Cotter's England

by Christina Stead

  "We all have struggles. I don't think a criminal struggles more than another."

  "Eh, we don't know! And it's the weakness of the criminal that asks for our pity. It's like punishing a blind man for his blindness."

  Eliza was quiet for a while.

  "Well," enquired Nellie timidly, "do you think there's a chance for us, Eliza? Can we be pals?"

  "We are," said Eliza.

  "I don't mean that, chick, I mean real friends. Do you trust me?"

  "Yes."

  "You believe in me, chick? You don't think badly of me?"

  "Why, you're wonderful Nellie: I've seen your struggles for years. I've never known a better woman. You've overcome sickness and disappointment and with such courage: you'd be wonderful in a resistance movement, I've been thinking. You're the stuff of a hero."

  "Bless you for that, I'll never forget it," said Nellie, getting up and coming over to her. "I have to kiss you for that, let's have a good long hug, darling: eh, what it is to find a true woman."

  When she came away she stood against the door looking down at her friend, her tall slender body bent like a seahorse, with the tuft and the nose and with a wild sly bright eye; and she smiled with diffident charm.

  "I'm afraid I'm imposing on you, Eliza, you're so good. Perhaps ye don't want to live with me."

  "I do, though."

  "Ye're not offended chick with my ideas about—about Jago, you know."

  "I've always had the thought," said Eliza, "that hunger is a greater passion than love; and I've been surprised not to hear them talk about the distortions produced by hunger, the sublimations and disguised forms of hunger. It's a primitive need, you can live without all but food." She laughed. "So it must take very diverse forms in us, especially in a childhood and youth of semi-starvation. When you see all about you twisted and starved and when they enquire into your bellies and send visitors to look at your kitchens—So Jago played on your hunger and I don't blame you."

  "Oh, no, pet," said Nellie flicking her cigarette, "man does not live by bread alone. I'm sorry but I can't agree, Lize. No, he wasn't playing on our hunger. He gave us a big spread. That was one of the attractions. We'd go there for the food when we were just hungry chicks. No, he understood that there were bigger impulses working up in us and great aspirations. It was the intellectual hunger, we all felt. It was a great hunger. We went everywhere looking not for food, but for guidance and for knowledge. You see we couldn't find any of it at home. And Jago understood us: he was the only one that did. We went to the Communists and they said, Study, read the history of socialism, learn how society is composed and work for a future society. But I said to the district organizer, What is the meaning of death and hunger? Have you got some words so that I can explain that to a poor mother? Hunger, desertion and death are too stark for words! Your pals, I'm sorry to say Eliza, did not understand us at all. They treated us a bit like pickpockets. In fact, I think they would have preferred pickpockets. They would have been able to work on them. But they couldn't work on us so easily for we were damned serious. It was spiritual hunger."

  "We just had no education," said Eliza, "and it was a vague struggle for education and it was a lively time, those days: but don't argue for them. We just couldn't get along on humblepie and humbug, but that's all we knew."

  "I don't agree with you, pet," Nellie closed hastily. "We'll have many a good evening wrangling it out. We'll have a grand time, chick. We won't repine. As long as you can stand me, Lize. As long as I'm not boring you."

  The evenings were long and light. One time when Nellie strolled home just before the closing of the pubs, though there was no light in the house, she heard voices and one of the voices sounded like George. She turned her key softly in the door and came in listening.

  In the front room George was shouting, "Nothing's going to stop me! I've found out what I wanted. I'm only fifty. I know I can. I know I will. I can pick and choose now: they're begging me to accept. I'm going to Geneva. I'm fixed! What do you think of that, Bob?"

  "What about the job here? You had one in view!"

  "They'll have to get along without me."

  "They'll find it's not the same," said Bob with her sea-gull laugh.

  Nellie leaned against the front door, with her eyes closed. She had not been feeling well for a long time; she had not eaten all day.

  George roared with laughter, "Come on, now," he commanded, "get me some more of that divine coffee, Bob. You taught me about coffee: I owe a lot to you. I'll never forget. I must have my coffee black. Oh, the wonderful coffee you get in Italy. I'm a European bureaucrat now. Flawless service is what I get."

  "Take some brandy instead," said Bob.

  Nellie heard the drink being poured and she thought this was what she needed.

  She glided to the doorway. "Hello, chicks! I heard you, George. I heard your news chick, because I was at the door, though I could have heard it if I'd still been in the tube. Hello, Bob darling! I'm heartily glad to see you, pet."

  She kissed the old woman who was sitting against the wall, smoking and drinking brandy. George had a brandy glass half full and was tossing the liquid round in the glass between his two large rosy hands.

  "Give me that," said Nellie, reaching for the glass, but George said, "Get your own, I'm warming this."

  Nellie laughed, "I'll drink from the bottle! Don't let me interrupt your tête-à-tête. A nip and then I'll just make meself a cup of tea: and then I'll be in to join in the rejoicings. Hand the bottle there, can't you spare a drink for a pal." She began to rally, the light began to gather in her face. "You're a pal, George! Cognac! Ye lucky bloody sod, George, with fair dames plying you with three-star and your ould wife plying her trade along the pavements and in every dirty damp harbor round Britain. I sound like an ould streetwalker and I couldn't be worse off if I was."

  "Cognac and tea don't go," said George: "I've learned my manners. You'll be sick."

  "With me, it'll go, sweetheart. Don't worry about me. I can drink ax heads pickled in methyl and take a chaser of the black bilge by Armstrong's, but I still need me tea to make me sleep sweetly. But nothing today will wash the taste out of my neck of your going back. It's bitter; but I didn't expect honey. What'll happen to your old wife, George, now you're fixed? What the hell, I don't care! Aye, I care! It hurts and it aches, but I won't try to stop you. How are ye, Bob pet? How is the pottery? How is the farm, pet? You'll be a saint if you take in a tired old grass widow one of these days for a rest. I'll have to take a weekend off."

  Bob was sitting hunched over herself, her blue eyes looking very strange through her thick glasses, her white and black streaked hair pulled tight over her large skull. Her thick, aging skin was smooth and yellow-brown from exposure, and the solid bones stood out, making an impressive mask. She looked straight at anyone when she spoke, with disturbing effect.

  "You'll be welcome, Cushie," said she harshly, looking at Nellie.

  Nellie laughed and tossed her shoulders. "Ah, bless ye, thank ye," she muttered uneasily and turned to George, "So it's fixed up, you've got a new job? That's a nice thing to hear. It's a bloody runout powder you're taking. You know you could work here at home."

  "But at home I'd have you and I'm trying to get rid of you, Cushie." George was in great humor. "You don't get the point; you're the burr in the sheep's back. I could have such a whale of a good time without you."

  "George, you oughtn't to say that," protested Bob.

  "But I mean it. I've been trying to lose the woman for years and this is my big chance." He leaned back, picked up his glass of brandy and held it up before him tipping it to his face and sucking at it. "More, varlet! At once, melord! Make it snappy! Ding-ding-dong! melord."

  "Mr. George Cook, late of the working class," said Nellie. "Aye, he's a typical old socialist, trying to be glorious at the expense of the workers. I despise you, George Cook: the back of me hand to you. Did you struggle your way up from the docks of Tyneside for this pitiful glass of brandy
?"

  "I did," cried George. "A worker's a figment to you, Nellie; it's a schoolgirl dream. It's a vague, dirty, hungering man, weak and a failure: someone for you to mother and maunder over. You're just a plain Fleet Street sobsister."

  "That's a bloody lie, you bastard," cried Nellie, springing up, "I won't sit at the table with you; you're on the way over to the other side."

  George bellowed with laughter. "But you sit at table with every ex-I.R.A. sellout, who'll hand you a dishful of workman romance. Ah, the British sods, the murderers of the Irish people: what can ye do? Ye must write tripe to fill your unworthy belly and ye must write the tripe they want, the poor beggarly Sassenachs living on king and country, for they know no better. I'm no traitor, I'm just an Englishman who wants to represent his country abroad. In the old days it was the young lords and the promising young scholars and now it's the worker from Blaydon way."

  "Why, Nellie, must we shoot the bolts on our own jail-door? He's right. The rich still go abroad: it's only the poor that stay. It's a class law," said Bob, looking pinpoints at Nellie through her pebbles.

  "Ah, don't flatter the sod," cried Nellie: "ye can't give him enough: he'll be hungry for more, whatever ye say. It's a fine figure, the self-elected Atlas holding up England abroad. It's not for the wine then you're going? It's for your principles, ye sod? It's a damn disgrace. Deserting your country for the sake of a meal."

  "Why doesn't my country offer me a square meal?" said George angrily. "I'm a big man, I'm not a half-starved sparrow. I've worked all my life: I've fought for my class. It's a rule in demonstrations that after you've got in some good hits, you step aside or get off to some other area, you don't waste yourself: you keep yourself so you're there next time."

  "I'd a damned sight rather waste myself than make a show of myself as a runaway." But Nellie couldn't find words bad enough to characterize this excuse.

  Bob said it was a time when not only individuals but masses of people were driven from their countries or sought refuge for their own sakes in other countries: there seemed to be no end to it, then.

  But Nellie repeated that George was hauling down the flag, betraying his class and turning his back on his life of struggle.

  "If all Englishmen had stayed home, true to their dear sod," George said with irony, "I should like to know where the Empire would have come from, that's kept us in sugar and tea? We don't grow it ourselves, that I know of."

  "You're avoiding the personal point with your grand comparisons," said Nellie.

  "And you're trying to drag everything down to the personal plane like you," shouted George. George was angry. "And you're helping them. You're helping your lords and masters by talking a lot of frill about patriotism. Whose country is it? Whose pound sterling is it? Whose indebtedness is it? Whose empire is it? Whose revenues are they? Am I going to lose my eyes and hair and get to be like your Uncle Sime, old scrap nobody wants, and everyone spits on, to save their England? Or to save Cotters' England?"

  "What do you mean by Cotters' England?" she cried out. "What's wrong with my England?"

  "The England of the depressed that starved you all to wraiths, gave Eliza TB, sent your sister into the Home, got your old mother into bed with malnutrition, and is trying it on with me, too, getting at my health. I never had an ache or pain in my life: I beat their England. I lived through the unemployment, the starvation, the war, I knocked out a few bloody eyes and I got me fists skinned a few times, that's all I ever got: and now I'm going to live for my country. You stay here and die in it. Don't you want to change it? Or is it only the beer-soaked sawdust of bohemia you love? The dirt and sweat of the tear-stained bachelor's bedroom; Bridgehead in all its glory? You don't know what you're fighting for. To change Cotters' England. Wasn't that what drove you on? Or just ragged rebellion?"

  "You're a bloody Cook's Tours, that's all you are," said Nellie; "you've got your spoon into the fleshpots; dear old Bob introduced you to it without knowing what it would do to you, it was the grand maternal impulse in the dear old elf; and now the smell of the ragout is all you can think of."

  George was irate and humiliated to be slanged so before another woman. He got up, stretched, turned to Bob smiling, under the light, a magnificently built middle-aged man, tall, broad, brass-faced, brass-haired, very red now; and in the courteous and even unctuous manner he could assume, he said he must go to call on Mrs. McMahon who had been lovely to him and written such kind letters.

  Nellie was leaning against the mantelpiece, her arms akimbo, the glass held on her hip, her hair loosed from its turban and her bony cheeks caved in. She had lost weight again and seemed only snowy skin and long bone. She looked at the grate, threw the end of her cigarette into it, looked up at George, dashed tears from her eyelashes and said, "Me sun has set." She looked at Bob and remarked, "There's only selfishness there, the man's heartless: he's leaving me."

  "Well, I'm not leaving you till I can get my plane ticket," said George. "Relax, I'm going out. Sorry Bob; I'll see you soon." He went out, whistling, banged the door.

  "You see," said Nellie, "his fine, rough, common sense? The man's hard as steel. Now he's going to torment Gwen McMahon, a poor dame who thinks his love is to her, when it was only to his pots and carpets." She sank into a chair and lighted another cigarette. "Give me a glass of brandy, Bob. Ah, sweetheart, I'm not very brave, I'm afraid. Give me a fortnight and I'll swim to the surface. And I am going to fight for him, though I hate to fight. I'm weak. I don't like to fight with my sweethearts." She burst into tears. "No one is really for me. They all think he is going to leave me. I've always known it myself. And when I stand up to him, it's with terror. I'm afraid of that bald blind look of total Philistine intolerance. He hasn't been making love to you, Bob?" she said in a weak voice.

  "No, he's not my sort," croaked Bob.

  Nellie hardly listened to the answer. She went on, shaking out her ashes, "I'll not sleep tonight, either way. And for once he must stay up with me. Ah, darling, love's an incurable disease, and I've got a bad case. The bugger's got me beat: but you'll see me fighting a grand retreat. You're staying the night, sweetheart? Ah, do, pet: but you know you're always expected."

  When George returned, Nellie said, "You can put on your pajamas, George, but you're not going to get any sleep. You've had enough sleep at your desk in Rome, me fine lad. You're going to have it out with me: I'm going to pull the woman act. You're not deserting me without a whimper, I'm not going to be the heroine. I'm going to fight for you."

  George wore a reflective smile. He sat down and said, "Where's Bob?"

  "Bob's upstairs: she's going to bed."

  "I feel like a cup of tea with Bob," said George, who seemed thoughtful and mild.

  "No, pet, I'll make it and we'll drink the pot out."

  She brought it in presently and found George halfdressed. She sat down opposite and said sweetly, "George, when I married you, I looked upon you as the glory and success of my life, sweetheart, my laurel wreath." She implored him, "George, are you going off to leave me lonely, a wandering woman of forty, fighting by myself?"

  "There's a hole in my right sock again," said George, looking at his foot. "It's the toe I stubbed on the table. The doctor said, That'll never grow straight again: you'll have it for the rest of your life. How did he know that at once?"

  "I've darned your others: you've got fresh."

  "It stops me from going barefoot or wearing sandals," said George, "women used to admire my feet."

  "Admired your feet now," cried Nellie, "you beggarly provocateur!"

  "Well, if I'm in for it, I may as well enjoy myself," said George.

  "I intend to run you ragged, you bugger," said Nellie.

  George walked up and down for a while. She tormented him. The bed invited his glowing body over which the hot dusk and lethargy had already come. Her ability to tease and stir was the hold she had over him. Once, too, he had thought her very beautiful in a unique way, strange, shaking with mysterious bells and cor
ollas like an oriental tree, shivering with sunstreaks, racing with windrips from within. He still saw these almost invisible movements in her. His eyes were closing and her darings and trillings, her ingenuous and disingenuous ways, lovely voice and queer oaths, all the practiced art came to him, blew round him, lulled him and made him laugh: and then she would wake him up with a buffet, with sting and roaring in his eyes and ears. He laughed, shouted, sulked and falsely snored; and he did sleep, too.

  "I'll give it to you," she cried. She made pots of tea; the night wore away.

  At last he said, "I'm getting out of here. I'm going to sleep upstairs!"

  "There's nowhere to sleep—Bob's in one room, Johnny's got another reserved for her and Eliza has hers. Caroline's in the attic. You can't go there."

  George went out into the backyard where the cool early morning air woke him. There was an immense beach of sky to the east on which were thousands of little sand-colored clouds and the light blue air was swimming off it: and yet it was only half past three. Bob had said, "You must take care of Nellie, it is your duty: she is going to pieces, her moral and mental health is going." What moral health? George had laughed at this, "Nellie always was a bohemian. She can't be shipwrecked in Bohemia."

  Bob was herself a bohemian: "What's wrong with Bohemia?"

  "I couldn't stand it," George had said; "I hate it."

  "It's the way out for many people, it's the way they pick up an education."

  "Yes, but Nellie's a prisoner of Bohemia. She won't grow. When I met her she was in it and promised to get out: she never got out."

  "Take her with you," said Bob, "and she'll have to get out. Take her away from the weeds growing over the ruins. Even Nellie will have to change.