Colour Blind

by Catherine Cookson

  Halfway home Cavan burst out laughing. ‘It was funny the way you got him on the raw, joking about St Patrick being English.’

  ‘I wasn’t joking—he is.’

  ‘You’re funning.’

  ‘No, not a bit of it—he was English, all right.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Oh, I read it.’

  ‘Well, you can’t believe all you read. Was it in the paper?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  They went on pushing their barrows; and Cavan looked through the drizzle of rain at this young fellow, tousle-haired, dirty and thin, as they all were, whose calm assurance was making even him have his doubts as to St Patrick’s nationality. But he felt he must warn the lad of making it an open statement, particularly around these quarters.

  ‘I shouldn’t repeat it too often, lad.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Oh well, you know.’

  ‘Aye, I know…for the same reason that folk don’t like to remember that Christ was a Jew. They like to think he was an Englishman, or God, which amounts to the same thing with some of the bloody churchgoing lot.’

  Cavan was aghast. ‘But why, man, he was God!’

  ‘All right, if you think so. He may be to you, but he isn’t to me; nor is he to two-thirds of the world. I think he was the greatest man who has yet lived, but I don’t think he was God.’

  Cavan stopped pushing his barrow.

  ‘You serious, lad?’

  ‘Yes, why shouldn’t I be?’

  The positive tone silenced further questioning. Cavan had never heard anyone talk like this.

  It wasn’t until Cavan was leaving him to continue his journey alone to Jarrow that the young fellow said, ‘Do you read much?’

  Cavan rubbed his sleeve across his face. ‘Not in my line, lad. Although, mind’—he gave a superior nod—‘I’ve got some books—stacks of them—nigh on fifty. There was nearly a hundred, but the wife stuffed some up the wash-house flue.’

  The young fellow put the handles of his barrow down on to the road. ‘What kind of books?’

  ‘Oh, all kinds; some in foreign tongues; but some of the English ones are as bad—I can’t make head or tail of them. Some are about science and some are about the Middle Ages. Some’ve got one pound marked on ’em. Fools and their money, I say. They all belonged to an old wife who died, by the name of Peggy Flaherty. The bums sold up the house to meet the back rent, and I went along ’cause I’d nowt better to do, an’ when they put the books up, just for a lark I said threepence…and be hanged, I got them. Laugh—the place was razed. And there was me and all the bairns in the neighbourhood carrying the books home in a long procession, and Kathie raised Cain and made me dump them in the wash-house. Still they’ve come in handy.’

  ‘Can I see them?’

  ‘Why, aye, lad.’

  And that had been the beginning. Ted Grant saw the books and convinced Cavan of their value, not in money but in knowledge. He was absurdly grateful for the dozen that Cavan gave him, and he persuaded Cavan to take the rest into the house, which he did, and stacked them under the bed; and so impressed was he by Ted’s praise of them that he threatened to annihilate Kathie if she stuffed any more of them up the flue.

  Ted was a married man, with three children all under six. He was also an embittered man, because, having won a scholarship to the High School, his parents were forced by circumstances to take him away at fifteen. He was further embittered through having been so weak as to marry while on the dole, for he became dependent on his wife. He was still dependent on her, for she went out to work, leaving him to see to the house and the children. His trek to the tip was made mostly from choice, for it helped him to keep his self-respect—he was doing work of a sort, and among men.

  Cavan’s conversion to reading seemed to happen overnight. From Ted Grant, who was young enough to be his son, he learned, sitting half the night listening to him, being guided by him, step by step, until now he could read his own books with understanding. And there was rarely a day passed but he did not quote his tutor’s words to the joking yet admiring men at the corner, ‘They can starve your bellies, but only you can starve your mind.’ So although there was little or no prospect of work for Cavan in the next few years, after which he would be really too old to bother, there were times now when the thought of sudden prosperity, returning life to its normal routine of the war years, was actually frightening to him. He wanted nothing to interfere with the orderliness of his days and nights—his sitting on the tip, except in very severe weather, from ten at night till five or six in the morning, his sleeping for six hours, and the rest of the day being taken up with his reading and keeping his eye on Matt. The only part of his present life which he resented was this trailing of his son—this casual shadowing of Matt whenever he thought he was making his way to Bridget, and his sitting in Bridget’s kitchen in his endeavour to outstay Matt—wasting precious hours of his reading time in shielding Bridget from…From what was he trying to shield Bridget? Cavan had never put it into words; but the feeling that he was preventing something happening never left him; and it was being strengthened as he watched his son’s face becoming even more twisted, and his step losing its spring and beginning to slither, and his fingers plucking the front of his coat. This last habit was a recent addition to his queerness. Cavan noticed it first when Matt, Bridget and he were in the kitchen, and Rosie unexpectedly came in. Matt, his black, gimlet eyes fixed on the girl, who never looked at him if she could help it, began to pluck his coat like a woman plucking a hen.

  Cavan began to dread the times when Rosie would be at home. It was one thing keeping his eye on Matt where Bridget was concerned, but he felt utterly inadequate to stand between Rosie, the girl, or the woman as she now was, and Matt. He had formed one point of the protective triangle in which she had stood as a child, the other points being Bridget and Tony; but as soon as she went into service the triangle became useless. And now here she was home again. He turned into Dunstable Street’s back lane and into the house, and found Bridget alone in the kitchen.

  ‘Well, lass?’

  He took off his cap and hung it on the knob of the chair.

  ‘She’s back again.’

  ‘Aye, I heard.’

  ‘Somebody’s been quick.’ Bridget’s tone was sharp.

  ‘It was Johnnie.’

  ‘It isn’t her fault.’

  ‘I never said it was, lass.’

  Bridget doubled her fists and beat her knuckles together, betraying her worry. She stood gazing unseeingly out of the kitchen window, and as Cavan looked at her straight back he felt a stirring of pride that he, a little shrimp of a man, was father to such a fine, upstanding figure as Bridget. Here she was, on forty, with no grey hairs and a body as straight as a die. The only part of her showing the stamp of her trials was her face, which had a stiffness about it that at times he likened to enamel. He cleared his throat and spat into the fire.

  ‘It’s no use taking on, lass.’

  ‘But this is the third place she’s had in two months.’ She swung round and faced him. ‘Why in God’s name can’t they leave her alone?’

  Cavan rasped his hand across his chin, and gazed down on his boots so covered with patches that there was no sign of the originals left.

  ‘And she hasn’t given her a reference.’

  Cavan’s head jerked up. ‘That’s bad…what’ll she do?’ Bridget turned to the window again, saying, ‘God knows…where can she get without a reference?’

  In the silence of the kitchen Cavan sat pulling his lower lip in and out between his finger and thumb; and when Bridget turned from the window and thumped the kettle on to the fire he said, ‘Don’t worry, lass, something’ll turn up—she’ll drop into a good place one of these days.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Bridget harshly. ‘Oh, I could kill them all!’ She ground the kettle into the cinders…

  Upstairs, Rose Angela, too, asked herself where she could go now—no decent mistre
ss would take her without a reference. She sat on the side of the bed and looked at the reflection of her face in the little mirror of the dressing table, and not for the first time she told herself how she hated that face—it had brought her nothing but misery. The brown of the eyes, in the depth of which lay the pain and mystery of her father’s race, were deepened still further by the sweep of the long, black lashes, which shadowed the skin until it reached the cheekbones, changing its colour from a creamy tint to that of deep olive.

  It was this face which laid her open to men like Mr Spalding—oh, Mr Spalding and his hands—she shuddered and closed her eyes—waking her up in the night, moving over her in the dark. She had wanted to scream, but she knew it would bring his wife, so she had pleaded, ‘Leave me alone…please leave me alone.’ But she did scream; even with his hand over her mouth she screamed. But apparently not even the scream convinced Mrs Spalding that her husband was at fault—Rose Angela had enticed him, and would have to leave. But such was Mrs Spalding’s mentality that she said nothing the next morning, and allowed Rose Angela to continue with her usual routine of doing the washing; but when this was finished she handed her three days’ wages and told her to go. Rose Angela did not even protest that she was entitled to a week’s wages in lieu of notice; she packed her things and went, tired, and slightly dazed, and burning under the humiliation of yet once again losing her place and having to go home.

  What was she to do? She saw her head shaking in the mirror. Should she try to get into some shop? But there were so many trying, and one stood little chance because of the married women, who pleaded a family to support. She could perhaps go into the working-man’s café…No! She stood up and began to unpack her case, stacking her uniform neatly in the drawers of the dressing table, her morning pink prints and big white aprons, her black afternoon dress and little frilled caps. No! She would first try to get a place somewhere.

  She began to move about the room, straightening things out of habit. Always on her return from the big houses her home seemed smaller and the fifteen streets more grim. She paused in her moving and looked down into the street. The children as usual were filling the pavement, more so immediately below the window. When they were chased from other doors they invariably settled outside twenty-eight, for Bridget never shooed them off. Rose Angela watched them with the yearning that had never left her. How often had she stood as she was doing now and watched their play. The longing to join them was past, but the hurt of being ostracised by them still remained.

  This being cast out was not due entirely to the tint of her skin, but because, since the day she marked Janie Wilson, she had become suspect…there were two people now in the fifteen streets scarred, and by a Paterson; and mothers warned their children, ‘Keep clear of that Rosie Paterson, mind,’ and the children, ever anxious to create bogies, fed their inherent cruelty on this ready-made one. The spark of courage Rose Angela had felt after hitting Janie Wilson had been crushed, and had never risen again. More and more she began to sit by the fire, sometimes thinking and wondering why her thoughts hurt her, sometimes listening to Bridget reading stories. But very seldom did she hear a story right through, for when her Uncle Matt came in Bridget would send her upstairs. There had been a period of stark fear, she remembered, after she hit Janie, when she was afraid even to go to school, and would walk with her head bowed and her arms ready to shield her face. Her fear, she knew, was not unwarranted, for her mother would often be at the school gate to meet her, and if this were impossible she would tell her to go along to her place and wait there. The years did little to lessen the fear.

  Directly below her a group of children were taking turns at kicking the bottom of a broken bottle into chalked squares. They were doing this while standing on one foot and with their hands behind them. Rose Angela looked at the smallest among them, a child of five, Janie Wilson’s child, and thought how like her mother she was. A boy was manipulating a piece of tin, through the centre of which were drawn two pieces of string. As he pulled the string the tin whirled, making a sawing noise, and he dashed among the girls, working it against their faces. There were screams and yells, and they scattered and ran, all except Janie’s child, who stood fixed and screaming. Rosie was about to knock on the window when a big girl pounced on the boy, crying, in a very good imitation of her elders, ‘Get out of it! Do you want her to be marked for life, like her mother?’

  Rosie turned sharply from the window. Marked for life! The mark of the buckle had shrunk until now it wasn’t a quarter of an inch in length. It had not spoiled Janie’s looks, for she had none to spoil. Rosie had long suspected that this lay at the core of Janie sustaining the hate over the years. Oh, what did it all mean…She sat down on her bed again. What did living amount to? Fear and hate, fear and hate, that’s what her living amounted to. It always had and it looked as if it always would. She could count on one hand those who had never caused her to be afraid—her mother and Uncle Tony, her grandfather, Father Bailey and Mrs Kent. If only Mrs Kent hadn’t died—she would still have been with her, and happy. Mrs Kent had made her feel as if she was different; and not because she was a half-caste, either. She would come to the kitchen at nights and talk about her husband, who had been killed in the war. But more often she would talk about Rose Angela herself. Frequently during the two years they were together she had said, ‘Don’t you worry, my dear, you won’t always be doing this. You’ll see…you’ll marry, and marry well, and I’ll live to see it.’ But she was dead, and Rose Angela often thought that if those two comparatively happy years could have gone on she would have been content to let Mrs Kent’s prophecy of a happy marriage go forever unfulfilled.

  Her mother’s voice came to her from the foot of the stairs, ‘Rosie, there’s a cup of tea…your granda’s here.’

  ‘I’ll be there in a minute, Ma.’ She straightened the coils of her shining black hair and smoothed down her grey print dress; then she went downstairs.

  ‘Hallo, Granda.’

  ‘Hallo, lass—how are you?’

  ‘Oh, all right, Granda.’ She smiled at him, and took a cup of tea from her mother’s hand, then sat down near him; and Cavan, returning her smile, thought: You can’t blame the chaps, really. God in Heav’n, but she’s bonny! While he was thinking this he felt that the description was not quite right, but how could anyone find words to fit the effect she had on a man? He could well see her driving a fellow crackers, and doing so unconsciously, because he knew she was unaware of her power. Her movements were so natural and unaffected, yet in them was the sensuousness that tore at a man’s control…God help and protect her! Where would she end?

  ‘How’s your reading going, Granda?’ There was a faint twinkle in her eye.

  ‘Oh, fine, lass.’

  ‘And the professor?’

  ‘Oh, Ted’s still goin’ strong.’

  ‘Has he unravelled any more mysteries?’

  ‘My God, yes.’ He hitched his chair nearer. ‘Do you know something, Rosie?’ He stopped and pinched his lip and nodded to himself before going on. ‘I’d like to be letting on to Father O’Malley about this—aye, well, I might an’ all some day—Well, do you know there’s not a bit of truth in this Adam and Garden of Eden business—never has been.’

  Rose Angela lifted her eyebrows.

  ‘Yes, it surprised me, but there’s been books written about it…do you know it’s the belief—and that of men of great learning—that we come from…’

  ‘Monkeys!’ put in Bridget, endeavouring to forget her anxieties by joining in her father’s pet pastime.

  ‘Not a bit of it. Life in the first place was nothing but slime. Now can you take that in? Slime. And another thing; do you know why a snake’s the length it is, eh?’

  ‘No, Granda.’

  ‘Well, because it wanted to be that long.’

  Both Bridget and Rose Angela remained silent during his impressive pauses, knowing that it gave him great pleasure to expound the knowledge gathered from his books and Ted Grant.<
br />
  ‘And do you know why a bull has horns?’

  ‘No, Granda.’ Rose Angela shook her head.

  ‘Because it thought them up.’

  Here Bridget and Rose Angela laughed.

  ‘Ah, you can laugh, but it’s a fact. It’s all in a book by a fellow called Lemarck…the bulls and cows and such had only their heads to fight with, and they wanted something hard there so much that it affected their glands and things, so horns started to grow out of the tops of their heads.’

  ‘They weren’t made by God, then?’ The twinkle was evident in Rose Angela’s eyes now. ‘Where does he come in, then, Granda?’

  ‘Ah, ye’ve asked me something there. Where does he, lass? It makes a fellow think. It made me think a bit, I can tell you, ’cause, as Ted says, he could’ve made the slime in the first place; but that does away with this business of making the world in seven days. But then again Ted says it was only them Romans who chopped time up into days. A day could’ve been the word that meant a million years, for all we know. And then, as Ted says again, who’s to know how long he took over making it? That’s if he did. He’s never told anybody, for Ted says half them prophet fellows, if they were about the day, would be shut up as loonies. People believed them in bygone times ’cause they was always frightened of what they couldn’t understand. Aye, and that’s another point. Have you ever thought of how our lives are ruled by what other people say? They say God wants you to do this or that, but how does anybody know what God wants of them, other than what the good part of their hearts tells them, eh?’

  ‘Don’t you believe in God then, Granda?’

  ‘I don’t know, lass; I just don’t know.’ He stroked the bare part of his scalp with two fingers. Then, looking from one to the other, he laughed. ‘Be damned, it’s funny, but I just don’t know.’