SATURDAY AFTERNOON

By STANLEY SHARPLESS

IT doesn't take much to start them off and that's straight. We'll be sitting there calm as you like, Dad and Mum and Bill and me—Bill's my brother, he's only ten—having our dinner or tea or whatever it is. Perhaps Mum will be talking about the woman next door, or her rheumatism, or something, or Dad will be giving an imitation of Mr. Beevers at the works who hasn't got a roof to his mouth. Dad's awfully good at this. And then someone'll say something quite harmless and off we'll go.

This time it was over me going to the pictures. I said to Mum during dinner : " What about the sixpence you promised me so I could go and see Bertha Floss in Flames of Desire ?" So she said : " Oh, I forgot, well I can't keep jumping up and down in the middle of dinner, I shall get indigestion, I never get a moment's peace ; wait till after dinner then you shall have it."

When Dad heard Mum say that he laid down his knife and fork, although he'd only just started his steak and kidney pie.

" What's this about going to the pictures ? " he says, looking sharp at Mum and me.

I had my mouth full ; I'd stuffed it up just before so I couldn't answer.

Mum says : " Now let the poor boy alone, Bert, he don't get much change, you know he don't."

" That's the second time he's been to the pictures this week," says Dad.

" Yes," I says, " but on Wednesday I went to the Empire, and today I'm going to the Odeon ; there's a different picture on there."

" I don't care whether there's 5o different pictures on," says Dad, banging on the table and making all the knives rattle. " I won't have you trapesing round to every picture palace in the place and getting a pack of damfool nonsense into your head. Once a week's quite enough for you, I've told you before."

" If you had your way," said Mum, going on with her dinner, " the boy'd get no fun at all."

" Oh," says Dad, his voice all high and sarcastic. " Who took him for a walli in the park last Sunday ? Who took him to see the Spurs play Wolverhampton Wanderers once ? Go on, who ? "

" That's all right," says Mum, " but what's the harm in the pictures I'd like to know ? There wasn't any when you was a boy and you're jealous, that's what it is."

" When I was a boy I hadn't the time for gadding about, or the money, as you know very well," says Dad. " I had a sick mother to look after and a crippled brother, too."

" Yes, a nice miserable family I married into when I took you on," says Mum.

I knew that would put the fat in the fire, and it did, too. Dad stood up suddenly, banging his chair back against the dresser.

" So that's it," he shouts. " For fifteen years I've slaved away at the works to keep you and your brats, and this is the thanks I get. Like a bleeding millstone round my neck, you've been. That's why I never got on. You kept me back when I might have got on. A miserable family. My God, I wish I'd never married you."

Dad had gone quite white and his nostrils were curved back in a funny way.

" I shall scream to the neighbours," cries out Mum. " Frankie, quick, run and tell Mrs. Brown your father's gone out of his mind and he's going to kill me."

Mum always tells me to call Mrs. Brown when she and Dad have a dust up. She does it just to make him mad, but she doesn't really mean it and I never go.

" Leave the neighbours out of it," says Dad. " We don't want any damn neighbours come interfering in this house."

He picked up his plate of dinner and threw it on the floor, so that it broke and the steak and kidney pie went all over the carpet. I kind of felt my stomach go all tight inside.

Mum screamed. " Look at my nice kitchen now," she says, " and me slaving my fingers to the bone trying to keep it clean and respectable. Oh, you beast and bully, you, I wish you'd fall down dead where you stand, that I do."

She took out her handkerchief and started to cry good and proper. That set young Bill off, too, and there they all were, boohooing and shouting all round. I felt sick, so I got down from my chair and opened the door and went out of the room. As I went I noticed the cat was eating up bits of the steak and kidney pie that were lying about. I went upstairs to the bedroom and locked the door. I heard Dad shouting out after me to come back, so I propped a chair up against the door with its back under the handle, like I'd often seen Mum do. It was cold up there and I had to keep both hands in my pockets. I knelt down by the edge of the bed and shut my eyes and said : " Please, God, stop Mum saying things that'll make Dad mad, and don't let Dad smash anything else up, and make him go out soon because I want to go to the pictures. Amen."

After a bit I took away the chair and crept out on to the landing, and leant as far out over the banisters as I could and listened. They were still carrying on.

I thought, I wish I was away at a boarding school like you read about in school stories. They have rags there, I know, and the new boys have a pretty rotten time with bullies and fagging and all that, but there's nothing so bad as this, I bet.

I stood there a long time and the banisters hurt my chest with me leaning against them so hard. Then at last the kitchen door opened and Dad stomped out. He took his cap from the peg in the passage and went out and shut the street door with a bang.

I ran downstairs. Mum was sitting in the rocking chair drying her eyes on her apron. She looked white except her eyes, which were red. I wanted to say I was sorry and why couldn't she and Dad get on together like the mothers and fathers of the chaps at school whom I went to tea with some- times : they never quarrelled like this. But I didn't some- how. I just said : " Have you got the sixpence ? " And she got up and took it out of her purse on the dresser without saying anything, just sniffing all the time.

So I said : " Thanks. Good-bye, Mum," and took my hat and went off to the pictures, but it wasn't a very good film after all.