The Silent Lady

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Oh, that’s all right, Mr Travis. I get by well and can put a little aside, not a lot but something. It means I can give these poor fellows work, as well as a dry bed to the needy, and more and more of them seem to be pouring into the city.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, Miss Morgan, there are, the country’s in a dreadful state – the world’s in a dreadful state at this moment, and it seems to my mind at times that any move that is made only leads us further into disaster. But, anyway, we can’t do much about it, you or I, can we? Yet we are both doing our bit in an unseen way.’ He leant toward her, and his words were hardly above a whisper as he said, ‘If we were to prevent hundreds of thousands, even millions being creamed off from this country to find their way to Switzerland, the place your employer’s friend mentions in this epistle, we’ll have done a great deal.’

  Bella could only nod, saying, ‘Yes; yes,’ although she did not understand exactly what he meant.

  They parted affably, Mr Travis emphasising again that she had only to call on him for help, and she promising faithfully that if ever the time came she would do so. As yet she wasn’t to know that the time wasn’t so very far away.

  The following morning she was a bit late in getting up, and when she entered the kitchen and saw Willie and Reenee busily working she apologised, saying, ‘Eeh, my! I overslept. I think I’ve got a bit of a cold on me. You’ve had your breakfasts?’

  ‘Yes, Bella, we’ve had our breakfasts, and all is running well, as usual, except . . .’ Willie stopped what he was doing at the table and repeated ‘. . . except for Andy. He came back last night, Bella.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Aye, but he’s in a bit of a state. He sat there with his head down and his hands hanging between his knees. Carl had just made a pot of tea, and he handed Andy a mug, which he took but didn’t say anything. Yet he drank it straight down. Then John said, “Well, lad. Come on, tell us how you got on. It’s better when it’s out.” At that Andy straightened up in his chair, and he looked from one to the other of us before he spoke. He said he had caught them on the hop. He hadn’t told his wife he was comin’ and he walked into a full kitchen. Of all things, they were havin’ a party, a birthday party. The widower next door had a six-year-old boy, and there the two of them were, all merry and bright. So were her mum and dad, her sister – the married one – and two of her bairns, and the single one and Andy’s wife and her bairns. He must have appeared like a bomb dropping on to the middle of the table. Anyway, if they were surprised by the sight of him, he said, he was surprised at the sight of that table: he had never seen such a well-laid table for years. No one would think there was a slump or anybody out of work in Wales, at least in Cardiff. It was laden with ham and tongue and tarts and cakes of all kinds.

  ‘It was she who spoke first, he said. She jumped up from her chair and almost yelled at him, “Why didn’t you tell us you were comin’?” And nobody asked him to sit down until her father stood up and told him to take a seat. Apparently Andy told them to finish their party and that he would come back later. And he went along to a pub and got himself a pint and a sandwich, and there, he said, he sat for nearly two hours. When he went back, the kitchen was clear except for her and the two bairns. They seemed to be waitin’ for him, he said, for she turned straight away to the bairns and said, “This is your da.”

  ‘He must have made to go towards one of them because he told us the younger, Betty, backed away and said, “You’re not me da. I don’t like you.” And with this, she had run from the room.’

  Willie now looked from Bella to Reenee, and said, ‘What could you say to that? We just sat there like dummies. And then his wife must have said the only place he could sleep was on the couch in the front room as there was nowhere else, and she must have left him. He said to the older girl, “Don’t you remember me?” and she answered that she remembered him taking them up the river on a Sunday afternoon in a sculler. His head must have drooped once more when she turned on him and in a voice, which must have been just like her mother’s, she said, “I’m not goin’ back there. I don’t like it. I like it here and I want to stay.’” Here Willie paused, then said slowly, ‘He asked Carl if there was any more tea in the pot and we all jumped up at once to pour it out. It was a dreadful experience, Bella, awful.

  ‘And in the morning his wife said she had lived like a widow for the last four years and fended for herself for most of the time; now she was home and intended to stay there.

  ‘He must have said something to her like, “You won’t stay a widow long, by the look of things,” for she said that perhaps he was right, and her sister had pointed out earlier that long before she had met him, the fellow next door and she had been courting, and it was a pity she had ever left Wales.

  ‘He said he doesn’t remember anything more, only that he went into the front room and took his attaché case from under the couch, and then that he was at the station. And . . . and you know what he said then, Bella? I nearly burst out cryin’ meself. He said he didn’t feel like a man any more. He said all the rough times he’d had with us chaps long before we came here and met you, Bella, the cold, the hunger, the misery, standin’ and beatin’ that little drum out in the rain hour after hour, nothing like that had ever made him feel as small as he did on that station.’

  When Willie did not continue, Bella asked quietly, ‘How is he this morning?’

  ‘Very down in the mouth. We told him to stay indoors and just clean up the wash-house.’

  ‘I’ll go round,’ said Bella, ‘and have a word with him.’

  ‘Well, if I were you I’d wrap up well. You shouldn’t go out today at all, that cold’s heavy on you.’

  ‘Thanks, Father, I’ll do that.’

  After she had left the kitchen, Willie turned his attention to Reenee. She was sitting with her hands idle on her lap while there was still a pile of vegetables before her. He knew she was thinking about what she had just heard, and he said, ‘I’m glad I’m not married; it must be awful to have kids and then they turn against you. Of course, you’ve got to see their side of it: they haven’t seen him for some years. That wasn’t his fault either; Bella’s invited them down here more than once. It looks to me as if Tony was right about the wife.’

  Willie now watched Reenee’s mouth open, and then she brought out the single word ‘Lost.’

  ‘Yes, Reenee. As he himself said, he felt he was no longer a man. And as you say, he feels lost. It must be an awful feeling.’

  There was a silence, then he sighed and said, ‘Well, we’d better get on. Broth doesn’t make itself, does it, Reenee?’ She began to chop the vegetables. Yet it wasn’t ten minutes before she suddenly laid down her knife and walked away from the table, bringing from him the reprimand, ‘Where’re you going?’ and the immediate apology, ‘Oh I’m sorry. It isn’t my business.’ Yet two minutes later, he thought it was, when she came back into the kitchen, the sleeves of that great coat pulled down and on her head that weird article which was supposed to be a hat. At the sight of her standing just inside the door he almost rushed at her, saying, ‘Oh, please! Please, Reenee! Don’t leave the house. Bella gets so upset when you leave.’ She put up a hand and held it in front of his mouth, but she didn’t touch it; she waved her hand in denial, then pointed, first to the door, then to the left as though towards the gates. With her head going back and her mouth opening, she said, ‘Wash.’ And again, ‘Wash.’

  He translated quickly, ‘Wash-house? You’re goin’ to the wash-house?’

  She nodded, and the corners of her lips moved upwards, and he suggested, ‘To . . . to see Andy?’ Again she nodded, brightly now, and he added, ‘Nice. Nice,’ and immediately went before her to open the front door, from where he watched her go along to the gates and through them.

  The sight of the weirdly dressed figure coming towards her caused Bella almost to drop the wash-basket she was carrying out of the wash-house, and she muttered under her breath, ‘Oh, my God, what now? She’s not goin’ out again,
surely.’

  Andy was standing behind her and he murmured, ‘That’s the miss.’

  ‘Who else?’ murmured Bella. Then on Reenee’s approach she said, ‘And where d’you think you’re off to on this soft summer’s morning that would cut your throat?’

  For answer Reenee pushed past her and went into what Bella would always call the wash-house, causing Andy to step back and Bella to re-enter and close the door after her.

  Reenee held out her hand to Andy, and when he took it she spoke two words, almost plainly now, ‘Home . . . friends.’

  Bella smiled widely and with not a little pride translated, ‘She means, Andy, that you’re home and among friends.’

  ‘I know. I know,’ Andy said softly. He put his other hand on the one he was holding, and there was a break in his voice when he said, ‘Thank you, miss. I’ll never forget what you have just said: I am home and among friends and the one I hold most dear is your very kind self.’ He knew he should have said the one he held dear next to Bella was herself but, glancing at Bella, he felt that she understood because she was nodding at him and her eyes were bright.

  Slowly now Reenee pulled her hand away from Andy’s and, looking round what was now quite a large room, she made a sound in her throat that could not be translated, for she was trying to say, ‘So big and comfortable.’

  She walked over to the addition the men had built on, which was larger than the wash-house itself. Against the far wall were stacked three wooden bunks; alongside the right-hand wall was a wooden platform with a mattress on top, forming another bed; and in the intervening space were two renovated easy chairs and a table about three foot square.

  Now taking on the role of guide, Bella said, ‘They play cards in here at night and gamble for monkey-nuts; they’ll have the police on them.’ Then she pointed to what had been the far wall of the actual wash-house and where there now stood a large cupboard. She opened it, to disclose shelves on which were pieces of crockery. The plates might be cracked and the cups and mugs be without handles, but nevertheless they were china; and on the bottom shelf was a box with an assortment of rough cutlery in it. The companion door of the cupboard contained an array of tins and covered dishes, and did duty as a food cupboard. The boiler top was no longer to be seen, for this was covered with what Bella recognised to be part of the spare leaf to the kitchen table. The boiler fire had an enlarged grate, on the hob of which stood a bubbling kettle, and, most surprising of all, along the left side of what had been the original wash-house was a chintz-covered sofa. That the chintz had seen better days made no difference; it looked clean and comfortable, and Bella, turning to Andy, whose whole being seemed to have lightened during the last few minutes, said, ‘I’ve meant to ask you: how did get you that in?’

  ‘Oh, we put it in before we finished building the end’ – he thumbed over his shoulder – ‘and we were lucky that it never reached a tip. We saw it being taken from a house and being given to the dustmen, and we asked them if we could have it and, never letting anything go for nothing, one of them said, “It could cost you a bob,” so we gave him a bob willingly.’

  ‘Eeh!’ Bella went over and examined the couch. ‘It’s got a carved frame. Really, it’s beautifully done.’ And she turned to Reenee and said, ‘Haven’t they made a fine place of it? And what was it, just an old wash-house? You lads are a clever lot.’ She was addressing Andy again, and he answered her, without a smile now, ‘Not me, Bella. I can only handle bricks; I haven’t got an eye for finer things, just bricks.’

  ‘Well, where would they’ve been without you and your bricks?’ said Bella briskly. ‘They could never have built this place without you. Anyway, come on now, you’re not gonna sit mooning here all day. Take us back in, and tonight we’ll crack a bottle. Yes, we will,’ she emphasised, waving her hand; ‘we’ll crack a bottle to welcome you home.’

  And this they did, and Andy, who yesterday had felt he was nothing, knew that among friends like these he couldn’t help but grow into a man again.

  9

  Bella’s cold was a bad one, and she passed it on to Reenee.

  Unfortunately, Reenee’s cold attacked her chest, and one morning when she didn’t appear at breakfast Bella went up to her room and found her in a fever, hardly able to get her breath.

  ‘Oh, my dear,’ she said, ‘you’ve got it right and proper, haven’t you? I’m sorry, lass; I’m sorry I gave it to you, but mine was never like this. Nevertheless, I know what’ll cure it, a lemon in some boiling water with a drop of whisky in it.’

  Reenee was past making comment of any kind: all she could do was hold her chest tight, trying to press down the pain and the tightness of it and to prevent herself from having another bout of coughing.

  ‘Just lie quiet now; I’ll be back in a minute.’

  But three doses of hot lemon with dashes of whisky did nothing to alleviate Reenee’s condition. As the day wore on she became worse. This frightened Bella, and when she saw Carl in the yard, talking to one of the boys, she called down to him.

  When he hurried into the kitchen she said, ‘Look, you know the doctors round here. I know there’s only two, but who’s the better?’

  ‘Why, Bella?’

  ‘The lass, Reenee, she’s bad, real bad. I think she’s in a kind of fever.’

  ‘Oh, there’s Dr Brown and Dr Harle. Dr Harle’s the assistant. He’s a young man, but they say he’s good. Well, I know he is: I saw him pull a fellow’s shoulder back into place without him havin’ to go to hospital.’

  ‘Well, go and get him. Ask him to come as soon as he can.’

  It was almost two hours later when the doctor arrived, and straight away Bella liked the look of him. He wasn’t all that young, perhaps in his late thirties, and he was only of medium height, but broad, and his voice was nice, as she put it to herself, kindly like. She noticed that he seemed a little surprised at the inside of the house. Being at this end of the market area, he had likely expected it to be a muck-heap, and as they made their way upstairs, he said, ‘Have you lived here long, Miss Morgan?’

  ‘Touchin’ on thirty years.’

  ‘Really! And you’ve never had the doctor in?’

  ‘No; not often, Doctor, we haven’t. As I recall, you’re the first since Mr McIntyre died.’

  On entering the bedroom, he stopped for a moment just inside the door and looked at the waxen-faced figure on the bed. Reenee’s chest was heaving; the sweat was running from her brow. Her eyes were wide open, and as she turned them towards him she pulled the rest of the bedclothes right up under her chin with a convulsive movement, making a guttural sound in her throat.

  Immediately Bella went to her. ‘Now it’s all right, love. It’s all right. This is the doctor. He’s a nice man and he’s come to make you better.’

  The head on the pillow turned from side to side, and the doctor, having put down his bag and taken off his overcoat, gently eased Bella to the side and, bending over Reenee, said, ‘It’s all right, my dear, it’s all right. I’m only going to take your temperature and look at your chest.’

  A sound came again from her throat, and now her two hands were flat on his shoulders and she was pushing him away. Bella, taking the doctor’s arm, whispered to him, ‘She’s afraid of men.’

  ‘What?’ His face was puzzled.

  ‘Just what I said, Doctor, she must’ve had a shock in her time, a great fright. She’s afraid of men, most of them anyway. She’s got to get very used to them before she’ll let them come near her.’

  He looked at her closely before turning back to the bed and saying to Reenee, ‘My dear, I am not going to hurt you. I am a doctor and I just want to help ease that cough of yours.’ He now forcibly took one of her wrists in his hand, and when he had felt her racing pulse he laid it down and said, ‘I must explain to you. You’re in a high state of fever and you must be examined before I can help you.’ Again the hand came out to push him, and to his amazement he saw the large eyes in the pale face close tightly and the bedcl
othes heave up and down, not from her chest but from her stomach.

  Pulling the heavy eiderdown to the foot of the bed, Bella said, ‘Oh, she’s gonna have one of her turns, Doctor. Her stomach always goes like that beforehand, up and down, up and down, as if it was bein’ pushed up and then down.’

  ‘Has she epileptic fits?’

  ‘No, I’ve seen people in them, Doctor. What she has isn’t a fit, not ordinarily, but it’s something. She’s . . . she’s afraid of something, and she genuinely yells out in one of these turns. You see, she can hardly speak, it takes her some time to get a word out; but in the turns . . . well, she does, I mean speak, and clearly at times, but just a single word or two.’

  He turned from the bed. ‘She’s in a very low state. She can’t go on like this, I must examine her.’

  ‘She won’t let you, Doctor. She rarely takes her clothes off, I mean even in front of me. She’s got a kind of what they would call phobia: she wears a big dark coat all the time, mostly in the house, as if she’s hiding behind it or something. But she’s a lovely girl and she’s not really mental – I mean, I think she’s lost just part of her memory. Something happened to her, something awful, but otherwise part of her brain’s all right because she knows everything that’s goin’ on, and . . . and is kindly.’

  He said quietly, ‘I can’t struggle with her and make her undress, so I shall have to give her a little jab. It will put her out for perhaps half an hour, but in that time we’ll be able to see what has to be done. Otherwise, I am telling you, Miss Morgan, she could die.’

  ‘Oh, God, Doctor! I couldn’t have that . . . I love her. I love her like a daughter.’