Cotter's England (25 page)

Tom put his hand over his eyes, took them away, looked at her with his large globular china blue eyes, shining and staring, "You used to talk death with him, Nellie; isn't that where you got this black stuff? You should never have brought her here."

"She needs me. I'll cure her. I made her promise to give up that office job. Otherwise, we might see another bout of sheep's-eyes."

Tom was aghast. Throwing up jobs was one of Nellie's own ways of purifying herself.

Nellie answered him, "You judge too fast and you judge by yourself. You wheedle and coax. I don't. I have something to say; it is to make them see the truth as it is. It's given to me to see the truth."

"What is the truth then? I'd like to know myself!"

"Ah, lad, but you won't face it. It's like asking for a foothold in quicksand. Under you it's bottomless, but you keep afloat because you're a feather. You have no real heart; you can't despair."

"Is that all? To despair? You don't despair."

"We're all different. We go by different paths." She seemed serious. He lighted another cigarette, threw himself back and smoked upwards.

"She's too honest, Nell. You oughtn't to play with her."

"It wasn't me," she said in a deep voice.

"Leave her alone. She'll get out of it. We all do."

"She didn't want to get out of it. She wanted to understand. She sent me a cry for help."

He murmured, "Day and night she cried on me, Fair Helen of Kirk-connell Lea."

"I had to go, pet. It was an emotional morass. She was getting confused and taking false steps and ready to sink in. When I got her back here from Roseland, I thought she was safe. That fellow with his phony book on housing."

"How do you know it was phony?"

She yelped, "Can you help the workingman living in the slums with a book? It's the landlords! They're glad to see your books and your commissions. Nothing will be done if there are enough books. It's the penpushers justifying themselves with a bit of type; me name's there as a champion of the down-and-outers. So I explained it to her: it's no good. What you're doing is useless. It's hopeless. It's getting nowhere. And that fellow tearing her the other way. And she took that and took his bloody flirtation and thought, I'm guilty, I'm not good enough for a man who writes a book. I can't bear it: ah, the poor waif. I got her out of that mess and at once here some humbugging man starts in again and she can't understand it. She asks me advice. You can't take it again, pet, I said. You'll never take it again. So on my advice she promised to quit the job."

"You're succeeding better than I thought," said Tom.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Nellie sharply.

He began in their horrible croon, "However fast she makes connections with real things, and real people, you cut them away one by one, and soon the whole spider web will be adrift."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about the soul you're saving. Where did you get the idea that you could save souls?"

Nellie mumbled quickly, "It's no such thing. I need someone of me own, Tom. Where is George and where is Bob? They're saving their own souls and you too, Tom. Ye all have no hearts. It makes me sick and shudder, to see the selfish striving. It's so patent. I have a friend I've been with tonight. There I found understanding; but she's cured of the world, the cruel mean hearts, the bloodsuckers and flesh-eaters. You'll never know what she knows and I see it through her eyes, through love—a friend's love. Her heart is one wound and the world's bleeding to death through her: that's how she feels. And Tom, I must have someone; I can't face it. And she clings to me, Caroline. She believes in me and I'm the only one. I can save her from what no other sees. She's such a credulous loving child. Say the word love to her and she loves. Ah, chick, death's the end of that road, through the fens and the brambles. It's a lonely road, sweetheart; with stumbling footsteps; and if there's despair and disbelief in you, you'll stray off sooner or later into the—"

"Stop it!" shouted Tom.

She hid an ungleeful smile. Her face was very pale, strained. Her small eyes moved about under the narrow lids as if searching for something.

She said amiably, though, "What's the matter, pet. Can't you take it? No, I can't get through to you now. But I make her take it, face it. Aye, she's braver than you are. Women are. And she'll be able to face it when she sees where she is, the fen mists all around and the bog of death—"

She paused, no longer interested, and lighted another cigarette.

Tom said, "Do you remember, Cush, when you got Estelle and me apart, you left us?"

"You're talking rubbish, Tom."

"You went to that hotel in Wales. You got a job there for you and one for Peggy. You made her come out of Bridgehead."

"Aye. She was desperately seeking a way out."

"She was going to dances like other girls. She had boys."

"Never, never! She never cared for those things. It was another sort of hunger. And I brought her out to see the world a bit, to understand. Perhaps I made a mistake. Some are too fragile."

"You got her into a hotel among the men, the travelers, the waiters, and she got into trouble. You meant well; and it always ends in misery. Whenever you dabble in soul-saving, you get someone into trouble. I know why, Nellie. You have a loving heart. It isn't enough."

The next afternoon, a Saturday, he took Nellie for a drive. They had taken a long rising road and were high above the Vale of Aylesbury, which, under a faint vapor, rolled away right and left before them. The road was on a rampart of earth and above it rose an almost naked mound.

Nellie said, "Let's stop here. Let's go up there and get the real fresh wind."

A fair cool breeze was blowing and hissing in the grass tufts.

"It'll be bad for you, Nellie. You shouldn't overexert yourself."

"I'll be fine, chick. Just help me up. Let's sit on top of the world, like we used to on the moors. You always said, I can breathe now. I like to be with you, darling. There's no one like you. You're restful. You help me to believe in things. Ah, darling, it's hard at times. The road is rough."

He held on to her, pulled her upwards.

"Take it easy, Nell."

She had to stop several times; her breath came rasping. She coughed and held her chest while she laughed and protested, "I'll be all right, pet; I'll make it."

He said they never should have come up. They sat down.

She gasped and hawked and said, "Those chimneys spoil the view: see the smoke going into the fresh air!"

"No chimneys and I'd have no work," said Tom.

"Come on, tell me the gossip, Tom."

"What gossip? Nothing ever happens to me."

She said laughing, blowing her cigarette smoke away, "Ah, ye devill Come chick, let's have your news, don't tease! Tell it in your own deprecating style, at the rate of one hint a half-hour, to be tiresome. Come, what did you do last night, chick?"

"I saw Eliza. We all went to the pub."

"They are a damn dreary lot." She looked restlessly here and there.

"Well, here you are Nellie, on top of the world."

Said she, musing, "I've come a long way. My life's been an unusual story. In a sense it is clear-cut. The five ages, aye. My childhood up to fourteen when I was a sad serious child, very conscious of my shortcomings and the feeling of guilt. That's salutary. Then fifteen when I realized the world and myself in it. Then my work in London and the provinces when I brought you all down, out of it, to get into reality; and perhaps I'm guilty. And then George."

"That's four. And then?"

"Then life without George."

He waited.

She wiped a tear off her cheek, "He's leaving me in the lurch, the bastard. He telephoned me this morning. He can't fix it for me for a while. He had a letter from Geneva. He's going to Geneva as soon as he gets his papers ready. They don't want me yet. They want him to settle first. It's the end."

She turned round, clasped his neck, sobbing.

"Chick, I can't be brave."

Tom put his arms round her, and kissed her, "You'll have to stick to me, Nell."

"Ah, bless you, Tom, you're a saint. Would you go up to Bridgehead, lad; and I'll try and get a job there and we'll be back in the old home?"

"Not on your life. Why you wouldn't stick it three days, Nell."

He chuckled.

She pleaded in a strained yearning voice, "It would do the poor souls' hearts good; and she'd be saner, Tom. You'd take the burden off the poor girl. It's not fair, Tom."

Tom said drily, "I do what I can."

"Tom, I don't understand you. Our parents are only struggling human beings. They brought us into the world. They're not guilty. We're guilty. Ah, Tom, I feel guilty, guilty. When I stop on the doorstep with the frail bits of parsley by it and see the clean window curtains and put me key in the door, you don't know the awful guilt I feel."

"I don't feel guilty, Nell."

"You're hard, harder than I am, Tom. How can you speak so of that innocent flower destroyed in savagery, in thoughtless egotism and that now has nothing to fulfill itself but in stifled bitterness? What is she, Peggy, the poor darling, but a white flower in a black cloth? What is Bridgehead but the black cloth? She's being slowly suffocated, put away, turned brown and wrinkled in a back drawer. Tom—she's my greatest deepest regret. I feel a horrible guilt. I led the way. I meant to show her life. She was such a rosy white child with that soulless merry laugh. Tom, oh my lad, I remember her as she was, not as the poor Bridgehead lass living a defeated life in a back kitchen as she seems now to you. Men cannot see women. They see them with a purpose, an aim, not with pitiful love and an everlasting tender heart. I see her sitting there in the dark room knitting; to me she's just a white bird with a trailing wing, a bit between spirit and flower."

"You'd say that about a coal barge in the Scotswood muck if it suited you, Nell," he said laughing.

"Ah, Tom, the poor wee lost spirit; why can't I make you see? Will ye go, lad? I'll give up my job and we'll work together for the home."

"I will not."

"They look to us like hungry birds, now that Pop Cotter, bless his heart, has gone. They don't understand it when the money doesn't come in."

"No, they're not getting me back into that trap. I'm no Uncle Simon."

She cried, in a thin failing voice, "But why not? What have you got in your life, pet? I'd understand it if you had a home; but you're just a wanderer. Look at George. Wandering, thinking of his own pleasure, thinking of some new love! What's in the men? You're degenerate—thinking of it and nothing else! No mercy, no pity. I'm disgusted with you all. The first woman that comes along to look at you open-mouthed and everything else vanishes like burnt paper."

"It's a good life," he said, smiling.

"I know you, Tom. You'll begin to spend your money foolishly and it'll end up in some new Marion craze. It's just monkey tricks and mumming with you from end to end."

"I like it."

"And it'll be some harpy again getting the money, when they need it."

"They get more than their share in Bridgehead. Don't nag me."

"Ah, you're bitter, Tom. I'm thinking of what they never had. Have they had the lovely dreams we've had, seen the sights, known the world? Their poor old bodies sitting their lives out in a smoky chimney corner! It's pitiful, it makes me weep. Here we sit on top of a hill in beautiful southern England and we are free to do what we like. They're chained to Bridgehead."

"And they've turned into chuckle-headed gossips and domestic cutpurses and I don't intend to exchange my experience for theirs."

For a while they sat side by side, smoking and looking at the view. A man was in a glider, rising on geysers of wind through clefts, reaching an invisible billow and wallowing over it. And others; some of them going far up and away, banking and coming back in circles, using the air as birds do, soundless and easy, though not free. The sun was going down over the Vale of Aylesbury and shone sometimes on the faces, or even on a wrist watch of the gliders. It was such a strange sight, like a vision of the future, or of Mars by an old time engraver.

At last Nellie said gently, "Tom darling, you see, pet, if you were to go up there, I could perhaps go with George, if he wants me. I could follow him. Wives are wanted. It's the rule in official jobs. They can't deny his wife."

"Ah, is that it? Why couldn't you come out with it, Nell?"

She said eagerly, "Ah, then you'll do it, chick? Ah, chick, you're a blessed saint."

"I will not, Nell."

"But why not? Tom, your life's empty. And I couldn't send the money myself. George is so hard. He wants me to put them in homes. And he won't send money willingly."

His face was placid, mild.

And now Nellie wanted to get back to London. She had become very agitated. Her friend in Southwark was in hospital again, and very low. Perhaps she was sinking. "I heard her voice just then, Tom; she said, Oh, Nellie, Nellie! Why is she calling me? I must go."

As they turned towards London, Tom began to smile to himself. He had his own reasons for wanting to get to London.

"If I can go, Tom, what am I to do with the house in Lamb Street? How will I keep up the payments? It's ruin I face. I must have me home."

"It's a poser."

"And my poor sweet girl up in Bridgehead struggling along on breadline money. And I'm responsible."

"I'm damned if I know what to do."

"Tom, I must go to him."

"Yes, I know."

She said in a soft wailing voice, "It's a bloody bugger; pet. He's my weakness. You know I never was like that. Tom; he's ruthless. He overrides me every time. Bob's encouraged him. He's a stalwart, she says. And I think so too; I agree with her. He's a big man. He's got to develop."

Tom said, "I get it. You needn't go on."

"What do you mean?"

After a silence, she said, "You're angry, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not."

She suddenly flew into a temper, "You'd desert your family and anyone, to stay in London and flirt."