A Kind Man (5 page)

But from the doorway she said, ‘She’s very bonny, Eve.’

They left soon after, the boys wailing in protest. Miriam did not come back upstairs.

‘I don’t know,’ Tommy said, taking her teacup away. He touched his daughter’s soft hair wonderingly with the back of his finger as he passed.

Eve did not tell him. Miriam would do nothing, it had been a sudden despairing moment, but she surely would not do anything. Yet she had barely said one pleasant word, not admired the baby, nor given her sister a word of praise, which seemed to Eve a sad, bitter thing.

LATER THAT
year they started laying off men, first in the coach and next in the brickworks and after that the closures spread to the mills. A dozen went, then fifty, then half. John Bullard was one of the early ones to go and by then he and Miriam had four boys and no money coming in. Vera Gooch had a little set by and helped them. Tommy, whose wages were still good, called in and left a shilling every time in the teacup on the sideboard, not wanting to be discovered or to put them to shame. The whole town seemed to be sliding into a pit of despair, though people tried to put on brave faces and talk one another round, the women at their doors, the men on the street corners or, if they had a few pence, in the public houses and their own clubs. It was no worse here than in most places.

‘When is it coming to us?’ Eve asked. Jeannie Eliza was pulling herself along the rug to try and reach the little stray cat which had come in one night from a hailstorm and never left. ‘We can’t always be in luck.’

Though the printworks had plenty on still and Tommy even did extra hours because he was one of the most skilled men, he knew how the machines ran and could save a fortune because in his hands they never broke down.

But he only told her not to fret and picked up the baby to take her out and show her the rabbit before he locked it up. He carried her as often as he could, she was up and in his arms the moment he got in unless she was asleep, and when she was fretful, which was rarely enough, he got out the fiddle and played her a soft tune, or spoke to her, old rhymes and tales he remembered from his own childhood, and she watched him out of dark blue eyes.

That was a dreadful winter, with the granite-grey church setting up trestle tables in the porch and serving soup and bread and cheese and having long queues, the Baptist chapel giving out shoes and warm scarves to families with children. No one could think ahead to Christmas.

John Bullard was goaded by Miriam into joining the line of men looking for work and after a few
weeks, and to everyone’s disbelief, he found it. He had stayed at school a year longer than most and he was presentable and spoke well, and he drove a car. He was employed on the smallest retaining wage, the rest being commission, to travel four or five counties selling light fittings, shades and lamps and ornamental pendants, to smart stores, with a cheap range for small ironmongers. He still had his shiny wedding suit and collar, and best shoes. They came out and Miriam dabbed over them with white spirit whose fumes made her boys sick. But the suit came up well. Boxes of samples were delivered and had to be locked into the car out of reach of the boys. He left and did not know when he would be back, and Miriam settled into her chair and closed her eyes, as the sound of the engine died away, and felt peace and a sense of safety, having herself to herself. Michael and Clive were at school, Arthur George played in the yard all day, and Neville was a sleeper, a huge, bald, easily satisfied baby.

Perhaps that could be the last of it, somehow, she thought, and because the sun was shining that morning, stood on a chair to unhook the kitchen curtains and set them in a sink full of soapy water. It turned greasy grey after a few minutes. She was glad no one else was there to see it, her mother, who would have remarked, and Eve who kept a neat, clean house
and would notice but say nothing. Eve’s silence was the worst. Miriam had always, and quite without reason, felt harshly judged by her sister.

Later, she took Neville out in his pram, Arthur George sitting on the front, and by then the sun had long gone and the streets were darkened under heavy cloud. The whole town felt like a place struck down by some terrible affliction or contagious disease. No one smiled. People kept their eyes down and no longer made jokes to one another. Men hung about.

For the first time in her life, because of having a man with a car and work, Miriam felt superior. He came home every three weeks, sometimes looking downcast, having sold very little, once or twice buoyant, having taken orders. His pay was poor and the commission from the good weeks took a long time to reach him so that money was even more of a struggle and twice Miriam had to ask her mother to help out. Tommy came by and brought this or that, usually vegetables from the garden or a tin of cakes and biscuits Eve or he had made, and usually he left money in the teacup on the sideboard, saying nothing.

Miriam was alone with the boys and all of them asleep the night that the bangs came on the front door, waking her into a heart-pounding fright so that she was up and down without even a cardigan round her.

The door had been battered by Robbie Prentice, the six foot tall lad who lived with his family in Water Street.

Vera was dead, he said. His mother had heard a crash and then a silence so terrible she had got Robbie to break in.

‘Go to Eve,’ Miriam said, starting to shake. ‘Have you called the doctor? Have you called the ambulance? Robbie, please will you go and fetch Eve? I’ve four children, I can’t go.’

It was Tommy who came, of course, running all the way beside Robbie through the dark and going to the phone box to make the calls, arrange things, stay with Vera until the doctor was there. No one could have done anything. She had not died falling but had had a stroke as she was on the top landing and that had caused her to topple down the stairs.

It was the first time Miriam had had any experience of death and she shied away from it, not wanting to see her mother, using the children as an excuse.

But Eve went, leaving Jeannie Eliza next door, where Robbie carried her into the garden and swung her about and showed her the pigeons cooing softly in their loft. He said afterwards that she had gone quite still in his arms, her head to one side, listening.

Tommy went with Eve.

So that is death, she thought. Her mother looked
younger and somehow bland, all the character smoothed out of her face and as if she were an infinite distance away. She had always shown what she felt, anger or sadness, laughter and tears had been there for you to see. Now, she was expressionless. You could not read her.

Eve did not feel sorrow. She felt nothing. If she was to remember her mother, or to miss her, it would not be here or now.

The house had to be cleared, but the landlord was accommodating, they could take as long as they needed, he said, so that it was more than a week later that she and Miriam went together. Eve was there first, and opening the front door and hearing the silence, she felt her throat tighten, because her mother should have called out or come from the kitchen to greet her and she did not. There was a hollowness at the heart of it.

She wandered around, touching this or that, looking into her mother’s bedroom at the white crocheted cover on the tightly made bed, and her own old room, almost bare because she had taken most things with her to her married home.

‘Eve?’

‘Up here.’

Miriam came up heavily, like an old woman climbing the stairs. She was expecting her fifth child
now and because her muscles were slack as loosened ropes, showed further on than she was.

‘What have you taken?’

‘Taken? I’ve taken nothing.’

‘There’s plenty I could do with. What do you need?’

There seemed little enough in their old home to covet.

‘I’d only like one or two bits of china,’ Eve said. ‘And the chiming clock.’

‘You’ve a kitchen full of china.’

‘Then have it. It doesn’t matter, Miriam.’

The clock would be enough. The Westminster chimes had measured out her childhood and her growing up.

Miriam opened drawers and pulled things out, set them on the table, riffled through linen and spoons.

‘There’s the furniture,’ Eve said, looking round. Neither of them had room for any of it.

‘I want this table and the chairs in the front room. The boys have jumped ours to bits.’

Miriam ran her hand over the cold range. But that went with the house.

‘John’s been laid off,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t getting the orders.’

Eve understood at last.

‘Just the clock,’ she said. ‘You can sell up the rest. I’ve no need of any. You sell it, Miriam.’

SO THAT
was death, she had thought, and remembered how she had felt so little, looking down at her mother. Death. But of course then she had known nothing.

It was late April, a cold spring and the plum blossom barely out, the hedges not yet pricking green. Tommy had whitewashed the kitchen and the paint smelled damp and chalky. She had washed all her pieces of china in the sink, with Jeannie Eliza standing beside her on a chair and dabbing her fingers into the suds.

‘We’ll finish these off and go for a walk a little way,’ Eve had said and started to rinse and dry the jugs and teacups, saucers and bowls, but Jeannie had climbed down from the chair and wandered off into the other room. When she went to fetch her, the child was in Tommy’s chair, curled asleep on the cushion.
Eve waited for an hour and then woke her, though by then the sky was curded with heavy grey cloud and they would not be able to walk far.

The china looked fine, gleaming even in the dull light. She wanted someone there to admire it with her. Tommy would but only if she drew his attention to it and then he would say, ‘That looks grand,’ just to please her.

She went to stir the child and saw that she was flushed. Her skin felt hot. Let her sleep then. Eve made tea. Rearranged the china again. Thought they would have baked potatoes with their cold meat that night.

Rain pattered against the window.

Jeannie did not wake until just before Tommy came in, soaked to the skin. He had to go and change clothes and brought the wet ones down to put on the airer in front of the range.

‘She’s not right,’ Eve said.

‘Colds. Everyone has them. It’s so changeable.’

He knelt beside his daughter and touched her cheek. Frowned.

‘Red hot.’

‘Should I get her into her bed?’

‘Sponge her with tepid water. It’s not good to be so hot.’

Jeannie woke and her eyes were too bright. The heat came off her from a foot away.

‘No,’ she said, and tried to push her face into the cushion, turning it from the light.

At seven, Tommy went next door for Mary.

‘Jeannie?’ she said. But Jeannie cried out and pushed her head further into the cushion.

‘She loves you,’ Eve said, ‘she doesn’t mean it. She loves you, Mary.’

‘Maybe get the doctor?’

Tommy stayed only long enough to put on his boots and waterproof. The rushing sound of the rain came into the house as he opened the door. Mary waited with Eve. They said nothing, only listened to the rain on the roof and the child’s laboured breathing.

It was an hour, a hundred hours, a lifetime, of the rain drumming and the wind howling and the waiting, nothing said. Mary made tea. Jeannie turned her head restlessly and once or twice her limbs jerked in a sudden spasm, before she went limp and still again.

Eve sat looking at her. Jeannie was dark-haired and not very big for her age but she had never been ill other than having the usual infant teething problems. She was like Tommy, quiet but alert, and had a natural kindness about her that was his own mark. Now, the silken skin of her face seemed parchment-thin, although she was still flushed, and her eyes were sunken down. When she opened them it was as if she were confused, not knowing where she was but
clutching at Eve’s hand and for a second gripping it, before she lost strength again. Her eyebrows were fair, hardly there against the skin but her nose was already defined and her mouth wide. It had been possible from the day of her birth to see what she would look like later.

They had had joy of her from that first day and the joy had increased with every small change and growth, her look, her quietness, the way she watched them, the smile on the wide mouth, her laughter, which came only sometimes but when it did, pealed out so that Mary said she could hear it next door and that it made her laugh too.

Never since the day of her birth had Eve looked at her daughter in the way she did now, in a new amazement that she should exist at all and that she should have such miraculous beauty and be theirs, made of flesh and blood, skin and bone, and so infinitely precious. She did not know if the child was in pain but certainly she was in distress and if she could have taken that on herself she would have done so in an instant. What could be eased for her by the doctor or, if she was sent there, by the hospital, she had no idea, but that it would be done she did not doubt. It was the waiting that ate into her, the waiting, the helplessness, the lack of knowledge or skill to do more than touch and speak softly.