The Undertow by Jo Baker Page A

though it’s November and dark and freezing and he could have done that earlier on his way back from the factory, she gestures Billy into the hall and asks him quietly to give her the money from Cheeseman’s round.
    “No,” he says.
    She looks startled. “What do you mean, no?”
    “I’ve not been paid yet.”
    “When will you be paid?”
    “Tomorrow morning, I think. I don’t know, really.” In fact, he hadn’t even thought about it. He’d forgotten that it was the point.
    She turns to get her coat. “I’ll call round there and ask for it now.”
    Billy catches her arm. “Don’t.”
    She glances down at his hand, then back up at his face, her eyebrows raised. He releases his grip.
    “Sorry,” he says.
    “I should think so.”
    He scuffs his toe into the matting. “But, please don’t, Mother.”
    “Mr. Cheeseman won’t mind.”
    “It’s not that,” Billy says. Though it is partly that. But it’s more that she doesn’t care what Mr. Cheeseman thinks of her going round there asking for wages before they’re due, and she doesn’t care because it’s for the One-Eared Man. Billy shuffles, resentful, conscious of his smallness and youth, and queasy with the sense of not being quite so very important any more.
    She slips an arm down her coat sleeve, tugs the yoke up onto her shoulder. “Then what is it?”
    “It’s him,” he says, and gets suddenly hot and flaps his arms around. “It’s that man. He’s, I don’t know—”
    “Shush.” She glances back to the kitchen door, leans in close to hiss. “For goodness’ sake.”
    “Why’d you like him so much?”
    “He was your father’s friend.”
    “Do you believe that?”
    “What?”
    Billy straightens himself up to her. “I don’t.”
    “Do you think he’d lie?” She flinches back, coat still hanging half off. Her throat is going blotchy.
    “He can say anything,” Billy says. “How can we know that it’s the truth? We only have his word for it.”
    “No we don’t, Billy. We have your father’s word too; the postcard, you remember? He entrusted Mr. Sully with it.”
    “That’s what he says.” Billy shrugs. “He’s a liar, though. Bet he is.”
    She smacks him, open palm whack on the bare back of his leg. Her coat swings round like a pigeon’s tail, grey and shabby.
    He rubs at the sting. It doesn’t hurt, not really. His eyes water. It’s just the suddenness, the shock.
    “A little respect, Billy.”
    “He just eats our food and drinks our tea and sits in our warm—” his voice is rising, almost a wail “—and I don’t like it. I don’t want it any more.”
    “That’s enough. I’m not standing for this.”
    Her voice is like a water biscuit, parched and brittle. She fumbles her other arm into her sleeve, plucks the buttons through the buttonholes one after the other. Her lips are set. She doesn’t look at Billy.
    “Why now?” Billy asks. And it makes sudden, brilliant sense. “It’s been years and years. Why didn’t he come before?”
    Then she looks at him.
    “I see him walking the streets,” Billy says. “First thing, when I’m on my rounds.”
    “So what? What are you suggesting?” But she’s faltering now, he sees it, presses harder.
    “That he’s got nowhere else to go.”
    Her lips press tighter. “He’s here because of your father.”
    “He doesn’t give tuppence, you know he doesn’t. If he did, he would have come soon as he could; he could have posted the blooming card if he’d really wanted you to get it. If he cared, we’d know him already. We’d have known him for years.”
    She blinks, shakes her head. But she’s coming round to him, he sees it. He pushes his point home.
    “He just needs somewhere to be, that’s why he’s here. One night, you’ll let him stay, and he’ll be here for ever. Or till it suits him to move on.”
    She goes white. He actually sees the pink fade from her cheeks.
    “How dare you.”
    “It’s
true
.”
    “Go to your room.”
    “I