Cotter's England (47 page)

"Eh, pet?"

Mrs. McMahon laughed faintly.

"Eh, well, then," said Nellie, "so me bold sailor boy came to see you, eh? Me husband was over? It's like him, Gwen; that's like him. He'll never forget ye, pet, and the way ye polished those brasses for him: that went right to his heart: the brasses and the pottery. Him and his pots. It was a pleasure to see him worrying about whether a blue daisy had five petals or six; I used to get fat looking at him. But it's all over now, Gwen. No more polishing and dusting. The lad's run out on us, Gwen, me dear. Eh, the men, Gwen, not a good one in a bushel. Well, you've got your good man, you've nothing to worry about. He's good to you, Gwen. He's loyal. He gives you his money; he never asks anything of you. You're lucky, my girl. Not like my man running all over the universe. Why not? For he must conquer the world of today; nothing must escape him. That's my darling. Now you're blessed, aren't you pet? A good man who's working not ten streets away and who'll be here on the tick of six fifteen. Eh, I wouldn't cry if I were you, Gwen; I'd not take it to heart. Things could be worse. That's me advice to ye, Gwen. Ye've got a good solid man who'll stick to ye until ye get old; and you're young now. And your sweet little kiddie here, she'll be growing up with ye. Partings are hard, now. I won't like to lose you, Georgiana pet: what'll I give you when I go? When I fly off to Geneva, to me husband? What would you like, Georgiana?"

"Are you going by airplane?" said the child. "Will you take me? Mr. Cook said he'd see me again one day."

Mrs. McMahon lay back on the pillow and her eyes were thoughtfully raised to the wall above the door. She did not seem to care about those present.

Nellie cast her a reptile look. "No, pet, I'm afraid not. No, you won't see him again, sweetheart, but you'll forget him. You're going to grow up and be a big lovely girl, have lots of good times. Aren't you? And you won't be worrying about any sweethearting sailor boy if you've any sense. They get round the girls, they get round the women, they get round the grandmothers, so you keep off them when you're a grown-up sensible girl. I'll buy you a jigsaw puzzle, pet, will that do? And you'll do it on Sunday night with your father."

She then turned to press questions and advice upon Mrs. McMahon and presently took her leave after giving Miss McMahon a tin of salmon for the invalid.

"And cheer her up, Rose, keep her cheerful, that's the thing."

When she got home she wrote to Tom saying she had teleponed him at the factory, but found him out and the rest of the week with the whirl of George's coming and going had no time to think about him: "and you've let me down too, a bit, Tom. Thank goodness George came in the nick of time. But now, Tom, I'm afraid it's all over. You must come down, Tom, when you can and let's have a look at you. Or has some siren with a pretty face pleased you in the flowering brecklands?" To this she got a reply,

Dear Nell,

I hope you'll be able to make arrangements to go out with George soon. I think it would be best for you and I hope it'll be easy. Let me know if I can do anything. I don't think I can get down for a while. It's true I'd be glad to get out of the mental and emotional morass and the dullness of work at this moment, but I can't see that I'd do better in London. I'll soon lose my glamorous reputation as "the London man" but sic transit gloria mundi and as a matter of fact I'm putting on a little weight, not too much and am brighter than usual on Mondays. This confirms the local view that London is a dangerous place for a man. I'll let you know when I can come down. I'm glad you've got Eliza.

Yours, Tom.

"I'll pay the bugger out for that, I won't write until I've made him grovel," cried Nellie. "It's like his cheek. He'll let me know. What's in the man? I must be losing my charm," and this started her off once more on her visiting. She would leave Eliza home, for Eliza was often too tired after work to visit.

Long, long into the night Nellie talked out her troubles. "Everyone thinks it's all over. They're even thinking of getting up a subscription to send me out. Let me come close to you Eliza and cry my heart out. You know him, I feel nearer to him with you."

Eliza received no letter from Tom. She thought she had cut herself off from Tom; he could not write to her in Lamb Street perhaps. She grieved so deeply that Nellie noticed it and supposed she was fretting for her last lover, a young man. At last when Nellie had to go away for two weeks on an assignment, Eliza wrote a note to Tom, "It's a long time since I've seen you. If you feel like coming to London, come and stay in the house while Nellie's away, you'll be free and can go down to the farm if you like, and see your friends. But if you do come, send me a letter or send a letter to Nellie saying you can't come for she would be hurt to think you came in her absence."

She hesitated about posting it, but posted it. "He can always say he can't come."

After three days, she received a letter from Tom which was handed to her with an evil questioning look by Nellie from the morning mail, "Ah, here's a billet-doux for you from me little brother!" Tom wrote:

Dear Eliza,

I never answered the letter you wrote me weeks and weeks ago and I am sorry you got in before I did. I had much to think of and was troubled and confused. I made up my mind I wouldn't come. I wasn't going to come, but I had to come down the other weekend to see someone, a woman you understand, and tell her it was all over. It couldn't be helped. I'm a Blackstone man now. I just couldn't take Lamb Street that weekend. I see I missed George. I had to tell someone to get the hell out of my life. I didn't seem to have anything for any woman, until just now. I'm afraid I won't be seeing London for a long time now. It's not only the distance and such minor things, but I have a responsibility, an attachment here and this sweetens for me the black-walled town and the lonely forest. It's quite a different thing with a sympathetic companion. May the world go well with you. I'll be writing to Nellie one of these days.

Yours, Tom

Eliza, with a chuckle, passed this letter over to Nellie saying, "Well, we've got your little brother off our hands! He'll be writing to you he says there," she pointed and rose smiling, brushing the crumbs off her lap. She put her things in the sink and went out.

Nellie at first suspected some sarcastic triumph in this unusual action and read Tom's letter with jealous disgust and curiosity.

Eliza, who had instantly thought how cunning Tom was to take her invitation and transform it, and how in his purity and uprightness he was now punishing her for many things, and especially for betraying his sister, at once determined to shed any further interest in him. Her interest had always been very tender and pitying. What a terrible thrust the man had! Well, she thought, everything passes over in three days, that's my experience: I only must now live through three days. She got up from the sewing she was doing, and went upstairs to her room.

Nellie called her, but she did not answer. Nellie came upstairs and stood in the door looking at her. She took no notice for a while but began to find this presence in the doorway unbearable and suddenly looked up. Nellie's expression of curiosity was just changing to a devilish triumphant cunning. It flashed into her face and disappeared, leaving its trace in the impish smirk, the first thing that Eliza ever remembered of Nellie, when she had been a woman of twenty and Nellie only seven. Eliza thought angrily that she had given herself away to this imp of Satan, and then she recalled her first impressions of Nellie adult, a mummer, a liar. Gradually she had lost them and become very fond of her, tender towards her. Tom, too, she hadn't liked at all at first, another curious being with a floating soul, neither man nor woman, and not human; neither of them human. She tried hard, all in this moment, to recall and retain her first impressions of the fatal brother and sister.

Nellie was joyful; but she had brushed away the smirk now and came in in her graceful lope, reassuring her, "Was it a shock to you as to me, Eliza? Well, maybe it's better to have him pinned down to Blackstone and we know where he is, the reckless fool. If it's not some old harpy again, it's a wonder. Come, we'll drop tears in our gin, me dear: let's go out and celebrate. I'll not write to the ungrateful monkey though till he tells me, but you will, eh?"

"No," said Eliza.

"Eh, that's wrong, chick. You mustn't let him see you're wounded," said Nellie, looking at her sideways with a laugh.

"What's it to me?" said Eliza; "don't be foolish, Nellie."

"Ye can't conceal it from me, sweetheart, why shouldn't ye admit it? It's no disgrace. It's a maternal affection, you feel. It's no disgrace in an older woman. We all come to it. I'll be seeing myself in a few years no doubt, sighing and mewing after someone in knickerbockers."

At this brutality, Eliza burst out laughing and putting on her red hat and her jacket and very red, with her hair a little loose, looking like, as Nellie said, "a guid ould wife," she went out with Tom's sister to the nearest pub.

But in the night Nellie could not sleep now that George had gone and came to Eliza with her troubles. Tom had been a disappointment to her all his life and now he was stuck away in a cabbage patch with some hobbledehoy girl or village spinster or luring old landlady. A girl in every port and she had pinned her faith to him for he'd been a bonny lad though silly, so silly they thought him simple; they called him girlish.

For a long time she sang the old strain about Tom, his weakness, his breaking her father's pride and his mother's faith. But Eliza roused herself to say to Nellie that he had his own life and they were two old fools to be sitting there weeping over him, like village biddies themselves.

"It's all like a lost village, all of it," said she. "Would you think we were really in the heart of London?"

Nellie said no, and she talked Eliza to utter weariness telling her about the great epochs of her life. She saw it now looking back as from a hill to a glittering plain, the triumphs, the mistakes; how she had been led astray by early ones and late ones. It was a story of thickets, brigands and enchanters; and herself riding some bare-boned nag through it all, but always forward on a straight path through it all to the present moment; "the moment of my downfall, for where am I with it all, all I had? What I have to give and no one wants! I'm a genius, Eliza, and always knew it. I felt it in me and everyone felt it, they all expected great things of me; even old Pop Cotter, the old humbug, was proud of me. Me hour's come now, Eliza, perhaps: and if me George shelves me, we'll face the world together. Ye'll stand by me and I'll write me great play, Lize. I've got it in me. I see things that have never been said or not said the right way. They're all humbugs, and when they'd tell the truth, they put in the hard cruel cutting word, the unnecessary revelation, all misplaced, scorn where there should be love and hate where there should be understanding. How do I see life, Eliza? With a rosy tender veil. It's the palpitating heart of life, I must put in, with the language of love. I feel it, the rich thing like a rose. I've had terrible experiences, no one can ever know. I've had strange things happen to me, strange loves that nothing can explain, that can only be explained in their own terms, in terms of themselves. Yes, darling, I can express it all to you, it's strange, you're my only friend. We only go two by two and my brother is not as fine as you, Eliza, sweet angel," she said pausing for breath and having lost hold of the idea. She mused for a while in the dark and went on, "Loves! That is what hasn't been expressed, Eliza love, and it is hard to express: love. If I could express it, for that's the message in me, I'd be far beyond them with their rule-of-thumb explanations of the universe. What can Marxism say to a lover, or to a mother? Or what can Einstein? Aye, he can say more, for there's something wonderful and beautiful in the idea that we have an attic window only, open on the swamp of stars."

"The way you talk is so lovely," said Eliza struck by this. "I believe in you Nellie."

"Do you believe in me, pet?" said Nellie, excitedly squeezing her. "Then that's all right; then, that's all right on your side. We'll be all right together. You and me armed to the teeth with understanding, facing the bitter mocking world. Is that it? Is that how you feel? Eh, you're cured of that little stab of Tom's unfeeling letter, aren't you? I can cure you, sweetheart. I have a gift: it's given to me. I have it in me. Stay with me. We'll live together in the wilderness of London and it will be like an ideal forest, it was a lover and his lass with a hey and a ho and a hey-nonino! Ha-ha," she said, placing her long legs together and jumping up, "I can't sleep tonight, but you sleep, Eliza chick, if you must."

"I'm a heavy woman, I must sleep," said Eliza.

She slept but Nellie poured herself some brandy, and spent the night smoking and looking out of the black window to see if she could get another idea like that about the stars which had so pleased Eliza. She could not. Black curtains of fatigue dropped all over her mind. She sat in the double dark till morning, with fiery tongues of desire, brain-flame licking the roots of her skull. She had perhaps made another conquest in Eliza but it was not sufficient. The drawback of her easy conquests, she thought to herself, was that they left her dissatisfied: she wanted more. She felt greatness in herself, limitless possibilities: "Me great black and rosy wings."

Sprawling in the great armchair by the empty downstairs fireplace in which were heaped ashes and cigarette butts and some old letters, she fell into a dizzy doze, and was awakened by Eliza standing over her.

"What is it? Stop! I tried to stop you, but you hung on to whatever it was."

"It's nothing, sweetheart," said Nellie, smiling innocently at Eliza, "it was just a nightmare, nothing to be told. It was a staircase. I was going down and there was a long curtain with a flap or skirt trailing on the stair to trip me, and on that part of the stair there was no light and I was saying, There's no light, there's no light."

"It didn't sound like any words," said Eliza: "it was groaning and a scream."