Pure as the Lily

by Catherine Cookson

  “Oh, I didn’t go to High Shields, not to the Bcain office, I went to the one on the Dock Bank.”

  “Did they throw you out?”

  “Aye’—his eyes twinkled ‘just about’ “ Small wonder. “ Alee turned his head completely away from his father and looked out of the open door into the twilight that was already beginning; and now he said. You must be right barmy. Nobody’s goin’ to buy rhymes; they don’t buy good stuff the day, never mind rhymes, man. God, you really must be up the pole.”

  “They’re not rhymes I tell you once again, they’re not rhymes, they’re poetry. An somebody’ll buy them some day, you mark my words.”

  “Aw, Da.” Alee was facing his father again, his head bobbing now, his face red. You know what? You make me embarrassed, you an poetry! You don’t know the difference at ween a full stop ah’ a bus stop. “

  “Maybe not; but neither did Robbie Burns.”

  That’s not it. Robbie Burns lived in a different age, and he had something to say. “

  “Well so have I, lad. I’ve got something to say an’ all. Listen to this.” He thrust his hand into an inner pocket of his shapeless top coat and pulled out a bundle of papers, but Alee flapped his hand backward at him, saying, “I don’t want to hear.”

  “Oh Da! Da.” Mary was tugging gently at his sleeve, her voice placating. Then she turned to her gran da

  “Go on, Granda,” she said, ‘go on,” and Peter, holding a piece of dogeared paper before him, said, “ I’m goin’ on, lass, it’ll take more than me thick-heided son to stop me. Listen this, it’s called “Value for money” “ He now tilted his chin upwards, slanted her eyes downwards and began:

  “We played ma’s and da’s Those years ago;

  Ma’s apron and skirt, Da’s shirt and old bowler.

  Round the top corner In the chimney breast We played at houses, In which the test Was Birth.

  Our Jimmy, Three years old, The bairn, New delivered into the house In the chimney breast, Yelled like any new flesh Feeling air upon its skin.

  But him, He yelled for taffie Which was his pay For playing the hairn That day.

  Now the day, he stands Shiverin’ Outside the bedroom From where he hopes His firstborn Will yell.

  No tame the day, No pay, Just sweating hell And dim surprise That from the dole queue, The gap, The Guardian’s food ticket, The corner end, The tip, The man somewhere in him not quite spent Has the vitality To earn the two bob Allowed for a baim By the Government. ^

  “There!” Peter nodded at his son’s back and at his granddaughter’s soft, tear-bright eyes.

  “I think it’s lovely, Granda.” There was a break in her voice. She bent in front of Peter now and, her tone loud, she said, T)a, I do, I do; I think it’s lovely, sad, but lovely. “

  Her father turned slowly towards her and said heavily, “All right, all right, it’s lovely.”

  Since he was a very small boy Alee had listened to his father’s rhymes, and if his father had been able to keep them within the perimeter of the family he would not have minded, but his father was convinced that he was a poet, a poet of the people and, when given the opportunity, would read his efforts aloud. True, he would be able to put more into them than was in the written word because he was a bit of an actor when he got going, but as the years went on Alee found that he was more than a bit of an embarrassment, people laughed at him. And he didn’t want his father to be laughed at, he was angered by it, for at the bottom he knew that his father had something, something rare. Yet he felt that this something was a handicap, for even in the old days when there was work, he didn’t seem to be able to hold down a job. He considered that if his father had put as much effort into earning his bread as he did into his rhymes his mother would have weathered the slump for a number of years. But

  2 i7

  anyway his mother had had one advantage over other people, she had learned a long time ago, as his father had just said, to stretch a penny to a shilling. There were times when he admitted to a deep feeling for his father. He did not give it the name of love, but that’s what it was; for who could help loving him, a man such as he was, a man who retained, in spite of everything, the joy of living.

  Alee now looked at Mary. Her eyes were pleading with him to be kind to his father. In a way she took after his father, she had the same kindness in her, and, like him, she was given to spurts of joy; only her joy didn’t run to poetry, thank God. He smiled inwardly and his eyes lingered on her. What would he do with his life if he hadn’t her?

  She was his one splace, his one joy. Some day she would marry and what then? Sufficient unto that day; let him enjoy her when he had her, for long or short. But from the way she was turning out he doubted that their time together would be long for she was real bonny, and blossoming further every day. Her skin was pure milk and roses and those eyes of hers, not usual; nobody on his side, or on Alice’s, had green eyes. She had likely inherited them from far back. They were a deep clear green, like looking down through water, and when they were soft and moist, as they were now, and shaded by her long lashes, they did something to him, brought a restriction under his ribs. His love for her was like a pain, it gnawed at him at times, times when he dreaded anything bad would happen to her. She was as tall as him now and still growing. Some day, and not far off, she’d be a spanker, a breathtaking spanker, and she was worth somebody better than the fellows around the doors, for who were around the doors? There were fifty houses on their side of the street and only three men out of that lot in full-time work. The few lads that were at work were apprenticed and as soon as they finished their time they’d be out on their backsides. Of course, that didn’t stop them from getting married. Some of them married while they were still serving their time and had a couple of baims afore they were twenty. But that wouldn’t happen

  to Mary; no, by God, not if he knew it. He didn’t know how he was going to do it but he was going to get her away from the street and from Mrs. Turner’s and her fourpence an hour; if it was only into a shop, a good class shop. It would be a bit of prestige anyway.

  He had been going down to the reading room at the Institute every morning lately looking up the jobs, not for himself because that was hopeless, they didn’t advertise for fitters in the newspapers, but something for her, for if he didn’t do something for her nobody else would. Her mother wouldn’t. The situation as it was just suited her;

  Mary coming home in the afternoon to get the tea and see everything was ready for Master Jimmy coming in, and then doing the ironing and all the odd jobs that she left her while she went out earning. Earning! It used to be two hours in the morning at the shop and two hours in the afternoon, but now she was scarcely away from it.

  “Da! Will you have another sup tea?”

  “No, hinny, thanks. Look, it’s getting on.” He nodded towards the deepening light.

  “I think we’d better be making a move.” He turned round on the upturned bucket, then pushed his father in the shoulder with his fist, saying jocularly now, “Come on you, Poet Laureate!” And at this they all laughed.

  As they dampened down the fire and gathered up their things, Peter said, “Aye, you never know. There’s many a true word spoke in joke.

  Just you wait, there’s time enough yet. I’ll have the laugh on this town when I appear in T. P. an’ Cassell’s Weekly. Aye, an’ John 0’ London’s. “

  “Evenin’ dress or morning suit, Granda?”

  “Listen to her! Listen to her!” cried Peter, and father and son now looked at Mary, joined in this moment in their admiration for her, and Peter said, “There, you’re so bloomin’ sharp you’ll be cutting yourself! Punch for you, me girl!” Then suddenly holding her face tightly between his two hands, he repeated, “Evenin’ dress or morning suit? and out with it as quick as knife I tell you it’s good enough for i9

  Punch. Aw, me love. “ He bent forward swiftly and kissed her on the side of her mouth, and she hugged him for a moment before he turned from her, blinking rapidl
y and crying, “ Where the devil’s it is it was I put it? “

  “What Granda?”

  The pipe, me pipe. “

  “Asking the road you know.” Alec’s voice was a mumble as he walked out of the door and along the narrow winding path between the partly stripped stumps of sprouts and cabbages.

  Back in the hut Mary pressed threepence into her gran da hand, and he held on to hers as he said, “Ta, me hairn. Ta. I’ll pay you back, I will. Somehow, some day I’ll pay you back.”

  His head was bobbing all the while and she whispered to him, “I know you will, Granda. And mind’—she now poked her nose close to his “ I want interest. “

  They came out of the hut laughing loudly; and now Peter put his arm around her waist and, in a deep musical voice, he began to sing:

  “I love a lassie, A bonny, bonny lassie;

  She’s as pure as the lily in the dell;

  She’s as sweet as the heather, The bonny, purple heather, Mary, me Scotch bluebell. “

  A man’s voice came across the allotment shouting, You’re in good voice the day, Peter,” and Peter called back, “ Never better, Sam. Never better. It’s this warm weather. “

  They laughed while their breaths formed clouds in the biting air.

  When they came up to Alee, Mary walked between them, and, thrusting the bass bag at her father, she said, “Will you carry that. Da?” Then she linked her arms in theirs, and, laughing and stumbling over the rough

  land, they went from the allotment They stopped when they reached Biddle Street, and Peter, still in high fettle, cried, “We’ve come to the parting of the ways, my love,” and Mary, taking up his tone and mimicking his voice, said, “Goodbye.

  Goodbye; we may never meet again! Ronald Colman, big picture, last Tuesday night. “

  And as Peter and Mary laughed together again Alee said, You two should have your heads looked at. Come on you’ he grabbed Mary’s arm ‘else the town crier will be out lookin’ for us. “

  “Just a minute.” Mary thrust her hand into her pocket.

  “Here, Granda.”

  She held out two mintoes towards the old man, and as he took them he said, “Oh, mintoes! Good lass, I love a mintoe. But, you know’—he thrust his finger at her ‘if I go in suckin’ one of these your grannie’ll be on me like a prairie dog, she will, she’ll swear that I’m just coverin’ up me breath. And where did I get the money for drink! An’ she’s stood enough of me coming in as full as a gun, an’ she’s going off with Charlie Riddle.”

  “Aw, come on.” Alee tossed his head impatiently as he pulled Mary away from his father.

  Tar-rah! “ called out Peter.

  “Tar-rah, Granda,” Mary called back. Tar-rah! “

  “Aw, tar-rah, goodbye, and so long!” said Alee. Then a few steps further on he looked at Mary, and she at him, and she slipped her hand once again through his arm, when they both laughed softly and Mary said quietly, “I love him,” and Alee replied, “Well, I hope you love him enough for both of us at this moment, ‘cos he got that threepence out of you, didn’t he?”

  “Oh, Da! what does it matter? Threepence!” And then she remembered, he very likely hadn’t threepence; the few coppers her ma allowed him out of the depleted dole, depleted because there were two people now working in the family, he would likely have spent on his trip across the water this morning. She knew he had felt a bit better when neither her mother nor she was working and for six weeks at a time he could tip up twenty-seven shillings on to the

  kitchen table as if it was his wages. She thought now she had been foolish, she should have given the threepence to him and not to her gran da

  Chapter Two

  95 Cornice Street comprised four rooms, a scullery and two staircases.

  It had a lavatory in the backyard, separate from the one belonging to 93, but it shared the wash-house and the only supply of water, a yard tap, with the tenants downstairs.

  Alice Walton had been known to brag that her house was the best furnished in the street, and on this she was right When in 1916 and at the age of seventeen she had married Alee, he was just out of his time in the shipyard and owing to the war earning good money. By 1918 he was earning treble what his father had been earning in 1914. From the first Alice had known what she wanted out of life and had been determined to get it. The determination had brought her from one furnished room at the top of the Church Bank to two rooms in Hope Street, then on to four rooms in Cornice Street. They had arrived in Cornice Street in 1921 when Mary was four and Jimmy two years old, and she had planned that their stay there would be no longer than three years at the most, by which time Mary would want a room of her own.

  She did not intend to have any more children, not if she knew it; and at this stage she had made it plain to Alee and told him he must do something about it. She didn’t know what exactly she expected him to do nor did he know exactly what he was expected to do, except use something, and he wasn’t going to all that palaver; so whether it was by chance or management they never knew, but they had no more

  children. This enabled Alice to set about furnishing her house properly.

  By 1923 she had a real front room, containing a three—piece suite, a china cabinet, a glass-fronted bookcase and two occasional tables. The floor was not covered with lino but with a grey cord carpet right to the walls, a great innovation in those days; and in the living-room she was the proud possessor of a drop-leaf table, a sideboard, four Georgian—type chairs which she had bought second-hand and did not know the value of, only that their shape appealed to her, and two arm chairs that had once graced a club room. In her own bedroom she had an austere satinwood bedroom suite and a double wooden bed; no brass knobs for her. She had, however, to be content with two iron beds in the children’s bedroom. Her curtains were all heavy Nottingham lace, and there was deep imitation lace on the bottom of the yellow paper blinds.

  It was in 1924 when she was looking further afield that her eye alighted on “Moat Cottage’. Why a six-roomed cottage standing in half an acre of land on the outskirts of the town should have been given this name wasn’t evident, because the ground all about was level and there was no sign of a moat, wet or dry. She had passed the cottage often on her walks into the country with the children but it wasn’t until she saw it empty that she coveted it. When, all agog, she put the proposed move to Alee his first question was, “ What’s the rent? “

  “Eleven-and-sixpence.”

  Almost double what they were paying for the present house, was she mad?

  Mad, or no mad, she had said to him, she was going to have that cottage; she wasn’t going to stay all her life in a grubby street like Cornice Street looking into somebody else’s back kitchen and somebody else looking into hers. Moreover, she was tired of living next to a lot of numskulls.

  At this he had answered quietly, “I have news for you, we’re on half-time next week.”

  And that had been the beginning of the end of her dream of Moat Cottage. It had also been the beginning of a change in her character.

  Previously, the objectionable facets of her nature had found vent in the ambitious drive to get on, to have a better house than the next, better-dressed children than the next, and cleverer children than the next. Alec’s place in the sphere of her ambitions was the provider of the wherewithal to achieve at least two of her ambitions.

  On short time. Alee became an irritant, but when he became unemployed Alice’s irritation leapt to bitterness bordering on hatred for him, and what little love she’d had for him became centred, not on her firstborn, her daughter, but on her son, James. James was going to accomplish for her all that his father had failed to do.

  She now looked at her son, where he sat on the corner of the high fender, his knees almost up to his chin, engrossed in a dog-eared comic, and said, “Put that away and get on with your homework!”

  “What, Ma?”

  ‘you heard me. Put that rubbish away and get on with your homework. “

 
“But, Ma, I never start me homework until after I’ve had me tea.” He peered up at her, and she said, “We’re not havin’ tea until those two come in; I’m not mashing twice. And where does she think she’s got to?

  Almost five o’clock here and she finished at two. The more you do in this house the more you might, you get no help. Do you hear me? “

  Her voice was shrill now.

  “Put that away and get on with your homework!”

  Jimmy rose from the fender, folded the comic, and was about to push it into his pocket when it was grabbed from his hand and Alice bawled at him, ‘how many times have I to tell you you’re not to stuff your pockets with things! It puts them out of shape. God knows your clothes are hard enough to come by. Take your coat off and hang it up. I’m tired of tellin’ you. “

  She sighed deeply and, her voice dropping, she said, Aw boy, It’s for your own good. Don’t you realize that? “ She bent towards him, and he answered sullenly, “ Aye, Ma. “

  At this she closed her eyes, gripped her hands togetheYand pressed them to her breast as she said, “Aye, Ma. Aye, Ma. What good is the secondary school to you when you cannot get away from the common jargon of the street? Aye, Ma. You can’t even learn to say yes.”

  The boy stood with his head bent staring down at his feet, and as she went to push him towards the little table in the corner of the room there came the sound of the bottom staircase door opening, and her chin jerked, then her head moved in a half-circle, nodding in its passage from one shoulder to another.

  “They’ve arrived,” she said and marched across the room, pulled open the kitchen door that led into the scullery from where the back stairs dropped, and glared at Mary who was ahead of Alee and demanded, “Where do you think you’ve been, miss?”