Cotter's England (34 page)

He looked at her in the mirror, quite seriously and turned to her,

"Do you like me?"

"Oh, yes. I like you very much. As a kind of love."

Joy filled his face, "I'll do anything for you. So would anyone."

When they went out for a drink, he was manly and free as if they were now united and he was a man. He shouted across the park, with his extraordinary voice, people turned round. "I am going to keep that job at Blackstone. You decided me. I am going to get married."

He smiled at her and looked at her arms and breasts as if he knew his head and arms were still lying there. They sat down on the heath, looking at a distant view; then turned inwards.

He said romantically, "You would have made a good mother."

"I like children."

He understood that for the first time she felt that she was not a woman, she had no children. He was delighted: he was fulfilled. It was as if a child had come to her and said, Why haven't you me? He was the child. He was happy at all that had happened and took her home, kissed her at the door, came back, kissed her again; and made off.

He had a long hasty stride, the stride of a tall man; his long thin muscular body bent forward. At the corner he turned with a smile and waved, crossed the street and at that corner smiled and waved. The smile ran down the folds of his face, spread over it: the smile of a happy confident man.

When he was round the corner he strode fast; but tears came into his eyes as he thought of his loneliness. Frida's husband would be home in a day or two: she had nothing to do but wait for him. She felt nothing real as Tom did; she felt no loneliness, did not know what the thing meant; and women did not; they had only to wait. It was Nellie in her desperation, her gallant attempt to be something she was not, that was closest to him. He passed a mother in the side street, with two children. She was about nineteen, her long fair hair was arranged like a cape, a shortcut Lady Godiva: she had high-heeled white shoes for dancing, banana legs, a short white spongy skirt and a long red-blue silk shirt over it, a dizzying pattern. She looked like the wildest dancehall youngster; but there she was married and complete. I wish I were a woman: life would be easy."

But he was proud of being a man. Perhaps he ought to marry a woman with children, like Camilla. He always said that a man with children, who shammed devotion, was a defeated man; it was no fulfillment for a man.

He would go and see Camilla. The children were away visiting the grandfather. She hoped Edmund would marry her when she was free. The grandfather always seemed to stand in the way. There was even a hint—and he had seen Camilla in very strange moods. "I don't want the grandfather to give us a home; there would be too many strings." Yet she was attracted. I could save her from that, thought Tom. But he wanted a woman of his own; and to tie the woman up, a man had to have her child. Weak women—liking him, but not enough; wanting strings on several men; naturally unstable.

There was one woman he could marry: Caroline, and she was younger than himself. He was near home now and determined to go up and ask her to marry him; clinch the matter before Nellie could put in her oar.

"You are so good, so kind; there's no one like you," Caroline had said.

But he would prove he was a lover, too; a real lover, a man, firm and aggressive. He reached the Cooks' house and went upstairs. At the turn of the staircase he looked across and saw Camilla at her window opposite. He hesitated; then went on.

Caroline, with her loose light brown hair over the pillow, her arms open and her breasts almost uncovered, was lying in bed, looking sick. She didn't know what was the matter. She felt miserable and restless; she had no strength. She couldn't get up to make soup or tea.

"You have a temperature! I'll get the doctor!"

Nellie was over at the hospital: she had received an emergency call: her friend was on the danger list. Her Southwark friend had said Nellie was her married sister. Tom called the doctor, stood about quietly; Caroline went to sleep. Nellie came in, at last, in a very black mood, so he left her to herself. When the doctor came, Tom went out for the medicine; came back, tended Caroline, and went downstairs for food for her. He brought it back, fed her and gave her the sweet shadowy comforting look he had given other sick ones. He was joyful; and made up his mind to ask her as soon as she was a little better. He would give her a new life. He would have to find a place in Blackstone first. Things could happen; he could decide to come to London. Should he do so? Avoid the dull, ignorant life of the country town, which was proud of its decline? "We've been going downhill in Blackstone since the year one thousand." And all around were the buried roads and ramparts, the abbey walls weathered to bogeys in the wild winds of the piney lands; a miserable place in winter.

The "temptations" of London would not matter if he were married. But the woman? Once a woman married she became unsettled: so there must be a child.

"Well, I can give her a child; I know that."

He sat there, delighted to be united with her in the sickroom silence, and thought now about Nellie. Angry with him for coming downstairs so tardily, after her return, perhaps, she had given him a gruff hello. She had on her blackest face and she was wiping away tears. No doubt, some letter from George. Perhaps she would be pleased that he was taking Caroline away, no longer be open to all those temptations.

"She is right to worry about me."

Caroline could work at first: there would be money for Bridgehead.

Downstairs, there had been a discussion. "When are you going off, Tom? You won't be coming down for the weekends for a while, will you?"

"I'll be coming down, Nell; but I'll bring my own fodder, ducks, geese or pheasants. All I have to do is chalk up on the board,
The engineer wants a brace of pheasants,
or ducks maybe, and they turn up. Where they are got is not for me to ask. Nearly every one of my workers is off the feudal estate."

He laughed.

She said briefly, "We have no one here to cook birds of that sort. Gwen McMahon never saw a bird in her life, but a chicken to take over to the priest."

He volunteered, "I'll cook them. I'll have enough for you and Camilla and Caroline."

She said earnestly, "Now, Tom, I want your solemn promise that when I'm away on this Labour Party conference, you'll keep away from them: you'll do no mischief-making with Caroline and Camilla."

He laughed, "Oh, I can easily do that. I am going to ask Caroline to marry me. I think she'll say yes. I came here for that this afternoon: but she's ill. It won't do now."

She said violently, "You'll do no such thing. Do you want to cut her mind to pieces with such rubbish? She can't understand. This is her weakness. I foresaw some such tripe. I've arranged for her to go away and stay with someone reliable, a friend of mine, while I'm away. Keep away from her. I won't let her backslide now."

"When she's my wife, you won't have to trouble. I'll take care of her health."

She said rudely, "I won't tolerate it. So that's where you were? Talking spoony to her. I'm going straight up there now. Behind my back, under my nose, it's the same story. I'll undo your nonsense at once."

But he said she was asleep, she had influenza, was weak, and to have a future with him would make her happy; if Nellie started her nonsense he'd be very angry.

"What do you mean by my nonsense?" she said indignantly.

"Now I'm taking a walk, Nellie, and I'm coming back to look after her. I won't ask her now; but it's on the record; and I'll ask her next weekend. It's settled. You know when I mean a thing."

Nellie, sitting twisted at the table, smoked and stared at him; "You mean, then, that it's all meant nothing to ye, all I've said? You're going on with your trouble-making? You're not going to do your duty by Bridgehead?"

He stood, looking at her calmly, waiting for her remonstrances. To all she said, he smiled; and repeated he was going out for his walk and would be back.

"And perhaps, in view of what you've said, Nellie, I'll ask her tonight. I'll get it settled. I don't want any of your counterplots!"

She burst out indignantly: she was honest and fair, the only honest one that she knew in the world. There was another one —she paused; she got up and turning her back went to the fireplace, where she stuck her shoe into the empty grate and looked down.

Then she turned back, lifted her head proudly and said, "She's just died, Venna, me true sister. The world's a blackguard. I see nothing else. The vultures got her. Oh, Tom, if only I could get them. If only—oh, Tom. And ye said counterplot. What counterplot is there to beat them? Go away, go out, I'll stay here till me feelings fly screeching up the chimney and I wish I could fly with them."

"Let me stay with you, Cushie. You won't see me: I'll be in the other room."

She exclaimed passionately, "You! The bloody bystander! Aye, easy for you to drop a bamboozling tear. Where's your heart? Isn't there a torn place in your jacket on the left side? Someone came along and tore it out of you and since then you've been wrenching the hearts of others. You were born without one or it was taken from you as a child."

He said calmly, "Aye! And you were the one who took it, Nell. And that's a thing you can't give back. You took it from me and lived on it, and now you're scurrying around from one body to another, hungry and thirsty and you'll do anything to still the pain."

"It is pain! Struggle and pain—and now I feel what I never felt before: everything is repulsive that isn't struggle and pain; for that's the real world. And I can't submit. Ah, leave me. Take your walk, go to your pub. Leave me. What is here is too real."

He went out. But he was troubled, worked up, sorry and angry though he had kept calm before his sister. He waved to Camilla who was sitting in the window sewing. He wondered why she was not using Nellie's basement room. He thought he would go in and find out. Camilla rose when she saw him, placed a seat at the second-hand wooden canteen table she had bought for her sewing, and began to prepare a rabbit.

"Do you like rabbit?"

"I did; till in the war we began to get those warren rabbits tasting of dirt."

"What's your favorite dish, Tom?"

"I like herring, plain herring. There's nothing better."

"Yes, but they're bad for children with all those bones."

"As a child, I had strong teeth and I chewed the bones."

She went on working.

He chatted, "Your hair's lovely Camilla, now it's loose I can see how nice it is. But why are your eyebrows a different color?"

"Eyebrows often are. This is my natural color. I'm not dyed."

"Ye-es. I knew that. What wonderful teeth you have, Camilla."

She said laughing, "I see Nellie has been talking me down."

He said nothing. She continued, "Nellie has been roaming the place in a bad temper, so I made myself scarce. She's missing George. I thought she would be over here for me to make it up, but she hasn't been. She doesn't like Edmund."

"Where's Edmund?" he said in a hard tone.

"He's got a mortgage. He's buying a house in Chelsea. He wants me to go there. I can't. The grandfather would never swallow that."

"Did he ask you to marry him?" he said, as before.

"Who?"

"Either!" he said angrily.

"Neither."

She looked at him, smiled, parted his yellow hair and kissed the parting. He said, "I knew that was going to happen."

"You sit waiting."

"I know something is going to happen. I don't know what. I'm waiting for it."

She laughed.

He said nicely, "I'm thinking of getting married. I have someone in mind. What do you recommend? I've been having an affair. It didn't work out. My feelings changed. This is someone who needs me."

She studied his face, "Someone in London?"

"Someone who needs me."

She went out. He heard her chopping something on the chopping board. She came back with stuffing for the rabbit.

"It's all right, Tom. I wasn't serious with you."

He said somberly, "I know: it's not serious with you. You don't care for me."

"You're wrong. I love you—in a way."

He sat by the hearth in a low chair which eased his aching back and mused. He seemed hurt. He got up presently with difficulty, barred the way as she crossed the room, put his arms round her like a child. He said with a sob, "Oh this is so real, so natural." He said, he'd go: he felt upset.

"Do you feel bad?"

"I should like to feel worse."

"Do you think good and bad has anything to do with it?"

"How do you know I'm saying what I mean?" he asked, recovering himself and beginning to smoke.

"It doesn't matter."

He looked at her as she moved about,

"A friend of mine up at Blackstone wouldn't approve of you, Camilla."

"Who is it?" she said proudly.

"A policeman. He has no stripes because he has never sent in a report. He can't shop anyone. They are trying to make up their minds to get rid of him; but he hasn't done anything bad either. He lives in a shack and makes papier-mâché maps of the district. When he was a boy a teacher taught him that and he's been doing it all his life. He joined the cops thinking he'd have a lot of spare time and could get about making maps. He has a savage dog at the front gate to bark when any policeman comes to spy on him. That dog hates policemen. It likes me."

"Why should he disapprove of me? Perhaps he could try to do me in papier-mâché."

Tom laughed, "Yes, it would get him out of the rut. But he's very moral. He's full of moral ideas. He's very rough on women. He thinks a bad woman makes a bad man."

"I'm not going to make you bad," she said.

She moved over suddenly and kissed his head many times, "No one loves you as much as I do."

He said restlessly, "I don't know. I'm not really passionless. But I can't settle. I'm waiting. I can love. I ought to stay in my swamp in Blackstone. It's cold there all times of the year. It suits me. I'm miserable and don't have hopes."

"Don't do that."