Hamilton

by Catherine Cookson

  How kind, how kind George was. Suddenly I thought of the statues of the saints in his church. He was better than all the saints.

  ‘Here you are, hinny. And have a chocolate biscuit.’

  As Gran Carter put the cup of coffee and a plate of biscuits to the side of me I knew for a certainty from where her son got his kindness. She now put her hand on my hair—I had taken off my school hat—and said, ‘You know, you could do something with that hair. You get that trimmed at the hairdresser’s and it would look real bonny. It’s strong hair. They always like strong hair. They have a devil of a job with mine.’ She now pulled the net upwards from her head. ‘Peggy Wicklow’—she nodded towards George now—‘she says she can count me hairs on the top an’ why did I pass on what hair I had to you. She said you should go to her and she’d trim you up.’

  ‘Aye, she’d do more than that, would Peggy Wicklow.’ They both laughed and he added, ‘See me goin’ into a woman’s hairdresser. I hate to go to the barber’s; I’m gona be like the young chaps, let it grow down me back.’

  ‘You do if you dare! All them young bug…people look lousy.’

  George became so doubled up with laughter that he spluttered as he said, ‘Why didn’t you say it, Ma, she won’t drop down dead? She’s heard it afore an’ she’s had her bellyful of politeness. Haven’t you, pet?’ He pulled me towards him, and the voice inside me said, ‘More than me bellyful, George. Oh yes, more than me bellyful.’ At this moment all I wanted was to be like them, and be common. Oh, I did want to be common.

  After I’d drunk the coffee and eaten three chocolate biscuits I said I’d have to be going, because I was to meet Katie at the market. Why, asked George, had I to meet Katie at the market? But I paused before telling them why, because I thought I was giving Katie away. I knew though I could trust these two people with Katie’s secret. But I couldn’t see what was so funny about it when George put his arm around his mother’s shoulders and she put her arm around his waist and they hung together like that half over me while they laughed, and George said, ‘Eeh! the things that go on.’ Then he ended, ‘But you thank Katie for us. Thank her ’specially, and tell her you’ll stand in for her every Sunday.’

  ‘I’ll tell her.’

  At the doorstep they both kissed me, but then walked down the short front garden to the gate, and when I reached the end of the row and turned, they were still there and they waved. But after turning the corner, all the joy left me and I was filled with such longing and a great urge to run back to them and be loved and be common.

  That word common was coming into my mind more and more every day. And Katie was using it too. Such and such a girl was common. Such and such a thing was common. Such and such a place was common. But mostly she was saying nowadays that such and such a one talked common. How did one talk common? Perhaps she was meaning the people who talked in broad Geordie. But why were they common because they talked like that? This word common was in a way troubling me, because I knew that everything nice that had happened to me in my life had been common.

  Katie was not at the market place. I waited until one o’clock and when the Town Hall clock struck, I turned in agitation and made for home, and as I neared the terrace and saw Mrs Moore leaving our door I knew what was in store for me.

  I went in the back way and through the kitchen. She was standing in the middle of the hall, and what she said to me in a quiet voice was, ‘Where did you go when you left Katie to do her dirty work?’ I didn’t answer, but that voice inside me said, She’s got a nasty mind; Katie wouldn’t do anything bad.

  ‘Where did you go? I’m asking you, girl.’

  The voice said, Speak. Say you went for a walk. Say something. If you don’t, she’ll hit you.

  ‘You went along to them, didn’t you?’ She was standing close to me now. I hadn’t seen her walk towards me; I think my fear had dimmed my vision.

  When she did hit me it wasn’t with the flat of her hand but with her fist. She had a small hand. It looked delicate but the bones seemed to go right through my skull. I was falling to one side when a blow came on the other side of my head. This time it was the flat of her hand. And now she was using both on me, flap-flap, flap-flap. I was crouched on the bottom stair, my face pressed tight now against the carpet on the third step and the fingers of one hand gripping the edge of the flat brass stair rod.

  I didn’t hear her leave. The house was quiet, so quiet that I heard the sparrows chirping in the nest they had built above the cup of the drainpipe. I crawled up the rest of the stairs and then, bent double, made for my room. I knew I was crying a lot and yet I was making no sound, not outwardly at any rate, but inside the voice was yelling at me, Go to George’s. Go to George’s. He said you had to. I answered it, No, no; she’ll get wrong; not only from him she’ll get wrong, she’ll get wrong from other people …

  When I lay on top of the bed I shivered and for the first time I realised I hadn’t my coat on. I remember my hat flying off my head but I couldn’t remember her tearing my coat off me.

  The next few hours became a blur. I must have fallen asleep, and I woke up with a dreadful dread on me because I felt I had gone blind. Something had happened to my face; it was stiff and I could scarcely open my eyes, but through their narrowed slits I saw her standing over me. The electric light was on so I knew it was night-time. As I shrank back into the bed her voice came to me soft and in a tone that she had never used to me before. ‘Sit up and drink this,’ she said.

  It was a great effort to do as she told me, and she put her hand behind my back and it felt firm and gentle. And I found difficulty in sipping the tea because my lips were swollen.

  When I couldn’t manage any more she took the cup away, then stood looking down at me. Her hands were clasped tightly against the collar of her dress and her voice was a mutter now as she said, ‘You asked for it. You know you did, you asked for it. You shouldn’t have done it. You asked for it.’ And as I peered at her I realised she was frightened, and the more this became clear in my mind the more my own fear of her ebbed away …

  The following week is lost in mist because at times I knew I was in bed and yet at other times I felt I was some place else: sometimes at Gran Carter’s; sometimes hitching along the park path with George; and more than once I seemed to be in a room that was lined with books and laughing at a man sitting across a desk. He was a nice man and I knew I liked him until he turned into a policeman, and he took my hand quite gently and led me into a cell-like room with bars on the door.

  When everything else during that week turned into a misty blur, that last picture remained in my mind, foretelling the future.

  My mother brought up meals and tried to make me eat, but my face was so stiff that I could only swallow liquids. She very rarely spoke to me and I never spoke to her at all, at least not during that first week. But sometimes during the second week, I said to her, ‘I…I must go to school. They’ll be wondering.’ And she answered, ‘I’ve sent them a note and told them you’ve had a slight…a slight accident.’ She drooped her head now and turned to the side as she added, ‘You’ve got to say you toppled down the stairs. You understand?’

  I understood, but I said nothing. ‘You brought it on yourself,’ she said again. And then she muttered, ‘I just couldn’t bear it, the…the indignity, the…the…’ When she turned away I knew she was almost crying and when she left the room I no longer hated her but felt sorry for her.

  It was on the Monday of the second week that I saw my face for the first time. It was mottled blue and yellow. My eyes were black, my cheeks were swollen and my large mouth looked even larger. The voice said: No wonder she’s frightened. She could have killed you.

  Yet in some strange way I was glad it had happened because I had lost my fear of her and I knew also that she would never again raise her hand to me; she mightn’t be able to stop her tongue, but the result of her rage had in a way entirely altered our relationship.

  During the following days I sat by the bac
k window, but not too close and my view only showed me the McVities’ garden to the right of our house. The weather had turned colder so there was no-one sitting outside. It was during these days that I first experienced aloneness. It wasn’t exactly loneliness, it was if part of me was locked away and had no urge to get out. Yet this part of me seemed real, because nobody knew about it, not even George. I tried to put it into words in my exercise book but it didn’t read right. Anyway, if I wanted to write in my book I had to keep alert in case my mother came in, for she would want to read what I had written. She had more than once torn out sheets from my book because she said she had never read anything so infantile in her life; a child of five could do better.

  I always wanted to write down things that I thought when I was with Gran Carter, because everything she said sounded funny. Even when she was sad she sounded funny.

  What I didn’t write down was what had happened over the past few days, because that was beyond words; it was all feelings, feelings that couldn’t be expressed.

  Then on the Thursday night we had a visitor. When I heard his voice downstairs I clamped my hand over my mouth. The doorbell hadn’t rung, so I knew he had come in the back way and he was yelling, ‘You try an’ stop me.’

  When he burst into the room I was standing with my back to the window and he took only two steps before coming to a halt; then he shook his head as he whispered, ‘God Almighty!’

  My mother was standing behind him and she was yelling at him, ‘She fell downstairs. She fell downstairs. I tell you, she fell downstairs.’

  I watched him turn slowly towards her and his voice now was low and his words slow as he said, ‘You’re a bloody liar. Fell downstairs. Who do you think you’re trying to hoodwink? It’s me remember, George. I’ll have you for this. By God, I’ll have you for this. I warned you, I did. I warned you time an’ time again when I saw what you meant to do. But you’ve done it. Well, it’s the last time you’ll lift your hand to her. By God, I’ll see to that. Come on, hinny.’ He thrust out an arm towards me; but I didn’t move from where I was standing, and he said again, ‘Come on, lass.’

  ‘I’m…I’m all right, George.’ I saw my mother’s eyes on me, her lips were quivering, in fact her whole body was shaking, and then I was amazed to hear myself saying in a calm-like way, ‘I want to talk to George, Mother.’

  I saw her throat contract as she gulped, and I wasn’t surprised when she turned about and left us alone.

  George had hold of my hands, and as he stood looking down into my face his big head moved from side to side and when he muttered, ‘Poor bairn,’ I wanted to fall against him and cry. I wanted to feel his arms about me. I wanted to say, ‘I’ll come with you now,’ but there was this other voice that seemed to belong to someone who had more knowledge and understanding than I had and it said to him, ‘I can’t come, George. I can’t leave her. She…she’ll never do it again.’

  ‘By God she won’t! By God she won’t, lass!’

  ‘She’s sorry. She’s…well, she’s frightened.’

  ‘An’ well she should be. If this happened a week gone Sunday as I reckoned it did from what I’ve heard about you supposed to have fallen downstairs, she as near killed you as nothin’. Me ma only heard the day about your supposed fall. Some girl that goes to the same school told her mother, an’ me ma soon put two and two together. I…I didn’t even stop to wash. Look at me!’ He held out his work-grimed hands; then dropping down onto his hunkers, he said, ‘If you came and she took the matter to court and they saw a picture of your face as it is now after all this time, she wouldn’t stand an earthly of keepin’ you.’

  ‘She’s lonely, she hasn’t got anybody.’

  ‘Oh, hinny, you don’t know her. She’ll get somebody; she’ll have some other man in here afore you can say Jack Robinson. But he won’t be like me.’ He smiled wryly now. ‘A different type altogether. She’s got over my phase, digging in the dirt as she once termed it. The next one will be some white collar bloke with an interest in music and such. You know the kind.’

  I didn’t know the kind, but I understood what he meant.

  His hand came out and he gently touched my still swollen face and all the time he was muttering to himself; then he asked, ‘What did the doctor say?’

  ‘I…I haven’t seen him.’

  ‘You haven’t?’ He screwed up his eyes. ‘Well, it’s about time you did then, isn’t it? Has anybody been from the school?’

  ‘I…I don’t know.’

  ‘Somebody must have been around, you off school a fortnight…You’re sure you won’t come?’

  ‘I…I want to come, George, you know that. I want to come more than anything, but…but somehow I can’t. If…if I came I would be thinking about her all the time.’

  ‘You’re daft, do you know that? She’s put an old head on young shoulders an’ she’s not worth your little finger, and she won’t thank you for stayin’ mind, she won’t. I know her.’

  He was right. I knew that she wouldn’t thank me for staying, not in the way I wanted, not by loving me. She was only afraid of me going because of what the neighbours would say and the publicity that might follow if she then took the matter to court. But as for thanking me; no, I knew that she would never even like me. I was, in a way, something that had spoiled her life. I…I was a sort of cross.

  George stood up now and as he did so a sprinkling of light-coloured dust fell from his clothes: he was working on the buildings, knocking them down again. He now said, ‘I’m gona tell her that if you don’t appear at our house within the next fortnight, when your face goes down that is, I’ll be back again. And she won’t like that because the neighbours’ tongues will be waggin’. I passed two of them on the street as I came in. One was old Mrs Pratt and her lower jaw dropped so far her teeth nearly fell out.’

  I wanted to laugh but couldn’t, and when he bent and put his cheek against mine the smell of lime and brick dust and sweat and cigarette smoke was like perfume to me.

  At the door he turned and said, ‘You’ll see a doctor an’ all, yes you will.’ He nodded twice, and then he went out.

  I sat down with my back to the window, my joined hands tight between my knees and my head on my chest, and my mind was crying: Oh, George, George, George …

  My mother acted as if he had never been; but the following afternoon the doctor called. His name was Doctor Kane.

  Over the years there were periods when my mother visited the doctor regularly, and at these times she took a lot of pills. I hadn’t seen Doctor Kane for years and had only a faint memory of a man with a hairy face. I had never been really ill except with whooping cough and measles. The faint memory of him went back to a time when I fell on the elbow of my short arm and it swelled up and he stuck needles in it. After a time the swelling subsided but it continued to pain. And now here he was looking at me.

  He looked at me for a long time before he said, ‘Well, well, so you tumbled downstairs. When did this happen?’

  ‘A…a few days…’ His head seemed to snap round on his shoulders and he looked at my mother and said, ‘She’s got a tongue, hasn’t she? She can speak for herself…Now, when did this happen?’

  ‘Over a week ago,’ I said.

  ‘Precisely how long over a week ago?’

  I daren’t look at my mother. ‘A week gone Sunday,’ I said.

  ‘A week gone Sunday. Well, well. And so I’m called in to see you now…Why?’ He was looking at my mother again and her voice trembled as she answered, ‘She…she didn’t seem to be recovering as she should.’

  ‘From the aftermath on her face I should say she’s recovered remarkably well. She must have looked a pretty mess when she reached—’ his eyebrows seemed to go up and his beard drooped down as he finished, ‘the bottom of the stairs.’

  There was a silence before my mother said, ‘She…she didn’t look all that bad at first.’

  ‘You surprise me. But still, I’m used to surprises. Well, miss, how do you feel?’
>
  How could I tell him how I felt? Could I say I feel lonely, unloved? But that would be a lie, because George loved me, and Gran Carter loved me. Could I say I feel lost and part of me feels I’m not grown up enough to know anything, and the other part of me feels I don’t need to grow up to know? I know it all now, which, when I thought about it even then, was ridiculous.

  ‘Come on, you must know how you feel.’

  ‘Not very good.’

  ‘Not very good,’ he repeated; then said, ‘Now we are getting somewhere. Where do you feel not very good?’

  He was a difficult man to talk to and my other voice which I used only to myself now came out, saying tersely, ‘That’s a difficult question to answer, because to tell the truth I don’t know where to begin.’ His whiskered lips moved apart and he showed his teeth as he said, ‘Now we are really getting someplace, it’s up to me to start eliminating, isn’t it? By the way’—he turned and looked at my mother—‘do you think there could be a cup of tea going?’

  I saw her blink rapidly; then she looked at me. ‘Yes, yes; I’ll make one,’ she said.

  As soon as the door had closed on her he sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at me for a moment. ‘Well, now,’ he said, ‘let us use our horse sense, shall we? And I’m sure you’ve got quite a bit of it tucked away in that napper of yours.’

  I hadn’t time to think that in a way he could be like a cross between George, Gran Carter, and a gentleman—for doctors were gentlemen all mixed up, because the most strange thing happened at that precise moment, a weird surprising thing, for what did I see but a great horse which galloped right over him. I opened my eyes wider than I’d done since that particular Sunday morning when I’d come through the kitchen and saw my mother waiting for me. My mouth fell into a gape too, for although the creature was galloping, it had its head turned towards me; its eyes were full of knowledge and its lip was back as if it was laughing. It had a long white tail and two white front feet and a great flowing mane, a white spot on its nose, and its body was shining black and as sleekly as a seal’s.