Cotter's England (29 page)

"Why?" said Eliza frankly. "Because you said I'm getting on? I am getting on. I'm thirteen years older than you and twenty years older than Tom. I remember it. I let my head and my heart both have a go, that way they're healthy and keep a respect for each other. I fell for Tom, he's a dear lad, he could be my son but I fell for him like a girl and love him, that's the truth. It's my old age, Nellie; I never thought it would happen to me. I thought it was a bourgeois weakness, as you'd say. It's a hopeless love, he can't marry me and I'm not free. I have someone, and if I were free he wouldn't have me, and I couldn't have him. Would I be going out and having people looking at us and then asking us with a lark in their eyes, How is your nephew, or your son? I'd have more self-respect, though perhaps he wouldn't; for my boy Tom is an angel, he has no feelings but kind ones. He'd do anything for a woman: and I'd do anything for him."

"Your boy Tom," said Nellie, thoughtfully, looking at Eliza. "Bless you, darling."

She smoked a bit and remarked, "Aye, he's a fine lad, the poor lad. He should have had better luck. Or maybe he's better as he is. He would have cut a wide swathe; his victims would have stretched from Moscow to Peru. He's walked on hearts to where he'll be now, the wailing spirit of the Brecklands."

"He's just a plain workingman, like many another," said Eliza indignantly. "He's honest and true."

"Not so plain, chick, not so honest." And Nellie continued to smoke; "He's got a lot of his mother in him. She was a wily old spider sitting there in the glimmer of the hearth, a helpless complaining little body and drawing it all out of you, word by word, question by question, getting behind you. She made him what he is, afraid of his own shadow, starting at every word, full of deceit and shamming. Aching for love, for she never had a true love, the poor body: and he learned that of her too. He was always mother's boy. She adored him, Eliza; it was pitiful. She groveled before him, as she did before every man of her own. We're a pathetic breed, believing in the men, groveling before them: it's a pitiful sight. When he came into the house from his playing on the moors, his boyish tricks, she'd be after him. Do you want this, love; can I do this for you, hinny? He couldn't bear the house on Sundays because of the smell of cooking; whatever she thought the men would like, pies, and joint and two veg. as they say; the soup and the gravy, the puddings and the dumplings. It made him sick. Give me bread, I'm a plain man, he said: but she couldn't understand it, the love. The weekend had to be a family feast; it was all she had to look forward to. So you can see how it is that now he says, All I ask is to be let alone, I'm a man who is better alone. Give me bread and tea and a lonely walk and I'm myself again. I'm afraid it's like Uncle Sime he'll end up."

"He says he was starved as a child," said Eliza, "and I know it's true; don't I know Bridgehead?"

"Aye, but did you ever meet a boy who wasn't starved?" said Cushie. "I wasn't starved, for I had more to think about; but Tom was always a vapid thing. The boy will do anything to get immediate satisfaction, and then he forgets it like a young dog. He's good at promising and he knows how to promise more with a look than a word."

"I'm not a mad, old woman," said Eliza, "I know he's looking for a job and a girl and that is right and I'm for it."

Cushie asked her, "You'll forgive me won't you, pet, treading on your feelings. I'm sorry, sweetheart. I don't do it to hurt you. I don't want you to be taken in by an angel-faced lad. He's black, Eliza, as black as me; we were in the tar pits, all that Jago corruption together. We thought it was knowledge, darling! What the bourgeois was afraid to do, we did."

Eliza said, "I didn't hear of this Jago circle till I met you and Tom again in London; and then Tom said nothing: hard liquor and dope, he said, and ignorant adolescents playing at vice. There may have been such goings on among the people I knew but I never heard of it. My sisters and I had to scrub, wash and sweep from children; and when I got political ideas from George, or we both got them together, I don't know which, I electioneered and pamphleteered, and did everything they asked me including washing the floor of the hall and knocking planks together and holding the horse's head while they were waiting for the procession to begin to the Town Moor, because my father was a brewery drayman, and I knew about horses. I went out in the usual Bridgehead weather, and my mother graduated from a shawl to a cheap overcoat and felt she was getting on in life, and that's all I know about it. I never would have credited that there was a lot of youngsters getting boozed up, or smoking doped cigarettes or whatever it was you did. What, in Bridgehead?"

"You're right there. And it was a scarlet on the gray that Jago tried to patch. I'm not blaming him. He was only a Bridgehead man; he probably thought he was bringing a little London to our doorsteps. He was forty, Violet says, and it was a shame. But I say, poor human being, he was fighting a pitiful struggle against frustration and failure. He wanted to be a painter, but whoever was an artist on the Tyne? So his bent and twisted impulses tried to create something in us."

"I have no use for devils," said Eliza.

"You're hard and passionate—you're unforgiving. I can't help but pity. Tom is like you; you are both stern angels. But I can't help putting the rosy veil of pity over their pitiful human weakness. I see their struggles. I forgive them. There's good stuff in everyone. Judge not, for the stern judge is a criminal: he does not take into account the terrible struggles: he is sacrificing to the Baal of his selfish pride."

"We all have struggles. I don't think a criminal struggles more than another."

"Eh, we don't know! And it's the weakness of the criminal that asks for our pity. It's like punishing a blind man for his blindness."

Eliza was quiet for a while.

"Well," enquired Nellie timidly, "do you think there's a chance for us, Eliza? Can we be pals?"

"We are," said Eliza.

"I don't mean that, chick, I mean real friends. Do you trust me?"

"Yes."

"You believe in me, chick? You don't think badly of me?"

"Why, you're wonderful Nellie: I've seen your struggles for years. I've never known a better woman. You've overcome sickness and disappointment and with such courage: you'd be wonderful in a resistance movement, I've been thinking. You're the stuff of a hero."

"Bless you for that, I'll never forget it," said Nellie, getting up and coming over to her. "I have to kiss you for that, let's have a good long hug, darling: eh, what it is to find a true woman."

When she came away she stood against the door looking down at her friend, her tall slender body bent like a seahorse, with the tuft and the nose and with a wild sly bright eye; and she smiled with diffident charm.

"I'm afraid I'm imposing on you, Eliza, you're so good. Perhaps ye don't want to live with me."

"I do, though."

"Ye're not offended chick with my ideas about—about Jago, you know."

"I've always had the thought," said Eliza, "that hunger is a greater passion than love; and I've been surprised not to hear them talk about the distortions produced by hunger, the sublimations and disguised forms of hunger. It's a primitive need, you can live without all but food." She laughed. "So it must take very diverse forms in us, especially in a childhood and youth of semi-starvation. When you see all about you twisted and starved and when they enquire into your bellies and send visitors to look at your kitchens—So Jago played on your hunger and I don't blame you."

"Oh, no, pet," said Nellie flicking her cigarette, "man does not live by bread alone. I'm sorry but I can't agree, Lize. No, he wasn't playing on our hunger. He gave us a big spread. That was one of the attractions. We'd go there for the food when we were just hungry chicks. No, he understood that there were bigger impulses working up in us and great aspirations. It was the intellectual hunger, we all felt. It was a great hunger. We went everywhere looking not for food, but for guidance and for knowledge. You see we couldn't find any of it at home. And Jago understood us: he was the only one that did. We went to the Communists and they said, Study, read the history of socialism, learn how society is composed and work for a future society. But I said to the district organizer, What is the meaning of death and hunger? Have you got some words so that I can explain that to a poor mother? Hunger, desertion and death are too stark for words! Your pals, I'm sorry to say Eliza, did not understand us at all. They treated us a bit like pickpockets. In fact, I think they would have preferred pickpockets. They would have been able to work on them. But they couldn't work on us so easily for we were damned serious. It was spiritual hunger."

"We just had no education," said Eliza, "and it was a vague struggle for education and it was a lively time, those days: but don't argue for them. We just couldn't get along on humblepie and humbug, but that's all we knew."

"I don't agree with you, pet," Nellie closed hastily. "We'll have many a good evening wrangling it out. We'll have a grand time, chick. We won't repine. As long as you can stand me, Lize. As long as I'm not boring you."

The evenings were long and light. One time when Nellie strolled home just before the closing of the pubs, though there was no light in the house, she heard voices and one of the voices sounded like George. She turned her key softly in the door and came in listening.

In the front room George was shouting, "Nothing's going to stop me! I've found out what I wanted. I'm only fifty. I know I can. I know I will. I can pick and choose now: they're begging me to accept. I'm going to Geneva. I'm fixed! What do you think of that, Bob?"

"What about the job here? You had one in view!"

"They'll have to get along without me."

"They'll find it's not the same," said Bob with her sea-gull laugh.

Nellie leaned against the front door, with her eyes closed. She had not been feeling well for a long time; she had not eaten all day.

George roared with laughter, "Come on, now," he commanded, "get me some more of that divine coffee, Bob. You taught me about coffee: I owe a lot to you. I'll never forget. I must have my coffee black. Oh, the wonderful coffee you get in Italy. I'm a European bureaucrat now. Flawless service is what I get."

"Take some brandy instead," said Bob.

Nellie heard the drink being poured and she thought this was what she needed.

She glided to the doorway. "Hello, chicks! I heard you, George. I heard your news chick, because I was at the door, though I could have heard it if I'd still been in the tube. Hello, Bob darling! I'm heartily glad to see you, pet."

She kissed the old woman who was sitting against the wall, smoking and drinking brandy. George had a brandy glass half full and was tossing the liquid round in the glass between his two large rosy hands.

"Give me that," said Nellie, reaching for the glass, but George said, "Get your own, I'm warming this."

Nellie laughed, "I'll drink from the bottle! Don't let me interrupt your tête-à-tête. A nip and then I'll just make meself a cup of tea: and then I'll be in to join in the rejoicings. Hand the bottle there, can't you spare a drink for a pal." She began to rally, the light began to gather in her face. "You're a pal, George! Cognac! Ye lucky bloody sod, George, with fair dames plying you with three-star and your ould wife plying her trade along the pavements and in every dirty damp harbor round Britain. I sound like an ould streetwalker and I couldn't be worse off if I was."

"Cognac and tea don't go," said George: "I've learned my manners. You'll be sick."

"With me, it'll go, sweetheart. Don't worry about me. I can drink ax heads pickled in methyl and take a chaser of the black bilge by Armstrong's, but I still need me tea to make me sleep sweetly. But nothing today will wash the taste out of my neck of your going back. It's bitter; but I didn't expect honey. What'll happen to your old wife, George, now you're fixed? What the hell, I don't care! Aye, I care! It hurts and it aches, but I won't try to stop you. How are ye, Bob pet? How is the pottery? How is the farm, pet? You'll be a saint if you take in a tired old grass widow one of these days for a rest. I'll have to take a weekend off."

Bob was sitting hunched over herself, her blue eyes looking very strange through her thick glasses, her white and black streaked hair pulled tight over her large skull. Her thick, aging skin was smooth and yellow-brown from exposure, and the solid bones stood out, making an impressive mask. She looked straight at anyone when she spoke, with disturbing effect.

"You'll be welcome, Cushie," said she harshly, looking at Nellie.

Nellie laughed and tossed her shoulders. "Ah, bless ye, thank ye," she muttered uneasily and turned to George, "So it's fixed up, you've got a new job? That's a nice thing to hear. It's a bloody runout powder you're taking. You know you could work here at home."

"But at home I'd have you and I'm trying to get rid of you, Cushie." George was in great humor. "You don't get the point; you're the burr in the sheep's back. I could have such a whale of a good time without you."

"George, you oughtn't to say that," protested Bob.

"But I mean it. I've been trying to lose the woman for years and this is my big chance." He leaned back, picked up his glass of brandy and held it up before him tipping it to his face and sucking at it. "More, varlet! At once, melord! Make it snappy! Ding-ding-dong! melord."

"Mr. George Cook, late of the working class," said Nellie. "Aye, he's a typical old socialist, trying to be glorious at the expense of the workers. I despise you, George Cook: the back of me hand to you. Did you struggle your way up from the docks of Tyneside for this pitiful glass of brandy?"

"I did," cried George. "A worker's a figment to you, Nellie; it's a schoolgirl dream. It's a vague, dirty, hungering man, weak and a failure: someone for you to mother and maunder over. You're just a plain Fleet Street sobsister."

"That's a bloody lie, you bastard," cried Nellie, springing up, "I won't sit at the table with you; you're on the way over to the other side."