“At first it was all right. That winter, when the gas and electricity were cut off, he found an old combustion stove on a tip and pushed it home in a ramshackle pram. He knocked a hole in the ceiling of the back kitchen, got a bag of coke from somewhere. We were marvellously warm – I still remember it. They moved us out of there for damaging the property. After that he began to give up, like my sister’s husband. He had always liked to drink but he started going out all the time whether he had money or not. He would rake the tips for what he could sell. He would sing for coppers in the street. He sang in the pubs too and people stood him rounds. People liked him. He used to drink himself silly night after night.

  “One night I was alone in the place with my two younger sisters. My mother was spending the night with Katy, that was the married one, she was pregnant again. I was seven years old. I got my father his dinner and he went out. I put my sisters to bed and I went to bed myself. In the middle of the night I woke up. There was a smell of burning rubber, a very strong, acrid smell, I’ve never forgotten it – there was the same smell tonight. I went down to see what it was. My father was asleep in the armchair by the fire. His feet and legs were in the fire. His trousers were smouldering. He had come home drunk and put his feet up against the fireplace and his legs had just slipped down into the fire. The fire was nearly out but the embers had charred his trousers and they were burning him – I could smell the scorched flesh.

  “I couldn’t wake him and I couldn’t move him. He was too heavy, I wasn’t strong enough. I wrapped cloths round my hands and lifted his legs out of the fire, one after the other. I could see the red burn marks on his legs through the holes in his trousers. The soles of his shoes had melted – that was the smell of burning rubber that woke me up. I put the guard on the fire. I couldn’t think what else to do – he wouldn’t wake. There was no one to ask. I went back to bed.

  “When I came down in the morning he was still asleep but he was groaning. His face was white as death. He heard me moving about and he opened his eyes and said, ‘Get us a cup of tea, love,’ in the same way he always said it. He didn’t know yet what the pain was, where it was coming from. Just then my mother came in, she had caught the early bus. ‘What’s going on here?’ she said. I started to cry now she had come. ‘Dad’s burned himself,’ I said. ‘Dad’s burned his legs.’ She took in the whole scene in one glance. I’ll never forget her face, the way she looked at him. Not anger, not concern. No expression at all. ‘Let him be,’ she said. ‘Let the sod be’.”

  Alma made a grimace which might have been intended as a smile or might simply have registered the last of the whisky. “I’m talking too much,” she said. “I won’t go on much longer. You could say of course that my father was feckless and a drunkard and my mother an ignorant drudge who should have used contraceptives, that they were simply a 1950s version of those undeserving poor who are always with us – they’re enjoying a resurgence today, aren’t they? But the fact is that they were good people, both of them, valuable people. My mother was strong and sensible and my father was creative. They were both generous-hearted. And they had loved each other. Perhaps in ways I couldn’t see as a child they still did. But what I remember now is that insensibility, that deadness – the stupefied man and the woman with a face like a stone. My parents. Now I see my sister going the same way. Anything is better than letting yourself be ground down like that, anything at all. Throwing stones at the police, burning down Barclay’s – or half the city for that matter – is infinitely better than having all the energy and hope drained out of you by an inhuman system. It’s so much better that it’s not on the same plane of comparison at all. I know the people to blame are somewhere else. But it’s still better. Those people tonight were fighting. I thought it was marvellous.”

  Alma appeared to flag for a moment then she said with sudden, vehement energy, “Yes, I do blame the system, I don’t care if you think I’m a solemn lunatic, that’s what you called me in the pub that day, don’t imagine I’ve forgotten it—”

  “You called me an Alliance voter, which some might think worse.”

  “And I don’t bloody care about your oh so world-weary view of the people’s struggle. Fighting is better, that’s all. That’s why, you know, when you said that about its being terrible for me, well, first of all there you were, grey in the face and shaking, dishing out comfort to the weaker vessel, and then I thought, no, he is missing the whole point, it wasn’t terrible, it was marvellous.”

  There was no ambiguity about the smile now. It was direct and friendly as she looked at him. “It’s taken me a long time to get round to it,” she said, “but I’m trying to say I’m sorry for snarling at you like that. And thank you for getting me out of it the way you did. It was marvellous but I was extremely frightened.”

  “You didn’t show it.”

  He was silent for a while, not knowing quite what to say. As she was speaking he had felt the last remnants of his belief in her as a muse depart for ever; she was a muse for heroes perhaps, but not for him. Her story had meant something different to him but he could not tell her so because it was hers. The father had inflicted the burns on himself, the mother had choked her own love. Brutalised people turn against themselves like suffering animals. Who had they been hurting tonight? The police were simply performers, uniformed slaves. They were burning themselves, he thought, stoning themselves. Even the looting – that street of poor shops …

  “At first,” he said, “just for a moment or two, when I saw those people throwing stones, the movements they were making reminded me of a dream I once had, black people dancing on the deck of a ship.”

  He stopped again and looked at her. It came into his mind that vulnerable as she was now, softened by the intimacy of their talk and the emotions of the night, she might be willing to sleep with him if he asked her. He wanted her; but it was a kind of opportunism repugnant to him, in conflict with the conditioning of his generation – scruples she would think of as sexist no doubt; and he was so much older, perhaps not attractive to her, he needed stronger indications than any she had so far given. As they regarded each other in these moments of silence it seemed to him that he could see some similar kind of speculation on her face too. But he remained silent and the moment passed.

  “It’s a bit complicated,” he said at last. “The dream, I mean – and everything else. I’ll tell you what I mean another time. I’m dead beat and I suppose you are. We’d better get some sleep, don’t you think?”

  Later, on the narrow sofa, as he drifted into sleep, he was not sorry. She would be still there next morning, he reminded himself. She was there now, in his bed, asleep already probably, her slight form under his sheets, all that anger dissolved. She would leave of course, but she wouldn’t have to rush away – it was Sunday. They could have breakfast together. Had he the necessary ingredients for breakfast? Eggs, butter, bread, marmalade, coffee … Was there milk? He could nip down to the shop on the corner and get some. She wasn’t the Muse but he liked her. He would take care not to bore her, he would be amusing, he would disguise his egotism and his obsessions. He would not refer to his block, or Anzio or the slave trade …

  6

  “So there was no way of telling how much of it was genuine,” he said. “But the woman broke down and I was sure she wasn’t acting. I don’t know what I’m going to say to Rathbone next time I bump into him, I can’t feel the same about him anymore, what he did up there on the stage was evil. But he has a great future.”

  “Evil? What does that mean?”

  “Ah, I see, not in your vocabulary. I mean he corrupted the solidarity that should exist between the members of the human race. As I say, I can’t think of him in a very friendly way now. But it was one of—”

  “Solidarity?”

  “We seem to be having trouble with terms this morning. What I mean is that he made us consent to the business, with himself as ringmaster, conducting—”

  “Yes, I understand what you mean. It’s just that I don’t happen to think there is such a thing as solidarity in that general sense at all. It’s a political word. There can’t be solidarity between men and women, for example.”

  “Are you saying there couldn’t be solidarity between you and me?”

  “Never. Among men, yes. Among women, yes. That’s why I say it is a political word.”

  “Good God,” Benson said. “And you accuse us of distorting the language. What I’m trying to get to is that Rathbone is a kind of genius. It was one of the most gripping things I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  “I missed something then.”

  “Yes, you did, but I’m actually not sorry you missed it.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment,” Alma said, “but I like to make that kind of judgement for myself. Anyway, perhaps you’ll be able to use it in a book.”

  “Highly unlikely. I haven’t been able to write anything for a long time now. The Liverpool slave trade was to have been the setting for my next book but it has defeated my imagination. Somewhere in the process I have fallen sick. And then, you know, it went on so long, I couldn’t think of it just as an historical episode. I couldn’t deal with it and I couldn’t leave it alone.”

  “I know what you mean. That’s how it was with my marriage. Of course you get out in the end, otherwise you’d die. It’s how they’re supposed to catch monkeys, isn’t it, put a banana in a little cage with a very narrow entrance, the monkey puts its hand in, gets hold of the banana, but he can’t get his hand out while he’s holding it and he can’t let go, so he just sits there.”

  “Hm, yes.” Benson had not much cared for this comparison. “Anyway,” he said, “that’s why the meeting with Thompson was so important. The war was a kind of slavery too. The essence of slavery is having a role imposed on you, being made to perform. And I see now that that is true of everything. The meeting with Thompson made me think again about Walters, that’s the chap I told you about, the one I got killed. I found something out from Slater, you know, I tricked him, really, into an admission, and it changed my whole feeling about Walters’s death. After all these years. Walters transcended the condition. He died as himself. It may not sound much, put like that, but it is terribly important to me. It doesn’t make me less to blame but it makes him less to be pitied.”

  “To tell you the truth, it always seemed to me that there was more of pity than blame in that business. Who is Slater, by the way?”

  It was a brilliant morning. Sunlight lay across the table, over the remains of their breakfast. Benson had opened the window and they could hear the squabbling of sparrows in the eaves outside and see swifts wheeling high above the city in a cloudless sky. A faint, acrid smell of smoke came drifting in on the mild air, only sign of the previous night’s disorders. She looked at him across the table with a sort of ironical patience which he felt marked a deeper acquaintance between them. Her face still had some of the softness of sleep on it, but the eyes were as dangerously bright as ever.

  “Of course, there hasn’t been time to tell you,” he said. “He’s been so much in my mind, I was assuming he must be in yours.” He was silent for some moments, then said rather awkwardly, “I was going to make some more coffee. But I suppose you have a lot to do …”

  “I haven’t got anything to do. It’s Sunday, isn’t it? I’ll have to go and see about my car later on.”

  He glanced through the window at the bright day. It was undeniably Sunday. “I’ll go with you, if you like,” he said.

  From the kitchen, busy with the coffee, he told her about his visit to Brampton Manor, the forthcoming show, his talk with Slater, Meredith’s revelations. “He’ll do it, you know,” he said. “He’ll get to screw Erika. He’ll get his knighthood. Just as he got to be Officer i/c Entertainments, just as he has made a packet out of the commodity market. It’s monstrous, really. I wish I could put a spoke in his wheel somehow.”

  “Perhaps you could,” he thought he heard her say.

  “What?”

  He was advancing towards her with the jug of coffee when the doorbell rang. He put the jug down on the table and went to the door. He found himself confronted by Dollinger, massive in a dark suit, holding a long white envelope.

  “I hear you lit a fire in your grate,” Dollinger said in a deep, deliberate voice as soon as the door was opened.

  Benson gaped at him. Did the envelope contain his notice to leave? It was three months now since that votive fire. Had the greater fires of last night finally moved Dollinger to action? In this dawn of riot he had judged the time ripe.

  “I wanted to make an offering …”

  But a wrestler would not be interested in that aspect of things. Was he now, with Alma looking on, about to be subjected to the Crab or the Boston Whip? “It was a cold day,” he said.

  “Mrs Dollinger informed me about it.”

  This was redundant, something they both knew, a sign of weakness then, to state it now. Benson looked for a moment into Dollinger’s eyes. They were deep brown and amazingly gentle. Within their depths he saw the ordeal of a sensitive soul. This was a man who abhorred altercation. Dollinger had not come in wrath to throw him around. He was here because the implacable Mrs Dollinger had finally nagged him into it. Three months he had resisted; now, in his Sunday suit, after Mass, he had been able to resist no more.

  “It is true, what I hear?” he said.

  “By God, yes.” Benson said, with experimental boldness. He saw wavering and dismay on the other’s face at this defiance.

  “It’s all right,” he said quickly. “I’ll apologise to Mrs Dollinger in person, this very day.”

  Dollinger nodded slowly. “Thank you,” he said. “Do not forget to do it.” He held out the envelope. “This came for you. In the night they brought it. I found it downstairs on the mat.”

  “Thanks.”

  Dollinger’s face broke into a sad smile. “Good, very good,” he said, “we have understood each other, no?”

  “Yes.” With a strong sense of sympathy Benson returned the smile. He watched Dollinger retreat down the stairs. As he went back towards the kitchen he opened the envelope and took out the folded sheets. He recognised the handwriting at once: it was Carter’s.

  He took the pages back to the breakfast table. “Will you excuse me a moment,” he said, “while I have a quick look at this?” Out of long, self-protective habit, he began reading at the last page.

  Albert was squeezing her breasts inside their gossamer-thin casing, seeking by the urgency of his handling of them to make her equally desirous of him as he was for her. He had already removed her briefs and he was hoping with a hope as clamorous as his need for her, a need that had grown so mighty and potent that he could no longer contain it, that she would remove his, because he knew that in so doing she would be elated by her own audacity and so more ready to give of herself. She, knowing his desire for a love uncluttered and unhindered, hastened to meet his wishes because now the time had come for both of them to abandon reserve and reward themselves and each other for the strength and constancy of their love.

  With a strange smile on her face, half dreamy, half self-conscious, she uncupped her breasts one after the other as her brassière sprang below. Albert brought his mouth to them, exciting her to a pitch almost unbearable. “Oh, my love,” she said between a groan and a sigh, and “Marvellous, marvellous, Sheila,” he kept repeating and now as their passion mounted she eased the implement of his power into the deepest fronded recess of her being. On her face he saw an expression he couldn’t read, abstract, as if she were looking at something far away. Then he was surfing home on a gathering tide of ecstasy all rhythmic to her throbbing convulsions and so there came to Albert and Sheila after all their long tender trials the supreme oceanic floodings of saturated and seraphic completed love …

  Benson raised a delighted face. “Thank God, they’ve finally done it,” he said. There was a disturbing touch of the Black and Decker in the description of Albert’s member and that faraway look of Sheila’s was a bit ambivalent, as if she might have been imagining it was Clint Eastwood. But they had got there, they had broken through.

  “They’ve done it,” he said again. Waving the papers he performed a brief impromptu dance. He remembered now Carter’s triumphant gesture of the evening before. He must have been intending to hand it over then, but the riot had delayed him; delayed, not prevented: he had come through a battle-torn Liverpool to drop this long-deferred consummation on the mat.

  “They have finally fucked,” he said, unconsciously employing in his exhilaration Carter’s favourite stylistic device. “Albert and Sheila have finally fucked.”

  “Who are they, friends of yours?”

  “Not exactly. I’ll tell you. But first, what did you mean just now? Did I hear you say you thought I could do something about Slater?”

  “Well, you could, if you really wanted. You said you had a programme of next Sunday’s events.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “How is your memory these days? You said you had a good memory for landscape, details of ground and so on.” “Yes,” he said, “but that was in the war, you know.”

  “This is a war, too. You can’t really stop people like that, short of revolution. What I have in mind is a token, something symbolic – it should be just up your street. And I think it would be good for you.”

  “Good for my character you mean?”