She projected her other hand from a vast sleeve, and pointed inside the church railings. I looked, and saw three empty porter bottles, lying at all angles, where some reveller had thrown them the night before.
I rose to the situation at once.
“All right, Ma’am,” said I, and proceeded to angle with the crook of my stick. One bottle came quick enough, but the others were teasers. It wasn’t as easy as you’d think, especially when the bottles were out of reach anyway. They were powerfully slippery, and apt to roll in the wrong direction. I had to lie on my stomach, and reach to my uttermost, to get the last of the three. However, I got it, spurred by ecstatic wheezes from my old witch, who showed a fine sporting spirit, appreciating the performance on its merits, quite apart from the value of the bottles as the price of her breakfast.
So intent was I, laughing and talking to her and contriving, that I never noticed the people coming out of church: and the Travers family was presented with the spectacle of their prospective son-in-law, crimson in the face, laughing, earthy at the knees, triumphantly handing a porter bottle to the Witch of Endor, who rewarded him with husky demented cackles and pats on the cheek.
I suppose she saw the dismay on my face, for she turned, and realised the situation at a glance. She raised her voice.
“May the blessin’ o’ God and His Holy Mother rest on ya, sir, for the kindness ya shown a poor old woman,” she croaked fervently, and shuffled off, stowing the bottles under her clothes, and leaving me to thaw out a frosty silence as best I could.
The trouble was that I could not get Muriel to see the funny side of such things. I would try to laugh them off, and sometimes she would smile, but the worried look remained on her face. Her parents dinned into her the need to raise me up, and she laboured conscientiously to obey. A score of small pressures and restraints grew up round me, about my friends, my language, everything. She wanted me to give up every form of alcohol. She gave me a little book of devotions, and begged me for her sake to use it night and morning. For nearly a week, I did. Then my stomach turned, and I put the book away out of sight. One day I said, not thinking, “What the hell”. She blushed a little, but smiled. Later, I found her in floods of tears. She never reacted at once, that was the worst thing. It was only afterwards that I learned, usually in a letter, what I had done wrong. And the phrase that once seemed so sweet and charming, “That’s not my Luke,” became a corrosive.
But when it came to lovemaking she threw away all restraint. I don’t mean we anticipated the marriage ceremony, or anything like that. Such an idea, if she had understood it, would have made her faint with horror, and it would have horrified me. But, knowing nothing—her parents had never said a word to her, as I later discovered—she gave herself up to the full force of a passionate nature, and her ardour in caresses shocked me. It shocked me because I had nothing with which to answer it. I liked to be close to her, to hold and kiss her, I felt the hint of what passion might one day mean to me, but I could not reply to her more violent transports, and her wet open mouth groping for mine repelled me.
’’You don’t love me,” she said reproachfully one day, drawing away from me.
“I do, of course I do.” I plunged at her and pressed my face against her bosom.
“No you don’t. Not as much as I love you. I felt that, the very first time we ever kissed.”
It was unanswerable, and the more vigorously I protested, the hollower my words seemed, and the more guilty I felt in my heart.
Yet for nine-tenths of the time I told myself that I was happy, and believed it. I was certainly making progress in the new world, and I soon learned to keep my backslidings a secret.
A month or so after we became engaged, I dined with Uncle John. He was, for the first time in my knowledge of him, tired and discouraged. He had a cough, and his eyes were red and watery.
“I got a cold in the winter,” he told me, after a spasm of coughing, “and I can’t seem to shake it off. I tell you, son, I’m getting old. I’m not the man I was.”
He didn’t eat very well either. I rallied him, and he said he had no fancy for his food.
“I don’t know what’s coming to the country,” he said. “Upon my soul, I don’t know what’s coming to us. There’s no prosperity in the place, no prosperity at all. When I was a young fellow, sure, half a sovereign would buy what a sovereign won’t pay for now.”
I tried to cheer him up, for I wanted to talk about my engagement. I had written to tell him about it, but received no reply. Uncle John did not write letters. He would explain that he travelled such a lot he was sure to see everyone of his acquaintance sooner or later, and that a good gosther and a drink were better than a cold bit of paper, any day of the week.
At the first chance I got, I reminded him of my letter.
“Oh ah,” he said: but seemed to have no comment to add.
“You know which girl it is, don’t you, Uncle John? The one you met me with that time.”
“Yes, yes. I remember.” He was quite colourless about it.
“Her parents didn’t want it to be open at first,” and I told him the whole story, hoping for some commendation of the way I had stood up to Mr. Travers. But he only said, “Oho” and “Aha” and “Is that so,” and nodded with a vague, far-away look in his eyes.
“Why do you think he didn’t want us to be openly engaged, Uncle John?”
He paid no attention for a moment, then tried to rouse himself. “Why do I think what, son?”
I repeated the question. He appeared to consider it, and sighed heavily.
“I couldn’t tell you, son. I couldn’t tell you at all.”
“He said I was too young.”
“Did he so?”
“Do you think I’m too young, Uncle John?”
“Too young for what, son?”
“To be engaged.”
“Ah, God, no.” He came back with a flash of his old self. “Sure, by the time I was your age, I’d been engaged three times, and did always be falling in love. Every six weeks or so. A boy’s never too young. But with that one——”
He looked thoughtful, and broke off.
“What were you going to say?”
“I don’t know, son. I’ve forgotten.”
“Uncle John. Don’t put me off. Tell me.”
He looked at me straight, and his eyes closed over.
“I don’t think one man’s experience with women is ever any good to another, son. I’ve had to do with women all my life, and I know next to nothing about them. It depends on the woman, and it depends on you.” ‘
It was no use; he would not discuss it. I gave up all effort to persuade him.
“Here’s luck anyway, Uncle,” I said, and raised my glass to him.
His eyes flickered. “I never knew it bring luck to any man,” he said quietly.
We talked for a while longer, but I could not rouse him from his apathy. I left early, and went home, concerned about him, but, I confess, relieved on one point. I was afraid he would wish to go and pay a call on the Travers, and I writhed at the picture: Uncle John uncertain of himself, and therefore magniloquent, and, perhaps, jocose with Mrs. Travers. No: that could do no possible good, and might do a lot of harm. At best, it could only confirm the Travers in their belief that I was a brand to be plucked from the burning.
One of the signs of grace I was to show was to save money. That had been agreed, at one of the family conclaves held in my absence. If I wished to marry Muriel, if I intended to undertake so great a responsibility, I must prove my fitness by saving money. Muriel had announced this decision to me, as she did all the decisions, sweetly and gently, choosing always a time and situation in which I could offer little resistance. I could offer little resistance at any time. Nothing in my life had prepared me for the soft pressure, the below-the-belt, if-you-love-me stuff that women employ so readily and with such lack of scruple. Mind you, Muriel was a victim almost as much as I. None of it originated in her head. But she took to i
t very easily: and, the worst of it was, there was nearly always a germ of reason at the core of the decision. I had the feeling that a court would give it against me every time. A jury of matrons certainly would. What, on the face of it, could be more reasonable and right than that I should save? And, if advice were given, surely it must be detailed advice, pointing out to me what I could best afford to do without, and what economies were easiest. But the recurrence of “Father says” and “Father thinks” with an occasional “Mother doesn’t want to interfere for a moment, but …” had a depressing, sometimes a maddening effect upon me. I tried once or twice to enlist Lance’s sympathies, but he shied off immediately. He had his own worries. He was in the toils, too, and, if he had evasions, he kept them to himself. His attitude towards me was neutral, with an underlying chill of suspicion. To the world would be offered a haughty, dignified * exterior, compensation no doubt for the complete submission exacted from him at home. I was the only person who had found opportunity to note the contrast, and I think he was always afraid I would give him away. Poor chap, with his firm chin, his navy-blue serge, his cuffs and his high stiff collar: whatever character he had was crushed out of him before he reached double figures. When I first was engaged, he eyed me speculatively for a few days, perhaps in the dim hope that I might be an ally and help him. But he soon gave up hope, and left me alone, I daresay in contempt. Now and then I would surprise in him a gleam of kindness, a faint warmth of humanity, but one could never count on it, and I soon learned to leave him out of all my calculations, as he left me out of his. I never met a man often and knew less of him than I did of Lance Travers. I don’t think the girl he ultimately married, a pale, colourless creature chosen for him by his parents—I don’t think she got much out of him either.
Meanwhile, I was supposed to save money. It was damned hard to save on one pound fourteen a week, even in those days, when money went twice the length it does now: and at the end of three months I had made very little progress. Submissive at first, I found myself resenting the cutting down of my small luxuries. I had a fondness for plain chocolate, which I ate after each meal. This was cut to a piece twice a week, with another, for a treat, on Sundays. The Sunday piece Muriel insisted on buying for me herself. But I missed my regular chocolate. It used only to cost me tenpence a week, since I ate very little at a time. I liked an odd glass of porter. They wanted me to cut that out altogether, and for once I wouldn’t give in. I said I’d been told it was good for me by a doctor. This was relayed to Mr. Travers, who looked down his nose and said no doctor had a right to prescribe things which lay in the conscience of the patient to avoid. He returned at intervals to the charge, insinuating this and that against “my so-called medical adviser”. I wonder what he would have said had he met him. I would have given a good deal to see Mr. Travers confronted with the Doctor. The Doctor would have had the better of it, all along the line, but his victory would be useless, for Mr. Travers would not realise that he had been defeated.
So, in one way or another, my savings programme suffered relapses. One of them was not wholly graceless, though it bit deep into my conscience, and I jumped like a salmon in my bed, whenever I remembered it, for months afterwards.
It was a Saturday afternoon. All my spare time I spent with Muriel, but for once she was away, visiting an aunt in the country, so I was left to my own devices; and I hadn’t any. Johnny and Billy had long since given me up as a bad job, and in any case I saw enough of them during the week. I thought of going to Martin’s, or to the Doctor, or of combining the two, but the day was threatening, and when I came out from eating my dinner it was raining with that fine, steady, penetrating rain that can go on all day and all night, the rain that wets everything but isn’t strong enough to wash it, the small rain that soaks first your hatbrim and then your very soul, and dilutes every quality of warmth and valour till you’re a mere drizzle yourself. By the time this rain had fallen for twenty minutes, it had fallen for twenty weeks and twenty months and twenty centuries. I was in an eternity of rain, with no prospect of ever emerging from it. I couldn’t go home and sit in my dark cold lonely room, it was before the days of the bioscope, so I pottered along the quays, skirting the black puddles of coal dust, hoping maybe that some friendly sailor would take pity on me and invite me into his galley, and I might have a pleasant afternoon playing nap, and wind up with a meal of sausages tasting of paraffin. But there was nothing alongside except a few small brigs, with cargoes of tiles and slates and such, mostly from ports in South Wales, and devil a sign of life did I see but a damp dog shivering on the deserted deck of one of them, too dejected to look at me when I whistled to him.
My coat was beginning to feel heavy and cold with wet, and I decided I’d had enough. Resolutely stamping down a feeling of guilt, I turned into the first pub I came to, and took a seat in the snug. It had one other occupant, a girl. I glanced at her profile, and saw with a stir of interest that she had fair hair, and was quite pretty. Then she gave a glance in my direction, and my interest leaped up several pegs. What raised it was the rare fact that she was even prettier front ways on, and that she had, in addition, a very fine specimen of a black eye, together with other signs of alcoholic combat at a recent date.
She was cleanly dressed, with the usual black shawl, and well shod: but one of her boots was open. The uninjured eye, which I could plainly see—she tried to hide the other—was of a light, sulky blue. It had a look which wonderfully combined defiance to the world, shame that I should see her in this state, and bravado at being in the pub at all.
I murmured the usual greeting, which she didn’t seem to hear, and for the first few minutes no word passed. I ordered a drink, and sat, exquisitely, miserably self-conscious. Then I caught her glancing at me. She moved her lips, looked down, and looked up again. I must say something.
“Terrible weather,” I said.
She made no reply. Then she gave her whole self a confidential jerk towards me.
“Stand us a small one, Mister,” she pleaded.
I started, and tried to hide my surprise.
“Of course. I’ll be delighted.”
In those far off days, the price of a small one was twopence. She put it down quickly, but not as an expert. The air was eased, and we fell into conversation. I don’t recall what we said, except that, far from being flirtatious or tender, it was more like the sparring of a pair of young cockerels: but, before I realised where it was all leading, she’d wheedled me into standing her a glass of port and some biscuits. This was going too deep, and I’d no sooner given the order than my feeling of guilt revived and swelled to treason. But I was fairly in now: and half a minute later it was worse.
“Would ye do something to oblige me, Mister?” she said. “Would ye button up me boot for me? Every time I stoop to do it, the brains roll about in me head like a red hot crokey ball.”
Was she trying to seduce me? Was I being fooled? I went down on one knee and fixed the boot for her. When I sat back, I couldn’t look at her. My face was on fire, my heart was beating somewhere up in my throat: I was profoundly embarrassed, and wretched. I looked out of the window, and saw through the blurred pane the deserted quays and the forlorn unsteady masts of ships, and my mind went from them to the wet decks and the empty galleys and the slow oily river, and I felt all the depression and sadness of the city join my own depression, and my loneliness and my guilt, and flow back on me in a wave.
It got so bad I could hardly sit still. In despair, I dared a look at the girl, and saw, with astonishment and horror, that she was weeping. Muriel had made me sensitive to a woman’s tears, and, at that precise moment, a bomb exploding couldn’t have given me a greater shock.
What I did next was as bad.
Before I realised, I was off my stool and had an arm about her. All my despair came to a head in her grief.
“Ah,” I cried, “what is it? What’s wrong, what’s wrong?”
This excess of concern seemed to pull her together. As nicely as possi
ble, she moved from under my arm, and I sat back, but without feeling rebuffed, while she told her story. She had come home drunk the night before to her married sister, with whom she lived, and whose husband was the best of quiet men.
“Why were you drunk?” I asked.
“Ah, Mister, that’s telling.”
But she told. It was because her sweetheart had of late been showing indifference to her: that, plus a splash of envy at the happy and secure life of her married sister.
I have always had a capacity for surprising myself by coming out with something I never knew was in me. To my vast astonishment, I heard myself expostulating with her in the strongest terms. I pointed out all the obvious things, and told her she was going the very way to get into serious trouble.
“You know,” I wound up, “if you drink in these places, what will happen to you in the end.”
She did know, but she was more concerned with what had happened her already. It appeared that the main trouble was, she had broken some of the ornaments at home, and was ashamed to face her brother-in-law.
This kind of situation was right down my street. I had not spent all those afternoons and evenings at the barber’s for nothing. All my diffidence had gone. I knew just what to say and do.
“You’re not drunk now,” I said. “If you’ll give up the drink and go into the chapel and go to confession, I’ll see about having the ornaments replaced, if it’s anyway possible.”
I knew what confession means to women, and the restraining effect it has on them. Young and raw though I was, I’d seen and heard it so often. So I yanked the poor girl straight off to St. Paul’s, drove her in front of me, and saw her go in to the Reverend Father whoever-he-was.
She came out a changed woman. The moment she was clear of the door, she was hot to be away from me and go home to beg forgiveness. But I was in the full warmth of my quixotry. We needed to consolidate things.
“Oh no,” I said. “A bargain’s a bargain. Go on ahead, and get the ornaments, and I’ll pay for them.”
The Bay Page 24
