Love on the Dole (17 page)

Still, that being so - if they could find someone here to employ them. But his heart shrank at the thought. This had occurred to him earlier, the occasion after he and Helen had discovered a whitewashed cottage to be let at a half-crown a week. He had inquired, cautiously, tentatively regarding employment here of an old fisherman. The old man had disillusioned him instantly; had told him that the winter saw most of the folk hereabout unemployed. Unemployed, here, though! Did its stinking carcass foul the air everywhere? Was there no place where it did not lie in wait for your coming? Despite it all revolt stirred in his heart when he had to acknowledge his impotency.

‘It’s a bit thick, Helen,’ he mumbled: ‘ - a bit thick when y’ can’t do what y’ want. Yaaa, who wants t’ go back t’ Hanky Park?’ He unshipped oars, headed the boat round and pulled with an energy expressive of his feelings. Helen was silent.

Over the hills the pale moon was sailing, growing more brilliant as the western horizon lost colour. The lighthouse on the breakwater’s extremity was flashing when Harry restored the boat to its proprietor.

A high eminence, little frequented, the home of sheep, deep bracken and blazing yellow gorse, overlooked the white-walled town. They followed the track to a point half-way up, branched off to a hollow they had discovered hard by a clump of conifers and seated themselves. They sat silent for a while each brooding.

‘It’s all right for you, Harry,’ Helen murmured.

‘What d’y’ mean, Helen?’

She shook her head and stared into her lap: ‘Oh, Ah dunno,’ a sigh of weariness: ‘What’s good o’ talkin’ about it …’

‘Talkin’ about what, though?’ He persisted, and, slowly, wrung a confession from her. The story was not unfamiliar: he had heard a similar from Tom Hare regarding the sexual behaviour of drunken parents. But, whereas Tom’s story disgusted him, Helen’s shocked him. He hated her parents savagely. He - He - Oh, what could a fellow do?

‘Ah want t’ get away from ‘em, Harry…. An’ Ah would ha’ done long ago if Ah could ha’ found a place where they’d take me in for what Ah’m earnin’. But strangers won’t do it when they know y’ work at Marlowe’s mill, them allus bein’ on short time … ‘ a pause, then, with sudden passion: ‘Oh, Ah hate sex. Ah
hate
it.’ She laid a hand on his arm: ‘It’s them, Harry, Ah mean. It’s
them
… Ah could be sick when Ah think about it. An’ livin’ here wi’ you for a week with all this here,’ a pass in the direction of sea and town, ‘An’ a clean bed an’ a room - an’ knowin’ that
they
won’t come home drunk an’ go in next room. Oh - ‘ Her head drooped, her hands went to her face.

He put his arms about her and held her close to him. He did not speak for a while. Presently, he said: ‘Ne’er heed, Helen…’ ardently: ‘Ah love y’, Helen. Ah
do
love y’…’

Without thinking as to its practicability he suddenly burst forth, eagerly: ‘Aye, ‘Elen, an’ as soon as Ah’m out o’ me time we’ll be married. Really. … No kid. An’ Ah’ll be out of it in a few months now.’ Then a rebuke rose to his mind by way of an afterthought; a disturbing picture of automatic and other devilishly self-sufficient machinery. Things that made the serving of his apprenticeship a waste of time. Here he was promising marriage with such a competitor to fight. It was all very well for those fellows who invented them; their inventions put them on velvet. But they didn’t pause to consider how many poor devils had to go under on their account. Blimey, look at Billy Higgs and his generation, still mooning around; skilled engineers supposed to be.

Then an access of confidence: ‘Maybe,’ he told himself: ‘Maybe Ah’ll land a job when Ah come out o’ me time. There’s
sure
to be jobs
somewhere.’
He breathed with greater freedom. He said, impatiently: ‘Aw, let’s forget about home, Helen. We ain’t there now, thank God. Let’s mek most of it while we can: there’s on’y another day.’ She relaxed in his arms. He felt her arms stealing about him: she said: ‘Y’ll allus love me, wont y’, Harry? Things don’t seem so bad when Ah’ve got you.’

‘You know me,’ he replied, stoutly: ‘When we get back home we start saving up straightaway for - well, you know what’ Pause: ‘Funny, ain’t it, Helen … Ah mean it’s funny we ain’t ne’er thought o’ getting married afore. You know. … Fancy, though, us livin’ in different houses when there’s nowt t’ stop us from gettin’ a home of our own!’

It came in the way of a revelation this appreciation of their liberty to marry. It was as though, previously, no such thing as marriage existed, or, at least, if it did exist it was not for such as they. On a sudden, as it were, they felt they had cast the shell of boy and girlhood and had emerged, adults. A most inspiring sensation suffused them both; in an instant everything seemed possible. They now were responsible for themselves, the arbiters of their own destinies. Going home now to the prospect of marriage minimized the pang of parting from this lovely place.

He assured her, with confidence and ardour, that his promises would soon come to pass: ‘Once let me get back to work. … Let me get out o’ me time an’ on full money. Ah’ll show y’ .. Ah’ll find a job … Ah’ll - Oh, you wait an’ see.’

She lay back in the bracken, sighing. He brushed her sunburnt cheek with his lips. She murmured his name, her lips sought his, and, abandoning themselves, they surrendered to ecstatic oblivion.

The waxing moon climbed higher in the heavens: brilliant beams bathed land and sea. Where shadows lurked the blackness was intense, impenetrable; elsewhere was eerily white. No wind, no sound save the distant cool swish of the sea: rabbits kicked their heels, sheep grazed, bats flitted and owls were on the wing. The road the lovers were to traverse home wound, a silver ribbon by the empty white-walled cottage, through sable coppices and between high thorn hedges heavy with honeysuckle and blossom.

THE return to the Two Cities was not so dismal an event as they had thought: nevertheless, despite their plans of marriage they bade farewell to the holiday with many pangs. Still, it was inevitable, Harry concluded, and, the sooner he settled down again to humdrum existence the quicker the time would pass which now separated him from the termination of his apprenticeship. All that would then remain would be the finding of an employer willing to pay him the full rate of wage due to a time-served engineer. Already he had accomplished this in fancy. He assured himself that he would not fail. His optimism communicated itself to Helen; their confidence grew and engendered a delightfully new sense of intimacy and devotion.

They considered the necessity of having to settle down again to the squalor of Hanky Park as a period merely of probation; a kind of temporary stage which had to be endured whilst the money necessary to marriage was saved. Their fancies and the seductive pictures it painted of a home of their own obscured reality and made bearable what, otherwise, would have been intolerable.

With ten shillings in his pockets, the residue of what remained of his winnings plus a shilling each which they had managed to save, he and Helen, arm in arm, went window gazing in the furniture shops. The most expensive establishments drew them as a magnet; luxuriously upholstered lounge furniture held them spellbound. Their imaginations were fired by the show-cards’ sketches depicting suggested arrangements of the furniture in spacious, oak-panelled rooms whose open French windows looked on to a sunny garden with a dovecote on a pole in the centre of the lawn: such a place as never existed within miles of the Two Cities and whose upkeep would require at least an income of two thousand pounds a year.

An economical form of entertainment and much more satisfyng than the picture theatre. Satisfying whilst one could keep up the pretence of being able to purchase the things displayed. But, when the illusion faded and the solemn stillness fell between them, they could only practise deception on each other in glum silences or in forced cheerfulness: ‘Aw, ne’er heed, Helen. just let me get that there job on full money an’ we’ll soon have things like that.’ With the utterance of the words his heart contracted: what a shallow, ill-considered promise. He knew that on full rate of pay he would never be able to afford decent furnishings. Of the things he would have liked fine dreams only were his portion.

They would drift, by degrees to the cheaper shops. Ugly furniture; imitation this and imitation that; skimped jerry-built stuff that hurt the eyes, that boasted its inferiority shamelessly, brazenly and filled the brain with a bleak dullness. No show-cards here save: ‘Join Our Club. Weekly Payments Taken.’

Homewards with moody, resentful discontent in their hearts.

‘Seems as though we’ve ne’er to get nowt we really want, Harry grumbled. He scowled. Then, remembering his solitary stroke of good fortune, and, with dreams of a successful repetition, added, hopefully: ‘Still, we
will
get what we want if Ah win newspaper competition. An’ somebody’s
got
t’ win.’

Alone, he sometimes dared to look the problem straight in the face. Here he was, within hailing distance of completing his apprenticeship. For nearly seven years he had been working for a boy’s wage, and, these last four years he had been performing a skilled tradesman’s work, though it had made no difference to his wages. So far was quite clear: his income had been such as had precluded the possibility of saving, nay, but for the communal pooling of wages at home he would have been in debt. The future was the bugbear;
that
gave him pause. All his plans of marriage were on the other side of a very large ‘if.
II
he was successful in securing a situation on full pay.

Each time he saw Billy Higgs and his generation, ragged and down at heel lounging the street corners, each time he stared at them he stared at reality. But it was only an incomplete appreciation: every attempt to realize it fully was vitiated by a hope that he would evade their fate.

The ominous menace looming on the horizon of the future only served to set a keener edge upon his ambitions; the more impossible he recognized his circumstances from the viewpoint of marriage the more maddeningly desirable it became.

He could not restrain his pent-up feelings betimes; sought reassurance of everybody who would lend a sympathetic ear, though he referred to marriage guardedly, in a general sense.

Joe Simmons, Bill Simmons’s elder brother, who was married and a labourer at Marlowe’s, scowled when Harry, one evening on the way home, introduced the subject: ‘Marriage. Yaaaa,’ he growled: ‘Blimey, you tek notice of a mug wot got married. Luk at me now. Nowt t’ wear an’ ne’er a blasted penny t’ call me own,’ indignantly: ‘An’ me
workin’,
too!’ bitterly: ‘Ah wus

one o’ the clever devils. Ah wus Oh aye. Ah knew all about

it when Ah was single, Ah did. We was gonna be different from rest, we wus. But, bli-me! Eeee! Ah wisht as ‘ad me time t’ go o’er agen. By Christ, Ah do an’ all.’

A week’s holiday at the seaside, fifteen pounds and the girl of his pre-nuptial fancy - now his wife - had been the basis of Joe’s venture into matrimony. There, by the sea, everything had been ideal: they had spent the fifteen pounds, or, in other words, had lived for a glorious week at the rate of £750 a year and had found such happiness as had inclined Joe to the belief that marriage would be one long repetition of the holiday. He overlooked the fact of the difference between the £750 and the £104 which last was the amount he earned after a full year’s hard labour at Marlowe’s.

Even now Joe still dreamed on the now remote happiness that had been his and his wife’s on their only holiday. And though he felt, keenly, the need of money he never acknowledged it as the cause of his present discontent. He did not appreciate the fact that money’s value was determined. He endowed it with a quality of elasticity when it was in his wife’s hands and accused her of incompetence when she failed in producing the miracle of all their wants. He scowled when she gave him his half-crown spending money out of his wages every Saturday noon, said, surlily, that he didn’t know what she did with the money he earned.

And when their language and temper became heated nobody would have thought them the same couple, who, years ago, strolled the Blackpool promenade arm in arm, perfectly happy.

Nor were others more encouraging; all warned him against it on grounds of financial stringency - all except one. The diminutive Mr Alfred Scodger whose termagant wife performed upon the trombone. Alfred said: ‘Bein’ wed’s like a feller wi’ a bald head: there ain’t no partin’.’ He removed his oily trilby so that Harry might see his shiny pate: ‘Yaah, you be careful, Harry. Y’ can allus get a new lass but y’ can’t get a new wife once y’ married. Remember wot owld Alf Scodger says wot’s bin through it all an’ knows. Be careful, lad, be careful, an’ be wary o’ them as is musical inclined.’

Anon the vision glowed seductively; he day-dreamed on it, talked of it so to Helen that sometimes it was difficult to believe it actually hadn’t occurred. And, long before his apprenticeship was complete it had ceased to be a vague ambition and had become a necessity shot with fearful apprehensions lest something unmentionable should arise to thwart its consummation. He came to put out of mind such daft, impossible notions of a decent home; they were futile wastes of time. Came to treasure and to be glad of the likelier possibility of obtaining such a house as any in Hanky Park. Oh, the deep yearning to imagine any one of them as his and Helen’s; the poignant sweetness of picturing himself shutting the front door and feeling secure against all trespass! He came to regard all front doors with a deep respect.

His own home, what little he saw of it these days, was intolerable. He and Helen spent most of their time walking the canal bank or sitting on Dawney’s Hill planning and scheming until darkness fell, then, under the stars, lovemaking.