Mrs. Engels (13 page)

“You two go on and have a turn,” says Lydia. “We'll join you in a bit.”

Jamie moves to take Mary's place on the rug to be closer to Lydia. In the fuss of arses and limbs, I stretch my legs and spread out my dress, leaving only the corner for Moss. He doesn't seem to care. He takes two bottles from the basket and walks on his knees into the sun. There he rolls up his sleeves to the shoulder and his breeches to the knee, and puts himself out to bask. He's watched by the people drinking tea at the little tables under the creepers. Farther down river, there's a spot where the men swim in the next-to-nuddy and the women take off their boots and show their shins, but we're not there now; we're
here.

“Piss-artist,” goes Jamie, as if to say he himself is the kind that stays covered if there's ladies about and drinks only what he's offered or can afford.

Lydia is glad to gob the bait. “One beer goes further in a poor family than two in an oiler like him.” Her smile is crooked. His is cruel. Mine is faint-livered and craven, for though I want naught from Moss and wouldn't be happy if folk put me together with him, I do hate to hear a bested man drubbed further. He's had it harder than most, I've heard, a father that ill-used him and kept him from his meals, and he's turned out a lovely looker and kind enough, considering.

“Moss,” I says, putting the sandwiches on a plate, “come and have something to eat.”

“In a minute,” he says without turning his face from the heat.

For a time then there's silence, just the flies and the moving water, and for another time we play a game where we guess what dodge Mary is going to try next to make Frederick handle her. Rock the boat? Splash the water? Grab the oar? When we tire of this, we turn our attention back to Moss.

“You'll get burnt,” I says. “Come back into the shade.”

“I'm grand,” he says.

“Arrah, come on, Moss,” says Jamie. “We're missing you here. Come and tell us one of your stories from Ireland.”

“I'll do no such thing, I'm fine where I am.”

“Arrah, Moss, don't be like that,” says Lydia.

“I'll be how I like.”

“Leave him be,” I says. “Isn't he grand where he is?”

I bring him a beer and a sandwich.

“
Go raibh mile,
lovely Lizzie,” he says, and gives me his teeth. White and strong, they are, the ones that haven't been knocked out. He bites the sandwich, takes a gulp, then puts the bottle and what's left of the bread onto the grass and rolls onto his side as if to sleep. I pick up the old bottles and bring them back to the basket.

“I'll tell you what, then,” says Jamie once I'm settled, “I'll tell one of Moss's stories.”

“Go on,” says Lydia, nudging him, “go on, tell us.”

“Oh, Christ, Jamie, spare us,” I says.

“Lizzie!” says Lydia. “Remember yourself! We're only here for you. Doing you a good turn.”

He tells a story of Moss when he was a boy back in Tipperary. How one day at the river—a river like this one, only called the Ara—he had his clothes robbed and had to walk home stitchless except for the bit of sack he picked up to cover his vitals. It takes Jamie an age to tell it, going into all the particulars about Tipperary town and who did the robbing and how, and making sure to mention that Moss already had clumps of hair growing up and over himself even though he wasn't yet ten.

I watch Moss through the telling. He doesn't show himself to be hearkening. He doesn't kick up or cut in. Doesn't move at all, except to swat a wasp or scratch his tummy. It must be he knows Jamie's jealous. It must be he knows Jamie would take on all of his troubles if it meant being a stunner the same. So he turns the deaf ear.

But when Jamie is over and Lydia has balled out her laughs, and when there's been pause enough for a bit of guilt to be felt for telling another man's tale, Moss does get up and come over.

“You didn't tell the end of it,” he says, dropping his empty onto the rug and rummaging in the basket for another. “What you've told is only the beginning.”

He keeps us biding while he drinks from the new one, and then while he swallows and wipes and staggers over to lean on the tree. When final he gets round to it, I can't help but think he's putting on to be tipsier than he is, for the scene it makes.

How he tells it, when he got home from the river, starkers as he was, his mother wouldn't open to him, the news of his shame having reached her before.

“Off with you and find your father,” she called at him through the door. “If the sight of you doesn't bring him home, Christ only knows what will.”

Knowing she'd not be talked round, he set off on a tour of the drinking houses and, by the time he'd found the one holding his father, the whole of Tipp was laughing at him. His father himself was laughing till he understood it was his own son that had come through the doors. And when he understood this, he was quick to turn the laughing to his favor, the cute hooer, by keeping on laughing and making a song and dance of ordering his son a spirit from the bar.

“Give the boy something to warm him,” he said. “Can't you see he's half-froze?”

To the delight of his intimates, he gave Moss his shirt for the walk home.

“A double act! There's a pair of you in it now!”

Some sight they were on the roads, father bare of chest and son bare of leg, the two of them three sheets to the wind. Moss—watching his father wave at the people who turned to mock, listening to how his father caught their sly sniggers and threw them back as heartful bellows—began to feel light, near happy, and well nigh forgot what he was going home to receive.

His father's high mood vanished when the door of the homestead was thrown closed. But when Moss looked at his father, he saw that it wasn't only his humor that was changed but something else too. What it was, his hair had gone white. White complete. Some time between the pub and the house, he'd lost all the color out of his locks. His father's hand was raised to start the thrashing, but seeing how Moss was looking at him, not with fear but with gaping disbelief, he broke off and went to check himself in his shaving mirror. Being as vain as he was handsome, he thought the thing was lying, and he put his fist into it. Then he pulled it out of the wall and used it on Moss.

“That's how I got these scars here,” Moss says, opening his shirt and taking it down to show his neck and shoulders and back.

I turn away. On the other side of the green, at the little tables, people are peering out from under their hats. “Cover yourself up,” I says.

He obeys. Puts his hands in his pockets. Spits in the grass. “I'm going for a jimmy-riddle.”

We watch him go off towards the bushes. A fine figure, no question, but it's his own fault everybody knows his trials.

“Do you even think he's
from
Tipperary?” I says.

Jamie and Lydia shrug together.

While he's gone, Frederick and Mary bring the boat to the banks and beckon us to join them.

“You two go on,” I says. “I'll bide here for Moss.”

I'm still here waiting when the four get back.

“Where is he?” says Jamie.

“Must still be looking for a private spot,” I says.

Lydia hisses and folds her arms across. “Well, we're going to the roundabout. Are you staying here?”

I look at the hole in the briar where he disappeared. “Nay, I'm coming with you.”

Frederick buys tickets for everybody. Jamie and Lydia take theirs without a thanks and climb up onto the same horse.

“Woo-hoo,” cries Jamie.

“Yippee,” cries Lydia.

Frederick laughs and calls out to Mary. “Come, Mary, let us ride together like Lydia and James!”

“Nay, nay,” she says, waving her hands and shaking her head. “Nay, please, Frederick, nay.”

I look at her.
Nay, please, Frederick, nay?
Aren't these public displays what she lives for?

“Come on, Mary,” says Frederick. “It is going to start in a minute. It would be fun!”

“I'm sorry, Frederick, but I can't, I can't.”

I give her a stern look. “What's wrong with you? Can't you get up there with him now he's paid for you?”

“I can't, Lizzie,” she says, touching her belly. “Not in my condition.”

I want to fetch my picnic up. And in fact, that's what I do, only I put a hand up to stop it coming past my lips.

“Are you all right, Lizzie?”

The roundabout creaks to a start, and the three of them, the wanton couple and the lonely German, go round. The music rings a pain in my temples. I swallow down and look around for somewhere to sit.

“You're no more pregnant than I am,” I says as I move away. “Wasn't I washing the run out of your sheets just two weeks ago?”

I sit on a bench by the bandstand. Mary stays by the roundabout, gives a weak-looking wave every time Frederick passes. When it stops, Jamie and Lydia come off arm-in-arm, swerving and wobbling and all-round acting like topers. Frederick rushes to Mary and pours his foreign concern over her. From where I'm sitting, I can't be sure if he knows what game she's playing. He brings her over to sit at the tables. I wait till the tea is brought before joining them.

“We ought get the rug and basket,” I says. “They'll be robbed.”

But no one moves.

Moss doesn't come back.

“Typical,” says Jamie.

That night Frederick doesn't stay the night, for he can't be seen walking to the mill from this direction in the morning. I hear him leave around midnight. Mary comes straight into me.

“I'm tired,” I says. “And we're up early.”

She pays me no heed. Gets into the bed beside me. “I've told him,” she says.

“Told him what?” I says, though I know well what.

“About my circumstances.”

“Oh, for Christ sake. Good night, Mary.”

“If I'm not pregnant now, Lizzie, I will be before long. It's not a real lie.”

I shake my head in the dark. “And is he happy about your
circumstances
?”

“That's the thing. He's over the moon.”

“Suffering Jesus.”

“He's going to stick by us.”

“Is he now.”

“He's going to put us in a bigger place, maybe even farther into the country, for the fresh air, and as soon as I start to show, he's going to tell everybody and move in with us himself.”

“Us? Who's this us?”

“You, me, and the babby. And him.”

I laugh. “Have you lost your senses?”

“What do you mean?”

“You think I'm going to stick round here and take on the burden of your mistakes? Sit up for your dirty issue? Clean the crap out of his nappies?”

“You're twisting my meaning.”

“You're the one that's twisting, Mary. Twisting the good out of everything.”

“You're my family, Lizzie, and you'll soon be Frederick's too. He vowed to look after you.”

“Look after
me
?”

Out of naught a vision of Moss comes: nuddy as Our Savior on the cross. “Better to marry me,” he says, “than to burn in this hell.”

The next day, after the bells ring, I go looking for him. He's not hard to find. I take the seat beside him.

“Two more of those,” I says to the tapstress.

“What do
you
want?” he says.

“I'm sorry for yesterday, Moss.”

He shakes his head. “Arrah, you don't have to be sorry, Lizzie Burns. You're a good woman. I'm not worth you.”

I touch his hand. “Enough of that, Moss. You're worth more than most I know.”

He looks at me then, and through his blinking eyes, I can see his urges.

“I'm getting you out of here,” I says.

And he follows. You don't understand the power you have till you test it.

We can't go to his house, for he shares with other men, and I'll not bring him to ours, not with Mary there to fling the dirt, so I lead him up the passages. We start a couple of times, but we're not left alone for long.

“I know a place,” Moss says. “But it costs.”

“Don't worry about that,” I says.

He brings me down Great Ancoats and into a neighborhood I can't name. The room is bright enough and tidy. The lass who shows us up is younger and has a plainer, cleaner face than you'd suppose.

“Thanks,” I says when I hand her the coins.

“You have till the morning,” she says. “Nine on the clock. If you leave before, you don't get it back.”

His bit is a thick log that sobers me and gives me second thoughts.

“You ought know something, Moss,” I says.

“What?” he says, lifting his head out of my mammies.

“I know my way around a man, but I've never let one inside.”

His eyes go wide and his brow creases, and I can't tell if he's more surprised by my frankness or by my maidenhead.

Once it's in, there's little in the act that surprises me. I lie under and he goes over, and I search in it for the pleasure, though it's over before I catch more than a spark.

Afterwards he stretches out beside me, puts an arm across my belly.

“If I'm up the pole,” I says, “will you run off like you did in the park?”

“I'm sorry about that, only I didn't feel right. I was riled up, and when I'm like that my manners are not of the best. I hope you can forgive me.”

“I suppose.” I put my arm to rest over his.

We're like this till I'm almost asleep. But then he chooses to say, “I was engaged to be married, you know. In Ireland.”

“I don't need to know about that, Moss.”

“She was a fine girl and I loved her, but I had to leave. It was the only way.”

“Please, Moss, that's all none of my business.”