The Rising of Bella Casey (18 page)

‘Look what you’ve done now,’ she cried at Nick.

He stood there swaying gently, his brow more perplexed than stormy, then suddenly he retreated back to his chair and slumped into it.

‘Are you alright, Mam?’ Babsie asked, only now beginning to sound panicky.

‘There, there,’ she said. Useless words of comfort. ‘Your father was just moithered, that’s all. Woke up from a bad dream and thought himself still in it.’

They spoke in whispers as Nick had resumed his torpor. But he was wide-eyed and present – bodily, that is. Bella knew then she must quell the girls’ suspicions. With great trepidation, for she did not know what reception she would get, she went over to where Nick was sitting and put her arm around his shoulders, kissing the crown of his head. He closed his eyes and moaned softly.

‘How’s my brave soldier boy?’ Bella crooned as if he were a baby.

‘All serene, Ma’am,’ he replied, ‘all serene.’

F
rom then on, Nick became a full-time inhabitant of his past. He took to donning his old regimentals to go to work and had to be cajoled out of it. He looked a sight for it was his dress uniform he chose, the crimson coat with the full skirt. Since the trews of this outfit had long since gone the way of all evil, he teamed the jacket with a pair of knickerbockers laced at the knee that used to be worn for musketry. He’d gained some weight since the last time he’d worn the coat, so the gilded buttons didn’t meet and the torn scarlet lining was visible for all to see. Bella would have to strip him like a child and force him into his postal serge, all the while convincing him that he was not Lance Corporal Beaver of the King’s Liverpools presenting himself for duty. He had to be chastised firmly out of the notion that he was stationed in Aldershot and set to go off to India.

Then one morning, he failed to rise at all. Bella did not insist on rousing him for it saved her the usual dismal morning routine. She kept James back from school and bade him to run over to Amiens Street instead and tell the Station Master that his father was sick and would not be turning up for duty. It was a filthy March morning, dimpled pools on the street, the sky leaden with mournful cloud as if the very world were disconsolate with itself. James was back within the half hour and he was not alone. The Station Master was with him, all rigged out in a tailed coat but with a cape thrown over it to protect it, rather than him, from the weather. Rain dripped from the peak of his cap like a
guttering
eave as he stood on the threshold and poor James was soaked through for he’d gone out without his coat. Courtesy demanded that Bella invite Mr Devereux in, though she shuddered to think what Nick would make of his boss standing in the parlour,
discussing
him behind his back. She prayed that, like a fractious child, he might sleep through the entire encounter.

She put the kettle on and told Mr Devereux to unburden
himself
of his wet Ulster. When she’d made the tea and fished out the good cups to serve, she told James to go out and feed his father’s birds.

‘I’m sorry to hear, Mrs Beaver, that your husband is
indisposed
,’ Mr Devereux began as soon as James was out of hearing. He spoke in a confidentially loud manner. ‘But it comes as no surprise.’

Bella dreaded what he was about to say next – that the railways
did not encourage malingering and that Nick would have to go.

‘The reason I’ve called today – and I hope you will forgive the intrusion – but I thought when the boy came, I should, in a manner of speaking, strike while the iron was hot.’

He slurped noisily at his tea. Bella noticed his large hands, wet and red from the cold, and worried that the china might slip from his ham-fisted grasp. He carried the cup tremulously to his nervous lips but lost all finesse on the return journey, so that it collided noisily with the slope of the saucer.

‘But it has been brought to our attention – when I say our, I mean, actually, Mrs Beaver, mine – that your husband has become, how shall I put this, a trifle distracted of late, which has impaired the efficient pursuit of his duties. We were, at first, inclined to put his forgetfulness down to over-indulgence at the wine lodge and were prepared to make allowances. What one of us …’

Here Mr Devereux halted and laughed nervously.

‘Well, be that as it may, Ma’am …’ He hesitated and made another attempt at the tea. Cup to mouth, then back again
without
a sip being taken.

‘Your husband, Mrs Beaver,’ he began, ‘your husband has taken to wandering.’

If only that was all, Bella thought.

‘And that’s not the end of it, I’m sorry to have to say. He seems to get agitated for no reason and has been witnessed raising his voice at members of the public in what I can only describe as a
highly undignified fashion.’

He raised the cup again and then thought better of it. Another tiny crash ensued.

‘He became most irate with a woman on the platform the other day when she asked him for directions.’

Mr Devereux leaned forward, casting an eye over one shoulder and then the other before whispering dramatically. ‘He seemed to mistake her for a lady of the night, Ma’am.’

Relieved that he had got this unpleasantness over with, Mr Devereux reverted momentarily to his own vernacular.

‘We’re at our wits’ end, Mrs Beaver.’

Bella felt the urge to confide in this kindly man since his
heartfelt
despair chimed so closely with her own. But she stifled it. She knew she must, yet again, feign innocence. If she admitted she knew there was something amiss with Nick, she would only be handing Mr Devereux a club to beat her with. In her mind’s eye, she could already envisage the eviction notice, her children ragged and barefoot, their belongings heaped on a cart on the side of the street for all the neighbours to see … but no, she shook herself, she must not court disaster like this.

‘So we feel it’s no longer appropriate for him to hold a position of authority.’

There, at last, it was said. There was a certain relief in it. At least it was an end to pretence – though the pretence had been comforting – that there was nothing wrong with Nick. She waited then for the final hammer blow.

‘So we’ve decided, given how impeccable his record has been, and the fact that he has served his country, that he should be given a less demanding occupation …’

He must have seen her face fall and mistook her relief for
disappointment
.

‘Until, that is,’ he hurriedly added, ‘he recovers his full health.’

Nick was put to work on half-pay sweeping the floors. He was forbidden to go near the Parcels Hall for fear he would be mocked by his former underlings, and being an army man, he followed these orders without objection. It was still a terrible comedown for him, even if he was too far gone to realise the full import of his demotion. Bella found excuses to pass by the station. There she would see him leaning on his broom, the dust-pan idle at his feet as he stared off into the mid-distance as if stalled in some deep entrancement, the warning drums of an approaching army that only he could hear. Sometimes he would point, hand raised aloft, his eyes shaded by his fingers as he peered through some red mist that seemed to have obscured his eyesight. He had always been fastidious, but in his new position this trait became enlarged. He would fix on one patch of the chequered tiles in the station
forecourt
and sweep it over and over again, chasing ribbons of dust only he could see. But as long as the Great Northern Railways would pay Nick, no matter how measly the remuneration, it was imperative that he turn up and clock in. For that reason, Bella sent James to accompany Nick to the station in the mornings
and Susan to escort him back in the evening so that he wouldn’t stray
en route
. Then one Thursday when Susan went to collect him, Nick was nowhere to be found.

One of the counter clerks, Reggie Elliott, helped her to scour the station for Nick. Something of her distress must have bound them together for shortly afterwards they began stepping out, but on that night their mission was fruitless. It transpired that Rocliffe, one of the men in the Parcels Hall, had collared Nick on the steps of the station and had lured him off to Bergin’s. They’d stayed drinking until ten when the landlord refused to put any more up on the slate. The upshot of the escapade was that when Nick finally arrived home, he was quite evil with
spirits
, staggering and wild-eyed. He’d always been able to hold his drink, but now even a single measure seemed to inflame him. He demanded food, of which there was little in the house, it being the night before pay-day. Bella and the children had eaten earlier. Not much of a repast – a head of cabbage and some bread and scrape. There was one large potato left in the larder which she’d boiled and held back for Nick. When she set it down on a plate before him, it looked plain miserly.

She was busying herself in the scullery, hoping that by
reopening
the door of the cold press several times, some exotic morsel might come to light that she had somehow overlooked, when Nick came to the doorway. He held the cold potato in his hand as if it were a cannon ball.

‘What’s this?’ he roared.

‘It’s all there is, Nick,’ she said. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

‘Tea,’ he bellowed, ‘is that all you’re offering to a man after a hard day’s work?’

Behind him she could see the anxious faces of James and Valentine.

‘It’s Thursday, Nick,’ she said, ‘we’re a bit low.’

‘We’re a bit low,’ he repeated. He turned around to find his sons examining him intently. ‘Hear that, boys? Her Ladyship is too high and mighty now to stock the cupboards.’

‘Please, Nick,’ she said, hoping he wouldn’t embroil the young ones in his fury.

But her pleading seemed to enrage him. He raised his hand and flung the potato into the grate. She thought he was going to make a hash of the place, break plates or turn on the
furniture
, but instead he took one well-aimed swing at her. She reeled backwards, striking her head against the corner of the cold press door which was swinging agape. By the time she’d slithered down on to the floor, her temple was bleeding and her lip was cut. She tried to hoist herself up so that the boys would not see her sprawled so inelegantly thus. But Nick was standing over her so menacingly she thought that if she stood, it would be as if she were standing up to him. James ducked under his father’s arm still guarding the doorway and tried to help her up but she was too much of a weight for him. His son standing there between them seemed to bring Nick to his senses and he retreated to the parlour and sat himself at the table, grumbling
softly to himself.

‘Come home to find not a decent bit of grub in the house, a cold spud, if you please, and a cup of tea with the leaves used twice over, no doubt. Not the whisper of a sausage even. A fine how do you do for General Beaver …’

In the midst of the mayhem, a wry thought struck her – Nick’s madness was outranking him.

She staggered to standing and tried to comfort Valentine who was hiccoughing with the fright of the encounter. Though the sight she presented must have offered little solace. Her lip split, her front tooth cracked, her brow bleeding profusely.

‘There, there,’ Bella said, ‘hush now.’

But she was speaking as much to herself as to the child.

Leaning heavily on the rim of the sink, she ran the water and bathed her face with the hem of her apron. She stole gingerly into the parlour, for fear even her footsteps might offend, but Nick was slumped in the armchair beside the dying embers of the fire. His eyes were closed, but she wasn’t sure whether that indicated he was asleep or in one of his vivid trances. She sat on one of the hard chairs at the table, the one with the gammy rung, for most of the furniture in the house sported a wound of some kind from Nick’s fits, and she waited. For what she did not know. She had ordered the boys back to bed. James, at first, refused to go.

‘I won’t leave you alone with him, Mam,’ he declared.

Had it come to this, Bella wondered, that her thirteen-year-old
son had to shoulder the responsibility of protecting her from his father?

‘He’s quiet now, James, he’ll be no more trouble.’

‘But what happens if he gets worked up again?’

‘Go to bed, James,’ she warned.

‘But Mam …’

‘Do as you’re bid, James, that’s how you can be a help to me.’

The kettle began to scream then and Bella answered its
piercing
call numbly making the unwanted tea. When she returned, James was gone.

She watched Nick now, the sad downturn of his features in repose, his closed lids and jutting lower lip, his fine jaw gone slack and loose and felt an appalling fondness for him, despite her throbbing lip and aching head. In this state, there was no malice in him; he looked both innocent child and defeated man.

The house fell into a kind of shocked harmony, the aftermath of the storm with only the mantel clock ticking, parsing out the truce. Nick’s tea curdled in the cup. If anyone were to look in at the scene, lit only by the dying firelight – the tired husband dozing in the chair, his wife sitting at the table seemingly lost in a homely reverie, the children abed – how would he know that anything was amiss? Bella got up quietly and tiptoed to the dresser, fetching down one of the candlesticks. There was the stump of a red candle in it, the wax falling down in frozen icicles. She searched in the pockets of her apron for matches but found none. Just as well, she thought, for even the tiny sulphurous seethe
of a match might unsettle the delicate calm. Better to sit in the tranquil shadows and leave the peace undisturbed.

Susan came home presently from a night out with her Reggie, a romance that had blossomed from the night that Nick had gone missing. Bella put her finger to her lips to forestall any questions about the ruin of her face. She motioned Susan to go to bed. Babsie came in shortly afterwards.

‘I’m dying for a drop of tea,’ she said, glancing over at her father then fixing on Bella’s split lip. ‘What’s this?’

‘Don’t start now, Babsie,’ Bella urged her, ‘all is peaceful and we want to keep it that way.’

Nick stirred then and opened a beady eye.

‘Go,’ Bella urged, ‘go on.’

But Babsie hovered. Spittle flecked Nick’s tunic where he had drooled.

‘Did you wake up?’ Bella asked in as pleasant a voice as she could muster.

He rose unsteadily to his feet and Bella went to help him, to hold the crook of his arm and steer him upstairs to bed. But something about the way she touched him – was it too maternal or did he divine pity in it? – ignited the rage she had thought was spent.

‘Get your hands off me, you Jezebel,’ he muttered and
pummelled
her arm with his fist. Another blow hit her across the cheek.

‘Please Nick, no more.’

‘What have you done to Mam?’ Babsie shouted at him. ‘You’re nothing but a bully!’ Oh my fiery girl, Bella thought.