Cotter's England (19 page)

She was astonished. "From your sister's description of you, they could have put a hundred men in a line-up and I should never have picked you."

A pause. Then he said, "You are surprised people torment you. You know them for years and they always torment you. It's the fox under your jacket."

"Ah!"

"If you talk to strangers in a town you learn all kinds of things and they're kind to you. I was invited to Buckingham Palace by a stranger I met in the train."

He gave a curious broken laugh, like a sob. She said nothing.

He continued, "And a horrifying thing happened to me on that occasion. I went to see him. He was some kind of under-butler. I walked in past the sentries and the policemen and the guards and had to begin in the kitchens. I probably began with a potboy. I was passed on to the maids and a housekeeper, I imagine, and then met my friend, who said he would send me up to see the table laid for a state banquet that night, with the gold plate. He took me to a footman and I was passed on and on and we reached a man standing at the foot of some stairs and on and on; and the head butler was very pleasant about it. He wasn't supposed to, but he did. They took me to a door and opened it and there I saw a long table already set with all the crystal, the china and plate on it. The plate was all gold, wonderful to think about, but somehow dead, when there was so much of it. I stood there and then said goodbye to my friend and came out the way I came in. I saw a few of them looking at my lapel but it didn't occur to me to think why. So I came out of the place and into the park and under the trees a Mayflower fell onto me and I looked at it. Then I noticed I was wearing my red star with the hammer and sickle I got in Russia. I suppose they thought it was some sort of order in a civilian department."

She burst into a ringing laugh.

He continued oak-faced, speaking quietly in a low baritone, with his northern burr and inner song, slightly bowed, with his hands clasped on his knees.

"I remember those stairs. I don't like walking downhill; my feet go before me. They slip. I can't get shoes to fit."

"You ought to have them made to order."

"I saw some in a paper yesterday for three pounds. I sent off for them."

"That's not enough to pay."

"I'm not obliged to take them."

"Are you tired? Do you want to be alone?"

He looked at her anxiously, passed his hand down his cheek, "I put up my cotbed and I'm used to it, but it isn't comfortable. There are no sheets. My head falls over the top of it. When I'm worried I sometimes do the contrary, I get farther and farther down under the blankets and I wake up almost suffocated. So my sleep is broken."

He got up and went to the mirror hanging on the wall near the door, opposite the sink.

He came back and explained earnestly, "I'm small and bony, but I'm very fit. I've always been nothing but skin and bone. My father didn't like me because of that. I told him Caesar and Napoleon were little men; but he wanted me to play football. We weren't fed as children. They didn't know enough. I think I should have died once of inanition but for a movie called
Bill Barter's Adventures.
I had a horrifying experience when I was about fourteen. I was riding on the moor on my bike with another boy when I fell off and broke my arm. I didn't go to the emergency ward till next morning; no one seemed to think to tell me. When I got there, I had to wait and there was a man before me, groaning and bowing up and down with pain. My sister Nellie, and my other sister went away for a holiday and I thought they were punishing me, leaving me at home. I had to stay with an aunt who could not look after me, because of her new baby. One day I walked to our house which was shut up, just to look at it and I walked back to my aunt's. It was a long walk and when I got opposite the big general hospital I sat down on a stone wall and felt so feeble and weak that I thought I would die. I thought, I will die right now; why go any farther? A man in the porter's lodge was watching me for quite a time. Then he called out to me. I was afraid but I got up and went over and he held out his hand to me. He had two eggs in it. Take these, he said; go home and cook them and eat them. So I did that and ate them. My aunt came in and said, What is the matter? I said, I feel so weak, I think I am going to die. She said, Here's sixpence, go to the pictures; there's a boy's picture on. I still felt weak and tired, but I went; and somehow the movie turned the tide for me. It was about a boy's adventures. I don't remember it now; but I never wanted to die again."

When Camilla went to the front basement room to do her sewing, he went with her and he sat there, interested in her work, talking, telling her endless tales, "horrifying things," and she listened, smiled. It was easier to work with him there. He asked her nothing about herself or her children. When she went up for lunch, he went too. He went out for a walk but was back for tea and brought something for dinner. Then he took her out for drinks in a pub and when they came back he went over to her rooms with her, smiled at the children but without making up to them; and she sat, smiling, musing, surprised, while he went on with his reminiscences. When her lover Edmund came, Tom went. Her lover was very busy with an exhibition of pictures, his own and others', and even slept on the other side of town at present.

They spent two days in this way. Tom, who had now bought a cheap, second-hand car, was to go to East Anglia the following week to a factory, where he hoped to get the position of works manager.

"Do you think you'll get it? Have you experience?"

"Yes. I had three hundred men under me in the last job and in the job before that about fifty. I gave up one to come and be near Marion; and then I gave up the last one to nurse her."

"I know nothing about England. Here I sit all day, all the year, making clothes and curtains and chair covers."

"You have West End customers."

"Yes. They're nearly all West End. The workers round here all work for West End tailors and dressmakers. Round the corner in Johnson Street are sweatshops for the multiple stores; it's a different trade."

"You work hard, Camilla. Could you take a day off to go with me when I go, and see the country?"

"I could arrange it."

He thought for a while, looking at the tablecloth as if considering a map.

Then he said, "Well, there is Grimes's Graves, in southwest Norfolk. They are flint mines; and about four thousand years old or more. There are about three hundred fifty of them and some of them are lost. I know a flint-knapper there and he prepares the flints just as they were prepared four thousand years ago. It's not a lost art. He introduced me to the caretaker. He showed me how they used to hang axeheads on trees till the handle grew into the axehead. It's a quiet grassy heathland in the middle of a lot of low forest. It's bleak and desolate in winter, but it's lovely in summer. I was just walking there once and I flushed about fifty pheasants. They were sitting there in the grass enjoying themselves. They whirred all round my head."

He laughed. "You ride along. You must keep blowing your horn. The road is thick with grasshoppers. Wild birds and rabbits just sit there, and pheasants stalk across the road in front of you or sit calmly on the fence looking at you. Grimes means something like Peter Grimes perhaps; he's a sprite. And they aren't graves. They did a big trade in flints four thousand years ago and there's a sort of flint track all the way to the river where they shipped to the sea. They dug with antlers and antlers are still there in the mine galleries. Would you like to see that? I don't like to drive alone. I'm not used to it."

She was excited. All her poverty and imprisonment by work was perhaps her own doing. She had never tried to get out of it. So she thought for a moment, studying the quiet man, now fresher looking, younger.

When Nellie returned on Sunday evening Camilla left them together, but in a different mood, as if she had part of him, too. He gave himself so freely.

Later, Nellie, inquisitive, came over to see her.

"I heard you were so good as to talk a little to the poor lad. It's good of you, pet. And where's Edmund?"

"Your brother doesn't seem very sad."

"Ah, pet, he keeps it up before people; but it's an act. It's what the Chinese call face. He's proud. But with me he's different. Now I have to face the night, Camilla, and I don't know if he'll see the morning. There's the awful prospect. But don't think badly of me for saddling you with my family troubles. Where's Edmund?"

"He's away for about a week. He has this exhibition to arrange."

She said excitedly, innocently, "Ah, that's lovely, pet and you'll be going to have a look."

When she recrossed the street, Tom was on the stairs, saying he was going for a ride.

"Where are you going, pet?" said his sister anxiously.

"Just for a ride."

"Let me come with you. We'll have a chat."

He said in the crooning they both used, "No, Nellie, you stay here. I'll be back later."

She asked and asked anxiously, in her thin wailing voice and added, "I'm afraid Marion will be riding with you."

"Perhaps I won't even think. I'll just ride."

She stood at the door, watching him to the corner.

She went in. She told Eliza, who was staying overnight, "He's gone. I don't know if I'll ever see him again. He's gone to talk to the dead."

"Give him time. I think he's quite sane for a recent widower."

"Eh, Eliza, sweetheart, don't say that word: that's a misnomer. No Eliza, he's no widower. He was not married in any sense, legally, physically, mentally, morally. We must deny he had anything; for he had nothing. Fantasies can grow and eat up the brain. He's out there now, speaking to her now, thinking of what they said to each other and begging her to explain. I made him confess everything. The man's a hollow man, he's not a real man, remember that, Eliza; and let us do what we can to save the poor lamenting thing."

Eliza gazed at her uneasily. She was puzzled, but moved by Nellie's upset. They went to the kitchen for the usual pot of tea. Nellie was restless, kept going to the door and eventually went out. She was headed for a pub up the hill.

Tom soon returned. He said smiling, "I just wanted to breathe."

"You're a funny coot," said Eliza.

She began telling him things he did not know about the early Bridgehead years; and he her.

He said, "When I was ten we had a little fox terrier called Doggo. They never would believe me that he was vicious. As soon as we got outside the gate he chased me till I got up on a pile of leaves or dirt and he ran round barking. As soon as he got inside the gate he wagged his tail and turned sweet and peaceful. They thought I made it up."

She told him that Nellie and George had clubbed together to buy her an oak chest because she'd been pleasant about the divorce.

"I didn't like it, that they did it when I agreed. It cost me nothing, not a minute's thought. The chest cost them eight pounds and they couldn't afford it, setting up house. They called me here and presented it to me and told me to stay here, too. It was after the war and I was living in the attic of a house that had been badly bombed. I didn't like living in the house with them. But Nellie insisted."

Tom presently went to bed.

Nellie came restlessly prowling in, "Where's the boy? Where's young Cotter?"

She leaned against the door, looking Eliza over, smoking; and said in a moment, in rather a bullying tone, that she had learned that Camilla was going with Tom to East Anglia for a ride.

"It's good of you, Eliza, pet; aye, it's good of you girls to mother the poor waif. He needs it."

But she was very uneasy, lounged about the house, went to bed and got up.

In the morning, as soon as Camilla came over to her workroom, Nellie went in to see her and asked what day they were going to East Anglia, for the ride. It was to be two days after that, a Wednesday; and Edmund was coming to look after the children. Nellie communed with her cigarette for a while and said, "Talk to him, then, Camilla. You've got the day before you. Bring him to his senses. You're a mother. You've no time for his silly nonsense. I want you to make him see what he's been through and let him see what death is; not a subject for play-acting. It's the end, total extinction, the big question mark. Act the sister to him. But sweetheart, you must understand what he is. He was at a feast of illusion and himself was a ghost eating with a ghoul. You've faced total failure, Camilla: your man left you, you had nowhere to turn and but for your children, you'd have been willing to die, because of the misery, the unsuitableness of life as you see it. You're brave, pet. I admire it. And he's not. He's a child playing with a sunbird, in an empty moldy room. Show him. Let him shiver and shudder before it. I'm bloody tired of his weeping and wailing about a worthless dame who deceived me, tried her smile on me to get him away. I sent her a corsage when I heard she was coming and she had the blasted cheek to come here wearing it and smiling at me and calling me her sister. As if I would have a sister like that!

"Then she went off with him, hid him from me. There he was, eight bloody years, without a thought of me or the poor things at Bridgehead, playing like a child with a doll and, now, I have to hear this trifling trash about his broken heart. He has no heart. He's without a heart. Some vulture took it out of him long ago, a woman of thirty when he was seventeen. And long before that we had faced the facts and I made him see he had no one but me, only me for his life long; and he had admitted it. Then he married one of my best friends; and after that, when that failed, nothing but whims and sensual amusement. Ah, Camilla, the suffering of a sincere and loving heart—that's mine; and the shame to see him what he is."

Nellie had been leaning against the doorpost and knew that Eliza was behind her. She did not mind; it had brought on a deeper melancholy.

But Eliza turned red and hit her on the shoulder, "I'm not going to listen to such lies, Nellie. You don't know what you're saying. Why do you run him down? He's loyal to you. I never met a more loyal soul. He has a true heart. Can't you see you're just a jealous sister? You can't bear him to ever have had anyone but you! That's mean. It's so mean, I canna bear it."