The Menagerie

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Pam, I’ve got to find out.’

  ‘Find out what, dear?’

  ‘If my father and our Jack are all right.’

  ‘But you said yourself…’

  ‘I’ve got to know.’

  Pam’s face had paled, and she asked quietly, ‘And what will happen if they are in it?’

  He did not look at her but rose from the couch, and taking up his hat went to the door. But before he could open it, she was upon him, her arms twining his neck. ‘Larry, Larry…don’t go. They won’t be in it. Oh, Larry, darling. Darling.’

  He held her gently. ‘Pam, I’ve got to phone and find out. But don’t worry.’ He lifted her face to his. ‘It can’t touch us. Nothing can touch us. At the worst it can only delay our going, that’s all.’

  Slowly he took her arms from his neck, and in a fixed, almost fascinated stare, she watched him go out. Then moving to the window, she looked down into the street and waited for his appearance. When he stepped onto the pavement and crossed the road, her eyes went with him. On the far side, and at the end of the long street, was a telephone kiosk. She watched him go in, and then gripping the coarse, musty curtains in both hands, she closed her eyes.

  After a long while, she looked up the street again. Larry was still in the box, and when, after what seemed to her half an hour at least, he moved into the street again, she could not watch his coming but turned from the window and sat down. Even when the door opened she dared not look at him.

  He came in quickly, his breathing short and loud as if he had run from the box. It told her all she wanted to know, and when he stood before her she kept her eyes fixed on his feet.

  ‘We’ve got to go back, Pam—they’re both in it. Me father and our Jack, at the face. And Willie’s one of the two men behind the fall.’

  ‘No…no, we can’t. I won’t go back.’ She was looking at him now, her face as white as his. ‘I couldn’t, I couldn’t. Where would I stay? I’d have to go home…I tell you I couldn’t bear it. I don’t know now how I managed to come away on Wednesday, they were so upset. If I go back now, they’ll wear me down.’

  ‘You needn’t go back home, you could find lodgings in Chester-le-Street or Durham.’

  ‘Yes, and what then? I know what will happen…I’ll be there for life.’ Her voice had risen. ‘If anything has happened to your father and brother do you think your mother will let you go? No. You’ll be tied there, and me with you.’ She did not move from him, but she swung her body from side to side as if struggling for release. ‘I couldn’t bear it. I hate Fellburn and all it stands for. I tell you, Larry, I couldn’t do it.’

  His eyes seemed to have sunk into the back of his head, their expression lost in the blackness. There was no vestige of colour in his face, and his lips were now a hard straight line. He looked at her in silence for some moments, then said, ‘You’ll wait for me here then?’

  Now she did move. She turned from him and went to the window, and with her back to him, she said, ‘You expect me to stay in a place like this on my own? Doing it together, it’s different, but alone I couldn’t put up with it. This!’ She waved her hand back to take in the room.

  ‘I’ll leave the money with you; you can go to some place decent.’

  She moved impatiently. ‘How long do you think it would last in London? Oh, Larry.’ She swung round to him. ‘What can you do if you go back? Nothing that isn’t already being done. I’m sorry about your people, oh I am, but you can’t better it now. Larry’—she moved to him, speaking softly again—‘send a wire and get your mother to come to the phone somewhere, but don’t go.’

  He did not answer, but stared at her fixedly as she went on, ‘No-one will think any the worse of you.’

  ‘No?’ he said quietly. ‘Nobody but myself. I’ve got to go back now. Even if my father and Jack weren’t in it, I think I would have had to go back. I’ve worked in that mine since I was fifteen; I know it, every cranny of it, and officially I’ve never left the pit, I didn’t give my notice in.’

  ‘But you hated the pit, every minute you were down. You said you did.’

  ‘I know, and I still do. I can’t explain it, but I’d never be able to look a pitman in the face again if I didn’t go back.’

  ‘I’m only a secondary consideration then?’

  He moved his mouth as if he were chewing, and the words came out painfully, ‘You’re my life—you know you are—I can’t see me living without you, but in a case like this…’

  ‘In a case like this, the first test, I’m put in my place. No, don’t touch me.’ She stepped back from him. ‘They were right, they said it wouldn’t work. Once a pitman, always a pitman, and me fighting to make them believe you were a frustrated literary genius.’

  ‘Do you realise that my father and brother are probably dead?’

  ‘Then if they are, what can you do? You made a decision, you should stick by it. That decision involved me.’

  ‘You forget there’s still my mother. How will she feel now there’s only Aunt Lot and Lena there?’

  ‘How do you think my mother felt? It nearly killed her when she knew I was seeing you again, and on Wednesday night she collapsed. I didn’t tell you, but she did, and I felt like a criminal, a murderer. She has worked for me for years, and what do I do? Throw it all up for you and bring disgrace on her. But did I hesitate? No. You wanted me, I must come to you. Now I want you.’

  ‘If you want me you’ll come back with me.’

  ‘And be a laughing stock? No, I couldn’t. I won’t. Nor am I going to live in slums on my own. If you leave me now…’ She paused and her voice sank, and she repeated, ‘If you leave me now I’ll go back to Ron. I can, you know. He loves me, he would have me back…it depends upon me.’

  A combination of anger, fear and pain filled his eyes with mist and blotted her from his sight, and he pulled at his collar to ease the feeling of choking in his throat. In this moment his hate equalled his love. ‘Don’t go too far, Pam,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t go too far,’ she repeated. ‘I mean what I say—if you leave me now, I’ll go back to him. I won’t be made a fool of.’

  The mist cleared and he saw her, the side of her he had shut his eyes to, the side that had prompted her to bring all the fellow’s jewellery from America, knowing that she might leave him. He thought of the man’s words. ‘You are depriving her of a way of life.’ He could see in this moment that she wouldn’t have been without that way of life for long; with her push and tenacity she would have driven or carried him to a height from where he could provide her with what she wanted. He would have been crude clay in her hands because she would have led him with the other side of her, which he knew to be all love and tenderness, and this present side he might never have known. But now it was confronting him and it had the power to enrage him. Yet he controlled his rage and once again pleaded, ‘Pam, you wouldn’t do it…you couldn’t. Look, I promise you on God’s honour, if you come back it will only be for a couple of weeks. Your mother needn’t know you’re back; you can, as I said, get lodgings in some place near. You could go to Newcastle or Sunderland.’

  ‘No.’

  It was final and he knew it. She was no longer a beautiful girl, soft, yielding, maddening. She was facing him as a woman, a sophisticated woman, who because she knew what she wanted could rule her heart.

  He watched her turn swiftly and go to the bed and pull one of her cases from beneath it. Having unlocked it, with quick, deft movements she began putting oddments into it, such as a brush, a comb, slippers, and lastly her nightdress, a thing so fine that she was able to cover it with both hands as she rammed it into a corner. Following this last action, she turned to him. ‘Well?’

  She had turned the last screw and she expected it to break him. When it didn’t, she cried, ‘You’re a fool—a fool!’

  He made no answer, and she cried again, ‘Don’t you realise what I’m going to do? I’m going back to him.’

  Still he said nothing. His body seemed n
umb, and a curious numbness too had come upon his mind. Everything she had done and said in the past few minutes he seemed to recognise as if he knew it had been bound to happen and had rehearsed it in his own mind. And it wasn’t finished yet. He must wait until it was finished. He could not, at this stage, walk out on her; he must let her do the walking out. He must give her that satisfaction. But no matter which one went first, this was the end. He knew he was looking on her for the last time in his life; he knew that never again would he be called upon to feel the pain that had the power to freeze his body into numbness and clamp down his emotions, rage included.

  Even when finally she came near to him, so close that the faint perfume she always wore wafted gently into his nostrils, and looking into his eyes said, ‘You can’t let me do this,’ he remained silent. The link could never be mended now, even if he had said ‘All right, have it your own way.’ The mend would only be a temporary job, for, as much as he loved her, he would have fought against her now, defying her to lead him whither she willed. Life would have been a fight between them, his conscience acting as a one-sided arbitrator.

  She left the room door open with her cases standing before it while she went downstairs to call a taxi. This she set as a final of final tests. When she returned and the cases were still there, she moved slowly towards him; and now she was the old Pam again, her eyes bright with tears, her voice breaking as she said, ‘You can’t do this to me, Larry. You can’t let me do it. Larry, darling, it’s not too late.’

  Her face was close to him, and in spite of the tears raining down it, he had the odd feeling that if he were to relent now she would hate him, not for his lack of strength, but for depriving her of the chance to retrieve that which deep down her soul craved.

  His lips were stiff with numbness as he said, ‘You know where to find him!’

  Her eyes swimming with her tears darkened; her head went up and she stared defiantly at him for a moment, then, turning quickly away and picking up the two heavy cases and a number of oddments, she went laboriously down the stairs.

  Nothing in him moved to check her when he heard the car draw up to the door. He looked at his watch. It said twenty minutes to seven. He shook it gently, thinking it must have stopped—life couldn’t change in twenty-five minutes. But as he stood staring at the watch he knew it could change in seconds…an explosion in itself is but a matter of seconds. His life had been changed when the explosion hit the mine…no, not changed, brought back to its beginning.

  The numbness began to lift and he had the desire to throw himself down somewhere and cry—cry as he had done secretly when a lad, cry like a girl, a woman…like Jessie Honeysett must have done.

  On this thought an involuntary reaction in him caused him, too, to turn suddenly and cram his things into a case and make ready to go.

  Chapter Twelve: The Pit

  It was quarter past nine on Saturday morning when Larry reached Fellburn. He had been unable to get a seat on the long-distance buses, but had done the journey almost as quickly in three lifts. The first, on one of the hundreds of lorries packing the roads, had taken him as far as Doncaster; from there he had got a lift in a private car to Durham; and from Durham it was but a short bus ride to Fellburn.

  The bus stopped right opposite the Turnbulls’ shop, and it so happened that Mr Turnbull was arranging a display of goods to the side of the open door. He glanced up as the bus stopped; then, straightening his back, he looked at Larry across the distance. For a moment their eyes met, and Larry saw that all there was to know Mr Turnbull already knew, for behind the hatred in his eyes there was triumph. With burning bitterness he thought, she hasn’t been long in passing on the good news. Or was it the man himself who had phoned them?

  All night he had refused to think of the man, fearing he might snap under the strain of his jealousy. At one point during the long ride, when the lorry was crossing a bridge, he had looked at the driver, who, although his eyes were open, seemed asleep, and he had thought, a push, and a twist of that wheel, and we’ve had it. But before the thought could take shape in any way the driver had turned to him and said airily, ‘Cheer up, chum. It can’t be as bad as that. Wife left you or summat?’ Yes, his wife had left him, for she had been his wife as she would never be her husband’s wife. And as he walked down the street a stiffness came into his muscles that had no connection with the tiredness assailing his body. The street was strangely quiet. On his side there was no bustle of women, no early gardener getting in a bit of digging between shifts, and on the other side there was no-one in front of the cottages doing windows or steps. This lack of audience to his return did not affect him one way or the other. The town was lying under a disaster, and his affair would be swamped beneath it. For this much he could at least thank God.

  Three nights ago, when he had passed through the front gate, it was, he had told himself, for the last time, and he had felt not the slightest regret—she had outweighed home and all it stood for—yet here he was back. If she had outweighed it three nights ago, why was she not outweighing it now? Her question came to him: if they are dead, what can you do?

  He opened the back door and stepped slowly into the scullery and stared at the strange back bending over the sink. A woman turned and exclaimed ‘Good God!’; then, wiping her hands quickly on her apron, she added, ‘It’s you, Larry. Oh, you give me a shock, I thought it was…’ She stopped. The movement of her hands became slower, and she went on with naked frankness, ‘Well, you’ve come back, that’s something in your favour anyway.’

  His face tightened still further, and he asked gruffly, ‘Where’s my mother?’ But before the woman could answer there was a scuffling movement on the stairs, and the next moment he was enveloped in Lottie’s frantic embrace. ‘Oh, Larry, Larry! Oh, you’ve come back, Larry. Oh Larry! Oh Larry!’

  ‘Be quiet,’ said the woman; ‘you’ll raise the house, Lottie…I’ll make you a cup of tea, Larry. Have you had any breakfast?’

  Larry diffidently patted Lottie’s back, and muttered, ‘I want nothing, just a cup of tea.’

  ‘Oh, Larry, I said you’d come back. I told Jinny you’d come back. Poor Jinny.’

  Larry pressed Lottie’s straining body from him, and looked down into her tear-ravaged face. ‘Is me mother in, or…?’ He did not say, ‘at the gates?’ And the woman put in now, ‘Give ower, Lottie, and leave Larry be for a minute. Yes, she’s in. She’s bad, Larry. You’d better prepare yourself for a shock.’ She did not pause to break the news but went on, ‘She had a stroke last night. She’s sensible enough, but there’s one side gone. The doctor says she should go to hospital for the time being, but she won’t. She wrote on a piece of paper asking him to leave her here. We’ve got her in the front room, it’s easier there. We brought your bed down, not knowing you’d be back.’

  Slowly he pushed off Lottie’s clinging hands and went along the passage, as the woman admonished Lottie, ‘Now you stay where you are.’

  The front-room door was open and he could see the foot of his bed. Two women were standing, one on each side of it, their backs bent. ‘Up,’ said one, and together they heaved.

  He was in the middle of the room before they were aware of him, and he saw that, like the woman in the scullery, they were not close neighbours such as Mrs King, or Mrs Adams, or Willie’s mother. One was a Mrs Preston, and the other was Mrs Patty, both from the top end of the street. When they straightened up, he saw his mother, and she him, and they looked at each other.

  One of the women, after making wordless sounds of surprise, said, ‘Well, there you are, Jinny, we’ll leave you for a bit. We’ll be back.’ She patted the sheet straight, touched Jinny’s hair where a wisp had fallen about her ear, then, picking up a bowl from the floor, she went out, followed by her partner who carefully and soundlessly closed the door after her.

  Unable to withdraw his eyes from his mother’s, Larry moved to the bedside. His heart and conscience smote him with such force that for a space her plight held him. In the shor
t time since he had last seen her, she seemed to have shrunk to half her size. The whole of the left side of her face was affected—the corner of her mouth stretched upwards to meet the dragging skin from her eye. Her left hand lay still on top of the bedspread, while the fingers of the right hand moved swiftly about it in a plucking motion, as if to prove its power of life.

  Slowly he lowered himself onto the bed, and taking the moving hand between his own, he held it firmly. The right side of her face crumpled, the tears rolled down her cheeks, and her body began to shake. In one swift movement he hitched himself up the bed and put his arms about her. And like that they stayed, saying no word, only clinging together.

  Again and again, stereotyped sentences formed in his mind, made up of words that would fit the occasion, such as ‘There, there. Don’t worry, you’ll get better. No matter what’s happened, you’ll be all right. I’ll see to that’; but he could say none of them, for he needed no confirmation to know that she would never get better, not to be herself again.

  When he laid her back she turned her eyes towards the piece of paper and a pencil lying on the side of the table, and taking the paper up and placing it on a book, he held it for her, and in a small drunken scrawl she wrote one word, ‘smallholding’.

  The word expressed everything she was feeling. Never more would she hear talk of Frank’s lifelong desire, never more would she see through his eyes the military rows of vegetables and fruit bushes. The pit had got him as over the years he had secretly feared it would.

  Larry could not bear any longer to look at her agonised face, so without a word having been spoken between them, he went out, and, evading Lottie, whose crying of relief followed him upstairs, he went into his room.