Cotter's England (26 page)

He didn't answer.

She said fiercely, "You're both traitors to me. You'd both desert me for the first harpy that comes your way."

"I wouldn't, Nell," he said calmly.

"You don't sympathize with me: you don't care if he leaves me: it's the League of Men."

"No, it isn't."

"You sit there looking so smooth and fair," she complained, "you know I forgive you everything."

"No, you don't."

"I would even love anyone you asked me to."

"No, you wouldn't."

"You don't think I'd do anything to hurt you, Tom."

"Yes."

"But we're two against the world, Tom: there's only you and me."

"No, there's not, Nell."

"Ah, damn and blast you, Tom Cotter," she said flying into a wild roistering banter, "you've got me by the nose sitting there with your meek smirk and saying, No, I don't, and Yes, you do."

"No, I haven't."

"What do you mean by telling all the women your sorrowing tales and talking about sex and mayflower and saying you feel like the son of Venus's son: and that in the country your feet don't seem to touch the ground and such sonnets?"

"Those are not my words," said Tom.

"Real beams came from Venus all this month: you said that to Caroline this morning: she admired it."

"Those were my words."

"What are you going round telling all the women your poetry for?"

"Because I feel it," said Tom.

Nellie was silent. After a while, she said, "But what's the sense to it, Tom?"

He was looking straight in front, smiling at the red evening.

"What pleasure do you get out of it?"

"No pleasure!"

"Then why do you do it?"

He was silent.

"At your age, Tom, with your experience, you ought to give up this wild dancing in a hall of mirrors."

"This wild dancing in a hall of mirrors."

"And it's an illusion!"

"And it's no illusion," said Tom.

"But you haven't known happiness as I have, Tom: you must grant that. You haven't known the great reality, the one great true experience, the tree of life."

"No, I haven't known it as you have," he said humbly.

"And you never can, it's a one in a million chance."

"No, I shall make another mistake," said Tom.

"Then why try, when you know it's foredoomed?"

No answer.

"Is it right to trouble the lives of these women and go round making mischief?"

He looked slyly at her, a troubling sideways glance.

"If you were honest, you'd tell them to get the hell out of your life and leave you alone."

He looked sideways at her, and she began to tremble with urgency, "Now, Tom, I want you to promise me you won't go and do any more mischief-making."

He looked ahead at the road.

"Eh, Tom?"

"I don't make mischief; I do nothing. I just sit there."

"I don't ask you to restrict your life."

"I don't bother about what you ask."

"What?" she said, astonished.

"Life doesn't restrict itself. It comes and finds you."

"Then you won't make any promise?"

"No."

"I'm ashamed of you."

"To change the subject. My room where I had my last job, Nell, was a miserable bedroom with a light you couldn't read by. The wind howled and blew in the street. The landlord came in and out of the dining room like a dark-colored spook and used to whip the plates at you from behind his trousers like a conjurer. He wore a felt hat and bicycle clips, and his wife used to go to the pub after dinner. I don't blame her. She felt that if they could get away to London they could better themselves. He was interested because the atom bomb didn't injure canned beer. There was a laboratory chemist there who had lost his job and worried because he was getting farther and farther behind. If you're three or four years behind, you're lost, out of it. I used to wake up at night trembling, my heart was jumping about. I knew there was nothing there, but I couldn't help it, I'd lie there without daring to move. It was the loneliness."

"You were born to loneliness, lad."

"And so I think, Nell, I must look around and find a wife."

She said angrily, "You know you're not for women! You can't give. You're a bachelor born. You're cold, stone cold. You're trying to get warm, like poor old Simon at the kitchen fire; but no woman can warm the likes of you; and you can give her nothing," and she said it deep in dialect, "naw-thin."

She continued, "You were born, you will live and die, a lonely man. Ah, isn't it better to accept it, swallow the pill and be yourself, lad? You're out of character, cooing to the women. Be what you were, as a lad. I was proud of ye then. And now I'm ashamed of ye."

"But I think I'll get married. I have my eye on someone."

She sulked. Tom, soon lost in his thoughts, smiled to himself. Nellie, at first absorbed, noticed his expression. She put her thin wrist on his and said sweetly, "You're not going to go where temptation lies, are ye, love?"

"I'm in a mood to be tempted, Nellie."

She reflected.

Along the London road, passing through a large town, there was a wide green, well kept with trees behind and bushes round a convenience in front.

"I feel like a pee, Tom. Let's get out and stretch our legs."

He waited for her and then strolled across the green, half of which was occupied by circus tents.

"Ah, Tom, I love the sideshows, let's walk on sawdust for ten minutes."

It reminded her of Race Week on the Town Moor, when, poor children, bedraggled but whistling and shouting, they had gone up there with a few pence in their pockets.

"Peggy loved it so much, the darling. And now we can't let her go near: it's bad for her. Ah, the bygone days!"

She said as if inspired, "Do you remember, Tom, the day we all went to Whitley Bay and went in the ghost train? Peggy wanted so much to go on the ghost train and we were afraid, for she was always so excitable; and we went in and what was it but a track running in all the curves over bare earth and you could see it too? Poor Peggy! But I was glad. No spiderwebs, no shrieking spooks. The poor devils, aye, they were packing up, no business; but they took our sixpences!" She laughed, "And do ye remember that day, the prawns we ate at Cullercoats! And the bus conductor who fell off the bus and tore me good jacket; and looked at me so angry! He thought I was going to bawl him out and I said, Go on, love, better me jacket than yours; and he still went on up the stairs, looking back so furious."

She went into shrill sisterly laughter, "I was taken for a bloody bourgeois suing dame that day! It was a nice jacket, all new, made to order, me first and in a good cloth. Do ye ever think of those days, Tom?"

"I never had a happy day there but on the football field. I stand now and watch them in Regent's Park, the lads making a thousand goals an hour, but it doesn't get me any more. And like me, the daft lads think they'll reach the big money that way."

"Ah, Tom!" she wheedled. "Eh, look there, Tom! Isn't that a grand one. Let's go in."

They had come along the tents and were now at a large loosely boarded place named Palace of Mirrors.

"I've got such a craving on me for those things, Tom. Let's go in."

"Well, you know what it is: it's distorting mirrors."

"Ah, come, love, let's go in. Let's have a bit of fun, just brother and sister, like the old days. It gives me the thrill of Race Week when I was small. We used to beg petty cash for it."

"Aye and once I stole from Mother's purse. You remember? And you gave me a curtain lecture."

There was no one at the booth: it was between afternoon and evening sessions. They rapped and looked, till they found a man in shirt-sleeves who let them in. The entrance door was a mirror, in which they saw themselves, the short yellow-haired man and the tall wedge-faced woman; they looked earnestly and went in. There was a short corridor with different sorts of mirrors, then a rotunda, it seemed. One mirror showed Tom cut off at the waist and very fat; "A playing-card king, just what Patrick said," said Tom disgustedly. "Patrick? Who's that?" he laughed. "And look at me, the spindling hatchet witch," she said, poking out her tongue at herself in the neighboring glass in which her long thin arms, legs and face were fancifully drawn out. Tom looked where it made him a dwarf with a huge head. Depressed, he leaned against the wall and watched Nellie who was looking at herself in every mirror in turn, laughing, posturing, exclaiming, "Eh, Tom, love, I'm a beauty. Tom, look at this black raven! Why, thank god, Tom, it is not the Hall of Truth."

He said nothing. She began to gesture, posture and then dance a strange dance, her own, with knees bent and wobbling, arms akimbo, tufted head going up and down and sideways, like "a crawing creature" she said. Aside and forward she went in the figures of her dance, smiling to herself, beckoning to herself, putting her arms on her breast and with a strut turning the circle. She saw Tom there, stretched out her long thin arms and he came forward in his heavy shoes, took both hands; and they danced a few steps, though he was no dancer, at arms' length, a country dance. Her face bright as metal, triumphant, gleamed and cut into him; very bright, her small eyes peered into his large bursting ones. Then she flung one of his hands aside and began to draw him after her. She stopped a moment, eying a mirror which showed them side by side, shredded, a bundle of dark reeds and a wisp of hay, both with long beaked faces, split like seaweed, on her head a long sprout, on his the dry grass ground birds hide in.

She was displeased, "Not much, is it? They're distortions of human beings! Why do we like it, Tom?"

After eying it for a bit, she screwed up her face, leaned forward and dragged him behind her. "Let's dance!"

So there was a string of them in the dusty narrow corridor, a ballroom of the strangest people, but always the same two. And suddenly, she stopped, dropped to the floor, and leaning on a bent knee and one arm, began to cough. She leaned over, her head to the floor, whooped, almost strangled. Tom stood there waiting. Presently, she climbed up over herself. He helped her up.

She leaned on his shoulder for a breather, "Eh, it's the dust. The floor's thick with the dust of feet," she said.

"Come on, Nell. We'll go home and you lie down."

"It's a drink I need, sweetheart: they must be open now. Take me to the nearest. They're all friends."

"Ye-es, Nell."

"It does me good to have a drink and to stretch me legs in a strange pub. I feel so cosy and so free. Me troubles are outside."

They sat some two hours in the nearest pub, Nellie tossing down one drink after the other, in her own cycle, sherry, whiskey, gin: and Tom taking one glass of wine which made him go red.

Said Nellie, "Must be snobs round here, if they serve you glasses of wine. You'd never get anything as fancy as that in a true workingmen's pub."

After she had drunk two rounds, she leaned her head back on the yellow flyspecked wall, her elbow on the table, her hand turned gracefully outwards, the cigarette smoking into the air; and she said in her weak tone, "If ye only knew, Tom, how it sticks in me gullet. He's dead and he thought that of me at the last, that I was letting the family down. I'll never swallow that black spoonful. I sup with guilt."

"What is it, Nell?"

"Aye, ye weren't there. Pop Cotter in his big bland way, lambasting me, Tom, because I'd dropped ten pounds a week and there wasn't enough food in the house, nor meat for his plate. I'll have it always with me, Tom. If only you had been able to get a job there, darlin'. I know it's work you want, not a name, I wouldn't have this shadow on me shoulders. It's with me in my dreams, it haunts me in the day, that the money isn't coming in and they look to us like pitiful hungry birds."

He did not answer, looking rosily around, noticing everything.

She did not insist then, but grasped his hand, kissed his cheek and said, "Eh, but that was grand, Tom, just when I needed it. You and me together. That's the way we meant it to be; but it can't be. You can't argue with the world. I need the world, Tom and that's why it all went wrong. Let's go; I must get back. Will ye drive me to the hospital?"

"I'm not sure it's good for you."

"I am the only one she can talk her heart out to. The rest she calls vultures."

When they sat in the car, driving, looking ahead, she said, "I feel on top of the world, now, because you're the one I've given me real heart to, Tom. Don't let me down ever; or I'll think very little of you."

"You know, Cushie, that you've always got me."

"Bless you, pet."

George, while…

G
EORGE
,
WHILE
waiting for a Geneva transfer, had gone back to the Rome office. One day she got a telegram from George, saying that she was to leave for Rome as soon as she could arrange; he believed they had a job for her in his office. This was on a Thursday. The newspaper told Nellie to go at once. Not only had the doctor been in the office and given her warning, but anyone could see that she could not last much longer in this way.

Two days later she was to leave by train. She sent Tom to Bridgehead to say goodbye for her and give presents and make promises. If Tom caught the early train down in the afternoon, he would just be able to say a few words to her before she went. He was to go straight from his train to a delicatessen near Victoria and wait outside. She would go there to buy a few sandwiches; then they could have the parting cup of tea. He left Bridgehead at the earliest possible moment and after the four-hour trip got to the rendezvous with about half an hour to spare. She could be counted on, though she often rushed in at the last minute. He stood there till there were only a few minutes left before train time, with anxiously beating heart, flushing with worry. At last he rushed across the station, where he found a crowd at the barrier. There were dozens and dozens of people there, kissing, shaking hands, calling out, laughing; every kind of affection and momentary tenderness, a feast of love and emotion. He looked eagerly about, straining, calling, "Nellie, Cushie, Cotter!" He asked the man at the gate if he could get in; but this was not allowed. He stood on tiptoe and poked his face through the railings. Nellie did not come and the train pulled out.