Pure as the Lily

by Catherine Cookson

  You don’t think I’m a frightful man? “ And she had looked at him, and then she had surprised herself by falling against him.

  No, she hadn’t been vexed at him, for she liked him. She hadn’t liked what had happened that night, but nevertheless she liked him. He was kind and nice. and lovable, and he

  “looked different from any of the men around the doors, better class like.

  But it wasn’t only her father she was afraid of knowing, it was her ma.

  Now she had missed her period and she knew what that meant: when you stopped having your period you were going to have a hairn. And she didn’t feel very well inside herself.

  She looked from one face to the other bending over her, their expressions full of concern, and she said, “I want to talk to me grannie, Granda.”

  Peter straightened his back and said, “Oh aye, lass.” Then with an effort at his old jocularity, he added, “Well, I’d better away. Did I tell you I had business to attend to in the Town Hall? There’s a meeting of councillors the day, a real covey of them. They’ve asked to see me, I think they’re going to put me up for Mayor.”

  When this evoked no answering smile from her he went out, and Grandma Walton, pulling up a wooden chair to the table, sat down and caught hold of her hands and looked into her face for a long moment and with the knowledge of years she said quietly, “No, lass, not that?” and Mary, knowing that there was no need for detailed explanations to her grannie, just dipped her head once.

  “Aw my God! baim.”

  “Oh, Grandma!” She flung herself into her grannie’s arms, and Grandma Walton rocked her as she patted her back, asking quietly, “Who is it?

  I didn’t know you had a lad. “

  She was sobbing so bitterly she couldn’t answer for a while. Then raising her head, and sniffing and wiping the tears from the end of her nose with the back of her hand, she said, “It isn’t a lad.

  Grandma, it’s Ben. “

  Ben? “

  She looked at her grandmother’s screwed up face.

  “Mr. Tollett.”

  “Oh my God!” Her grandma dropped her hand as if it were a hot cake she had just taken out of the oven.

  “You’re jokin’, lass?”

  “No, no, Gran.”

  “Aw, what a swine! to take advantage of a bit hairn....”

  “He didn^t, he didn’t. Listen, Gran, listen.” It was she who had hold of her grandmother now, shaking her by the arms.

  “He didn’t. It wasn’t like that at all. He wanted to marry me straightaway, an’ I wouldn’t, ‘cos I was frightened to tell me da, or me ma. The other, it, it just happened. And ... and I want to marry him, Gran.”

  “You do, lass?”

  “Yes, yes. Gran.”

  “Then why were you frightened to tell them at home?”

  “I couldn’t. Gran. You see... well, there’s a reason.”

  “Yes, go on.”

  “Well Gran, I don’t know how to say it, an’ I shouldn’t say it.”

  “You’ve said enough, and you’d better tell me the rest, lass. If you don’t want it to go any further, you know me.”

  Yes, she knew her grannie, it wouldn’t go any further. She said quietly, The ma’s been after Ben all the time she’s been working in the shop. He . he pushed her off. I saw him, actually saw him one night and heard him tell her that he . he wanted none of her because me da was a good man. “

  ‘. Your ma . after him? No! . and,” she added vehemently now, ‘your da is a good man? But he didn’t think that when he took you down....”

  “He didn’t take me down, Gran, not like that I’ve got to say it, I, I was willin’. If I hadn’t been he wouldn’t have. But you see I couldn’t let him tell me da, because me da’s known about me ma wanting him, I mean Ben, and he would look upon it, well, like a double insult.”

  “Well, things haven’t changed; how do you think he’s going to look upon it now? And you’re right when you think he’s not going to like it, he’s going to play up, and that’s putting it mildly. You know, your da thinks the sun shines out of you, lass, he thinks you couldn’t do wrong, not if you

  were tempted by ten devils. He thinks of you like your gran da song Pure as the Lily in the Dell. Aw! Mary, Mary, why had you to do this? “

  “Gran, I didn’t, I didn’t, not on purpose.” She was crying again.

  “It just happened.”

  “Well’—Grandma Walton sighed deeply ‘he’s got to be told, and you want me to tell him, is that it?”

  Tes, Gran. “

  “In that case I don’t think I’ll wait for him comin’ round, it’ll be better to kill two birds with one stone and tell them together. I’ll get me hat and coat....”

  Fifteen minutes later they walked out of Bingley Street, into Grant Street, went past the station, hardly exchanging a word until they stopped outside the shop. Then Grandma Walton said, ^Ybu’d better go and prepare him. Your da will come storming down, you know, and you’ll need some soft soap and sugar to smooth him, I’ll tell you that. “

  Mary stood for a moment watching her grannie walking up the street, her black coat shiny with use, her black hat perched straight on her head. Her figure thin and small, she looked for all the world like a girl playing at grannies.

  She did not go in the shop way but entered by the side door and went up the stairs, and she hadn’t been in a moment before Ben joined her.

  “Well ?” He stood in front of her.

  The grannie’s gone up now to. to tell them. “

  He wiped his hand back and forth across his mouth; then with a short laugh he said, “Well, I must say I’m not looking forward to the next hour or so, but I’m glad it’s come. I’ve got the same feeling in me stomach as I had in the war after I had been called up and thought of the day I would have to go over the top, and what it would be like.”

  He smiled Wryly.

  “Now I know.” He stared down into her face, then swiftly he pulled her into his arms and kissed her long and hard.

  After a moment, with gentle fingers he traced the outline of her mouth, saying, “It’s a small price to pay for you, Mary, going over any top.” And with that he turned from her.

  This was the last time she was ever to see his face clear cut and handsome.

  Alice stood near the table. She was holding on to the edge of it with clenched fists, her knuckles, like bleached bones, sticking up white through the skin. But her face, in contrast, was red, purply red, as if she were about to go into convulsions. The red was reflected in her eyes; there was a madness about her.

  In contrast. Alee stood to the side of the fireplace, one hand stretched outwards holding the brass rod, his mouth open and his face grey. He appeared relaxed, as if he were going to sink down on to the fender. And he could have done just that; he felt in a state of shock, sapped of strength, unable to move. His mother was standing there telling him that Mary was pregnant to Ben Tollett. He had taken the words in, he knew he had, for he was repeating them in his mind, but he couldn’t do anything about them. His face even refused to express surprise. It wasn’t that he disbelieved his mother, he did believe her; this is what had been wrong with Mary for weeks now. He remembered the day she had suddenly changed. It was after the night she had had to stay, waiting for Ben coming back from the dinner . in Shields. She had come in sort of exhausted, and he had said to her, “You can’t go on like this. It’s these jobs; two jobs are one too many.” She had never been right since then.

  He recalled vividly now the look on her face. That was when it had happened, that night. Ben Tollett, not satisfied with having Alice on the side, had to take Mary, Mary . his mary!

  Of a sudden his mind came alive. Ben Tollett had taken Mary. He would kill him. That’s what he would do, he would kill him. Nobody was going to take his Mary down, least of all Ben Tollett after the carry-on he’d had with Alice, ‘cos you couldn’t tell him that there had been nothing between them, her breaking her neck to get down there every min
ute, and she had not let him near her since she had

  started at the shop. She hadn’t been much for it before, but this last year or so, nothing, so you couldn’t tell him. And he had taken his Mary.

  His body refused to move as quickly as his mind and his slow pace, as he walked from the fire, brought Alice’s attention from her own blind rage for a second. She watched him go towards the st airhead door, and when Grandma Walton shouted, “Alee lad! Alee lad, don’t go. Not like that!” and made to go after her son, Alice suddenly grabbed her fiercely by the arms, steadying herself by her hold on the older woman, and screamed, “Let him go! Let him be! Let him bash his face in! Do you hear? Let him bash his face in!”

  “Steady, lass, steady.” Grandma Walton shook off Alice’s grip, and, in turn, took her by the arms and pushed her into a chair.

  But Alice was no sooner in it than she was out of it. Hobbling to the top of the stairs, she screamed down them, “Smash him! Smash him up!

  And his shop an’ all. Do you hear? Do something worthwhile in your life, smash him up” As Alee went down the street his step quickened.

  “Smash him up,” she had said.

  “Smash his shop an’ all.” She had no need to tell him what to do, he knew what he was going to do.

  He thrust the shop door open so fiercely that it bounced against a bag of potatoes and sprang back at him, and for the second time he thrust it open. Then he was standing in the middle of the shop looking past the two women at the counter to Ben, whose skin seemed to have bleached.

  After a moment of staring, of silent waiting, even on the part of the women. Alee said, “You bloody swine you!” The words came quietly from his throat, but deep. Then on a higher note: ‘you dirty, whorin’ swine you! “ On a higher note still: “ A baim. Little more than a baim! A young lass, pure. She was pure! “

  “What is it. Alee?” One of the women had come to his side, and he thrust her away so quickly and hard that she

  stumbled back against the counter that held the stationery and birthday cards and comics and women’s weeklies.

  “Alee!” There was a tremor in Ben’s voice.

  “Look, come in the back.

  This is a private affair, come in the back. “

  “Come in the back, he says.” He was now looking from one woman to the other.

  “Come in the back. Do you hear him? Come and hide it up. He’s taken my lass down and he’s asking’ me to come in the back! Do you know that, Mrs. Wilson, and you, Mrs. Cooper? He’s taken our Mary down;

  this dirty swine has taken our Mary down. “

  With a spring, he was leaning across the counter, his two hands full of Ben’s grey linen shop coat and his shirt and vest.

  “Leave go, man! Leave... leave go!” Almost choking, Ben wrenched himself free, and as he staggered back against the partition on which the tin stuff was stacked Alee flung up the counter flap and was on him again. As they struggled together and the tins rolled from the shelves and the counter shuddered and a half round of cheese went tumbling to the floor, the women screamed, and one of them ran into the street shouting “Help! Help!”

  By this time the two men were wedged in the opening left by the flap and already blood was pouring from Ben’s face. Then, like froth pouring out of a bottle, they spurted into the middle of the shop, and crashed against an ornamental biscuit stand, wherein the tins were set at angles, fronted by a long glass door, the stand rocked backwards and forwards twice, then fell inwards towards the window with a resounding crash.

  The women, who had been trapped in the corner, now slipped through the counter lid and caught at Mary as she came dashing from the storeroom yelling, “Oh, Da! Da!”

  ‘you can’t do nowt, lass, you can’t do nowt. Let them have it out. “

  The woman held on to her, and it was at this point that Ben managed to throw Alee from him. But as he did so he slipped on the spilled fruit on the floor and went sprawling badcwards. In a flash Alee reached to the left of him and

  picked up a glass jar of sweets standing on a shelf at the back of the shop window facing Cornice Street. For a moment, just for a moment, it was poised in his hand, the next it crashed down on to Ben’s face, and the jar split in two as if it had been cut by a knife, the two pieces falling one to each side of his head while the jube-jubes spilled over him and instantly became bathed in his blood.

  Ben didn’t move. Nobody moved. Not Alee, now leaning back against the counter; nor the woman holding Mary; nor Mary, straining forward; nor all the children in the shop doorway; not until the men rushed in and exclaimed one after the other, “My God! God Almighty! Christ alive!

  what’s happened? “ did the tension break. Then Alee, pulling himself slowly away from the counter, went from the shop. He did not look towards Mary, he looked at no one. His clothes were torn, his face was splattered with blood; but it wasn’t his own blood. Blindly he went through the crowd at the door and the larger crowd on the pavement and the road. The whole street was out, and they made way for him. And when he saw the policeman come hurrying towards him, with a woman at his side, he half stopped. But when they just hesitated as they looked at him, then went on, he, too, went on.

  When he entered the house again his mother said, “Oh my God! Oh my God! what have you done?”

  And Alice cried, “Did you do it? Speak, man! Did you do it?”

  He looked at her long and hard as he said, “Aye, I did it, I did what you said. Aye, I did it. You satisfied now?”

  Then he went and sat down by the fire and held out his hands to the blaze, and when his mother took a towel and began to wipe his face he did not push her away.

  Mary cradled Ben’s head until they brought a doctor, and when he came and the shop was cleared, except for two men, a woman and the policeman, she still knelt on the floor by his

  side until they brought the ambulance. Then she rode with him to Harton Hospital in Shields.

  “Are you his daughter?” the nurse asked.

  No. No. “

  “His wife?”

  She shook her head.

  “Who are his next of kin?”

  She didn’t know, except that he had a cousin who lived in Wallsend, but she didn’t know the address, and anyway she was crippled.

  Half an hour later when the nurse came to her and said, “He’s ready for the theatre,” she asked in a whisper, “Is it bad?” and the nurse shook her head and looked down as she answered, “They’ll try to save his eye.”

  Oh God! his brown eyes, his beautiful brown eyes. Her da had done this to Ben. She couldn’t believe it. She had known he would be mad, but not this kind of mad. She thought he would have gone mad with his tongue, going for her, then not speaking to her for a while, but afterwards he would come round. Her da was a gentle man, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. And it was all through her. She wished she was dead. Oh!

  oh how she wished she was dead!

  Half an hour later still, they took her into a side ward and gave her a cup of tea, and the nurse said, “What are you to him, a relation?”

  She shook her head and turned it away, and the nurse raised her eyebrows and asked no more questions.

  An hour and a half later, they brought him out of the theatre, and the sister herself came to her now.

  “You’d better go home,” she said; ‘you won’t be able to see him until tomorrow. “

  “What did they do to him?” Her voice cracked on the words, and she had to repeat, “What did they do to him?”

  “Well, they had a lot of stitching to do. His face was badly cut;

  there were pieces of glass in it. “

  His. his eye? “

  “Oh, I think the eye will be all right; the cut just missed it fortunately. He was very lucky really, much more so in his neck for the slash was near an artery.” She nodded sympathetically and said, ‘you can see him tomorrow. Go home now, dear. “

  She turned dumbly away and walked out of the hospital, down the long drive, through the iron gates;
and only then did she realize that she hadn’t any money for her bus journey back to Jarrow. Blindly, she began to walk, down Talbot Road, along Stanhope Road and into Tyne Dock. She passed through the Dock arches, went up the long quiet road towards East Jarrow. But before she came to the New Buildings she crossed the road to sit on a seat because her legs were aching. Her whole body was aching; her head and her heart were aching. She was weighed down with a great ache, and pain, and anguish. She loved Ben, she knew now she loved Ben, but she also loved her da. What would happen to her da?

  She had no answer to this. She looked across the road to the slacks, the open timber pond that filled up twice a day with the tide from the river and the North Sea. Children were playing on the timbers, running back and forward yelling gleefully. It wasn’t long ago that she had played and laughed and been happy, that was when she wasn’t in the house. She had been happy, too, with her da and her gran da in the hut on the allotment; and she had laughed when she was at school, especially at playtime.

  “She would never laugh again.

  She started to walk on, up past the disused Barium Chemical Works, the tram sheds round by the Don Bridge and St. Paul’s Church, and when she entered Jarrow she did not go up the church bank but cut across the salt grass, and so wended her way through the maze of streets until she came home . to the shop, because although she hadn’t thought about it, she knew now that this would be her home, if Ben lived this would be her home. She’d never go into number 95 again.

  Mrs. McArthur had been looking after the child. Mrs. McArthur was a nice woman, not gossipy; she minded her own business and she was one of Ben’s best customers. The shop door was locked; she went round to the side door and up the stairs.

  The child was crying and Mrs. McArthur said, “I’ve tried to pacify him, but I couldn’t.”