Cotter's England (30 page)

George bellowed with laughter. "But you sit at table with every ex-I.R.A. sellout, who'll hand you a dishful of workman romance. Ah, the British sods, the murderers of the Irish people: what can ye do? Ye must write tripe to fill your unworthy belly and ye must write the tripe they want, the poor beggarly Sassenachs living on king and country, for they know no better. I'm no traitor, I'm just an Englishman who wants to represent his country abroad. In the old days it was the young lords and the promising young scholars and now it's the worker from Blaydon way."

"Why, Nellie, must we shoot the bolts on our own jail-door? He's right. The rich still go abroad: it's only the poor that stay. It's a class law," said Bob, looking pinpoints at Nellie through her pebbles.

"Ah, don't flatter the sod," cried Nellie: "ye can't give him enough: he'll be hungry for more, whatever ye say. It's a fine figure, the self-elected Atlas holding up England abroad. It's not for the wine then you're going? It's for your principles, ye sod? It's a damn disgrace. Deserting your country for the sake of a meal."

"Why doesn't my country offer me a square meal?" said George angrily. "I'm a big man, I'm not a half-starved sparrow. I've worked all my life: I've fought for my class. It's a rule in demonstrations that after you've got in some good hits, you step aside or get off to some other area, you don't waste yourself: you keep yourself so you're there next time."

"I'd a damned sight rather waste myself than make a show of myself as a runaway." But Nellie couldn't find words bad enough to characterize this excuse.

Bob said it was a time when not only individuals but masses of people were driven from their countries or sought refuge for their own sakes in other countries: there seemed to be no end to it, then.

But Nellie repeated that George was hauling down the flag, betraying his class and turning his back on his life of struggle.

"If all Englishmen had stayed home, true to their dear sod," George said with irony, "I should like to know where the Empire would have come from, that's kept us in sugar and tea? We don't grow it ourselves, that I know of."

"You're avoiding the personal point with your grand comparisons," said Nellie.

"And you're trying to drag everything down to the personal plane like you," shouted George. George was angry. "And you're helping them. You're helping your lords and masters by talking a lot of frill about patriotism. Whose country is it? Whose pound sterling is it? Whose indebtedness is it? Whose empire is it? Whose revenues are they? Am I going to lose my eyes and hair and get to be like your Uncle Sime, old scrap nobody wants, and everyone spits on, to save their England? Or to save Cotters' England?"

"What do you mean by Cotters' England?" she cried out. "What's wrong with my England?"

"The England of the depressed that starved you all to wraiths, gave Eliza TB, sent your sister into the Home, got your old mother into bed with malnutrition, and is trying it on with me, too, getting at my health. I never had an ache or pain in my life: I beat their England. I lived through the unemployment, the starvation, the war, I knocked out a few bloody eyes and I got me fists skinned a few times, that's all I ever got: and now I'm going to live for my country. You stay here and die in it. Don't you want to change it? Or is it only the beer-soaked sawdust of bohemia you love? The dirt and sweat of the tear-stained bachelor's bedroom; Bridgehead in all its glory? You don't know what you're fighting for. To change Cotters' England. Wasn't that what drove you on? Or just ragged rebellion?"

"You're a bloody Cook's Tours, that's all you are," said Nellie; "you've got your spoon into the fleshpots; dear old Bob introduced you to it without knowing what it would do to you, it was the grand maternal impulse in the dear old elf; and now the smell of the ragout is all you can think of."

George was irate and humiliated to be slanged so before another woman. He got up, stretched, turned to Bob smiling, under the light, a magnificently built middle-aged man, tall, broad, brass-faced, brass-haired, very red now; and in the courteous and even unctuous manner he could assume, he said he must go to call on Mrs. McMahon who had been lovely to him and written such kind letters.

Nellie was leaning against the mantelpiece, her arms akimbo, the glass held on her hip, her hair loosed from its turban and her bony cheeks caved in. She had lost weight again and seemed only snowy skin and long bone. She looked at the grate, threw the end of her cigarette into it, looked up at George, dashed tears from her eyelashes and said, "Me sun has set." She looked at Bob and remarked, "There's only selfishness there, the man's heartless: he's leaving me."

"Well, I'm not leaving you till I can get my plane ticket," said George. "Relax, I'm going out. Sorry Bob; I'll see you soon." He went out, whistling, banged the door.

"You see," said Nellie, "his fine, rough, common sense? The man's hard as steel. Now he's going to torment Gwen McMahon, a poor dame who thinks his love is to her, when it was only to his pots and carpets." She sank into a chair and lighted another cigarette. "Give me a glass of brandy, Bob. Ah, sweetheart, I'm not very brave, I'm afraid. Give me a fortnight and I'll swim to the surface. And I am going to fight for him, though I hate to fight. I'm weak. I don't like to fight with my sweethearts." She burst into tears. "No one is really for me. They all think he is going to leave me. I've always known it myself. And when I stand up to him, it's with terror. I'm afraid of that bald blind look of total Philistine intolerance. He hasn't been making love to you, Bob?" she said in a weak voice.

"No, he's not my sort," croaked Bob.

Nellie hardly listened to the answer. She went on, shaking out her ashes, "I'll not sleep tonight, either way. And for once he must stay up with me. Ah, darling, love's an incurable disease, and I've got a bad case. The bugger's got me beat: but you'll see me fighting a grand retreat. You're staying the night, sweetheart? Ah, do, pet: but you know you're always expected."

When George returned, Nellie said, "You can put on your pajamas, George, but you're not going to get any sleep. You've had enough sleep at your desk in Rome, me fine lad. You're going to have it out with me: I'm going to pull the woman act. You're not deserting me without a whimper, I'm not going to be the heroine. I'm going to fight for you."

George wore a reflective smile. He sat down and said, "Where's Bob?"

"Bob's upstairs: she's going to bed."

"I feel like a cup of tea with Bob," said George, who seemed thoughtful and mild.

"No, pet, I'll make it and we'll drink the pot out."

She brought it in presently and found George halfdressed. She sat down opposite and said sweetly, "George, when I married you, I looked upon you as the glory and success of my life, sweetheart, my laurel wreath." She implored him, "George, are you going off to leave me lonely, a wandering woman of forty, fighting by myself?"

"There's a hole in my right sock again," said George, looking at his foot. "It's the toe I stubbed on the table. The doctor said, That'll never grow straight again: you'll have it for the rest of your life. How did he know that at once?"

"I've darned your others: you've got fresh."

"It stops me from going barefoot or wearing sandals," said George, "women used to admire my feet."

"Admired your feet now," cried Nellie, "you beggarly provocateur!"

"Well, if I'm in for it, I may as well enjoy myself," said George.

"I intend to run you ragged, you bugger," said Nellie.

George walked up and down for a while. She tormented him. The bed invited his glowing body over which the hot dusk and lethargy had already come. Her ability to tease and stir was the hold she had over him. Once, too, he had thought her very beautiful in a unique way, strange, shaking with mysterious bells and corollas like an oriental tree, shivering with sunstreaks, racing with windrips from within. He still saw these almost invisible movements in her. His eyes were closing and her darings and trillings, her ingenuous and disingenuous ways, lovely voice and queer oaths, all the practiced art came to him, blew round him, lulled him and made him laugh: and then she would wake him up with a buffet, with sting and roaring in his eyes and ears. He laughed, shouted, sulked and falsely snored; and he did sleep, too.

"I'll give it to you," she cried. She made pots of tea; the night wore away.

At last he said, "I'm getting out of here. I'm going to sleep upstairs!"

"There's nowhere to sleep—Bob's in one room, Johnny's got another reserved for her and Eliza has hers. Caroline's in the attic. You can't go there."

George went out into the backyard where the cool early morning air woke him. There was an immense beach of sky to the east on which were thousands of little sand-colored clouds and the light blue air was swimming off it: and yet it was only half past three. Bob had said, "You must take care of Nellie, it is your duty: she is going to pieces, her moral and mental health is going." What moral health? George had laughed at this, "Nellie always was a bohemian. She can't be shipwrecked in Bohemia."

Bob was herself a bohemian: "What's wrong with Bohemia?"

"I couldn't stand it," George had said; "I hate it."

"It's the way out for many people, it's the way they pick up an education."

"Yes, but Nellie's a prisoner of Bohemia. She won't grow. When I met her she was in it and promised to get out: she never got out."

"Take her with you," said Bob, "and she'll have to get out. Take her away from the weeds growing over the ruins. Even Nellie will have to change.

"If I only thought she could grow—" But George didn't think so. She not only wanted to stay in Cotters' England, or Bohemia as he saw it, but she wanted him to stay there, too. "It's like asking someone to stay in a bad place in fairyland: I'm no fairy." George had thought as he said it and caught Bob's gimlet glance, that Bob looked very like a bad fairy.

Now when he came inside to Nellie, he said, grinning, "The roof looks sunken. Let it fall in and even you will see I can't stay."

"I'd love it if it were only a heap of bricks and rags," said Nellie. "People lived in such places in the blitz, and lived through it and are Englishmen today."

George laughed. "She's hopeless! By the way, Nell," he said sitting down and taking a pull at the fresh pot of tea, "who's this friend of yours, Caroline? There's an attractive woman."

Nellie was quiet for a while, looking at the tea table and swinging a foot, gentle and earnest looking.

George got up and began sorting books again. "I'll sell the Italian dictionary," he said, "now I won't have to learn that; I wasn't good at it. I had a lovely girl to teach me, too. You should have seen the old wolf in the pension when I brought her in. He told the boys at the table, You should see what the Englishman picked out,
bellissima ragazza!
She was a University graduate, a doctor, and too timid to name a price for her lessons. She said I could name the price at the end of the first series. She lived with her family in the new flat houses that were put up after the war and she was rather ashamed of them, because workmen lived in them too. At first I went to a class and in front of us, all middle-aged people, was one of the most beautiful women in the world, a glorious deep-limbed blonde, her flesh just flowed from her waist to her feet, and her feet only touched the ground gently. Her hair curled and flowed on her shoulders: she had long flowing cheeks and neck. She was writing simple things on the board and I thought she was learning her lesson before the teacher came. Who is the teacher, I asked her. I was in the front row. I am the teacheress, she said. She had no stockings. She came to teach me privately and we had conversations at which I was no good, but I asked her questions. She told me she can't marry because she has no dowry. She is middle class and cannot marry a worker. She didn't seem to think the young men were cads: she didn't want to reform them. I said to her, What a shame! I couldn't tell her she was so beautiful that it seemed to me she'd only have to walk down the street in any capital in the world and have men at her feet: for there she was in Rome where they have a sense of beauty. And I couldn't say the words to her: she was too glorious, not merely beautiful. I looked at her and felt the air rushing down my nose and throat; I couldn't get any words out. I worked very hard for her. I never tried to make her. I never made her a compliment. I couldn't. I felt ashamed for men. You know how the young Italians walk about all the time in Rome, up and down, doing nothing. She told me they are waiting for a dowry. When I had to leave just now, I asked her how much and she timidly named a price for the whole series of lessons which was just enough for one pair of nylon stockings. I gave her twice that; I couldn't give her more. She asked me if I would drop her a postcard. She said she knew I was married; but just to get a postcard sometimes from an acquaintance. She said she was so lonely. She was a teacher. She had to teach Americans and refugees: they made silly talk, rough camp gallantries with her. She would just pass it over."

"She seems to have made a hit," said Nellie dryly, but ruminating.

"You can't believe that a woman can be so beautiful that you are very far from thinking of her for yourself," said George, looking at Nellie loftily.

"Yes, I can see she was," said Nellie, mildly.

"If you fell for a woman like that, you would be under for life; I would be a different man. It would be a way of having a new life and being someone else, of course," said George thoughtfully. "I couldn't love her. She is too good for me: she is better than me."

"I wish I had a record of those words," said Nellie unwinding her legs, smoking and looking at George, "because no one will ever believe you said them. I like you, pet: you're a good man. If travel can do that for George Cook, it can do anything. I wish I knew your—what was her name?"

"La bellissima ragazza,"
said George, smiling loftily. Nellie flushed. George smiled, "In the pension they wondered how the devil I picked out a girl like that. Just my luck. An accident. I'm lucky with women."