Love on the Dole (18 page)

At home was discord. This mysterious business of housekeeping was insoluble. His father’s work was become chronically spasmodic; the new industrial revolution had stolen, insidiously, upon every enterprise, it seemed, and now was an accomplished fact. Though the three days’ working week that it had established was still looked upon by all whom it affected as ‘bad trade’; a phase that would pass when ‘things bucked up’. Meanwhile there was no sign of this, and Hardcastle’s wages were halved with the inevitable consequences on his temper.

There was something amiss with Sally, too. Gloomy, moody, she sat about the house as though nursing a perpetual grudge against everybody; at the least provocation she would flash out tempestuously.

Harry was relieved to be away from it: ‘Ach, you make me sick, you do,’ he snarled at her: ‘Allus on the growl like a bear wi’ a sore head. Why don’t y’ get married an’ get out of it?’

She raised her gorgeous eyes to his at the taunt: he saw in them a look of intense pain. She did not speak. He blushed, picked up his cap and slunk outside, leaving her alone in the house.

NED NARKEY, standing cross-legged on the doorstep of his lodgings, thumb of one hand in belt, the other hand resting on the door frame and supporting his great bulk, lifted his lip in a scowling snarl as Larry Meath passed by on the other side. As he passed Ned spat contemptuously on to the pavement and voiced a harsh, growling exclamation, glaring at Larry and still wearing the scowl until he turned the corner.

Harry, sitting on the doorstep of his home, witness to the incident, wondered idly on its cause. Some days later he made a startling discovery by, an accidental act of eavesdropping.

It was noon, he was standing by an open window viewing the smoky prospect and resting in the time that remained before the siren blew at one o’clock. To his left a wood partition enclosed the lavatories, a cramped place where were a half dozen chipped washbowls. Conversation on the other side was quite audible from where he stood. There were peepholes, too, cut in the wood, the work of idle apprentices who wished to watch for the approach of foremen and any other persons invested with authority.

The gush of water from a couple of taps first attracted his attention, then, amid the splashings of hands being washed he heard the surly voice of Ned Narkey say: That there crane o’ mine wants fixin’ agen’; a short pause: ‘Y’d berrer gerrit seen to. … Y’ made a right muck of it last time,’ contemptuously: ‘Mechanics. Aaach! Aaach! Ah’ve seen berrer wi’ skirts on.’

Curious, Harry stooped to one of the holes in the partition. Ned was speaking to Larry Meath. Wonderingly, Harry remembered the incident of a few nights ago when Ned had spat as Larry passed by. In what way had Larry given Ned offence. He listened, puzzled.

Without looking at Ned Larry answered: ‘If there’s anything wrong with the crane you know where to lodge the complaint It will be passed on to me.’ He continued washing his hands.

Ned took a couple of heavy steps forward: ‘Don’t you come the bloody sergeant-major stuff on me, Meath,’ he snapped: ‘You ain’t kidding a tart when y’ talk t’ me.’

No answer.

‘You know what Ah mean,’ continued Ned: ‘Ah know y’ game…. It don’t kid me.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Come orf it. Come orf it. You know who Ah mean. Y’ve bin stuffin’ her up wi’ all that there high-falutin talk o’ yourn an’ she swallows all y’ say.’

Larry gazed at him and said, patiently: ‘Who are you referring to, Ned?’

Ned curled his lip. ‘Referrin’ … referrin’,’ in rising tones: ‘Ach. The bloody edge you put on makes me sick,’ indignantly: ‘Who the ‘ell d’y’ think y’ are?’ threateningly: ‘Anyway, you leave her alone. It’s Sal Hardcastle Ah’m speakin’ about.’

Harry’s heart leapt; his skin crept. Larry, as he saw, was folding his towel; he was frowning as he regarded Ned whose enormous muscularity seemed magnified in comparison with Larry’s slightness of build. Ned’s expression was frightening; his chest rose and fell; his upper lip blue, like his jaw with stubble, was stretched tightly across his teeth; his unsleeved arms, muscles taut, fists clenched, hung, crooked, by his side.

Larry said, quietly: ‘Don’t you think you’re making a bit of a fool of yourself, Ned?’

‘Don’t - you - talk - to - me.’

Larry turned to go but Ned’s hand fell on his shoulder and whipped him round again: white, Larry faced him: ‘You listen to me,’ Ned snapped: ‘What’re y’ goin’ t’ do about it?’ he thrust his face forward, his huge chest rose and fell agitatedly. Larry made no answer immediately, regarded Ned interrogatively: ‘Y’ makin’ no move t’ marry her, a’y’?’ Ned demanded.

‘How can that concern you?’ Larry answered, spiritedly.

‘Me? Don’t concern me?’ Ned spluttered:
‘Me,
as’s ast her t’ marry me …’ passionately: ‘Turnin’ me down for a white-livered conchie like you . .’ angrily: ‘Ah fought for such bastards as you. Sergeant-major Narkey, that’s me. Aye, an Ah wus o’er there while yellow-bellied rats like you wus sleepin’ wi’ owld sweats’ wives an’ landin’ soft jobs for y’selves,’ pointing a threatening finger at him: Think on, now, Ah’m warnin’ y’. If y’ don’t want that there dial o’ yourn smashed in, keep away from Sal Hardcastle. Unnerstand, Ah mean it.’

Larry straightened his collar, disarranged by Ned’s rough usage. He recognized the uselessness of argument in the face of Ned’s jealousy. Besides, there was nothing he could have said. Yet, despite his usual equanimity he resented Ned’s autocratic usage of his physical superiority and could not refrain from the retort: ‘If I were you I’d consult Sal before you make any more arrangements for her,’ gazing at him, steadfastly: ‘As for your threats,’ a shrug, ‘you’d have time to regret them in jail.’

‘Aaach,’ Ned snarled; he clenched his teeth, glared and made a sudden movement as though to strike Larry. But he restrained himself: hatred burned in his eyes as he muttered, thickly: ‘You an’ y’ bloody talk. You’ve got it comin’ t’ y’, s’elp me. Y’ll open that trap o’ yourn once too often …’ the rest of his utterance was lost in the din of the siren. Harry saw Larry turn and walk out leaving Ned standing there his face contorted with impotent anger.

The memory of the incident plagued Harry, filled him with a restless perturbation all the afternoon.

He vowed not to tell Sally of the occurrence but he could not keep it to himself. Soon after tea, when they were alone in the house, he mentioned it casually. Her immediate response was something of a revelation. Her anxiety and the appeal in her eyes disconcerted him; never, previously, had he considered her capable of deep feelings, say, as existed between Helen and he. It came as something of a shock to find that she, too, had problems to face. ‘Go on, Harry. What did Larry say…? Try to remember.’

She drew it from him, phrase by phrase.

‘You don’t like Ned, d’y’, Sal?’ he asked afterwards and saw the angry colour mount her cheeks.

‘Him,’ she answered: ‘He’s a dirty pig. Him an’ Sam Grundy’s a pair.’

‘Sam Grundy? Why?’ murmured Harry, staring. Surely …! There returned to mind a memory of the evening Sam Grundy had paid him the winnings: until now he had never dreamed that there might have been an ulterior motive in his inquiries concerning Sally and in the adjuration: ‘Tell her as Ah’ve said that she’s t’ have a couple o’ quid out o’ y’ winnings for new clo’es.’ A suspicion dawned. Hateful beast. It was common knowledge that Sam had kept women up and down the place; everybody knew of his house in Wales where, so people said, his mistress of the moment resided. It was perplexing to know that one could act so with such amazing impunity. Money, it seemed, could do anything. But to think of Sally’s having anything to do with such…! ‘You ain’t …’ began Harry, falteringly: ‘You ain’t …?
He
ain’t…?’ His cheeks burned.

‘Ach, he’s allus on to me, the fat pig,’ in imitation of Sam Grundy: ‘Y’ve no need t’ work, Sally. Y’d have all y’ want,’ curling her lip: ‘Puh! Ah’d want summat t’ do t’ let a thing like him or Narkey muck about wi’ me.’

Imagine it! Men regarding her with desire! She, Sally, his sister! She, who, previously, he never had suspected her being a woman as, say Helen. And such men: it was shameful: he experienced a bitter hatred towards both of them; such a sensation of disgust as though they had made an improper suggestion to him. He clutched the remembrance of Larry Meath, gratefully. He had confidence in him; his unaffected superiority inspired it.

He said, gazing at her: ‘And won’t Larry …?’ and left his question unfinished. How mature she looked. Why, she was a woman: he had not noticed it before.

She was staring into the fire, head drooping slightly, one foot resting on the steel fender. She shook her head slowly, mechanically as she revolved memories which reopened the wounds of her discontent; memories of conversations with Larry, of confidences exchanged, of ideas expressed on his part - sometimes incomprehensible, otherwise depressing - ideas on and against marriage which rebuked her high hopes. She could have reconciled herself more easily to her disappointment had she known him to harbour no affection for her; it would have been inevitable, then. But he did not, could not deceive her; intuitively she felt him to be wilfully suppressing, evading his love of her, that he was as unhappy about it as she, and she responded, thrilling, to the remembrances of those times when it refused to be suppressed, times when it looked out of his kindly eyes eloquently and ravished her with an agonizing, hopeful happiness. At the thought she tingled with dissatisfaction and impatience; her heart expanded in an overwhelming desire to be in his company. She turned from the fender, picked up her hat and coat and made towards the door without a word to Harry. She knew where Larry would be.

‘Where y’ goin’, Sal?’ Harry asked, anxious in the face of this sudden activity. She must not have heard him; she went out without answering. He stared at the door, perturbed. What an uncomfortable state of affairs. Ned’s threats to Larry: Sally’s revelation of Sam Grundy’s proposals. What a hopeless tangle; made his head swim to think about it. Oh, it didn’t concern him, anyway; he’d his own worries. They came crowding back to him at the thought: he groaned, inwardly, reached for his cap and went in search of Helen.

2

Larry was not at the Labour Club where Sally guessed he would be.

‘He’ll ha’ gone down cut bank, shouldn’t wonder,’ said one of the men at the club: ‘He’d them there field-glasses wi’ him an’ that’s where he gen’ly gus. Thee be careful a-goin’ down theer, lass. ‘Tain’t fit place fr lass t’ be alone.’

That people might suspect her of ‘running after’ Larry, as the saying goes in the Two Cities, did not occur to her: even though it had she would not have been deterred. She never made a pretence of her infatuation, could not have dissembled it; rather was she proud of it and was naively, disarmingly frank with Larry concerning it

In a sense she was relieved that Larry was not at the club; confidential talk was not possible there. And she knew the spot Larry generally affected on the canal side. It was about two miles west of Pendleton.

Anybody seeing a snapshot of some select comer might imagine it as being representative of the heart of the country. Beauty was there, doubtless, but not to the eyes of slum dwellers who walked there. They take with them what exists two miles away to the east. Still, beauty is there in the tall, limp-leaved beeches and hairy elms, the long grass and sedge and the water meadow sweeping down to the serpentine river a quarter-mile distant. Beauty, pockmarked by glimpses of gaunt, pit headstocks rising between trees and scarecrow electric pylons sprawling across the meadows’ bosoms.

Often the eye is offended by the ribald handiwork of obscene boys and youths who, with lumps of chalk make crude suggestive drawings on the canal bridges’ masonry, write disgusting doggerels and phrases and inscribe the names of girls beneath. Sometimes the songs of the lark and blackbird are overwhelmed by raucous screams of counterfeit shocked laughter from groups of mill and factory girls parading the banks who have been surprised by louts from the slums lying in the grass peeping at lovers, and, on occasions such as when they are encouraged by the presence of groups of girls, exposing themselves then bursting into raucous, hysterical laughter. Less egregious pastimes are indulged: colliers use the banks as training tracks for their whippets; gamblers hold ‘schools’ for the pitching and tossing of coins: in season the bat slogs the ball in adjoining meadows: racing pigeons are loosed; ferrets put down holes to start up squeaking rats and bolting-eyed rabbits which are chased to a bloody death by pitiless greyhounds. Here and there patient sportsmen puff pipes as they contemplate their floats bobbing on the still water, hook diminutive roach and gudgeon, carry their catches home alive in tins of water, put the fish in glass bowls when they arrive home then throw them into the midden two or three days later when they are dead.

Altogether, a pleasant place, marred by the activities of unpleasant people whose qualities, perhaps, are sad reflections of sadder environments.

As she walked the canal bank she brooded on Narkey’s threats to Larry, flushed, resentfully. Then her spirits leapt as a wild hope warmed her. Perhaps these threats of Narkey’s would set Larry on his mettle, as it were! Instantly she rebuked herself. Such would not be Larry. Not he whom she had followed round from street corner to street corner, blessed in the privilege of giving out - what were to her - dry-as-dust pamphlets, watching him as he mounted the seat of a borrowed chair wherefrom to proclaim his political faith to an audience of street-corner mouchers, who, for the most part, stood awhile then drifted to the pubs or where not. Nearly always she thought on him thus; it pleased her, charmed her so to do: as such she saw him ‘attired in brightness as a man inspired’, a character full of such qualities as those of an ideal. The very thought of having his caresses was stifling, ecstatic. There would be no giving on her part, only taking: she would be the receiver, he the giver. What had she to give? Who was she? Sal Hardcastle, an insignificant weaver at Marlowe’s cotton mills. She shrank from the acknowledgement of her abysmal negligibility: by comparison Larry seemed more remote than ever.