‘Goodbye, everybody.’
‘Go, you snake,’ said Mrs. Rouse. ‘Go back to the prostitution I took you from.’
The nurse turned back once more and spoke in the same cool and gentle voice she had spoken to Sonny the day she sat waiting for him with the cane across her knees.
‘I am going, Ma Rouse, but don’t be afraid. Mr. Benoit is coming with me, too.’ And then as if suddenly inspired she smiled the same cold little smile and said, ‘Doggie! Doggie! Look bone.’
Chapter Eight
That night No. 2 was a curious mixture of brooding quiet enlivened by flashes of excitement. All the talking and discussion and reconstruction came afterwards. What everyone was really waiting for was the appearance of Benoit. As far as they knew he had no inkling at all of all that had happened, having gone away as usual after lunch. Ella said that Mrs. Rouse had learnt what was going on since the day before but had kept her own counsel. It seemed, too, that she had discovered a similar situation some months before, but had pardoned the couple. But this turned out to be some kissing alone, and both the nurse and Benoit swore that there was nothing else in it. Ella enlightened Haynes about Benoit.
‘That man, sir! He have a devil. From the time I come here, the man is after me.’
‘What!’ said Haynes.
He had thought that the nurse, Wilhelmina and Mrs. Rouse represented the limit of Benoit’s activity.
‘Yes, sir, I had to tell ’im I didn’t play so rough. Good night, sir.’
‘Good night, Ella.’
‘Now that woman gone, sir, there will be peace in the place. Good night, sir.’
‘Good night, Ella.’
‘Been a busy day, sir. And you were having fever only the other day. Better have a quiet evening, sir.’
‘I think I shall, Ella. Thank you.’
But except for Mrs. Rouse, who had gone to her bedroom, every separate member of the household paid him a visit that night.
Philomen came first, with swollen eyes.
‘Mr. Haynes, lend me some matches, please.’ But she did not go.
‘How is Mrs. Rouse?’ asked Haynes.
‘She had to take to her bed, Mr. Haynes. Her head is bursting and her heart is full. What will happen when Mr. Benoit come I don’t know. Mr. Haynes, the nurse behaved too badly to madam. Whenever she out on duty she meeting Mr. Benoit, and the madam been so kind to the nurse. Excuse me, Mr. Haynes. I have to go and boil some tea for the madam. Nothing buy yet in the grocery, the things not washed up, everything in a mess.’
The next was Miss Atwell.
‘Mr. Haynes,’ she said. ‘You must excuse me, Mr. Haynes. A tragedy have taken place. In all my days I never see such a brass face as that nurse. After they do so much for her that is the way she turn round and not only take the man away, but actually give cheeks on the bargain. But she will come to a bad end. Everybody is glad she gone. It puts an end to all her tricks and trapezin’ with you and Ella. The house will be at peace now. Good night, Mr. Haynes. I am goin’ for a walk on the seawall. I needs a little ozone, Mr. Haynes, to freshen up the lungs.’
Not ten minutes afterwards Haynes heard a knock below the window on the other side of the house.
‘Mr. Haynes.’
Before he could move, Maisie’s head and shoulders appeared above the sill. Haynes was almost as startled as on the night of Miss Atwell’s first appearance.
‘Anybody here?’ she whispered.
‘No.’
‘Give me a hand,’ she said, and Haynes helped her into the room.
‘Close the door, Mr. Haynes.’
Haynes closed the door.
‘You had better lock it.’
Haynes locked it.
‘If anybody comes don’t open.’
Haynes nodded.
‘Mr. Haynes, you look frightened. But you are all right. It’s me who is in the stew.’
‘No, I am not frightened. Why should I be frightened? But what stew are you in?’
‘They inside swearing vengeance on me. All of them saying that it is when I laugh, at least Miss Atwell keep on saying so, that it is when I laugh I spoil the whole business. And Miss Atwell vex already because I say the bailiff was coming.’
‘But was the bailiff coming?’
‘No,’ laughed Maisie, ‘no bailiff was coming, but how can they know whether the bailiff was coming or not? But there’s more in this than you know, Mr. Haynes, plenty more. The nurse gone and the nurse is not coming back. That is what is killing me. If she would only take me— This house is going to be a prison cell.’
She was speaking in a low tone and the last few words had been addressed as much to herself as to Haynes. Suddenly she held her head up.
‘Mr. Haynes, I hope you don’t mind my being here. I want to see what will happen when Benoit comes.’
‘No, not at all,’ said Haynes.
And he didn’t. He was seeing for the first time what an extremely pretty girl Maisie really was and what a fine figure she had. She sat thinking her own thoughts and Haynes watched her. Never before had he seen her so grave.
‘Mr. Haynes, I feel to run away from the place. Only the nurse used to bother with me here. Mrs. Rouse thinks of one thing and that is Benoit. I only had a good time when the nurse was here. The nurse used to stick up for me. They used to pay five shillings a month for me at a private school. I was bright at school, Mr. Haynes, but Mr. Benoit say that it is only a waste of money. He say what women want to get on in the world they haven’t to learn in school, they born with it. But the nurse stick out for me to go. And after they take me away she say that if I too big to go to school I big enough to go out. And whenever they counting out money to spend at Christmas and Carnival and Easter, the nurse always put in a dress for me and a pair of shoes and so on. And little dances and bazaars, if wasn’t for the nurse I would never go. Mrs. Rouse only used to be thinking of Benoit, Benoit, Benoit all the time. Anywhere to go, Mr. Benoit is to go. Any circus and so on come here, Mr. Benoit going. If they have money or ain’t have money, he have to get some to go, and plenty money too. And Mrs. Rouse will break her neck to get it for him. Then she press clothes and buy shirt for him and he gone. She behind: “See for both of us,” that is what she always telling him. Then when he go and come back, she sit down to hear what he say. She in the kitchen like a slave and he like a prince. And look what he do her. Serve her damn well right.
‘Mr. Haynes, before the nurse come to live here nobody used to come here. Only a lot of old people. I used to go and stand by the gate. As soon as Mrs. Rouse finish in the kitchen she calling me in. I must come in and stay in. If Benoit there they talking. If Benoit out, she sitting down nodding in the chair waiting until he come. I’s only the nurse used to bring a little brightness into the house and now she gone.’ Maisie lifted her head and looked at Haynes. ‘I tell you, Mr. Haynes, what I wish is that Mrs. Rouse had gone and the nurse stopped.’ She dropped her head on her arm again and said slowly, ‘It’s all that Benoit’s fault. That man! He would carry his freshness to the Virgin Mary.’
There were footsteps in the yard. Maisie raised her head and listened as a dog does.
‘Benoit,’ she signalled with her lips to Haynes.
The footsteps, Benoit’s footsteps, came to Haynes’s door.
‘Haynes,’ said Benoit, ‘you there?’
Haynes was about to answer, but Maisie put her finger before her lips and went to the window.
She swung herself over, but before her head disappeared she gave Haynes a nod and a smile as if to say ‘go ahead.’
‘Yes,’ answered Haynes, and opened the door.
Chapter Nine
Benoit wore a white suit, and a spotted shirt and collar to match. He was, as usual whenever he went out, smoothly shaven, but when he took off his hat his hair was disordered. One of the buttons of his shirt was unfastened, his eyes were bloodshot and his lips were pouted in the centre and drawn at the corners.
‘Have a cigarette?’ said H
aynes.
He took one and lit it and drew deeply two or three times while Haynes watched him and waited.
‘Where is—?’ He pointed with his thumb to Miss Atwell’s room.
‘Gone out,’ Haynes replied.
He pulled deeply at the cigarette, offering no word of conversation.
‘Having a little read?’ he said at last.
‘Amusing myself,’ replied Haynes. Benoit’s appearance and manner made him nervous.
‘You have anything to drink?’ asked Benoit, breaking another silence.
‘Yes, there is some brandy I have left over from my illness. I have no soda though. You will have to take it with water.’
He poured and poured, gulped it down, and took a little water.
‘Not taking one?’ he asked, wiping his mouth.
‘No,’ said Haynes.
It was only then that he began to speak.
‘Hell of a thing happened here this afternoon,’ he said slowly.
‘The nurse is my girl, you know,’ he continued. ‘Long time now; and that one in there, of late she only quarrelling. She is so damned stupid.’
But this little spurt of wrath spent itself almost at once.
‘Yes, I must love the nurse, man.’
He was looking at Haynes, but absent-mindedly, and seemed to be talking chiefly to relieve himself.
‘The nurse is a nice woman, man. Nice colour, straight hair and a moving woman. The nurse and me understand one another well. Everything was going so good …’
He curled his lip and shook his head slowly.
‘If it wasn’t for the nurse I wouldn’t be sitting here tonight.’
He continued emphatically: ‘No, I wouldn’t be sitting here tonight.’
‘When she first come to live here I take in one day. She was attending to a case. Lucky thing the baby was born already. She used to go and come, as they didn’t want her all the time, you see. I take in in the kitchen in a fit and they lift me up. That one in there was in hell. Lucky thing the nurse come in. As soon as she see me, she say “O God! Is a stroke he getting. We have to turn it.” And she started to work on me. Warm application, hot bath, she send for medicine to the doctor-shop as if she was a doctor. And she turn it back. The doctor come afterwards, but he say if wasn’t that the nurse was on the spot and do everything, I might have been a dead man or a cripple. I can’t forget the nurse, man … And you can see for yourself that she is a nice woman.’
Haynes nodded.
‘And I help her, too, you know. Yes, I help her, too. When the woman first came here she was nothing. Nobody used to watch her, didn’t use to give her no jobs, nothing. And then I take her in hand. I know some science, you know. And I talk to that one in there, she say yes, we take her into the house and I work on her. I put her to stand up before me naked as she born and I say the prayers over her for nine days. We boil the bath and I bathe her myself and tell her what to do. In three months you wouldn’t know was the same woman. The woman start to get jobs. We lend her some money, she put in telephone, she buy glasses, she start to dress and she begin to make some good little money. I’s I who fixed her up. If wasn’t for me she would have been still down to the ground.’
He remained silent, looking sometimes at the walls, sometimes at the bottle on the table, sometimes at Haynes, but always with the same expression of abstraction tempered by uncertainty.
But Haynes himself had ceased to think of the Benoit sitting before him. Instead he saw the nurse standing naked before Benoit without a stitch, and Benoit performing the rites. He wondered if Benoit was naked too. Was there ever such a rigmarole? If Benoit was not there he would have burst out laughing. Benoit bathing the nurse, and Mrs. Rouse allowing it. This Benoit was a hell of a fellow though. Haynes gazed at him fascinated.
Benoit raised his head with a jerk and said sharply:
‘She lie if she think this going to make me give up the nurse, though.’
‘Oh! You mean to continue with her?’ said Haynes, who in his simplicity had looked upon the affair as over.
‘If I have to leave this one! The nurse going good. Her colour help her, you see: she does only attend to the white people. And when she leaving they give her presents, brooch and watch and sometimes ten dollars extra. If you see the presents the woman does get! And this one here, her business going bad. They ain’t no money in cakes again, man.’
‘But if you keep on with the nurse, Mrs. Rouse is going to be very angry.’
‘Let her vex if she want. She have her husband. I ain’t a married man. If she bother me I leave her tomorrow … But that is all right. She love me too much. I can always bring her round.’
He smiled for the first time, a confident almost contemptuous smile.
‘You work it by your science?’ said Haynes.
‘No science, but when you see me loving a woman she never want to give me up, man, she rather die first. I am taking another drink of your brandy.’
He took it and went, a less worried man than when he had come in.
Haynes went to bed and thought of the developments of the morrow. But the next morning nothing happened. Mrs. Rouse was up early and went to market as usual, but dressed today as if she was going to High Mass. When she came back she took off the dress, but she still wore her Sunday shoes and stockings. Her hair also remained as it was on festive occasions, and she moved about the kitchen and the yard cheerfully and with vigour. Haynes, looking to see her broken or depressed, was thoroughly bewildered and slightly disappointed.
Benoit was entertaining two or three friends as on an ordinary Sunday morning and they were all talking, laughing and drinking in the dining-room. Once he came to the door and called to Mrs. Rouse.
‘A., we want some more ice. Send and get some for us.’
Philomen was sent flying.
It was late before Haynes opened his door and was seen by Mrs. Rouse.
‘Good morning, Mr. Haynes … I am well, thank you.’ She smiled brightly and understandingly. ‘Philomen, my girl, be careful with that rice. You know Mr. Benoit don’t like it boil too soft. I hope you slept well, Mr. Haynes.’
So Benoit had been as good as his boast and had, indeed, brought her round. Haynes spoke to Ella about the affair, but Ella treated it as of no importance.
‘These people, sir, don’t bother with them, sir. Last night she was cuttin’ the man’s throat. This mornin’ she lickin’ his foot.’
Chapter Ten
Benoit, after that night, came in regularly for a chat. He talked of scandals in the town, of food, of women he had known, but fairly often and with a growing frequency he talked of his present position between Mrs. Rouse and the nurse. He was determined not to give up the nurse. She had established herself in a room in Kent Street, she had sent for her things, had had the telephone installed and was not in the least incommoded by the change, had rather benefited in fact, for she could now receive Benoit and enjoy his company as long as she liked without fear of interruption. Benoit spoke loudly and embarrassed Haynes, who did not want Mrs. Rouse to think that he was Benoit’s confidant. And also, Haynes was genuinely sorry for Mrs. Rouse.
‘But what about Mrs. Rouse, Benoit?’ he asked one day when Benoit had been reiterating his determination to maintain his connection with the nurse at all costs.
‘Oh! She all right, man. If she don’t like it let her go to America and look for her husband.’
He was chewing as usual.
‘You will soon get tired of the nurse – and—’
‘Tired of the nurse! You don’t know what you saying, man. The white woman is too sweet. She is like jelly. I am not going to give her up. Look! Where she work the other day they send for her, give her a big bottle of lotion, a bottle with a gold stopper and ten dollars as a present. Five was mine. Give her up! No, man. This one is too stupid. I live with you nearly eighteen years. I not going to leave you. But she ain’t going to prevent me going out when I want.’
Mrs. Rouse was not going to
prevent him going out. It was not long before everybody in No. 2 knew that Benoit spent every hour that he was away from home at the nurse’s house. As soon as he finished work he took his lunch and left. He returned to enter the accounts in the book. He ate hurriedly, sometimes did not eat at all, and was off again, not returning until midnight, or later. Night after night he and Mrs. Rouse quarrelled. She used to sit up waiting for him, and attacked him as soon as he entered. At midnight and in the early hours Haynes could hear them, voices raised without restraint, more often than not cursing one another; so that Miss Atwell grumbled and swore that she was going to move from this ‘unhaller’d’ house.
One morning Haynes heard an official voice in the yard making enquiries about one Thomas Inniss, known as Aucher.
Ella came quickly inside.
‘Don’t look out, sir. And if ’e ask you anything you better say you don’t know, sir. ’E come to see about Aucher. Aucher is a thief, you know, sir. And when they see a person like you, they always like to get them for witness, sir.’
Thomas Inniss was not there, so the policeman went away.
Aucher, that solemn-faced young man, was by fits and starts a well-known thief, of bicycles, goats, clothes, cigarettes, anything that he could put his hand on. Whenever he was not at ‘the College’, as Ella called the gaol, he worked with Mrs. Rouse.
‘But why should she have such a person about her? Wouldn’t he steal from her, too?’
‘No, sir. ’E wouldn’t steal from her, nor anybody here, sir. You know how she try with ’im to make ’im give it up, sir? She like ’im ’cause ’e don’t talk too much and ’e can attend to the stove and bake the cakes well. But every now and then you hear ’e steal something. As soon as ’e didn’t come to work for two or three days, Miss Atwell say she know something was up.’
‘Very peculiar.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Ella laughed. ‘Miss Atwell say that she talk to ’im and try to teach ’im, but no good. She say you can’t train a common horse to win the Derby.’
Minty Alley Page 5
