Free Paperboy by Christopher Fowler Page A

glow bright. Bill’s mother fanned the flame with her own sly whispers, and suddenly everything ignited. One night I awoke to crashes, screams, the sound of someone being pushed or falling. I looked through the banisters but the kitchen door was shut, so I crept downstairs and quietly pushed it open.
    My mother was sitting on the floor, wedged into a corner, and my father was standing before her, flexing his right fist. There was broken glass and china everywhere. Kath’s mother’s ceramic statue of a lady in a green lace dress had lost its nose. At my appearance, the rage faded from Bill’s eyes and Kath climbed awkwardly to her feet. She had been punched and slapped, but I could see that she was not scared. She simply seemed emotionless, quiet and determined.
    Kath pulled on her cardigan in stoic silence and went out into the rain, and around the corner to the local police station. A portly constable came back with her and spoke quietly to my father. The copper could not have been satisfied with Bill’s response, though, for he remained outside in the front garden all night, his cape wrapped against the downpour, keeping watch on the house. To be on the safe side, Kath slept with a carving knife under the bed.
    In the morning, having satisfied himself that the house was at peace, the policeman quietly went away before the neighbours could spot him; it was what policemen still did in the sixties. A few days later, he came back to check on the inhabitants of Number 35 again and had a quiet word with Kath, advising her that perhaps she might like to rethink her decision to remain with her husband.
    The atmosphere at home calmed but it was never the same after this, because the threat of violence had been made good, and once out, this particular demon could never be put back in its bottle. There were further fights, but they lessened in frequency. My mother was not frightened of my father; quite the reverse. She felt him to be a coward, and he gradually diminished in her eyes. It was a process neither of them could control, no matter how much Bill tried to make amends. He even had the nose on the ceramic green-laced lady replaced, but it was the wrong shape and discoloured over time, making her look like an elegant leper.
    It was tempting to trace the cause of Bill’s behaviour to his unemployment and loss of status in the home, but the truth was more complicated. Coming from the kind of family where conscription into the armed services was seen as an escape from poverty, he developed a strange relationship to the spending of money. Things were purchased in order to last, never because they held appeal. Christmas presents invariably came from London’s Petticoat Lane market 1 at knockdown prices. Pennies were watched and pounds hoarded for no other discernible purpose than habit. Although she had no sense of materialism and was thrifty by necessity, Kath felt that meanness was a sin and would ultimately deny them happiness. There was a line where thrift crossed into something more miserly and joyless.
    In a flourish of rare generosity Bill also bought a television, but TV was rubbish back then, and never worse than on a Sunday, when programmes didn’t start until late afternoon and consisted of things like
The Brains Trust
, where a group of elderly men in demob suits droned on about town councils and indecency, or quiz shows with Sir Mortimer Wheeler, an archaeologist who always had a pipe gripped between his teeth. Other delights of the times included nature programmes with Armand and Michaela Denis, a pair of self-publicizing globetrotters who fascinated as much for their fabulous lifestyles as for their dubious animal knowledge. Armand was Belgian, and had supposedly married New York beauty Michaela within twelve hours of meeting her. Michaela’s main item of travel equipment was her cosmetic box, and she was never seen without a thick layer of orange make-up and silver nails. We also had Mr Pastry, a peculiar old