‘Was she good-looking?’
‘In a way! In a bold sort of way! A very good colour, and a high-and-mighty way with her, showing off! But you could tell she was a trolly. You’d only to see her go down Tevershall hill, marching in that slow way, with her head up, and looking round with her bold eyes, wanting everybody to stare at her. And clothes! My word, she had some clothes, good ones too! And jewellery! worth a sight of money! But where had she got it from? — men! — everybody knew! Though the colliers weren’t good enough for her! oh dear no, common colliers! She turned up her nose at them. But she married Oliver Parkin as soon as her arm was out of splints, and they went to live in a new house in Chat’ley Road—’
‘Why did he marry her?’ asked Connie.
‘You may well ask me. He wasn’t one for the girls, either. Never spoke to one. — I suppose she thought she’d better marry somebody, so she got hold of him.’
‘But why did he let her?’
‘There you’re asking something. His mother wouldn’t speak to him for years. Oh, old Mrs Parkin and Bertha Coutts hate one another like poison. — But I suppose her finery dazzled him. And he was young.’
‘How old?’
‘Why how old would he be? — William Allcock was building those new houses in Chat’ley Road when their Cassie was born. And Cassie Allcock is eighteen. So it must be seventeen or eighteen years ago. And Oliver Parkin — he’ll be how old? He was a lad of about—’
But Connie knew how old he was. And she silently calculated that he would be twenty or twenty-one years old when married.
‘Not much over twenty — anyhow,’ concluded Mrs Bolton.
‘And were they happy at first?’
‘Oh I don’t know, I’m sure. I never heard anything of them. But I know she’d be sailing out dressed up to the eyes, and paint and powder and all in the afternoon when she should have been getting his dinner ready. And he’d come home to a cup of tea and a kipper. He was working in the blacksmith’s shop on the pit-bank then, and took his snap like all the others. His mother told me herself. And they used to have rows royal over that. She told him he could cook his dinner himself, and he told her he see her in hell afore he gave her a penny on Friday night: and there’d be some language, when they both started. For she could rip as hard as he could, and he was a foul-mouthed beggar. I suppose he got it from old Bob Pawney, his father: or his step-father, by rights.’
‘Whose step-father?’
‘Oliver Parkin’s. His name is Oliver Seivers, only nobody ever called him by it. His father was Dicky Seivers, a cricketer, who went off all summer professional cricketing. Mrs Seivers was only married to him a year, and Oliver was just born, when he died o’ somehow, when he was away somewhere. And Mrs Seivers went and married Bob Parkin, old Bob Pawney, they called him, who was two years older than she was, and a widower with two growing girls. And a bad step-mother she was to them, for they ran away to service as soon as they left school. Nobody ever heard of them, not even old Bob. And she led him a dance, too, till he was finished off. She had a demon of a temper. She fairly bullied old Bob’s life out of him, and he never said a word, till he was blind drunk. Then he came out with language to make your hair stand on end, and smashed whatever he laid his hands on. They say your heart would stand still, of a Saturday night, when old Bob seized the poker and made for the cupboard, smashing cups, plates, teapot, everything he could lay his hands on and then after her. And she running like a demon up Bestwood Lane, for the police-station. — And then next day, old Bob as still as a mouse, and she raving and tearing! Oh my word, it was an awful house!’
‘Poor little boy!’ said Connie.
‘Who, Oliver? Yes, it’s hard on the children. But to Bob’s two girls she was really cruel: made them bath in the back yard, even in winter, so they wouldn’t make a slop. One of those women who wouldn’t let a speck of dust settle even on the floor. Old Bob had to take off his pit-boots and trousers in the outside scullery, before she’d let him in the house. And all the children, of a muddy day, had to take their shoes off before they could come through the door. And not allowed to stir in the house: not allowed to stir, for fear they made a foot-mark on the floor. They were always in the street, freezing or snowing, raining or blowing, always in the street, shivering in other people’s entries.— And then thrashed if they weren’t in at eight o’clock, to go to bed.’
‘What a devil of a woman!’ said Connie, stifling with rage. ‘Did she have any children by that Bob?’
‘Two! — a boy and a girl! Both left home as soon as they left school. Like old Bob’s own girls, who ran away when one was twelve and the other thirteen, and never heard of again, as far as I remember. Oh, she was a demon! She favoured Oliver, if she favoured anybody. But she thrashed him just the same, and I believe he hated her. He always stuck up for old Bob. He died, Bob Pawney, when Oliver was a lad of fifteen, I should think. It was before I really started nursing, but I used to go in sometimes, to see the old man. He was about sixty. They’d just moved up the hill. He died of hardening of the liver. Pitiful he was. He used to whisper to Oliver: Oliver, lad, could ta fetch me a pint? And if Oliver had got threepence in the world, he’d try and sneak a pint in for his Dad. Of course it was bad for the poor old man! But what was the use! He’d got to die! But she, Tanky Parkin, as they used to call her, caught sight of the beer, oh, there was a scene to bring the roof down. And she’ snatch it from the poor old Bob and drink it up herself. And he poor old man, would cry, really cry, when she snatched his beer from him and drank it up herself. — And Oliver would call her such names! Oh, awful! I’ve heard him myself, and him a lad in his teens. I’ll break your neck for you one of these days you stinking bitch! — I was well-brought up myself, strict Wesleyan, and my blood ran cold. But Mrs Parkin had a hard time of it, taking in washing to earn a shilling or two, and old Bob lingered — years, it seemed, and two children at school, Oliver just begining, to earn. And Bob had drunk himself to death.’
‘Did the children drink?’ said Connie.
‘Not to speak of! Their father had cured them of that. When the father drinks badly, the sons are usually rather sober. No, I never heard any harm of Oliver Parkin, except the awful language he would use when he was put out. And of course he’d sit in the pub and take his pint, but not too much, as a rule. — But people didn’t care for him. He was never free and easy, and if you asked him anything, it was always: Who asked you anything? so surly and spiteful. Then when he’d been married a year or two he went as gamekeeper to Sir Geoffrey, and I hardly saw him.’
‘And had he still quarrelled with his mother?’
‘Oh! old Mrs Parkin! she got converted, just after old Bob; died, at one of these revivalist meetings: not Gipsy Smith, a young fellow as there was so much talk about with Hatty Smithurst. She got converted, and fell at the mercy seat, and confessed her sins, how she’d been a hard woman to her husband and her children, and if the Lord would forgive her — oh, a great show. And she went to the Primitive Chapel and to prayer meetings, and prayed and carried on — for about six months. Then she dropped off, and now she never goes near a place of worship, and has her pint regular. — But she’s much quieter, very different, and as hard as nails. The work she gets through! And she spoils Oliver’s little girl down to the ground. That’s how it is, after being cruel to her own and to Old Bob’s children. It’s the way of the world.’
Connie was silent with dread, thinking of the awful lives people led: there in Clifford’s village.
‘And after Oliver Parkin came to the gamekeeper’s cottage, was he happy?’
‘Oh no! — She started her old games, dressing up and going off to Tevershall and sitting in the pub. Pretending she was fetching the shopping, she’d be gone hours. And he coming home and finding the fire out, and knowing where she was. —Then there’d be another row when she came in.’
‘But couldn’t he control her?’
‘It seems he couldn’t. His mother says he was too soft with her
the first year, and let her have her way with him, and now he’s paying for it. But she’s older than he is, and a woman who’d had goodness knows what life before he married her — well, what can you expect? Though I can’t quite see him being soft with anybody.’
‘And did she have other men still?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. I don’t think so. Not before the, baby was born. The baby was born the year of the war — and he joined up in 1915, I believe. He said he joined up to get away from her. The cottage was shut up, and she went with the baby to live with her mother in the new buildings. And when he came home on leave he went to stay with his mother, not with her. I know, because there was a lot of talk. But when he came home from the war, and went back as gamekeeper to Sir Clifford, Sir Geoffrey having died, she went with the child to live with him in the cottage. But I believe it was a dog’s life. Till she went off with that collier Swain from Stacks Gate, and she said he drove her to it. That’s what she always said: that her husband turned her out, and drove her to another man: that she’d been the best wife on God’s earth to him for fourteen years, and then he turned her out and told her to find a man as ,’ud keep her, for he’d keep her no more. And that’s — but you remember when it was, between two and three years ago — three years come December: it was near Christmas time.’
‘And does she live with the same collier still?’
‘I believe so: in that row of houses just after the level crossing at Pye Hill — about a mile out of Tevershall, that’s all. But she doesn’t often come into the place, she goes, more to Stacks Gate and Uthwaite. She would, if she’d any shame in her.’
‘And is she happy with the collier?’
‘They say the pair of them drink and swear together. He’s a bad lot, one of the boastful, loud-mouthed, blathering sort, always talking about what Ah did and what Ah said and what Ahs’ll do if th’ bloody — you know the sort. His wife left him, and took the children. He’s a rather fat fellow with sticking-out eyes, a bully, and just a bit off it, if you ask me. I don’t know how she lives with him. But she says if Parkin went on his knees and licked the dust on her shoes, she wouldn’t go back to him.’
‘He’s hardly likely to want to,’ said Connie shuddering.
‘I should say not.’
There was a dead pause. Each woman-was thinking the same thing: what a man to be mixed up with. And yet, after all, it wasn’t his fault.
‘Don’t you think he’s a nice man at all?’ Connie asked at length, a little wistfully.
‘Who, my lady?’ said Mrs Bolton, looking up with troubled grey eyes. She knew the intimate life of Tevershall so deeply. And somehow, it always moved her very much.
‘Oliver Parkin! Oliver Seivers, you say, really!’
‘That’s right, my lady, Oliver Seivers! Well, I know no harm of him, as I say, except his bad language. He seems to keep himself to himself. That’s perhaps what folks have against him. He’s not liked. And then to marry that woman—’
‘Wasn’t there anything nice about her?’
‘Oh, I don’t say that! She was clean, and she never made debts. She was honest, the Couttses were that. And there’s no denying she was handsome, and had a way with the men — but a bit too free for a nice man. — Perhaps she might have been all right, but for clothes! and that came of being a bar-maid, or whatever it was, all those years.’
‘I wonder where all her clothes are?’
‘Oh, he sent them after her, by Knighton’s fish cart. He sent everything of hers, everything she ever bought. And she said an awful thing. She said he’d better cut off his member — only she used another word — you know! — and send her that, for she’d more right to it than he had, because she’d had to get it alive for him.’
‘Did she say such a thing in public?’
‘In a public house full of men. His mother told me. They say she was wild because he sent her things on Knighton’s fish cart. But then Jacob Knighton carts things for lots of people. But that’s how she behaves: as if her clothes should be sent after her in a cab with a pair of white horses. And then takes up with an outside fellow like Swain, a man as has got himself on the brain, and isn’t quite right in his head.’
Connie sighed deeply.
‘What awful stories! What awful lives people have! It makes one dread coming into contact with them.’
‘It does, my lady. Yet I don’t know. Life’s always awful one way or another. Better-class people’s lives can be awful too, in another way. You never know. Old Mrs Parkin says that Oliver ruined that Bertha by making too much of her when they were first married. You never know how a man will be. The nastiest can sometimes be nicest. And those that seem so nice turn out the biggest swindle as a rule. My husband wasn’t very nice with people. He was off-hand with them, and never wanted them in the house. Yet with me — ay! It’s no good judging from outside!’
CHAPTER XI
Clifford wanted to go with Connie into the wood. There had been some hot days, the pear-blossom and the plum-blossom had emerged out of nowhere, in creamy and silver-white, upward-breathing snows, little hills and mountains of blooms.
It was indeed cruel for Clifford, that he had to be helped from one wheel-chair to another. His legs were quite useless. But his arms and shoulders were very strong, and he was very clever at swinging himself from one place to another. And Constance hardly felt the shock any more, of lifting those long, heavy, inert legs, and covering them up.
She was sorry for him as he puffed away all round the house, in his chair. But then, he had always believed in the immortality of the soul, or rather of the spirit, and the comparative worthlessness of the body. Nobody had stolen his soul or his spirit. He could still assert that stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.
She waited for him at the top of the drive, at the turn of the loop, by the great beech-tree, as he came chuffing along behind the yew trees. His low chair, with its little motor, puffed softly, and moved at a meek, invalid pace. As he came near her, he smiled.
‘Me on my foaming steed!’ he called.
‘Snorting at least,’ she replied, laughing.
‘A little nearer,’ he replied, as he glanced round at the long façade of the low, brown-stone house. ‘Wragby doesn’t seem to open its eyes any wider, no matter how I’m mounted,’ he added. ‘After all, I ride upon the achievement of the mind of man, and that beats a horse.’
‘Quite,’ she said. ‘And Plato’s soul riding to heaven on a two-horse chariot is all out of date since petrol.’
‘Absolutely! No black steed, no prevention of cruelty to animals! We’ll have some repairs done to the old place next year. I hope I may have a few hundreds in hand then.’
‘That will be good. If only there isn’t another strike.’
‘What in the name of heaven would be the use of their striking! Just ruin the industry — it’s no good, you know, Con! The human animal doesn’t know when it is well off. It’s worse than children: it’s vicious. It’s no good, there has either got to be compulsion, or anarchy.’
‘But I thought you said the other day you were a conservative-anarchist.’
‘So I am. People can be what they like and feel what they like, privately, so long as we keep the form of life intact. It’s the form that matters.’
‘That seems to me silly — like saying the egg can go as addled as it likes, so long as we don’t break the shell. But the shell will break of itself.’
He was in rather high feather this bright May morning. The larks were singing over the park, the distant pit was chuffing and rattling merrily. It seemed like the old days, before the war. She did not really want to talk about strikes or any of those things. But then, she didn’t want to go to the wood with Clifford at all. So as she walked beside the chair, that edged cautiously down the incline, and the rooks rose in a hover from the hollow, she said:
‘You don’t think there is any solution in any form of socialism?’
‘Oh, don’t!’ he cried. ‘N
othing is more of an apple of Sodom than an exploded ideal. No! What the mass of people want is masters.’
‘And who will be the masters?’ she asked.
He looked at her quickly, then answered, after a pause:
‘We! I! Even I!’
‘But will they let you?’
‘We shan’t ask them. We shall do it while they’re not looking. It’s for their own good: to save them from starving. Stop any part of the big industrial machine of this tight little island, and for the workers, it means starvation. Not for me. I could still live without them. But what they must realise is that they cannot live without me. And therefore they’re not going to dictate terms.’
At the curve of the path, on the slope, they looked down the shallow valley at the mine, that sent up its usual white plumes and black plumes. Beyond, climbing the hill, was the glisten of dark slate roofs of Tevershall, and topping all, the old square tower of the church, of brown stone like Wragby, among dark trees. The dwellings seemed to crawl up the hill in curious overlapping steps, like the scales of some long, sharp-ridged reptile, and they gave a phantasmal look to the view, gruesome and sordid.
‘But will they let you dictate terms?’ she said.
‘They’ll have to — if one goes about it quietly,’ he replied.
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