‘For God’s sake, Maisie,’ said Haynes, ‘that’s enough.’
‘All right, Mr. Haynes. I’ll spare her for your sake.’ She left the window.
‘Let me just put my hands on you,’ said Mrs. Rouse over and over again and made powerful strokes on the door with the hatchet.
Maisie had disappeared, but suddenly there was a shout from a few of the people who had crept into the yard to witness the disturbance. She had slipped through the window at the back. By the time Haynes reached round he could just catch a glimpse of her walking up Victoria Street, bareheaded, in an old pair of soft slippers, no stockings, her head and neck and half her dress still plastered with mud from Mrs. Rouse’s tumble, and a small crowd walking behind her. Gone. And gone for good.
Mrs. Rouse in the back had collapsed in a welter of tears and mud and Miss Atwell was trying to console her.
Chapter Thirty-One
The whole of the next day passed and he did not hear from her. In the night he went to the room where they usually met. She did not come. Who were her friends? He did not know one of them, had no idea where to begin to look for her. Two days passed. At No. 2 he came in and went out and had nothing to say to anybody, nor had anybody anything to say to him. The cook brought his meals and he kept his door closed. At last on the fourth day, at about five in the afternoon, a woman’s voice on the telephone told him that Maisie wanted to see him that night and would meet him at ten o’clock in the park – he knew where. She was punctual as always when meeting him and his heart beat when he saw her. Never before had he felt so much like taking her in his arms and holding her tight to him. They held hands.
‘Well, Maisie,’ he said. ‘So you have gone.’
‘Yes, Mr. Haynes. I couldn’t put up with her any more. And I had to give her something to remember me by. Mr. Haynes, you enjoyed it?’
And then the two of them stood up in the park and laughed and laughed as if they were never going to stop. When they recovered they walked along together and Maisie told Haynes what he had guessed in the interim, but rather vaguely.
During Haynes’s absence Benoit had been coming regularly up to No. 2 and used to talk to Mrs. Rouse, she in the kitchen, he in the alley. At first Mrs. Rouse didn’t want to have anything to do with him, or, as Maisie said, ‘pretended’ that she didn’t. But later, they had made it up (Maisie had always been a shameless and adroit eavesdropper) and they used to meet and make love. But the reconciliation had not lasted long. Benoit had promised to make a definite break with the nurse, but had not done so. He asked Mrs. Rouse for some money to pay some debt or other before he came back. How exactly it went Maisie did not know. At any rate he had had his time with her and gone off again. ‘I am not lying, Mr. Haynes, I am telling you the God’s truth. She was waiting for him. That day when Parkes came she was going to take him, but as soon as Benoit came she tell Parkes no. And not only I know. Other people in the alley know. A thing like that can’t hide for long. But one day I was alone in the kitchen and I hear her say how people slandering her and saying she living with Benoit again, but she warning everybody that the day she hear anybody with her own ears she going to take the law in her hands. Was me she meant. Because nobody else was in the kitchen. But I didn’t bother with her. Anyway, Mr. Haynes, that is over.’
‘Yes, Maisie, but there is something else. What about us? When shall I see you again?’
She did not answer at once. Then, ‘I’ll ring you up tomorrow,’ she said.
‘Where are you sleeping?’
‘Don’t ask me that, Mr. Haynes.’
‘As you wish, Maisie.’
She turned and faced him.
‘That is over, Mr. Haynes.’
‘Over? What do you mean?’
‘You and me, Mr. Haynes. I’s you that made me stay at No. 2. If it wasn’t for you I would have gone long ago. I didn’t want to leave you. But now it’s happened, I am going to America. I have been to my uncle. That’s why you didn’t hear from me. I told him that he had never given me a damned cent in his life and I wanted some money now.’ She laughed.
‘He gave it to you?’
‘He had to. I said I was going to stay there until I got it, and he borrowed it and gave it to me.’
‘How much money?’
‘Thirty dollars.’
‘That can’t pay your passage to America.’
‘No, Mr. Haynes. But the stewardess on the — line has an assistant and sometimes two. And if you pay her twenty dollars you get the job. She has been after me a long time.’
‘Why after you?’
‘She likes to get young coloured girls who are nice. The white officers like them.’
‘So you mean, Maisie—’
‘Mr. Haynes. I want a job and I am going to get it. The captain and the whole crew can’t get anything from me unless I want to give them. The boat is in and if I get the job I am going. You have papers to sign that you are coming back. But when that boat hit New York and I put my foot on shore, if it wait for me before it leave, it’s going to wait a damned long time.’
‘So everything’s fixed, Maisie.’
‘Everything, Mr. Haynes.’
There was a harshness and determination behind the casual air with which she spoke that stunned him into acceptance.
‘When are you going?’
‘I don’t know, but soon.’
Something in his voice seemed to move her. For the second and last time she held him of her own accord.
‘You sorry I am going, Mr. Haynes?’
Haynes was choking and could only nod.
The cathedral clock boomed out eleven, and Maisie rose slowly.
‘I have to go now, Mr. Haynes,’ she said.
They stood up, but made no move. At last she held out her hand and he took it.
‘Goodbye, Mr. Haynes,’ she said faintly. He kept her hand in his, but said nothing.
‘You’ll remember me sometimes, Mr. Haynes?’
‘Write to me, Maisie. I shall be waiting anxiously to hear from you.’
‘I’ll write, Mr. Haynes. Goodbye.’
And with a last pressure of her hand she pulled it away and went.
Chapter Thirty-Two
She did not ring, and he never saw her again. Two days after the night in the park a boat left for America and he could only suppose that she had gone with it. Well, that was that. It was no use crying over it. The next thing was to get out of No. 2. He owed Mrs. Rouse for August. He wasn’t going to bother himself about that. She would do without. He would pay her on the fifteenth and give her a fortnight’s notice. The thing to do was to find Ella. He went to her old home. She had left there and they didn’t know where she was. So he wrote to her people in the country and asked them to let Ella know that he wanted to see her at the office as soon as possible.
At No. 2 work went on as usual, but the household was undergoing one of its recurrent periods of gloom. Haynes met Mrs. Rouse face to face one morning and they greeted each other, Mrs. Rouse timid and appealing, Haynes polite but firm. His resentment was almost gone, but he knew that without Maisie No. 2 was no place for him. If he were leaving it was best to leave while this discord lasted. To soften the blow he would tell her that the money she still owed him she could pay at her convenience.
On evenings he could not stay in No. 2 at all. Memories of Maisie seemed to haunt the place. To eat without her moving round the table, bringing in dishes and talking to him, giving him the news of all that had happened during the day; after dinner her constant coming in to see if he had finished any work he was doing or wanted anything, filling his pipe (better than he ever filled it), giving him a gay ‘Au revoir’ and going out to see the boys if Haynes was busy; the long, lazy evenings when they sat and talked, or she played the gramophone, the thousand ways in which she filled in all his hours, they were suddenly torn up by the roots out of his life and he could not fill the gap. His old loneliness descended on him again; but now he couldn’t endure it as he used to in
the old days. To sit in the room alone was like being in a prison. So he ate his meals hurriedly and went out again, to the cinemas, to see acquaintances long neglected, or merely riding on his bicycle. The only thing was to find Ella, clear out of No. 2, and then think over things. He would sometime or other find another girl friend. But another Maisie, never. Why had he let her go? But how could he have kept her?
Mrs. Rouse and Co. he kept at a distance. ‘Good morning’ and ‘Good afternoon’. For a week that was all that passed between them. He kept his face wooden when chance brought Miss Atwell across his path. She almost fled from his presence.
On the second Saturday after the upheaval he bolted his food as usual and went to the pictures. But the show bored him; long before it was over he left, and not knowing what to do with himself he came back slowly home, put his bicycle under the house – Maisie always used to do that – and mounted the steps into his room. As usual nowadays, he closed the door, then threw himself on the bed. Saturday night had always been a gay time. ‘Jokes, Mr. Haynes,’ ‘Mr. Haynes, news.’ Maisie was always at her most brilliant on Saturday nights. Then Sunday morning, lots of time and no work to do, the long drawn out lunch – he would miss Mrs. Rouse’s meals. Maisie would be nearing New York by now. He wondered if she were sleeping with the captain. There was a firm and decided knock at the door. Who the hell— He did not want to talk to anybody.
‘Who is it?’ he asked without encouragement.
‘It is me, Mr. Haynes, Mrs. Rouse. I want to speak to you.’
The long avoided explanation. Well, he would tell her tonight exactly what he was going to tell her on Monday. It was all ready. He opened the door.
‘Come in, Mrs. Rouse,’ he said, but his manner softened in spite of himself.
‘I can’t come in, Mr. Haynes,’ she said. Something was up. But something was always up in this wretched place, and he was jolly well tired of it. She had a shawl around her shoulders and didn’t take it off. ‘Mr. Haynes, I am in sore distress, and I don’t know where to turn. You will help me?’
‘I shall do all I can, Mrs. Rouse.’
His conscience pricked him that he had not paid her the money. Under the urgency of her voice and manner the last traces of his resentment vanished, and he felt a return of all his old regard and consideration for her.
‘Mr. Haynes,’ she continued, ‘Mr. Benoit is in trouble.’ (Always that Benoit.) ‘He got a stroke a few days ago and the nurse has left him. He has been in a room two days by himself. I only hear this afternoon. I don’t know what is happening to him. I want to know and I am going. But I don’t want to go alone. Will you go with me?’
Haynes blew out his lamp immediately.
‘Certainly, Mrs. Rouse. Where is it?’
‘George Street.’
It was at the other end of the town.
‘I tell you what I shall do. I shall walk on ahead up Victoria Street. You follow. I am sure to meet a taxi and then I’ll come along and pick you up.’
‘All right, Mr. Haynes. Thank you.’
As Haynes hurried up the road and hailed a taxi he thought of Maisie and what a glorious piece of news this would have been.
During the drive down Mrs. Rouse did not speak. She had her beads and told them with a tense concentration which seemed to be unaware of him sitting at her side. Benoit. So that good-for-nothing had been stricken and the woman had left him. Served him right. Poor devil. Maisie, perhaps in New York now, was missing it all.
The taxi drew up and Mrs. Rouse jumped out. ‘Wait for me, Mr. Haynes,’ she said. He waited, but only a few seconds, and when she returned it was not to call him but to come back into the taxi.
‘He not there, Mr. Haynes. The ambulance come for him about six o’clock and they carry him to the Government Hospital. Chauffeur, drive to the hospital.’
‘But they wouldn’t let us in tonight.’
‘I know. But I am just going to make sure.’
When they reached, Haynes told her that they might as well dismiss the taxi, and they did so. Together they made enquiries at the porter’s lodge. Yes, Benoit had passed in that afternoon. No use going to ask anything about him now. Come in the morning, and if visitors were allowed they could get a ticket from the matron.
‘I’ll have to come in the morning, Mr. Haynes,’ she said to him, all the life gone out of her voice.
‘So it seems, Mrs. Rouse,’ and they stood irresolute for a while. Then they walked up the street together.
‘Now, what exactly has happened, Mrs. Rouse?’
‘I don’t know much, Mr. Haynes. They were in Pendleton up to a week or two ago. Then I lost track of them. But things were bad with her and they moved to a little room in George Street – she, the man and the child. I didn’t know that till suddenly my friends tell me he got a second stroke. The nurse couldn’t turn it this time. I didn’t bother myself too much about it, Mr. Haynes. I have troubles enough of my own. And they are man and wife, lawfully married. But this afternoon I hear the woman leave him.’
‘Just walked out and left him lying on the bed?’
‘Walked out, give the neighbour the key to hold and say she coming back, and gone. Lucky for Benoit he was nice with the woman. So I heard this afternoon. He used to be there the whole day and the woman’s husband out to work and sometimes the nurse out too. He is a man like that, Mr. Haynes. I’s his nature, he can’t help it. And, anyway, she mind him for a day or two. At least he had someone to hand him a cup of water when he was thirsty. But I don’t know what happen. Perhaps he get worse or she get weary. Anyway, he is in the hospital.’
They were passing the Church of the Immaculate Conception. It was late, but the choir was practising and the door was open.
‘Mr. Haynes!’
Mrs. Rouse stopped.
‘You wouldn’t mind excusing me. I want to go in.’
‘I’ll go home and wait, Mrs. Rouse.’
‘I wouldn’t be long, Mr. Haynes. You are displeased with me, Mr. Haynes, over Maisie. I know you have cause. I was waiting until you had cooled down a little before I talked to you about it.’
‘Don’t bother about that now, Mrs. Rouse. Let us do what we can for Benoit first.’
As he walked home he looked up at the myriads of stars, shining in the moonlight. Did people live there? And if they did, what sort of life did they live?
Chapter Thirty-Three
He found Miss Atwell in their drawing-room sewing, on her nose her glasses (a late acquisition).
‘You back alone, Mr. Haynes! Where is Mrs. Rouse?’
‘She went into the Immaculate Conception to pray.’
‘Poor soul. Come in, Mr. Haynes.’
Haynes told her briefly of their ill-success. ‘But you ever see anything like that, Mr. Haynes. Who would believe that she was goin’ to go lookin’ for that man after all he do her? Two nights she in bed next to me and she ain’t sleep. Every time I open my eye, she up or she prayin’. She say she certain something happen to Benoit. So when she tell me she hear that he sufferin’ and she want to go and see ’im, I tell ’er to go.’
Haynes said nothing.
‘What you think, Mr. Haynes? You don’t think I was right?’
‘I should think so, Miss Atwell.’
‘Well, well, well. Look at life, Mr. Haynes! When I first come here—’
‘How long ago was that?’
‘Three years, month after next. The man was in his pride and glory, ’e used to scorn me. When they ask me why I was so thin and I say is my nature, ’e used to laugh – ’e used to say: “Nature what! You don’t eat.” But I am still erect on my hind legs, Mr. Haynes, and look where he is.’
‘I am sorry for him,’ Haynes said. ‘Benoit is a very pleasant fellow. But it is his own fault.’
‘I am sorry for him too, Mr. Haynes. I wouldn’t be a Christian if I was not. But ’e goin’ to suffer. My father had a stroke and where ’e lie down ’e wasn’t the man to move for three years and nine months. And we had to do e
verything for ’im.’
‘But what is to become of him?’
‘God knows. ’E in hospital. They will keep ’im there I suppose.’
‘He made a terrible mistake when he left here to marry the nurse.’
‘I’s that marriage that kill Mrs. Rouse. If ’e did leave her and only live with the nurse, they would have been able to patch up that. But i’s the marriage.’
‘But didn’t he come back here the other day for a time, Miss Atwell? Maisie told me so.’
‘Mr. Haynes, Maisie tell so much lies, I don’t know what to say. Mrs. Rouse tell me that ’e used to come around here and used to talk to ’er from the alley about how ’e sorry, how ’e treat ’er and so on. She tell me so herself. She say that she doin’ her work in the kitchen and ’e come in the lane and talk. Well, she talk. But I hear Maisie say this thing, and I hear other people in the alley say that ’e was livin’ with her again. But Mrs. Rouse swear no, and since that afternoon when she nearly kill Maisie I don’t meddle. What’s happened to Maisie, Mr. Haynes?’
‘I really don’t know, Miss A.,’ said Haynes. He called her Miss A. to soften the rebuke.
She took off her glasses, put her work aside and remained silent. Then she spoke again. ‘Eh, Mr. Haynes, look at life. Here today and don’t know where tomorrow. I remember the day you come here. I was inside and I only hear your voice talkin’ to Ella. And I say, “Well, I ain’t see ’im. But ’is speech like a nice young man.” I don’t know how you stand all this, Mr. Haynes. If I was you I would ’ave gone long ago.’
Haynes made a non-committal gesture with his hands.
‘Poor Mr. Benoit,’ continued Miss Atwell. ‘Yes, Mr. Haynes, as you say, I sorry for ’im. “Man that is born of woman has but a short time to live and is full of misery.” The words of the Scripture, Mr. Haynes, is true words … And not only man, but woman. Look at the misery and torment that man put poor Mrs. Rouse in. And where she should be sitting down, restin’ in her house, ’e have her trapezin’ all over the road lookin’ for ’im. She comin’ now.’ Miss Atwell leant forward to listen.
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