At the door

Bang, bang, bang! went the Devil in John's wardrobe. It towered over him, ready to topple, and fear crawled over his shoulders as if the tendons were being drawn out through his neck, but now it wasn't fear but confusion, and he woke to the quiet of the terrace, broken every few moments by a reveille on a front door—our front door, he realised, yanking himself out of bed.

He drew the curtains. The houses opposite were grey and desaturated. John tried to work out if it was early or just overcast, but there was no clock in his room. All he knew was his own grumpiness and a head full of sleep. He reached for his kex bunched up on the chair. Who was it, thought John? It wasn't right. He'd always moaned that nothing ever happened. Nothing new, at any rate. Fighting like last week, or gossiping like yesterday, but nothing new. So who was at the door?

The noise was fit to rouse the whole street. It had woken John's mum, which was bad enough. By the time he had got dressed, she had answered the door. "John William Atherton, get thisel' down 'ere this minute," she shouted from the front door, and pitched the last few words down her son's ear as he clomped into the hall.

"I 'eard, I 'eard," he whined, pulling a jumper over his shirt. The air from the street smelt of rain. One tangled, jumpered arm banged into a palm-leaf cross on the wall, and Mrs Atherton frowned at him. His head emerged and he said, "What's goin' on? What time is it?"

"Just gone six," she nearly shouted, and as John breathed in to complain some more—it was Saturday, after all—she carried on: "You've gorra visitor."

She swung the door wider, and John saw Bert Whittle. He looked bent double as usual, knotted and gnarled like a tree root. Bert's work clothes, which he had on now, were all tatty cuffs and loose seams. Frank, the local wit who loved a few doors down, had Bert Whittle marked as a butt for his jokes, saying once (and then repeating) that Bert was "as owd as 'is tongue an' a fair bit owder 'an 'is trrousers." The cap never escaped a mauling when Bert was nervous, and he was now wringing it wretchedly, blasted by the heat of this woman's temper.

"Ay, John," Bert Whittle creaked out in greeting as if on cue. He poked his nose closer into the shadows of the house where John was still hiding. "Needed down church. Grave to be dug. Funeral today, in't it." There had been no question there.

Only half awake, John cracked. "Ah, bugger off, Bert," he cried, "what about your bloody digger?"

Slowly both men turned their heads to look at John's mum, who was still deciding who would be first to get told off. Then, blood thickest, she turned to the old man and burst out: "'E's right, Bert Whittle. 'Asn't Father MacFie scowered enough off o't'collectin' plate for that new machine of yowers? We've 'eard enough about it these past few Sundies, 'aven't we? Well," she added, sending another look in John's direction, "some of us 'ave." John pretended not to hear. "You know 'e's not doin' this any more. 'E's got to do 'is schoolin', fat lot o' good it'll do but Mr Sinclair at the grammar says it's for t'best. 'E can't be goin' out playin' in churchyard wi' yew anymower."

Bert looked regretful, and spread his arms wide. His cap unravelled into a cap shape. "Digger's bust, missus. Damp 'as got ter it. I'm 'avin' Paulie tek a look at it later but 'e'll be wantin ter be in ground by then. Not Paulie. Charlie Waterworth from up Rose Croft, God rest 'is soul. Need John to give us an 'and, like. Got sirvice at eleven o'clock and t'hole's 'ardly a scratch yet." More twisting of his cap like a dishrag.

Mother looked at John. John looked back, then at Bert. Bert at Mother, Mother at Bert, John at—then his mother leant close and said, "well, gowon then! Don't just stand there like cheese at fowerpence! Give 'im an 'and." John sloped round the jamb of the doorframe, still dozy from bed. As he passed her in the doorway she clipped the back of his head, saying, "an' you'll be in church tomorrow, an' in confession tonight before'and, my lad."

He scowled, then moved off before Bert Whittle finished taking his own cringing leave. John's feet slapped on the cobbles as Bert tried bandyleggedly to catch up: John's one-time foreman, boss once more, wishing he had a digger instead.