Cotter's England (42 page)

"What will they do?" said Lewis, seriously.

"You'll see, by June, next year, there'll be a general strike."

"I don't agree with you. The old spirit's gone," said Lewis.

"The men certainly did talk more seriously twenty years ago," said George.

Nellie said perhaps it was the radio and TV.

"It's gone by in a flash: you can't discuss it."

Mrs. McMahon had finished and came in to listen, her peachy face lighted up. Said she, "The English do not sing as much as the Welsh."

Lewis noticed she was Welsh and turned a little towards her. Mrs. McMahon said, "The men think they've paid their way. They pay out their responsibilities in taxes, insurance, all kinds of contributions. They feel they've done their bit; and the little bit over is for the pub and the pools."

George had his teeth into it, though, "Well, but I remember very well when I first came to London from Tyneside. It wasn't hard to get up an argument then and I did it purposely wherever I went, to learn to speak. I learned a lot from the talking and joking in pubs. I learned to meet the serious opponent, the surly or angry man without temper: I learned to show my temper; I learned the tricks of the heckler. I'm a heckler myself. But now I couldn't learn the soapbox or the platform in the pubs and I never go near them. It's all blamed hush-hush and respect and don't say that. What's happened to men like Cobden? They must still be with us."

Nellie said there were young fellows coming up but they were not allowed up. Lewis had his teeth into it, too. He said, "It is a smug determination to take what is coming to them. The workers are determined to get what is coming to them, though they don't think for a moment the Labour Government is really their government. They're greedy for their rights. It's a lingering memory of the bad days. Now the job of social democracy is to make use of just this tendency. It's no good saying it was the war. They had much more war on the Continent and over there there are strong revolutionary parties."

Nellie became very excited at the suggestion that anything on the Continent was better than anything in England; and she theatrically and noisily scolded George when he said the food was better, revolutionary feeling was better and there was a hundred thousand times better discussion. Nellie became angry and went out with Mrs. McMahon to make tea for them and cut some cake.

"It makes me boil, Gwen, to see them stretching their legs and denouncing their own workers and praising foreigners up. I can't understand what gets into them as soon as they leave the pit and the dockside and become representatives. They're bloody retired. They're looking for a socialist Cheltenham."

She sulked and smoked for a while. Presently Mrs. McMahon went home, Lewis went to bed and George said he'd turn in too. Nellie sat smoking and in a while her eye fell on her bundle of mail. She said she'd just run through the stuff, get another pot of tea and hop into bed. George said to give him a cup when she made it, if he wasn't snoring.

"Whether you're snoring or not, pet, I'll wake you up if I have to throw the clock at you."

She went over and kissed his face all over with endearments under which his face expanded; he relaxed. He commanded, Come to bed and stop fiddling.

Nellie was anxious to, but Johnny Sterker's note stuck in her mind. She was sorry the evening had gone by without her telephoning Vi Butters or Eliza to get the news. She had been so busy thinking of trades union affairs, that she had not had a minute to think of herself. She had written to Caroline, received no answer, been very angry, because she thought Caroline must have been taken in by one of the women guests. They would do anything. She had already been upstairs and found that nothing of Caroline's had been touched; her own letters to her were there unopened.

She was very tired. She took the letters to the kitchen, glanced at one or two and went in with the pot of tea. George was not asleep and gave her sly, soft glances.

"Come to bed, blast you, you night bat; am I going to stay awake all night while you chainsmoke?"

George would not allow her to smoke in bed. During his absence she had smoked half the night and now she was, in fact, trying to get through a few cigarettes before turning in.

"You know too much about me," said she, sitting down to her tea. He lay there, yawning and holding out his hand for his cup of tea. She gave it to him and as she returned, noticed a letter under the clock. She made a pretext and took it to the kitchen, for she knew the handwriting: but whose was it? She read,

This will be perfection and the water is rushing over the dam, it is roaring deep smooth all the threads twisting into the fabric, continuous splendid dark—I can say nothing to you, for you are inside your cell of glass this is the only message I can give—from the glorious power—think of me as grief, I will not be thinking and not grief—the end not submission rushing intensity, not what you think, everything there rankles, here is living—quiet rushing over the edge out thousands of stars so many that they are daylight, all lives stars, myriads are one. I lost my honor. I said that once to you. Honor went down the wind a rag. It turns round, flies in my face—it is returning coming at me, what it is I don't know. I lived for honor and love and—dishonor only—(there was a stroke of the pen after this and some watermarks, perhaps tear marks. Some way under she had written in big letters,) I am dying, Nellie, where is honor.

Nellie read it again and again. She felt a gust of joy, anger and fear. If Caroline had really died, what a triumph for Nellie! If she had written to others, what danger! And without understanding it, the word, honor, honor, displeased her. In a shining storm, a fierce new life in her, she came in to George, mumbled through her cigarette "I've had a cryptic announcement from Caroline that she's changed her residence. There's a woman who never caught the blue bird! Have you heard from her darling? Has she been around?"

"Come to bed and stop smoking and fidgeting."

"You heard nothing from Caroline?"

"No."

Nellie undressed, put on the faded men's pajamas she wore, an old pair of George's turned up at wrists and ankles. Round the waist she tied, like a rope, some three yards of pale blue satin ribbon Caroline had once given her, seeing her pajamas pinned up with two large safety pins. This ribbon she wound three times round her thin waist and knotted in front. She then put a boot-lace round her "bunch of scallions," ate three small raw onions, smoked a last cigarette so hastily as to bring on a spasm, spat blood, took a glass of brandy, dropped paper and ash into the fender, put Caroline's letter in her shoe, and got into bed. As soon as she got into bed, she lighted another cigarette, with a twist to her mouth and a starry eye, blew smoke in George's face.

George shouted.

"Want a real good fight, pet?"

"No, I don't: let me nap," said George.

Nellie said with a come-hither grin, "No, let's have a quarrel." She pawed him on the side of the head, pulled the pillow away, "Lazy bugger, traitor, living on foreign handouts, living on women, I've no use for you."

"Shut up. The house is swarming with people."

"Suits me, pet," she said and she went for him, teasing and insulting till he became furious and half rose to fight her. They shouted at each other, filling and exhausting their lungs. The whole house was stirred up, wakened, kept awake. When they were quite satisfied with what they had done, they fell asleep. Nellie woke up suddenly some hours later and began to think of Caroline's letter, "Your cell of glass"—"Nellie I am dying where is honor?" and suddenly of Johnny's nasty pert tone. She got up and went downstairs to the kitchen, to ferret out meanings, to plan explanations. She believed that Caroline was dead; and she felt a blow on the heart; she was very much afraid. And yet of the wonderful letter, her achievement, she was very proud. She made a copy of the suicide note for Johnny: when someone had killed herself for Johnny long ago, there had been no such beauty in it. She left out the words about honor which she did not understand.

This morning, Monday, Mrs. McMahon was washing up. George had gone off to see seniors in his organization, about difficulties abroad; and Mrs. McMahon's little girl, Georgiana, clung in teasing affection round Nellie's legs as the two women spoke. Nellie gave Mrs. McMahon a cigarette and went inside with a pot of tea. She closed the door and did a lot of telephoning. She sat down and thought for a long time. She then took up her pen and wrote fluently:

Dear old Tom,

You ought to hear this from a friend of Caroline's who feels it as much as you will. You were a playmate of Caroline's. I don't know how well you knew her. She had been under the weather morally and physically for some time and took her life some weeks ago. Friends saw that little appeared in the press and all the details are not known. There is a page missing from the diary she kept, the last day. For those who knew her it was a great tragedy and a great loss. She was so reticent and shy that she did not impinge very much until one got to know her; and that was difficult. She was a grand fellow but her tragedy was supersensitivity and fastidiousness and an ineradicable disbelief in her own worth. She was a born saint and a born victim. She believed in people as well as causes. She survived several terrible ordeals; for she had a fatal instinct for picking out paranoiacs of the selfish kind. She tried to fuse her personal incompatibles by falling "in love" with a black-coat bureaucratic climber who used everyone as a brick in the wall he was building for himself to stand on. She was born only to dedication. She couldn't take disillusionment, Tom; that was her tragedy. She tried to take it. The struggle went on for months, and she wasn't the sort of pal you can help by getting drunk together. Fate set her a problem she couldn't solve and so she cut the Gordian knot, just because there was no pal standing by at the psychological moment. And Tom it was a hard blow to take. I'll be glad of a word of comfort. I wish I had you here to pour out my thoughts. I need a good bout of introspection to relieve my feelings. Will you come down?

Bless you darling,

Your devoted Nellie.

Nellie sat smoking in the front room by the empty hearth, ruminating. She got some fresh tea and a piece of custard tart.

Georgiana came running in. She was thin, agile, wily, the kind of child that a number of serious illnesses has made avid for life. The single chest of drawers they had at home, with two small and three long drawers, was mostly given up to Georgie's toys. Nellie gave her some caramels out of a vase. The playthings which she had brought in a new red beach bag, were scattered about the rug. She entreated, "Tell me a story about the sparrows."

"Not today, pet."

The child began to tell the story about the sparrows herself. "First they all fly in a flock in winter and when spring comes they separate, mm, mm, mm." She began to play with two loose-legged wooden dolls, one a sailor, one a gypsy girl in whose wooden head Nellie had fixed an old paste buckle. Georgiana danced the dolls and chanted interminably, "Up she goes, down she goes, up he goes, down he goes. One little darling, one little husband. Nellie, what is a husband?"

"It's like a father, pet."

"One little sailor, one little princess, sitting in a corner, poor Georgie's mother doing all the work, poor Georgie's mummy doing the work. Patacake, patacake, patacake what are you doing, what are you doing? Kissing, kissing, kissing, ha-ha-hal I kissed him on his noseypeg, sailor! I kissed him on his wooden leg, sailor, sailor, sailor!"

She sighed, "Sigh sigh. He can sigh properly."

She began to sing again, "I went down the lane, never could come back again. Georgie-porgie pudding and pie kissed the girls and made them cry. Georgie, Georgie, Georgie, here comes Georgie. Cookie, cookie, cookie, here comes cookie. Oh—"

"That's enough, pet. Go and ask your mother for an orange."

"I've got an orange here. Look! Look-cook! I bring my own oranges and biscuits and everything."

Suddenly, she rose and went to Nellie's knee, which she leaned on as she asked affectionately, "Is Mr. Cook going away again?"

"Yes, pet."

"Is he coming back again to see me?"

"I'm afraid not, pet. Not for a long time, You'll be a big girl. You won't remember him."

"But he's going to leave me all his money, isn't he?"

"Go and ask your mother, Georgie."

"But she told me yes."

"Well, now run and play in the hall."

She rambled away singing and took her dolls for a walk in the hall.

Presently Mrs. McMahon and the child went. The woman wore her usual thin black coat of some damask-surfaced rayon and underneath a shabby black jacket and skirt with a little dusty black hat on her head. She wore the same outfit summer and winter and it killed all the color in her glowing skin, brought out the first signs of fading and age. The red gold of her beautiful hair stuck out raw beneath this miserable hat. She had a worn brown leather purse which served for a shopping bag also, a string bag, brown canvas shoes and heavily bandaged though solid legs, upon which she was obliged to wear cotton stockings. She was a pretty woman and liked dress. In a thin silk dress she looked like a nicely shaped girl.

They were a pathetic pair. The child wore a pretty blue coat which her mother had cut out and made from a coat given to her, and underneath was a red and white cotton dress which cost thirty-five shillings in a local fancy goods shop. She had a white lace collar, new patent leather shoes and new white socks with red stitchings. The parents both went exceedingly shabby to dress the little girl. Georgiana was swinging a red handbag which George Cook had given her for Christmas. Nellie noticed that the child was in all its best and that Mrs. McMahon was wearing a new soft green silk blouse.

"Goodbye, Gwen," she said briefly, "come Tuesday will ye, pet?"

She sat smoking and thinking till George came in and began to take books from the bookcases and put them in stacks on the floor. He then began to look into them and sort them. He lay down on the sofa with a book.