Pure as the Lily

by Catherine Cookson

  weighing up sugar at a side table, while he hummed to himself the song that had been his father’s favourite, the song that got on her nerves, the song that in a way she took as a reproach to herself:

  “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. “

  There were times when she wanted to scream at him, “Oh Da! for God’s sake change that tune.”

  She recalled once when they were walking along the cinder path, his arm about her shoulders, and he was singing—someone had stood him a few pints that day—and he looked down into her face as he sang the line:

  “She’s as pure as the lily in the dell.”

  Lately she had thought that perhaps even without her ma agitating him he would still have beaten up Ben. Looking at him, now, small, stooped, quiet, inoffensive, a prematurely aged man, who would think that he had ever been capable of acting as he had done?

  Since she had given him the job of weighing the dry goods and packing up orders she had seen glimpses in him of his former self, especially on the nights when Jimmy and Lally came round. Then he would sit with Annie between his knees and talk, and even chaff. And she knew that in these moments he was happy; he had his family around him as he had never hoped to have, and never had in their young days.

  What hurt her most with regard to him was his subservient manner towards herself; it was always, Tes, Mary. Aye, Mary. Yes, I’ll do

  that, Mary. “ It made her the boss, and somehow she didn’t want to be the boss. The boss of him, and Annie, and Cousin Annie and Jimmy, and Lally. Yet they all looked to her as the boss. She didn’t want to be their boss, anybody’s boss ... not even Arthur’s in the Charter Street shop, or Teresa’s in this one.

  She wanted to get away on her own.

  Alee said, “How’s that?” He pointed to the row of sugar bags, and she said, “Fine. Fine, Da. Go on up now, I’ve made your cocoa.”

  “Oh ta, Mary; I could do with that. Is there anything else you want specially doin’ when I come back?”

  “Well, you could start on the tat ties Do them up in quarter stones.”

  “Aye, aye, I will Mary. I won’t be a minute.”

  “Take your time.” Her voice was impatient. Then she looked at him gently and smiled.

  “There’s no hurry, take your time, Da.”

  “Aye, lass, aye. All right.” As he went out she sighed, and put her hand to her head; then she was walking towards the shop door when Teresa came through it, saying hurriedly, “There’s a man in the shop wantin’ to have a word with you.”

  Without speaking, Mary followed her back into the shop and there, at the other side of the counter, standing among a number of women customers, all from around the doors, was Hughie Amesden.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Tollett.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Amesden.”

  When he looked from one side to the other she said, “You would like a word with me, Mr. Amesden?”

  Tes, Mrs. Tollett. “

  “Will you come through then?”

  She ignored the looks of the women and lifted the hatch and allowed him to pass in front of her and into the storeroom.

  They stood looking at each other for a moment. He had his hat in his hand. It was a soft trilby. She had noticed that

  he never wore a cap, and this sort of made him stand out from the other men about the place. He pulled the rim of the trilby between his fingers and thumb as he said, “I ... I just wanted to say goodbye to you.”

  “Goodbye? You’re going away?”

  “Yes.” He nodded.

  “The first stage is Southampton. We’re leaving the morrow, and, and then America.”

  “America?” She bowed her head towards him.

  “Yes, you see my wife’s got an aunt over there. Her son came over here during the war and he married an English lass. They live in Southampton. He’s billeted there. Well, the long and short of it is me wife can’t settle here; she’s crazy to get away since we lost our girl, you understand?”

  She moved her head again.

  “And her cousin’s going to see about getting us a passage. We might have to wait a bit but Rene, that’s my wife, thinks that if we’re on the spot we’ll have a better chance.”

  “America, it’s a long way.”

  “Yes, it’s a long way.”

  “Are you looking forward to it?”

  He looked into her face for a full minute before he said, “No. But you know how it is.”

  She nodded again, but she didn’t know how it was. She wouldn’t know until she, too, was able to say to someone, “I’m going away, I’m going to America.”

  He was twisting his hat around in his hands now as he said with a half smile, “It’s funny. We haven’t met often during the years although we were brought up together ... well, quite near each other. But I thought, well, I thought I would let you know I’m going, just to say ta-rah.”

  “It was very kind of you, Mr. Amesden, and I wish you all the luck in the world.”

  He didn’t answer, and they continued to stare at each other until the silence became so great, so heavy, that she felt herself going red in the face, and she searched frantically in her mind for something to say. And what she said was, “You’ll be glad to get away. It’s, it’s depressing here.”

  “No. No’—he shook his head vigorously “ “it isn’t that I find it depressing. Well, not more so than any other place during the war.

  Black-outs and everything you know, places don’t have a lot of effect on me, it’s people. “

  How true, how true. She said aloud, “Yes, you’re right, Mr. Amesden.

  Places don’t matter all that much, it’s the people. “

  The back door opened and Alee entered and they both turned and looked at him with blank faces, and he said, “Oh.”

  “This is Mr. Amesden, Da. He’s going to America.”

  “Oh aye.” Alee put his head back and looked up at the tall man.

  “I

  wish you luck, lad. “ He put out his hand. Hughie took it and they shook hands gravely.

  He now turned to Mary with his hand extended, and she placed hers in it. It was the first time they had touched. His hands felt big, warm, firm.

  “Well, I’ll say goodbye then, Mrs. Tollett.”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Amesden. I hope you get on well.”

  “I hope so.”

  “If ... if you ever come on a holiday you must look us up.”

  “I will, Mrs. Tollett, I certainly will.” He still had hold of her hand, and when he dropped it he stood for a second longer looking at her, then turned away and went towards the door that led into the shop. She did not follow him to show him out but turned towards the back door as Alee said, “He seems a nice chap. I seem to know his face. Is he from around these parts?”

  “Yes,” said Mary.

  “Yes, he’s from around these parts.”

  When she got upstairs Cousin Annie put her head out of the kitchen and asked. Do you want turnips done with the tat ties to mash like? “ and she looked at her and said, “ What? Oh yes. Yes, that’ll be all right, Annie. “ Then she went into the bedroom and, sitting on the side of the bed, she looked at the photo of Ben and bowed her head. What was wrong with her? What was up with her anyway? She had the feeling on her that she had just sustained another great loss.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘come on, love, and sit down and get this toast. “ Jimmy pulled Lally down into a chair by the side of the table; then, pointing to the fire, he said, “ That’s a blaze for you, isn’t it? And there’s enough rotten bits outside there to keep us going for a month. By! I was lucky to get that load. Arthur Stanhope, he’s in the boiler house, you know, he’s going to put me on to another lot. His brother’s on cleaning the bomb sites, that’s how he gets the tip-off. A couple of bob on the side’—he nudged her with his elbow—’and
we’re set. “

  He looked around the room, his face bright. Then he said, “Isn’t it marvelous! Ours. Fancy our Mary giving it to us! Just fancy. I still can’t believe it, not even yet. By! she’s good.”

  “She’s wonderful is Mary.” Lally looked down into her cup, then stirred it slowly before she said though fully “You know, Jimmy, most women are bitches. Oh, they are.” She looked at him and nodded as if he had denied this.

  “But when you get a nice one it makes up for all the rest.”

  He put his hand across the table and gripped hers, and he said quietly, “You’re telling me that. To me there are only two good women in the world, you and our Mary.”

  “Aw, Jimmy.” She looked at him with her big limpid blue eyes for a moment; then pulling her hand away from him and sitting up straight she said, as if coming to a grave decision, “I’m not goin’ to dress so flashy, I’m goin’ to pick quiet things.”

  Jimmy let out a roar of laughter, leant back in his chair and almost did a back somersault. Gripping on the table, the tears running down his face, he said, “Lally! you’re priceless.”

  And she was priceless to him. He’d had a year of such happiness that it was impossible to imagine. He had never dreamed that any human being could hold so many beautiful emotions in his body at one and the same time. Why, why did he love her as he did? According to modern educational standards she was, as she said, dim, at least dim about some things, but on others so unconsciously profound that she astounded him. At such times he felt that there was a door in her mind that had something behind it stopping it opening, and that once that door could be forced back he would have, in his Lally, a sage. But did he want a sage? No, he just wanted her as she was, he never wanted her any different, because as she was she had made a man of him. And her need of him, her love of him, would go on keeping him a man.

  During the past year he had done so many things he never thought he’d be capable of. He had used his hands. Just look what he had done to the place at odd times during the last six months? He had made cupboards; he had boarded in the old-fashioned sink; he had sanded all the grease and dirt off the great stone slabs of this kitchen; he had reinforced the stairs; he had even built Lally a kind of dressing-table in the queer little niche in the bedroom up above, and now that the authorities were allowing a pound’s worth of new wood a month for reconstruction, there was nothing he wouldn’t be able to do during the next year or two. Among that great pile of charred and oiled wood outside the door there were two large beams he was going to preserve he already had an idea what he was going to do with them.

  The front room was eighteen feet long and still held that old fashioned iron fireplace. Well, as soon as he could get down to it he was going to have that out and put one of these beams across the top and make an open fireplace. He had seen the picture in a magazine, seventeenth-century style. Oh, the ideas he had in his head. And then the garden, back and front; he’d have that all dug before the winter and designed. He’d make a sand pit for Ben at the back, and when he could get his hands on some cement he’d make him a little pool. He’d bring South Shields

  2is

  sands into his own backyard. The things he was going to do.

  Lally, looking from the blazing fire to him, now said, “Oh, Jimmy, I don’t want to leave. Now the fire’s on I feel we’re home... for good.

  It seems a long time till Monday when the things come. “

  Jimmy, who was sitting close to her holding her hand, looked at the fire too, now, and said, “I was a fool; I should have got them to move us the day or tomorrow. I don’t know why I said Monday. Oh yes, I do.”

  He nudged her.

  “I thought we’d all come in together, and as we’re not picking up Ben from the hospital until Monday I thought, wherever we go, whatever we do, we’ll do it together, the three of us.”

  “Aw, that was a nice thought, Jimmy, doing everything together, you, and me, and Ben. Do you think his ear will be all right?”

  Tes, yes. “

  “I wouldn’t like for him to be deaf, Jimmy.* “ He won’t be deaf. “ He shook her arm.

  “He’s got a bit of an ear infection, that’s all. And we’re lucky, we’re favoured. Don’t forget, it isn’t every baim they take in and look after. First-class care, we’re favoured.”

  “It’s ‘cos of you.”

  “Tripe!” He stood up now, saying, “Well, it’s getting dark;

  we’d better be making a move if we want to call at Mary’s. “

  “Oh aye. Oh aye. Are you going to bank down the fire, Jimmy, afore we go?”

  “You bet. Oh, you bet.”

  “It’s a shame, it’s such a lovely blaze.”

  He looked at her as she stood now gazing down into the fire, and then he pulled her round towards him, saying, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do.

  Billy Sollop won’t be doing anything tomorrow, he’d given me the choice, Saturday or Monday. Look, I’ll slip into him as we’re going home and ask him if he can do it tomorrow. Anyway, it would be more sensible to

  have the place all straight for Master Benjamin Walton returning home, wouldn’t it? “

  “Oh Jimmy, will you?”

  He took her into his arms. You’d like to come in tomorrow, wouldn’t you? “I’d like to come in now.” She pulled a face at him.

  He smiled at her, then said airily, “Well, Mrs. Walton, you may, if you wish, sleep on the stone floor, or, if you prefer the boards upstairs, but for me, my old bones need a mattress.”

  “Oh Jimmy! you’re funny.” She pushed then pulled him towards the door, and they went out, he having to stoop to avoid the low lintel, They were halfway down the path when he swung her around and they surveyed the cottage. It was deceptive looking; it suggested it might have two rooms down and two or three up, whereas, in fact, it had, besides the large kitchen and equally large sitting-room, another twelve by ten foot room, a scullery, a large wash-house that gave access into a wooden outhouse which Jimmy had already planned as a workshop, and upstairs it had three bedrooms. It was a place that had great potential, and the artist that was in the poet saw this. Moat Cottage was going to be a show place. In his mind already he saw it completed.

  Arm-in-arm, tight-linked, they made their way in the gathering dusk into the town, lit now with street lamps but still showing the scars of war. The nearest way to Mary’s would have been along Croft Terrace, down the road and cut through Haydon Terrace, but he kept clear of Haydon Terrace and took the long way round. He had come across Betty twice during the last year. The first time the day she had taken him to court for a maintenance order, and he had been committed to pay her fifteen shillings a week. The second time was when he had found himself sitting opposite her in the bus. He had only been seated a minute and there were her eyes boring into him as if they would stab him. He had got to his feet and jumped off the bus with the

  . ———
  His mother he had seen only once and he never wanted to see her again.

  It was on the day everybody was going mad with victory. He had been pushing his way through a crowd blocking the roadway near Ellison Street. He had Lally by the hand pulling her after him, and there was the face to the side staring at him out of the crowd. The only face that wasn’t laughing, the only mouth that wasn’t open. He saw that she had her teeth gritted, her lips back from them in a snarl, like that of a dog, and it had crossed his mind that she looked like a mad woman.

  But he could go in by Cornice Street from the top end now-he always did when coming back from the cottage and it gave him a sort of kick as he walked down the street with Lally on his arm. From the beginning he knew what they would be saying; “Brazen bugger! Did you see the pair of them? Talk about being bare-faced! All right, all right, granted Betty was a bit of a tartar, and his mother ... well, they all knew what she was .,. but for him to walk out on them and to take up with that one, Doo-Ially-tap, he must be as daft as her. And always arm in arm, a pair of brazen buggers, if
ever there was. Oh he’s barmy all right. Well, remember what he got up to ... the Salvation Army do?

  And then the dustbin? And to wipe a blackboard with a lad’s face! If you ask me they’re well matched. “ As if they were shouting in his ear he could hear them. But it didn’t matter to him; they couldn’t penetrate his private world, this island on which he was living, this beautiful island called Lally.

  In Mary’s, he announced loudly, “We’re going in tomorrow, Mary. I was daft, we have all the weekend to get straight.”

  “Now you’re talking sense.” She nodded from him to Lally.

  “I wondered to me self why you were leaving it till Monday.”

  “Aw, just a fad, a kink. I’m gone up here.” He tapped his brow.

  You needn’t stress that fact. “ She laughed at him.

  “Go on, have something to eat. Give me your coat, Lally.”

  “Mary.”

  Yes, Lally? “

  “I was just sayin’ to Jimmy, the next things I buy with me coupons I’m goin’ to get something quiet like, and I’d like you to come with me and....”

  “Come on, you big fathead.” Jimmy tugged her so hard by the arm that she fell against him, and Mary just smiled, but she was laughing inside. Lally in quiet clothes! If you put her in a nun’s garb she’d still look like Lally. How could she ever hope to hide that bust and that backside? But it said something for her that she wanted to dress quietly. She thought now, as she had thought before, that it was a pity she was stamped with the telling title of Doo-lally-tap. In one way she could understand how she had come by the name, but in another she thought it was quite unfair, because Lally, at bottom, was no more doo-lally-tap than she herself was.

  When they went into the dining-room she said to her da, “They’re going to move tomorrow, you could give them a hand.”

  “Oh aye.” Alee nodded at Jimmy.

  “Oh aye, lad, I’ll give you a hand to get straight, and pleased to. An’ I tell you what, I’ll come and dig your garden. Oh’—he looked at Mary ‘that’s if it’s all right with you, lass?”