Cotter's England

by Christina Stead

  "Aye, you feel it, do you, that we're alike, that we have something in common?"

  "Yes, goodness and compassion."

  Nellie glowed; then lamented, "Yes, I have it, love. But he has not got it, it's a simulacrum: it's the veil of cheating I was talking about. He caught it from me, it's me shadow self, but it isn't him. Any word he says to you is false, for it isn't him and it has no outcome. If he were to say love, it doesn't mean love; things aren't what they seem: things are the contrary: if he were to say marry me, it would be nothing but the joke of a silly, yellow-faced, garlanded clown dancing in a hall of mirrors, but in all these hundred shadows, love, there is not one man. You can't marry him, for there is nothing to marry. If you stood up before the minister or went down to the Town Hall, it's no difference: you'd be the world's most miserable woman. He was married, did ye know that? And the marriage at once fell apart for he cannot play the husband's part; and the poor girl, always a girl, is left to mourn. Did ye not know that? Did he not tell ye? And because the poor simple creature, doomed to loneliness, cannot bear to face the truth, he will play the cat and mouse with all the women. Will ye marry me? Would ye marry me? Could ye marry me? It's a game; and playing the game he knows the women; and there's your lure and dead end of life for you, darling. Don't think of him! Root him out if he's put down root, crush him if he's made a paper flower in your heart, for it's nothing, there's nothing for a woman in him. I can't tell you, love, for it would crush you, the names of the women he has taken in and what has happened to them. Ah, don't let me see you join them. I couldn't bear it with you. I can't bear to think," she said stormily, "that he is doing this to you and to me, when we were so close, close as sisters, we were reaching the perfect understanding, the true love."

  Caroline had understood that Tom might propose marriage to her very soon and Nellie's exhortation confirmed it. She became very agitated and said Tom was good and they were fond of each other.

  Nellie began to croon, "Marriage is an illusion, it's not the paradise of women as they thought, the poor pitiful mothers and grandmothers. Ah, pet, if ye could have seen me poor mother down on her knees, waxing the lino and polishing the brasses for a man who had eyes only for the harpy's red smile and the fake brilliant in the false gold on her finger, you'd understand me. I see you going wrong. I've seen it before and let it go on, for I'm a great believer in destiny; but I've been punished for it and I'm punished now if ye go wrong. He has no need of you, me weak and wicked brother, Tom. He can do nothing for you and you nothing for him. But I can do everything, I'm the doer and seer. He can't offer you love, not even friendship, he's only playing with your tangled feeling to get relief for a moment, the moment of a cigarette's burning, love, from his own tangled confusion, the contemplation of his wasting and loneliness. I know it's a pitiful thing, I admire you for your kind heart, but it's the kind hearts are taken and consumed."

  She leaned forward sharply, bent with her bright fierce little eyes over the sick woman, shaking cigarette ash on the bed, "Heed me, darling. I can see into hearts and I know what is in his and yours. You're not for each other: you're both for the lonely road."

  Caroline with a soft and blasted look, lay on her pillow, her large watering eyes fixed on Nellie's, blinking, shutting, opening.

  "Nellie, let me rest a bit? I'm so tired and weak feeling, so depleted."

  Nellie broke into a humble croon, "It was the memory of me sister, Caroline, forgive me. Can you excuse me, darling? I tried to lead her into life, I wanted her to get the feel of the world, to interest her in social matters; it was wrong. I tried it with you, it was wrong. You see it for yourself or not at all: it is a matter of fate. I tried to lead you to Marxism: it was wrong. You cannot be led. It must come of itself, the vision and the way. I have always been punished for interfering with fate. I've been black and blue, striped with the thongs of fate, it's come back on me. But beware of the false vision. Ye bend over looking into the well of illusion and ye see a face, a dark significant face, but it's your own, it's the reflection of your loneliness, there's no one there, love. Ah, it's a terror, it's the lonely terror. Haven't I told ye about it though, haven't I faced it myself? Aye, I know what it is. But it's my Peggy I'm thinking of. Even now, I wake up in a sweat, every night sweating for her and I think of her destroyed by her trustfulness, her innocent longing for glamour and love, like you, just like you. I am guilty of that, too. I thought all she needed was escape, like you escape from the dear Dead Sea fruit of your parents' love, which turns bitter and poisons a young life. But ah, it broke her; I'm afraid it has broken you. I can never do too much for her, nor too much for you. Every look and word you grant me, darling, is a blessing to me: for it shows me you trust me, you've forgiven me for any accident of mistake.

  "You'll forgive me, won't ye, love; for warning you about Tom? Let him go and trust me, you'll find peace when you've had it all out, seen it for what it is, rooted it out, confessed and told me everything and faced the music. You've got a long way though to go to get out of your mess, I'm afraid. You're not ready, not willing."

  "Why do you say that?" said the woman, feverishly and vaguely.

  "Surely you don't think you've succeeded, Caroline? Or are you giving up the struggle?"

  "I think the best way for me is not to think about myself and all this trouble, but to get a job in social work as I had before and work for others. And I know I must watch my feelings. I control them and they betray me on a lower level. I never can keep them in hand."

  Nellie beamed wickedly, "Muckraking and exposés and the helping hand of the good women are the delight of the Philistine middle class, it's pleasurable pollution and sedative holiness for Sunday: to see the workers rolling in their wallows and pity them so that you can rough-tongue the char on Mondays with a good conscience. There's a gulf between them and us: you can't bridge it over with paper. Is that what you want to do with your life, already wasted so far? The muckraking and social-worker epoch is ended: you've come too late. You can't put ointment on your sore any more with that. The workers understand you. It's your own fate you have to face, not theirs. They know about theirs and they know about you. It's the courage you lack to face yourself. But I'm going to help you. I'm going to make up for what I did to me sister, in my devotion."

  "It's hard for me to understand all this," Caroline said feebly, "because I've never really met evil, or I didn't see it, I didn't think there was hate or jealousy or envy in our world; I never saw it. Recently, with your help, I've begun to see it. I know I must face the reality of the world."

  "Aye, it's a hard, malicious, lined old face, the world. It's got no smile for you. It's to others, your sisters, to those who understand and pity ye must turn, not to the world."

  "And there are things I don't understand even in you. Now you say you love your brother, Nellie. I know you love your sister and family. But you say your brother is selfish and light and only making a game out of his passionate beautiful love for that dead woman, a trifling and skipping you said, a borrowed air on a tin whistle. I can't see it. It's because of that I believe in him. If I can't think that's true, life wouldn't be worth living; I think he's true. That's what I thought existed in the world; and he has it."

  "What he's planted in you I've got to tear out bit by bit. He's not what you think, unfortunately, a lover in a poem. He'd like to know you thought that. He never even tried to get you out of that beautiful cell of dream you live in. He's only blown you up with self-importance and vanity, a lot of silly tripe. This sudden whim shows a great weakness in you, you're ready to cling to anyone who'll feed you the moonshine you want. You're clinging to any fairy tale. I'd blush to say such a thing. You have a desire for death and the end; that's noble and true; that's connected with the best and deepest in life, that's realization. It takes courage to face what I see is in you. You're trying to run away. You wouldn't have the courage to make a death pact, even as he did. He's a weak, poor creature but had the courage to do that. I admire that. He'll
always have my admiration for that. If he did that for a worthless, wicked spider woman, what would the poor lad have done if he'd met the right person. But life is not for him. The booth with the puppets is for him; he's good at voices, aye. Let him go through the world with his songs and games if he doesn't hurt anyone. But he does. He doesn't say, This is my Punch and Judy show: he says, This is real, this is love, this is what you want. So he's the meanest and most dangerous of mountebanks and charlatans. But when the woman played up to him, Will you die for me? he said yes. And would you die for me, pet? I said. Aye, he said, for you if it would help you. For that's what he is. Sterling in the essence. And you, though, you have not that courage. Would you die for someone who loved you, do this for me because I ask you? Aye, I've heard of such things. I've gone down on me knees in holy humble respect, I've hidden me face for the joy and shining in it, before such a thing. And if ye could do such a thing, I'd go down on me knees before you. But would you? Has my love and respect been misplaced?"

  "I could," said Caroline, faintly. "I think so. I wouldn't want the world much if someone I loved in it, died. I don't think it's my fault you don't think me brave. There was the war; I lost Barry; I lost my family. I changed towns and jobs. I poked about looking for something; I had a sort of social consciousness in me; it came from the church perhaps. Now I see that's no use, at least coming from me. But I do believe in something, though I don't now what it is. I love someone, though I'm not sure who it is."

  "Ah, no, ah, no; you can't have it both ways."

  Caroline was puzzled by this and said nothing.

  "Am I keeping you up, when you're not well, sweetheart? Are you tired?"

  "I'm a little tired, Nellie. It's the flu."

  Nellie put out the light. The faint starlight coming in over the low roofs opposite showed the whereabouts of the hair on the pillows, the sheet turned down. Nellie leaned against the bedhead. Opposite, Mrs. Yates was looking after one of her children. Nellie mentioned it, "She's a darling, Camilla Yates, but too effaced. She's a pet but she doesn't like to talk, it's reticence, it's reserve; and she feels she's getting older; her time is over. She's absorbed in the thought. The men don't let her alone, poor waif. Her first husband was once Governor of some province and to him she's a province he's won and won't free. And she, too, got the manner, the great dame manner; she can't sink to the human level. Poor woman! A lost life."

  Caroline was beginning to sleep.

  Nellie said it was heaven to be talking to someone who understood and who was not afraid of friendship, after Tom's behavior making her so angry, teasing her in her pitiful state, "I'm afraid I blew my top!"

  Caroline was grateful for her talking. She was sinking into a sweet exhaustion. Everything was peace now after the strange winds that blew through this house.

  "Am I disturbing you, pet?" said Nellie, low.

  "No, Nellie."

  Nellie was grateful: she sang her praises. There she had been looking for a friend and the gods gave her Caroline.

  "But don't you feel the need of a great friendship, the perfection communion, Caroline? Then everything would be clear as morning. You would have joy."

  Nellie's voice roved about the room sweetly, almost like a breeze. She had marvelous endurance; she could sit up all night talking. Did she get it from the white nights of the Bridgehead summers? "We used to do this in Bridgehead: it reminds me of fine summers gone." Nellie saw nothing strange in it. It was truth, intellectual aspiration, the right thing to do. Souls who needed to find true love, vision, a way of life, did it.

  Caroline woke up, Nellie had become excited. Caroline must give her an answer now, whether she believed in friendship. What other answer was there to the loneliness of the human being? Men offered it and tore it away again; aye, it was cruel. You set out to sea with one sail and the first storm blew it away and you were left to your fate.

  Caroline, in confusion, listened and fought to understand. Poor lonely woman, sitting up all night trying to stir passions in sluggish souls, singing for herself, a nightingale, the victim of her song. As soon as she opened her throat the same passion poured; ears opened, but she went on twanging in the dark: it did not seem to matter who heard. These sympathetic thoughts fluttered over Caroline but she was too tired: she didn't care now what they both meant, this pair, the singing brother and the singing sister. She knew George had been there for one night and had now gone off to Bob's farm; and even Nellie had said, Does he think he'll get the farm, the cadging bugger? Everyone thought, it was clear, that George was going to leave Nellie, Nellie thought so; and George didn't care what he did: for himself, and his ideas were trained puppies that ran beside him. Utterly spoiled by women: Caroline had noticed his ways, Bring me this, Caroline; Mrs. McMahon, I want to see your smile; Nellie, my shoes need cleaning. And yet he was a fine man, a great fighter and a great orator, so they said.

  And when he and Nellie were together in the rooms downstairs and she could not hear their words, their voices were perfect counterpoint, it didn't matter what was said; you could hear the music; it was the music of the male and female, true, poignant. The music might hold them together; it was the only thing.

  Nellie was saying, "I lost George when I gave up my fifteen-pound-a-week job and took one at five. He's more like Pop Cotter than he thinks. He calls me a sentimentalist."

  Caroline went to sleep. Nellie called her awake a second time, with her keen lilt, with her northern song: on and on about friendship, wearisome, poor thing, talking senselessly, restlessly, so that she couldn't think about George's doings. If he leaves me, I'll need a friend as never before. I never was happy before. I didn't believe in it. As you have more, there is more pain; perhaps it's better to have nothing like the poor women before me, and so you do your duty."

  "Am I bothering you, Caroline? You don't want to hear lucubrations?"

  "Yes, yes, I do."

  "But you're silent: you're judging me. You're deep in the heart of that beautiful crystal shell where nothing can touch you!"

  "No, I'm drowsy."

  "It's only as high as the room and as broad as the house, that's your world. Private worlds! If you only could break out and come into ours. Friendship would do that for you. But there you are nursing your soul as if it were a toothache. I had a friend, Caroline, who used to inspect the timbering in the mines. The men elected him and he did it for thirty years; men's lives were dependent on him; He said, I hate to come to the surface, for life seems gaudy and shallow; down there, it's real: men's lives and their families depend on me. He said to me, Cushie, get out and do things and you'll be more of a citizen. Don't stick around the pithead, writing notes about surface life. That's what I did. He'd never be able to talk to you, Caroline. But he'd know by looking at me that I'd followed his advice. Now, my life's been a life of adventure and taking chances."

  "I know it has."

  "Aye, but knowing isn't enough. The miners would never talk to a woman like you; you don't know the words to appeal to them. I do. He's my friend but he'd be disgusted with you. If the timbers aren't right, the miners die. No matter how many papers you shift and sign, no one dies and no one lives, you least of all. It's Gimcrack Castle, it's smirking into a looking glass in your clean collar and new make-up; it's wage-rape."

  Caroline lay there, baffled and gloomy.

  Nellie continued, "The life of the office worker living on the back of the true workers is a sapsucking thing. They regard you as a parasite, someone who never works and the hollowness and shallowness reveals itself in your feeling of defeat and failure. You have no life-aim. That's it in a nutshell, why you can't hold anyone, why you want to let go of life. You know, in your heart of hearts, we all know, aye, where we stand, in the eye of the great judge, Life; you know you're struggling in a nightmare and you're crying out for the hand that will wake you up. But unable to respond, in a catalepsis of unreality."

  "What am I to do?"

  Caroline's heart was sore, she was insulted. She felt sc
ornful but she felt there must be something very wrong with her that Nellie saw clearly; she felt herself on the edge of those abysses nervous, thin-hearted children feel, when they are growing up, she tossed and jumped like a caught fish.

  "All right, Nellie, I'm weak and wrong."

  Nellie said rapidly, "Our life is a mysterious thing, Caroline: we must listen to it as a seashell. There are cycles and moments. There are fatal hours. If a man's destined to die young, he dies. The world is not what it seems. Does an airman, up above the low atmospheres, see what we see? He hasn't even the same sunset and sunrise. But we think ourselves the center of the world and the world is painted on our eyes. It's a fact, pet. One can't shut one's eyes. You may talk about forgetting yourself and losing yourself in a lot of cock-and-bull stories of the golden rule, like an infant child, but it isn't worthy of you and it isn't worthy of someone I call my friend. Your life's moving in cycles 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. Can you escape? For you're no airman, no, pet; you're an earth creature. No, it's a fateful thing you came to Roseland, it's a fateful thing you met me, it's a fateful thing you met those who sucked your heart dry, and the hour is now, pet: it's my voice that is telling you the right thing; listen. This is your last chance. It's now or never. But would you have the strength for it, even that? If I told you: that's the thing to do, the great thing."

  "What, what?" said Caroline wearily.

  "Have the courage to deal with your own life?"

  "I don't know."

  Nellie assured her, "You're priceless to me. I'm proud of you. I'm intensely interested in you. You give me what I've never had. You've been given to me and I feel such joy and satisfaction, Caroline, for the beautiful thing you have in you, the courage to face life and stark death; you're one of the rare ones."

  She told Caroline they'd miss nothing together. They were getting somewhere now.