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

into the sin which had bound her to Scurridge and brought Eva into the world. Eva who, as the wheel turned full circle, had departed without blessing from her father’s house, though for a different reason. No, she would never leave him. But neither could she foresee any future with him as she was. She had come to believe in the truth of her father’s prediction that nothing good would come of their life together and she was sometimes haunted by an elusive though disturbing sense of impending tragedy. The day was long past when she could hope for a return to sanity of Scurridge. He was too far gone now: the demon was too securely a part of him. But she too had passed the point of no return. For good or for bad, this was her life, and she could not run away from life itself.
    They sat on before the fire, two intimate strangers, with nothing more to say to each other; and about six o’clock Scurridge got up from his chair and washed and shaved sketchily in the sink in the corner. She looked up dully as he prepared to take his leave.
    â€˜Dogs?’ she said.
    â€˜It’s Saturday, in’t it?’ Scurridge answered, pulling on his overcoat.
    All the loneliness of the evening seemed to descend upon her at once then and she said with the suggestion of a whine in her voice, ‘Why don’t you take me with you some Saturday?’
    â€˜You?’ he said. ‘Take you? D’you think you’re fit to take anywhere? Look at yersen! An’ when I think of you as you used to be!’
    She looked away. The abuse had little sting now. She could think of him too, as he used to be; but she did not do that too often now, for such memories had the power of evoking a misery which was stronger than the inertia that, over the years, had become her only defence.
    â€˜What time will you be back?’
    â€˜Expect me when you see me,’ he said at the door. ‘Is’ll want a bite o’ supper, I expect.’
    Expect him at whatever time his tipsy legs brought him home, she thought. If he lost he would drink to console himself. If he won he would drink to celebrate. Either way there was nothing in it for her but yet more ill temper, yet further abuse.
    She got up a few minutes after he had gone and went to the back door to look out. It was snowing again and the clean, gentle fall softened the stark and ugly outlines of the decaying outhouses on the patch of land behind the house and gently obliterated Scurridge’s footprints where they led away from the door, down the slope to the wood, through which ran a path to the main road, a mile distant. She shivered as the cold air touched her, and returned indoors, beginning, despite herself, to remember. Once the sheds had been sound and strong and housed poultry. The garden had flourished too, supplying them with sufficient vegetables for their own needs and some left to sell. Now it was overgrown with rampant grass and dock. And the house itself – they had bought it for a song because it was old and really too big for one woman to manage; but it too had been strong and sound and it had looked well under regular coats of paint and with the walls pointed and the windows properly hung. In the early days, seeing it all begin to slip from her grasp, she had tried to keep it going herself. But it was a thankless, hopeless struggle without support from Scurridge: a struggle which had beaten her in the end, driving her first into frustration and then finally apathy. Now everything was mouldering and dilapidated and its gradual decay was like a symbol of her own decline from the hopeful young wife and mother into the tired old woman she was now.
    Listlessly she washed up and put away the teapots. Then she took the coal-bucket from the hearth and went down into the dripping, dungeon-like darkness of the huge cellar. There she filled the bucket and lugged it back up the steps. Mending the fire, piling it high with the wet gleaming lumps of coal, she