Nellie stretched her legs out and said a perfect friendship was a fine thing. Had Caroline ever had a friend?
"I had plenty of friends, at school and in the church, everywhere. Dozens I suppose if you count them all."
Nellie said earnestly that was not what she meant, "You can't have dozens of friends. You can only have one, one true friend. Have you never had a true friend?"
"Oh, yes, when I was about eighteen I had one. We used to take long walks together. We were both interested in serious questions. She was lovely: so true."
"And she was your true friend, pet?"
"We got on because we weren't too close and weren't alike. That's best. Our lives ran parallel and never met: no friction. And she's loyal and so am I."
"Ah, no, your lives didn't run parallel; they met."
"No, my life never met anyone's till I met Barry, my husband. He was more like a best friend. I was very happy. I knew the risk I was taking coming home."
She paused and Nellie waited. Caroline continued, "We live through everything. Sometimes I think life is a strange disease that attacks different people in different ways; and at different ages it attacks you differently."
"Aye, but with a true friend you can fight off that disease; you can hold on to the true solution, the cure."
"What's the cure?" Caroline laughed sadly.
"There are two, sweetheart: love, and death."
"Oh, both those are diseases, too."
"Ah, you're depressed, love. You see, you never understood what friendship is. The friendship at school and at church, that's good; but it's the loaf of bread; it's not the wine."
"My parents loved me. They couldn't understand why I left home.- I heard Mother saying one day, with such an undertone of joy, that their dear daughter had never been able to bear leaving her own home, where she was so loved. I had already secretly begun to save up to come away."
Nellie said, smoking and drinking, "Yes, family love is painted as a smooth green shallow valley of comfort and it's full of abysses; you've got to watch your step not to slip in. But pity is the answer, Caroline. We're responsible for them, their failures and pitiful disappointments. They were young things when they had us, ready for life and we were the first burden on their thin young shoulders. I don't understand those who don't feel this terrible tender guilt towards their parents. It's a crushing burden, darling: it is. It breaks many people; but we have known life and love and it was denied to them."
"I am sure my parents love each other. I even wondered how they could see me there without a life of my own."
Nellie said excitedly, "But isn't that the proof? That they never knew the complete perfection and joy which our generation knows ought to be marriage? Of course, chick, it's rare even with us, a rare, rare flower, shy and difficult. Ah, darling, when I think of my poor grandmother, uncomplaining, a splendid human being who showed us the stuff of life, taught us what a woman could be, held our hands spiritually and physically through our hungry thirsty youth! When we wanted knowledge and were looking for it in all directions, cheeping pitifully like young birds, she fed us from the spring of life, she taught us, a noble human soul, enduring, closest to us all, a noble wife and mother—to think she never knew the meaning of sexual pleasure! Such people, generous and fine, miss the grandest thing of all, for they sacrifice out of ignorance of self, out of goodness. Sacrifice must be done, darling! But pain goes with it. Discovery is the keyword: the world is there to be found. Self-denial is not the modern answer. To know all and to understand all, the good and the evil alike, that is the modern answer. And to pity all. We do not know what lies under the actions of the just or the unjust. Not scorn but pity. All suffer, but the criminal suffers more; all his life is suffering. And one must know joy too, otherwise the crown of perfection is missing. I often wonder at my strange fate to be born into the first generation that understood humanity's birthright, the perfect consummation. If a woman has that with a man, darling, then you can't ask more from life."
"But the classics are full of it. I was interested in love always."
Nellie scowled, "I left the university, pet, because of teachers abruptly enlightening the young, ignorant, questioning minds; that is the reason for many distorted lives. A teacher there— what she said combined with what we knew—and the classics! The Rape of Lucrece, and Venus and Adonis—it was a crime— the corruption of youth."
Caroline looked at her thoughtfully, did not know what to say. Nellie went on in a sweet thin craven tone, asking if Caroline thought they could be friends.
"You're missing something if you haven't a friend."
"But we are friends, aren't we? I know it's early."
"It's early for an ordinary companionship, aye; but where there's a genuine basis, it ought to begin at once. It only needs the act of willing and knowing. Would you say we couldn't be friends now?"
Caroline looked at her, still puzzled.
Nellie went on in a dreamy coaxing tone, "It's no good playing the ascetic, no; the thick armor of self-sufficiency which you have, pet, covers a wound, a scar is there. Self-knowledge must be struggled for. Confess what you know, confess what you don't know. You need a friend for that, to tell your inmost secrets to."
"I'll tell you the truth," said Caroline and paused.
"Ah, now, that's better: let's be frank."
"I've written to Barry, but had no reply. He never caused me any pain. I feel quite sensible now. It was harmony with him, as you say. If he is free, I would go there now."
She looked at Nellie as if she had told her whole story.
Nellie said, "Then there's no hope for us as friends?"
"Why not?"
Caroline looked at her eccentric face and topknot and the glasses standing before her sympathetically. She added, with warmth, "You know, I think it is you who don't know about friendship. For a woman the best friend is a man. There's no deeper feeling."
Nellie cried in a rage, "That's a damn hypocritical superior attitude. I won't take it from you or anyone else. So women are second-class citizens. Like families in slums who need housing. Subjects for pity!"
Caroline sat up in angry astonishment.
Nellie cried, "So that's it. Women are inferior, incapable of friendship. Of all the goddamn backward bourgeois attitudes. A woman's not the equal of a man. I resent it. You can't put that over on me. So we're second-class citizens to you."
Caroline said indignantly, "Well, if it seems that way to you."
"You see what a bourgeois you are? The superiority feeling in everything! You're incapable of a decent human relation with another woman."
Caroline did not reply.
Nellie began to lament, "You see how contorted your attitudes are? You're formed by the middle-class marriage hunt; man first, last and always. Aren't you ashamed, a little ashamed? Ashamed to put your sisters on such a level?"
"I can't see what you mean. If Barry answers, he will be all to me."
"That's a terrible confession."
Caroline said, "A confession?"
"A confession; a terrible confession."
"Of what?"
"Of weakness, inferiority, of needing the superior conquering sex."
Caroline began to laugh weakly, "You make everything so unusual. I want to get married again; that's all. I'm glad to have some women friends."
She felt she had hurt Nellie and added, "We were brought up so differently."
"Yes, we were. I was not brought up with pretty pictures painted on me eyelids."
"If you're my friend, shouldn't you try to understand me?"
Nellie said bitterly, "I understand you very well. You're smugly satisfied to be enclosed in the shell and never get out. You don't want experience. You don't want discovery. Experience is a difficult woman to woo: you must leave your mother and your father and your milksop ideas of romance. No good will ever come of your writing unless you open your eyes. You'll get no respect from me. You must rely not on yourself but on others; on me.
I can show you the way; and if I don't, if you alienate me, your last chance has gone. You'll be the blind led by the blind. You'll be writing the mutterings and screams in a nightmare, no reality. There are enough paper spoilers. I could show you the way. There is a way. With just a little, you could be close to the warm skin of humanity. But you can't take it. Your soul and heart are second rate. You're weak. You want to follow the way of the mothers, the grandmothers, the pathetic imprisoned Eves."
Nellie ordered another drink and they sat in silence till she had finished it, tossing it in with curt desperate gestures. Then Caroline said, "Shouldn't we go? Didn't you say you had to go and see someone tonight?"
"Yes, I have to go and see someone you'd never go and see. It's an unfortunate woman, miserable and despised. She lives in a prostitute's hotel in a bad street in Southwark on the marshy side. And I don't blame you. I don't know any bourgeois woman who'd go and see her. And yet she is my friend and no man ever was her friend. To be her friend I did what you would never do. I told her I was a streetwalker, too. I told her I had a different district. She thinks I walk the streets round here!"
She ended in a tone of bitter heart-rending misery.
"Let's go then," said Caroline Wooller, getting up.
"I must go home first; I must take her some eggs and a jacket."
They headed home. When they were some way along the street, Caroline noticed that Nellie was crying. When they reached the door, Caroline offered Nellie the house key, thinking that she had offended her too deeply; but Nellie begged suddenly, in her pretty quick tones,
"You'll stay tonight? Let me make it up with you, Caroline. Did I offend you? Did I go too deep? I'm a bloody fool, darling, I'm so sincere. I cut across nerves. Will you forgive me, pet, and give me another chance?"
"I'm so unused to talk, you see; I'm afraid I'm ridiculously touchy. You're right, that it's not human."
"Eh, darling, you're all right; you're a fine woman. You remind me of my grandmother, the woman I honor most. Let's have a cup of tea and a bite. I've got to unpack me legs and get going, but I must eat something. The poor woman won't have anything. She's waiting on me."
While they were eating Nellie said vaguely, over her cup and cigarette,
"Yes, my grandmother, as I was saying, Caroline, was my guiding star. I resolved that that great life should not sink unrecorded into the dust of millions. That's my high resolve: to make a beautiful drama of it. It's me great play. She will not have lived in vain."
Caroline asked about the plot; but Nellie did not tell.
"There are things, pet, which cannot be reduced to words, though that spites our poor scribbler's vanity."
Someone came into the house; and Nellie explained that it was Eliza Cook, George Cook's sister. She had a back room on the second floor. She was working now as a door-to-door salesman and had many friends who kept her out.
"You'll get to know her, Caroline. Stay here. I need you both. I made up me mind to get drunk after facing that chamber of horrors at Bridgehead and if there wasn't a homing letter from my George. Wait up for me, darling. I'll bring a bottle and we'll drink it together. We'll steep our tribulations in gin in the good old way; and then we'll look at them fresh. There's nothing better. It keeps you from a world of black. And what faces me in Southwark, Caroline, is pure tragedy. She doesn't see why she should live. She has stuck her knife into the carcass of men's truth; and what's in it, is unspeakable. Only the brave can face it. Ah, I couldn't tell you yet: you haven't faced life yet. . . . Aye, and from tragedy I took the train down here."
"I'm sorry about your mother."
"Ah, she's aged before her time, poor pet, the doctor said. It's my father that's worn her out with his women, his pubs and his debts. They should never have married; that's the root of it all. And the way she clings to him, it's pathetic. It is that. I saw a sad ruin. And she's alone there, I feel so guilty with only my poor sister there; and me brother as good as a deaf-mute to it all."
"And how is your sister now; Peggy—is it?"
"Aye, sweetheart, it's Peggy. I don't know, I don't know. Not much better, I'm afraid. That's the terror and it haunts me. I feel so guilty towards the poor pitiful creature. Ah, the poor thing. The frail white camellia. It's a house of storm. I have bloody dreams; and I wake up in terror, all in a sweat, every night in a sweat, dreaming she's over the edge. The beautiful thing that she was, an early bloom, pure white, and now like a flower crushed by a rough hand, only a dark shred where there was a miracle."
"Isn't she likely to marry? She's young yet, isn't she?"
"I'm afraid not, sweet; no, darling; that's not likely now. She's not interested in those things now. You see, it was a bloody rotten, hanging fire affair with a bloody teaser of a man that did it; eight or nine years he had her hanging on and her mind bent. Ah, poor pet. No, no that's impossible now."
"But there's your father. Isn't he at home?"
"Ah, he's at home in a sense: that's his address. He never had any heart. He's out to his football club—wine, women and song it is. He betrayed her with women the first week they were married and she, poor pet, never knew; at least not then. Perhaps later, and it twisted her. It made her the ever-ailing, complaining headachy, artful little thing she is, calling us the guilty ones when we were little: for she worshiped him and never would admit the guilt in the house was his."
Nellie broke into her piercing sweet whistle and lit a cigarette. This started a strangling cough, which shook her thin body in spasms. She took no notice, meditating all the time through the smoke and coughing. She sighed, "Ah, yes, it's a bloody tragedy, you're right. The frustrated lives."
"You're afraid she won't live long."
"It isn't that that worries me, Caroline. It's the bloody harpy he'll drag into the house the next week. I'd like to take ye with me, show you a bit of England with the lid off, no Roseland, the furnace beneath the green moor that'll blow up into a blistering volcano one of these days. Aye, it's a bit different from your green and pleasant fields. But it's a very normal tragedy."
After a while she laughed; "But I didn't tell you about Uncle Sime."
"Ah, he lives there too, then?"
"Certainly he does. He always lived there. We daren't speak to him remember. He'll never answer us, pet. The kitchen's his sitting room. He sleeps up in the attic with the bats, always did. He doesn't get up till eleven."
She began to speak faster, in deeper dialect; "He goes and sits in the kitchen, speaking to no one. He's queer in the head and a penny spared, puir lad, a confirmed bachelor, one of life's beached wrecks, aye. Eh, he'll never forgive ye if ye turn the gas up on the stove; that's his field of action. He's a reactionary, puir pet, he never knew any better. You'd never get on with the ould lad: the best thing is never to take notice. I'm afraid the picture's depressing. It's a house of terror and storm."
"Poor old man; I like odd people. They go their own way."
"No one could like Sime: no one ever did. But then he never had a woman, darling. It's a bloody awful shame in a man's life: it makes him an old maid. He belongs to the generations that had no happiness. Eh, a poor elf."
After a moment, she said, "I'd like to show you Bridgehead, but if you said to me, Remember Bridgehead, I'd say, not the Cotters and their woes, but some blue, red and white advert over the rivers or a dockers' pub down between the quayside railway tracks with some sandy youngster laughing at ye, like me own brother. He was a canny lad—but they twisted him, the bloody women!"
She wiped her eyes, "It's not the High Bridge, nor the coaly Tyne. I'd say, D'ye see that place with the bloody fake Corinthian pillars? That's the Atheneum Club! Old Pop Cotter was peeing against that wall one night when the cops got him. They took him to the lockup. What a man! You can't do this to Thomas Cotter! They must have done it for a bloody lark. And he ran amok in the station and gave one of them a broken jaw and one a black eye; and he was in all night. It's like the kids sing, What's his name? Tom Cotter! What's he got? Whooping c
ough. And what else? And a black eye. And what else? And he got run over. They took him to the hospital and put in stitches and sent him home without his britches. He'll tell that story over and over and say; And they did that to Thomas Cotter. For he knows every cop from South Shields to Peterlee, that's his proud boast; and he can stop his car and say, How are you? What's the time? And the cop'll say, I'm fine, it's twenty to twelve, Mr. Cotter. That's his achievement. Eh, but he's a darling! Fuddled every night, the ould humbug, and me mother polishing the hearth and the woodwork and the brasses; and him without eyes but for the brasses in the pub. Eh-eh-eh! What a lad, what a lad! A fine-looking lad, the Tommy Atkins of me heart. And a big handsome dandy he was, until he ran into the back of a tram and lost the argument; and the drink's done for the rest."
She finished her tea; "So will ye stay a bit, then, Caroline; and give the house a soul?"
"Why not? I'm lucky. It's a new life here."
"Ah, bless you, pet; that's sweet."
Nellie, going out, paused at the door and looked at her, her deep-carved half-moon face pale against the door frame; "Then you like me, pet?"
"Why, Nellie, you're pure English, old English. Why, if they elected the Queen and she wasn't born to it, they'd elect you."
"Sweetheart, you're an angel born."
She went out, with a deep smile.
Nellie returned when the night was not old, with a bottle under her arm and came chirping up the stairs to her friend's attic room, where Caroline was in bed.
"What were you doing, pet, whiling away the time?"
"You're not late after all."
"Ah, no. My friend had to go to work."
"She works?"
"It's work. Tramping her feet to the bone, doing what none of you would do; taking chances with the vultures."
Caroline looked at her with compassion.
Nellie said, "Come on down to me boudoir; we'll have a drink and a chat and get to know each other; and no misunderstandings this time."
The Cooks occupied on the floor below, a front room and a bedroom. As Caroline entered the front room, she noticed a large painting of a short-haired grinning boy in blue overalls coursing on a bicycle. It was a talentless painting, but spirited; and she exclaimed, "Who's the handsome boy?"
Cotter's England Page 5
