Cotter's England (39 page)

"Do you think someone has taken advantage of you?" Tom asked involuntarily.

She shrank back farther and he could see that for her he was convicted. Her interpretation was that he and Nell, not to mention the others, had taken advantage of her loneliness, nervous collapse, for an abomination of their own. Shrunk like old age, she looked at him with contempt too.

"What you think is not so!" said Tom.

She turned her eyes away. Then she looked back and said, low, hurriedly, "I'm alone in the world and I've agreed to everything Nellie wants, and I've lost my sense of honor: she can't want any more than that, so I've given everything and what have I to give anyone else? She's taken everything from me. I've ruined myself."

"Would it help you if I made her talk to you? I'll talk to her."

"You must never mention it. Never. You will be the only one to understand. I'm getting old, I'm weak, I'm like the things at Stonehenge that frightened you. I am bad, lost. She wants it."

She again gave him a dark look, indignant.

"Not you, Caroline."

"The others must do the work. I can't."

The light wind played with her wasting hair. Tom went inside and said to Nellie that there was something very wrong with Caroline. Her depression and inanition were not normal.

The women were sitting in the front room eating and drinking, smoking.

"You talk her into bed, Tom, you're good at that," said Nellie.

Tom was filling a glass, stopped with the bottle poised, looked at Nellie enquiringly.

"But what does he do when he gets her there?" said their friend Flo, a short, handsome, plump woman with white arms.

Tom picked up two glasses and a bottle.

"Tom's the darling of the middle-aged women;" said Nellie: "he smiles shyly and deprecatingly and buys them bull's-eyes."

"The only bull's-eyes they'll get from him," said one of the others.

Flo sat easily, smiling at him: she liked him: but she was altogether under Nellie's thumb.

Tom went out to Caroline. Nellie entered into a roistering mood. She came to the door and blackguarded him, ordering him to come in. He came in. Nellie then went to Caroline and very roughly ordered her to come in, too. She gave Nellie a strange look, but Nellie took no notice, picked up the things, came in cursing; what did she mean turning down all her guests? What was the new phase? She didn't like masochism. Was she superior to them all? She could drink with Tom? Then she could drink with them. She had been respecting Caroline's feelings and now she found out it was a ladylike pet. None of that here, it wouldn't go. Tom was shocked and acquiescent. He had never known Nellie like this: she was rough and ready as a tart. Was there a woman of that sort among the women? He eyed them. Nellie would do anything in her rough, bohemian democracy: she would never make herself out superior to other people. Once she had lived in a prostitutes' hotel. All the girls were prostitutes. She was very friendly with one.

There was some rough joking going on to which he listened half-surprised, half-amused. He did not believe women could be really rough. "You can take a horse to water but you cannot make him drink," said Flo to Tom; it was a rough joke.

"Don't take any notice of the hags," said Hardcast, the woman in the business suit, in a loud dry voice. It was the first time she had looked at him. Tom was eating, his wind-roughened lank red face bent over his plate. Hardcast always sat stiffly about with a long-distance look; never facing people, riding sidesaddle. She had black hair plastered down. She was head of a very big, city office. She was in a position to take bread from people's mouths. Some of the women there were her subordinates. Nellie had once been one of them.

"Tom doesn't mind: he's used to our style of humor," said Flo. "I suffered enough from him and Nell when we were children. They'd always be running ahead, leaving me behind and throwing back smart cracks over their shoulders. They thought they ran Bridgehead in those days."

"I never said anything unkind to you," protested Nellie shaking her topknot eagerly.

"Everyone did. You gave me a sense of inferiority."

"Didn't I work to get you out of Bridgehead?" cried Nellie indignantly; "you owe it to me!"

"I came of myself," said Flo in an easy-going style. She was very untidy, but her chalk-blue angora sweater blazed round her beautiful arms and neck; her greasy black hair framed a fine white forehead. She was an attractive slut, uneasy when she washed. She had a good nose and missed the numerous familiar scents from her own body.

"I have a lot of the dog in me," she always said; "I like to find my way about my own house by smell. I like to smell my own children. It's healthy and natural. I feel twice the woman. Besides, I'm not strong enough to keep things clean."

Her skirt, slipping from her waist and without a fastening, gaped showing a white hip. She sat next to Tom who glanced at her flesh appreciatively and smiled at what she said. Then he began talking to the woman on his other hand, Binnie, a soft plump reddish woman about thirty-eight, dressed carelessly but in a city style, with tossed well-kept hair. She was a rover, had been all over Europe, visited every danger spot, had lovers there, probably gone there to pick up lovers. She was energetic, headed committees, made speeches, had a number of children, wrote books, spoke languages, met statesmen, gave parties, introduced one circle to another and showed no sign of it at present when she was like an effusive, garrulous, top-heavy girl.

"Tell me how you do it," she said to Tom.

"Do what?"

"Make the women dance, what's the tune?"

"I do nothing."

"Is that it?"

He laughed.

"Perhaps that's it," she said lifting her voice with a slight domineering affected accent.

"We know he does nothing," said Nellie who with sharp, jealous, glances followed every word of the conversation.

"He flirts, that's enough," said Flo eating big dollops of pie. "He's the darndest flirt I ever met. The playboy of the Western World. Look at the footlights facet"

"A glitter like a Woolworth ring," said Hardcast, looking out of the window.

"Is that your mother's?" asked Binnie rudely of Hardcast, who wore a heavy gold wedding ring.

"My grandmother's, my mother had it," said Hardcast: "my grandmother wanted her to go into a convent."

"Better a mother than a mother superior," said Binnie.

This coarse joke made the women nervous. Binnie began to talk about the health of her children with Tom.

"Don't you ever miss children?" said one of the women teasing, to Tom.

"I have a child," said Tom. "I had one when I was twenty-one years old."

"A summer with but one rose," said the same woman.

Tom was angry.

"Leave him alone," said Nellie, who was watching everything.

"I bet you're happy now, surrounded by seven women," said the same tease.

Tom looked at the seventh woman longingly. She was a startling creature, flat and slender, with flaxen hair that she wore in an unbecoming but surprising style. She was elegant, in a plain Paris silk suit of yellow, stitched in white. Her eyelashes, eyebrows and the skin-hairs were pale. The light bathed her, soaked through her. She kept an unnatural stillness and coolness, sat in a sunny spot when she could, or lay on what golden, yellow, white, mustard, ocher lounges and cushions she could find. She was not saying anything, but knitting. She ate little and dry, at least when in public. She was knitting men's socks of thin natural wool, in a variety of fine stitches. Tom could not keep his eyes off them.

"I think I know something about knitting," he said, rising and drawing nearer. "But I've never seen anyone like you. Why don't you go in for these national knitting prizes?"

"I shouldn't care for that," she said in a sharp chiming voice.

"Stop flirting in your corner," called Nellie.

"I'm not flirting," said the yellow girl, Marilyn.

"Where are you from?" she asked Tom.

"Upstairs," said Tom, laughing.

"Bridgehead? What's it like? Would I like it?"

"In autumn, about October, just before Guy Fawkes Day it's all dark at eight, quite dark. There are a few boys and girls playing quietly round the few street lamps like moths, the rest dark, no lights, all have retreated to the back fire for high tea, curtains are drawn tight across the windows. Go down the back ways and you'll see a bright stream of light through the crack of the back gate and hear the yard being scrubbed. The air is sickening, you're right in an aerial coal seam, a slowly blowing, vaguely stirring mist of coal: and the next day will be rain. In the meantime you can see the stars through a ceiling of about ten feet of coal mist."

"Don't let him put you off," cried Nell impatiently, "it's a grand old town, it's our home. It's our mother, we owe everything to it: and they think hardly of us for deserting it. We're very proud of Bridgehead."

Tom did not turn his head but continued to the yellow girl, Marilyn, "And you'll meet a ragged, grotesque troop of children with stockings of flour or sawdust or earth, saying 'A Penny for the Guy.' I always go about with a pocketful of pennies, I don't know if I got it from that time. I always have about a hundred pennies on me. I used to go about myself. I got quite a bit of money. People liked me. I was bashful, my boots were always in holes, I used to sew up the holes in my pockets myself first to be sure not to lose any pennies. The others often had this stocking bludgeon but I never wanted to bludgeon anyone; it's like a big sausage they dangle in their hands," he explained, laughing.

"Are you telling your tales?" said Nellie contemptuously from the other corner of the table. "Quit your flirting there."

"I'm not flirting," complained Tom.

He remained turned to the girl. "They used to get me to sing too: I sang willingly. I had a good voice then. I used to get money."

"Sing now," said Marilyn, looking at him with curiosity.

"It's lost now."

"Come pipe up, brother," called Nellie wildly. "Let's hear the broken pipe."

"It's broken."

"Well, croak it, but let us hear you," she cried jealously.

They were surprised. He turned round, opened his mouth, and sang,

"Early in the month of May,

In the taverns slopped with ale.

Broken-footed from the way,

Loud sing I my threadbare tale,

There I stand, all red and pale,

Clowning in the month of May.

The bramble grows a wild white rose,

Late lay snows in Ilger's plot.

Look, my wreath is heavy with death,

All black beneath with loamy clot.

Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow, sorrow, sorrow till the end!

My heart is broken, none can mend; I must sorrow till the end."

He sang to simple quavering strains he had made up. Nellie laughed loudly and boldly.

"Aye, he can chirp like a bird in a cage: he sings to them, aye!"

"Do you sing to them?" enquired Flo, surprised.

He looked awkward, touching, outlandish. He looked queerer and stranger and twisted his mouth and eyes into odd shapes. He turned round and looked piteously across the room at Caroline who was sitting in a cold sulk by the hearth.

"You are a strange man," said Marilyn.

"Don't flatter him, sweetheart," called out Nellie: "or you'll be hearing nothing else for the rest of the weekend but his heartbreaking tales. He's not all there: there's a part missing."

"It's my heart," said Tom; "you're jealous of my heart."

At first he was angry and then he gave Nellie a splintered smile, very sly. She did not know where to look. Marilyn affected a snowy cold.

"Venus is the star I like most," Tom informed Marilyn in his ordinary tones, "it's like the mooring light of a ship that seems to be moving and isn't. I noticed last night through the roof."

"You write poetry I suppose," said Marilyn.

He assured her eagerly that he did. "In my Logbook. I never show it though. And I have ideas that wouldn't do for stories I suppose. I once knew a woman who wrote stories. She's dead now. This is an idea: a woman tall as the air and white, shaped like bells, and she has chains of rubies: you pull them off and she dies. Then I once knew a man who was fond of spiders, he told me all about them; what they felt."

Nellie began to make a great clatter, bang the china about, pour out wine, shout, swear, roughhouse, like a stableboy. Tom took no notice and went on confiding in Marilyn.

Nellie banged her plate with her knife, shouted, "Eh, young Cotter, throw me that rose, you daft fool, you do look silly in it!"

Tom took no notice but bent his head nearer and went on chatting.

"Thomas is not a good name for you," said Marilyn.

"It's not my name, it's my father's name. I have no name of my own," he replied.

"What do you do?"

"I can heal some people," he said. "I should have been a doctor I expect. If I knew how, combined with my feeling for people, and if I practiced, I could cure people. I'd like to do that."

"What's your brother saying?" asked Flo of Nellie.

"I don't know," said Nellie, "but he's bogus."

"He's saying that he can heal," Hardcast's voice was heard.

"He can give women children, I suppose, that's the kind of miracle he can perform," said Binnie.

"No, pet, he can't, but he can get the women thinking about children. They have only to look at those big eyes sailing right out of his head and they start sighing for a boy," said Nellie, "a boy under a flowering May tree, isn't that so, Tom?"

Tom stopped talking and stared at her.

She cackled, "Eh, eh, I made you stop the sweet drool."

He looked at her sternly.

"Eh, Cushie, you remind me too much of Bridgehead," said Eliza; "don't do it."

Nellie laughed, was so pleased she seemed to fly, eyes winking, hair sticking out like straws, arms akimbo, legs flying about, shoulders waggling, she sketched a fairy hobbledehoy, a woman cut free from the earth.

"Airmen are a great blessing, they can drop in on a woman anywhere," said Flo.