Cotter's England

by Christina Stead

  She said violently, "You'll do no such thing. Do you want to cut her mind to pieces with such rubbish? She can't understand. This is her weakness. I foresaw some such tripe. I've arranged for her to go away and stay with someone reliable, a friend of mine, while I'm away. Keep away from her. I won't let her backslide now."

  "When she's my wife, you won't have to trouble. I'll take care of her health."

  She said rudely, "I won't tolerate it. So that's where you were? Talking spoony to her. I'm going straight up there now. Behind my back, under my nose, it's the same story. I'll undo your nonsense at once."

  But he said she was asleep, she had influenza, was weak, and to have a future with him would make her happy; if Nellie started her nonsense he'd be very angry.

  "What do you mean by my nonsense?" she said indignantly.

  "Now I'm taking a walk, Nellie, and I'm coming back to look after her. I won't ask her now; but it's on the record; and I'll ask her next weekend. It's settled. You know when I mean a thing."

  Nellie, sitting twisted at the table, smoked and stared at him; "You mean, then, that it's all meant nothing to ye, all I've said? You're going on with your trouble-making? You're not going to do your duty by Bridgehead?"

  He stood, looking at her calmly, waiting for her remonstrances. To all she said, he smiled; and repeated he was going out for his walk and would be back.

  "And perhaps, in view of what you've said, Nellie, I'll ask her tonight. I'll get it settled. I don't want any of your counterplots!"

  She burst out indignantly: she was honest and fair, the only honest one that she knew in the world. There was another one —she paused; she got up and turning her back went to the fireplace, where she stuck her shoe into the empty grate and looked down.

  Then she turned back, lifted her head proudly and said, "She's just died, Venna, me true sister. The world's a blackguard. I see nothing else. The vultures got her. Oh, Tom, if only I could get them. If only—oh, Tom. And ye said counterplot. What counterplot is there to beat them? Go away, go out, I'll stay here till me feelings fly screeching up the chimney and I wish I could fly with them."

  "Let me stay with you, Cushie. You won't see me: I'll be in the other room."

  She exclaimed passionately, "You! The bloody bystander! Aye, easy for you to drop a bamboozling tear. Where's your heart? Isn't there a torn place in your jacket on the left side? Someone came along and tore it out of you and since then you've been wrenching the hearts of others. You were born without one or it was taken from you as a child."

  He said calmly, "Aye! And you were the one who took it, Nell. And that's a thing you can't give back. You took it from me and lived on it, and now you're scurrying around from one body to another, hungry and thirsty and you'll do anything to still the pain."

  "It is pain! Struggle and pain—and now I feel what I never felt before: everything is repulsive that isn't struggle and pain; for that's the real world. And I can't submit. Ah, leave me. Take your walk, go to your pub. Leave me. What is here is too real."

  He went out. But he was troubled, worked up, sorry and angry though he had kept calm before his sister. He waved to Camilla who was sitting in the window sewing. He wondered why she was not using Nellie's basement room. He thought he would go in and find out. Camilla rose when she saw him, placed a seat at the second-hand wooden canteen table she had bought for her sewing, and began to prepare a rabbit.

  "Do you like rabbit?"

  "I did; till in the war we began to get those warren rabbits tasting of dirt."

  "What's your favorite dish, Tom?"

  "I like herring, plain herring. There's nothing better."

  "Yes, but they're bad for children with all those bones."

  "As a child, I had strong teeth and I chewed the bones."

  She went on working.

  He chatted, "Your hair's lovely Camilla, now it's loose I can see how nice it is. But why are your eyebrows a different color?"

  "Eyebrows often are. This is my natural color. I'm not dyed."

  "Ye-es. I knew that. What wonderful teeth you have, Camilla."

  She said laughing, "I see Nellie has been talking me down."

  He said nothing. She continued, "Nellie has been roaming the place in a bad temper, so I made myself scarce. She's missing George. I thought she would be over here for me to make it up, but she hasn't been. She doesn't like Edmund."

  "Where's Edmund?" he said in a hard tone.

  "He's got a mortgage. He's buying a house in Chelsea. He wants me to go there. I can't. The grandfather would never swallow that."

  "Did he ask you to marry him?" he said, as before.

  "Who?"

  "Either!" he said angrily.

  "Neither."

  She looked at him, smiled, parted his yellow hair and kissed the parting. He said, "I knew that was going to happen."

  "You sit waiting."

  "I know something is going to happen. I don't know what. I'm waiting for it."

  She laughed.

  He said nicely, "I'm thinking of getting married. I have someone in mind. What do you recommend? I've been having an affair. It didn't work out. My feelings changed. This is someone who needs me."

  She studied his face, "Someone in London?"

  "Someone who needs me."

  She went out. He heard her chopping something on the chopping board. She came back with stuffing for the rabbit.

  "It's all right, Tom. I wasn't serious with you."

  He said somberly, "I know: it's not serious with you. You don't care for me."

  "You're wrong. I love you—in a way."

  He sat by the hearth in a low chair which eased his aching back and mused. He seemed hurt. He got up presently with difficulty, barred the way as she crossed the room, put his arms round her like a child. He said with a sob, "Oh this is so real, so natural." He said, he'd go: he felt upset.

  "Do you feel bad?"

  "I should like to feel worse."

  "Do you think good and bad has anything to do with it?"

  "How do you know I'm saying what I mean?" he asked, recovering himself and beginning to smoke.

  "It doesn't matter."

  He looked at her as she moved about,

  "A friend of mine up at Blackstone wouldn't approve of you, Camilla."

  "Who is it?" she said proudly.

  "A policeman. He has no stripes because he has never sent in a report. He can't shop anyone. They are trying to make up their minds to get rid of him; but he hasn't done anything bad either. He lives in a shack and makes papier-mâché maps of the district. When he was a boy a teacher taught him that and he's been doing it all his life. He joined the cops thinking he'd have a lot of spare time and could get about making maps. He has a savage dog at the front gate to bark when any policeman comes to spy on him. That dog hates policemen. It likes me."

  "Why should he disapprove of me? Perhaps he could try to do me in papier-mâché."

  Tom laughed, "Yes, it would get him out of the rut. But he's very moral. He's full of moral ideas. He's very rough on women. He thinks a bad woman makes a bad man."

  "I'm not going to make you bad," she said.

  She moved over suddenly and kissed his head many times, "No one loves you as much as I do."

  He said restlessly, "I don't know. I'm not really passionless. But I can't settle. I'm waiting. I can love. I ought to stay in my swamp in Blackstone. It's cold there all times of the year. It suits me. I'm miserable and don't have hopes."

  "Don't do that."

  "There's a bird with a most awful cry, a shriek; it must be a bird, on the heath at night. There's a fog there I've never seen before. It rises thick white, straight out of the ground and hangs about shoulder height, so you can just see a head moving towards you."

  He put his head against her and said in a tremulous voice, "In the evening, it's a strange sight. They talk of other towns as if they were a hundred miles away and not even in the same century. They say that in Wisbech—"

  He l
aughed lightly.

  He went on, "You can hear sounds, things moving round your feet, in the fog. It might be a bush. You might stumble over something, the remains of masonry. You can't see your feet: you feel as if all the parts of your body are going along separately. If you take someone's hand, it's just your hand holding a hand. You lift your hand up over the fog and there are two hands holding together."

  "Now, in July?"

  "No, but I've seen it," he said flatly. Then he confessed that he had been in a camp near there during the war; "It's a bad climate: half the men had what I have, lumbago and back pains."

  He bent his head, kept close to her.

  "Tom, I don't know what it is, you give me a feeling that I can't stand. It's in my heart, a cold slipping struggle. You're taking me down with you in your swamp," she said with a slight laugh.

  "Oh, I hope not," he said sitting up.

  "You're a man could kill a woman. I don't want to marry you. I don't know what it is. You're only playing a game, you're cold and indifferent. You have smiles that no serious man has."

  "I couldn't kill a woman, or anyone else."

  "You're like a painted Christ in a blue and pink oleo."

  "Beware of the man with the painted heart," he said seriously.

  She said, "How can you be so cheerful and do what everyone asks, when you're so unhappy and lonely."

  "I'm not happy. I never was. I don't ask for anything. But I like to feel all I can: I like to see a fireside sometimes, the air of the moors and heaths, strange people. Any sort of person can be strange."

  He lighted a cigarette and began to chat. "You have curious experiences up there. I came down in a train that stopped at every dog-kennel. There were very few people in the train. We passed some lonely looking heaths with dark trees. At one stop a man and woman got into the carriage with a lot of luggage; so I thought they might be going to London. The man sat opposite, the woman sat next to me. They didn't say a word, but each got out a book. The man read very slowly; the woman was a fast reader and got to the end of her book before the man had turned three pages. Then she got down a bag, put away the book and got out another book, which she began on. She read everything, the title page, the foreword, and then started on chapter one. It was a novel I'd never heard of. As we were coming in to the next wayside station I got up and went to the other window and at that moment an express rushed past in the other direction; you could see people in different postures, doing things, scraps of actions and smiles. It was like a play.

  He sat with a contented air, looking at her, "When I turned round, they had gone, their luggage was gone; and I hadn't heard anything. They had just traveled one stop."

  He laughed outright, "I asked myself if they'd been there. But I wasn't at all sleepy. I looked to see if my chicken and eggs were still there. I take a glass of beer about once a week in Blackstone. I just go into the pub and take one glass and stay a bit. A man said to me the other evening, You're the man who came down from Scotland with a child nine years old, aren't you? I said no. He said to me, I recognize you because I happened to be over in Wisbech and you were there and the child was never heard of again. That's the kind of thing that can happen to you and get you a reputation. They don't know what I am. They think I have a Scots accent. And anyone who comes from ten miles away is a rollingstone. Because I come to London they imagine orgies. If anything horrifying takes place, I'll be the first man questioned. They give me the creeps too. They're off ducal estates, or else they're descended from Lady Hamilton's lackeydom. I hate Lord Nelson. Everyone talks about the national hero. I don't. He ran a navy manned by press-gang crews."

  Camilla was at the window: she exclaimed, "I can see Nellie: she's in that top room. Caroline's there, isn't she?"

  Tom jumped up and stared across the street. The window was open and Nellie seemed to be forcing Caroline out of it. Tom rushed out of the room, downstairs, into the house without closing the front door; and presently Camilla saw him struggling with Nellie and Caroline at the window. He closed the window. Astonished and frightened, Camilla sat down in Tom's little chair. Who were they and what were they doing? She sat there for a time, grew cold and tugged out of a chest a great black shawl she had once had for the theater. There, like an old Italian woman, she sat till it was time for the roast.

  Tom got Caroline back to bed and ordered Nellie out of the room in such a tone, that she went, looking wild, hollow-eyed, insensate. He heard her talking on the stairs.

  "To think one quiet girl should cause so much passion," said Tom.

  "Yes," said Caroline, sinking into her pillow and drawing a breath.

  "Sleep now. I have something to do."

  The girl did not answer. He went away, leaving the door ajar. He asked in the kitchen, "And now, Nellie, what in the world were you doing?"

  "I was showing her what you were. She wouldn't believe me. I said to her, Is that your wonderful man? Can you see him over there, with his make-believe, with that middle-class wanton, that harpy who's got her clutches into three men already and is now living with a love, keeping a tight hold on a man who wants a divorce and playing for marriage with a rich man, the grandfather. Do you see him? And there she was kissing you, fondling you, the old woman. Caroline said her eyes were heavy, she could not see. I made her see. I opened the window and pushed her over the sill to see you standing there with your harpy."

  "Does she think I'm a wonderful man?" he asked.

  "Aye, the poor sick brain. I love Tom. I'd die for a man so good. So your little fairy story makes its way. It's their desperation and they call it love to death. I can't understand you."

  She went to the stove to put on some hot water to wash, came striding back, flung herself down and went on raging at her brother.

  "It isn't you: it was this Alan in the office. It's the desperate seeking. It's not love. She doesn't know what it is. There are those who never know. Then they must learn to face life without it. What is it, this dirty swamp they want to sink in? I'll die for him. Aye, she'll have to. For this Alan picked for himself one of those cream-cake strawberry-filling dames."

  "I'd go for that sort myself," said Tom, amiably.

  Nellie blackened and told the story of Alan and Caroline again with spicing and stuffing, "I despise and loathe and have complete contempt for the knight-errant and minnesinger who goes around playing with things that are so deep."

  "Am I a minnesinger? I like that."

  He began a Northumbrian tune in his aeolian voice.

  "What's that rubbish?"

  "A song about me, the man without a heart," he smiled.

  She became very earnest, "Tom, you had a chance, the best chance a man ever had, to be a decent pure man. I was so proud of you. Before you make another mistake, lad and ruin another life, like other men, hurt and harm, won't you take the beautiful chance you were given? You could have been always a brother to women, like you were to me, a beautiful thing: they need it. You need never have harmed any creature. You had a heart and head of gold. I always used to see your gold head all the way down the street and I thought, There's my own lad, a sweet true boy. Why were you tempted when you grew up? You threw away all that sweetness and purity. Let me plead with you now, to keep away from the women for ever, do them no harm. Oh, it would be a lovely thing to see such a man; I grant ye, you don't know all the harm men do; I know now. You mean well, you think. But you can do nothing but harm. Wouldn't you like to live alone, to meditate, to find the way for yourself, the truth? Don't go down the slippery steps again and sink into the mud. I beg ye, Tom. You'll never do any good unless you are a pure man, never touching a woman; and why should you? If only you would reconcile yourself to a beautiful destiny, to the purity of loneliness."

  "Like Uncle Simon! No thanks," said Tom.

  "I can't tell you what I've been told. I wouldn't spread evil and contaminate," she said bitterly, chewing her cigarette and her lip together. "You ought to do what I ask without questioning. I know. You know I know." />
  "You've heard a lot of dark stories from a—from an unfortunate friend, and that's all; it doesn't happen to everyone. There are happy lives."

  "There are no happy lives. Those that are happy are blind and selfish. They're blind," cried Nellie.

  He said he was going out. She told him not to come back before midnight; and then tomorrow morning early to get up to Blackstone; and to stay there. He was not wanted here by anyone, least of all by her.

  "I'm staying for two days. I've got to go to the Industries Fair for the firm. What's more, I'm coming down every weekend," said he.

  "While I'm away at the conference, too?"

  "Every weekend, first train out and last train in."

  "Then I must put an end to it."

  He took no notice of this threat; but went out to see a friend of his called Monica. He had made up his mind to put an end to that affair, to begin with.

  Nellie tried to sit with Caroline the two nights of the weekend, smoking many cigarettes to pass the time; but it was hard for her to sit without talking. She would go downstairs for tea or brandy, cut a wedge of bread, walk about whistling softly and ruminating. At last, she stretched out beside the sick woman and slept restlessly, coughing and uneasy; she had no covering.

  When Caroline woke in the early hours, Nellie made her some tea, cut thin bread and butter and brought them up and put them beside her friend on a chair. She was too heedless to have a sickroom manner; and waited impatiently for Caroline to lie back, which she presently did.

  Then Nellie said, sweetly, with a sigh, "I'm glad you're here with me, darling; me poor brother's off gallivanting again. I'm a fool, I must be to trust him. But when he's sweet to me, I trust him again. Aye, we women earn our troubles; and why was it I wonder that Nature gave the men those sweet ways to cheat us to make us the doting weak things we are? Otherwise, we'd see them as they are, no doubt. That must be it. It's the law of survival: aye, it is. For don't we naturally trust each other, more? So there has to be something to lure us; and if the man's your brother, no matter what he is, you can't help the love and pity."

  "Yes, I can never forget how nice Tom has been to me, Nellie. You're a beautiful pair; you're a real brother and sister."