Cotter's England

by Christina Stead

  Dear Eliza,

  I never answered the letter you wrote me weeks and weeks ago and I am sorry you got in before I did. I had much to think of and was troubled and confused. I made up my mind I wouldn't come. I wasn't going to come, but I had to come down the other weekend to see someone, a woman you understand, and tell her it was all over. It couldn't be helped. I'm a Blackstone man now. I just couldn't take Lamb Street that weekend. I see I missed George. I had to tell someone to get the hell out of my life. I didn't seem to have anything for any woman, until just now. I'm afraid I won't be seeing London for a long time now. It's not only the distance and such minor things, but I have a responsibility, an attachment here and this sweetens for me the black-walled town and the lonely forest. It's quite a different thing with a sympathetic companion. May the world go well with you. I'll be writing to Nellie one of these days.

  Yours, Tom

  Eliza, with a chuckle, passed this letter over to Nellie saying, "Well, we've got your little brother off our hands! He'll be writing to you he says there," she pointed and rose smiling, brushing the crumbs off her lap. She put her things in the sink and went out.

  Nellie at first suspected some sarcastic triumph in this unusual action and read Tom's letter with jealous disgust and curiosity.

  Eliza, who had instantly thought how cunning Tom was to take her invitation and transform it, and how in his purity and uprightness he was now punishing her for many things, and especially for betraying his sister, at once determined to shed any further interest in him. Her interest had always been very tender and pitying. What a terrible thrust the man had! Well, she thought, everything passes over in three days, that's my experience: I only must now live through three days. She got up from the sewing she was doing, and went upstairs to her room.

  Nellie called her, but she did not answer. Nellie came upstairs and stood in the door looking at her. She took no notice for a while but began to find this presence in the doorway unbearable and suddenly looked up. Nellie's expression of curiosity was just changing to a devilish triumphant cunning. It flashed into her face and disappeared, leaving its trace in the impish smirk, the first thing that Eliza ever remembered of Nellie, when she had been a woman of twenty and Nellie only seven. Eliza thought angrily that she had given herself away to this imp of Satan, and then she recalled her first impressions of Nellie adult, a mummer, a liar. Gradually she had lost them and become very fond of her, tender towards her. Tom, too, she hadn't liked at all at first, another curious being with a floating soul, neither man nor woman, and not human; neither of them human. She tried hard, all in this moment, to recall and retain her first impressions of the fatal brother and sister.

  Nellie was joyful; but she had brushed away the smirk now and came in in her graceful lope, reassuring her, "Was it a shock to you as to me, Eliza? Well, maybe it's better to have him pinned down to Blackstone and we know where he is, the reckless fool. If it's not some old harpy again, it's a wonder. Come, we'll drop tears in our gin, me dear: let's go out and celebrate. I'll not write to the ungrateful monkey though till he tells me, but you will, eh?"

  "No," said Eliza.

  "Eh, that's wrong, chick. You mustn't let him see you're wounded," said Nellie, looking at her sideways with a laugh.

  "What's it to me?" said Eliza; "don't be foolish, Nellie."

  "Ye can't conceal it from me, sweetheart, why shouldn't ye admit it? It's no disgrace. It's a maternal affection, you feel. It's no disgrace in an older woman. We all come to it. I'll be seeing myself in a few years no doubt, sighing and mewing after someone in knickerbockers."

  At this brutality, Eliza burst out laughing and putting on her red hat and her jacket and very red, with her hair a little loose, looking like, as Nellie said, "a guid ould wife," she went out with Tom's sister to the nearest pub.

  But in the night Nellie could not sleep now that George had gone and came to Eliza with her troubles. Tom had been a disappointment to her all his life and now he was stuck away in a cabbage patch with some hobbledehoy girl or village spinster or luring old landlady. A girl in every port and she had pinned her faith to him for he'd been a bonny lad though silly, so silly they thought him simple; they called him girlish.

  For a long time she sang the old strain about Tom, his weakness, his breaking her father's pride and his mother's faith. But Eliza roused herself to say to Nellie that he had his own life and they were two old fools to be sitting there weeping over him, like village biddies themselves.

  "It's all like a lost village, all of it," said she. "Would you think we were really in the heart of London?"

  Nellie said no, and she talked Eliza to utter weariness telling her about the great epochs of her life. She saw it now looking back as from a hill to a glittering plain, the triumphs, the mistakes; how she had been led astray by early ones and late ones. It was a story of thickets, brigands and enchanters; and herself riding some bare-boned nag through it all, but always forward on a straight path through it all to the present moment; "the moment of my downfall, for where am I with it all, all I had? What I have to give and no one wants! I'm a genius, Eliza, and always knew it. I felt it in me and everyone felt it, they all expected great things of me; even old Pop Cotter, the old humbug, was proud of me. Me hour's come now, Eliza, perhaps: and if me George shelves me, we'll face the world together. Ye'll stand by me and I'll write me great play, Lize. I've got it in me. I see things that have never been said or not said the right way. They're all humbugs, and when they'd tell the truth, they put in the hard cruel cutting word, the unnecessary revelation, all misplaced, scorn where there should be love and hate where there should be understanding. How do I see life, Eliza? With a rosy tender veil. It's the palpitating heart of life, I must put in, with the language of love. I feel it, the rich thing like a rose. I've had terrible experiences, no one can ever know. I've had strange things happen to me, strange loves that nothing can explain, that can only be explained in their own terms, in terms of themselves. Yes, darling, I can express it all to you, it's strange, you're my only friend. We only go two by two and my brother is not as fine as you, Eliza, sweet angel," she said pausing for breath and having lost hold of the idea. She mused for a while in the dark and went on, "Loves! That is what hasn't been expressed, Eliza love, and it is hard to express: love. If I could express it, for that's the message in me, I'd be far beyond them with their rule-of-thumb explanations of the universe. What can Marxism say to a lover, or to a mother? Or what can Einstein? Aye, he can say more, for there's something wonderful and beautiful in the idea that we have an attic window only, open on the swamp of stars."

  "The way you talk is so lovely," said Eliza struck by this. "I believe in you Nellie."

  "Do you believe in me, pet?" said Nellie, excitedly squeezing her. "Then that's all right; then, that's all right on your side. We'll be all right together. You and me armed to the teeth with understanding, facing the bitter mocking world. Is that it? Is that how you feel? Eh, you're cured of that little stab of Tom's unfeeling letter, aren't you? I can cure you, sweetheart. I have a gift: it's given to me. I have it in me. Stay with me. We'll live together in the wilderness of London and it will be like an ideal forest, it was a lover and his lass with a hey and a ho and a hey-nonino! Ha-ha," she said, placing her long legs together and jumping up, "I can't sleep tonight, but you sleep, Eliza chick, if you must."

  "I'm a heavy woman, I must sleep," said Eliza.

  She slept but Nellie poured herself some brandy, and spent the night smoking and looking out of the black window to see if she could get another idea like that about the stars which had so pleased Eliza. She could not. Black curtains of fatigue dropped all over her mind. She sat in the double dark till morning, with fiery tongues of desire, brain-flame licking the roots of her skull. She had perhaps made another conquest in Eliza but it was not sufficient. The drawback of her easy conquests, she thought to herself, was that they left her dissatisfied: she wanted more. She felt greatness in herself, limitless possibilities: "Me g
reat black and rosy wings."

  Sprawling in the great armchair by the empty downstairs fireplace in which were heaped ashes and cigarette butts and some old letters, she fell into a dizzy doze, and was awakened by Eliza standing over her.

  "What is it? Stop! I tried to stop you, but you hung on to whatever it was."

  "It's nothing, sweetheart," said Nellie, smiling innocently at Eliza, "it was just a nightmare, nothing to be told. It was a staircase. I was going down and there was a long curtain with a flap or skirt trailing on the stair to trip me, and on that part of the stair there was no light and I was saying, There's no light, there's no light."

  "It didn't sound like any words," said Eliza: "it was groaning and a scream."

  "And yet in the depths of my dream it was quiet, safe and peace, peace," ruminated Nellie.

  No one ever…

  NO ONE ever got out of the country as fast as Nellie. When the news came that George had a place for her, the newspaper, all her friends hastened to do what they could, pull wires, run messages, buy the outfit, promise to keep an eye open, organize a farewell party and reserve a seat in a plane. Everyone from Robert Peebles to Bob Bobsey had been so much afraid of a crack-up, and saw so gloomy a future for Nellie, probably dependent upon a pauperized Tom, that they did all in their power to help her to get off. Delightfully rattled, in the middle of her packing party, with Tom packing a big trunk he had got for her on the way from the station, Vi Butters passing judgment on her old clothes, condemning her cherished turbans and scarves, "You can't wear things like that in Geneva!" and even Camilla, who had been told and had come round with gifts of clothes, Nellie, though never more bowed or bony, yet tinkled and gleamed with charm. She was surrounded with love and fuss, and the unbelievable had happened. George, whom she, and frankly all the others, had thought lost forever, had made a right about turn and was calling for her.

  "They won't let me stay here as a bachelor, they insist upon wives!" he cried over the phone in his well-known way. "They put beautiful girls in my office and then say, Bring your wife! I was brought here under false pretences."

  "God bless Europe," said Nellie.

  Tom was all smiles. Everyone said some complimentary thing about his sister. He had very much the aspect of a young bridegroom. He did not know which way to look, and whether to blush or clear his throat, and said in a deep voice, "Yes, I know!"

  People from the newspaper were there, dropping hasty appreciations in his ear about her good work, all the friends were there, jolly, tender, relieved from the bottom of their hearts that anything so fortunate could happen to poor Nellie. Their minds were engaged, as well with her good fortune, as upon the problem, "Will Geneva, a continental world be able to change the old Nellie? Is it too late? Was it ever possible? Is she cast, not formed?" But all were bent on one thing, to get her away before she became too ill to go, and as old friends and total strangers were united in this urgent, intense purpose, it worked.

  Nellie saw in it all nothing but love; and Tom was not far from that.

  "You will write Peggy a letter," said Nellie drawing Vi aside. "I don't dare tell the poor pet, I feel so guilty; she will feel she's abandoned."

  "Well, she is," said Vi, "and what about me? Haven't you a thought for me too, Cushie?"

  "Ah, pet, yes, but you would think that England had died for me with the old soldier, poor old Tommy Atkins. Now George is my country. I'm a traitor I'm afraid. But you'll do that for me? Write to the poor pet?"

  "I will."

  "She's a noble woman, a grand girl, Vi, she'll forgive me. She'll know my place is with my husband."

  "Yes, I suppose they'll grudgingly say that even in Hadrian's Grove."

  "There's a letter and a packet for you, Tom," cried Nellie, turning away, "it's somewhere around, look inside the piano. Some one of your sweethearts has been knitting for you." She shrugged one shoulder and eyed him sarcastically. "You're the only thing that worries me, sweetheart, but I've got to leave you to your fate, a ship without a rudder. Will you take care of him for me, pet?" she said with equal sarcasm, winking at Eliza. "I know you've got a soft spot for the changeling lad."

  "Don't worry about me," said Tom in a deep voice. He had now laid his hand upon the packet and the letter.

  "A girl's writing," said Nellie winking, "and a tearspot as large as a shilling on the address!"

  "Ah!" cried Tom, "I didn't want to reopen that. I didn't ever want to think about it again!" He drew out a knitted waistcoat.

  "Who's knitting for ye, darling?" jeered Nellie, rushing round with seven half-pounds of tea which she packed in a tin box.

  But Tom was sitting down opposite Vi reading a long letter, and after a while, he handed it to Vi. She read:

  Dear Tom,

  I said I'd write to you and never kept my promise. I tried to sometimes, but never felt I could. However, now I feel better about it and as I finished the waistcoat some time ago I thought I'd send it and my news. I hope you haven't got any fatter or thinner. If you got thinner, you can easily change the buttons, as I thought of that in the design. Now for my news. I was in London quite a bit, going gay you would think. But I got someone to help me on the orchard, a very good man. I saw Patrick a few times for tea but he always had an appointment afterwards and I suspected, you know, a lady in the case and so there was. Now he has written to me to say he is going to get married. He did not join the air force after all: too old I suspect; but he says he is going to settle down. This is a sort of preface to my own news, Tom. I am going to get married myself. The lady is very charming, I think, and I think anyone would think so; not in her first youth though. She has domestic ways but is more a bird of paradise than a modest hen, I think, and I wonder what you would think! I cannot understand how it was she waited for me, as it were. Of course, we didn't know each other until recently. Well, I was nervous about putting the question, for one never knows, but one day after Patrick had left me, I thought, It is now or never, I must take the plunge and I went in and won through. We are being married in a month and I want you to come. I asked Patrick but he will be in the country with his beloved! Isn't this exciting and unexpected news? I am a happy man.

  Yours sincerely, Connie.

  "I don't understand this," said Vi, "is it a man or a woman?" "That's the husband! I took his wife from him!" said Tom.

  "What husband?"

  Tom frowned. "Marion's husband."

  "Did she have a husband?"

  "Good heavens, of course; where did you think she lived?"

  "I thought she was trailing round the country with you in a —heavens knows in what. Oh, I don't know. You and Nellie never tell me anything. You just led me by the nose all my life. I'm a fool to you."

  Tom said proudly, "Nellie did it to protect me. She has always been faithful to me." After a while he smiled, "It is quite a coincidence, because I am going to get married myself." And at this he smiled, looking for a compliment, up at Eliza who was standing by.

  Eliza turned away and went into the back yard. She thought, "Well, that's a good thing, now he's off my shoulders. I feel free again."

  Later, however, she felt as if she had been cracked on the head. She was dizzy and in pain. She thought that it was a good thing there was so much to do.

  Nellie saw her upset and was delighted and moved, "I'll write to you, pet," she said, kissing Eliza several times, "we're great pals, we'll be pen pals, won't we?"

  But that was all the time she had for Eliza in her flurry. She went off in the early morning and with her, most of the helpers. Only Tom and Eliza were left.

  He and Eliza discussed what they should do about the house which neither of them could keep up. They breakfasted and presently Tom said he must get back to Blackstone.

  A horrifying thing had happened there. There were three old men who called him The Engineer, and who used to wait for him on a seat on the London Road. They sat in the same places every day. The middle old man thought he owned houses and had troubles with imaginar
y tenants. A local lad, a dark middle-sized young fellow of football build with a thick chapped skin and narrow eyes was very contentious, had a bone to pick with everyone, "an unspeakable nuisance," and he swooped down on the middle old man. He was a smallish, rather good-looking old man, with wide cheekbones, blue eyes; he had a cap like a Chelsea Pensioner's and his white hair stuck out unwashed, underneath. Sometimes the three old men would take a walk and the landlord in dream would point down a street, "My houses are just down there, three of them in a row." The others would agree. The young busybody got to work on this harmless old man and after weeks of destroying his arguments and his proofs, had convinced him that he had no houses.

  "The poor old cove tried to drown himself in the swamp and is in the hospital now. I must see him."

  And so Tom went. Eliza went to the station with him, to have the stirrup cup, but he said, "I won't be coming down now, Eliza. I won't have the money. I must look for a home."

  "Aye, Tom."

  The two women, friends of George, who had once employed Mrs. McMahon, took her back but they were disappointed in the change in her. She was dull, inattentive, stupid, it must be admitted. She did her best but she was not as clean as before. Still, because they had made the promise to George, they kept her on, complaining about her behind her back.

  After she had been there about a year, she said timidly to one of them, "Do you ever hear from Mr. Cook, Madam?"

  The woman started, looked keenly at Mrs. McMahon: she thought her mind had gone.

  "But Gwen, he died nearly a year ago."

  "He died?" she said faintly, stood there with the pail in her hand, turned and went out to the kitchen. The woman felt upset.

  She went to Gwen, who was standing by the kitchen sink, her mouth slightly open, "Didn't you know, Gwen? I didn't mean to blurt it out. He died in a skiing accident. He shouldn't have tried at his age; but he would try anything."