Fenwick Houses

by Catherine Cookson

  They sat at the kitchen table, and from the scullery I listened to her talking as I had never heard her talk. I'd never guessed she knew so much. She sounded to me very, very knowledge able. And then she came out to me, her face bright and her voice low, and asked "Did you iron my grey print...?"

  I nodded and answered quietly, "It's upstairs in your room."

  They went out together and I went upstairs and, falling on my knees, I prayed for the first time in years, asking God to bring something out of this association, and quickly. Not to let it be just a lad and lass affair with a dance on a Saturday night and the pictures now and again and nothing certain. I prayed that the spark I saw struck in the kitchen last night would fan itself quickly into a blaze and marriage.

  Three months from the day they met they became engaged. It was the happiest moment I had known for years, there would only be a happier when I stood in the church and saw them married. The night they came and told me she flung herself into my arms and whispered, "Oh, Mummie!"

  and I held her tightly and thanked God, and I looked over her head towards David, smiling my affection for him.

  Later that evening when they had gone out I wanted to go upstairs and celebrate with the quarter bottle of whisky I had tucked away in the bottom drawer, but I resisted the temptation because not for the world would I imperil the existing harmony that now reigned between Constance and me if she smelled the whisky on me I knew the dark, dull look would come into her face again and her happiness would be marred. God forbid, I thought, that I should mar it again. No, I would wait until bedtime.

  Each morning I woke up with a very thick head and had difficulty in rousing myself, but I dared not take a 'nip of the dog that had bitten me'. I had rarely any difficulty in resisting this temptation, for I had nearly always finished up what was in the bottle the night before.

  These thick heads made me long for Sunday mornings, for then I could have a lie-in. This particular Sunday morning I lay in a drowsy state for quite a long time, for Dad did not wake me with a cup of tea on this one morning of the week. Then with startling swiftness I was brought awake by the sound of two well-known voices, first one and then the other. The thought that they were coming through the wall brought me upright in bed and the next minute on to my feet, and as I stood blinking dazedly I realized they weren't coming through the wall but from outside. Going cautiously to the window, I drew the curtains an eye-width apart and looked down. There was no one in our back yard, nor could I see anyone next door, but the voices were coming from there. And they were the voices of Don and Constance. My window was raised from the bottom a few inches, and I knelt on the floor and put my ear to the opening. The next thing I heard was Constance's laugh.

  But it was a shaky laugh, and she followed it by saying softly, "Don't be silly."

  "I'm telling you, Connie, you can have what you like a twelve hundred car anything. I'm in big business now, and I'm leaving this God-forsaken hole."

  He said something more which I couldn't catch. Then again came Constance's laugh, and again she said, "Oh, dont be silly."

  Don Dowling's job kept him away for anything from two or three days to two or three weeks now. This time he had been away more than three weeks, and this was the first knowledge I had that he was back.

  "I told you, we're engaged." Constance's voice came a little louder.

  "Now, dont you start kidding me, Connie, you and that little whipper-snapper, it's laughable. That type of bloke never gets past reporting tea-parties and bazaars. You were made for better things, things that cost money. You know what I told you last year. I told you I wouki soon be able to give you anything the world. Well, now I can. Listen."

  His voice dropped, and suddenly I found I was afraid to hear any more.

  I was sitting on the floor with my back to the wall and fear was swamping me again. I was sick with it. What if he did something?

  What if he broke them up? But he wouldn't. No, he wouldn't. I was forcing anger up through the fear and I turned it on to Aunt Phyllis, for she was in the house there listening to him trying to ensnare my girl, and knowing the reason why he wanted her. She was, I thought, as mad as him, or the other way about, for it was from her he had inherited what was in him.

  I hurried into my clothes, my fingers fumbling and slipping the while, and when I got downstairs Dad was sitting at the table calmly reading the paper. And I went for him immediaately saying.

  "Did you know Don Dowling was back and has got Constance in their back yard?"

  He looked at me closely, then said, "But that's nothing new, lass, he's always talking to her. He must have just got back from his trip."

  "And what's he talking about?"

  "Now, now, how should I know? What's upset you? Don's always talking, he's all talk. It means nothing."

  "It means he's after our Constance."

  His look now was long and pitying and his voice was soft when he said,

  "Don't be silly, lass."

  "Oh!" I turned from him with a helpless gesture. Dad would not believe meat was rank until he saw the maggots crawling out of it.

  When she came into the kitchen looking somewhat pale, I restrained myself from making any reference to Don. Neither did she mention his name. So the matter rested, uneasily rested.

  It was May and the month of processions, and this particular Sunday night Constance was in a procession, and David, although not a Catholic, was going to Benediction to see her. At least, I understood that to be the arrangement until there came a knock on the front door.

  Sam, who had arrived just a few minutes earlier, went to open it, and when I saw him return with David I was startled into crying, "What's happened? Where is she?"

  "Nothing's happened. Constance is at church and I was going, as you know, but I thought I would just slip up and see you." He was looking at me.

  "There is something I want to talk to you about, but it would be awkward with Constance here."

  I heaved a sigh of relief, yet it did not clear my mind of anxiety.

  What could he want to talk about that Constance shouldn't hear? It couldn't be about his people, he hadn't any for which I was heartily grateful except an aunt who had brought him up and who had accepted Constance without question. I noticed he looked rather drawn and worried, and when he cast his eyes towards Sam I added, "There's something wrong, isn't there? You can speak in front of Sam, he knows all there is to know about us."

  As I watched him draw an envelope from his pocket a sweat broke out on me, and before he handed it to me he leant forward and said, "I'm going to let you see this letter because I feel you should know about it. It was slipped through the door when we were out. But it makes not the slightest difference between Constance and me. Please understand that.

  And I dont want her to know a thing about it. You seem to have an enemy, and with your permission I'll take it to the police."

  My hand was on my throat and I was crying loudly inside me, "Not again!

  not again!" Then I was reading the letter. It was asking David if he knew that Constance was illegitimate? Did he know that her mother had had several men, including her brother, and was now living with the man known as Sam Dowling? Moreover, she was disease-ridden and had been brought before the court for being drunk and using obscene language.

  The terrifying thought leaped at me from the page telling me that although only the first and last statements were true I had no way of proving to an outsider that the rest was lies.

  "What is it?" Sam was standing at my side and he put out his hand for the letter, but I crushed it in my fist, and bowed my head. Then I heard Sam saying to David, "Show me the envelope." My head was still bowed when Sam said, "Give me that letter."

  Slowly I opened my hand and he took the letter from it. There was no sound in the kitchen until Sam spoke again, when, touching my shoulder, he said, "Stay where you are. I'm walking down the hill with David, I'll be back."

  Before David left the room he stood over me and in a
very firm voice he said, "Please believe me, Mrs. Winter, it makes no difference to me...

  none."

  I couldn't speak, and he went out.

  About twenty minutes later Sam returned, and I was sitting where he had left me. His face looked darker and his voice was unsteady as he said,

  "Don't worry, he understands."

  "Sam." My voice sounded steady, yet I was trembling in every vein.

  "Sam," I said, 'if he breaks this up I'll kill him. "

  "He won't break it up. David isn't so easily put off. He knows what he wants, and it will take more than a letter to frighten him off."

  "But it won't stop at letters, Sam. You know it won't. Look at me."

  Suddenly I was thumping my chest and crying, "All my life I've lived in fear of him. It's him that's ruined my life, not Martin Fonyere. I would have married you years ago if I hadn't been afraid of what he would do. He's tortured me for years. That isn't the first letter. He did the same with Ted Parrel, only they were much worse than that. And he sent men to the house.... You didn't know that, did you? He's tortured me for years one way and another, and I wasn't strong enough to stand up to him. I'm not made like that. But, by God, I swear that if he spoils this for Constance, and I repeat, I swear, Sam, I'll kill him."

  Sam said nothing for a moment, but sat down by the table and rubbed his chin with his hand. Then he said quietly, "There'll be no need for you to do that, Constance'll marry David, dont you worry." Then as if to himself he repeated, "Don't you worry."

  But I did worry, night and day, and the anxiety was too much for me. I was in agony all the time Constance was out of my sight. The only peace I had was when she was in bed or with David. I was standing in the front room at the window one Wednesday dinner-time waiting for her when I heard the quick tap of her heels on the pavement, and I moved to the door to open it when Don Dowling's voice checked me.

  "Hullo," he said.

  "Where are you hiding yourself these days?"

  "Oh ... I'm not hiding myself. Uncle Don."

  Her job' told me he must have surprised her.

  "Uncle Don it is now? Why have I got my old title back?"

  "Oh, I dont know. Habit, I suppose." I heard her give a little laugh, then Don's voice again, saying, "I'm bringing the car for you on Saturday, what about it?"

  The tone to anyone else would have sounded playful, but to me it was laden with threat. There was a pause that I could not fill with any image in my mind until Constance's voice came sharply, saying, "Leave go. Uncle Don, I've got to have my dinner. Oh, leave go!" And then I pulled the door wide. There, not a foot away, with his back to me he stood, his hands gripping Constance's arms.

  "Take your hands off her!"

  Slowly he turned and confronted me. I had never been so close to him for years, I had never looked into his face for years, I had always been aware that he was smart in his own way, so I wasn't prepared for the close-up of his face. It was bloated, and his hair was receding from his forehead. But it was his eyes that held me. They were very, very bright and bluey dark, not black. As if fascinated, I watched his lips draw back, and then he said, "Well, well, Christine. Sober enough to talk after all these years ?"

  I reached out and, pulling Constance over the steps and thrusting her behind me, I cried, "You've done all you can, Don Dowling, and now I'm warning you. You can frighten me no more. You touch her again and it'll be for the last time."

  His head went up and back, and he laughed. And on the high note of the laugh he cried, "Christine Winter with spunk. My God! what will we be hearing next?" 241 I banged the door closed and hurried into the kitchen. Strangely enough, there was no reprimand awaiting me from Constance, for I saw immediately that she was afraid, and her fear was like a reflection of my own at her age.

  "Sit down and have your dinner," I said as calmly as I could, and when I placed the meal before her I added quietly, "You could stay at the canteen and have your dinner after this, and David or your Grandad or your Uncle Sam would meet you coming back." Even on what only a few days ago would have sounded like a preposterous proposal she made no comment

  The next morning, just before she went out to work, she said to me, "I won't ask David to meet me, it would mean explaining things." She did not look at me as she spoke and I couldn't say to her, "David knows."

  If he wanted her to know he was in the picture he would tell her himself, so I said, "All right, your Grandad will meet you tonight."

  When I told Dad as briefly as possible that Don was pestering and frightening Constance and asked would he go and meet her, he was still unable to take in the full import of the situation, and he screwed up his face at me and said, "But he's always been fond of her, lass. You must realize that."

  "This is more than being fond. Dad. Can't you see?"

  He blinked his eyes rapidly as if he was at last beginning to see, and then over his shoulder he glanced towards the dividing wall and said,

  "If I thought he meant anything I'd knock his bloody head through the road."

  "He does mean something, but dont say anything, at least not yet. Sam knows and David knows, and now you know. And you must believe this, Dad. Don Dowling is bad." I pressed one closed hand tightly into the palm of the other to emphasize this, and he stared at me for a long moment in a bewildered fashion, then muttered, "I've always known he wasn't the best.

  "Twill be better if I dont come across him for a while."

  There was neither sight nor sound of Don for the next three days. I listened carefully to the sounds next door. When Aunt Phyllis's wireless wasn't blaring forth there came no sound of voices, only the sound of doors closing and her foot steps creaking on the stairs.

  And then it was Saturday. David had rushed in about ten o'clock to say he was being sent out on an assignment. It was a murder case, some place near Hanlepool, and he didn't know what time he would be back.

  If he was too late in getting home this evening to come up, he would be round first thing in the morning. Would I tell Constance how disappointed he was about the dance tonight ?

  "Yes/ I said.

  "And dont worry, she'll understand." And I patted his arm.

  "It might be a big thing for you."

  He nodded and said, "That's what I'm thinking. But isn't it awful somebody has to go and be murdered before you get a break?"

  In the afternoon Constance washed her hair, then she washed some of her undies and ironed them, and it was as she stood ironing in the kitchen at the table near the window and I stood baking at the table in the centre of the room, going back and forward to the oven every now and then, that I talked. I talked about myself and Don Dowling. I told her right from the time I could remember, right from the time he held me in the river, and only once did she pause in her ironing and put her hand over her mouth. That was early in my talking when I came to the incident of the rabbit nailed to the tree. I told her about her father and how he came the second time, and how I wanted to do away with myself when I discovered I was going to have another baby. But I didn't tell her he had any relations on Brampton Hill. I thought it better not to. If there had been any chance of her meeting up with her half-brothers then I certainly would have told her about the colonel and his daughter. But as it was I thought it better to leave that page closed. But I told her about Ted Farrel and about the letter he had received and the letters I had received. I told her about the form of mental torture that went on for years with the knockings on the wall.

  I told her everything that concerned me and why I hadn't married her Uncle Sam. And I knew that she understood, especially this last, for there was a fear in her now, a fear that something would happen to separate her from David.

  When my story was ended I felt very tired, suddenly very tired, and I dropped into a chair. I had a need on me for a drop of whisky, but when she came and put her arms around me and pressed my head to her, saying softly, "Oh, Mummie! Oh, Mummie!" the need for the moment left me.

  We were close, really close f
or the first time in our lives. And then it was she who talked, and as if she were the mother and I her daughter. This was no new feeling, for often in the last two years or so I had felt that she had already reached a maturity that would never be mine. The only thing that had developed in me through the years was my weakness.

  That evening, after tea, Dad said, "I'm going to slip down to the club for an hour. Harry Benger's interested in the allotment."

  "Our allotment?" I said.

  "Aye." He got up and put on his coat.

  "I'm not getting' any younger, I've been feeling lately I'm past it.

  Anyway, the vegetables we need we can get from Sam. Half the stuff I grow there I give away."

  I felt I knew the reason why he was doing this, and it wasn't because the allotment was too much for him. Soon we'd be needing the allotment as much as we had done years ago, for the pits, after a blaze of prosperity never before known in their history, were once again on the down-grade. It was a repeat of the nineteen-thirties. Whole pits were closing down. At any moment the Phoenix or the Venus might be on the list.

  "I'll leave your supper," I said.

  "I'm a bit tired and I'll get to bed early."

  Neither Dad nor Constance ever remarked on my going to bed early. If they knew why I went upstairs so soon in the evenings they thought it better to say nothing. If I had to drink, then that was the best place to do it.

  But I did not get upstairs early that night, because this new relationship between Constance and me kept me tied to the kitchen listening to her plans for the future. The wonderful plans for her and David. And then it was she who went up stairs first. She kissed me good night in a new way. Again as if I were the younger, she held my face between her hands and looked at me, and then she said something that gave me a thrill, like I'd never had for many a year.