"O.K. O.K. Don't bawl, but you're not going to deny she's had two kids, are you ?"
"It was from the same fellow."
"Oh, you can't tell me. And it's good of you to stick up for her.
She's lucky to have somebody like you. But I've heard a thing or two lately. "
"Well you can take it from me they're all bloody lies."
"No, Mollie, I can't take it from you, for some bloke even wrote to me."
My hand was at my throat, checking all sound, trying to throttle down the pain.
"Then there's another thing. You know yourself she's got the makings of a soaker."
"Well, you knew she was like that when you started the courtin'
business, didn't you?"
"Aye, I did, Mollie, I admit it, but I thought I could cure that. But I didn't know all this other and I'm not a bloody fool altogether.
I've seen too many blokes let in these last few years and it's not going to happen to me. "
"You'll go further and fare worse, I'm tellin' you that, Ted.
Christine's all right. She's had a dirty deal. Her only trouble was she was too damn innocent; she was bound to be caught by some bugger.
"
There came a silence, and I kept my eyes tightly dosed as I wondered what I should do. Then Ted was speaking again.
"I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Mollie, because you're a wise bird and not likely to be taken in, but I think she's so damned clever that she's taken you for a ride an' all."
"What do you mean ?"
"The virgin stuff. You didn't know she'd been carrying on with her brother, did you ?"
"What! Who the hell said that ?"
"It was in this letter I got."
"And you believed it?"
"When I found out all the rest was true, aye. Mind I didn't take it as read at first, I made inquiries, but when all the rest tied up with the letter why should I disbelieve that?"
"Whoever sent you that letter is a dirty bastard."
"It's all the way you look at it. He was likely trying to do me a good turn, and he has, you've got to admit that, although she's a pal of yours."
Scarcely breathing, I lowered myself silently into the chair. There was a buzzing sound in my ears now and I dropped my head, terrified that I was going to faint. I heard Mollie still talking, I heard Ted still protesting, then Mollie's steps came towards the kitchen. Just within the doorway I heard her stop. It must have dawned on her that I had been there I was the only one since Doddy had gone who washed up for her. I heard her moving again, and when I judged she was at the sink I pressed the door slightly ajar and made a desperate motion with my hand for her to get rid of Ted. The sight of me startled her, and the flush of concern and pity on her face was too much for me and I had to ram my handkerchief into my mouth to stop the sound of my crying.
What she said to Ted to make him go I dont know, but within a few minutes the door was pulled open and her hands came to me and lifted me up. And when I was on my feet she held me and comforted me, saying,
"Don't, dont. You're the unluckiest bugger alive. Anyway, you're well rid of him. There now, there now. Come and sit down and I'll get you a drop of something. There now, there now ... oh, dont give way like that. I tell you he's not worth it. None of the sods are worth it."
A few minutes later she handed me a glass of whisky, and when I had gulped it I gasped and muttered, "Le... let me have another, Mollie."
And she let me have another.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"I didn't ask him for it."
"You must have."
"I tell you I didn't." As Constance flung round and left the front room I looked at her indignant back. She appeared like a boy from behind, with her jeans and jersey and short-cropped hair. She was now fifteen and had left school two months and had a job in the electric component factory. I turned my gaze back to the piano standing ludicrously out of place in the corner of the front room. It was a second-hand one but it wasn't an old thing with fretwork and candle brackets, but looked quite up-to-date. I looked from it to Sam, and he, too, was staring at it.
"I thought you had brought it for her or I'd never have let it inside the house," I said under my breath.
Sam put his fist to his mouth and bit sharply on one knuckle before saying, "If I'd known she wanted one so much I would have got one. She never mentioned piano to me."
"Whatwillldo? Send it next door?"
"That won't be any good. Knowing him, he'll leave it stand- in' in the street, and it will only upset her. In the long run it would be you who'd get the blame."
Yes, it would be me who would get the blame, as always. Not that I hadn't deserved it during these past ten years, but that was my business. I was always telling myself these days that it was my business and mine alone. What I drank I paid for. I worked hard for the money and, strangely, my labour was in demand. Years ago if you were fitted only for domestic service you weren't of much account, but now domestic servants were no longer domestic servants, but home helps, and so scarce were they around these parts you could demand as much an hour for cooking in a kitchen as for working in a factory. But most of the girls preferred factory work, so I made good money, money to pay for my drink. But in spite of my drinking I rarely neglected the house and had never, since the end of the war, neglected Constance, except perhaps on a Saturday night. No matter how I whipped my will to obey me during the week, Saturday night and the Crown back room were a weakness that I could not overcome. Nor did I want to over come it, for this weakness was my only pleasure, and I looked forward to it from one week-end to the next. So I went on telling myself I did nobody any harm. In fact, I reiterated that most girls having had my experience would have gone to the bad altogether. I was well aware that most of the town considered I had already done this. The general opinion was that I was living with Sam, not openly, of course, but on the quiet, and who was to prove them wrong? He might sleep at Mrs.
Patterson's and eat there, but he was never out of our house. And Sam, though no taller than myself, had grown into a very mannish looking man. He was attractive in a big-boned sort of way and had a pleasant face, and a voice that went with it.
Why hadn't I married Sam? For the simple reason that I was afraid to.
It's all right saying that I should have gone ahead, that once married to him Don could have done nothing about it. But you see I knew Don.
I knew him as well as I knew the dark places in myself. I knew that some part of him, a part that you couldn't put a finger on and define clearly, was mad. And the only protection I could give Sam was not to marry him. Not that I hadn't wanted to once or twice, and not that I hadn't wished he would ask me to live with him. Oh, yes, I had wished that. And it might have eased things for us both and made life more bearable for me; also it may have set up an opposition to the bottle.
But apparently Sam didn't see it like this, and there was enough of the old Christine in me to pre vent me leading up to it.
From the night Don Dowling had done me the service of bringing on a miscarriage we had never exchanged one word. We had passed each other on the road and I dont know whether he looked at me or not for I kept my eyes cast down at his approach. But he had never ceased to talk to, and be guile Constance. Quite early on I found that the more I smacked her and forbade her to go in next door the more she would go. I had talked to her quietly at first, then shouted and ordered, until Dad roared, "This is getting you nowhere, you're driving her in there," and at last I realized that this was true and so forced myself to say less and less. But as she grew older she sensed my feelings and started to hide the things Don gave her, until one day, making an effort to check this, I said casually, "Why dont you show me the things Uncle Don buys you?" From then on she would show me what he had given her. She was about eight at the time, and with each year he bought her gifts to suit her age. And with them he bought her affection, and something more that made me sick at the mere thought of it a kind of love that showed itself in he
r defence of him.
"Why dont you speak to Uncle Don, Mummie. Other people have rows but they dont keep them up for years like you do?" When she had said this I had asked her quietly, "Do you like your Uncle Sam?" and she had answered, "Of course I do. Of course I like Uncle Sam." Then I had said, "Do you like him better than Uncle Don?" At this she had screwed up her face and said, "They're different, I can't explain. Uncle Sam's so quiet and Uncle Don's jolly. I like them both in different ways."
The question of who her father was must have troubled her from time to time. She was about ten when she first put it to me. She had come straight from school one day and, throwing her satchel on the table and without kissing me as usual, she looked at me and asked point blank,
"Why aren't you married, Mummie?"
The question was so unexpected that I was lost for an answer and my mouth opened without making a sound. Then she said, "Is Uncle Sam my father?"
I made plenty of sound now for, my voice seeming to come out of the top of my head, I cried, "No, no, he's not. Your father died in the war.
He was in the air force."
"What was his name ?"
My mouth hung open again, then I brought out, "Johnson." It was the name advertising flour on the back of a magazine lying on the table, and I added, "Why are you asking all these questions?"
"Because I want to know. What did he look like?"
My voice was quiet now and weary.
"Like you, very like you."
She seemed pleased at this, and she asked no more questions on this subject until two years ago. It was a Saturday night and it was summer. I had sat in the back room of the Crown until closing time.
There was the usual Saturday night crowd and we had laughed and joked until we parted. Mollie wasn't there, Mollie was never there now. I must tell you about Mollie. But this Saturday night I felt particularly carefree and happy. This wasn't always the effect that drink had upon me now. At one time I could rely on it obliterating all my worries and trans forming me, as it were, on to another plane where cares were non-existent and whatever future there was was rosy. Then for no reason for which I could account, every now and again the effect of whisky would be to make me want to argue and to pick a row with somebody, and this feeling would always be accompanied by a spate of swearing in my mind. I would think in swear words Mollie's vocabulary wasn't in it compared with the words that presented themselves to me.
The first time I felt like this I started an argument with one of the regulars, but she took it in good part, and because she took it in good part, I had the desire to lift my hand and smack her across the mouth.
And this aggressive feeling had persisted, even mounted, as I made my way unsteadily in the dark up the hill, and when I got in and Dad greeted me with the look that he always wore on a Saturday night, I turned on him crying, "And what the hell are you lookin' at me like that for? I'm drunk, and what about it? It's the only escape out of this bloody cage. Aye, it's a cage and you're the jailer. I would've been gone from this hole years ago if it hadn't been for you. I could have worked for her and made a home for her, but I was trapped here twixt you and Sam and that bugger next door."
For the first and only time in his life Dad struck me, and the next morning I remembered most of what had happened and was bowed down with shame and resolved to take a strong pull at myself. But the next Saturday night I was in the back room again.
The second time the drink aroused an aggressive fury in me it was all directed against Don Dowling. Vaguely, I remember standing in the kitchen holding the bread knife and telling myself I would burst into the kitchen next door and take him by surprise and he wouldn't be able to lift a hand. I dont're member what stopped me carrying out this intent.
The night that Constance brought up my past again was a Saturday night, but I was feeling happy and at peace with the world. I was crossing the bridge in the late twilight, humming to myself the song they had been singing in the back room earlier on: "Now is the hour when we must say goodbye," and then I saw Constance. She was standing talking to two girls and I saw her deliberately turn her back towards me. But that did not deter me from crossing over to her and demanding in words that I tried to separate, "What ... what-you doing-out at this time anight? Eh? Come on now, away home."
She did not turn and look at me as I mumbled my order, but the other two girls stared at me in a sort of surprised way. I was about to add,
"You, too, you should be at home in bed," when Constance darted away.
I gave an admonitory nod to the girls and walked off, trying to keep my gait steady as I knew their eyes were on me.
There was no evasiveness from Constance once I entered the kitchen; she was standing waiting for me. Her pale skin looked bleached and her brown eyes black and staring, and she greeted me with, "You! ...
you!
You're a disgrace acting like that on the bridge and Jean and Olive in my class. Oh . h. " The " Oh' had a weary sound and she followed it up with, "I hate you. I hate you. Do you hear?"
Somewhere in my head words were gathering fast but I couldn't get them to come down into my mouth. It was as if there was a gap across which they couldn't jump. And then she said, "There's something else I've learned about you. You had another baby, didn't you ?"
All the happiness evoked by my kind friend the whisky was gone.
Although I knew I wasn't sober I was filled with the pain that I endured when sober, only it was intensified now.
"You're a disgrace to everybody, you're no good. What Aunt Phyllis says is right, you've always caused trouble. You've separated Uncle Sam and Uncle Don and broken up her home, and now ... and now ... I won't be able to face them in class on Monday. I hate you, do you hear?" The last was spoken too quietly to be just the outcome of childish anger, it had the stamp of calculation and much thought.
The words had now jumped the gap and were in my mouth ready to fall on her in my own defence, but without a word I passed her and went into the scullery, and she went upstairs to bed, banging the door after her.
Five minutes later Dad came out of the front room and, looking at me where I sat staring into the fire, he said simply, "Well, what do you expect?" I gave no answer, I did not even turn to him, and he went back into the room and closed the door. But he closed it quietly.
After a restless night I heard her get up and go out to early mass, and when she returned I had her breakfast ready as usual. I was alone in the kitchen and didn't speak to her as I placed a plate with egg and bacon on the table. I had turned away to the stove when I heard her whispered "I'm sorry." I didn't say anything, but lifted the teapot and came back to the table, and then she was standing in front of me, her head bowed, and she repeated again, "Oh, Mummie, I'm sorry." In an impulsive movement she flung her arms about me, and I held her tightly to me, saying, "It's all right, it's all right."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"There's nothing to be sorry about."
"I'm a beast and ... and I dont care what anybody says about you."
I stroked her hair and looked over her head and out of the window towards the broad sky that covered the fells, and I thought, "Neither do I." But I knew that wasn't true. Then on the spur of the moment I made a decision and, drawing her down to a chair, I sat opposite to her and said, "You're old enough to know what I've got to tell you.
It's true I had another baby, but it was to . your father. "
Her wet lashes blinked at me and her eyes widened, and I said, "Yes, it was years after you were born. But he didn't know you had been born and he came back and ... and' now for the supreme lie 'we were going to be married. You see the war was on and things were difficult, moving about and one thing and another. I was to see him one night and he didn't come, he had been killed that day."
"Someone said he came from the Hill... Brampton."
"He didn't come from the Hill, he came from France."
Her lashes blinked again, and she said with something like pleasure.
"Then
I'm half French?"
"No, just a little bit, he was half French."
I looked at her and her quivering lashes. She was pondering this last news. She seemed pleased that she was partly French. It was odd but there wasn't a facet of her character that I could trace to myself.
She had the kindliness of Dad, and very much to the fore were traits that reminded me sharply of Ronnie, for she was always reading and scribbling. Her scribbling took the form of rhyming and making up songs. It was this that led to Don buying her the piano.
From that Sunday we came close together for a time, and I made a great effort to moderate my Saturday night diversion. If my effort had been accepted and let go at that, all might have been well and I may have improved steadily, but from the time I cut my visits to the back room of the Crown she and Sam became so solicitous that they never left me alone for five minutes. They combined to be kind, and their kindness oozed with protection, and it was the protection that I wanted to kick against. I wanted to throw my arms wide and press my self out of this second triangle in which I was living. Some times I thought I would go away and leave them all, but this never got further than a thought, for each in their different ways held me. I had no strength of character.
I was still tied by my feelings, and so the monotony of my days went on un relieved even by my hate of Don Dowling.
This monotony was bred, I think, because I was prevented from loving, loving with my body, and not because of lack of interest, for things were happening and swiftly. First, Sam left the pits and took over a small holding across the river. Every now and again he had given Mr.
Pybus a hand in his garden. The old man had four acres of land, two greenhouses and a four-roomed cottage. He lived alone, and when he told Sam he was going to sell and asked if he was interested it was as if he had offered him a gold mine Sam had now been working at the coal face for ten years, and for the last three years had done a lot of overtime. He had saved the greater part of his money. One day he came to me more excited than I had ever seen him in his life and said,
Fenwick Houses Page 25
