The Solace of Sin

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘No. No, I suppose not.’ She turned and looked at Peter and put the question in two words. ‘All right?’

  ‘Fine.’ He was smiling widely at her. ‘For me, I can’t wait to get settled in. I wish I wasn’t going…’ He paused before adding, ‘But I can come up every weekend.’

  ‘How soon can I have the money?’

  She turned quickly from Peter and looked at the man again. ‘Oh, well…well, I haven’t got my chequebook with me. I can’t leave a deposit but I can let you have it tomorrow. Can you come into Newcastle? I’d have to see my solicitor, of course. It should be done through him.’

  ‘What time?’

  She was wavering in her mind, for he was going ahead like a racing car. ‘Whatever time you like,’ she said. ‘What would suit you? You’d have to get into town.’

  ‘I can be there at ten.’

  She wanted to smile. He wasn’t going to waste a minute. Nor was he going to give her time to change her mind, apparently. She said now, ‘Well, you see, I’ll have to make an appointment; I don’t know whether my solicitor will be free at that time.’

  She saw the dark shadow dropping like a blind from his eyes over his entire face, and in an effort to lift it she said quickly, and as if explaining to someone who knew nothing about solicitors and their ways, ‘Well, you see, it isn’t always convenient. He may be able to see us or again he might make a later appointment, but…but if you’ll call at our flat—I’ll give you the address—I’ll be able to tell you what has been arranged. In any case, I could give you a deposit to show that I am in good faith.’ After a pause she added, ‘You have your own solicitor, I assume?’

  His lids were lowered now. He was staring at the rough flagstones of the terrace and she could not see what impression her words were having on him, but he said quietly, ‘No, I haven’t. It could all be done through your man. I’ll be there at ten.’

  As she handed him a card from her bag she said, ‘Your…your father; he’ll be with you, I mean, to make the necessary arrangements for the transaction? That is if we can see the solicitor tomorrow.’

  ‘No, it’ll be my mother. It’s her house.’

  ‘Very well.’

  It was his mother’s house but he had said that he wanted the money. She was slightly puzzled.

  ‘I’ve left the door open.’ He nodded back towards the house. ‘You might want to look around again.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He inclined his head by way of farewell, then walked abruptly along the terrace. But at the end he stopped and, turning, asked, ‘Which way did you come?’

  ‘We…we left the car near Woodpark.’ She pushed her arm backwards.

  ‘Woodpark!’ His thick eyebrows moved upwards. ‘That’s all of two miles away. There’s a nearer road, two in fact, one just below our place—’ he jerked his head—‘and the other behind the house here. You can bring the car to within a few minutes’ walk of the back.’

  ‘Oh.’ She smiled at him over the distance. ‘That’s good to know. I was just beginning to wonder how we would get the things here. Furniture, you know.’

  ‘That won’t be too difficult.’ He turned abruptly and disappeared round the side of the house, and the next moment Constance found herself being whirled round the terrace in Peter’s arms, and she laughed while protesting, then put her hand over her mouth. When she managed to pull him to a stop she looked along the terrace in the direction Vincent O’Connor had taken and she said, ‘You shouldn’t; he might…he might think we were laughing at him.’

  ‘Why should he?’ He was off again, running now, jumping over the remains of the lunch and right into the house. She followed him, her face bright, and looked at him standing at the bottom of the stairs, his arms outstretched, his hands gripping the knobs of the two balustrade posts. She waited to see what he would do next; would he bound up the stairs or continue his hilarious gallop down the length of the long room? But he did neither. His arms dropping to his sides, his body turned slowly and when he confronted her there was no longer laughter on his face as he said, ‘It won’t be the same if he comes.’

  ‘Peter!’

  ‘It won’t, I tell you, it won’t.’ He closed his eyes as he shook his head from side to side in wide sweeps. ‘He’ll change it; he’ll put his stamp on it. Can’t you…can’t you give him the flat and leave him and come here?’

  ‘Peter. I couldn’t live here alone; at least, I don’t think so. I’d…I’d have to see. I’ve never been alone. You see—’ She moved towards him and haltingly, as she tried to explain, she said,‘You see, I need people…someone. You don’t understand.’

  ‘I understand.’ He moved away from her and walked towards the raised dais footing the window. He sat on the edge of it and placed his elbows on his knees and dropped his hands between his legs as he said, ‘You’re alone all the time; you couldn’t be worse off. I should have thought it would be worth giving him the flat to get rid of him.’

  She walked up to him and stood over him. ‘I hate to hear you talk like that. After all, he is your father.’

  He looked up at her and his expression and words were not those of a boy as he said, ‘I wonder how that came about.’

  ‘Peter!’

  ‘Oh, don’t sound so shocked. But I’m telling you, leave him before it’s too late or you’ll be sorry.’

  Four

  ‘You know what you are? You’re a bloody vindictive bitch; a quiet, refined, vindictive bitch.’ Jim Stapleton was sitting at the desk in his study, his forearms, tightly crossed, lying over some scattered sheets of manuscript and his Adam’s apple moving swiftly up and down his short thick neck. ‘You’re trying to break me, aren’t you, trying to make me do something I’ll be sorry for, or, more to your point, I’ll have to suffer for. You’d like me to beat you up, or him, something that would put me…put me along the line, say.’

  ‘You wouldn’t necessarily have to do that to be put along the line.’

  The retort had been dragged from her and she was sorry as she heard herself saying it. She watched him lean back in his chair. She saw the quivering of his hands, the tightening of his face muscles, and she knew that his whole body was suffused with rage, and as she looked at him she knew that what he had said was right. She knew she wished, and had wished for a long, long time, that he would do something that would act as a cleaver between them. It was illogical, this way of thinking, because she already had the cleaver in her own hands: she had a weapon which, were she to use it against him, would certainly put him along the line. Then why hadn’t she used it? Because exposure would reflect on her own inadequacy? Partly. But the main reason was Peter and the shame he would take onto himself; the shame of having a father who was not like other fathers. And yet, Peter alone wasn’t the main reason; he was only part of it. There were so many other reasons why she stayed with this man, why she had borne with him over the years. Part of the answer lay in what she had said yesterday morning in the long empty room of the house: ‘I don’t think I could live by myself.’ She had never, as yet, learned to live with herself, and so she feared having to live by herself. This feeling of being alone, she knew, stemmed from the day she learned that her mother wasn’t coming back from her long holiday but was getting a thing called a divorce. The result of this was that she became a boarder in the convent instead of a day pupil.

  It was in the convent that her need for people had gone underground. On the day the Mother Superior, looking at her across the large black desk, had said firmly, but kindly, ‘You are a big girl now, Constance, and you mustn’t follow Sister Mary Agnes about. When you try to get all her attention you are depriving others of it. You understand this, Constance?’

  ‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’

  ‘One of our greatest assets in life, Constance, is to be able to control our feelings.’

  ‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’

  ‘You are not a Catholic, child, so I cannot say to you, go and pray to the Holy Family and there you will find comfort,
but I can say to you that you should pray, pray to be given calmness of mind and decorum of manner.’

  Decorum of manner? She had achieved decorum of manner, so much so that it could drive Jim mad, but calmness of mind…?

  She did not realise that she was standing with her head drooped, her chin on her chest and her eyes closed. She had not heard him get up from the desk. It was the awareness of him standing close to her that brought her to herself again. She opened her eyes but kept her head lowered as he talked. Because of her barbed thrust, she had expected his wrath to pour over her, but he was ignoring it, acting as if she had never said it; instead, he was telling her he was sorry for his outburst. Somewhere in the back of her mind she recognised the strategy of his attitude.

  ‘You make me say these things, Connie. I…I don’t mean them, you know I don’t, but I ask you, was it fair to do this off your own bat, buy that place and never let me know, and then expect me to go and live there? You know yourself, I can’t stand the country.’

  As she swerved slightly his hand came onto her elbow. The whiteness of her face worried him for a moment. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Look, sit down. I’ll get you something.’

  She sat quiet until he returned with some brandy in a glass and after she had sipped it he said, ‘Feel better?’

  She inclined her head.

  He now drew up a chair and sat opposite her and after a moment he asked, ‘What’s it like?’

  She looked down into the glass and swirled the brandy round it before saying, ‘It’s very well built.’ Her voice was shaking and she swallowed before she went on, ‘But isolated. It has beautiful views. It’s…it would just do for summer living.’

  ‘But you said we’d have to get rid of this?’

  ‘Yes, yes, because I must get the capital up again. I thought…I thought if we got eight thousand seven hundred and fifty for it, and we should with all the fittings and carpets, we could get a bungalow, a small one around three thousand, and the remainder would bring in another two hundred a year or so. Then if we sold one of the cars, that would be at least another hundred, and in the new place the living…well, it would be reduced to a minimum, just food and transport into the town; the rates are negligible, no phone, or electric bills.’

  He rose to his feet and paced the room before he said, ‘I like this flat; I’ve done better here than I’ve done for years…Oh, I know.’ He shook his head as if he were aiming to throw it off his shoulders. ‘I know I haven’t hit it again, but that isn’t to say I haven’t done good work.’ He punched at a large parcel on the desk which had just come by post. It was the sight of the parcel itself that had waxed his anger into white heat, and on the matter of the house that she had bought, he had vented upon her his disappointment of yet another returned manuscript. His fingers tugging at the sticky tape, he now uncovered five hundred quarto sheets which represented to him a year’s labour. Clipped onto the title page was a letter. He picked it up slowly and read it, but before he had finished the first paragraph his whole manner underwent a change. His face alight, he was bending down to her, his mouth opening and shutting before he brought out, ‘They’ve taken it! He’s taken it. He just wants one or two alterations. He’s been abroad, that’s why I haven’t heard. Three hundred advance, he’s given me.’ He straightened up and looked at the letter again, saying before he resumed reading it, ‘He’s not breaking his neck, but nevertheless he’s taken it and it’ll sell; I know it’ll sell.’

  When he had finished reading he shook the letter. ‘I’ve done it, Connie. I’m back.’ His face was only inches from hers and slowly he bent forward and kissed her.

  As his lips touched hers she did not shrink. Anyway, there was hardly time, because the kiss had been quick and light, a mere brush of the lips. And now he was sitting back smiling at her. In this moment he appeared a different being, and although she could no longer forget his real character she was grateful for his lapse into happiness. And when he said, ‘I’m glad of one thing, anyway. It’s proved to you that I’ve really been working this past year, that I haven’t just been sitting in here on my backside twiddling my thumbs,’ she replied, ‘I never thought you were.’

  ‘Oh.’ He smiled wryly as he wagged his finger at her. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter; I’m in again. Look, will you read it and let me know what you think?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ It was almost six years since he had asked her to read any of his work and it might be six years again before she had another opportunity, unless she could say that she liked what he had written. Anyway, it must be an improvement on his last three books or they wouldn’t have taken it. ‘Is it set in the north?’

  ‘No. No.’ The tone was defensive once more. ‘I told you years ago I’d finished with that. Look, Connie.’ He was bending towards her. ‘I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. I’m not going to be dubbed a regional writer, even if I never make a go of it. But I have. I have.’ He flung out his arm in the direction of the desk. ‘I knew I would…Regional writers!’ He was pacing up and down again. ‘Ten a penny. That’s what they are…And mind’—he turned and pointed his finger at her—‘Our Harry can talk until he’s blind about the virtues of Hardy and Bennett and the rest of the old brigade, and the new brigade an’ all, Fillman, Cooksy, and that lot. That kind of writing is dead. Oh, they make me sick, as sick as our Harry makes me when he goes on, glorifying the back streets and the blowsy women — ’earts of gold. Real Geordie characters; taking a pride in using a dialect that nobody else on God’s earth, only their own kind, can understand. You should hear what they say about them down south. They get the same kind of treatment as a secondary modern school kid would get from an Etonian, polite condescension. The term “worthy” is even tagged on to them. I tell you I know what I’m talking about. I had some of it with my first…You should know, anyhow…’

  He was away, well away again on his protest against his early environment. She could have said, as Harry had often said to him, The only decent thing you have ever written was in that first book, and that was full of northerners, north-eastern northerners, not those of the Yorkshire Dales or Cumberland, but the conglomeration of northerners who filled the towns that hemmed in both sides of the river. But what was the use; there was no point in aggravating his bitterness, the bitterness of being ignored. He had come back to his birthplace, where he imagined he should have been fêted…even if only as ‘local boy makes good’, but after one brief mention in The Journal he had been filed for further reference, if and when he made the grade again.

  He stopped suddenly in both his walk and his talking and stood gazing down at the manuscript; then looking at her, he said, ‘I want our Harry to know. Do you feel up to going round there tonight?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

  ‘And we’ll take Peter. Where is he, by the way?’

  ‘Oh, he just went for a run out, but he’ll be back. And he’ll come; he likes going to Harry’s.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, he likes going to Harry’s.’ His voice held a bitter note again.

  As she rose to her feet she knew she had said the wrong thing. It was seldom they could talk for more than a few minutes without her saying the wrong thing.

  He let her go without further comment and she went into her room and lay down on the bed and, her thoughts again reverting to yesterday, she remembered Peter’s words: ‘It won’t be the same if he comes.’ And she knew it wouldn’t, and she wondered if, up there in that house, she could learn to live with herself, and by herself.

  Five

  Four rooms on the ground floor of a two-storey building, one of eighty such dwellings that formed Bickley Street. Like everybody else in the street, Harry described his home as a house, not a flat. The sitting room was like ten thousand others in the town; the furniture could be seen in any shop window that boldly advertised deferred payments. It was the antithesis of Constance’s lounge, yet she always felt at home here, perhaps because Millie and Harry made you so welcome; and tonight more th
an usual.

  Harry had been genuinely pleased to hear his brother’s good news, although Constance knew that, later, Jim would say that Harry had put on a good face and that underneath it he was seething.

  During tea, Harry had laughed and joked about what Jim would do when this one hit the paperbacks, and then became a film…The first one had, and this was a comeback after years in the wilderness. Jim, Constance knew, hadn’t appreciated his brother’s simile, but he had made himself smile.

  Suddenly, the outer door burst open; then the room door was flung open and Ada banged into the room. Her handbag was flung onto the sideboard, and she pulled off her coat and headscarf and in a high-pitched giggling voice greeted everyone with: ‘Well! The gathering of the clans. Hello, Uncle. Hello, Aunt Connie. Oh! Hello there, big boy.’ She saluted Peter with an old soldier’s hand to her brow, then rumpling her father’s hair as she passed him to follow her mother to the scullery, she said, ‘Hello, love-of-my-life.’

  ‘I’ll love-of-your-life you in a minute.’ But there was pride in Harry’s voice, and even in the assumed sternness of his expression as his eyes flicked from one to the other the while he said, ‘She’s a girl, isn’t she?’

  ‘What’s to eat?’ Her voice came from the scullery, and Harry said with a sigh, ‘Oh, to be young again and with the chances they have today.’

  ‘Where’s she working now?’ Jim asked; but before Harry could answer, Ada’s head came round the door and she cried, ‘At Woollards, Uncle. But not for long, I’m tellin’ you.’

  As her father and Jim laughed the head disappeared, but the next minute she came back into the kitchen carrying a tray. Banging it down on the table, she seated herself and pushed a piece of ham into her mouth, saying, ‘All women over thirty should be shot. What do you say, Uncle?’