Pure as the Lily (30 page)

But her thoughts went on, they’d come for her da, naturally.

As she unbarred the shop door, the policeman said, “I’ll come in a minute if you don’t mind.” There were two of them. They walked past her, then turned and faced her where she stood with her back to the door.

“It’s ... it’s about your brother, Mrs. Tollett.”

“Jim ... Jimmy?”

“Yes, Jimmy, and, and his wife. There’s been an accident ... a fire.”

“A what! A fire? The cottage?”

Yes, yes, I’m afraid so. “

*. They’re. they’re not hurt? “

The policeman opened his mouth, then moved his head downwards.

“Aw no. Oh dear God, no!” She was rocking herself while she held her face now.

“They’re not...?”

“Your brother’s all right, that is he’s badly burnt, but he’s alive.

But I’m afraid, Mrs. Tollett, his wife’s dead. “

Lally? His wife? I mean Lally? Lally? . No! “ The policeman stared at her, and she pushed past him and walked to the counter and pressed her back to it, tight against the edge, and she flapped her hand at them, saying, “ No, no, no! He’ll go mad. Lally. Lally wouldn’t hurt a fly. What is it? What happened?

“

“As far as we can gather,” said the policeman softly, ‘the fire had caught well alight by the time your brother awoke. They were overcome by the fumes. He . he opened the window and tried to get her out that way, but couldn’t, and then . well, by what I can gather he dragged her down the stairs, the place was blazing. She must have been nearly

dead before he got her outside. And it’s a cold night, extremes you know. He tried to revive her. Some people in a car passing along the main road saw the flames and when they got to him they couldn’t do anything. Well, it was natural, he was like someone demented. By the time the Fire Brigade arrived there was nothing much left of the cottage. “

She felt herself going down into the darkness, then her da was saying, “Lass! lass! drink this.” She opened her eyes. The policemen were still there. She didn’t remember them bringing her upstairs.

She looked at her father. The tears were running down his face, and Annie was crying and whimpering,

“Oh! Uncle Jimmy. Oh! Uncle Jimmy. And me Aunt Lally.” It hadn’t taken Annie long to adopt Lally as an aunt.

Cousin Annie came hobbling out of the kitchen with a tray. She had been making the inevitable cup that cheers. She, too, was crying.

“Where are they?” Mary’s voice was level.

“In the Frederick Road Infirmary, Shields. We’ve got the car outside, we could run you down.”

“Yes, yes.”

They helped her to her feet.

“I’ll get me things on,” she said.

“Have this cup of tea, lass,” said Cousin Annie.

“I don’t want any tea.” She walked past them into the room, and as she got into her clothes she thought, What’s wrong with us? There a blight on us. He’ll go mad. I hope he dies an’ all; he wouldn’t want to live without her, she was like a stay to him, a great, warm, comforting stay.

For days Jimmy lay in a daze of pain, mental and physical. He prayed to die. If they had left any means near him he would have seen to it that he had died. They stuck needles in his arms to quieten him, but it didn’t obliterate the pain in his mind. He had killed Lally, burnt her alive.

For the thousandth time he was back in the room. He had put the gramophone on and he had said to her, “It’s lucky we have the gramophone. And we’ll get a battery wireless; I 15 225

don’t want electricity, nor gas, I like the lamp-light, don’t you? “

“It’s lovely, Jimmy, lovely,” she had said.

“And you’re lovely.” He had pulled her up out of the chair and waltzed her round the uneven floor, and she had cried, You’re tiddly. “

“And so are you,” he had answered; Sve’re both tiddly. Come on, let’s get more tiddly, let’s finish this.

It’s a celebration, it’s a house-warming. We would have had it on Monday anyway. “ And as he poured the glasses of whisky out he said, The last time I felt like this I led the Salvation Army around Shields Market, remember?”

They had fallen on each other’s neck and laughed as she said, “Eeh!

you’re a lad. Jimmy. “

“And you’re a lass, Lally. You’re a strapping, North—Country lass, and I love you ... love you ... love you.” With each love he had hugged her tightly to him, and she had gasped and laughed loudly and said,

“Jimmy, it seems too good to be true, it’s like heaven.”

After that they had sat down on the mat in front of the roaring fire and, as she had leant against him and looking at the sparks flying up the chimney, she had said, “I never want to die That is what she had said,

*I never want to die.” And then they had gone upstairs, and she had died. And it was his fault because he had banked up the fire with wood. She had warned him not to.

“Eeh!” she had said, ‘don’t put any more on. “ But he had laughed at her, saying, “ This old chimney will stand it. It’s brick all the way up, there’s no timber going across it. And it’ll soon die down, and the room will be warm in the morning when we get up. “

When he had next looked down into the room over the banister it was like looking into a blast furnace.

He had dragged her heavy body from the bed and tried to push it out of the window, but the window was too small, and only one side of it opened anyway. Then he had carried her to the stairs. But when he was only halfway down he had lifted his

hands from the burning banister and had fallen, and then he had dragged her through the heap of burning furniture. Most of the bedroom pieces had been left downstairs because the men couldn’t get them up the narrow stairs, they’d had a job to get the bed up. They’d had to take the box spring to bits, and he had said he would manage the furniture himself, he could unscrew it and put it together again. And there it was like a mighty bonfire, and when he’d got the door open there was more of it. The pile of wood outside was ablaze and lying across the door. He hadn’t wondered how it got there, he just knew he dragged her over it. And then he was holding her, rocking her, yelling. He could hear himself yelling,

“Lally! Lally! Lally! God Almighty, Lally ...!”

On the evening of the third day, when he came round Mary was sitting by the bed. She said, “Hello, lad,” and he just stared at her. He couldn’t move his hands or arms because of the bandages, and they had bandaged his head. He remembered his hair catching afire and it being wafted into a blaze when he went outside, and he had bashed at it with one hand while still hanging on to Lally< You feeling better? “ For answer he said, “My fault, Mary.”

“No, no, Jimmy.”

Ves. “

“No, no. What makes you think that?”

“The fire, I... I heaped it up. I... I got tight’—he closed his eyes, then said, “ I got tight, Mary. Things always happen when I get tight. “

“Ssh! Ssh!” she said. Don’t talk, go to sleep. But it wasn’t your fault, it was nobody’s fault. “ The next time he was aware of her sitting by the bed was two days later. His mind was clearer now.

She said, “Are you feeling easier?” and he answered, “Yes.” Then he looked at her and said, “Couldn’t last, Mary; it was too good to last, too wonderful.”

She gulped in her throat but couldn’t speak.

“I wasn’t worthy of her and ... and I should have known

something like that would happen because . because I saw me mother, in the afternoon I saw me mother. She was coming out of Brooker’s Lane, not far from the cottage. She didn’t see me, I kept out of her way, but I remember wishing I hadn’t seen her. I should have known, shouldn’t I? She put a curse on me. “

The quiet. Be quiet. Don’t say such things. “ But even as she said this her mind was working rapidly.

Her mother along Brooker’s Lane?

Brooker’s Lane joined the rough road on which the cottage stood. What was her mother doing round Brooker’s Lane?

It was three days later when she knew what her mother had been doing round Brooker’s Lane. The insurance man called, together with the local insurance inspector and another man, who had come down from Newcastle and whose particular work was to deal with fire claims, and what he said to her was,

“I’m sorry Mrs. Tollett, but we have to go into the matter of your claim; there’s more in it than meets the eye.

Now we’re not exactly sure of this but there will be more investigating to do. But as it stands now there is a theory that the fire did not start in the chimney inside but was started from the pile of wood outside with an application of paraffin. “

She stared at the three men. Then she poked her head towards them and said, “With an application of paraffin?”

Tes, Mrs. Tollett; that’s what they suspect Do you know anyone who would have reason to set the place on fire? “

She did not shake her head or answer, she just continued to stare at them.

Her insurance man now said, You did tell me, Mrs. Tollett, that their original plan was to go in on the Monday. Whoever set the place afire, if someone did that is’—he now looked at his two superiors ‘it’s very likely they didn’t know that anyone was inside. “

Somebody set the place on fire with paraffin from the outside, and Jimmy had said, “I saw me mother coming out of Brooker’s Lane. She didn’t see me.” Do you know anyone who would have reason to set the place on fire? “ the man had asked.

Oh no. No! she couldn’t have done that. But she could, she was capable of anything, her ma; disfiguring or burning alive, her ma was capable of anything.

“Don’t distress yourself, Mrs. Tollett’—the Inspector was speaking —’your claim will be met. There’s no doubt about that, but there’ll be an investigation.”

Courteously they left. They left her sitting staring in front of her, churning up such a rage that she knew that if she didn’t take hold of herself she would give vent to it in screaming.

Annie came into the room, saying, “Mam, can I go and play with Bella?” and she said to her, “Yes.”

“Mam, are you all right?”

She looked at her daughter.

“Yes, I’m all right, hinny. Go and play with Bella, I’m going out for a short while. I’ll go out the back way.

If your gran da wants me tell him I won’t be long. Tell Teresa also that I’ve gone out for a short while.

“

“Where you going, Mam?”

“Just on a bit of business, dear “ Not down to the hospital? “

“No, not now, not down to the hospital. I won’t be long.” She put on her hat and coat and went out.

The time that it took her to get from Cornice Street to Haydon Terrace was filled with the admonition.

Don’t touch her. Don’t touch her.

Don’t lay a hand on her. “ Yet from all areas of her brain, it seemed, the question came at her, how could she resist not laying a hand on her?

She had never been in the house in Haydon Terrace but from Jimmy’s description she knew the layout.

She went in the hallway and stopped at the door on the left-hand side.

She knocked once, a hard sharp knock, and when it opened Betty was standing there. When she saw who her visitor was she put her hand over her mouth and muttered, “No, no.”

“Get out of me way.”

As she went into the room Betty grabbed at her arm, saying, “It’s no good. Leave her be.”

“Where is she?”

Betty jerked her head back towards the door.

“You can’t do anything, it’s no good.”

With a sharp push she threw Betty off and went to the door and thrust it open, and there, opposite her, in a double bed lay her mother. Her two arms were lying limp on top of the patchwork quilt, her head was tight against her shoulder and the corner of her mouth was drawn upwards into her cheek.

‘you see. You see. “ Betty was by her side now almost jabbering.

“She can’t speak, do nothing, she’s had a stroke. She’s been like that since she heard about....”

“Heard about?” Mary looked down on Betty, and she repeated “Heard about? You mean since she burned Lally to death, and Jimmy nearly.

That’s what you mean. “ She looked towards the bed again, then took a step forward. There was no pity in her for the paralysed form. You took paraffin, didn’t you, Ma, a tin of paraffin and set light to the wood outside, and tried to bum them alive. Nobody was going to get Moat Cottage, least of all Jimmy and Lally. You’d always had your eye on the place, hadn’t you? And it was the last straw that they should be happy there. Well, I’m going to tell you something. Your son’s been happier this year than ever he’s been in his life. He had one year that few men ever enjoy.” She turned her face towards Betty now.

“And that’s for your ears an’ all.” Looking back at her mother, she ended, Your catch phrase was

“everybody gets their deserts” Well now, it’s come true, hasn’t it? “ The eyelids flickered, the face strained, the saliva ran out of the corner of the twisted mouth, guttural sounds filled the room, and Mary stood watching, pitiless in this moment. And then she said, slowly, “I hope you live for years, Ma, years and years, until you’re a very old woman.” And on this she turned and walked out.

She was opening the door to go into the hall when Betty came scrambling after her and, looking up into her face, whimpered, “She didn’t know, she didn’t know they were in there. I told her they weren’t going in until the Monday; she wouldn’t have done it else.”

“You knew then, you knew what she was going to do? Well you’re as bad as her. Whether she knew they were in there or not she was going to burn their home down and, whatever she or you might say, she would be wishing in her heart they were in there. And she got her wish. Well now, I said I hoped she lived for a many a year. I hope you do too;

you’ll be good companions for each other. “ She stared down into Betty’s taut, trembling face, then she opened the door and went into the hallway, and as she went through the main door Betty’s whimpering voice followed her, saying, “ I’m not having it, she isn’t my responsibility. I’m not having it all me life.

She’ll have to go to Harton, I’m not having it’