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BERYL BAINBRIDGE
CLAP HANDS, HERE COMES CHARLIE
Two weeks before Christmas, Angela Hisson gave
Mrs Henderson six tickets for the theatre. Mrs
Henderson was Angela Hisson's cleaning lady.
'I wanted to avoid giving you money: Angela
Hisson told her. 'Anybody can give money.
Somehow the whole process is so degrading. . .
taking it. . . giving it. They're reopening the Empire
Theatre for a limited season. I wanted to give you a
treat. Something you'll always remember. '
Mrs Henderson said, 'Thank you very much.'
She had never, when accepting money, felt
degraded.
Her husband, Charles Henderson, asked her
how much Angela Hisson had tipped her for
Christmas.
Mrs Henderson said not much. 'In fact,' she
admitted, 'nothing at all. Not in your actual
pounds, shillings and pence. We've got tickets for
the theatre instead.'
'What a discerning woman: cried Charles 20
Henderson. 'It's just what we've always needed.'
'The kiddies will like it: protested Mrs
Henderson. 'It's a pantomime. They've never been
to a pantomime.'
Mrs Henderson's son, Alec, said Peter Pan wasn't
a pantomime. At least not what his mother
understood by the word. Of course, there was a
fairy-tale e1ement to the story, dealing as it did
with Never-Never land and lost boys, but there was
more to it than that. 'It's written on several leve1s:
he informed her.
'I've been a lost boy all my life,' muttered Charles
Henderson, but nobody heard him.
'And I doubt: said Alec, 'if our Moira's kiddies
will make head nor tail of it. It's full of nannies and
coal fires burning in the nursery.'
'Don't talk rot,' fumed Charles Henderson.
'They've seen coal fires on television.'
'Shut up, Charlie,' said Alec. His father hated being
called Charlie. 'Does it have a principal boy?' asked 40
Mrs Henderson, hopefully. 'Yes and no,' said Alec.
'Not in the sense you mean. Don't expect any
singing or any smutty jokes. It's allegorical.'
'God Almighty,' said Charles Henderson.
When Alec had gone out to attend a union
meeting, Mrs Henderson told her husband he
needn't bother to come to the theatre. She wasn't
putting up with him and Alec having a pantomime
of their own during the course of the evening and
spoiling it for everyone else. She'd ask Mrs Rafferty
from the floor above to go in his place.
'By heck,' shouted Charles Henderson, striking
his forehead with the back of his hand, 'why didn't
I think of that? Perish the thought that our Alec
should be the one to be excluded. I'm only the
blasted bread-winner.' He knew his wife was just
mouthing words.
Mrs Rafferty's answer to such an outlandish
invitation was a foregone conclusion. She wouldn't
give it house room. Mrs Rafferty hadn't been out 60
of the building for five years, not since she was
bashed over the head coming home from Bingo.
All the same, Charles Henderson was irritated.
His wife's attitude, and the caustic remarks
addressed to him earlier by Alec brought on
another attack of indigestion. It was no use going
to his bed and lying flat. He knew from experience
that it wouldn't help. In the old days, when they
had lived in a proper house, he could have stepped
out of the back door and perambulated up and
down the yard for a few minutes. Had there been
anything so exalted as a back door in this hell-hole,
going out of it certainly wouldn't improve his
health. Not without a parachute. He couldn't even
open the window for a breath of air. This high up
there was generally a howling gale blowing in from
the river - it would suck the Christmas cards clean
off the sideboard. It wasn't normal, he thought, to
be perpetually on a par with the clouds. People
weren't meant to look out of windows and see 80
nothing but sky, particularly if they weren't looking
upwards. God knows how Moira's kiddies
managed. They were stuck up in the air over Kirby.
When Moira and Alec had been little they'd played
in the street - Moira on the front step fiddling with
her dolly, Alec on one roller-skate scooting in and
out of the lamp-posts. Of course there was no
denying that it had been nice at first to own a
decent bathroom and have hot water coming out
of the tap. After only a few weeks it had become
unnecessary to scrub young Alec's neck with his
toothbrush; the dirt just floated off on the towel.
But there was surely more to life than a clean neck.
Their whole existence, once work was over for the
day, was lived as though inside the cabin of an
aeroplane. And they weren't going anywhere - there
wasn't a landing field in sight. Just stars. Thousands
of the things, on clear nights, winking away outside
the double glazing. It occurred to Charles
Henderson that there were too many of them for 100
comfort or for grandeur. It was quality that
counted, not quantity.
At the end of the yard of the terraced house in
which he had once lived, there had been an outside
toilet. Sitting within the evil-smelling little shed, its
door swinging on broken hinges, he had
sometimes glimpsed one solitary star hung
motionless above the city. It had, he felt, given
perspective to his situation, his situation in the
wider sense - beyond his temporary perch. He was
earthbound, mortal, and a million light-years
separated him from that pale diamond burning in
the sky. One star was all a man needed.
On the night of the outing to the theatre, a bit of
a rumpus took place in the lift. It was occasioned
by Moira's lad, Wayne, jabbing at all the control
buttons and giving his grandmother a turn.
Alec thumped Wayne across the ear and Charles
Henderson flared up. 'There was no cause to do
that,' he shouted, though indeed there had been. 120
Wayne was a shocking kiddie for fiddling with
things.
'Belt up, Charlie,' ordered Alec.
Alec drove them to the Empire theatre in his car.
It wasn't a satisfactory arrangement as far as
Charles Henderson was concerned but he had no
alternative. The buses came and went as they
pleased. He was forced to sit next to Alec because
he couldn't stand being parked in the back with the
children and neither Moira nor Mrs Henderson felt
it was safe in the passenger seat. Not with Alec at
the wheel. Every time Alec accelerated going round
a corner, Charles Henderson was swung against his
son's shoulder.
'Get over, can't you?' cried Alec. 'Stop leaning on
me, Charlie.'
When they passed the end of the street in which
they had lived a decade ago, Mrs Henderson
swivelled in her seat and remarked how changed it
was, oh how changed. All those houses knocked 140
down, and for what? Alec said that in his opinion it
was good riddance to bad rubbish. The whole area
had never been anything but a slum.
'Perhaps you're right, son,' said Mrs Henderson.
But she was pandering to him.
Charles Henderson was unwise enough to
mention times gone by.
He was talking to his wife. 'Do you remember all
the men playing football in the street after work?'
'I do,' she said.
'And using the doorway of the Lune Laundry for a
goal-post? It was like living in a village, wasn't it?'
'A village,' hooted Alec. 'With a tobacco
warehouse and a brewery in the middle of it? Some
village.'
'We hunted foxes in the field behind the public
house,' reminisced Charles Henderson. 'And we
went fishing in the canal.'
'You did. You were never at home,' said Mrs
Henderson, without rancour. 160
'What field?' scoffed Alec. 'What canal?'
'There was a time,' said Charles Henderson,
'when we snared rabbits every Saturday and had
them for Sunday dinner. I tell no lies. You might
almost say we lived off the land. '
'Never-Never Land, more like,' sneered Alec,
and he drove, viciously, the wrong way down a one
way street.
When they got to the town centre he made them
all get out and stand about in the cold while he
manoeuvred the Mini backwards and forwards in
the underground car park. He cursed and
gesticulated.
'Behave yourself,' shouted Charles Henderson,
and he strode in front of the bonnet and made a
series of authoritative signals. Alec deliberately
drove the car straight at him.
'Did you see what that madman did?' Charles
Henderson asked his wife. 'He ran over my foot.'
'You're imagining things,' said Mrs Henderson, 180
but when he looked down he saw quite clearly the
tread of the tyre imprinted upon the Cherry
Blossom shine of his Sunday left shoe.
When the curtain went up, he was beginning to
feel the first twinges of his indigestion coming on
again. It wasn't to be wondered at all that swopping
of seats because Moira had a tall bloke sitting in
front of her, and the kiddies tramping back and
forth to the toilet, not to mention the carry-on over
parking the car. At least he hadn't got Alec sitting
next to him. He found the first act of Peter Pan a bit
of a mystery. It was very old-fashioned and cosy.
He supposed they couldn't get a real dog to play
the part. Some of the scenery could do with a lick
of paint. He didn't actually laugh out loud when Mr
Darling complained that nobody coddled him - oh
no, why should they, seeing he was only the breadwinner
- but he did grunt sardonically; Mrs
Henderson nudged him sharply with her elbow. He
couldn't for the life of him make out who or what 200
Tinkerbell was, beyond being a sort of glow-worm
bobbing up and down on the nursery wall, until
Wendy had her hair pulled for wanting Peter to
kiss her, and then he more or less guessed
Tinkerbell was a female. It was a bit suggestive, all
that. And at the end of the first scene when they all
flew out of the window, something must have gone
wrong with the wires because one of the children
never got off the ground. They brought the curtain
down fast. Wayne, was yawning his head off.
During Acts Two and Three, Charles
Henderson dozed. He was aware of loud noises
and children screaming in a bloodthirsty fashion.
He hoped Wayne wasn't having one of his
tantrums. It was confusing for him. He was
dreaming he was fishing in the canal for tiddlers
and a damn big crocodile crawled up the bank with
a clock ticking inside it. Then he heard a drum
beating and a voice cried out 'To die will be an
awfully big adventure.' He woke up then with a 220
start. He had a pain in his arm.
In the interval they retired to the bar, Moira and
himself and Alec. Mrs Henderson stayed with the
kiddies, to give Moira a break. Alec paid for a
round of drinks. 'Are you enjoying it then, Charlie?'
he asked.
'It's a bit loud for me,' said Charles Henderson.
'But I see what you mean about it being written on
different levels.'
'You do surprise me,' said Alec. 'I could have
sworn you slept through most of it. '
Moira said little Tracy was terrified of the crocodile
but she loved the doggie.
'Some doggie,' muttered Charles Henderson. 'I
could smell the moth balls.'
'But Wayne thinks it's lovely,' said Moira. 'He's
really engrossed.'
'I could tell,' Charles Henderson said. 'They
must have heard him yawning in Birkenhead.' .
'It's one of his signs,' defended Moira. 'Yawning. 240
He always yawns when he's engrossed.' She herself
was enjoying it very much, though she hadn't
understood at first what Mr Darling was doing
dressed up as Captain Hook.
'It's traditional,' Alec told her.
'What are you on about?' asked Charles
Henderson. 'That pirate chappie was never Mr
Darling.'
'Yes it was, Dad,' said Moira. 'I didn't cotton on
myself at first, but it was the same man. '
'I suppose it saves on wages,' Charles Henderson
said. Alec explained it was symbolic. The kindly Mr
Darling and the brutal Captain Hook were two
halves of the same man.
'There wasn't more than a quarter of Mr
Darling,' cried Charles Henderson, heatedly. 'That
pirate was waving his cutlass about every time I
opened my eyes. I can't see the point of it, can you,
Moira?'
Moira said nothing, but her mouth drooped at 260
the corners. She was probably thinking about her
husband who had run off and left her with two
kiddies and a gas bill for twenty-seven quid.
'The point,' said Alec, 'is obvious. Mr Darling
longs to murder his offspring.' He was shouting
quite loudly. 'Like fathers in real life. They're
always out to destroy their children. '
'What's up with you?' asked Mrs Henderson,
when her husband had returned to his seat.
'That Alec,' hissed Charles Henderson. 'He talks
a load of codswallop. I'd like to throttle him.' .
During Act Four Charles Henderson asked his
wife for a peppermint. His indigestion was
fearsome. Mrs Henderson told him to shush. She
too seemed engrossed in the pantomime. Wayne
was sitting bolt upright. Charles Henderson tried to
concentrate. He heard some words but not others.
The lost boys were going back to their Mums, that
much he gathered. Somebody called Tiger Lily had
come into it. And Indians were beating tom-toms. 280
His heart was beating so loudly that it was a
wonder Alec didn't fly off the handle and order
him to keep quiet. Wendy had flown off with the
boys, jerkily, and Peter was asleep. It was odd how
it was all to do with flying. That Tinkerbell person
was flashing about among the cloth trees. He had
the curious delusion that if he stood up on his seat,
he too might soar up into the gallery. It was a daft
notion because when he tried to shift his legs they
were as heavy as lead. Mrs Darling would be
pleased to see the kiddies again. She must have
gone through hell. He remembered the time Alec
had come home half an hour late from the Cubs -
the length of those minutes, the depth of that fear.
It didn't matter what his feelings had been towards
Alec for the last ten years. He didn't think you were
supposed to feel much for grown-up children. He
had loved little Alec, now a lost boy, and that was
enough.
Something dramatic was happening on stage. 300
Peter had woken up and was having a disjointed
conversation with Tinkerbell, something to do with
cough mixture and poison. Tink, you have drunk my
medicine . . . it was poisoned and you drank it to save my
life. . . Tink dear, are you dying? . . The tiny star that
was Tinkerbell began to flicker. Charles Henderson
could hear somebody sobbing. He craned sideways
to look down the row and was astonished to see
that his grandson was wiping at his eyes with the
back of his sleeve. Fancy Wayne, a lad who last
year had been caught dangling a hamster on a piece
of string from a window on the fourteenth floor of
the flats, crying about a light going out. Peter Pan
was advancing towards the audience, his arms
flung wide. Her voice is so low I can hardly hear what she
is saying. She says . . . she says she thinks she could get well
again if children believed in fairies. Say quick that you
believe. If you believe, clap your hands. Clap your hands and
Tinkerbell will live.
At first the clapping was muted, apologetic. 320
Tinkerbell was reduced to a dying spark quivering
on the dusty floorboards of the stage. Charles
Henderson's own hands were clasped to his chest.
There was a pain inside him as though somebody
had slung a hook through his heart. The clapping
increased in volume. The feeble Tinkerbell began
. to glow. She sailed triumphantly up the trunk of a
painted tree. She grew so dazzling that Charles
Henderson was blinded. She blazed above him in
the skies of Never-Never Land.
'Help me,' he said, using his last breath.
'Shut up, Charlie,' shouted Mrs Henderson, and
she clapped and clapped until the palms of her
hands were stinging.
© Beryl Bainbridge
Reprinted by kind permission of the author
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