THE CINDER PATH (18 page)

enamel, her voice, having now lost all its

jocularity, bawled at him, "You have the gall to stand there and ask me to go back and look after your mother! You must be flaming mad! Do you remember how we parted?

I could have throttled her, the old bitch! As for dear

Betty, if I had to come in contact with her

again I just might." She screwed up her eyes

and peered at him, then in a lower tone she said, "You must be barmy, you must, to come all this way to ask me that!"

"My mother is dying. That's putting it plainly.

As for Betty, well, you wouldn't have to put up with

her much longer, she's engaged to Robin Wetherby, and

if they get married she'll go straight over to his

place."

"Really! And so you'll be left on your own.

Poor, poor Charlie. Well, say your mother

dies and Betty goes, what then? I come back and

play the dutiful wife, which would help you no doubt

to lift your head up again in the markets; that's if a

conchie will ever be able to lift his head up again anywhere.

. . . Can you see the picture, Charlie?" She

waited a moment while they stared at each other across

the room; then she flung her arms wide as she

cried, "If your mother was dying ten times over, and you along with her, you'd never get me back in that house

again. I felt tied at home, but it was a home. .

. . Your place! What is it but a bloody

prison, an uncomfortable, cold, bloody

prison. I hadn't even anyone to keep me warm

in bed, had I? Eh! Had I?"

"That was your fault."

"My fault? Aw, don't make me sick.

You

know what you are, Charlie MacFell; you know what

you are, you're a nincompoop, nothing more or less,

a nincompoop. You'll never have an experience in your

life that's worthwhile, you'll never touch the depths,

and you'll never touch the heights; you'll live on that same plane of niceness." Her lip curled on the

last word, and she went on, "Nice fellow, nice

and easy going; nice and polite, nice, nice,

nice. . . . Get out of me sight!"

He didn't move. "You had a man here last

night."

Her eyes widened slightly as she pressed her

lips together; then she moved her head slowly up and

down and said, "Really! how do you make that out?"

"He left his approbation on the mirror."

"Oh dear, dear! that was a mistake, wasn't

it? I should have rubbed it off. But then I didn't

expect to see you today."

"I can divorce you."

"You can what!"

"I'll repeat it for you, I can divorce you."

"Aw no, Charlie, no, don't come that

with me. You cannot divorce me, but I can divorce you

... for non-consummation."

"That's a lie!" His voice came suddenly

loud and sharp, and he repeated, "That's a damn lie and you know it!"

She took three slow steps towards him; then she

stopped and said, "You try, you try and divorce me, you blacken my name and I'll stand up in the highest

court and tell them how I tried every way to make you

love me as a man should. And you didn't... or

couldn't."

His face was ablaze; he felt the sweat in his

oxters. It was he who moved forward now as he

growled at her, "Then I'll contest it. Yes,

I'll contest it; with my last breath I'll contest

it."

They glared at each other for a moment. Then lifting

her hand she patted her cheek as if in perplexity,

saying to herself, "My! my! Victoria, have you made a mistake and there's a man hidden somewhere in there?"

"Be careful!"

They were glaring at each other again.

"Good-bye, Charlie."

He looked at her for a moment longer; then swinging

round, he went from the room; and she went

hastily after him and watched him grab up his coat and

hat, but when he opened the door she cried at him,

"Why don't you try Nellie? She might help

you out; that's if you can get her sobered up."

When he opened the gate into the avenue he wanted

to run. The anger inside him was acting like a fire

stoking an engine; he wanted to use his limbs,

to flay his arms, to toss his head. God! was there ever anybody in this world like her? But he had only himself to blame; surely he had known what to expect.

Hadn't he gone through it all before? What in the name of God had made him think she would come back to the farm

and help him out? Desperation, he supposed.

His walk was on the point of a run when he emerged

into the main thoroughfare and there was forced to slow his pace, so that he was near the station when he recalled her words:

"Why don't you try Nellie? That's if you can

get her sobered up." Had she taken to drink that

bad?

It was almost a year since he had seen Nellie;

he had been to her house in Gateshead when she had

first gone to live there. Her place, being in a

terrace and three-storey high with a basement,

wasn't anything like the one Victoria had,

but it was a substantial house nevertheless. The

basement and the upper two floors were let off, and

Nellie had taken up her abode in the ground

floor. The property brought in a small income,

and

Nellie, who had taken a course in shorthand and

typing, had got a job in the office of one of the

hospitals. That being so, he now thought, it wasn't

likely she would leave it to help him out. Anyway,

with the war restrictions, perhaps she wouldn't be allowed.

Should he go and see her? He had only to cross

the bridge over the river; he could be there in ten

minutes if he took a bus. . . .

The street looked dingy; the tall terraced

houses looked like old ladies who had seen better

days. He went up the four steps and into the hall that

smelt dank and was thick with the aroma of cooking.

Before he knocked on the door he stood listening

for a moment to the sound of laughter coming from within, and when the door opened, Nellie stood there, her mouth wide,

a glass in her hand, saying, "Come in. Come-was

Her voice trailed away and she leaned forward, and

then in a whisper said, "Charlie!"

"Yes, Nellie; it's me."

He watched her swallow, glance over

her shoulder, then smile brightly as she said,

"Well! well! what are we standing here for? Come

in. Come ... on ... in. Come . . .

on ... in.

He walked into the room and looked at the two

soldiers sitting on the couch, and they looked back

at him, while Nellie, going towards them, swung

her head from one side to the other, saying, "This is an old friend of mine, this is Charlie. And this is Andy,

and Phil."

"How-do!" The two soldiers spoke together and their heads bobbed together.

And Charlie answered, "How-do-you-do?"

"Sit down. Sit down." Nellie was pointing

to a chair. "Let me get you a drink. You're in

clover, I can tell you; Andy brought this." She

laughed towards the shorter of the two men sitting on the couch. "You can't get Scotch for love nor money,

but Andy's got ways and means. Haven't you,

Andy?"

"Aye, aye, I have that, Nellie; I've got

shares in a Newcastle brewery." His voice was

thick with the Tyneside twang.

"Well, you should have, you've bought enough of their beer over the years." The other man nudged his friend with his shoulder and they both laughed together.

When Nellie handed Charlie a glass with a good

measure of whisky in it, he said "Thanks", then raised it to her and afterwards to the men before he sipped at it.

"It's good stuff." He nodded to them now, and the man called Andy laughed and said, "Nowt but the best for the British Tommy." The silence that followed was

broken by Nellie in a loud voice exclaiming,

"What brought you into town, Charlie?"

"I ... I had a bit of business."

"Oh. . . . Everything all right on the farm?"

He paused. "Well, not quite, Mother's pretty

bad and Arnold's off with severe back trouble."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. You got help?"

"No, that's the problem. Young Sarah . . . you

remember young Sarah? Well, she left an'

all."

"Aw goodness me!" Nellie put down her

glass and, leaning towards Charlie, said, "You must be in a pickle then."

"Yes. Well"-he gave a shaky

laugh"...everybody's in a pickle these days." Of a sudden he gulped at the whisky and drained

the glass, shuddered, then rose to his feet, saying,

"I'll have to be off; I have a train to catch."

"But you've just got here!" She was standing in front of him, one hand gripping the lapel of his coat.

"Look, stay and have a bite;

I'm . . . I'm not at work, I've been off with a

cold. Come on, stay and have a bite."

"I'm sorry, Nellie"-he smiled weakly

down at her-"they'll be waiting for me and, as I

said, we're short-handed; I'll have to get back."

He turned his head now and looked at the men and said,

"Good-bye."

One of them answered, "So long, chum," while the other said, "Ta-rah. Ta-rah."

She went with him into the hall, closing the door after her, and there, gazing up into his face, she said

softly, "You look awful, Charlie. Aren't you

well?"

"Yes, yes, I'm all right, Nellie." But

he could have returned the compliment by saying, "And you look awful too." How old was she, twenty-one?

She looked thirty-one at this moment; her face was

puffed, there were bags under her eyes.

"Have you been to see Vick?"

"Yes."

"Any progress?"

"Just downwards."

"Well, you're not missing anything there,

Charlie."

"Do ... do you ever meet?"

"What! her and me? Only when we can't help

it. She's doing a stint at present in a

canteen. I went in there with the lads one night and there she was . . . Huh!"

"There she was, what?"

"Oh, nothing." She shrugged her shoulders, then said harshly, "What am I covering up? You know how things are as well as I do. Yes, there she was, and

aiming to serve in more ways than one."

"Don't, Nellie." He turned abruptly

from her.

"I can't help it, Charlie." She was again

holding him by the lapels, with both hands now. "You're a bloody fool." Her voice was a thin whisper.

"You should never have married her, you know that. She's a maniac . . . Do you still love her?"

He turned his head sharply from the side and looked

at her. "Love her! love Victoria! Still

love her did you say? I can't remember ever

having done so in the first place. You said she

was a maniac; but no, you are wrong there, Nellie,

it was me who was the maniac."

After a moment of silence she slapped him with the

flat of her hand in the middle of his chest and she

grinned at him as she said, "You'd have made a

better bargain with me, wouldn't you?"

"Oh, Nellie!" He returned her smile and

shook his head, and she went on, "You would, I know you would."

He put up his hand and stroked her cheek. There was

something endearing about Nellie, and always had been; she was so frank, so open, so adult, yet at the same

time so childlike. He leaned forward and put his

lips to her cheek. "Take care of yourself and . . .

go easy on the Newcastle brewery, it's bad for the

complexion." He opened the door and went down the

steps, and when he turned she was standing just as he had left her, and she did not answer the salute of his

hand, nor as he walked away did he hear the

door close.

You would have made a better bargain with me,

Charlie.

He had no doubt of it, no doubt at all.

Mary MacFell was dying and she was dying hard.

She didn't want to go. She was resentful

that she was being forced to go; she hadn't got her money's worth out of the place; she hadn't been repaid for what she had suffered at the hands of Edward MacFell,

and later from the tongue of her daugher-in-law. And

when she was gone who would control the place? Betty?

Yes, Betty. That gangling son of hers was no

match for his sister.

She gasped at the air as she looked up into the

face of her son, the son she had once loved. For

sixteen years she had loved that face, but over the

past eight years she had come to hate it. Her son

was soft; and yet not soft enough to give her control of the farm, not easygoing enough to let her write out cheques.

He had stopped her buying furniture and finery.

In a way she had suffered as much from his hands as she had from her husband's. . . . But if only she could

get her breath.

"Take it easy. Mother. There, there!" He

smoothed the pillows; then taking a cup from the side

table, he put one hand under her head as he said,

"Try to sip this. Come on, it will ease your throat.

Try to sip this."

She thrust his hand and the cup away from her and the

linctus spilled over the bedcover.

He turned from the bed and went to the washhand

stand. After dipping a flannel into the basin of water, he went back to the bed and rubbed at the collar of her night-gown and the sheet and the eiderdown; and while he did this she lay gasping, her glazed gaze fixed

tight on him. And he was aware of it; as also he was

aware of the antipathy emanating from it.