its directness the question missed the target. Garson certainly felt guilty about the money, but the money meant Percy and the whole Brotherhood, not specifically Savage. He answered with a candour that was totally convincing because it was genuine.
‘I don’t know anything about Savage.’
‘He’s not afraid of anything you know?’
That came a little nearer. Garson was uneasy for a moment. He wondered if Old Daundy could possibly have got on to the money in the cellar. He put the idea away. If he knew about the money in the cellar he wouldn’t be wasting time asking a lot of silly questions. As for the question just put to him, he couldn’t see why Savage should be afraid of him when the rest of the Brotherhood knew all he knew. Surely Savage knew he would keep the oath as faithfully as the rest of them.
‘There’s nothing I know that other folk don’t know,’ he answered carefully. ‘Savage has no reason to be afraid of me.’
Mr Daunders let him go, but unwillingly. He felt he had neared the brink of the abyss where the mystery was buried.
It was a day of interrogation for Garson. His father started too after their silent evening meal together. From the casual way he spoke the boy guessed he had been thinking about it all day.
‘You never told me what you were fighting about anyway. What started it?’
What made grown-ups ask questions they wouldn’t like to hear answered, the boy wondered. He had had enough. If he could tell Mr Daunders he could tell his father. It was only right people should get what they asked for.
‘Savage said my mother ran away with a darkie,’ he said sullenly, and waited for it, ready to cower. And indeed his father’s hand went up before the words were fully spoken. The boy moved round the kitchen table to safety. His father put his hand back in his pocket and let him be.
‘That’s not true,’ he said walking from the kitchen sink to the kitchen door and back again, rubbing his nose, rubbing his lips.
The boy watched him alertly and waited.
‘It’s not true,’ his father repeated. ‘That’s gossip. I know what they say. But it’s not true. Your mother didn’t run away with anybody.’
‘What did she do?’ the boy demanded, his battered face twisted to choke the tears that the memory of Savage’s taunt brought back to his eyes. ‘Why is she not here?’
‘Aye, as far as you’re concerned she just disappeared,’ his father muttered, still walking up and down, still rubbing his face and thrusting his fingers through his hair in a private misery. ‘That’s all I know myself.’
‘Why?’ said the boy, determined to keep at it. He was going to find out something he wanted to know, he was sure of it. People had asked him too many questions. It was his turn.
‘Because she – because she wouldn’t do what I told her,’ said his father. He was started, his tongue was loosened after years of silence. He had to tell himself now, not just his son. ‘She took a job on the buses. She was a conductress. I didn’t want her to. But I let her do it because she said she needed the money for new this and new that. I don’t know what the hell she didn’t want. She wanted new curtains, that was all to begin with. Just work for a wee while, she said. Then she wanted a washing-machine, then she wanted a television, then she wanted a fridge. It was going to go on for ever. I told her to stop. Her place was in the house. But oh no, her place was wherever she liked. She liked being out working. The house was just dull, she was nobody’s skivvy. She was going to go on working just as long as it pleased her. I ordered her. A man’s the head of his own family. But she wouldn’t obey me.’
‘You sent her away!’ the boy saw the truth of it, and he was gripped by a hatred of his father’s masculine authority.
‘I told her to come back into the house or leave the house,’ his father admitted.
‘And where does the darkie come in?’ the boy asked, feeling a black cloud between himself and his father.
‘There’s no darkie,’ said his father wearily, resting from his walking up and down and standing with his hands wide apart on the kitchen table as he looked across at his bitter son with unhappy eyes. ‘Your mother’s driver was a West Indian, that was all. She was always on the same shift with him. They got on but that was all. He’s been in this house since your mother went away. He tried to help. He’s got his own wife and family. She never ran away with him. That’s nonsense. People said that because they were pals but it’s not true. Any conductress on the buses is pally with her driver.’
‘But you must know where she is,’ the boy complained. Now the darkie was explained he didn’t matter. What mattered was that his mother had been allowed to stay away. ‘You could find out easily enough. You could find her depot and get her address.’
‘She changed her depot.’
‘You could find out.’
‘I’m not going to run after anybody,’ his father shouted. ‘She made her choice. She wants to work, well, she can work. If she wouldn’t agree her place is here, then this is no place for her.’
He stared down at the table, his eyes on a dirty plate of ham and eggs.
‘I’m sorry,’ he conceded to his son. ‘Maybe she’s sorry. I don’t know. But there’s some things can never be put right. But that’s a lot of nonsense about a darkie. There was nothing between them. Just because she left me when she was working with a coloured driver some people liked to make up a story and they ended up believing it themselves. But it’s only a story. That wasn’t the trouble. Your mother never had that fault. It was just she said she could help the house by working and I told her she could help it better by being the housewife. I told her if I couldn’t keep a wife I didn’t deserve a wife. My mother never had to go out to work. And she had a hard time of it. My father never had the job I have. That’s what it was about.’
‘I want my mother back,’ the boy cried, but only to himself. He couldn’t say it aloud.
The father waved a hand over the dejected tea-table.
‘Come on! You get this table redd and get these dishes washed and stop greeting.’
‘You did what was wrong,’ the boy muttered, moving to his chore with the speed of a snail. ‘I’m not greeting.’
‘Maybe I did,’ his father answered. ‘Well, you’re damn near greeting. You’ll have to learn not to. It doesn’t get ye anywhere. Maybe I did, but sometimes you’ve got to do what’s wrong to be right.’
The boy stopped listening. He was thinking. What kind of a house was this, where he had to do the washing and cleaning and shopping and make up the laundry and do the cooking? If his mother had stayed at home he could have lived like other boys instead of having to live like a girl. A rebellion was gathering in him. The road to open insurrection appeared before him as he lay snivelling in bed that night, and when he was doing his paper-rake the next evening he loitered on the stairhead and looked at the advertising pages of the Evening Citizen. If his mother had gone away because she wanted to get more money then a promise of plenty would surely bring her back. Money seemed to be the eternal question and the universal answer.
He was the only member of the Brotherhood still working after school hours. Everybody else
