Rosie Hogarth

by Alexander Baron

  * * *

  Kate Hogarth’s name, mentioned casually in a conversation or even evoked mentally by the sight of some familiar object, always dropped into Jack’s consciousness like a stone into a pool. Ripples of nostalgia, at once pleasing and painful, spread silently across the surface of his mind, countering and confusing the currents of thought. The pictures from the past would take shape, dazzling and elusive as the shifting patterns of sunlight on the surface of disturbed water, distracting him from his occupation of the moment, filling him with regret for the past and discontent with the present. He was plunged into such a mood by an encounter with Mick Monaghan a couple of weeks after his engagement.

  He was walking past The Lamb one Sunday morning, about an hour before opening time, when Mick, who was standing at the private side entrance, called to him, “Ahoy, there, my lad. What about paying us a courtesy call? I’ve not had a chance to do more than shake your hand since you were engaged.” There was little hint of the Irish in Mick’s speech beyond the purity of his vowels, the relish with which he sounded each consonant and a frequent rotundity of phrase. His voice was resonant, but was more commanding than genial; together with his straight-backed tallness, his keenness of eye and his sleekly-waved, cropped-at-the-neck grey hair, it assured his success in keeping order in his own house, in presiding at the local British Legion, and in representing his neighbours as spokesman at times of crisis.

  Jack followed Mick upstairs to his private parlour, and greeted Barmy Naughton, who was in the room leaning brasses.

  “What’ll you drink, lad?” Mick asked. “Brown ale? All right, Barmy, you carry on with your polishing. I’ll get it.”

  While Mick was away, Jack looked round the room. Mick had lived here alone for nearly thirty years since his wife, infuriated less by his frequent infidelities than by the unrepentant attitude which he displayed in response to her pleas, left him. A Catholic like her husband, she had always refused to divorce him. Mick employed Barmy to help in the bar and to act as a personal runner and body-servant, an old woman (who was really one of his numerous pensioners) to cook and clean, and a beefy, sluttish girl who not only came in every evening to help in the bar but was reputed to be Mick’s latest comforter. The room was something of a museum of local history. Over the mantelpiece hung the D.C.M. which Mick had won on the Somme in nineteen-sixteen. In rows on the walls were photographs of annual outings, British Legion festivities, and the street’s Jubilee, Coronation and victory parties. There was one frame full of faded photographs of men who had gone from Lamb Street to the first war and a similar — which included Jack’s picture and which during the war had hung in the saloon bar over the Comforts Fund box — of the second war. There were letters of thanks to the people of Lamb Street from the Save the Children Fund, the Lord Mayor’s Miners Fund, the Aid Russia Fund, the Salvage Organiser and the National Savings Committee.

  “Takes you back, all this,” said Jack, as Mick came into the room. He raised his glass. “Cheers! — Ah, it’s nice and cool.”

  “Your health! Yes, there’s a few faces there we’ll never see again, eh, this side of the heavenly gates. Not that the gates will ever open for me. My sins are many, and since they’re all in the feminine gender, they’ll never give me rest.”

  “From what I hear, it hasn’t occurred to you yet to give them a rest.”

  “Ah!” There was a note of pleased vanity in Mick’s laugh.

  “Dora, eh?” Dora was the barmaid. “Surely you don’t believe an old crock of sixty has got the powder in him to bring down a high flier like that?”

  “Not much you haven’t! Sound bloody pleased with yourself, too, way you talk.” Jack turned away and peered at photographs. There was no banter in his voice as he said, “And she’s not the only one, eh?”

  “I shouldn’t believe too much that you hear in Lamb Street, lad.” Mick, too, spoke more soberly. “I know what’s what. No green in my eye. I can put two and two together.”

  “I wonder!”

  Jack looked at Mick. He could not stand the steady scrutiny to which the older man was subjecting him, and turned away again, conscious that Mick’s eyes were still on him as he wandered along the wall. He felt that Mick was trying to make up his mind about him somehow. “You’ve learned a bit, lad, these last ten years,” Mick said, “but you’ve got a lot to learn yet.”

  “What you mean?” Jack was growing uncomfortable.

  “Talk like a bloody boss-eyed oracle, you do.” Eager to change the subject, he paused in front of a photograph. “Hallo, here’s Nancy’s wedding group. She give you that?”

  “She did.”

  “She give me one, too. Ol’ Gran turned up for the wedding, eh? Look at her. Fierce ol’ bitch, isn’t she? I seen her a few times, never seen her smile that I can recall.”

  He remembered Gran Hogarth as he spoke, the mother of Kate Hogarth’s dead husband. In the old days she had been an infrequent and dreaded visitor, hobbling into the house from time to time like an old general on a tour of inspection. “Even Kate was frightened of her. We used to sit there an’ stare at the old woman as if she was going to eat us. Reckon we thought she would as well. Kate used to make her welcome, put a cup of tea in front of her, ask her if she was well, but I don’t know, not in her usual voice, not like — well, you know how she used to love having visitors — not like that somehow. Used to make me wonder, I can tell you, even then. The old woman glared at her once, I remember, and said, ‘Don’t put yourself out, Kate Hogarth, if you don’t want to. It’s the children I’ve come to see. My Victor’s children. If you don’t mind.’ And Kate just looked away, not a word. Dead funny that, come to think of it. Used to give us sweets, though, the old lady did. I dunno! Still alive, too, Nancy tells me. Nance goes to see her. You know Nance, soft heart, loves the whole bloody world, she does. Living in a room up Barnsbury way. The old lady I mean. Tough old bitch, I must say, way she hangs on. More than eighty, she must be. Easy.”

  There was a picture of Rose, taken when she was fourteen. She looked wild and free, radiant already with a beauty that was still to bloom yet retaining the heartbreaking innocence of childhood. It was painful to look at the picture. Beside it was another photograph, of a baby in swaddling clothes, that was puzzling but vaguely familiar. Jack indicated the picture of Rose. “I should have thought you could have got a later one than that,” he said thickly.

  “That’s the one I like best,” answered Mick with tired equanimity.

  “I didn’t know you was so thick with the Hogarths.”

  “I’m thick with everybody. Here —” he indicated a photograph on the opposite wall — “this is Bernie Whiteflower’s wedding. You were away at the time, weren’t you?”

  Jack did not move from where he stood. A wave of scalding emotion had flooded through him. For a moment he could not speak. He felt a hot prickling behind the eyes. “Kate Hogarth!” he croaked. He pointed at another photograph. “Where’d you get this one? I never seen it before.” The shock had been doubly violent because for the first time he was looking as a man at the picture of the woman whom he had only seen as a boy. For the first time he saw her as she must have looked to others ten, fifteen years ago; not a mother for children but a woman for men, ripely beautiful. It seemed a sacrilege to look at her like this, to compare her with the goddess who smiled from among the mists of memory; but he could not remove his gaze.

  Mick, as if understanding, let him stare for a while. At last he answered, “It’s not mine, lad, it’s Barmy’s.”

  “Barmy’s?”

  Barmy, who had appeared to be completely oblivious to their conversation, looked up. “Yes, Barmy’s! Funny, ain’ it? What she wanna give Barmy a picture for, eh?” He stared down at his brasses with a trapped, glaring expression and polished furiously. “That’s her! That’s Kate Hogarth! Thought you knew her, eh? You knew her! —” he uttered a barking little laugh of derision. — “Nobody knew her. I knew her! I knew her, and she knew me. God rest her dear, bles
sed soul, she knew me. Nobody else knew me!” He was panting. Jack stared at him.

  Mick said, “That’s enough, Barmy. Don’t upset yourself.”

  Barmy muttered something inaudible.

  “What’s that?”Jack asked.

  “He said that’s not all he’s got,” Mick explained. “He’s got a workbasket of hers. I gave it to him. It was in the wreckage of the house. I was in the Civil Defence. I found it.”

  “I got a letter,” Barmy said.

  “From Kate?”

  “I got a letter. From Kate Hogarth. She writ it to me.

  That’s another thing she did, she writ me a letter.”

  “When?”

  Barmy did not answer.

  “Show us. Go on, Barmy, show us. I — well, you know, she was like my mum.”

  “It’s no use,” said Mick, “he won’t even let me near it. You’d get a knife in your throat if you tried to touch it.”

  “She writ it to me,” Barmy muttered.

  “She was a good woman to him,” said Mick. “She was good to us all, God bless her.”

  “Ah,” said Jack heavily, “I miss her.”

  “I dug her out. I suppose they told you that. May the Lord forgive me, I cursed Him that night.”

  “I reckon everyone misses her.”

  “Yah!” Barmy’s anguished snarl startled them both. “Miss her! Think people got time to miss anyone? Them! What you think they care, that lot?”

  Jack, dumbfounded, murmured, “I dunno.”

  “I hung myself.” Barmy uttered the words in a clear, assertive voice, like a boast. Who else would have done so? — he seemed to imply.

  “Eh!”

  “I hung myself.” There was no mistaking the sick pride in his voice. “She was good to me, she was. She was the only one.”

  “Eh?” Jack, struggling to absorb the three incredible words, spoke without thinking, to keep the others at a distance while he steadied himself. “What about Mick? He’s treated you all right.”

  “She was the only one,” repeated Barmy with terrible passion.

  There was silence in the room.

  When Mick spoke, his words lacked their usual resonance. They seemed to fall, like bits of dead wood in the strange silence, to the carpet. “I found him. I was just in time. Don’t talk about it. It’s not good for him. Get on with your work, Barmy.” He resumed, self-consciously, his normal vigour of speech. “When’s the wedding, lad? That’s what I really wanted to talk about.”

  “After Christmas.”

  “You’re taking your time, aren’t you?”

  “Well,” said Jack, embarrassed, “it’s the old lady. Mrs. Wakerell. She’s a one for doing it properly. So what with her on the one hand, and me wanting to get it over before my next birthday — well, you know what I mean, thirty sounds a lot younger than thirty-one, don’ it? — we split the difference and made it December. Anyway, it’ll give me time to get settled, job and all that. Save up a bit. Look round for a place. Buy stuff. You know, do it in style, like.”

  “Well, when the time comes round you know you can count on a handsome present from Lamb Street. When Mick Monaghan passes the hat round they all dig deep. And I’ll be getting you something myself that’ll make ’em sit up and stare.”

  Jack remembered Rose and felt a flicker of the old resentment. “What for?”

  “Why not? It’s the least I can do for my old friends. I bought Nancy a china cabinet for her parlour. Didn’t she show it to you? It cost me twenty-four pounds, and anyone else would have had to pay twice the price.”

  Jack felt the blood rush to his head. He wanted to mutter thanks, but instead he heard himself blurt — “And Rosie?”

  Again the unflinching scrutiny from Mick’s eyes, amused and tolerant. “I’ll buy her a present, too, when she weds.”

  Jack subsided. “You’re a cool one,” he said weakly.

  Mick smiled. “You’re very hard on someone you think a lot of. I told you, lad, time may teach you a lot of things you don’t know. Why don’t you see her?”

  Jack shook his head like a schoolboy.

  “Why not?”

  Jack shrugged his shoulders, avoiding Mick’s eyes. “I said no.”

  “And I said, why not?”

  “Oh, for crying out loud, give us a rest, can’t you? Or I’ll say something else I’ll be sorry for.” He looked up, like a boy determined to play the man. “I don’t want to be bad friends with you, Mick. It’s a rotten world, I know that. I been around. None o’ my business what you do. Or any other party, for that matter. Leave it at that, eh?”

  “All right, lad. Let’s shake on it and part good friends.” Jack hated these smooth, hail-fellow-well-met gestures — Mick was addicted to them — but he submitted, as always, shaking hands while he smiled foolishly and felt hangdog and defeated. “Thanks about the present and all that,” he mumbled, “Joyce’ll be pleased when I tell her.”

  “That’s the spirit. And I’ll tell you what, you talk over with her what you’ll need, and let me know. Don’t be frightened to name it. Anything up to twenty-five pounds. You’ll only get the best from Mick Monaghan.”

  “Thanks, Mick.”

  “And you’ll look in again, the pair of you, and let me know?”

  “Yes, Mick.”

  “There’s a fine brave lad!”

  Jack wondered if there was mockery in Mick’s voice. He was thirty years old, but he was crushed when people spoke to him like this, powerless to defeat their condescension. He looked desperately about him trying to think of something to say. He noticed again the picture that had puzzled him, the picture of the baby. “Here, I was going to ask you. Whose kid’s that?”

  “Kate’s. That’s Tony, the baby that died.”

  “Oh. Course. Should have remembered.” He felt at once grateful and humiliated by his talk with Mick; and beneath that, filling him with a longing to escape and master in solitude his disordered emotions, was all the mystifying turbulence of feeling that every confrontation with the past aroused in him. “Thanks, Mick. Cheerioh!” He backed awkwardly towards the door. “All right, I can see myself out. Thanks for the drink. Cheerioh, Barmy! I’ll go and tell Joyce, now, eh?” He bolted, like a boy from his schoolmaster.

  Chapter Two

  Jack told Joyce with enthusiasm of Mick’s promised generosity, but for days after the encounter he remained in a confused and unsettled mood. There was a heat wave: people walked about like dreamers. At this time, when thought was as tiring as movement, Jack was burdened with vague but insistent problems. He was still happy — grateful for the affectionate domesticity of life with the Wakerells, grateful for his job, grateful for the surfeit of friendship which he enjoyed in Lamb Street, grateful above all for Joyce — but happiness was beginning to lose its charm, like rain after the first shower.

  For years past he had, in different ways, been able to relieve boredom with violence: now he had to learn to live with no such means of escape. Work, in this heat, was an ordeal. He begged his employer to send him out on installation tasks, protesting that he was a skilled man. “In a few weeks, boy,” he was told, “you’ve got to show us what you can do as a bench-hand before we try you as an outside fixer.” He remained in the workshop, quiet but inwardly infuriated. He passed his evenings with Joyce, but courtship — indeed, all conversation — was a burden; his head ached, his body was sluggish in the oppressive heat, and he only wanted to be left in peace. Joyce, too, was suffering. She looked sallow, she wore her glasses all the time, she was too weary to brush her dry hair or to dress smartly, and she dragged gracelessly about the house in an old cotton dress; so that he could not help finding diminished satisfaction in her company. It occurred to him that for six weeks he had been living day and night within this household, scarcely ever out of Joyce’s company. The monotony was becoming stifling. “You go and lay down,” he said to Joyce one evening, “it’s cool in your bedroom. You said so. I’m going out for a swim.” She was too ill and apathetic to
stop him, and he went out. He found a shady corner in an old churchyard and he sat here for hours on this and subsequent evenings, sunk in a mindless stupor or, as the air grew cooler, in languid dreams.

  The subject of all these dreams was Rose. For years she had dwelt in a dark attic of his mind. He had hoped that his engagement to Joyce would double-bolt the attic door; for, although he had never ceased to be aware of Rose’s presence within him, he told himself that every man — he recalled many confessions he had heard in the Army — possessed some memory like this which ached till the end of life, but that every sane man found someone else with whom to be happy.

  Now Rose had broken loose. How could he have hoped to forget her when every old friend he met reminded him of her, sooner or later, with some innocent question or remark? Every mention of her name had been a wrench at the bolts. Mick’s calm insistence that he should see her, and his own panic-stricken refusal, had burst open the door. Now she walked unchecked in the corridors of his mind. Wherever he was, however he tried to ignore her presence, he heard her footsteps.

  It was not merely his working-class puritanism that led him to condemn Rose, nor even his disappointment at the death of his own secret hopes. The intensity of his rage against her derived, rather, from the obsession (undefined in thought) that she had betrayed her mother. Kate was enshrined in his memory as a goddess, blessed, pure and above all human failing; throughout his youth he had looked on Rose as the image, in beauty and innocence, of her adored mother. Perhaps it was this, more than his inarticulacy, or the feeling that they were brother and sister, or their disparity of temperament, that had held him back in adolescence from explicit courtship. He had been crushed by the news of what he held to be Rose’s downfall so soon after her mother’s death. This betrayal of his dreams was what he could not forgive.

  * * *

  She had always remained out of reach, most of all so when they were closest together physically. “Oh,” she had cried once, when they had been walking together, “I have such dreams!”

  He had said, “Eh?”