Love on the Dole (35 page)

‘Oh, Harry,’ his wife whimpered: ‘Oh, Harry,’ she gripped handfuls of the folds of her apron.

‘Right,’ replied Sally, defiantly: ‘Ah can do that, too. Ah can get a place o’ me own any time. Y’ kicked our Harry out because he got married an’ y’ kickin’ me out ‘cause Ah ain’t. … ‘ Unwisely, in her agitation and in efforts to justify herself, she persisted in the same provocative strain: ‘You’d have me like all rest o’ the women, workin’ ‘emselves t’ death an’ gettin’ nowt for it. Luk at me ma. … Luk at Mrs Cranford. … Well, there ain’t no man breathin’, now that Larry’s gone, as’d get me like … ‘ she stabbed the air in the direction of her terrified mother: ‘…. Get me like
that
for him!’ Her voice rose high and shrill.

‘Aaaach! Y’ brazen bitch,’ snarled Hardcastle, thickly. He rushed at her: ‘Tek that …’ he lashed out; his fist caught her on the mouth.

She stumbled sideways, saved herself from falling by clutching the head of the couch. Her mother screamed and rushed to her side. The other two women rose to their feet in protest. ‘Hey, don’t be a damn fool, Harry,’ said Mrs Bull: ‘Luk what y’ve done t’ t’ lass.’

Hardcastle, white, fists clenched, breathing heavily, ignored them: ‘Now,’ he said to Sally, harshly: ‘Now gerrout o’ here: an’ Ah don’t want t’ see y’ agen,’ to his wife: ‘Come away from her….D’y’ hear? Come away.’

Sally rose to her feet, hair tumbled about her face, mouth bleeding. Mrs Bull took her arm: ‘Come on, lass,’ she said, quietly: ‘Come an’ stay wi’ me while y’ want’; to Hardcastle: ‘Y’ bad tempered devil, y’.’

For a moment Sally gazed at her father, then she burst into sobbing. Mrs Bull led her away, Mrs Cranford following.

Mrs Hardcastle flopped on the couch and buried her face in her hands, weeping bitterly.

Her husband stood there, motionless, his anger subsiding like a retreating wave the instant Mrs Bull slammed the front door. Beached on the bleak shore of remorse and self pity he felt he would have given anything to have been able to undo what had been done. Echoes lingered in his mind of Sally’s barbed, burning accusations ‘… ne’er havin’ nowt but what’s bin in pawnshop. … Luk at y’self. … Luk at our Harry … workhouse relief … ain’t even a bed t’ call his own. … Ah’d be fit t’ call y’ daughter if Ah was like that, an’ a tribe o’ kids like Mrs Cranford’s at me skirts .. Y’d have me like all rest o’ the women…. Luk at me ma. … No man breathin’ 11 get me like that. … Kicked our Harry out because he got married an’ y’re kickin’ me out ‘cause Ah ain’t….’ Her biting phrases lacerated him; such exquisite pain to which the dull senses could not respond, filled the brain with a cowed submission. He sought the support of the rocker chair; seated himself, heavily. Stark truth wouldn’t let him alone; it embraced and crushed.

What had he done for his children? Out of his despair rose a counter question which he clutched as a drowning man might a straw: What had he been
able
to do other than what had been done? The responsibility wasn’t his. He’d worked all his life; he had given all he had to give…

He felt his confidence slipping again. Sally, too, had given her all; so had Harry. They had been living on each other. These last few months since he had been knocked off the dole he had been living on Sally’s earnings. Living on a woman, his daughter, whom he had just dismissed for living on a man! She was gone now; had taken her income with her. What was he to do to meet the home’s obligations? The workhouse for pauper relief? He shrank from the prospect. Then there only remained Sally. And, to him, the source of her present income was corrupt. Oh, why the devil couldn’t they give him work? The canker of impotence gnawed his vitals. He felt weak; as powerless as a blind kitten in a bucket of water.

His wife, frightened by his silence, looked at him through her tears to see him sitting there, head bent, sparse grey hair catching the fire’s glimmer, an arm resting on the table, the other on his knee, his hand dangling limply.

Mrs Hardcastle, one hand at her throat, the other gripping a fold of the ragged lace curtain, gazed fearfully through the window at her husband standing indecisively outside the closed door of Mrs Bull’s home on the other side of North Street.

She hardly breathed fearing lest Hardcastle should change his mind and walk away without fulfilling his promise of a moment agone. It had needed all her powers of supplication and persuasion to overcome his resistance, though she sensed a powerful ally in his ill-concealed shame and remorse. All yesterday, on every possible occasion, she had begged him to go to repair the breach between himself and Sally: ‘Oh, Harry, Ah don’t know how y’ can do it. There’s no wrong in lass: she’s on’y young and self-willed…. She’s y’ daughter and she’s alone. What’ll become of her, lad?’

‘Ach, leave me be. Ah’m sick o’ hearin’ y’. She can go no lower than she is now.’ He looked away, uncomfortably.

‘For shame, Harry Hardcastle…. For shame.’

‘She made her own bed; she mun lie on it.’

‘Aye, y’ said that about our Harry.’

‘Aw, leave me be, woman, can’t y’. Leave me be.’

He had gone to bed out of way of her tongue. But he could not escape his own thoughts. She, lying by his side, sleepless, silent, translated his restless tossing and turning as the manifestations of his inward strife. Then she had dozed off. Sleep evaded him. He stared into the darkness, weary. ‘She’s made her own bed….’ ‘Aye, y’ said that about our Harry.’

It occurred to him that his arbitrary utterance had the quality of a boomerang; the propensity to return to that point from whence it had been thrown. A voice reminded him that, in turning out first Harry, and now Sally, he, too, had ‘made his bed’ and must be prepared to ‘lie in it’. He found his bed-making most uncomfortable; found himself, economically, up against a blank wall. This week-end would see no money whatsoever coming into the house, unless Mrs Hardcastle succeeded in procuring such work as Mrs Cranford found herself obliged to do. The thought was paralysing: a murderous hate of his own impotence made him squirm. What an utter, complete fool he had made of himself in denying the staring, glaring truth of Sally’s accusations.
Did
he really wish her to live such a life as her mother had lived; such a life as was in store for young Harry and his wife? No! he answered himself, emphatically, No! One long succession of dreary, monotonous years, toiling, moiling, with a pauper or near-pauper funeral and the end of it. Then why had he struck her? why had he been indignant that she should choose - what to him had been - a disgraceful way out? What disgrace was there in it? Who made it a disgrace? People’s tongues. What business could it be of theirs? None. In what way could Sally’s affairs affect them? No way. She was as free to arrange an illicit contract as they were a licit. Furthermore, she had chosen the former already. Again, she was no longer a child; she was a woman. He had not the slightest authority now to interfere with her. She was independent. Nay, financially, he and his wife were her dependents. It had been
her
earnings that had kept the home going.

Once begun he found a million excuses for her and a million condemnations of himself. He found ease; oil was poured on his perturbed spirits. He sighed, relieved, promising that he would permit his wife to persuade him into a reconciliation with Sally in the morning. Try as he would he could not overcome his stubbornness in taking the initiative unaided.

And now he found himself outside Mrs Bull’s front door, quaking inwardly with indecision and fear lest Sally should rebuff him. He licked his dry lips, raised his hand and knocked, softly.

Mrs Bull answered the door: ‘ ‘Allo,’ she said: ‘Ah wondered when y’d be comin’.’

‘Is Sal in?’

‘Aye, come thee in, lad,’ he followed her: ‘Sit y’ down,’ she said, indicating the couch, below whose seat rail could be seen an elliptical curve of hessian where the springs had collapsed. As she waddled to the room at the back, Mrs Bull announced, loudly: ‘Hey, Sal, lass. Here’s thi’ dad.’

He heard the creaking of a chair in the other room. Sally appeared. He dropped his gaze, shamefaced after a glance at her swollen lip. Staring at the floor he mumbled, in a hesitant monotone: ‘Ah’ve come t’ say Ah’m sorry, lass. Ah must ha’ lost me temper … ‘

His abjectness touched her. She felt the effort this apology must have cost him. Her heart expanded; she felt near to tears. But she smiled: That’s all right, Dad. Ah guess y’ weren’t the only one t’ lose y’ temper,’ pause; she added, still smiling: ‘Ah’ve a surprise for
y’. …
Ah think Ah’ve got y’ a job … ‘

He looked up quickly: ‘Eh?’ he said, incredulously.

‘Yes,’ she answered, then she interrupted herself, as, out of the tail of her eye and through the open door, she saw Harry passing on the other side of the street. She called his name. He paused, arrested, peered across the street and approached, slowly, wondering. ‘Come in, Harry,’ she said. He stared to see his father sitting there; had heard of the quarrel, plus a few enlargements, of Mrs Dorbell. The present situation electrified him; he felt as one who finds that he has strayed into the middle of no-man’s-land. He smiled forcedly at Sally; avoided looking at his father.

He blinked as he heard his father repeat: ‘A
job,
did y’ say, Sal?’

He gaped when Sally, opening her handbag, fetched out a couple of letters, passed one to his father and one to him, saying: ‘Y’ve t’ tek these t’ th’ East City Bus offices, and give ‘em t’ Mr Moreland. There’ll be a job each for y’. … But remember, say nowt t’ nobody how y’ got it. An’ give the letters to nobody else than Mr Moreland.’

They took the letters, awed; they exchanged glances of perplexed surmise. Harry found his tongue: ‘Bus offices, Sal? They don’t want nobody there, though. There’s a big notice stuck up there, warnin’ y’ off…. “No vacancies”, it ses.’ He stared at her blankly and licked his lips.

‘Aye?’ she answered: ‘Well, tek those letters as Ah’ve told y’, then see. Here,’ she passed her father some small change: ‘This’ll get y’ a few smokes each.’

Harry remembered Sam Grundy. He remembered Helen. What would she say to this? A smile grew on his lips and broadened: ‘Oh, ta, Sal, ta … ‘ to his father, whom he had sworn never to acknowledge again: ‘Say, Dad, can y’ imagine wot Helen’ll say? Gosh!’ knocking his cap upwards: ‘Ah dunno. … Oh,’ eagerly: Oh, come on, Dad, let’s go…’

Hardcastle, still holding his letter in his hand, followed his son outside. There was a far-away, childlike stare in his eyes; his brain retarded, bewildered.

Sally watched them go, torn between conflicting emotions, a fugitive response to their pleasure, then a blank, forlorn sense of utter loneliness which made her feel as one apart, a trespasser, unable to share in that happiness of which she had been the cause. She roused herself, shook off the creeping hand of introspection and went into the room at the back to escape from herself in talking to Mrs Bull.

Love on the Dole
3

Friday afternoon, the same week.

A knot of neighbours standing outside the home of Mrs Nattle, regarded, pensively, the front door of Mrs Hardcastle’s home from which a taxi had just driven away.

‘High-ho,’ sighed Mrs Jike: ‘I wouldn’t turn me nowse up at a fortnight’s holidiy where she’s gorn. Strike me pink, I wouldn’t!’

‘She’s a hinterferin’ young ‘ussy, that’s what she is,’ snapped Mrs Dorbell, angrily: ‘It’s her doin’s as’s got me lodgers t’ tek th’ empty house at top o’ street. Aye, an’ him just startin’ work when he’d ha’ done me a bit o’ good.
Me,’
indignantly:
‘Me,
mind y’, as got him pay from workhouse an’ a parcel o’ clouts from t’ Mission. Yah! That’s thanks y’ get.’

‘Hold y’ noise, hold y’ noise,’ snapped Mrs Bull; the lass has done best thing she could. “Get away,” ses me to her: “Get away from these here owld bitches, ‘cause no matter what y’ do, they’ll find summat t’ say agen y’,”’ loudly: ‘Luk at her across street; that pal o’ thine, Mrs Jike. Too religious t’ live - her an’ her spirits,’ she nodded towards Mrs Alfred Scodger, the spiritualist mission’s lady performer upon the trombone, who stood upon her doorstep, her back as straight as a poker, her arms as tightly folded as her lips were compressed, her clean, starched apron rustling in the bitter March wind.

Mrs Scodger closed her eyes and retorted: The carryings on o’ some folks wot could be named ain’t fit for the ears o’ respectable folk,’ opening her eyes: ‘An Ah’m surprised at you, Mrs Jike. Ah’m surprised!’

‘It don’t tek much t’ surprise some folk,’ Mrs Bull retorted. She turned, waddled down the street and into the Hardcastle home.

She found Mrs Hardcastle in tears. Helen, nursing her baby, was sitting in the rocker chair watching her, sympathetically. ‘ ‘Allo, more tears,’ said Mrs Bull, flopping down. She gazed at Mrs Hardcastle with disapproval, then said, impatiently: ‘Aw, ne’er in all me life did Ah see such a one as thee for shrikeing. Lord, what ails thee now?’

‘What’ll become of her. Oh, what’ll become of her?’ Mrs Hardcastle wailed.

‘Yah, ain’t that just way o’ the world, eh? Her dowter gets a sekklement made on her then her ma wonders what gonna become of her. Yah, y’ don’t deserve nowt, y’ don’t. Why don’t y’ ask what’s gunna become o’ all of us wot’s left i’ Hanky Park?’ sighing: ‘Ah dunno; some folks don’t know when they are well off,’ pause: ‘She’ll tek no hurt. She ain’t the kind. She’d ha’ bin a sight worse off hangin’ about here doin’ nowt but thinkin’. If y’
want
t’ know, it was
me
as ‘inted t’ Sam Grundy that she’d tek no hurt if she went away for a while. Three or four months at that there place o’ his in Wales, wi’ all nice weather i’ front of her - Why, woman, she’ll be new-made-o’er-agen. Allus she wants is summat t’ mek her forget. Everlastin’ thinkin’ about that Larry Meath, an’ livin’ here right opposite place where he used t’ live. … It’s more’n flesh an’ blood can stand. Use y’ head, woman, use y’ head.’ She enlarged upon the theme relating her own experiences regarding her bereavement of her first husband. ‘Ah’d ha’ gone barmy if Ah hadn’t tuk a job i’ service up i’ the country. Bein’ away tuk me right out o’ meself an’ got me out o’ me sorrer twice as quick.’