Read Birthday for Free Online Page B

let him see the old buildings and crossing gates.
    Reality behind the eyes showed scenery almost too good to be true, yet the ruins of the place were now like those of Pompeii in Italy he had seen on a coach tour with Avril, wrecked, flyblown, empty, resentful at being abandoned, a sudden pull out from the prime of life, as if the RAF had done a thorough job back in the war.
    He hadn’t seen the area for years and then, passing through one day on his way to somewhere else, he noted that death had already taken place, as if a gigantic fist had picked up the locality and given it a good pasting, people fleeing in all directions as they must have done from Pompeii when fire and ash came down, while those who survived the upshake were rattled to the core, had only enough spirit to pick up their tranklements and form their columns of refugees.
    Nowadays there was nobody, no footsteps, no laughter, no joshing voices, no shrieking kids to wave the next train through. A few people walking by in a hurry looked as shifty and guilty as if they’d been responsible for the area getting ruined. Cars going somewhere else were driven by those who in the old days would have walked or taken a tram, and he supposed they hated to be reminded of the place because they’d had no car or television or fridge or washing machine or a mobile phone, maybe only a wireless or radiogram. Far from being happy with all they’d got now, they were dead from the neck up.
    He recalled the girls he had taken to the fields around Top Valley Farm, an area now covered with houses and old folks’ bungalows, in one of which his mother had lived. The girls were fourteen or fifteen (maybe younger: they didn’t tell him and he didn’t ask) but when snuggled up to in a hedge bottom they melted softly into the warmth of each other’s bodies, hardly knowing it would end in going all the way, unable to tell at that age the difference between spunk and cuckoo spit as they strolled lovingly hand in hand back to Basford Crossing. He knew where in the bedroom Brian hid french letters, and helped himself, until Brian twigged some were missing and told him to get his own, since he was already bringing in money from the bike factory.
    He supposed all the girls he had shagged – good looking, passionate, and knowing what they wanted – had got married and had kids, some of them divorced and living as single mothers in flats provided by the council – and good luck to them. Nearly everybody he knew had been divorced, as had he, after Doreen put the kibosh on their ten-year marriage.
    He got home from the factory, knackered after an eight-hour stint, the sweat barely dried, and she came out with it before he was halfway through the doorway: ‘I’m leaving you. I’ve had enough. I can’t stand any more. The life we lead is no good. I’m too fed up for it to go on.’
    Of what she was fed up he didn’t know, because at times he felt a lot more fed up than she could ever know about. He was fed up now, and had been for a long time, though why she suddenly wanted her life to change he couldn’t think, blinded by her unexpected decision. She hadn’t caught him with another woman, because he worked too hard to find time chasing them, much as he might like to.
    But now that she’d spoken he knew that he wanted to split up as well, and though he couldn’t come out with what enough was, it certainly seemed to be so when they went on to argue about why they hadn’t said enough was enough years ago, and wondered why they’d ever got married.
    Smoking a cigarette, he stood by the door, watching her face thinned by the firmness of her stand, though the colour was coming back because she had found it easier to tell him than expected, and to get his agreement. It felt as if the boat was sinking under him, water already soaking his boots, on her saying she needed three days to move out so as to have time to