Cotter's England (20 page)

Nellie, smoking, turned round, leaned against the door and said, "Ah, bless you, darling, for your good heart. You pity the poor waif; and I'm grateful. But don't be taken in with his rainbow stories. The women are. He's a great hand with the women, telling his heartbreaking tales."

She spread her arms, took in both women, said, fierce and strong, "Ask him if he has a heart! See what he will say! Ask him what and who he cares for? See what he will say! You don't know yet what a burden I've had all these years, Eliza. I've been the leader and guide of the family and he's been nothing to anyone, not honored a single promise or debt, felt no guilt, no heartbeat. You must forgive me if my bitterness suddenly rises to the surface, Eliza; but I'm tried of the silly flimflam and the shallow corruption of the whole thing."

"I think he's a good decent man and I'll hear nothing against him," said Eliza; and she went off to work, saying abrupt goodbyes. She was quite upset.

Nellie said, "Ah, Camilla, Eliza's a good true soul; there's a heart without corruption. Bless her. She'll always be true working class, not like her big bluffing brother George. What a pity, Camilla, that she never married, didn't become a mother. She's had men, aye; but pitiful little travesties of love they were. There isn't a man good enough for her; and the men don't see pure pearls."

Camilla looked at her, hesitated, and then said, "Don't you remember you told me that Eliza is George's first wife. I do think she's a wonderful woman. Not many would do what she does."

This unbalanced Nellie for a moment. She waved her head, her long earrings, her cigarette, her elbows, her legs, expostulated, exclaimed and in a very sweet voice, kept praising Eliza over and over. Switching dizzily, she told Camilla about the poor pitiful creatures in Bridgehead, with their wasted lives, the frustrated mother and betrayed sister; and in the end Camilla understood that she was excusing herself for Eliza Cook. She forgave her. Nellie with her bright eye cocked, knew when she was forgiven; and at once changed her tone, pleading as if for a very great favor, "He'll have a good long talk with you, with your beautiful common sense and he'll stop talking to her ghost; for her ghost is still here, tearing him away from me. She's upstairs there at night with him. She comes out of that trunk. That's the tragedy of it, that he still takes it for real. And she laughing at him still, a ghostly laugh. I hear it, I hear it."

And Nellie turned to her and laughed a horrible laugh. She startled herself. She paused to. light another cigarette, choking, blowing a cloud to hide her face; and when she could, continued in a gentle voice:

"You will do me this favor? Save me from disillusionment. Let the man coming back with you on Wednesday be a sensible man, who admits it all, defeat and hopelessness and the bitterness; but sanity."

"But I don't know why I should," said Camilla, seriously.

"Won't you do what I ask, love? I know him, poor lad. I know what's best. I don't want him roaming the countryside, footloose and aimless and perhaps in some pub, on some roadside pick up some other harpy, instead of swallowing the bitter pill and facing the lonely road."

"I don't understand why his fate should be loneliness. He likes people."

Camilla was stroking in some fine pleats round the neck of a blouse, and she bent over her work, stroking slowly, delicately.

"He's born to it, sweetheart, aye, it's a sad fate. No wonder he's depressed and acidulous. He has missed the best thing in life, the glory of perfect love. Aye, I understand. But—I can't bear, I won't endure the women who ride him wild, dangling in front of his nose the carrot he can never have."

"Why can't he have it?" asked Camilla, more and more puzzled.

Nellie bent over and wagged her head, "Ah, no, it's a tragedy. The man without a shadow. Aye, my eyes fill with tears. It's not for him, love, wife and child. It's hard to bear. Fate is a wrinkled beldame, a cruel stepmother."

As Camilla had not got her bearings and Nellie sank into reflection, no more was said for a while; when Nellie suddenly got up from the doorstep and said in a businesslike tone, "That's right, then, chick. I leave it to you. You're a sweet waif, bless you."

She gestured elegantly with her cigarette. She went out to the kitchen to wash in the sink and to get a bite before work.

At night on Tuesday, Eliza and Nellie sat in the kitchen and waited; but Tom was home very late.

He slipped in, sat down smiling meekly and apologized to Nellie, "I'm sorry I am late. I was thirsty and went down a street I know near Piccadilly Circus. I saw a sort of café near Wardour Street which I knew in the war, but the door was closed. I rapped and was let in and had something; I don't know whether it was coffee or tea. There was a man there, a pimp and three girls outside on parade. The man studied me and came up and I thought, he thinks I'm a prospect for a girl; but no. He said, Are you superstitious? I don't know what I said. The man said, Because a man dropped dead in that chair, this night last week, that chair you're sitting in. He came in late like you and rapped at the door and he looked like you. I thought perhaps the man was warning me off; but he was dead serious. He pulled out a newspaper nearly a week old and showed me an account of it. We got to talking about superstitions and he said he was superstitious. I told him one time I motored up north, I stopped late at night at a hotel in Doncaster and the woman said to me, You were here last week. I said, No I haven't been this way for months. She said, Well, there's your name in the book and the police were here asking for you. And she showed me, Tom Cotter."

"What did you make of it?" said Eliza.

"I didn't know. I knew a Tom Cotter in the war, but he died. When I came out of this café, I saw a bike trying to take a piece out of a horse and I got to talking to the driver and he told me of a good fried fish shop round there. When I was in the ammonia works, there was a jealous horse, one of a team of two which brought round soft drinks for the canteen. This gelding would edge the mare up onto the pavement and try to take bites out of all the cyclists along the road. I suppose that was a bike that remembered. I used to see this jealous gelding working after hours. I had some sugar for him; but I was careful. He had a laugh in his eye."

Nellie sulked. She thought he was teasing her. She humped over her tea and smoked, looking down into her lap and pretending to think about something. Tom said he was coming along a street in Belsize Park when he passed a well-lighted house he knew was a gambling place.

"I was attracted. I used to gamble a lot."

Eliza smiled, "How much did you gamble?"

"A lot," he said evasively.

"How much?"

He said uneasily, "About six pounds at a time. I spent my money in all sorts of ways. Not on clothes. I should have bought a caravan instead. I could have taken it to some river bank in good game country and gone in for living on fish and game."

He said with a gentle smile, "Only I don't care much for catching and killing things. I'd rather have bread and tea. I used to like blue cheese but I got sick of it."

"What about winter, the floods and the ice?"

"Yes. I could move to higher ground. But it isn't practical. I think the best thing for me is to go in for nursing."

Eliza said, "Oh, no! I did it once. It was awful. You get involved with the patient and it's a nightmare. You'd have to join an association of male nurses, get a certificate. And supposing you had a big patient, a man, with delirium say. He might kill you."

He said huffily, "I'm stronger than I look. I'm very strong."

"Don't do it. If you're alone with someone, it goes wrong. It brings out queer things in people. You never know what will rise from the depths. There was that girl Nellie knew. She roomed with a friend. The mother went to bed and pretended to be ill, so that no one could leave the house. What was your friend's name, Nellie?" said Eliza.

"I don't know, pet," said Nellie.

"You told me about this girl, who had all the bad luck. She roomed with one after the other and each got her claws into her, you said. You remember the letter you read me from her?"

Nellie said, "No, pet, you've got me wrong. I don't know."

Eliza said, "You came over to see me, over in Hampstead. We were sitting on the hill and you told me about this girl you were worried about. She had such bad luck. You said there were a lot of you worried about her. You thought some gray fate was waiting for her."

Nellie said nothing.

"I asked you if she was a lesbian. Or they were."

Nellie muttered, "No, no, pet, no, no."

"I know who it is," said Tom.

Nellie went into a flurry, "Ah, yes, a tragedy there, I'm afraid. No, pet, I don't know about the others, but she wasn't one, she didn't know the word. No, darling."

"Where is she—Lucine?" asked Tom.

"She died."

Tom was upset, "When?"

"I don't know, Tom. Last year. She was living with someone and she got fed up with it all."

"Who was she living with?" asked Tom.

"I don't know, love, don't know at all," muttered Nellie.

Tom leaned back in his chair eyeing her deliberately and shaking the ashes from his cigarette. She seemed to feel it.

She exclaimed, "There was a bloody man in it. She found out he was married and just leading her on; and she couldn't take it."

Tom was upset.

"Why didn't you tell me? I could have stopped it. She used to talk to me."

Nellie turned to him in a fury, "What could you have done with your little smirks and fairy tales? She asked the great question; she got the great rejoinder and she accepted it—something you could never do. She was a woman and she accepted fate. She didn't try to run away from it with a hundred ducks and dives, running in and out—but it's a labyrinth, you can't escape. You'll end in a blind corner whether you like it or not. I won't stand it, Tom Cotter. I'll pay you out for poking fun at what is nearest to me heart."

She got up, lounged out of the room and presently they heard a bottle being uncorked and the liquid running.

Eliza exclaimed, "Nellie's a thrilling woman! She can make you see things her way, though you know it wasn't so. I used to think there was a lot of gimcrack and phony in her make-up, too much of the old man. She's always imitating him and he was a grand phony. But you cannot blame the old Kipling soldier for the character they put on him. And now he's gone, strike me pink, if she isn't more like him than before. Here I am sitting and tearing people to pieces like a Bridgehead back-kitchen wife. Aye, but he wasn't fair to you, Tom, the old soldier."

"He wasn't fair to her either. She suffered because he told her she was a scarecrow. She never got over her love for him till she met—till George."

But the next morning when Camilla and Tom started out, Nellie was in excellent humor. George was coming home at the end of the week to stay for a few weeks.

It was a fresh morning. They started off at seven-thirty to get to Norwich near which town Tom was to be interviewed by the managers of a plastics firm. Camilla sat still with the fresh-faced young man beside her telling her his anecdotes; she was glad to be away. Marion's death was mentioned several times but in an unexpected way.

"My girl had great courage. She didn't want to lose me and we made an unfair agreement."

"Do you think it was unfair?"

"Because she had to and I hadn't. And when it was over, I felt the passion of a boy. I felt quite new as if I had never tasted life at all; it was all to come. I still feel it. It was her death that waked me up to real passion. I burned for it. I'm living for it now."

He slowly raised the lids over his large eyes and stared unblinking in his unnatural way at her. He bent his mouth in a red bow and smiled, "Of course, I had three months' holiday from work and in the country, well fed, in an orchard, you see."

"You must find a friend," said Camilla, about to laugh.

Tom said placidly, "I have friends. I went out with one on Saturday. She does not get much out of life. They're poor and I took her out with her little boy, but the serpent raised its head and I thought she was too young and would suffer. Young women get caught and suffer. I am sure I will find a woman. I am like an adolescent—I can only think about the woman I am going to love and I'm excited about her, wondering."

She was silent, smiling.

"That young woman was awkward and cold and I became cold. I felt nothing for her, so I took her home and I came home."

"I don't like to think of poor Nellie waiting for us until midnight tonight. She is so pale. She is so worried about you."

He smiled ironically, "She is afraid I might make a run for paradise with a woman. Nellie would not like me to get from under her paws so fast. She wants to lick up every last drop. I don't take her seriously."

"Don't you think England is spectral? I am from a warmer place. The light is more golden and red."

"Yes, you can be sitting at tea, with the fire blazing away and the curtains drawn and no matter where you are, it comes over you: your hair begins to bristle."

"You're not a Christian people at all. Like the Italians, you're a very old people.
Christ stopped at Eboli.
Christ didn't come here at all."

Tom said, "I went to Stonehenge. I was there at sunset and it was just like the pictures. I was disappointed. The only interesting thing was a circle of trees on the hill, growing in the form of Stonehenge and I've seen that before too. I don't know what it means. I just sat down in the middle of the stones in the circle and was looking down the hill at the camp not far away. You could see the soldiers. The sun went down and suddenly I felt something awful. I felt some horror was coming in. I took to my heels. If you sit in a grassy hollow and can't see a house, you begin to think of the people who were there thousands of years ago; and you feel them there. You can't stand it."

He continued with a faint sound, like a distant sound of laughing coming over a hill in puffs, "I had a horrifying experience. I was in Scotland. Gone on a trip to Carlyle's country. Go up to the moors, he said. It was a spring day, the sun shining and no wind. I was walking across country taking care because of marshy spots and I was heading for a little town on the map. I came into a little valley, a depression, without anything in it, a few grasses and stones and mostly moss and I could see nothing but the light blue sky. It was springy turf and easy going but I began to feel scared. With each step I took I knew there was something wrong. I looked round everywhere but saw nothing. I was glad to get out of it. In the town they told me that valley is full of asps; it is the only one anywhere around with asps. On the same trip I was crossing some fields with stone fences. There was a bush on the other side of a low stone fence and I was attracted by it. I went that way. I was just putting my leg over when I saw four or five stoats standing on the other side of the bush, as if they were talking something over. I knew they were dangerous, and attack people in lonely places. They saw me and they all turned towards me. I turned and ran for my life and when I looked back the stoats were all coming over the fence; one was over. I ran for my life. I am a good runner. I was a good footballer."