Love on the Dole (33 page)

LATE afternoon.

They, Mrs Dorbell and Harry, had just returned from, to him, a new and unusual expedition. They entered the house together, Harry carrying a brown-paper parcel which he laid upon the table.

He was brimming with gratitude towards the old woman. But for her he never would have found the nerve to do what he had done. Besides, never in his life until now had he heard of the ‘Mission to the Respectable and Deserving Poor’, from which organization, and after much questioning, he had received a layette and an order for a half-crown’s worth of grocery, printed on the back of which was a list of goods, classed as luxuries, which the shopkeeper was instructed not to supply. As for the workhouse. Until Mrs Dorbell had initiated him he had no idea of the procedure necessary when applying for relief. He considered himself rather mean for having been ashamed to have been seen walking in the company of such a dirty old woman after she had taken so much trouble in his and Helen’s behalf.

‘It was good o’ y’ to have shown me what t’ do, Mrs Dorbell,’ he said, as he laid the parcel on the table: ‘Ah’d ha’ ne’er had nerve t’ go on me own.’

‘Yaa, y’ softy,’ she replied: ‘Y’ll live an’ learn. There ain’t nowt got i’ this world wivout a bit o’ cheek (impudence). Besides, it’s y’ right an’ proper due,’ a sigh: ‘Eh, it’s weary Ah am wi’ all that walkin’,’ she flopped into a chair, adding: ‘Ah’ll rest me pore owld feet for a minnit.’ Her mournful gaze rested upon the brown paper parcel: she said: ‘Ah’ll tek it t’ t’ popshop for y’, if y’ like.’

‘Tek what?’ replied Harry, turning to her, puzzled.

‘Why, that there that yon besom at Mission gev y’. She’s a bitch, if e’er God let one breathe. Dammer! Questions she asks! Pooo!’

Harry raised his brows: ‘But Ah don’t want it pawned. It ain’t mine… . It’s for Helen an’ the baby.’

‘Yaaa, softy. Wot does a child want wi’ things like that? Ik’ll on’y spew all o’er ‘em then they’ll be all spiled. Yaa, nobody about here e’er uses ‘em. Allus they get ‘em for ‘s popshop,’ warningly: ‘Y’ll want as much money as y’ can get when
she’s
confined, lad.’

Harry shook his head: he did not wish to offend Mrs Dorbell, nor did he wish to rob himself of this opportunity of giving Helen a surprise. He shook his head: ‘No, Ah’m not sendin’ it t’ pawn. It ain’t mine t’ send.’

She eyed him, pityingly: ‘Eh, lad, y’ve a lot t’ learn,’ she said, adding reproachfully: ‘An’ after all trouble Ah’ve tuk, well, Ah
did
think there’d be price of a nip for
me
out of it…’

Harry licked his lips, embarrassed: ‘Ah’m sorry, ma,’ he said: ‘But Ah ain’t got no money till Friday when they gie me some at workhouse.’

‘Wot about that there ticket for a half-crown’s worth o’ grocery? Mrs Nakkle gi’es one an’ thrippence for ‘em. You gie it t’ me. Ah’ll ha’ thrippence for a nip an’ bring y’ t’ shillin’ back.’

He fingered the order indecisively; could not for shame disappoint her. He held it out without speaking. She took it without a word, rearranged her shawl tightly about her person and went directly to Mrs Nattle’s, muttering to herself, aloud: ‘If ‘e thinks ‘e’s gunna get any change out o’ this arter all trouble Ah’ve tuk … well, he’s sadly mistaken, saaadly mistaken. An’ Ah’m sure o’ me rent from him now as he’s goin’ t’ t’ workhouse,’ contemptuously, and in reference to Harry’s refusal to allow the layette to be pawned: ‘It - ain’t - mine. It’s for her an’ babby. Yaaa. Don’t know what young ‘uns ‘re comin’ to … ‘

Inside the house, Harry was staring at the brown paper parcel, torn between a desire to open it yet hesitating, thinking that such should be Helen’s privilege.

He looked up as a peculiar knocking sounded upon the door. Wondering, he walked to the door and opened it.

It was Helen, her face pale and strained: she gripped the door frame for support: ‘What’s up. … What’s …’ he stammered. Then he took her by the waist and assisted her into the house, brain dazed with perplexity and fear.

‘Go for Mrs Bull,’ said Helen, weakly: ‘An’ go t’ t’ mill at five o’clock for me wages. Me number’s 215.

‘But…’ he stammered.

‘Leave me be. … You go for Ma Bull. Ah’ll get upstairs me-self,’ she disengaged herself from him with weak petulance, and walked with laboured gait to the threshold of the doorway dividing the two rooms. He heard her climbing the stairs one at a time.

Panic gripped him: with staring eyes he bolted into the street and dashed into Mrs Bull’s house. ‘Mrs Bull, Mrs Bull,’ he gasped, gesticulating wildly: ‘Come quick, will y’. It’s Helen. She’s tuk bad. Oh, hurry, will y’…. Hurry.’

‘Aye, lad, Ah’ll hurry,’ Mrs Bull answered. She was sitting down to the table ironing some clothes. She set aside the flat iron and gripped the table edge for support as she pulled herself to her feet. She was aggravatingly leisurely. She glanced at him: ‘Did y’ put kekkle on?’

‘No, should Ah ha’ done?’

‘Should y’ ha’ done. Yaa, get along wi’ y’. Put it on an’ see’ve y’ can ‘urry y’sel’.’

He dashed outside, tears starting, paused in the middle of

the street and returned: ‘We ain’t got no fire,’ he blubbered.

‘Ah’ll come an’ mek it for
y’,
dafty,’ she said, impatiently: ‘Mine’s too low. … Go’n ask somebody wot ‘as, stoopid.’ He ran out again, dashed to Mrs Cranford’s house, next door, pulled up sharp and stepped inside, nervous, agitated.

Two small children sat upon the bare boards pulling and stretching and trimming with scissors fragments of chamois leather with which the table and the sewing machine, the room’s only furnishings, were littered. A heap of the stuff lay by the children’s side, one pulled and stretched, the other trimmed and placed the finished pieces to one side for Mrs Cranford’s attention who, later, would stitch thirty or so more pieces together into the form of a window leather. Another little girl, standing on the threshold of the doorway dividing the two rooms, and staring at her mother in the back room who was setting the table, pointed her tiny hand towards the sewing machine under the window where a large rat was chewing a fragment of the chamois leather: ‘Mammy.’ the child said, ‘Mammy, the big pussy agen.’

Harry gazed in the. direction indicated by the child; his heart leapt; he hated the things. He glanced about, wildly, for a missile, saw a pair of Jack Cranford’s clogs under the table, dived for one, and, with a great ‘Shooo, y’ sod, y’!’ scared the rat to the floor and hurled the clog at it as it escaped round his legs and through the front door. He followed to see it meet a sudden bloody end in an encounter with a famine-hungry cat which, swearing like a trooper, dragged the corpse away.

The incident sobered Harry. For a moment he had forgotten about Helen. He returned to the Cranford home, urgently. Mrs Cranford, a wearied woman, eyes red rimmed with excessive stitchery, figure ruined with excessive child-bearing, came, heavily, to the front room to find the cause of the row.

Harry, stammering, made his request, then, as she said she could oblige him, told her of the rat: ‘Aw, sick Ah am of the things,’ she said: ‘Can’t leave a bite o’ food untended for a minute. Here, Harry, lad. Tek what y’ want out o’ t’ kettle. Use the bowl on t’ slopstone. Ah’ll come across in a minute t’ see if Ah can help any …’

A neighbour, standing on her doorstep, seeing Harry’s agitated running hither and thither, also seeing Mrs Bull waddling to Mrs Dorbell’s home, at once assumed the truth. And when, presently, Harry came out of Mrs Cranford’s house carrying an enamel bowl filled with steaming water, the assumption was confirmed. In a moment most of the street was acquainted with the news, and in another moment a group of women had assembled in and about the front door chatting concerning the peculiarities of their confinements.

Mrs Dorbell, sitting on Mrs Nattle’s sofa with a glass in her hand and a shilling change in the other, looked up as Mrs Nattle, pricking her ears, asked: ‘Wot’s all row in street about, Nancy?’ She folded the order for a half-crown’s worth of grocery which she had just discounted for Mrs Dorbell and placed it carefully into her purse.

Mrs Dorbell trudged to the door to see what the matter was. She returned, pop-eyed, mouth agape, drained her glass and exclaimed: They’re all i’ front o’
my
door …!’ She gathered up her skirts, went outside and made a ludicrous attempt at running. Mrs Nattle corked the bottle, said to the cat when it yowled as she trod heavily on its paw in her hurry to put the bottle away: ‘Shift out o’ t’ way, then,’ took up her key, went out, slammed the door and hurried after Mrs Dorbell to the scene of the commotion.

“Ere, ‘ere, wot’s all this ‘ere?’ demanded Mrs Dorbell, warmly, of her neighbours: This ‘ere ain’t Liberty ‘All!’

That gel is confined,’ said Mrs Jike: ‘Pore child, pore child.’

Mrs Dorbell did not stay to hear more. She entered her abode, sniffing and frowning. Mrs Nattle, when she appeared, was intercepted by two neighbours who, until her arrival, had been arguing. Said one, to Mrs Nattle: ‘Do it cover death i’ childbed when y’re insured wi’ newspaper, Mrs Nattle?’ Her question was couched in such petulant tones as almost appealed for a negative answer.

‘Ah neither know nor care,’ snapped Mrs Nattle: ‘An’ shift out o’ me way.’

‘Besom, slut, bitch,’ the woman flung after her. To her disputant in the recent discussion: ‘Eh, she’s an owld slut if y’ like. She’d mek money out o’ God Almighty ‘issel’ if she got chance.’ The other lady nodded agreement, adding: Though Ah’m sure, positive, that newspapers pay when y’ die i’ childbed.’ The dispute was renewed.

Mrs Jike, in conversation with three other women, suddenly interrupted herself and said: ‘I know what I’ll do. I’ll mike the gel a bowl o’ broth … I’ll not be a minute, gels….’ She trotted off towards Mr Hulkington’s shop to obtain a penny beef-essence cube on her credit account.

Within the house, Mrs Bull, sleeves rolled high up her arms, was receiving the bowl of water from Harry. Mrs Nattle was standing by the rickety table in the front room, her lips set in a sneer as she, having opened the brown paper parcel containing the layette, was inspecting each item critically. ‘ ‘e wouldn’t ‘ear o’ pawnin’ it, Sair Ann,’ Mrs Dorbell was saying.

Mrs Bull said to Harry: ‘Now, lad, sling y’r hook. Y’aint wanted here for hafe an hour an’ y’ll on’y be in way. Go on, now. Tek a walk.’

Apprehensive, flustered, he obeyed, taking up his cap and walking into the street in time to hear, at its height, the dispute as to whether newspaper insurance covered death in childbirth.

Helen die! The terrifying thought transfixed his brain. Until now such a possibility had never occurred to him. Cold shivers ran up his spine and crept under his scalp: he licked his lips afraid; dazed, shocked, he was too stunned to think. He moved with aimless gait, could not comprehend such an eventuality as Helen’s dying. Then, with a vivid flash of understanding, he appreciated how Sally’s bereavement must have affected her. A whiff of her bleak loneliness suffused his shrinking spirits: he marvelled, was awed by her fortitude. Suppose such a fate were to overtake him. ‘Gosh!’ he muttered: ‘Ah ne’er thought o’ this. Gosh! Suppose ‘Elen …’

Remembering Sally reminded him of Helen’s instructions to call at the mill for her wages. He grasped the opportunity gratefully as a means wherewith to occupy his mind with something other than that awful possibility. He would meet Sally, too; she would be anxious to hear the news.

He hurried forward, eagerly.

IN his preoccupation he passed Sam Grundy’s car drawn up at the end of the street where the mill was situated, passed it without a glance in recognition. Nor did the car’s fat proprietor, lolling gracelessly in the depths of the upholstery, notice the shabby young man’s passing.

The mill and factory hooters were shrieking and moaning the end of the working day before Harry came to the lodge gates of the mill. He found the yard full of queues of loud-voiced operatives; fresh streams of workers from the farther removed weaving sheds streamed across the great yard’s cobblestones with a noisy confused clattering of clogs and shoes. Impossible to pick Sally out of such a crush; even so, he doubted whether he would have had the nerve to expose himself to the cynosure of such a multitude of feminine eyes. He moved off to a secluded corner to wait and to keep a sharp watch for a glimpse of Sally amid the constant efflux of women and girls, shawls disarranged as they came sauntering into the street, preoccupied in the counting of their shillings and pence. He did not see her.

Later, when the numbers lessened, he went into the yard and waited an opportunity to approach the lodge window when the wages clerk was disengaged.

He felt an awful fool after he had stated that he had come for ‘Helen’s wages’ The clerk wanted to know who ‘Helen’ was. ‘She’s me wife,’ Harry murmured, very red in the face: Two fifteen’s her number. She was tuk bad this afternoon and come home and told me to come for her wages.’ The clerk asked for proof of his identity. Harry fished out of his pocket his much-soiled unemployment receipt card, now a historic memento of better days: ‘Me sister Sally works here. Sally ‘Ardcastle,’ he said, staring fixedly at the clerk.

The man nodded, lifted a small tin cylinder marked ‘215’ from a tray and tipped the contents, Helen’s wages, into Harry’s palm. ‘Y’d better count it,’ the man said: ‘… should be twelve and tenpence, that’s wi’ her insurance an two’n ninepence fines stopped out. She knows about it’ Harry counted the money and found it as the man had said. He thought the amount of the fines rather excessive, but did not say anything to the man about it. He pocketed the money and made way for the fresh queue of operatives who had formed up behind him, then, hotfoot, he hurried homewards.