Tomato Cain and Other Stories Read online

  “So often ye’ll see him buyin’ Tootie a drink; with bad grace enough sometimes. But for the sake of keepin’ oul’ times in their proper place.”

  As I left the village, I saw Dicky-Dan Watterson again. He was finishing the notice by the duck-pond, drawing a red “R” on “DANGER”.

  A duck stood in the middle of the drying slime, watching him; the water came half-way up the bird’s legs. But perhaps in winter it was deep.

  END

  Chapter 20

  Peg

  “Hallo," Peg said to a nice boy with curly hair. "Like to take me for a walk?”

  He walked past her. She ran and caught him up and patted his arm, but he didn't see her.

  Peg sighed. He hadn't looked like he was thinking, or going any place in particular; he might have seen her.

  Two women passed. They looked right through her.

  "I give up! I give up!" said Peg. She shouted: "I can see you all. Why won't you see me? I don't get it!" An old guy selling fruit off a barrow never even looked up from his oranges. Oranges! That's something you didn't see in the blitz. Only the Joes sometimes had one in their pockets.

  "Hi, soldier," she said. But the soldier had gone while she was putting her best smile on. Only a limey soldier, anyway, in his little sissy berry, yah! yahl

  It was like a picture she once went to see with Lola. About some guy that was invisible. He could see people, but they couldn't see him; they could hear him though.

  She yelled: "Then why don't somebody hear me? Folks do hear ghosts, don't they?” The words froze her; she must be in one of her crazy moods to-night, or she wouldn't have said it out like that: crazy to be seen by somebody.

  She ran, swinging her handbag. It was just getting dark, and the shop windows were popping out bright patches on the sidewalk. Her bag hit an old guy right in the kisser, but he didn't notice; he just kept right on walking. She dodged between the figures. If they walked sort of through you, it made you feel funny.

  She passed a broken shop, boarded up ever since the blitz. It was an old friend. There was nothing inside but burnt woodwork and rats. She had had a look.

  "Hey, you cop!" A policeman stood on a corner, and Peg ran up to him and danced up and down, waggling her hips. "Why don't ya pinch me? I ain't got no identity card!" The policeman was watching a car across the road. She banged his chest and screamed, "Lousy bum! Call yaself a cop?”. But it didn't even disturb a tiny fluffy blob of dust that had settled on the blue cloth.

  She looked at the faces. Nearly all civvies. Jeeze, what a corny mob! The women had long dresses. That was crazy! Why, you couldn't see even a bit of their knees any more.

  "I got nice knees. Hey, mister, ain't I got nice knees? Aw, does your momma know you're out?”

  Years and years it must be. They'd pulled down the shelters; she sat and talked to the men while they worked, but they didn't hear her. The old blackout was gone, the lovely, cuddly, crazy blackout. And the guns and the searchlights and the balloons.

  Hardly ever a sailor, and no Joes.

  Funny! It must be a long time, but you never noticed it. When you didn't have to eat and drink, it was like everything happened at once.

  Jeeze, it could make you feel funny in the head! Only a minute ago, sort of, there was dark everywhere and those sons-of-bitches with the white helmets standing in their twos on the sidewalk, watching the Joes. And the Joes were everywhere, and up the side alleys you'd find them, chewing, a bit high, and smoking lovely smelling cigars; with their caps sideways and pockets full of gum and money.

  "Lady," Peg said, "why don't you get wise to things? Your old man ain't coming home tonight - he's going to be my pappa!"

  The woman went on waiting for her bus.

  Old pig-face! She hadn't got a fur coat. Peg's was nice thick fur. She liked the feel of nice things. And that was a raw deal, too! She didn't exactly feel things now. She did. And at the same time, she didn't. Crazy!

  She came to the Electric Park and went in.

  Yow! Boy, this was the place! She always climbed on a pin-table to get out of the crush and see everything. Boy! The old juke-box singing, and the coloured lights! It was just the same! The girls had boys, and there was rifle-shooting and prizes, and showing off and throwing money away! That was great!

  She sighed.

  The boys were only kids. Kids with prissy hair and their little shoulders padded to look tough. Why, you bet they felt big if they got just to kissing a girl.

  These girls looked lousy anyway.

  They didn't know anything; couldn't act the way a guy would want them. A lot of dough-faces.

  The Joes would have raised the roof. They'd feed pennies into the machines for her and ask her name. She always told them a good one. Dolores or Sandra or Josephine. Never Peg. One night when she was a bit high she said Lola, and the Joes got the two girls mixed up. Lola was mad.

  Listen to that music, will you! She stepped it out on the glass of the pin-tables, kicking her high heels in the solemn faces that stared at the numbers and the little chromium balls. "Hey, look!" She danced over the barrels of the little toy rifles, and along the counter of the soda-bar, kicking at the hands and glasses. "This is how we used to do it in the dance halls!" Her arms jerked. "When the Joes was here!" Nobody saw. She got hep and danced great and nobody saw.

  Outside, she was angry. You couldn't cry. You can't cry without tears.

  She kicked at a piece of paper, and made it dance along the gutter. Really the wind was blowing it, but she pretended.

  There was the chemist's where she used to get lipsticks. Nice stuff that you wiped off and it left a lovely stain behind. Drug store, not chemist’s. Drug store. Crazy little duck behind the counter must have mistaken her for somebody else. "Mother well?" he used to say every time. Like she was on an errand.

  There was the milk bar with its big open front. Hardly any customers. An old guy with whiskers drinking pink stuff out of a glass. Pugh! And the big flash pub on the corner. They'd gotten wise to her after a bit, and it was no more gin for baby there. The Joes brought it out in bottles.

  Two big guys got out of a car and went in through the chromium and glass door; it used to be plywood in the blitz days. Big dirty guys in swell overcoats. In some racket.

  "Hallo. Got a match?" No luck. Another man went past without a look. You didn't really expect anybody to answer. It was just a game. She stood watching the cars and buses and taxis.

  Ever since she was little she liked to talk to people. She was quick; at school they all said she was. Just read things a couple of times, and she could say them by heart. Funny, she loved to talk so much and now nobody heard.

  She looked across the road and saw - it couldn't be!

  A Joe! A real live GI.

  Genuine stripes on his sleeve, and the little round US badges on his lapels shining in the shop lights.

  She ran through the traffic. "Hey, Joe!" she shouted. She felt she would burst, she was so happy. "Joe! Joe! Oh, I felt so lonesome, Joe! And all the time I knew there must be somebody else the same way I am!"

  She reached him.

  He hadn't turned. He was looking into a shop window, cigarette between his lips. A Lucky.

  It was no good. She knew it suddenly.

  She screamed into his face: “Joe! Look at me! You must be like me- you must! Answer! Answer!"

  She hit at him and scratched the back of his tunic as he went. "Goddam you! Oh - no! Joe! Come back!"

  He stopped a few yards away and she saw him ask a man the way. So he must be a living Joe after all. They couldn't all have gone.

  She came to the bare place they'd cleared after the block-busters. The empty space where the kids came to play. A little ball of dirty straw being bowled over it by the wind. A rag of newspaper flapped.

  It was where she had lived with Lola in the blitz; where she had been asleep the night the house caught it. The whole block had gone west in a few minutes. She often wondered where Lola was. Maybe she'd been in the h
ouse, too.

  Little bits of iron and brick stuck out of the ground. Once, before it was trodden flat, she saw a brooch in the dirt where kids were playing. "Look there!" she had said to them. "It's genuine rolled gold." A Joe had won it for her from a crane-machine in the Electric Park; it took him seventeen tries. But they didn't see the brooch, and now it had gone.

  She stood and thought. There was no need to sit, because she never got tired.

  These stupid kids would go on growing; she saw them. And they would get old and creep round, with grandchildren. But she would always be just fourteen.

  END

  Chapter 21

  Zachary Crebbin’s Angel

  He was the sort of old man you only saw going away.

  You might glimpse him taking a short cut through a thistly field in the dusk, or vanishing over the skyline of a little field in the gorse. But if any one in the village had been able to draw, and they had been asked to sketch the old man’s face from memory, the result would have been blank paper and a frown.

  Then it got about that Zachary Crebbin had seen an angel.

  They buzzed like black flies up to his cottage on the back road. If the story had come from wandering Mally Skillicorn, or Killey the Louse, who had hardly walked steadily in licensed hours since his infancy, it would have course been different. But as it was —

  He sat near the open fireplace among the squashed cushions of an old rocking-chair. The shadowy skin round his eyes moved; his hands opened and shut, and there was wonder in his face at the way his house had changed. There were strangers in it.

  It was easy to see the place held only one. Everywhere there were tables; loaded with dishes, under-clothing, empty plant-pots, candles, tools and shavings, a half-completed bird-cage. A track led though the furniture from door to fireplace. There was an odd, compound smell.

  “No more, now! No more!” somebody shouted, and they pressed the door shut. It was February, which kills old men.

  The six of seven inside squeezed for room. No women, because it might prove a serious business.

  The old man’s fingers were dabbing slowly at his chin, as if to push back the white bristles that spiked out like dead reeds. Next to him, the short, shiny red-cheeked person who had been the first there, turned to the others.

  “He says it was las’ night!”

  A murmur of wonder ran round, as each remembered what he had been doing then, to understand the matter more clearly.

  The old man nodded, encouraged. “Jus’ after I let the lamp an’ set the chimney back on it,” he said.

  A heavy fellow by the door breathed noisily and said, “What was it?”

  The rosy first-comer chattered back officiously with the incredible, “An angel! He says he seen —“

  “Shut up, Quirk!” The heavy man looked past him. “What was it, Mr Crebbin?”

  One of the old man’s hands fingered the knuckles of the other. “That’s right,” he agreed. It was like he said.”

  “An - angel?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a little silence.

  “I was ready for t’ have me supper,” said Zachary Crebbin. “Two soda scones an’ a bit of left-over cheese. I heard a kind of a noise outside. Like - like rooks settlin’ for to roost. An’ a minit later come a knock at the door. I thought, ‘that’s queer!’ - because there’s not such a tremendous lot of people comes to see me.”

  He flicked a glance over those who sat among his possessions.

  The heavy man cleared his throat. “What did ye do?”

  “I says, “Come on in: it’s not locked.’ An’ the door opens. An’ there —“

  “Go on! What like was he?” said little Quirk.

  Crebbin considered very seriously.

  “Kind of a big shape. Not fat, mind you, but high. He had to dodge a bit through the door.”

  There was another murmur. A voice was heard asking whether the figure had been shining.

  The old man seemed worried, licking his lips. “Well, not in so many words he wasn’t. I made strange of him at the first. There was a - look, it was the way he had lost his edges; that was it, his edges was gone. An’ he wasn’t white. A yellow kind of a colour.”

  The heavy man snorted and muttered, “By Heaven, there’s some fools —“

  There was a gasp from the rest. A young man with large ears stood up and said loudly, “Talk some other way about Heaven here, John James Quilleash! If you’ve only come for to — ! You can just mind yourself!” He swallowed. Quilleash had come noisily to his feet. “I’m gettin’ out! Think I’m stayin’ here with - with -“ - he steadied himself and glared at each in turn - “superstitious idolators!”

  Angry protests rose. Old Crebbin turned an expressionless face.

  Halfway out the door, Quilleash added, “Yellowy Augh!” He slammed it behind him. They were relieved to see him go.

  “Now that we’re shut of him,” said Quirk, “ye’ll be able to tell us the rest of it, Mr Crebbin. Ah, ye were on about his clo’es?”

  The old man nodded. “A long robe thang. A long, lovely robe. But ye could see it was real good stuff. Warm.” Daugherty the weaver murmured in self-conscious approval.

  “Was there - wings?”” asked the youth delicately.

  Old Crebbin hesitated. “In a way there was. I - couldn’ get a proper sight of his back, an’ the lamp is poor; I've been meanin’ for months back to get another, but I haven’ been in town at all. But I think he had them.”

  “Did he speak to ye?”

  The old man nodded hard. “Oh, he did.” The chair rocked quickly a few times, creaking. “He talked a lot.”

  “Mr Crebbin,” said Quirk seriously, “would ye tell us just what happened? Y’ see - it’s hard to find just what questions t’ ask.”

  There was almost perfect stillness. The old man wiped his lips, nodded to himself. “I sort of bent down when I seen him. The first thing he said was, ‘Straighten up out of that, Mr Crebbin; ye’ll take a cramp.’ He had a wise sort of a face, not clever; an’ eyes, ye could see them thinkin’ but ye couldn’t know what. He sat himself down on the shiny table. Jus’ where you are now —“

  He pointed to Gorry the smith. Long Sorry half rose, became conscious again of his doubts, and say once more, smiling with embarrassment.

  “Now, while I’m rememberin’ - we’ll just have a little sup of tea, after all.” In spite of protests, the old man filled the kettle slowly from a pail with a tin dipper. “The well-water is not the way it was.” He picked something from the surface and flicked it away; eased himself up slowly, to press the kettle among the coals.

  “Ah. He talked so plain. ‘Are ye lookin’ forward to comin’ to Heaven?’ he says. It sounded queer, that ‘comin’’ instead of always ‘goin’.’ I was sat down in this very chair. ‘Well, I am now,’ I says, and then I says, ‘Could ye tell - but I suppose that’s against the rules.’

  “‘What?’ he says. ‘Tellin’ what it’s like?’ An’ he smiles, an’ I have to smile too, an’ the next ‘minit him an’ me is laughin’. Laughin’ like sin. ‘Ye know what that did to the cat!’ he says. Curiosity, he meant. Then he goes quiet. ‘But th’ age is there,’ he says. ‘This is your eighty-second year, is it not, now? And so ye’ll often find yourself thinkin’ about comin’ up; it’s natural,’ he says.

  “‘Is it - I mean, could ye just say is it a tremendous lot different ’ I asked him then.

  “He smiles again. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘that’s a big thing now. It depends. But in the main th’ answer is no. Queer how many people only fancies they want somethin’. You're a big gardenin’ man,’ he says - he must have been round the back of the house for a sight before he come in - ‘so ye’ll be easy fitted,’ he says. ‘There’s flowers up in our place the beat of them was never dreamt of; you'll see. No frosts an’ blight either. An’ no wireworm nor caterpillars nor them dirts.’ ‘Say so?’ I answers him. ‘That’s a sensible idea.’ An’ makin’ bold, to keep him goin’ on the s
ubject, I says; ‘I suppose ye’ll not need such stuff as manure at all?’ He says, ‘Of a kind, yes. Accordin’ to whether ye have a nose for the goodness of it ; like half of life itself, eh?

  “‘Ever have a wife, Zachary?’ he says, sudden. And I nod, ‘Long before now, I had.’ ‘Ay, I know,’

  he says, ‘I was just wantin’ to see what sort of look would come in your eye. I’d not be givin’ ye too much grief with sayin’ - that’s all arranged?’

  “That set me head off in a queer, sweaty, fainty way. I - I - Ye'll not remember. She was - a good, lovely woman.

  “I know I shouted out somethin’ soft, about having tea made ready, I think. He puts out his hand towards me. Me arm tingles, though he doesn’t touch me; like pins’ n’ needles. ‘I haven’t much of a thirst on, thank y’ all the same,’ he says. An’ of course I seen our tea wouldn’ be suitable, even the dear kind. An’ then I caught his eye. An’ I knew it was all right.”

  The old man rubbed his gums together, looking out of the window.

  ”What happened then?” said Gorry.

  Zachary turned on him eyes like a stranger’s. “Oh, he - he went. ‘I just dropped in,’ he said to me. A strange sort of smile he had.”

  Little Quirk turned his head slowly till his eyes met Gorry’s. “Ah,” he said. “It’s wonderful, that.”

  Old Crebbin was searching out cups one by one, and a damp cloth to wipe the dust out of them. The silence continued until they were gently sucking the top off their tea.

  “I lay you were glad of a cup after that one had gone?” fished Gorry. Old Crebbin smiled.

  “Oh, it restores a man!” Quirk’s cheeks shone with the beam he put there as he sipped again, holding the spoon firmly down with his thumb.

  “Was there - did he leave any kind of a mark, say?” Gorry went on. “I mean, it would be fine thing to shove in front of a doubter, an' say ‘Look at this, then!’ Eh?”