‘Do you drink?’
‘Me! No. One Christmas, the first Christmas I spend with Mrs. Rouse, I drink some champagne. I get sick, I throw up, I couldn’t eat for the day. And not me again.’
‘You eat well though?’
‘Long time; but my appetite goin’ now. I can’t eat the stale cake, you know, Mr. Haynes. And Mrs. Rouse does cook only once a day. Sometimes she don’t cook at all for the day.’
‘Not cook at all for the day!’ It was incredible.
‘Why! That is nothing.’
‘But hasn’t she to cook for me?’
‘Yes, but that is different. She must cook for you. You give her money.’
‘And what do you all eat?’
‘Any little thing. We cook sometimes. But if we only get money to make cake for the parlours we can’t get anything. You know how Gomes can quarrel if anything wrong! We make tea every morning, and we credit milk from the coolie man to pay at the end of the month. If I feel hungry I credit ice cream cone when I goin’ down the road and eat it. I like ice cream, you know. But often I so busy I haven’t time to think about food.’
‘But why don’t you credit at a shop?’ said Haynes, and knew even before he was told that he had asked a stupid question.
‘Credit at a shop? If you know the messages the man at the shop does give me to bring to Mrs. Rouse if she owe him a dollar! I don’t tell her because I don’t want to worry her.’
‘Philomen!’
It was Mrs. Rouse calling.
‘Comin’, Mrs. Rouse. Good night, Mr. Haynes, I hope you sleep well.’
As soon as Philomen had gone Maisie came back again, closing the door behind her.
‘Mr. Haynes, I heard them next door giving Mrs. Rouse jokes about her new sweetheart.’
But Haynes had other things than Maisie to think about now. ‘I’m sorry, Maisie, but I find I have something very important to do.’
He bustled about the table with pen and paper.
‘You will finish soon, Mr. Haynes?’
‘I’m afraid not, Maisie.’
‘All right, Mr. Haynes, see you tomorrow night, Mr. Haynes?’
‘Yes, Maisie.’ Haynes would not look round, glad to be rid of her.
When she left he locked the door and put down his pen. He was genuinely shocked at what Philomen had so casually revealed. To the burden of Mrs. Rouse’s own overwhelming difficulties, he had with unpardonable carelessness added his own. It was all very well to throw his personal affairs upon Ella. That was Ella’s job. He paid Ella far more than the average servant got. She was ill and he still paid her her money. But Mrs. Rouse and Maisie and the rest did between them everything that Ella had done. With Ella he still had no regular system but merely gave money, and when it was finished gave some more. He always paid the money due on the mortgage from his weekly income and lived on the balance and the rent. Haynes was in a state of abject self-blame. And with good cause. Often when money was finishing Mrs. Rouse, just as Ella used to do, would say:
‘Mr. Haynes, how are things with you?’
If it were late in the week Haynes might say, as he did with Ella:
‘On Saturday morning, Mrs. Rouse,’ and perhaps it might be late Saturday night before he gave it to her. Sometimes he would draw money on the Saturday and go off to the country, not returning until Monday morning. But never once (except one day when it rained from three in the morning to ten o’clock without a break) was any meal late, and although his meals varied in quality, yet, judging from Ella’s standard, he got good value for the money. Morning, noon and night everything was ready punctually on the table for him. Now and then he did not come for supper and the food stayed till morning, some of it having to be thrown away. He had gone on his way, taking it all for granted. To what sacrifices had he put the good woman to feed him regularly while the rest of the household starved. He would have to do something about it. He would go into details with Philomen and then talk about it with Mrs. Rouse. He would do it as soon as possible. Of course he had never intended to do it that night. He had only wanted to get rid of Maisie. Maisie! Maisie liked him obviously. But tonight was not the time for that sort of nonsense. When he had settled his business with Mrs. Rouse. He felt that Maisie was as good as his.
Chapter Twenty
Benoit got married early in October, and it was in December that Haynes met him for the first time after the marriage. He was sauntering home along the pavement with his hat over his eyes, reading a newspaper, when he heard footsteps behind him and felt a hand on his shoulder.
‘Haynes!’
It was Benoit.
‘Hello, it’s you.’ They shook hands and watched one another. At the first glance Haynes saw that all he had heard about the failure of his life with the nurse was true. In health and appearance at least his change from Mrs. Rouse to the nurse had not been for the better. His face was blotchy, which, with his black skin, gave him a particularly unhealthy look. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes were a dirty brown colour and he was unshaven. His paunch, a sign of his well-being much admired at No. 2, except by Maisie, was almost gone, and the white suit was dirty. The trim and slick Benoit, who used to be such a delight to the eye of Mrs. Rouse when he took the street was no more. And the man had not been married two months.
‘How is the nurse?’ Haynes enquired after the first greetings.
‘Well, thank you. She out on a job. How everybody home?’
He continued to grin at Haynes uncomfortably and Haynes was uncomfortable himself. He knew what was passing in both their minds, but he left it to Benoit to begin. For once, however, the fighting cock could not flap his wings.
What a fool he had made of himself! Haynes felt he ought to have known that the wife living with him in two rooms would be less desirable than the woman whom he could hold in his arms only in stolen interviews. The material advantages which he had hoped to gain he had lost. Maybe Haynes had met him at a particularly bad moment, but so dispirited was the man’s appearance that if even he had not been caught in fish, his mistake had been realized quite as early and as disastrously as Miss Atwell had predicted.
‘I hear Mrs. Rouse wasn’t too well.’
‘No, she is all right.’
Mrs. Rouse, though thinner, had not had a day’s illness since the wedding.
‘I hear her nerves was troubling her.’
‘Not that I know of. Though it may be so.’
‘I heard she was sick,’ Benoit repeated.
‘Perhaps she may have been,’ Haynes said. ‘I know very little of what is happening there, for I am away most of the day.’
‘No, man. I hear you writing letters, making receipts, giving advice and so on. In fact you take my place.’
He laughed and spoke more like himself than since they had met.
‘Going anywhere particular?’ Haynes asked him.
‘No.’
‘Let’s go over to the bar and have a drink. There is a private room at the back.’
The private room was empty. Haynes ordered two beers, and they sat down on opposite sides of the little table.
‘Well, how do you like your new life?’ said Haynes.
‘Not bad.’ But he avoided Haynes’s eye. ‘Of course we haven’t settled down yet. The nurse out working and I have to fix up at home, you know. But we will move soon and get a servant – by the New Year, you know.’
If there was money he wasn’t getting much of it. He hadn’t a cent in his pocket and let Haynes know as much.
‘You have cigarettes?’
‘No,’ said Haynes, feeling in his pocket. Benoit asked him to buy some.
‘Let’s have another beer.’
‘Yes, man. Liquor is helpful.’
He smacked his lips after two or three mouthfuls and lit a cigarette.
‘I sorry we don’t meet sometimes to have a little talk, Haynes, as long ago.’
‘I miss you myself. I often remember the good talks we used to have.’
‘Yes, man
… I’s her fault, you know, that this happen.
‘I’s her fault,’ he reiterated. ‘She used to bother me too much.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Yes, man. I used to tell her to let me go out and do a little business. I have good luck. I understand science, as you know, Haynes, and I know when to start a business and make it successful. Some things, if you start on a Friday must turn out bad. And some things, again, Friday is your only day. And little things I know. But she always hamper me. She never want me to go out. I could have made money as a commission agent. She could have got another servant to do the cake business. But no, whatever she doing, parlour cake, everything, I must be there.’
Haynes saw his point, an aspect of the matter he had never seen before.
‘And she make such a fuss about me and the nurse. If she didn’t take up knife and all that, this thing would have died down, man, and me and she would have been still together.’
Haynes wasn’t so sure of that, but he nodded.
‘After all, Haynes, a man is not a little boy … I’s all her fault … You would have done the same in my place. She always was a jealous woman. And that spoil everything. I’s her fault.’
He seemed quite melancholy now, but soon he was lively again.
‘I hear you and the little one nice,’ he said.
‘No,’ Haynes replied. ‘You ought to know that that is not true.’
‘I don’t believe in truth. I was only joking you. But I hear she in your room the whole day?’
‘That’s true. But I am not her sweetheart.’
‘She is a hot little thing, you know.’
‘Well, I can’t say.’
‘You can’t see that for yourself? If I had stayed there a little longer she wouldn’t have escaped me. I used to kiss her and squeeze her when I get the chance; playing Pappy, you know. But how the nurse and me was nice, I didn’t trouble her too much. And as she was young, I was in no hurry. I hear she filling out pretty. I wish I was you. She like you, you know.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Man, any girl like Maisie will like a nice young fellow like you. Ask for what you want. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.’ He drained his glass. ‘Though, by Christ, plenty of them today don’t even wait for you to ask.’
‘She likes somebody else,’ said Haynes.
‘Who you mean? That fellow Boyce? She prefer you to Boyce, man. I hear her say so. And if even she like him what you have to do with that? A woman isn’t like a loaf of bread, where you share you only have half. Haynes, man, you are afraid. She always in your room. Choose your chance, hold the girl and kiss her. You needn’t even tell her anything. You just hold her and kiss her well. Boy, if I was up there I’d show you.’
Haynes said he had to go.
‘All right,’ said Benoit, and as they shook hands he added: ‘Don’t be surprised to see me up there one day, you know.’
‘What!’ said Haynes.
‘Sure. Why must I give up up there like that?’
‘You will give up the nurse?’
‘No. I am man enough for two.’
‘Nothing doing for you up that way again, Benoit. I know. She’ll not look at you.’
‘You don’t know, boy,’ said Benoit, and they parted.
Haynes had been hearing rumours that things were not going well between Benoit and his wife, but had rather discredited them considering the biassed sources from which they came. But lately they had been more insistent. Philomen often met Benoit in the street, and she first brought the news how he wasn’t looking too well – ‘he lose all the pig punch he had.’ Miss Atwell also brought some news from where she worked. (Haynes saw little of Miss Atwell now. Mr. Cross, her keeper, was so remiss in his visits and paying of rent that she had sought and obtained employment in a shirt factory, where she worked twelve hours a day.) She heard from a co-worker who lived near to the pair that they had come to blows two or three times already, the chief source of contention being the little boy. Benoit was not in the least the cherished darling. Indeed, Miss Atwell reported that he walked about the yard ‘with ’is naturals on the groun’,’ that is to say barefooted, which was a bad thing for a man who had been so ill.
‘I see already his slippers go bad and he quarrel about wearing his good boots in the kitchen and I give him mine, and I stand up in this kitchen three whole days in my high heels till the Saturday night I buy a pair. But it serve him right.’
The nurse had failed to get the promised job for him and he was still unemployed.
The first sight of Benoit had been sufficient to confirm the rumours. Benoit had himself told Haynes in the past of the kind of disposition the nurse had.
‘I must like the nurse, man. She nice to me. And you see her there, she don’t care for nobody – only for herself and the child.’ He had spoken wiser than he knew.
Why had the nurse married him? He had told Haynes once he could do as he liked with her. ‘As soon as I kiss her, man, she can’t say no to anything I tell her.’ Had he wanted to marry her? Or she to marry him? Haynes did not know. It had been all very well when Mrs. Rouse ran the house, saw after the food and clothes, and all the nurse and Benoit had to do was to contrive meetings. But either the nurse had discovered how to say ‘no’ even after kisses, or perhaps he didn’t kiss her so often. Six weeks was a very short time. Still, as Maisie said, ‘that was his funeral.’
Haynes thought at first of telling Mrs. Rouse that he had seen Benoit, but at the last minute he changed his mind. There had been more than enough talk about all this business lately.
But the very next evening Mrs. Rouse stopped him.
‘Excuse me, Mr. Haynes. I hear you and Mr. Benoit was drinking together yesterday, Mr. Haynes.’
There was a smile on her face, but a rather wry smile, and the lips were drawn tight. Was there a hint of reproach in her voice and manner?
‘Yes, Mrs. Rouse, I met him. We started to talk and we had a drink for old times’ sake … He doesn’t seem very happy with the change he has made.’
‘Doesn’t seem happy! I’s so you put it? Doesn’t seem happy! Ha! Mr. Haynes, you heard the latest? She calling on him to find work.’
‘He didn’t tell me that.’
‘No, he wouldn’t tell you that. But I hear everything. Every day they quarrelling. But he ain’t start to see trouble yet for all he have done me and still doing me. You know what she tell him the other day? She tell him’ (Mrs. Rouse drew herself up), ‘she tell him “I marry you. And it’s true I promise to find employment for you. But if I fail haven’t I do enough for you? I give you the boots you married in, the hat, the ring, the shirt, the collar, the tie, the motor car. I pay for you to go down to Rockville Bay. I do everything for you. You do nothing for yourself. I’s time you get some work to do.” And, Mr. Haynes, you mark my words, the time going to come when she going to put him in the District Court for maintenance. He going to have to find work. He sit down here, Mr. Haynes, but he not going to sit down there. She going to drive him out and make him work, and as long as he work she going to get her share. One-third the Court allow you, Mr. Haynes, and she will get her one-third. She is a woman like that. And he know her. He ought to know what kind of woman she is. But his punishment ain’t begin yet.’
‘He isn’t the man he was here.’
‘How could he be, Mr. Haynes? How could he be? I used to see after him here. If he wanted this I get it for him, if he wanted that I got it for him. But she, when she out on a job, she getting everything she want; he at home. Things bad with them. All that money you see she was saying people give her presents and giving him his share, was money she borrow. Borrow to fool the man, Mr. Haynes. But now she have to pay it back. They have no servant. He got to cook. I hear they have to share a little kitchen with some other people, and in a place like that the man cooking food for him and the nurse little boy. But I going to see him worse than that, Mr. Haynes. I going to see him go flat down to the ground.’
Mrs. Rouse had worked herself into a passion. Nobody spoke when she made one of these outbursts, just kept a respectful and sympathetic silence and waited for her to cool down. But this afternoon the voice of the invisible Maisie singing softly to herself broke the stillness.
‘Sometimes I is up, and sometimes I is down,
Yes, Lord, down, Lord, down to the ground.’
Mrs. Rouse exploded into wrath. ‘You, young woman, always there to make a joke of everything I say.’
‘Me! What I doing?’ said Maisie, in an innocent voice coming round the house. ‘I only singing what Mr. Haynes play on his gramophone. Look, let me get away from trouble, eh?’
Maisie went into Haynes’s room and Mrs. Rouse returned to the kitchen.
While Haynes was eating, Maisie began to wind the gramophone.
‘Thank you very much, Maisie. But what have you got there? Let me see.’
She laughed.
‘You are too smart, Mr. Haynes.’
It was as he thought. ‘Nobody knows de trouble that I see’, a Negro spiritual, with the words she had sung a few minutes before.
‘But Maisie, you are a devil. Why do you worry Mrs. Rouse like that?’
‘’Cause I don’t like to hear people talk such confounded nonsense and lies all the time.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You hear all she saying about the man? I tell you, Mr. Haynes, and you mark my words. If Mr. Benoit come back here tomorrow morning, Mrs. Rouse will take him back.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ said Haynes, but remembered Benoit’s words.
‘You don’t believe that! I live here. I know her. You don’t mind all that she is saying there. If he had two wives she’d take him. She can’t do without him. He have her like a little puppy. You remember what the nurse tell her, “Doggie! Doggie! Look bone.” Well, with all that big talk, she talking there, she is no more than a little dog to the man. And especially as you hearing how he and the nurse can’t get on. Wait and see. If you live here long enough you going to see him come here and you going to see her take him back.’
Minty Alley Page 12
