Colour Blind

by Catherine Cookson

  They stood for a second longer looking at each other and understanding each other, as if this was but one of many meetings during which their hopes and fears had been laid bare.

  He opened the door for her and she went out before him, and as they hurried over the sleepers he took her elbow to help her, and this action thrust her painfully back into the past—Jimmy had done things like this…Tony didn’t. His loving showed itself in other ways; like the men of the fifteen streets, he practically ignored women in public, at least when it meant doing any service that would qualify him for the name of ‘Sloppy’ and bring derision on him and the recipient of his affection. But, she remembered, Jimmy had not minded. He, like this man, had done these little things naturally. Her heart began to ache with an intolerable ache. Poor Jimmy! She should never have married him; she should have had the courage to have the bairn. But he had wanted her so. And she was young and silly, and ignorant.

  And now he was dying; and he’d been living in the town and hadn’t troubled her; and Rosie had stood all that scandal about living with an Arab rather than give him away. Would Rosie ever forgive her? What must she have felt when everybody turned against her! Oh, Rosie, lass, Rosie!

  Stanhope’s tongue, clicking with impatience, brought her thoughts from Rosie. He was looking through the railway-carriage window.

  ‘They’re gone!’ He turned a disappointed face to her. ‘The thing is now, where to look for them, for they may have gone across the water. Yet there’s the chance they may still be knocking around the market place or the ferry.’

  So, for an hour or more Stanhope and Bridget walked about the market and the ferry and beyond them, but saw no signs of Murphy and Pete. Then Stanhope suggested that Bridget, who was looking very tired, should return home and that as soon as he found Murphy he would send her word.

  But Bridget was reluctant to comply with his suggestion, even when he pressed the point that they would likely go on for hours without success. At last, when he intimated that he stood more chance of finding something out if alone, she agreed; and, as he had put her daughter on the tram for home last night, now he did her, reassuring her once more that as soon as he had any news he would send for her.

  Alone again, he hurried down the Mill Dam bank; but stopped before turning into Holborn. It would be a good idea to leave a note at the railway carriage telling Murphy, should he return, to wait there for him. Forgotten now completely was the fact that a short while ago he had threatened to throw him in the river.

  He was going through the narrow cut, when, to his surprise and relief, he saw Murphy entering it from the river end. Murphy had, however, seen him first, and was already making a hasty retreat when Stanhope shouted. ‘Hi there! Murphy!’

  Murphy did not stop, so Stanhope broke into a run, calling, ‘Just a minute! What’s the matter with you, man?’ And when he came abreast of him he demanded, ‘Are you deaf? Couldn’t you hear me?’

  Murphy looked at him out of the corner of his eye and cautiously answered the latter part of the question, ‘Aye, guv’nor.’

  Then, remembering the reason for this caution, Stanhope said, ‘I’m sorry about that; I was a bit mad. But something’s happened since then, and I want your help, Murphy.’

  ‘Aye, guv’nor.’ Again Murphy looked sideways at him.

  ‘I want you to take me to Rosie.’

  ‘What?’ Now Murphy was fronting him. ‘Take you to Rosie! Oh, well, guv’nor.’ He rubbed his chin with the palm of his hand. ‘Well, it’s like this. I can’t do it…not right away I can’t. I’ll have to have a talk with…Well, you see…’

  He stopped, and Stanhope said, ‘It’s all right; I know who Rosie’s father is. Her mother has just been to see me.’

  ‘To see you,’ repeated Murphy. ‘But God, guv’nor, she don’t know nowt about Jimmy being here!’

  ‘She does now.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By the drawing I did of him.’

  ‘But he don’t want her to know.’

  ‘She knows, anyway, and it’s right that she should. And she’s worried about Rosie. I’m worried about Rosie, too, Murphy.’

  Murphy had never before detected such a tone in Stanhope’s voice, and he moved from one foot to the other, saying, ‘Well, guv’nor…I dunno…I suppose it’ll be all right.’

  ‘It will be, I assure you.’

  ‘I wish Pete was here.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Gone along the river looking for a sign of…’ He stopped; it wasn’t likely the guv’nor knew anything about Matt. ‘Seeing if there’s anything doing,’ he ended.

  ‘Take me now, Murphy,’ Stanhope urged. ‘If you don’t, I’ll find them anyway. It will take me longer, but I’ll find them.’

  ‘Aye, there’s that in it.’ Murphy again looked sideways at him, and his next words would never have been spoken had he given thought to them. But as he stared at this big, blustering man, they seemed to be drawn to his lips. ‘You’re a bloody funny bloke,’ he said, and his mouth fell agape at his own temerity.

  After a moment they laughed together, then turned and went through the cut and into Holborn.

  Hassan came thoughtfully down the stairs. His first love offering had just been refused. When previously he had left Rose Angela he returned to his café and had there packed a basket of delicacies for James, and for her he had selected, from a small hoard of such things, a ring, a very valuable ring. Although he had given a lot of money for it, he knew he had paid only about a third of its real value. Rose Angela, however, had merely glanced at it and shook her head, and instead of allowing him to place the ring on her finger she had placed her fingers on her lips to ensure his silence so as not to disturb James’ sleep. And when he left the ring on the table she picked it up and followed him on to the landing and whispered, ‘No, Hassan, I can’t take it. Not yet, anyway.’ And he simply said, ‘All right,’ and told himself that he must go carefully, and that time was young. Give her a few weeks to recover and she would turn to him; she would be his…he would make her his; only let her not see that painter and she would forget.

  It was at this point that he reached the foot of the stairs, and, as if his thought of the painter had conjured Stanhope up, he saw him. Through the open doorway he saw him and Murphy enter the yard, and as fire will sweep over oil, so a flame of hate swept over him.

  He stood guarding the foot of the stairs; and when Murphy, coming first through the doorway, said, ‘Watcher, there,’ he made no reply. He did not even look at Murphy, but kept his eyes riveted on the breadth of the man protruding behind him.

  Stanhope, coming abreast of Murphy, faced Hassan, and he recognised in this thin tall Arab the man he had chased from the house last night. Also, even before Hassan spoke, he knew him to be the Arab whose name was coupled with that of Rosie, and immediately guessed that if rumour was wrong it was not this man’s fault.

  ‘What do you want?’ Hassan pointedly addressed Stanhope.

  And Stanhope tried to override his own dislike, for, after all, this was a man, and if his feeling for Rosie was to be compared with his own, then, whatever his race, he was to be pitied. So, with unusual calmness for him, he replied, ‘Don’t you think that’s my business?’

  ‘No, I do not.’

  The English was precise and clipped, not the pidgin kind, and this too impressed Stanhope that he was not dealing with the ordinary run of Arab who manned the cargo ships running back and forth from the Tyne. So again he curbed the hot retort on his tongue and said, ‘Well, whether you do or not is beside the point. Now, if you’ll move…’

  ‘I’ll see you in your own particular hell first!’

  ‘Why, Hassan, man’—Murphy was gaping open-mouthed—‘what’s come over you? Look, the guv’nor just wants to see Rosie and…’

  Hassan turned on Murphy and repeated, ‘Just wants to see Rosie! You fool!’

  Murphy stood dumb with amazement. Never before had Hassan taken this line with him. To him Hassan was a
warm man, and a very decent bloke, better than many whites, for he always had a civil word and would sit and crack with you. But now he was speaking to him as if he was a dog. And no coloured man, however decent he might be, was going to speak to him like a dog! After all was said and done, what was he but an Arab, even if he had money. No, by God, he’d soon let him see who he was speaking to!

  ‘What the hell’s up with you! The guv’nor’s come to see Rosie, and he’s goner see her!’

  Murphy’s tone now brought Hassan’s gaze back to him, and his anger for a moment was touched with sorrow: Murphy was no longer Murphy, he was a white man, taking another white man’s part against colour. And Jimmy, in his wilful ignorance, thought Rose Angela could entirely escape this!

  Hassan’s voice was quieter now as he addressed Murphy, but bitterness lay deep in it. ‘A few hours ago you saved Rose Angela from jumping in the river, because of this man’s treatment of her. Now you bring him to her. Well, it’s too late, she’s going to marry me.’

  ‘What’—the loose goose-flesh skin of Murphy’s neck rippled—‘marry you!’ He turned and looked at Stanhope; but Stanhope was showing no surprise at this preposterous statement, for inside he was sick with this new knowledge, that because of him Rosie had tried to drown herself.

  ‘Marry you!’ gulped Murphy. ‘Why, man, you must be mad.’ He knew that Hassan was fond of Rosie, but so was he, and so was Pete. Aye, by lad, Pete was very struck on Rosie. But would any of them think they could marry her? Yet here was Hassan saying he was going to. Why, it was enough to make the guv’nor bash his face in. He looked again at Stanhope, who was looking at Hassan…not as he should do, in one of his mad tears, but quietly, and what was more puzzling he was speaking quietly too. Funnily quiet, Murphy thought.

  ‘I am here to see Rosie, and I am going to see her! As for what she does, that is for her to decide.’

  ‘You’re so sure of yourself, aren’t you? You think you only have to see her again and tell her you know now she wasn’t living with an Arab and everything will be all right!’ Hassan’s lip curled back, miming the scorn against himself the last words implied.

  And Murphy thought, I shouldn’t have told him. I want me head look’n.

  ‘Will you get out of my way?’

  Hassan’s reply was to remain staring down at Stanhope from the vantage point of the bottom stair. There were now spectators on the scene, some on the stairs above and some in the doorway. Stanhope was not aware of them; he was only aware that his tolerance had reached its limit. With a lightning stroke for one so heavily built his hands shot up, and the Arab and he changed places. In almost the wink of an eye he had swung Hassan bodily from the step. But like lightning, too, Hassan’s hand moved behind to his hip pocket in a movement that spoke plainer than words to the onlookers, for whereas before no-one had uttered a word, now there were cries of, ‘Don’t be a fool, man!’ ‘You know who’ll get the worst of it, don’t you?’ and ‘None of that, now; do you want to bring the pollis on the house?’

  Hassan’s fingers still gripped the handle of his knife as Stanhope turned from him and walked up the stairs, followed by Murphy. And now the people in the hall and those on the stairs came and closed round Hassan, urging him, for his own sake, to be sensible and reminding him of the too swift justice that followed when a coloured man attacked a white.

  As Murphy tapped gently on the door, Stanhope stood taut, waiting. His mind was in a turmoil; all he wanted to do in this moment was to savour the thought that he was about to see her again, but the scene just past and the significance of the Arab’s statement that she was going to marry him, combined with the thought that but for Murphy she might have succeeded in drowning herself, all added to his confusion. And when the door was softly opened and Rose Angela stood there, a warning finger on her lips, all he could do was to stare at her.

  As her hand dropped to her side, Murphy whispered, ‘What did I tell you, eh, Rosie? Here’s the guv’nor; he wants to see you.’

  When neither she nor Stanhope spoke, Murphy went on, ‘Is Jimmy asleep? Well, that will do him good.’ The silence being too much for him, he moved from one foot to the other, then sidled past her into the room.

  Stanhope said, ‘I must talk to you, Rosie.’

  With a backward glance towards the bed, Rose Angela stepped out on to the landing and pulled the door to behind her. And now they were within a foot of each other. He looked into her face, discoloured and bruised from cheekbone to cheekbone, her eyes swollen level and their expression without life; and his love at this moment became purified and selfless. All he wanted was to ensure that never again would she know fear or want; and so deep was the sadness in her eyes that he felt that not in a lifetime could he erase it. That he had put most of it there he knew, and the responsibility lay like a weight on his tongue, making him inarticulate. ‘Rosie…what can I say?’

  She did not help him, she only looked at him, into his eyes.

  ‘Oh, Rosie, if you had only told me at the beginning. Can you forgive me?’

  He took her hand, and it lay passively in his. ‘Can you?’ His voice was deep with his feeling.

  Slowly she inclined her head, and he sighed. ‘Oh, Rosie, I’ll never forgive myself…never.’ He looked about the landing. The other two doors were closed, but he felt that behind them were straining ears, and he whispered, ‘Come back with me, I must talk to you.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘But we must talk.’

  He looked at the door behind her, and for the first time she spoke. ‘My father is very sick.’

  ‘Can I see him?’

  ‘I would rather you didn’t.’

  The listlessness of her voice perturbed him, and he said, ‘There’s bound to be some way in which I can help.’

  Again she shook her head, and it seemed to him she was growing more lifeless each moment.

  ‘Rosie’—he meant the demand in his voice to stir her—‘go back to last night; try to forget what has happened in between. I will make you forget. I’m to blame, at least for this morning…Will you?’

  Still looking into his eyes, she answered him, ‘A short while ago I promised Hassan…’ But what she had promised Hassan she could not go on to explain. Instead she shook her head pitifully and Stanhope’s brows gathered into a furrow and his jaw stiffened. ‘You can’t do it! You didn’t mean it. You did it on the rebound, you know you did. And perhaps, naturally, to hurt me.’

  ‘No. I did it because’—she looked away from him as if she was seeing the reason for her action beyond the walls of the house—‘because I’m tired of fighting.’

  ‘Tired of fighting?’ He echoed her words in perplexity.

  She nodded, her gaze penetrating the future. ‘With him there’ll be no need to fight; I won’t be ashamed any more of being what I am.’

  ‘Rosie, you’re mad! You don’t know what you are saying. You, ashamed of what you are! You’re tired and ill. You’re not thinking rationally because of all you’ve been through.’

  She turned and looked at him again. ‘It’s strange, but my mind is clearer now than ever before in my life. I’ve always been fighting inside myself because I felt inferior. I’ve always felt inferior and tried to hide it; and only Hassan could see it, for he, too, knows what it is like to be looked down on. But now there won’t be any need to hide it.’

  ‘Stop it!’ Stanhope’s voice had a touch of the old arrogance in it. ‘You cannot compare yourself with him.’

  ‘You don’t like Arabs, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t!’

  ‘Yet I’m coloured too.’

  ‘Rosie’—he swallowed hard and inhaled deeply in an endeavour to retain a hold on his calmness—‘why all this talk of colour? What’s come over you? Last night you didn’t take this line.’

  ‘No, I didn’t; I was still hiding from myself. But now I know it was because of my colour that you believed the worst of me.’

  ‘My God, Rosie, you can’t believe that! It nev
er entered into it. Can’t you see it was because, as I said, when I was to be married before, I found out about this girl, and the circumstances were pretty much the same? Rosie, Rosie, for God’s sake get that out of your head!’

  ‘But I kept telling you the truth, and you wouldn’t listen to me.’

  ‘Yes, I know, I know. But I was mad with jealousy because I loved you so much. Look’—he pulled her to him—‘you’re not going to do this. You wouldn’t only be wrecking your own life, but a number of lives. There’s your mother—she’s worried to death.’

  Her face was close under his and she whispered, ‘My mother?’

  ‘She’s been to see me. She knows about your father, and she’s worried because your uncle hasn’t returned home. And she’s afraid he’ll do you both further harm.’

  ‘My mother’s been to see you, and she knows?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He felt a sigh of relief pass over her, and the despair for a moment left her eyes.

  ‘She’s coming here?’

  ‘Yes, as soon as I can get word to her.’

  She looked towards the door of the room in which James was lying. ‘I must warn him.’

  ‘Rosie, let me speak to him.’

  She hesitated a moment, then said dully, ‘All right.’

  ‘And Rosie’—he pulled her closer—‘listen to me. I love you and I’m willing to spend my life trying to convince you of it, but I’d rather see you dead than married to that Arab. You love me, don’t you…look at me. You can’t look at me and say you don’t. Look at me.’

  But she did not look at him. Her eyes, wide and staring from her head, were looking at something beyond him. And he flung round from her, expecting to be confronted by the Arab. But he faced a man whom he had never seen before, and who was staring with a diabolical stare, not at him, but at Rosie. And before he had time to think, the man had sprung past him and at Rose Angela, and they were borne to the floor together.