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

was left of my grandfather’s proudest possession. There was a deep bulge in the back of the case. The glass was shattered and the Roman numerals looked crazily at one another across the pierced and distorted face. I put the watch back in my pocket and rode slowly on, my mind numb with misery.
    I thought of showing them what was left; but that was no use. I had promised them a prince among watches and no amount of beautiful wreckage would do.
    â€˜Where’s the watch, Will?’ they asked. ‘Have you brought the watch?’
    â€˜My mother wouldn’t let me bring it,’ I lied, moving to my desk, my hand in my pocket clutching the shattered watch.
    â€˜His mother wouldn’t let him,’ Crawley jeered. ‘What a tale!’
    (Later, Crawley, I thought. The day will come).
    The others took up his cries. I was branded as a romancer, a fanciful liar. I couldn’t blame them after letting them down.
    The bell rang for first class and I sat quietly at my desk, waiting for the master to arrive. I opened my books and stared blindly at them as a strange feeling stole over me. It was not the mocking of my classmates – they would tire of that eventually. Nor was it the thought of my mother’s anger, terrible though that would be. No, all I could think of – all that possessed my mind – was the old man, my grandfather, lying in his bed after a long life of toil, his hands fretting with the sheets, and his tired, breathy voice saying, ‘Patience, Will, patience.’
    And I nearly wept, for it was the saddest moment of my young life.

A Lovely View of the Gasworks
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    â€˜Well,’ he said after a silence, ‘what d’you think to it?’
    She answered him from the tall sash window where for several minutes she had been standing gazing out across the town in a dreamy, pre-occupied sort of way. ‘Lovely view of the gasworks,’ she said, stirring now and rubbing slowly at her bare upper arm with her left hand.
    He had been keenly aware of her absorption of mind ever since meeting her that evening and it had created uneasiness in him. Now he said, with the suggestion of an edge to his voice, ‘It doesn’t matter what’s outside; it’s what’s inside ’at counts,’ and some deeper significance in his words made her glance sharply at him and seemed to bring her back from wherever her thoughts had carried her to the room and him.
    â€˜D’you think it might be damp?’ she said, rubbing gently now at both arms together. ‘It’s none too warm in here.’
    â€˜The sun’s gone,’ the man said. ‘And the house has been empty for weeks. You’d soon notice a difference when we’d had fires going a bit.’
    She was quick to notice his choice of words, as though he himself had already accepted the house and now awaited only her acquiescence for the matter to be settled.
    â€˜You’re a bit set on it, aren’t you?’ she said, watching him.
    â€˜I don’t think it’s bad,’ he said, pursing his lips in the way she knew so well. ‘I’ve seen plenty worse. Course, I’ve seen plenty better an’ all, but it’s no use crying after the moon.’
    â€˜It seems all right,’ she said, looking round the bedroom. And now, strangely enough, it looked less all right than it had when they first came in. Then, lit by the evening sun, this room in particular had seemed charmingly airy and bright; but now the sun had gone she could see only the shabbiness of the faded blue wallpaper and feel how bleakly empty it was. She paced away from the window, a dark girl with a sallow complexion and pale bloodless lips, wearing a home-made yellow frock which hung loosely on her bony body. And suddenly then all the feeling the man had previously sensed in her seemed to burst and flood out as her features lost