Magnificent Joe Read Online Free PDF Page A

potholes still have a sugar-pane of ice. My arm aches from carrying the tool bag.
    Mrs Joe’s house is at the end of an isolated terrace of railway cottages. Of course, there was once a station nearby, but this is now nothing more than some suggestive bumps in a field where sheep graze. The houses are Victorian, well built, and must be worth quite a bit. I’m sure Mrs Joe knows this, but I’m equally sure that she doesn’t care.
    I go round the back and knock. There’s a shuffling from within. After some time, during which I studiously avoid noticing that the wall is water-damaged and needs repointing, Mrs Joe opens up.
    â€˜Morning. I’ve come to fix that lino for you.’
    â€˜Come in, son.’ Mrs Joe smiles tiredly.
    There are breakfast smells in her kitchen, but the evidence has been cleared away. There is no sign of neglect in her housekeeping. The offending linoleum curls up in the corner of the room. I hope that no damp has spread under the rest of it.
    â€˜Would you like a cup of tea?’
    â€˜Not yet. I’ll get to work first.’ I kneel and begin to peel back the lino, which comes away with unhappy ease. Clearly it is completely fucked and there’s barely any point in trying to stick it down again. ‘How are you?’ I ask Mrs Joe.
    â€˜Oh, fine apart from the usual complaints.’
    â€˜Joe not here?’
    â€˜He’s gone out walking.’
    It was a pointless question: Joe plods the local footpaths for hours every day. Maybe he has a plan – a timetable of routes that he follows – but it’s not one I’ve ever fathomed. He just appears here, there, or anywhere – shoulders hunched, hands thrust into coat pockets. He has been this way for as long as I can remember. Once, people would recognize him and give him the odd wave or very occasional jeer, but these days, nobody knows him. Perhaps they assume he’s a tramp.
    I fold the loose lino all the way over on itself and weigh it down with my tool bag. Mrs Joe stands at the other side of the room, watching me. ‘Is it bad?’
    â€˜Aye. We’ll just have to do our best.’
    â€˜You sound like your father. “Do our best.” That’s what he always said.’
    I rummage in my tool bag for a scraper with which to remove some of the old adhesive.
    â€˜He used to do bits for me too, you know, after my Johnny died.’
    â€˜Aye, I know.’
    â€˜That’s right, you came with him sometimes.’
    â€˜I did,’ I say, and feel as if I’ve been shown a photograph of myself that I don’t remember posing for. ‘It was a long time ago.’
    â€˜It only seems that way to you.’ She stands there, one claw-like hand resting on the work surface, and looks down at me. She probably remembers a lot of things.
    Mrs Joe was almost a surrogate mother to my father. He had no parents of his own, or any other family. He grew up in a children’s home, and when that was over, he got a job as a trainee welder, where Johnny – Mrs Joe’s husband – was his foreman. One day, Johnny cottoned on that my dad had no tea to go home to and brought him here. It was because of this relationship that my dad eventually moved to the village, where he met my mother. I suppose I have Mrs Joe’s cooking to thank for my existence.
    Of course, this was back in the 1960s, before Johnny died, when Mrs Joe was just Mrs Sally Briggs. Before there was nothing left to define her life but her idiot son.
    I turn back to my work, but the scraper proves ineffectual. I need solvent. It doesn’t really matter. The lino, like almost everything else in this house, is well past it. There is no point in sticking it down again, but there’s equally no point in replacing it. Mrs Joe is old, can’t afford it, and in a couple of years this house will be occupied by some Audi driver who will put tiles down anyway. Best bodge it, then. I am prepared