Cotter's England

by Christina Stead

  Tom's trunk and his folding cot which Connie Ilger had sent to King's Cross for him, were set up in the middle room in the attic. The front room there was for passing visitors; in the back was a little room and there a bed with a honeycomb quilt, a chest of dawers, a little madonna and some holy pictures on the wall, there Eliza's sick mother had made a long stay. In each of the few rooms were traces of past guests, a pair of cufflinks in a china ashtray from Gloucester, a frayed tie, a pair of wrinkled workshoes.

  "I don't know why he sent them. I don't know what I want them for. I don't want anything. I don't want to live," said Tom, when he set up his cot. He opened the wardrobe trunk and let it stand there. He found Nellie looking at the knitted woolen socks and a cardigan.

  "Connie knitted those."

  "Connie?"

  "The husband. He knits beautifully. He knitted Patrick a polo sweater," he said in a hard voice.

  Nellie, looking at the cardigan, dark blue, found a small photograph in the pocket—a laughing woman with black eyes looking through bright tangled hair and it was like the sun shining on blackberries in a blackberry bush. Tom let her look.

  "She took a good photograph; any snap was good," said Tom.

  "It's a scheming face. There's no frankness there; only tactics."

  Tom turned away, "I don't want to talk about it. I wish I weren't here. I wish I were with her."

  Johnny Sterker, on her wanderings again, presently left; and Tom and Nellie had much time together. Nellie could not help thinking of that trunk always standing open in the attic room. Instead of going to bars or to cronies, Nellie rushed home each day, to keep her brother from suicide, as she told everyone. Tom, though he kept saying he had no future, had gone to several interviews in London and had written off for two other jobs, both in the country.

  "I don't know why I wrote, Nellie. It's automatic. I write if I see something to suit me."

  "I should think you've had enough of the country. You could go to Bridgehead. There may be a job going, an unskilled job you could get."

  "An unskilled job! You don't think I'd take an unskilled job?"

  "What else could you get?"

  He could not help laughing, "Nellie, you don't think much of me."

  "Well, Tom, you've been foot-loose long enough. But stay here awhile, you need me. And I want you to talk it out, get rid of it. If you don't, there'll be another harpy. Introspect, lad, make me understand. If I can see your problem, I can help you.

  You've been under a spell. You've been in fairyland. I've got to ungum your eyes. And what legacy did she leave you, the bad fairy that she was to you? The wish for death?"

  "It's too fresh yet, Nellie."

  "Ah, you poor bemused victim. What was it? A sort of mesmerism? You, a clear-eyed man, always acidulous and on your guard? I can't swallow it, lad. It's too much for me. It sticks in me craw to think she could have made such a booby out of you. Living there with two others, calling you her half-brother; and the other a half-brother, too; and the husband taking it all. What sort of men were you all?"

  "We were all men who loved her."

  She plagued him, hungry for relief: she questioned him, day and night, probing into his secret life, suffering as she faced the intolerable truth, that Tom had loved the woman. She made him go over it again and again, repeating detail after detail; but she could not come to understand why he had loved Marion; nor why he had stayed there at the orchard with her husband Constantine Ilger; why he had called himself Green, not Cotter, Tom Green and got his letters, Tom Cotter, at a post office in a village fifty miles away.

  "She had relatives called Green."

  Why had he hidden himself from Nellie, his family and his friends?

  "It is true. I dropped every friend."

  "It was your shame, your acknowledgment to yourself that it was a shameful, unnatural love. You wanted no one to know, not even me! You had a reason. What was it? I can't bear it!"

  She would jump up, stalk about, smoking, raging.

  He remained sedate and sometimes sweet, "But why do you care, Nellie? I don't care. I'm anonymous. I may as well be called Green as Cotter."

  "You'll pardon me! Your name's Cotter and you stick to your name, not an alias, unless you're doing something you're ashamed of."

  "You've changed your name to Cook," he said, grinning.

  "Don't try to wriggle out of it! You know all she wanted was to see how deep in the mud she could get you. You stay there with two men in the house and you're called her half-brother, though you know you're no brother and there's another half-brother and you never guessed! I can't take it, her calling you brother. Ah, ah, no, no. I used to be proud of you. I thought you had the grit to face your fate. I pity you."

  A hundred points of the mystery she struggled to clear up, by cross-questioning, by stabbing at inconsistencies, by petulance, argument, by sweetness, by speaking her abhorrence of lies and by weak and piteous ways so that the tears came into his eyes. She begged him to "introspect," to look into himself and remark on the weakness and cowardice that had made him for eight years live with a scheming woman, who had nothing for him and for whom he had nothing.

  "But we had something, not nothing. I can't explain it, but it was there. It was not nothing."

  She thought his tears were tears of regret, remorse; but they came because Marion would smile tenderly when he said "naw-thing" in his Northumbrian; "A am naw-thing."

  Nellie repeated, "It was all illusion, bitter cruel illusion and you fell for it, the sweet candy covering the rotten apple."

  It ached in her brain, it kept her awake all night. She wanted Tom for comfort with George away; but Tom sitting there quiet and pensive, in his long mild silences, was spending the time with Marion probably. How could he, so acid, so keen, so slow to make friends (she said), so touchy about his honor, a clean man, so wise about women, have even liked, much less sacrificed himself for this faithless woman, who never loved him, but just wanted to count in another victim? But no matter how she put it to him, no matter how far she analyzed it and exhibited it, the miserable conspiracy, the way he had been tricked, not loved, she could get no more out of him, than, "I know, but it didn't matter."

  "And you make so much fuss about people lying and cheating!"

  "That's the way of it, Nellie."

  "But when you talked things over, introspected, didn't you notice things that didn't fit? Didn't you point them out?"

  "No."

  "Well, what did you talk about all the time?"

  "About ourselves. How I had to live for her. How I wanted to live for her and she for me."

  "I can't understand it. It doesn't seem like you."

  Every day she asked about it, in her free hours; and it was for that she hurried home, to torture herself over her tea, her cigarettes; crying between her two men, tormented by George's tenacious egotism, and by the intangible in Tom's story. As soon as she came home, she went to find him and made him a pot of tea.

  Then, "You've changed so much, you're unrecognizable, putting up with a thing like that."

  "I've always been the same, Nellie."

  "No, pet, I've thought and thought. I've tormented myself to make you see. For you, of all men to be involved with a harpy. Was it glamour? But she wasn't glamorous: it was all make-up and dress."

  "I can't explain it to you, Nellie."

  He told her all she asked, because with her he could talk about all of it and in the end, weep. They wept together. He told her that he was himself weak and wicked because he had promised to die with Marion and he ought to do it. He had sent off for two jobs just as if nothing had happened.

  "It's just as if she meant nothing."

  "She did mean nothing; and that's why you can do it. That's it, the simple raw truth. You think something tragic happened. Nothing happened. And now you want to make it a reality, your poor illusion of life. Aye, it's a conjurer's trick, done with mirrors. Because she wasn't there, not the woman you dreamed of; and you weren't ther
e; and the love, the passion you talk of— you make me so angry, lad, though I pity you, talking at random, using big words that have no meaning for you, to try to get in with me, to equal me, to make me think bigger of you."

  He was not offended. He roused himself to say, "Nellie, you're a fine woman, you're honest; but there are some things you don't understand. You want everything black and white; there are grays—and red and greens. If everything were black and white, I should have kept my promise to Marion."

  She cried out, "But Tom chick, it was nothing. It wasn't a great love. It was a shadow, thinner than the films. That wasn't love, Tom! It couldn't have been. That comes once in a lifetime or many lifetimes; it couldn't have been that."

  "I agree that it may have been something else."

  "Ah, you admit it! You've only got to see it plainly and you'll see there never was anything there at all. No great love, no tragedy, just a weak self-interest that it is an insult to call with the name of love."

  Tom said, "I don't know. I see everything your way and yet it was real. It was the only thing that ever happened to me."

  "Ah, no, pet, not the only thing; you can't go back on the rest of your life and on me like that."

  "I don't know what my life was for, Nellie."

  "That's the state she got you into, helplessly dependent. I can't forgive her for that."

  "I don't expect you to forgive her, and I have no need to."

  "Now, that's where you abdicate all your common sense and I can't sympathize with you, Tom Cotter. This mourning is ridiculous; it's a posture."

  "All right, Nellie."

  "Tom, it's getting me down. I can't sleep at night. It's the enigma. I worry about you. You've become twisted. I could always depend on you for the sensible flat view. It's the thing that's happened to your personality that worries me."

  "Don't worry about me."

  "But Tom, I do. I can never forgive Marion for using you, just to let the other men see she had someone else in her power, the weakest of all. What else was it, what but that?" She said this in a yearning, mournful voice.

  "I don't know what it was myself, Nellie. If I could only ask her just that one question, she'd tell me. She always told me the truth. I told her the truth. There was a bond. It was no use lying, because we always knew."

  "The truth!"

  "Can't you be satisfied to leave it like that? An enigma."

  "That's the proof isn't it that she didn't love you? She fooled and tricked you. Why, Patrick knew all along that you were no half-brother. And Connie knew it. They must have been laughing at you."

  "No one laughed. Patrick hated me."

  "Would you sacrifice someone you loved?" said Nellie.

  "No, I wouldn't."

  "So, you admit you were just a trophy for her. There was no love."

  "It may be so."

  "And yet you stand up for her, Tom, a man like you. Now, why don't you say straight out, say it to me, confess it, that you condemn her. You know in your heart of hearts she used you and gave you nothing."

  "Ah, but she did give me something."

  "What! How can you say that? What? Say what?"

  "She loved me."

  "And so you would die for her? Ah, lad, that's bitter! That's the bitterest word you ever said to me. And you wouldn't die for me, would you? I'm only Nellie, the old sister, the one you left behind in your grand life of adventure and passion. Love! Love! And you use that word for her."

  Nellie never could have enough of it, arguing, pleading. She would burst into tears and so would Tom. When she left him she went to talk to others; what was the explanation? She wept.

  In the back kitchens and back bars, from north London to south, "He mightn't be there when I get home. To think he's there now listening to a dead voice."

  She would do her work and go home and begin again, "If I asked you to die for me, would you do it?"

  "Perhaps, Nellie, I don't know. Would you—wouldn't you? I don't know. If it would do you some good, perhaps."

  "Ah, Tom, I get it. If love has by-passed you and you've given up your party, life may not be worth living. You don't want to keep trudging through the desert of life without a drop of water. I get it, lad. Ah, Tom, the curtain came down for you before the play began. Dedicated to frustration. And this woman seeing what it was, took advantage of the pitiful situation. Aye, it's a shocking thing. Who wouldn't see the pitiful tragedy? The defeated longing, the love-hungry man, running and crying to an older woman for an iron ration of happiness. It gets me down, Tom. I feel too much for you."

  "But Nellie, it wasn't an iron ration; it was real."

  "Aye, pet, it seemed real. It's strange, Tom, that the last ten years were the years you and I came to the crock of gold; but mine was real gold and yours was fairy gold. There's a parallel in everything we do, but mine is reality and yours is the shadow. Ours is a strange fate. Ah, Tom, if you only knew the happiness, the joy I met with George, the fruition. And that's why, Tom, I don't want you to take the Dead Sea fruit for the golden apple."

  She smoked and waggled her legs and said to Tom, "Well, chick, do you feel better now? Introspection, confession is the thing. Now there are some friends of mine would do you some good. Solid real people. You'd forget the ghosts and embers."

  "Now, Nellie, leave me alone. No friends can make any difference. I couldn't go out and start talking about the Labour Party and the housing crisis and Khrushchev's policy."

  And she went out again to drum up friends for him, telling them all the sadness, the lonely deceived man, the great illusion, "the black widow spider." Sometimes, they came to the house and saw a sedate, quiet man smoking away; sometimes he went out with them to a pub and talked cheerfully about anything; a countryman he seemed, with his thick boots and tan face.

  When the next weekend she had to go to Henley, to Bob Bobsey's, where a great skylarking was looked forward to, celebrating Bob's return, she implored Eliza Cook and Camilla Yates to look after her brother. Go she must: the lazy tyke George had left there an Italian sweater he wanted and Bob had letters; but she would not be able to enjoy the few days off she so badly needed, with the thought of her brother alone and "living the past with the dead." Eliza and Camilla promised.

  Camilla had been a little surprised to see in Tom a lean-faced, brown-skinned man of mature age, in good dark blue clothing, careful of his appearance, with clean shapely hands and nails. He had red lips, blue eyes, bright hair. He was polite, affable but restrained: they said good day. She heard him with his sister talking interminably morning and evening. She respected their privacy. The first day that Nellie was in the country, she went into the kitchen to eat and Tom came in. He slid into a seat beneath the long rickety table as if it had been allotted to him by her and gave her a quaint smile, bright, catlike.

  Camilla gave him some breakfast without chatting, not to intrude on his despair. When she sat down, she said, "I know that you have just lost your wife and I am very sorry."

  "Yes. I lost my wife."

  "I admire what you did. It was a beautiful thing to do. You are a brave man."

  "I couldn't help myself. I was in it."

  After a pause, she remarked; "Your sister says you know England well."

  "Yes, I know it. I could show, you places people don't know."

  "I once saw the mountains near the Cheviot and those dangerous moors; what lovely colors!"

  "I know them well."

  "Do you know the Border, Allen Dale, Allen Head, the Cumberland side?"

  He smiled a little, "All. Cheviot, Roseberry Topping, Ovington Edge and Ockfield Fell and all in the north, on the moors, through the gaps, against the wind, and with the sea-fret hanging, the sinking east coast and the brecklands; even Crewe and London, black Manchester—I could show you places. I went to some of the places because I heard about them in rhymes and songs, like Cwm Elan; and I was curious. I lived in some of those places. When I go first to a town I get to know all the cafés, all the teashops and the all
eys where there are little shops; and the old town; and I get to know the people who wait and walk about, like messengers, paperboys, gatekeepers, sextons, policemen—I get to know all the people of that sort. I could show you hundreds of places. I could take you to a lot of people."

  She was astonished. "From your sister's description of you, they could have put a hundred men in a line-up and I should never have picked you."

  A pause. Then he said, "You are surprised people torment you. You know them for years and they always torment you. It's the fox under your jacket."

  "Ah!"

  "If you talk to strangers in a town you learn all kinds of things and they're kind to you. I was invited to Buckingham Palace by a stranger I met in the train."

  He gave a curious broken laugh, like a sob. She said nothing.

  He continued, "And a horrifying thing happened to me on that occasion. I went to see him. He was some kind of under-butler. I walked in past the sentries and the policemen and the guards and had to begin in the kitchens. I probably began with a potboy. I was passed on to the maids and a housekeeper, I imagine, and then met my friend, who said he would send me up to see the table laid for a state banquet that night, with the gold plate. He took me to a footman and I was passed on and on and we reached a man standing at the foot of some stairs and on and on; and the head butler was very pleasant about it. He wasn't supposed to, but he did. They took me to a door and opened it and there I saw a long table already set with all the crystal, the china and plate on it. The plate was all gold, wonderful to think about, but somehow dead, when there was so much of it. I stood there and then said goodbye to my friend and came out the way I came in. I saw a few of them looking at my lapel but it didn't occur to me to think why. So I came out of the place and into the park and under the trees a Mayflower fell onto me and I looked at it. Then I noticed I was wearing my red star with the hammer and sickle I got in Russia. I suppose they thought it was some sort of order in a civilian department."