Justice is a Woman

by Catherine Cookson

  Her face had shown her keen displeasure before, but now it expressed raw anger as she cried at him. ‘David! David! I’m sick of that man’s name; he has caused nothing but dissension between us. Why don’t you get rid of him? Yes, any other man would. If a servant, particularly a half-caste, was annoying his wife he would get rid of him, but what do you do? You take his part at every turn. Who is he anyway that you should consider him so much? I know what I’ll do.’ She half turned and gripped at the handle of the door before ending, ‘I’ll go upstairs and see your father. As you said, he’s still master of this house and he’ll understand my side of it as he did about the girl downstairs. We’ll see if Mr David Brooks is to be put before me!’

  She was too shocked even to cry out when she felt herself being carried, half dragged across the room and flung down onto the couch. And then he was standing over her, glaring down into her face, and his lips were trembling as he said, ‘Don’t you ever dare go up there and ask for David to be dismissed; in fact, don’t you dare mention his name. Do you hear me?’ When he gripped the front of her dress her hands clutched at his wrists and she gazed at him in fear for a moment, her eyes stretched wide, her lips apart, her tongue moving up and down between her teeth; and her face seemed to stretch even longer in her shock and amazement as he went on, ‘My father suffered hell for years through one woman, my mother. And at this stage of his life and condition of his health I’ll not allow you or anybody else to disturb him. He’s…he’s fond of David, as…as we all are. You go up there and talk about having him dismissed and it’ll—’ He gulped in his throat as he swallowed a mouthful of spittle, then closed his eyes for a moment, after which he released his hold on her, straightened his back, and then, after a long pause while they stared at each other, he said softly, ‘I’m sorry.’ And on this he turned from her and walked hastily out of the room while she lay still, staring towards the door…

  He had been to the bathroom and sluiced his face in cold water, and now, as he stood on the second landing, he passed both hands over his damp hair, after which he inserted his finger around the inside of his shirt collar before opening the door and entering his father’s room.

  Mike was just emerging from the workroom. His back was slightly bent and he walked slowly and with a shambling gait. He reached his chair by the window before he spoke; then, turning his head to the side, he asked quietly, ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Aw, lad’—his tone was gruff—‘I’m not deaf. Remember your rooms are just below.’ He pointed a misshapen finger down towards the floor.

  ‘We had a disagreement.’

  ‘That’s a bloody understatement, if ever I heard one. What’s up atween you?’ The question was asked quietly and with concern.

  Joe now walked to the window, then lowering himself slowly onto the broad sill, he leaned forward and gazed out over the gardens before he replied, ‘I could say it was the heat.’

  ‘But you won’t.’

  ‘No, no, I won’t.’

  ‘Things going wrong?’

  Joe now turned and looked at his father. ‘We don’t seem to be speaking the same language,’ he said.

  ‘Huh! Well, damn it all! you didn’t really expect to, did you? You know what I said to you a while ago: don’t make the same mistake as me. That should have told you to start the way you mean to go on.’

  ‘That’s what I thought I had done.’

  ‘And she’s not having it?’

  ‘It would appear not.’

  ‘What was it about this time?’

  ‘Oh, everything and nothing.’

  Mike slowly edged himself forward in the leather chair; then twisting his body to the right, he pressed himself upwards until he was standing as straight as he was able too, then turned from the window and walked slowly towards the cabinet at the far end of the room. He took out a bottle and two glasses, and as he poured out the drinks, in a tone that was scarcely above a mutter, he asked, ‘Have you put her in the picture?’

  ‘No, of course, I haven’t; nor have I any intention of doing so.’

  ‘What if somebody else should?’

  ‘That’s impossible. Who could, anyway? It would only be hearsay.’

  ‘Aye. Aye, hearsay.’ Mike turned now and said, ‘Come and get this; I think you need it.’

  When Joe reached his side, Mike handed him the glass of neat whisky and, lifting up the other one, he gazed at it before putting it to his lips, and in one gulp he threw it off and shuddered. Then he put the glass down and turned away, saying, ‘It was a damn silly thing to ask.’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t have asked it.’

  He reached his chair and sat down before he spoke again. ‘You know what she told me the other day?’ he said.

  ‘What did she tell you?’

  ‘Well, I asked her what she thought about startin’ a family and she told me you had both agreed that such annoying trivialities—and those are the very words she used, although she laughed when she said them—weren’t going to interrupt your life for the next two or three years. So what do you have to say about that? Is it true?’

  ‘No.’

  Mike looked at Joe, who was draining his glass, and he repeated, ‘No?’

  ‘That’s what I said, no.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I think that what she needs is some responsibility; she wants to run something, rule someone. She’s finding me difficult, so I thought the best thing’—he paused now, thrust out his lips, nodded his head slowly and ended—‘was to start a small army for her and as soon as possible.’

  The laughter that erupted from Mike sounded as if it was coming from a great robust healthy body. His head was back and hanging to the side, one hand was pressing against his ribs. And Joe, looking at him, laughed too, but his laughter was more in the nature of a deep chuckle and the essence of it was not caused by the admission of his own deviousness but by the sight of his father’s enjoyment.

  Mike now sat rubbing his face with a large mottled silk handkerchief and the laughter was still bubbling in him as he said, ‘Aye well, I’ve got to hand it to you. Talk about a cunning young bugger. Has it taken?’

  ‘I don’t know yet; time’s young.’

  ‘Well, well, there’s one thing sure, you’ve got your head screwed on the right way, lad.’

  As Joe looked at his father he knew that his admission of tricking his wife into conceiving, if such should happen, had pleased him more than if he had come up in a straightforward way and said that Elly was going to have a baby; and it proved one thing conclusively to him: his father didn’t like her any more than those in the kitchen did, or those in the cottage.

  ‘Well, I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘Oh, and by the way, I’d almost forgotten to tell you, the London visit has borne fruit at last: we got an order this morning for a thousand cases, a third of them with fancy beading.’

  ‘Good! Good!’

  ‘Be seeing you.’

  ‘Be seeing you, lad.’

  As Joe reached the door, Mike twisted around in his chair and said softly, ‘I think I’d better have a thicker carpet put in here’—he motioned towards the floor—‘against the day when she finds out you’ve done it on her.’

  Joe’s only answer to this was a jerk of the chin, and as he went down the stairs and made for his wife’s sitting room again, he was thinking it would take more than a carpet to smother her reactions if his trickery were to work out as he hoped it would.

  Four

  But Elaine did not even raise her voice when she discovered she was pregnant; she was too shocked and dumbfounded, and at first she would not accept the evidence her body was presenting to her. Her monthly cycle had always been irregular but it had never caused her distress, being merely an inconvenience.

  Her first bout of morning sickness took place on a Sunday, and she put it down to the roast duck she’d eaten at the dinner-dance in Newcastle the previous evening. This, together
with a number of cocktails, must, she thought, be the cause of the upset. She lay in bed until noon, and Joe sat by her side for quite some time holding her hand and stroking her damp forehead while she talked intermittently about the future, the near future, the autumn.

  Couldn’t they go up to town and spend a few weeks with her Uncle Turnbull? He’d be so glad to have them because they would be like paying guests. It was very embarrassing for her uncle to be reduced to that state, but there it was, he couldn’t afford to entertain any other way now. There was so much on in town in the autumn and if they could get Cousin Kathryn up out of the depths of the country, her name was a key that fitted so many doors they would be invited to all kinds of functions.

  She placed her fingers around his bony wrist as she ended this statement: ‘You could be gay, you know, Joe, if you’d only let yourself go. Why, last night at the table you had everyone rocking. You were very witty. Do you know that? Not just humorous, but really witty.’

  ‘Was I?’ His reply sounded inane. ‘I didn’t know there was any difference.’

  She slapped his arm. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘But what about it, going up to town, I mean?’

  ‘We’ll see.’ When he rose from the bed she pulled herself upwards against the pillows and coaxed further: ‘Joe! Joe, I want an answer.’

  ‘And you want it to be yes?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I’m…I’m sorry, Elly; it’s no good making a promise that I might have to break. I’ve got a business to see to, and things are precarious; you know they are. Our men are being subjected to all kinds of insults, and assaults too. I’ve told you about the ugly scenes in the town, all because they didn’t come out in sympathy in the beginning. They’ve forgotten that some of the men gave up a day’s pay to them for weeks.’

  ‘But you’ve got a manager and staff to see to things.’

  ‘Yes, they’re all very well in their place, but it’s my responsibility, and I must be here.’

  ‘And I must be here too?’ Now she was sitting bolt upright in the bed, and she tossed her head so sharply that her cap of short, shining hair seemed to spring away from her scalp for a moment. ‘I’m fed up,’ she said. ‘Do you hear me? I’m fed up! I haven’t a soul to talk to.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Don’t tell me I’m silly. You tell me one intelligent person with whom I can converse.’

  He stopped by the dressing table and, bending down, picked up a comb and ran it through his hair, and he looked at her reflection in the mirror as he said, ‘My father mightn’t have the kind of accent you’re used to, but you’ll go a long way before you’ll find a more intelligent man. What you don’t seem to have discovered is that he’s widely read.’

  ‘All right! All right! All right! But you are missing the point. Your father is an old man, I want someone of my own age and cla…’

  He straightened himself up, turned slowly and looked at her; then, as slowly, he walked towards the bed and gazed down on her bent head. She was apparently examining her painted nails and she was no doubt expecting him to come back with a tirade on class, but he brought her head upwards and her eyes wide as he said, ‘Then why don’t you invite one of your friends to stay with you for a time?’

  ‘You mean that?’ Her face was moving into a slow smile.

  ‘Of course. Why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘But…but your father, wouldn’t he mind?’

  ‘Not in the least; he’d enjoy seeing a new face. What about your uncle?’

  ‘Oh, Uncle Turnbull.’ She shook her head, then laughed as she added, ‘Don’t forget it’s someone I want for company; Uncle can be a bore.’

  ‘What about Lady Kathryn?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. She’s good company when you can keep her in one place, but if I know Kathryn she’d want to spend all her time in the garden.’

  ‘Your school friends?’

  ‘Oh’—she shrugged now—‘most of them are married. My best friend Anna got herself married to an American rancher last year and she’s only written once and that seemed to be from the back of a horse.’

  He began to laugh and she laughed with him, then said, ‘Of course, there’s Betty.’

  ‘Oh yes, Betty. I forgot about Betty. But she’s working somewhere, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, but she would come if she thought I needed her. Betty is the type of person who loves to be needed. I told her once she was born to be an old lady’s companion, cheerful, willing and wanted. She used to make me feel frightfully inferior at one time, until I recognised that all her good points had been given her in compensation for her face.’

  ‘That’s cruel. I think she has a nice face. She seemed to be a nice person altogether.’

  ‘She is, she is, but you can’t get over the fact that she’s a great lumbering lump of a woman.’

  ‘Compared with you she may be, but she didn’t seem extraordinarily large to me.’

  ‘Oh, it isn’t her build. Anyway, Joe, you haven’t lived with her, you don’t know: she’s clumsy, she has a habit of breaking things.’

  ‘Oh, well, if that’s her only drawback she won’t do much damage here: we’ve only got two valuable pieces of porcelain in the house, and the Sunderland glass we can put in the cabinet, and then give her her head.’

  They were laughing again and he said, ‘Go on, why don’t you write to her?’

  She sank back now into her pillows and looked up at him as she said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. She can be heavy going. I’ll wait; I’ll put up with you for a while longer. But I’m going to tell you something.’ She grabbed again at his hand. ‘If you don’t take a break in the autumn I’ll go up to London on my own, because I just couldn’t stand the sameness of a whole winter here. I’m telling you.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ He nodded at her. ‘Do that; go up and enjoy yourself.’

  She dropped his hand and gazed at him; then she watched him grin at her before turning away and leaving the room. She lay back in her pillows, and immediately stretched her eyes wide, pursed her lips, turned her head first to the right and then to the left and exclaimed aloud, ‘Well! Well!’

  When the nausea occurred again on the Monday morning, Elaine groaned, ‘No, no; it can’t be. It can’t be. Impossible. He didn’t. He wouldn’t.’

  But after an early visit to the bathroom on the Tuesday morning as well, she returned to the bedroom and stood by the bed and waited for Joe to come from the small dressing room that adjoined the bedroom, and when he did, such was the expression on her face that he stopped in the act of buttoning his waistcoat and asked quietly, ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘You’re a swine.’ The words were low, scarcely audible.

  ‘What did you say?’ He was approaching her slowly now.

  ‘You heard what I said. You know what you’ve done, you do. You do. And you promised.’ The effort to speak was so great that her chin came forward on to her bare chest and she gulped twice before bringing her head up again and accusing him, but still softly, ‘You did it on purpose.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You know, you know very well what I’m talking about. You have made me pregnant.’

  She watched his face crinkle into a smile as he whispered, ‘Pregnant?’ Then his whole expression changing, he waved his hand in front of his face as if brushing off a fly, and said, ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘I hope I am being silly, but I know I’m not. I wouldn’t mind so much, but you promised on your oath you…’

  ‘And I kept my promise; you know I did.’ He turned from her now and walked across the room. ‘I…I don’t know when it could have happened, unless it was that night we came back from the Leveys; we’d both had more than enough that night…’

  ‘Yes, yes, I remember; we both had more than enough’—she was hissing at his back now—‘but I wasn’t so tight that I don’t remember you going into the bathroom. You! you’ve tricked me, and I hate you. Do you hear? I hate you. An
d what’s more, I won’t have it; I’ll have it taken away.’

  ‘You’ll what?’ He had swung round and moved towards her so quickly that she flopped back on the bed in not a little fear at the sight he presented, for his lower jaw was thrust out and his whole attitude overall was aggressive. ‘Don’t you ever say that again!’

  She hitched herself along the bed away from him, and now her chin went up as she said, ‘I will say it, and I mean it; I’m not going to be tied down at this stage. I…I told you before we were married, we talked it all out, and what did you say? All you wanted was me.’

  ‘I know what I said, but this has happened and now it stays. The child will be part of you.’

  ‘Not if I can help it.’

  ‘Listen.’ He was bending over her now, where she lay half on the bed, her feet still on the floor, and as if the words pained him, he said, ‘I don’t want to lose my temper with you, not at this moment when we should be all in all to each other, but if you attempt to carry out your threat you’ll never get back into this house again. And I mean that. I’ll throw you off even if I have to take you to court. You’ll have the child. Whether you like it or not, you’ll have it. My God!’ He pulled himself up straight and, gazing down at her, he shook his head slowly as he added, ‘I wouldn’t have believed it. Now, since I know how you feel, I’ll tell you how I feel. Yes, I tricked you; I wanted a child so badly I tricked you. But I wasn’t thinking only of myself when I did it, I was thinking of you, hoping it might make a woman of you, alter your outlook, your silly, selfish, middle-class outlook. I thought, in my ignorance, that after a small protest you would throw your arms about me and say, “Isn’t it wonderful!” But not you. Well, we both know where we stand: you said you hated me; well, at this moment I can return the compliment, and I only hope for your sake it’s a passing phase.’