Hamilton

by Catherine Cookson

  So I stayed on in my house, and six months of my pregnancy passed.

  Towards the end of this period I had joined a writers’ circle. Oh dear me, it was a surprise! I had expected to be enthralled listening to literary geniuses; I had expected to be overawed by the possessors of literary merit. What I met with was a conglomeration of people who really looked as dowdy as myself. They were mostly women, and half of them wrote about kittens, dear little kittens and dear little cats. They wrote short stories about them, and poems about them. There wasn’t so much said about dogs; it was always kittens or cats.

  Howard never gave me one penny, but I was making enough now from my typing to buy odds and ends I felt I would need when the baby came. Life in the daytime was tolerable. Life when I entered the bedroom until the lights went out was almost unbearable. The nights when I wasn’t being obscenely talked at, he handled me, and my elbow wasn’t always a deterrent.

  I was just on six months gone when I said to him, ‘I’m going to sleep across the landing.’

  ‘Like hell you are!’ he said.

  ‘Like hell I am!’ I repeated.

  ‘I’ll make it worse for you if you do,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think it’s in your power to make it any worse.’

  ‘You know nothing yet.’

  I looked him straight in the face, and I said quietly, ‘Howard, if you start any new tactics with me I shall go to Doctor Kane and tell him exactly what happens.’ This seemed to deter him; as also did my manner of speaking; yet he came back with, ‘And what can he do?’

  ‘He will know that I have registered a complaint against you, and it will help me when I tell you to get out of this house or I decide to sell it. Now I’m going to sleep across the landing. It’s up to you to decide what the future holds for you.’

  What he said to me now was, ‘You ugly, pig-eyed, little snipe, you! If you think you’re going to get me out of this house, you’re mistaken. And I’m going to tell you something else. I’m bringing May in here to live; I don’t see the reason to pay rent when there’s rooms going empty. And anyway, she looks after me now as she’s always done, because you damn well don’t.’

  ‘I won’t have May here permanently.’

  ‘You’ll have her whether you like it or not.’

  ‘I mean what I say, Howard. You force my hand, and I’ll sell this house. As much as I love it, I’ll sell it. I will not have May here permanently.’

  I could feel his hand coming up again and the effort it took him to refrain from hitting me …

  It was a Saturday night when I began to feel ill. It couldn’t be the baby, I told myself; I had felt it kicking vigorously only a short while before. I couldn’t quite put a name to my feeling of illness, but in the middle of the night, sleeping alone now in a single bed and the door locked, I became worried; more so when the feeling of illness was still with me on the Sunday morning.

  How I struggled to Gran’s on the Sunday afternoon, I don’t know. As soon as she saw my face she said, ‘My God! lass, I think you’re for it. How much are you gone?’

  ‘Six and a half months,’ I managed to say before collapsing onto the couch.

  I came to myself sometime later, with the bushy face of Doctor Kane hanging over me. ‘It’s all right,’ he was saying gently. ‘It’s all right. You’re going to be all right. Now listen carefully, Maisie. You’re going into hospital; your baby’s on the way. It’s a little early, but you’re going to be all right. You’re going to be all right.’

  I lay in hospital a week, and they were so kind to me, but I seemed to know from the beginning that I was going to lose the baby. When they eventually took him away from me, he had been dead for some little time …

  After I returned home, Gran came every day to see to me. But she left the house before Howard came in. May hadn’t visited me in the hospital, nor did she come and see me at the house. I understood she wasn’t well. And this was true, she wasn’t well; she was so unwell that Howard spent most of his evenings with her.

  For weeks after returning home, I couldn’t pull myself together; my body seemed depleted and my mind in a very low state. If I saw Hamilton at all he was bedraggled, his tail between his legs, his head drooping, no shine to his coat. He was no help to me. And what was worrying me now was that my lip was jerking like it used to.

  It was some time later when I went to see Doctor Kane. He had come to see me on several occasions, but the last time he visited me he said, ‘A walk won’t do you any harm. Pop in next week.’ Poor Doctor Kane, I was to pop in every week for months on end, until he was to become sick of the sight of me and, candidly, I of him …

  On this particular visit, he said to me, ‘Now what I’ve got to tell you is going to be disappointing: you’re made in such a way that you can’t carry babies.’

  ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘My body seems all right to me.’

  ‘Oh, your body’s all right. It isn’t your body really, at least it’s a part of it, it’s your blood.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, it’s your blood.’

  ‘What’s wrong with my blood?’

  ‘You’re what is called Rhesus negative.’

  ‘What?’

  He took a long breath and said, ‘I said you are what is called Rhesus negative.’

  ‘I know what you said, but what does it mean?’

  ‘Well, it’s to do with monkeys.’

  ‘Wh…at?’ As if I were imitating the creature, I rose up from the chair as if about to climb the wall. My whole body was stretched with indignation, until he said, ‘Get off your high horse—’ It was odd how he always connected me up with a horse. ‘It’s an experiment they did during the war with monkeys.’

  ‘And I’ve got the same type of blood?’

  ‘No. Most women have an antigen in their blood which is also in the blood of a Rhesus monkey. You haven’t such an antigen. I don’t know a lot about it, but it does happen in such cases as yours that the blood of the mother and that of the child are not compatible, and so she is unable to carry the baby. Some women have had six, seven, eight miscarriages, trying to carry through, and failed.’

  ‘Monkeys?’

  ‘Don’t take on like that, girl. It’s just a name. I’ve explained to you you’ve got no monkey blood in you. But still’—he gave a short laugh—‘the fact of the presence of these antigens does open up a big question of evolution via the apes. Was there a Garden of Eden? Hell no; I plump for the monkey blood coming down through the ages.’

  ‘I…I won’t be able to have children then?’

  ‘As far as I can see now, my dear’—his voice was soft—‘you would be able to conceive again, but it’s the carrying of them. But you have one consolation, you’re just one of thousands who are in the same boat. Under other circumstances I would suggest adoption, but not in yours, not the way you’re placed.’

  Oh no, he was right. Certainly, there wouldn’t be any adoption the way I was placed.

  ‘How are things, any improvement?’

  ‘I have a room to myself. I don’t know how long it will last.’

  ‘I could have a talk with him. I think I should. You’re in a very poor state of health at present, very low. Tell him I want to see him.’

  ‘I don’t know whether he would come.’

  ‘Well you can tell him and we’ll see.’

  I told him. Surprisingly, he made no comment, and he went to the surgery. But when he returned later that night he came into the study where I was typing. He stood just within the doorway and there was a sneer on his face as he said in that flat toneless way he had when spewing obscenities at me, ‘Monkeys. That explains it. My God, yes, that explains a lot. I always thought you should be in a zoo.’

  When he closed the door, not banging it, just drawing it slowly and softly into its place, I laid my head down in the crook of my arm on top of the machine, and the swelling in my chest burst up through my throat and the tears poured out of my eyes, nose and saliva out
of my mouth, and from that great unfathomed depth of me there emerged a new pain that made me cry out to God and ask Him why He had put me into this world to make me the victim of such people as, first, my mother, and now this man. Wasn’t it enough that He had made me plain to the point of ugliness, besides having deformed me. Why hadn’t He gone the whole hog and made me mental, then I wouldn’t have been aware of my state?

  When I raised my head Hamilton was gazing at me. He didn’t look like himself somehow: he was a horse and yet he wasn’t; the white of his tail seemed to have spread all over him. He said quietly, ‘You’ll get your answer; just work at it.’

  I dried my eyes and, strangely, for the next few days I felt calm inside.

  Then I met Bill.

  I had been to a printer’s on the outskirts of Bog’s End. I found I could get a good quality typing paper cheaper there than I could from an ordinary stationer’s. To get to the building I had to pass along the waterfront. I liked this walk. Before you got to the high dock wall you could glimpse the ships along the quayside, and, too, everything around this quarter seemed to be full of bustle.

  I had bought three reams of paper and was making my way back along by the wall now when I heard the screeching of brakes and above that a pitiful cry of a wounded animal. I swung round and saw, some way behind me along the road, a small lorry had stopped. For a time, nobody got out of it. From where I stood I could see this dark bundle lying in the gutter writhing and whimpering. After I reached it, the man got down from his cab and, looking at me, he said, ‘The damn thing ran right under the wheel. It’s a wonder it wasn’t knocked flat.’ I had put my parcel down on the edge of the pavement and was now bending over the dog, yet afraid to touch it. I liked dogs, although I’d never had one of my own, and, remembering my mother’s warning, never to stroke a stray dog, I stayed my hand. The animal tried to raise itself from the ground, then flopped back again, and from there turned its head and looked at me. It wasn’t a nice looking dog; it had a sharp pointed face and a blunt head, and its dark coat had white patches on it.

  Another voice now joined the driver’s, saying, ‘Oh, it’s that bloody animal, is it? He’s been runnin’ round here for the last three weeks. It’s a wonder he hasn’t caught it afore now. Somebody gettin’ on one of the boats must have dumped it. A bull-terrier he is, isn’t he?’

  A bull-terrier. The name sounded ominous. Yet, as the animal continued to look at me I put my hand down and touched its head, and for a moment it stopped its whimpering.

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’ The voice was from above my head again, and another answered, ‘Knock it on the head. It would be a bloody kindness to knock it on the head, because nobody’s been looking for a lost dog around here. And anyway, they don’t go in for bull-terriers. Whippets more like.’

  ‘You can’t do that.’ I turned to look up at the men. ‘It’s only his foot. It could be attended to.’

  ‘Aye, but who’s going to attend to it?’

  I turned my head and saw that the animal was still looking at me. What would Howard say if I took a beast like this home? Anyway, I couldn’t take it home; it would have to go to a vet first.

  ‘Is there a vet near?’

  The second man answered, ‘Yes, there’s one in Roland Street.’

  I looked at the driver and asked him, ‘Will you take him there?’

  ‘What! Me? Look, I’ve got a job to do.’

  ‘I’m only asking you to carry him for me, or let me ride in your lorry with you. I’ll…I’ll have him on my knee.’

  The two men looked at each other; then the other man said, ‘Well, if you don’t you’ll have to report it, won’t you? It doesn’t matter when it’s a cat, but when it’s a dog I think you’ve got to report it. But if she wants to take over…well, let her.’

  This seemed sense to the lorry driver and so without further words, he stooped down and quite gently lifted the animal from the ground. Then looking at me, he said, ‘I do run into them. By God! I do run into them.’

  I knew he wasn’t meaning running into dogs, but running into misfortunes.

  The other man gave me a hoist up on to the seat, and when the driver put the dog on my knee I was amazed at the weight of him. I also thought it very strange that although he was lying at an angle, he turned his head and kept looking at me. It was as if there and then he had decided that he wasn’t going to let me go.

  When we reached the vet’s the lorry driver helped me down from the cab, placed the dog in my arms again, then drove off without a word.

  When eventually we met the vet, his approach to the problem was that stray dogs were a nuisance; they should be sent to the pound. Did I realise what I was taking on?

  ‘What exactly do you mean?’ I asked, and the reply I got was, ‘This is a stray dog, you say. Are you intending to keep him? If you want his foot seen to, and this will need an operation because the bones are shattered and the ligaments torn and he will be in plaster for some weeks and then need further attention, it is going to cost you money.’

  ‘I’m aware of that,’ I said.

  ‘That’s all right then,’ he said.‘Well, that’s all you can do for now. Just leave your name and address with Miss Fennell, and then come back tomorrow and take him home.’

  I looked at the animal lying on the table. He was quiet now. I said, ‘Is he an old dog?’

  ‘No, no. He’s little more than a pup, I should say. Not quite a year old.’

  ‘Really…that’s nice.’

  He looked at me narrowly, and I, embarrassed, now said, ‘Well, what I mean is, he’s not going to die shortly after the operation then? I…thought he might have been thrown out because he was so old.’

  ‘No, he’s not old; but he’s the runt of the litter I should say.’ My eyes questioned him, and he went on, ‘Legs too short for a bull-terrier and the body much too heavy. There’s been a slip up somewhere, I think. Anyway, there’s one thing certain, miss, he’ll never win any prizes for you.’

  ‘That won’t matter to me. I’ve never won any prizes myself. Good afternoon.’

  Why on earth had I said that?

  As I gave his secretary my name and address, I saw him looking through the top half of the glass door at me. I was in two minds about him: I didn’t know whether I liked him or not. But it didn’t seem to matter. Yet at the same time it did: if he was a nice man, he’d be careful in his treatment of that poor animal; if he wasn’t, and knowing the dog was a stray, he might hash the whole business …

  Mr Biggs turned out to be a nice man, a very nice man. We were to become well acquainted over the coming years.

  It wasn’t until I reached home that I discovered I had left the new packet of typing paper on the kerb.

  I wasn’t going to mention the dog to Howard. It was to be a fait accompli: I’d install him in the house and that would be that…Or would it? But he happened to be at home when I arrived at four o’clock, which was most surprising. I didn’t ask why he was there because, looking at my blood-stained light grey coat, he said, ‘And what’s happened to you?’ in a tone that indicated that he wasn’t interested but would just like to know out of curiosity.

  ‘A dog got run over. I took it to the vet’s.’

  ‘Huh! If you concerned yourself with humans it would be more to the point. May’s ill. But do you care? Oh, no. You go to the rescue of stray dogs. Or sit talking to that moron of a council-house woman.’ Then, turning swiftly from me, he said, ‘I’m bringing May here,’ only to turn swiftly towards me again, and, his arm outstretched, his finger almost touching my face, say, ‘And don’t you put any obstacle in the way. May’s ill. She could die. She’s coming here.’

  I hadn’t seen May for a fortnight; the last occasion only for a few minutes. She had been very quiet, not her usual self. And so I said now, with some concern in my voice, ‘What is the matter with her?’

  I saw him swallow deeply. It was also obvious that he was very worried, and it was a moment before he brought ou
t, ‘Leukemia. She’s got leukemia.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  I had a very guilty feeling as I hurried from the room. I hadn’t realised she had been so ill. I had thought that since the business of the money, she had been putting it on as an excuse for not cooking the meals any more, sort of letting me get on with it, and making a hash of it, as Gran had once said …

  I was shocked at the sight of her when he brought her into the hall. I went up to her and said softly, ‘I…I have your room ready, May.’ And she said, ‘Thank you.’ Her voice was quiet; all her boisterousness seemed to have disappeared.

  Up in the bedroom, when I went to help her undress, he pressed me aside, not roughly, but firmly, saying, ‘I’ll see to her.’ I hesitated and he turned and looked at me and repeated slowly, ‘I’ll see to her.’ And on this I walked out. I thought it was odd.

  But during the next four weeks, which was all she had before she died, I learned that if he loved anybody, it was her. Not once during that time did he go near the bottle room. From when he came in, he fetched and carried and saw to her till he went to bed. During the day my own hands were more than full, for I also had Bill to see to.

  So changed did I find May that, the day after her arrival, I felt I could tell her about Bill, because that’s what I had christened him in my mind, and I asked her if she would mind if I slipped out and brought him home. And she answered quietly, ‘No, of course not. I’m perfectly all right.’

  I was confronted by Bill standing on three legs and what looked like a thick white stick. The plaster cast, the vet said, would have to remain on for some time, but I had to bring him back next week.

  Bill could walk in a dot-and-carry-three fashion. The funny part about it was, he kept stopping and looking back at his leg, then looking up at me, as much to say, what are you going to do about it?