Cotter's England

by Christina Stead

  Nellie turned quickly, paused; and with a brilliant smile, "That's me, love."

  "Who did it?"

  "A friend, my friend Vi. I'd like you to meet her. She's the daughter of me old friend, Ma Pelley. A genius, born into a family of three dull boys. She's married, but there's no hope there, Anthony, a man with a rattletrap tongue and no stuffing. Eh, what a struggle! When I was there last, Ma Pelley and I sat in the kitchen and opened our gin and dropped our tears in it. The house, love, is like a battlefield fought over by vegetables and rags, all torn, muddy, dead and rotten. Vi's no idea of housekeeping, her poor Ma had to go to work to keep them and the poor waif cannot cope. The place is coming down round their ears; but there's no help for it. He hasn't the interest and she hasn't the strength. Eh, the poor man can't help it: no steady job and a psychological down-and-outer, a frail waif. Ye can't blame them."

  Nellie opened her bottle and poured out the drinks.

  "My friend Vi took me to Spain to write me play; but I couldn't, for the misery of the people; and she came back for him and married him. Eh, eh! And now children and the life of struggle."

  "What does he do?"

  "Who, love?"

  "The down-and-outer, the man."

  "I don't know, love. What he can. He's a mechanic by trade, I think; an honest sort, a guid man, but no ambition. Poor waif! Aye, Anthony Butters."

  "Anthony Butters! Not the one who was in the papers this week? He's fighting for leadership of one of the big unions. They say if he gets in it will be the ruin of England."

  "Ah, I don't know, pet. It might be. I don't know. But he hasn't the go. The wasted lives."

  Nellie handed Caroline a glass of gin mixed with lime juice, "I take mine plain. You drink that and I'll go and get off me outdoor things. Thank goodness this is my late week. I can stay up and talk out me troubles."

  Before going out she gave Caroline the brief letter from her brother Tom; "Read that and you'll understand partly what I mean. He's coming to London. And not alone; but with that bloody leech that's taken every penny and now is coming for some of ours."

  She brushed her eyes and began to curse heartily; curse her brother for his treachery and weakness; the woman, for her treachery and vampirism. In the beginning, her brother Tom brought the woman to see her; he liked to have her approval; "And when I heard it was an older woman, that was taking an interest in the poor lad, I was grateful to her and found out where they were staying and sent her a spray of orchids and she came here, the bloody damn traitor wearing them on her shoulder, and full of charm. Aye, she's got charm and spends money on dress; young for her age and knowing all the tricks. She came in here, the—" and Nellie cursed her. Nellie had been charmed and kissed her and begged her to be friends and she had promised; but she meant not a word of it. She had come only to pull the wool over Nellie's eyes, the better to trap the poor baited fish. She had stayed there three days and Nellie had felt sure of her; she had begun to love her; and then, she, Marion, the woman, had gone away with Tom and never come again.

  "I resented it bitterly. It was as if she came to spy me out and try me weight and then when she had me weighed up, she knew how to plan her campaign."

  "Is she pretty?"

  "Pretty enough; big dark eyes and a taking way."

  "He didn't marry her?"

  "She's married. She's got two of them," said Nellie dryly.

  She went into the bedroom, and was away a few minutes. Caroline sat with her back to the door, taking in the room, a low broad room with two windows on the low-built street, the flat night-lighted sky over the flat roofs like an old engraving. The room had bookcases, a record player, a piano and lamps, a daybed; the walls were covered with dark red paper. A large vase, dark blue with a white flower design, was on a stand in the corner. She got up to look at the books and took out one after the other eagerly; all fascinating titles, new to her; Merrie England, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Priests and People in Ireland, Fields, Factories and Workshops; one after the other. She picked out one and stood with it.

  Nellie returned, poured out more drink and said, "Sit down, pet. What have you got there?"

  "There are so many books here I never heard of. I can learn something here if you'll lend them to me."

  She came over with a little book in her hand and sat down. She glanced at Nellie and looked away. Nellie, with a lively, hard smile, was sitting opposite, knees wide apart, her eyes fixed on her guest. She was wearing a blue shirt, as in the picture, and a pair of riding breeches, horribly bloodstained. Her hair was tied up with a colored handkerchief, her feet were in Spanish rope slippers, and, leaning on one elbow, she held a cigarette in the air. She leaned forward and told Caroline that what she had with George was a wonderful thing, a rare rare thing, the perfect union; and that if you hadn't known that, you hadn't known what life meant. She shook her cock's crest knowingly, her face darted forward with delight; "Ah, Caroline, if you only knew what a man George is, a real man, he's made for ecstasy. If a woman has a man like that, she can't forget it."

  She paused, waiting for an answer. Caroline replied nothing; but got up and went to the bookcase and began looking through one book after another; and then said, she was taking one to bed, The State and Revolution, because she had often heard about it; "I always wanted to understand that."

  Nellie had launched out on a description of some friends of George's, a writer and an artist living together, two women.

  "Me bold hero is a great one for the dames; they're at his feet and no wonder; but what he has is the rare gift."

  It turned out that these two women had had a general servant and this servant was Mrs. McMahon; "George saw she admired him and just like you, pet, she wanted to learn something, better her condition. So she came here for one day a week; and presently she gave them up and came to us. That was ten years ago and there she is yet, the good old faithful, the true, loyal working-class woman, better than ye read about, for she's a beautiful loving soul, patient and uncomplaining. Ah, but she thinks the world of George and he is very patient explaining things to her; and what a womanly care, love, for his bits of copper and pewter and china. Such simple devotion. Aye, I'd be jealous if I didn't know the woman's pure loyal heart. But the idea of wickedness never came to her."

  Caroline said, "If you're so fond of her, why should she think of wickedness? Among ordinary people there isn't any wickedness, is there? I've never seen any."

  Nellie was silent for some time. She suddenly said, in a rough tone, "You see slums full of rats and you don't believe in evil? That's weak, isn't it? There's your rose-painted specs again. You see? How you're tainted to the bone with the fairy-tale pink? It's weak, it's selfish, it's wrong."

  "Yes, it is weak; it is wrong."

  "Aye, but you won't set it right by signing papers in the Rehousing Committee; or reading The State and Revolution, as if it were a goodnight story. The truth is not in books; the truth is in humanity. You're sticking your eyes in a bookcase, you need eyes like a crab on stalks and you'll see nothing but the bottom of the sea. I'm disgusted with you!"

  Caroline turned round in frightened anger. But Nellie had not moved; she said, in a melancholy voice; "And the truth's right beside you!"

  "What truth?"

  "Sit down, love; and I'll explain to you."

  Caroline came and sat at a distance from the strange woman.

  Nellie smoked and said rapidly, "My life's been one of cycles. I look back on it and I try to divide up the tracts of time I've crossed. There was the era in Bridgehead, the era of wandering round the country taking one job and another; then the London era; and now, if me bold lad's going abroad, I'm going too; that will be the fourth. I often think I'll write about it. My mother came to London on her brief honeymoon and now time has come full circle, I'm in London myself. I was probably conceived here in the brief sad two nights of her first and only trip from the grime of her native city. Ah, the poor pallid waif. Taken from the convent at eleven and sent to wor
k in the houses of relatives; and then to the aunt who kept a boarding-house and that's where she met the big gallant Tommy Atkins and that was when for her the meteor fell from the sky. Me uncle Geoffrey went to the Continent to work on overcoats when he was a young man and that's where George is now. Our life is a mysterious thing, Caroline; there are cycles and moments. There are fatal hours. If a man's destined to it, he dies young. It's a fact, pet; one can't shut one's eyes. You may talk about forgetting and losing yourself in a lot of cock-and-bull; stories like an infant, for what is revolution to you but a pretty pink teacup in a sitting room, something to toy with? Your life is moving in cycles now to a certain end and you can't escape it; though you run howling and bawling through the universe that's closing in on you. No, it's a fateful thing you went to Roseland; it's a fateful thing you met me; it's fate you lost so many. For haven't you, pet? Haven't your friends dropped off from you; like him too, like Barry. It's your fate; and they're weak creatures; they feel your fate. They feel the death in you. Don't give up, Caroline. Know it; face it. It's been well said, if you don't confess, you must commit suicide and suicide itself is a confession; and not to commit suicide is a terrible confession. But you haven't the strength to confess, have you?"

  "Confess what?" said Caroline wearily.

  "No, you haven't the courage to deal with your own life. I have no faith in you. That's why I wanted to talk to you. To make you face the stark staring realities. You're wandering. You haven't the strength of soul I thought I found in you. I'm comparing you now with my Southwark friend; what a woman, what a soul! She knows the black. She'd walk boldly right into it."

  She brushed her eyes and blew her nose.

  'You couldn't. I see. The path's narrow and dark, you've lost your footing, the swamp mud would fill your nose and ears and eyes—"

  Caroline was staring at her. She said, "Why?"

  "Because you're turning down the hand that's offered to you. No good will come to you. Don't you want, Caroline, to go deep down into yourself and find out what is there? Is this surface thing you? Find out. Then you will understand; then the way will be clear. Come, let us introspect."

  But Caroline refused. It was very late. She was exhausted and she found it hard to understand Nellie's words.

  "Well, all right, Caroline: you need sleep. We'll talk it through tomorrow."

  She rose with a gallant bright smile and kissed Caroline on the cheek, saying, "Bless you, darling."

  Mr Cotter had…

  MR. COTTER had not been feeling very well, as he told it in his Sunday and Monday, his Tuesday and Wednesday pubs, his Thursday, Friday and Saturday pubs; in the Atheneum and football Clubs; to his clients and colleagues in the insurance business; to the Mother Superior, and to Mrs. Riggs, a divorced woman who had been acting strangely since her divorce; and to all the policemen after whose health he enquired and who kindly enquired after his own. It was no surprise therefore when Mr. Thomas Cotter went into hospital and it was in the local newspapers as an item of interest; Thomas Cotter, who as a young professional footballer had played for Wales.

  Mr. Cotter had an anesthetic and went under the knife; and when he came out of it he was worse than before. "They kept me in the hospital," the big man said genially, between spasms of agony, "for they had to empty the liquor out of my veins and put blood in before they would operate. They tested me: they found I was ninety proof"; and when his visitors twitched and paled to see him lying down there in such terrible pain, he said in his large way, "It's not the worst; the very worst is Tuesday, when they'll be talking about me at the Cross Keys, if I'm not there, as if I were a dead man. It's Tuesday and where is Thomas Cotter? I don't like to think of it." His next operation was to be in a few days. The first had been a success; "If that's what you call a success," he said, jumping at a stab of pain; "I was all right, I was just a little down, till they started on me and found out all my secrets! And now they can't stop; they've got to go on and on." But on Wednesday, he couldn't help feeling depressed that he was absent from the Princess, his Wednesday pub. What would they be saying, that Thomas Cotter was a goner? On Thursday, the night before his operation, with his stitches and his pain, he got out of bed at eight o'clock at night, put on a hospital dressing gown and telling a taxi driver he knew, whom he found outside the hospital gates, that he was discharged, he got him to unload him at the Ravenscourt, his Thursday pub. There he had a fine time, half doubled with pain, but of interest to all, before the taxi driver, struck with doubt, and the tavernkeeper, struck with compunction, insisted upon getting him back to hospital; for now, for the lark and for the pain, Mr. Thomas Cotter freely admitted that he had climbed the wall, fooled the sentry, escaped from jail. He got back somehow and pretended that he had only been a bit of time in the men's room; and the next day, he died under the anesthetic, so that he would have felt himself quite justified in going out for his last drink, if he could have known.

  There never was the funeral of a private person in Bridgehead or surrounding districts, like that of Thomas Cotter. All his friends were there. There were those from the assurance company, colleagues and clients, a group from two of his pubs, the Tuesday and Saturday, and a big wreath from his fellow drinkers of the Thursday for whom he had given his life; and. it was thought very small of the lessee of one of the others that he had sent nothing when asked, with the excuse that he did not believe in mourning. He was obliged later to place a wreath in beadwork on the grave itself. The cricket, bowling and football clubs were represented; the policemen, and the Atheneum Club had delegates. It was a fine day: and the firemen sent a band; and the dogs and all the little boys ran along with some long-legged skinny little girls, merry and mean, whose skins and lungs would never quite lose their present coating of Bridgehead gray. That evening, the sports edition squeezed their figures and forecasts to get in some fine glowing remarks about the man who had played for Wales, his subsequent soldierly career, his fine family; and they passed over the misfortune of Cushie's wearing her heart on her sleeve. The sun set on a glorious murky reddish day, with the dark gray river, reflecting in sulky oils its fires and greening. Mr. Cotter was quite right in his life. He lived respected and died as a great man; and for the next week or two, even the next few months, Nellie Cook and Thomas Cotter, Junior, were able to get little concessions from the landlord for the two women left in the house, Mrs. Mary Cotter and Peggy. The assurance company, the football club and the police thought about getting up a subscription. Nellie and Tom gave their mother and sister all they had in the bank and then they had to go back to work.

  With old Mrs. Cotter after the funeral, time had been, time was and time might be again, but it was all one time: she knew no difference between the living and the dead. Sometimes she did not recognize the living and sometimes the dead fled from her. She recovered her strength, they moved her upstairs, but to the back bedroom which had been Peggy's; and now Peggy slept with her to attend to her in the night. The fine front bedroom with the oak wardrobe and the air still faintly scented with Thomas Cotter's lotions, pomades and soaps, was empty. There was a lock and they kept it locked; but she found the key; or else her brother Simon gave it to her when she asked for it. The lock soon got broken with the way she treated it, rattling and pecking at it with the key; and then Simon would take the lock off, lay all the parts out in order on the kitchen table and put it together, clean and strong. Mrs. Cotter always had to look in to see if the room was in order and to see who was there. Her husband Thomas Cotter was often away now. Sometimes he was away to London or over the Border on a trip; or to Teesside, sometimes to Wales to see his brothers in business there. Often he was up there too, but asleep; and he was tired, with his traveling; she didn't want to disturb him. The room had to be orderly though; for he was fastidious, even vain, always titivating, as she said with a slight laugh, "a man proud of his looks and with a right to be." Sometimes when she found him out several times running, it occurred to her that something was wrong; and she would climb the
stairs to the attic to see if her sister Lily or her own mother was still lying there as they had done for years. When she found no one there, she would hasten down to the kitchen, laugh and say to Simon, "Yes, now I have got it right, Lily is dead and Tom is out on business; what was I thinking of?"

  Simon was anxious, for she spent a good deal of time on the stairs where she had had her fall; and he encouraged her to do her polishing, which she did when she was too tired for climbing. She would be down on her knees polishing the fenders and the grate, rubbing a duster on polished wood and on mantelpiece, scolding Peggy for tarnished silver or a spotted tablecloth; and if she could not find a bit of chamois leather, she would wrap silver up in paper.

  "You mustn't let the house go to wrack and ruin just because I'm not watching," she scolded Peggy. She worried about the disorder which she imagined was somewhere, things left on plates; and if she found food on plates, she'd throw it into the fire, for to throw scraps on the fire is a local housekeeping custom. There were days when anyone who wanted to have his dinner would be obliged to walk around with his plate in his hand. Only one thing was not in danger, the pot of tea, sacred in the house; but she would even throw the dog's food in the fire. Perhaps there was, as Peggy said, spite in it; for lately she had turned against the dog, and yet kept calling him Timmie, the name of a long-dead spaniel she had liked. She hoped to show Peggy by example, that it was wrong to call a dog Tom, after a man. On the more fretful days, her sisters would come and argue or console; but everyone was uneasy and ran around like pets in a cage. She would sit stubbornly in front of her own plate, fall into a dream, wake up; and when no one was looking, she would throw it all into the fire, scrape the plate, run to the sink and set the clean plate, fork and knife in their places. Sometimes she got the idea that they had done with this house and were going "to the other house." They had been in this one for forty years and once Thomas Cotter had spoken of moving higher up, near the Moor, where the air was good.