The Bonny Dawn Page 3

  And she had replied, ‘What! Me and Sandy Palmer? I don’t want Sandy Palmer…Him!’ only for her mother to say, ‘All right, but mind, I’m tellin’ you,’ whatever she was implying by that…mother’s warning.

  Sandy never came to the house, never called for her, but whenever she was at the club he was there and he would walk back with her, even when she left early. She had tried to push him off: she cheeked him, snapped at him, tried ridicule, but it was no good. If she went home with Nancy Leary he would walk behind them, talking at them. Sometimes he would be alone, and sometimes there would be Ronnie Fitzsimmons or Charlie Talbot with him. Charlie Talbot lived on the other side of the Palmers and was nothing but a little toad. He went around with Sandy Palmer because he was a sucker-up and wanted to be in with the motorbike crowd. But quite abruptly, about three weeks ago, Sandy Palmer had let her go home alone. He had been in the club all one evening and never once asked her to dance, hadn’t even spoken to her. But he had kept looking at her in an odd kind of way. If she hadn’t known him she would have called it a frightened way, but she did not think of fear and Sandy Palmer together, for he was afraid of nothing and no-one. Perhaps it was just coincidence that the time he stopped speaking to her should be the day after her mother and dad had had a terrible row, and yet it wasn’t so odd, because the Palmer family and hers were connected with a link that was a source of misery to her. No matter what joy she felt, it was impregnated with this misery: the connection between the Palmers and themselves. Life was horrible, dirty, dirty…

  ‘Don’t let it make you look so sad.’

  ‘What? What! Oh no. No, I’m not sad. It’s bonny. It’s too bonny to make you sad. It’s the bonniest dawn I’ve ever seen.’ She laughed. ‘That’s silly, as it’s the only one I’ve ever seen. But it won’t be the last.’ Her eyes were bright again, looking straight into his. ‘I can hardly see your face; it’s the colours, they’ve almost blinded me.’

  ‘You shouldn’t stare like that, you should keep blinking and not look at the sun directly. Look away to the side. You were staring as if you were looking beyond it, from where it comes.’

  ‘From where it comes?’ A soft smile touched her lips. ‘You say the funniest things. I suppose it comes up from Australia.’

  Now he laughed. ‘It doesn’t come up from anywhere. It’s us that comes up. It’s always there. You know I worried about it when I first learned it was us who did the moving.’

  ‘Why did you worry?’

  ‘Oh, well, when you accept a thing you don’t think about it, but when you look at a thing and know that you’re not seeing what you’re looking at, or what you’re looking at isn’t really there, if you know what I mean, well then, one thing leads to another and then you start asking questions. It worries me a bit even now when I know I’m standing on the crust of the earth and it’s going round. I know now that it’s gravitation that keeps me put, but what is gravitation? That worried me for a long time. I don’t even know the answer yet.’ He laughed self-consciously.

  She said, ‘Do you write poetry?’

  ‘What me? Poetry? No. What gave you that idea?’

  ‘They said you would.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘They: Nancy Leary and Janet Castleton, Clarky and…’ there it was again, the name, ‘Sandy Palmer.’

  ‘Sandy Palmer? Was he talking about me?’

  ‘They were all talking around the table at George’s. They were talking about the beats in London and the poetry sessions. They said it was cranky. And then they were asking who knew any poetry and they said that the only ones around the club who would be able to spout poetry were Leslie Baker and you.’

  ‘Sandy Palmer said that?’

  ‘Yes, and the others.’

  ‘Well, I can’t write poetry; I don’t even like it. I don’t write at all and I don’t want to. Too many people are writing things they know nothing about. You’ve just got to pick up magazines or books. Half of them write about places they’ve never been to…they get it all from the library. I’ve seen them sittin’ there. One of the journalists from the paper, the one that writes under the name of “Adventurer”, he’s never out of the reference library.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. And I’ve never written poetry or anything else.’

  He sounded vehement all of a sudden and she wondered why. Perhaps because he wanted to write and couldn’t. Yet he sounded to her clever enough to write.

  Joe was pleased that she thought he could write, poetry or anything else, but at the same time he was vexed that the subject had been brought up solely because he couldn’t do what Sandy Palmer and the rest gave him credit for: write poetry, or anything else. He wasn’t really telling the truth when he said he didn’t write anything. He had tried his hand at it, again and again. His head was full of things he wanted to write, but his spelling was awful, his style was worse, and when he attempted it he couldn’t get the stuff onto the paper for thinking how awful his spelling was. He was more concerned about his spelling than his writing, for he spelt phonetically and he knew now that was something to be ashamed of. He wished he had paid more attention at school, he wished he could have another chance, and yet he knew if he could have another chance it would be the same all over again. He wasn’t one who could learn from books or reading, he could only learn by looking and listening. He learned more from listening to a chap talking about a subject on the radio than he had ever done by reading books on the subject. And again, if the subject was to do with nature, he learned more by using his eyes on a long walk than listening to all the authorities on the radio. He wished he could write, he wished he could. But he’d never be able to. The things in his head would only come out through talking, and there were few people he had met to whom he really wanted to talk. But there were some, and Brid here was one of them. He felt the heat of happiness pass over him at the thought. It was wonderful that he had found a girl at last that he could talk to, that he wanted to talk to, and one who wanted to listen to him. He was nineteen and he had begun to give up hope that he would ever find a girl he could talk to, just sit like this and talk to. But he mustn’t let her think he was stuffy and that all he could do was talk. He said quickly, ‘You like to dance?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I love it.’ The admission was given in a tone of apology.

  ‘You’re a good dancer.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘The best at the club, I’d say.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m not; there are many better than me. But I like it.’

  ‘I’m no good at this jive stuff, that’s why I don’t do it.’ He was making amends for his attitude on the dance floor the previous evening when once again he refused to stand like a jolting puppet while she dizzied and whirled in front of him. He had thought privately that those that wanted to have St Vitus’ dance could have it, but he wasn’t going to. And again, that the girls looked like cock birds out to attract the hens. The positions had been reversed and it wasn’t nice. Modern times or no modern times, man should do what preening there was to be done.

  ‘I don’t mind what I dance so long as I dance.’

  They remained silent now as they looked at each other, and then they laughed and looked towards the sun again.

  ‘See there! Isn’t that wonderful? See there! That line of rocks, they’re all purple. You would think they were lit up by headlights, wouldn’t you?’ He pointed away to the far right towards where the land sloped more gently to beach level.

  She nodded, then said, ‘But they say there’re quicksands there.’

  ‘Maybe; but people don’t swim over there; the rocks here are a protection, but yon side of them is deeper and dangerous. This side, I’ve bathed for years.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But it’s got a warning up that bathing is forbidden, that it’s dangerous.’

  ‘Yes, it would be if you didn’t know what you were at. Well look, the tide’s out now and there’s still some water this side of t
he rocks, deep enough to swim in and it’s as safe as houses.’

  ‘Have you ever been beyond?’

  ‘No; I wouldn’t want to. It’s deeper, and the undercurrent is strong. I went in once, and by, it didn’t half frighten me! That was a year or two ago. But you needn’t go as far as the rocks, even. You can swim all you want just off the sand. And there’s this about it, you don’t get the crowds here. Many locals come. That notice is just for the holidaymakers who don’t know what they’re at. This afternoon you won’t be able to put a pin on this hill if it’s fine; everybody’ll be picnicking. And on the beach an’ all.’ He said again quickly, ahead of her, as if he were leading the way through passages of thought, ‘I never want to leave this place.’

  ‘You mean here?’ She flapped her hand towards the ground.

  ‘No…Yes, but not just this spot. The coastline. Oh, the coastline’s grand up here. Look at it. Where will you see a grander sight than that?’

  She followed his moving arm. She hadn’t thought about it before. In all the years she had lived so near to the sea she had scarcely paid it any attention. She had taken the train into Morpeth every morning for over two years now and her nights seemed to have been taken up with hurrying home and getting the tea ready for her mother and dad coming in from work. They got in a quarter past six, but the tea and washing-up were never over before half past seven. Then they would look at the telly. Her father never left her mother on her own at night, except when her Uncle John called in, and if that happened he and her dad went along to the club.

  On such occasions, when they were left alone together, her mother would talk to her. She was different altogether when they were alone. She would put her arm round her waist and pull her up beside her on the couch and they would laugh about things. She was jolly at heart, was her mother, and she would often say to her, ‘Come on, come on; don’t look so sad. Prepare to enjoy yourself,’ and she would laugh and quote the advert, which said, ‘Prepare to be a beautiful lady’. But sometimes, even right in the middle of her laughter, she would suddenly turn serious, almost fierce, and say things like, ‘Enjoy yourself; you’re only young once. My God, you are! But not with Sandy Palmer, mind,’ and her eyes would widen as she gave this apparent warning. ‘Keep clear of Sandy Palmer, he’s no good for you.’

  Then, later in the evening, even though there might be a serial or some other interesting programme on the television, her mother would assuredly hear the back gate click and then the dual footsteps on the cement path, and she would watch her mother lean her head against the back of the couch and laugh, but quietly to herself. Then she would close her eyes, and when the two men entered the room she would always say the same thing; without turning her head to look at them she would say, ‘We…ell!’ Just like that. ‘We…ell!’

  And so in the evenings, even in the summer, she had never gone for walks by the shore. Once or twice on a Sunday afternoon she had gone out with Janet and got as far even as this point, but they had never descended the hill to the shore. For one thing it would have spoiled their shoes, and for another it had always looked so grim and forbidding to her. But now she wondered why she had ever thought that. It was beautiful, made beautiful by the dawn, this bonny dawn. Oh, it was a bonny dawn. Even if she hadn’t been here with Joe Lloyd she imagined she would still have thought it was a bonny dawn, she couldn’t help but.

  ‘Look, every place is alight now.’ His roving gaze finished on her and he repeated, ‘Every place.’ For her face was warm and rosy as if she had just got out of a hot bath, and her eyes were reflecting the colours of the morning. He could see the streaks of dawn light going down into them. And yet they were all grey, a bright clear grey…and wise. Her mouth was open, just enough to show two large white front teeth, and her lips were like painted joy as they spread when she exclaimed with her finger pointing, ‘Look! There’s a boat, a little boat. It must have been there all night. Fishing?’

  ‘Oh yes; fishing.’

  ‘It looks yellow and dark blue to me. What colour does it look to you?’

  He laughed: ‘Yellow and dark blue,’ although he couldn’t see it.

  She said again ‘Oh!’ and her hands hugged at her knees. It was as if she had never before seen a fishing boat or imagined that anyone could stay out in a boat all night; and this was silly, because their Willie often went fishing at night. He went with Harry Palmer. They were both saving up to buy a boat, rather than a car. They both said they’d had enough of cars, driving their lorries. Their Willie and Harry Palmer had been pals since they were at school. In this, they merely followed the pattern of their fathers, because her father and her Uncle John had been pals when they were young, too, and they still were. At this point in her thinking, her head jerked and her mind went back to her brother Willie, and she thought, It’s funny, he’s never had a girl. Harry Palmer never bothered with girls, either. He used to, her mother said, until he was about twenty, and then he and Willie started to go fishing. They both worked for the same contractor and drove the long-distance lorries, sometimes as far as London and back. They nearly always managed to go on the same consignment. But when they didn’t manage it, their Willie mooned about the house and didn’t even go near the boat. Over the years, the boat had become as familiar as her own bike and yet she had never seen it. They hired it from Crosby’s up at the Bay, and she understood they always managed to get the same one. But when they got their own they would likely take her out in it. She rather liked their Willie and would have liked to be closer to him, to talk to him, but she had the feeling that he always pushed her off, evaded her. Yet when there were any rows in the house he supported her.

  As she looked at the boat bobbing up and down in her line of sight she visualised herself lying in bed, her head pressed into the pillow and her hands over her ears to shut out the murmur of her father’s voice from the next room. Her flesh crept when her father talked in that low entreating tone, but there was the night when he had screamed at her mother, and then she had heard Willie’s door open and his voice crying across the empty landing towards his parents’ room: ‘Give over, you two, will you? Don’t you know there’s somebody next door?’

  She knew that Willie hadn’t been referring to the Pratts, but to her. She remembered his last words before he went back into his room and banged the door, ‘God Almighty! At your age.’ It was then she heard her father bounce out of bed. He seemed to jump from the bed on to the landing, so quickly came his voice yelling to his son: ‘My age! Who the hell do you think I am? Methuselah?’ Her father had been forty-five at that time, and she fourteen. Then she thought she heard him mutter, ‘The unnatural bugger.’

  In other ways, too, Willie had tried to protect her against her father, and she had been puzzled up until recently by the fact that she should need this protection, but she knew she did. She was afraid of her father, yet she knew she could have loved him if he had let her. But he too pushed her off, much more so than Willie did. Her mother didn’t push her off, her mother drew her close, yet she had known right from a child that her mother was the cause of the trouble in the house. This on the face of it was strange, for her mother was bonny and laughing, and quite kind. Perhaps she laughed too much really, but it was often at herself. She laughed the day she got her hair bleached. It had been a mousey brown and was going grey, and she had had it bleached. Willie had laughed and she had laughed with him, but her father had nearly gone mad.

  Her eyes still on the boat, she took a great gulp of air into her lungs and as she let it out she muttered on the fringe of audibility, ‘Oh, if we only didn’t live near the Palmers.’

  ‘What d’you say?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Well, I was just looking at the boat. My brother goes fishing.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a brother; I thought you were the only one.’

  ‘No, he’s much older than me, he’s twenty-six. He and Harry Palmer go out and sometimes stay out all night, fishing. He’s Sandy’s brother.’ She turned her head towards him
now and her face was serious. ‘He’s not a bit like Sandy, he’s nice. Harry’s a year older than our Willie. Everybody says they’re like twins, they’re always together.’

  ‘It’s nice to have a pal like that. I’ve got a pal; he’s what you call my marrer.’ He laughed as he gave her this information. ‘He’s two years older than me; he had his twenty-first birthday last week. By, there was a do! He’ll just be coming up now.’ He lifted his eyes towards the sky as if he were with his friend and the cage had just stopped and they were taking their first fill of light. ‘We’ve been on different shifts for the last three weeks; it’s the cut of the draw.’

  ‘Would he have been with you all night if you had been on the same shift?’

  ‘Not him.’ Again he laughed. ‘He thinks I’m up the pole. But we go to cricket together, and in the winter I always watch him play football. He’s a grand footballer; he should have been a professional. Ossie, short for Oswald. He hates his name.’ Joe smiled sympathetically. ‘And I don’t blame him.’

  She looked towards the beach. The last lap of the tide had gone completely down now and licked lazily at the sand. She could see it leaving a line of bubbles, shining, rainbow-hued bubbles. The whole stretch of coastline looked like one great mouth and the tide like a tongue, as though it were the mouth of a happy dog with saliva dripping from it. But the picture was not translated into thought in her mind—her thoughts were taken up with Ossie. She did not like the sound of this Ossie. She felt that if they had been on the same shift Joe wouldn’t have been here, nor would he have come to the club in the first place. He had come down there because he was at a loose end. She felt suddenly frightened at the fact of so much depending on so little. If Joe hadn’t been at a loose end, if his pal hadn’t been on the other shift, if…if. A sense of insecurity enveloped her. She was here just by chance, just because Joe had found himself at a loose end. She was being forced to the fringe of the deep fundamental fact that life itself was but a chance thing. She said quickly, ‘Eeh! I’ll have to be getting back now,’ and before he could look at her she had swung herself up in an easy movement that spoke of youth. In a second, he was standing in front of her.