Read Online The Likes of Us by Stan Barstow - Free Book Online

shouldn’t be surprised if it turns to blood poisoning.’
    He turned away, muttering. ‘Aw, you allus make the worst of anythin’.’
    â€˜Well, it’s not the first time I’ve done it,’ she told him. ‘If you’d put me another post up I shouldn’t have to use it.’
    â€˜Aye, if I put you another post up,’ Scurridge sneered. ‘If I did this, that an’ the other thing. Is there owt else you want while we’re at it?’
    Goaded, she flung out her arm and pointed to the great stain of damp in the corner. ‘There’s that! And half the windows won’t shut properly. It’s time you did summat about the place before it tumbles round your ears!’
    â€˜Jesus Christ and God Almighty,’ Scurridge said. ‘Can’t I have any peace? Haven’t I done enough when I’ve sweated down yon’ hole wi’out startin’ again when I get home?’ He picked up his paper. ‘Besides, it all costs brass.’
    â€˜Aye, it all costs brass. The hens cost brass so you killed ’em all off one by one and now you can’t have any eggs. The garden cost brass so you let it turn into a wilderness. The sheds cost brass so now they’re all mouldering away out there. We could have had a nice little smallholding to keep us when you came out of the pit; but no, it all costs brass, so now we’ve got nothing.’
    He rustled the paper and spoke from behind it. ‘We’d never ha’ made it pay.’ This place ’ud run away wi’ every penny if I let it.’
    The mad injustice of it tore at her long-nurtured patience and it was, for a moment of temper, more than she could bear. ‘Better than it all going on beer an’ pools an’ dog-racing,’ she flared. ‘Making bookies an’ publicans their bellies fat.’
    â€˜You think I’m a blasted fool, don’t you? You think I’m just throwin’ good money after bad?’ His hands crushed the edges of the newspaper and the demon glared male-volently at her from his weak blue eyes. ‘You don’t see ’at I’m out for a further fetch. There’ll be killin’ one o’ these days. It’s got to come. The whole bloody kitty ’ull drop into me lap an’ then I’ll be laughin’.’
    She turned her face from the stare of the demon and muttered, ‘Gambling’s a sin.’ She did not really believe this and she felt with the inadequacy of the retort surprise that she should have uttered those words. They were not her own but her father’s and she wondered that she should clutch at the tatters of his teaching after all this time.
    â€˜Don’t mouth that old hypocrite’s words at me,’ Scurridge said without heat.
    â€˜Don’t tell you anything, eh?’ she said. ‘You know it all, I reckon? That’s why your own daughter left home – because you ’at knew it all drove her away. Well mind you don’t do the same with me!’
    This brought him leaping from his chair to stand over her, his face working with fury. ‘Don’t talk about her in this house,’ he shouted. ‘Damned ungrateful bitch! I don’t want to hear owt about her, d’you hear?’ He reeled away as the cough erupted into his throat and he crouched by the fire until the attack had passed, drawing great wheezing gulps of air. ‘An’ if you want to go,’ he said, ‘you can get off any time you’re ready.’
    She knew he did not mean this. She knew also that she would never go. She had never seriously considered it. Eva, on her furtive visits to the house while her father was out, had often asked her how she stood it; but she knew she would never leave him. Over the years she had found herself thinking back more and more to her father and she was coming now to accept life as the inevitable consequence, as predicted by him, of the lapse