The Invisible Cord

by Catherine Cookson

  Rance. She felt guilty at times about her feelings for Rance. Perhaps she had poured her love out on him because she found no outlet with Georgie. Perhaps it was because he was her first child, or perhaps it was because he had inherited her own looks. Whatever it was she knew she loved him more than all the others put together; and she knew this wasn’t right, because whereas Bill was a case, Rance was a handful, for he was always getting into scrapes, and she had a devil of a job at times to stop Georgie from lathering him.

  It wasn’t so strange that the boy didn’t like his father for from an early age he had felt Georgie’s hand across his bare rump. Then again, Georgie never spoke to him but he swore. It was odd, she thought, that Rance hadn’t picked up Georgie’s swearing, but Bill had. Bill at four often came out with bloody, or bugger, and protested with hands, feet and voice when he was chastised for it. Yes, Bill was a case, but it was Rance, she knew instinctively, who needed her more than the others.

  Even Kathy at two had an independence about her that was lacking in Rance, yet the boy was as loud-voiced and bumptious as his father at times. Of course, the bairns he mixed with round about didn’t help any, she was well aware of that, and if it rested with her, another year, two at the most, would see them out of it. She had thought at first there was a lot in coal, but the most that was in it, at least for her, was damned hard work. But it was paving the way to better things.

  When they had first moved in here in the January of ’46 she was living in a sort of dull despair. The Hereford business, as she had come to think of it, was still very much in her mind, yet lessened somewhat by the very fact that Georgie had made her pregnant again. How could a man be like that…odd, queer, if he could give you a bairn and want you at all odd times of the night or day? It didn’t fit in, did it? She had wished there was someone she could talk to about it. The only person who would know about such things was Mollie, but she was the last one she could go to, being his mother.

  When Mona and Arthur were married in the middle of January ’47 and they weren’t invited, she had been indignant. The excuse that they were being married in a registry office in Hereford didn’t satisfy her as it seemed to Georgie. The fact that Georgie rarely spoke of Arthur kept her suspicions alive, yet his answer to her statement, ‘You seem to have dropped Arthur, and he you,’ seemed logical, for he said, ‘Look, it was wartime. You strike up friendships in wartime an’ they just last during wartime, the majority of them anyway. Left alone, they die a natural death. Some silly buggers like to keep things goin’, so they have these get-togethers each year. Well, I met Arthur an’ he met me. We were different types, as has been bloody well pointed out often enough. He was educated an’ I was as ignorant as a pig, a come-easy-go-easy-God-send-Sunday type, but all right to have beside you when you had your back to the wall. Well, he had his back to the wall when he first joined up, an’ I stood beside him. An’ that’s what it was all about.’

  Georgie’s summing up had given her a new aspect of the situation. A refined type like Arthur would undoubtedly have his back to the wall among some of the roughs who were in the forces, and he’d be grateful to have a big bouncer like Georgie for a friend to fend off the enemy so to speak.

  So there she had left it, and got on with the business of carrying Anastasia—which name she had taken from a story in a weekly magazine—and furnishing the house, which necessitated travelling around the second-hand shops looking for bargains.

  When Georgie had failed to get set on with his old firm, or with any firm that required lorry drivers, for the town at that time seemed full of ex-lorry drivers, he took the job of helping to unload coal at a yard which supplied a number of coal merchants. It never struck Georgie that he had the facilities at hand to start up a business of his own, and even when she broached the subject he had laughed it to scorn. ‘Where am I goin’ to get the money for a lorry?’ he said. ‘Or are you thinkin’ of me going round the streets with a bloody cart and horse?’ To this she had answered that everybody was hiring things these days. Pentons, behind the station, had lots of second-hand cars and lorries in; she had seen them.

  It took her three months to persuade him that there was something in the suggestion. His last stand against it was, he’d be working eighteen hours a day and he couldn’t last long at that rate humping coal.

  He started with loose coal on a flat lorry, selling it by the bucketful. It took almost eighteen months before they graduated to sacks. The problem here was that he required another hand, but, as he said, if he had to pay a fellow to fill the sacks he might as well give up for they would never be able to save enough to buy a decent lorry and get started properly. And so she became the other fellow.

  Each day she filled the sacks ready for the following day, that is when her stomach wasn’t too big and prevented her stooping. She also attended to the barrows that came to the yard.

  The barrows were usually soapboxes balanced on a pair of bicycle wheels, the shafts rough pieces of wood, and the usual order from a barrow-holder was, ‘Bob’s worth, Missis.’

  Filling a bucket, she would measure out a bob’s worth; then, no matter how pressing would be the call from indoors with one or the other screaming, she had to watch the barrows until they were well outside the gate. A couple of nice big ‘roundies’ whipped up every time a barrow came into the yard could deplete the profit considerably by the end of the week.

  Her five years of drudgery in the house and the depot had caused anger to develop in her mother, and pity in Mollie. Mary considered it a disgrace that her daughter should shovel coal like any cinder heap picker, whereas Mollie was emphatic in saying that it was a bloody crying-out shame that a lass like Annie should have to work so and be blacked up to the eyes every day. But there, as she had said at the beginning, if anybody could make a roof out of rotten thatch it was Annie, and by damn, she was doing it!

  Annie liked Mollie, more than liked her; she had a deep affection for her such as she had never had for her mother. Moreover Mollie was kind, and those first hard days she had never come to the house empty-handed; even now, she always brought something for the bairns; whereas the only thing her mother brought with her was disdain.

  Her da, too, had been kind to her in the early days. When he came on his own he talked all the time, had a good crack, as he put it, but when he came along with her mother he just sat silent.

  As the years went on Annie had become more and more sorry for her father, and she warned herself that no matter how Georgie turned out she must never treat him like her ma did her da. And yet the strange thing was she knew that her da loved her ma. She didn’t think her mother loved anybody, not even herself; she seemed incapable of affection …

  Well, there they were. Annie looked at the sacks, ten of them. They would give him a start tomorrow. Now she was going to have a bath, but oh Lord, she wished she hadn’t to heat the water and carry it into the shed. That place was like ice. If they were here for good she’d have had a bath put in before now, but they weren’t here for good. No! Oh no!

  For some time she’d been chewing on an idea. She hadn’t said anything to Georgie about it because he would have bawled her out. ‘What!’ he would have said. ‘Are you mad? Takin’ on a bloody garage! What next?’ Yet he could take an engine to bits and put it together again and not mislay a screw. He couldn’t write a letter to save his life; his own name and address was about as much as he could manage. She had to do all the bills because he couldn’t reckon up, but give him a piece of machinery and his mind seemed to work. It was very odd, she thought, but he never seemed to realise his own capabilities, perhaps because he had come to accept the general opinion of himself, he was dim.

  She went through the back door and into a large stone-floored scullery, where a gas stove stood next to a shallow brown sink. Fixed in the corner of the wall opposite was a wash-house boiler with a wooden lid on top, and pressed against the front stonework of the boiler, his two hands holding a knife which was inserted in a piece of box wood,
was Rance, and she cried at him, ‘What you doing, boy! Be careful; you’ll cut your hands off.’ She grabbed the knife from him, saying, ‘What’s this?’ as she tossed a pile of narrow laths to one side.

  ‘Aw, Mam, give over, I’ve just cut them. I’m goin’ to make a hutch.’

  ‘You’re going to make no such thing. Haven’t you been told you can’t keep a rabbit out there. Now we’ve had all this out afore. Your da’s told you.’ She pushed him to one side. ‘Are you stupid, boy?’ Even as she said it she knew that he wasn’t stupid, only grimly determined to have his own way. This was an odd trait in the boy. You could tell him and tell him he mustn’t do a thing, and he would go on doing it as if he had never heard you speaking.

  He stood by the wall now, his hands behind him, staring at her grimly as he said, ‘I want a rabbit.’

  ‘When we move. If we move into a cleaner place where…where there’s no coal dust, then you can have a rabbit. And…and a dog. I told you, I told you the other night.’

  ‘I want a rabbit now.’

  ‘Will you be quiet, Rance!’

  ‘Peter Smedley’s got a rabbit and he’s only four doors down.’

  ‘Well, he’s four doors down, he’s not in this yard, and we want all the space we’ve got. You know we do. We can hardly turn the lorry now, and the walls are taken up with the sacks.’

  ‘I could keep it in the backyard here,’ he jerked his head towards the door.

  ‘You’re not keeping it in the backyard here.’ She now closed her eyes and bowed her head and said ‘Rance! Rance! Don’t let’s start this all over again. Look, I promise you as soon as we leave here you’ll have a rabbit, and anything else you want.’

  ‘When’s that?’

  ‘I…I don’t know yet but…it’ll likely be soon.’

  ‘I want it now.’

  ‘Get in there!’ She thrust out her arm towards the kitchen door and when he didn’t move she pulled him from the wall and pushed him forward. ‘And let me hear another word about that rabbit from you and I’ll tell your da. Mind, I mean it, I mean it this time. Mention that rabbit again and I’ll tell your da; and then you know what’ll happen, and you needn’t come to me to save you.’ She thrust him into the kitchen where Kathy, Bill and Tishy were sitting on the mat before the high-grate open fire and she called to Tishy, saying, ‘You were going to get yourself washed; then get yourself washed. And get Kathy’s clothes off and wash her face and hands, an’ Bill’s an’ all. Then get yourselves to bed. That goes for you an’ all, Rance.’

  Having banged the door on them she stood for a moment with her hands gripping the sink. When Rance went on like that he did something to her, churned her up inside. Oh, she was tired, dog, dog tired; she must put an end to this before it put an end to her. She knew she was strong and healthy, but the coal would break her heart before it broke her body.

  When the outer door opened swiftly she turned her head and looked at Georgie standing there. ‘I’m back,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t hear the lorry.’

  ‘No, I made it take its boots off an’ come in in its stocking feet.’

  She laughed wearily. He could be funny at times.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Thought you weren’t. See you’ve got all the bags ready.’

  ‘Me back’s telling me that an’ all.’

  ‘I’m starvin’.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to wait while I get this grime off me.’

  ‘Oh aye; how long will that be?’

  ‘The water’s hot—’ she nodded towards the boiler—‘Give me fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Leave it for me if it isn’t too much like glar, an’ I’ll get the thick off me an’ all.’

  ‘All right.’ She nodded.

  After he had closed the door again she remained standing and looking towards it. He had spoken to her for some minutes and he hadn’t sworn once, not even a bloody.

  She’d gone for him last week about his swearing, that was after Bill had come out with a mouthful in front of him. ‘You see,’ she had said, ‘four years old and swearing like a trooper. Nice state of affairs, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aw,’ he had laughed. ‘You know me. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t swear.’

  ‘Well you could try to curb it in front of them, couldn’t you?’

  ‘It comes out natural, lass,’ he had said.

  ‘Then try being unnatural for a change.’

  ‘What! D’you want a bloody miracle?’ he had laughed.

  She was about to turn towards the boiler when the door was pushed open again and he thrust his head through and said, ‘You know somethin’?’

  ‘No, what is it?’

  ‘I opened me mouth and I bloody well didn’t swear. Didn’t you notice?’

  ‘Aw, Georgie!’ She burst out laughing. ‘Go on. Go on.’ She flapped her hand at him.

  ‘Is that all you’re gona say, go on, go on? No praise? Why can’t you be kind to me an’ say, “Georgie, you’re a bloody marvel, that’s what you are, Georgie, a bloody marvel”?’

  Swiftly she picked up a dishcloth from the bench and threw it at him, and he caught it in his hand and rubbed it round his black laughing face and closed the door again.

  It was moments such as these that lightened the load and made living bearable.

  Two

  ‘It’s a crying-out shame. And I would put it stronger than that if these bairns weren’t here.’ Mollie glanced down to each side of her to where Tishy and Bill were hanging on to her hands. ‘By! I would an’ all. ’Cos look at you! What do you look like? A docker, that’s what you look like, a female docker. Twenty-five you are and the way you look now you could give yourself another ten years. Carry on like this, me lass, an’ your bonny looks’ll be no more. I’m tellin’ you. Just look at your hair…Oh, our Georgie! I could bash his brains in for him, I could that.’

  ‘Oh, be quiet, Mollie. Sit yourself down, and I’ll wash me hands and make a cup of tea.’

  ‘You’ll do nowt of the sort. If anybody’s goin’ to sit down it’s you. Get out of me road, you two.’ She playfully pushed the children aside; then lifting the kettle from the hob she thrust it into the heart of the fire, and as quickly lifted it back on the hob again, saying, ‘I’ll put it on the gas, it’ll be quicker. And don’t say “Aw, but think of the gas.”’ She pulled a face at Annie as she went towards the scullery.

  Annie, sitting back in an old leather chair, closed her eyes for a moment. It was good to have somebody to boss you nicely.

  Mollie’s voice came to her now, crying at the children, ‘Don’t do that, else I’ll skelp your backside for you,’ and they answering her with a laugh. They all liked their Grannie McCabe; except Rance. He preferred his Grannie Cooper, because she had always spoilt him.

  After a moment she called out, ‘How’s things?’

  ‘Oh, fine, lass. I’ve got a new lodger.’

  ‘What!…Another?’

  ‘Aye, another. Micky was gettin’ a bit too hot, even for me. Talked about marryin’. But you know what?’ Her head came round the door and her voice, although tones lower, was still loud. ‘I’ve got an idea he’s got a wife in Liverpool.’ She now took three quick steps into the room and, bending over Annie, said, ‘More than a bloody idea. I found a letter in his pocket, an’ the piece that wrote it wasn’t just a very dear friend. God! The things she said.’ She now put her head back and laughed, and as her whole body wobbled with her emotion she flapped her hand sharply against the mound of her stomach, crying as she did so, ‘Lie down! Your father’s not workin’.’

  At this Annie let out a roar of laughter, and she and Mollie pushed at each other until the children’s voices came from the scullery, yelling, ‘Kettle’s boilin’, Gran. Kettle’s boilin’.’

  As Mollie ran into the scullery with a lightness of foot that was surprising for her bulk, Annie sat back in the chair again. Aw, Mollie was a tonic. In some ways Georgie took after
her. ‘Lie down! Your father’s not workin’.’ That was funny that was. Pregnant women were supposed to have said that during the days of the slump when the child inside them kicked. It was a favourite saying of Mollie’s and never failed to elicit Annie’s laughter.

  When Mollie brought the tray of tea into the kitchen Annie said, ‘I’ve got hopes we may be out of this soon, Mollie.’

  ‘No! What’s in your head now, lass?’

  ‘A little garage. A lock-up. We could rent it for five pounds a week. It isn’t very big but it’s got pumps an’ all that. The snag is he wants a hundred and fifty for the goodwill. And then he wants to sell the tools an’ things. When we get in what’s owing to us, it’ll only come to just over a hundred; but I mean to borrow the rest from somewhere, even if I have to go to a money-lender.’

  ‘By God, you’ll go to no moneylender, lass! That’s jumpin’ into the jaws of the wolf all right. No moneylenders.’ She came towards Annie now, and bending over her she wagged her finger in her face as she said slowly, ‘Now promise me, no moneylenders. By! The ruinations I’ve seen caused by moneylenders. By God! I have that. Court, that’s where the moneylender’ll lead you to, court. Look, tell me what you want an’ I’ll lend it you. But no moneylenders, lass.’

  ‘You!’ Annie pulled herself up straight in the chair. ‘But…but how can…?’

  ‘Never you mind…I’ve been workin’ behind the bar for years, haven’t I? An’ when they say, “Have one yourself, Mollie,” what d’you think I do? I’d swim out of that bar if I took all that was offered me. What I do is chalk it up to meself. Trust Mollie. And then there’s our Winnie and Archie and Mike, they’ve been workin’ for years, an’ they pool their bit. Not forgettin’ the lodger.’ She knocked Annie back into the chair, and again they were laughing, but only for a short time for Annie said, ‘But…but I might need a hundred pounds, Mollie.’