

‘She has come, Tom. She's got a man with her. He drove her down in his sports car.'

‘What man?'

‘I don't know. I think he said his name was Harrison.'

‘It's no one she knew.'

Sadler turned. ‘Well it doesn't matter, does it, Tom? The things that's . . .'

‘You're always saying things don't matter.'

‘I'm not, Tom, I was going to say what matters is . . .'

‘Bleedin' Harrison. Could be anyone.'

‘The man's not important.'

‘Sez you, Jack. He is to me. It's my Ma!'

‘Well, you'll soon discover who he is, won't you?'

‘Yeah. But I don't like 'er turnin' up with just anyone. She's not like that, my Ma. She'd never go with just anyone.'

Sadler began to feel a rage inside him that distilled pain through his chest and arms and made him want to grab Tom and shake him and shake him till the boy howled. He knew that he had to control it because if there was to be a parting it had to be gentle. Anger could have no place in a parting between him and Tom. He turned back to stare at the orchard, remembering how Annie had sometimes calmed herself by gazing, gazing without blinking at the trees outside her window. But the orchard couldn't help him now. Each moment was precious and yet his senses were being dulled by his anger. Never before could he remember wanting to hurt Tom.

‘Tom—'

Sadler turned round but the boy wasn't there. Gone, of course. Eager to see his Ma, and why not? He loved her, still can love her. Sadler thought how Tom used to talk about her, slip her name in whenever he could. Then when she didn't write he never said anything, only stopped talking about her. Miserably, Sadler stared down at the apple trees. ‘I never saw that in London,' Tom had once said of the orchard, ‘trees are just green there, not all pink and stuff.'

Madge in the drawing room was feeling very hot after her walk in the sun. Her guests, after the first five minutes of shy silence, during which Madge made little sallies into brittle conversation, were now being very talkative. Scarcely listening to them, Madge was only conscious of the wet patches in her blouse under her arms and of her irritation that Geoffrey should have left her to endure this ordeal alone. ‘I'm not good with people,' she'd once admitted to Sadler, ‘I know I'm not. Some people of my — I mean, you know, like me, are terribly good at talking to everyone they meet. They can talk to people at bus stops, you know, or in the butchers. But I don't know why, I just can't get my right voice on. I seem to sound so stilted and awful . . .' She knew that when she did manage to say what she wanted to say now, her voice would make these people despise her. She wondered that she should mind, wondered
why
she should care at all, when she in her turn found them despicable. Their talk, this rambling perjury, it filled her with disgust. And the man Harrison, so smarmy, so cocksure; Madge didn't believe a word he said.

‘Let me put it this way, Mrs Bassett. Let me put it another way. To be quite honest with you, we're not trying to make excuses. Dol – Mrs Trent isn't just rolling up like to claim 'er son without offering you something by way of an explanation. I mean ter say, it isn't as if we don't recognize that it must 'ave cost you a bit ter keep the kid. I said to 'er, we're going prepared to offer some remuneration. That's only right. I mean, she knows it's a long time, don't you, Dol?'

‘Yes.'

‘It
is
a long time. But that's been 'ard times an' all. Difficult for everyone, mind. I wouldn't deny that. But Dol's 'ad no 'ome, see? She was bombed. One of the first bombs ter hit London hit Dol's 'ouse. Sliced away 'alf her street. And if it 'adn't of been for friends she'd've been out in the gutter. Nowhere to go. All her things gone. So you see, she 'ad no home ter offer the kid, did she?'

Harrison stopped. Madge saw the two faces looking at her and thought wearily that the moment had probably come to say her piece.

‘Whatever the reason,' she began, realizing as she spoke that she hadn't been listening properly, hadn't heard the reason, ‘whatever the reason, I think it's pretty disgraceful that you can care so little for a child that you can leave him in a stranger's house for five years. Five years! Tom isn't a child any more. You deserted him, failed to provide a home for him during his most formative years.'

‘But like I said, Mrs Bassett . . .' Harrison began.

‘Don't interrupt me please,' said Madge, ‘I owe it to Tom to say this to you. I think it's . . . I can't express what I think. All I can say is that you are lucky my husband isn't here because this whole business has made us both very angry indeed and ashamed, ashamed for Tom that you could so take advantage of the war to neglect your duty as a mother.'

‘You didn't hear what he said, did you?' This from Mrs Trent.

‘What do you mean?'

‘He
told
you why I couldn't provide no 'ome for Tom. I didn't have no bleedin' home!'

‘Why not?'

‘Told yer she didn't listen. 'Cos it was bombed, love. Big bang crash – no more house!' Then piteously, ‘I lost everything, see? Even lost me old cat.'

The sweat in Madge's armpits was ice cold. It was making her shiver. Such extremes of hot and cold, she thought, can't be good for my metabolism.

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I'm sorry to hear that.'

‘Well it was terrible, Mrs Bassett. If I were to tell you . . .'

‘Yes, well I suppose you'd like to see Tom now, would you?'

‘How is my Tommy?'

‘Oh he's fine. He's been very happy here with us, after the first shock of moving. He's become very used to the kind of freedom he has here.'

‘Growed up, is he?'

‘Yes he is.'

‘Well,' with a wink at Harrison, ‘it'll be nice ter have another man about the house, won't it, Mick?'

Madge longed for them to go. She was feeling so weak that, quite empty of words, she walked as quickly as she could to the door and rang the bell for Sadler.

Vera heard Madge's buzz. She'd just sat down at the kitchen table to drink a cup of tea and have a glance at the
Daily Sketch
. Cursing, she got up to go and look for Sadler. It was going to be another of her bad days. Her ankles were playing her up, the Colonel had gone off to London just when she'd made him his favourite steak and kidney for lunch, and now Sadler wasn't down for his tea and Madam was buzzing for him. Wearily, she climbed the back stairs and began calling.