Cotter's England (3 page)

She sighed and continued, "The parents are the innocent cause. She had a hopelessly middle-class country parson background. You don't venture to say the Queen has unsuitable shoes:
But it's the Queen, dear.
And the big thing to look forward to, taking a stall at the fete to raise funds for the church hall. Aye, she tried to escape. But can the bird break the iron bars by fluttering? You are likely to see bloodied and broken wings; and the close tendrils of parental love were in this case iron bars."

Nellie sighed and blew smoke; "The old, old problem, sweetheart. Even here, where the parents are of a fine old type, the father's word obeyed and the Bible called upon to prove and refute and have the last word; and the mother with a life of unquestioning frustration and the daughter a full-blooded woman with the passions sealed in."

"How old is she, the daughter?"

Nellie hesitated; then, "Twenty-eight and she was married; but not a woman, a girl. The husband tried to get her away; but he hadn't the appeal. He took her to America; but they wrote and they begged. Poor things! She felt the guilt. She came back; but then it was, You'll go back in the spring; you'll go and pay him a visit when the American summer is over; and then, Our dear daughter could not bear to leave her parents alone. Ah, poor things!"

Nellie brushed the tears from her eyes. She drank her tea and said dryly, "Caroline's only outlet is what she thinks is writing. She's published a thing or two, little clouded mirrors of life, that no one ever heard of. I've asked. No one ever heard of her. In one she tried to show her husband; it's pitiful. Life—no more like the stormy, hot-blooded, passionate, unruly, unbridled thing it is, Camilla, than a cup of tea is like a river in flood. But she's fine, and it's a damn shame to see her the prisoner of sterility. Aye, she took my advice. She left home and took this room; and the parents too have nothing. I'm sorry for the older generation. Ah, true marriage, pet, when it comes, is perfection. To think they never knew that! So many generations of wasted joyless lives; and only in our own day and here and there, the perfect flower of married happiness, a rare unforgettable thing, the only earthly joy. It's a grand thing, Camilla, perfection in union; to know each other as man and woman in perfection."

She placed her hands on her knees, leaned her topknot forward and looked earnestly at the dressmaker. Camilla gave her an enquiring glance and bent to her sewing.

Nellie, in the same posture, said, "What George, and I have is the flower of perfection. Physically, George is a wonderful man. It's joy, it's heaven; there's nothing like it when it's natural and sweet; a blessed union. That's what I have with George, perfection."

The dressmaker made no reply. After a short silence, she said, "Try this on, Nellie; let me see."

She made some marks with a piece of chalk. Nellie took the dress off and sitting down, smoking away, she continued to make comments along the same lines, until Camilla gave her an irritated glance. She then went on to talk about parenthood and its solemn responsibilities. Our parents, she said, were poor, pitiful, frail human creatures.

Here she was interrupted by a bad fit of coughing. She got up and lounged over to the sofa, where she lay prone, her head hanging down, coughing and hawking, gasping and puffing.

She got up, came back to the chair, picking up her cigarette, "It's me bronchitis."

She took a few puffs, inhaling deeply, and continued, like a chant, "They brought us into the world in sorrow and ignorance and haste, young people then, with their lives before them, taking us like packs on their backs, along the pike; and from then on destiny had only one voice, it came out of the crying mouths of little children. Taking a strange dangerous chance with us, fighting against poverty and death with us in their arms. That's the thought, isn't it, pet? It's pitiful. We must take up the burden of repayment. We've not fulfilled their hope, I'm afraid, darling. That's beyond our poor human powers."

Camilla, won by the inner melody of the northern voice and its unexpected cry, its eloquence, considered her. Nellie was looking into the smoke. She had paused and settled herself in a businesslike way. She cocked her head, like a journalist envisaging his paragraph.

She continued, "My brother Tom doesn't think like me. The poor lad's grown heartless, nothing but the flame of the moment, a poor trifler, out of work and living like a tramp. I had a letter from him this morning, Camilla; a sad change. He was my friend. We were together in everything. I led, he followed. I led them all. But he wandered away from me. He left his beliefs in socialism, the light went out of him: a spendthrift, a ne'er-do-well, an unemployable, a mischief-maker; that's what it's come to. The poor lad, Camilla. A tragedy. Stumbling after happiness, which eludes him like a will-o'-the-wisp, getting deeper into the swamp and clutching at a straw. The misery of it breaks my heart. He's in the clutches of a harpy, Camilla, wandering round the country, like two gypsies with no home, desperate that this iron ration of happiness will be taken from him." When she spoke of her brother, she used the home accent. She said puir la'ad.

"What is she like?" enquired Mrs. Yates.

Mrs. Cook rose and stood at the fireplace swinging one leg and shaking ash into the fire.

"No good, I'm afraid. It's the case of the snake and the fascinated rabbit. She's much older than he, though she doesn't look it; the cosmetics and the hairdresser. She'll leave nothing undone to hold him, every excuse to keep him from humanity! Persuades herself of the higher motive. She's woven him into her web. She's taken the poor helpless fly and made him her parcel. She's carrying him away to death and beyond! That's the type, that preys upon men. And he's promised to die with her!"

She leaned her head on her hand on the mantelpiece.

"What!" said the dressmaker.

"Ah, Camilla, the tenacious, bloodsucking, unscrupulous harpy! It's hard to understand; for he's a bitter man, disenchanted. He's not like me, pet, apt to glamorize everyone."

She sighed.

Camilla, sewing, said, "Yes, you must feel it to lose a great friend like that!"

Nellie stared. She turned, put her hand behind the clock and drew out a tan envelope, took out a sheet of engineer's squared paper and held it out to Camilla.

"There! It came this morning from my brother. It'll show you the hopelessness. Spending the little they've got on every quack remedy, a typical woman's trick. And there's no black or white in her mind, every method is fair. A superstitious roving, looking for the impossible; and costing George and me money. There's a London doctor in it and we footed the bill to the tune of forty pounds. Read it! You'll see him like a fly in the gluepot."

Camilla, after hesitating, took the sheet of squared paper and read,

Nellie:

I am sorry Mother is sick but I cannot leave Marion now. We must try everything. We have hope in a cure we are trying now. I had to bring her away from the nursing home and she depends on me. In two or three months we will know if this salve will work. It is supposed to cure third-degree burns. She is fighting it out. She will take no drugs for she says the doctors will kill her. I don't know how she stands the awful pain. I cannot leave her. If she begins to mend, I will go up to Bridgehead and see Mother.

Affly, Tom.

The dressmaker read this slowly.

Nellie sat with a sparkling angry face and said, "You see? You see the situation? Relentless to the last."

"It's a terrible thing for the poor man. Is he alone with her?" Nellie put the note away, saying vaguely, "No, pet. I think there's someone else. They've no money for a nurse. It's a case of destitution."

Camilla bent her head over the dress.

Nellie said, "You see what it is? He has no reason for living and he goes off the deep end over a thing like this."

She got up and lounged about the room. She came and stood near Mrs. Yates, looked down at her, said melodiously, "I'm the guilty one. I brought him to London from the home climate and everyone doesn't transplant. I was the pathfinder. I thought I'd go out and find a way for them, my brother and sister. I threw up the college work because they kept grinding our noses into the footnotes on Shakespeare. It's the living word that matters in our day. That's the way to disgust you with Shakespeare. And then, pet—there are some things that it is not right, even in Shakespeare, to offer to innocent minds. It's enough to make you think ill of Shakespeare. It did for me. I walked out and got a job. I was getting five pounds a week when most of them had nothing a week; and I was the leader, I was the dashing Jack Malone. So I influenced them too much perhaps. I knew I had something in me. Aye, I was guilty. I walked out of a good job with me poor mother depending on me pay. Me Dad, the old soldier, was wearing out his strength lifting the elbow. He made good money but it went down the gutters of Bridgehead one way and another. Ah, the grand old humbug; he's been the plague of our lives. I never liked it here, pet. They still make me feel like an invader from the north. But I had to come. It was my destiny. There it is, pet, in a nutshell. Now you understand us."

"Is it cancer?" said Camilla.

Nellie turned away for a moment, took a puff, said, "It's cancer, pet. And there they are traipsing around the country after quacks. It's all illusion: there's no reality to it."

"I'm sorry for him."

"Don't be sorry for him. His life is nothing but a dancing in a hall of mirrors."

Camilla looked at her, not understanding.

"And so I must go to see my family now. My brother's let me down."

She went out, came back again and leaned against the doorpost. She had put on a pair of blue overalls to chop some wood in the yard. She smiled at Camilla and an old-fashioned expression came into her face, like the charm of the delicate-faced crop-headed stage stars of the early twentieth century. For the first time she had a lick of beauty. She went and chopped the wood.

Presently, she came back dressed to go out and implored Mrs. Yates, "Don't think badly of me, Camilla, for leaving you alone. The house is yours, chick. Have some lunch. Mrs. McMahon will be along after lunch to clean up a bit. She's an angel and she'll beg you for work to do. She's a real friend, chick, remember. Her life's hard, poor soul. Married to an older man, a good man, but it's not happiness. And this is her home away from home. And yours too, Camilla."

"Well, I'll stay to finish this, and leave it for you. I may go away next week to see my father-in-law; he may do something for the children; I'll leave them with Edmund. They obey him like a father. They don't obey me."

Nellie gave her a sweet, open, doubting look, "Eh, Camilla, you're a damn good woman. I don't know how a man can leave you."

"Well, they say they can't. But he did," Camilla remarked in good humor.

"Were you hard-hearted to him?"

Camilla laughed.

Nellie went away shaking her head, "You're my idea of a beautiful woman! I wish my poor brother had fallen for a woman like you, pet."

Before she left, she came back with a book in her hand. She placed it beside Mrs. Yates.

"I know you've seen the world, Camilla. I'd like your opinion on this woman. Was it injustice? Was she guilty or not? She says they hounded her. We don't know what is a criminal, or how the criminal suffers do we? The law will never tell us who is a criminal. When I see someone branded I hear the hounds baying. I can't shake it from my mind. I'd be grateful for your opinion."

She took a little canvas bag, her shoulder bag and left. When she had gone Mrs. Yates looked at the book. It was the account of a murder trial at the beginning of the century; the trial of a French woman, Madame Steinheil, for poisoning her husband. A French President, Felix Faure, a friend of hers, she said, died of an overdose of aphrodisiac in a brothel. There was also trouble over a diamond necklace she said was given to her by Monsieur Faure. Mrs. Yates glanced through it and put it on the shelf. On the shelf was a book by Frida Strindberg about her life with the dramatist. On the flyleaf was written in Nellie's flowing hand,

I thank God every day for George, for a man of genius who is human and tender and great. What if I had. found one like this? Read it again and again and bless the fate that traced my lines. I was spared all suffering. From him only goodness.

When there was trouble in the industrial north, Northumberland, Durham, Nellie's newspaper sent her up there. She was able to get a week there now, some of the Tyne shipyards being struck; and after getting news along the River Tyne, she went home to her people, the Cotters, in Bridgehead. She had a cup of tea at the Bridgehead Station refreshment room and made for the hill leading to Hadrian's Grove, a long suburban road above the river, and lined on each side with small brick houses, all alike, with bow windows, picket fences and roomy attics in the sharp tiled roofs. Whistling, striding, her shoulder bag flapping, she passed the church and came to Number 23. In the front yard was a grass patch, a tree; a few springs of parsley grew by the doorstep. The multiple curtains in the bow window were drawn. She tried her latchkey. The door was bolted; she rang. A dog barked and Nellie called, "Eh, Tom! Where's Peggy?" When the door opened, there was a struggle. Nellie edged in with the door against her, while a furious young sheepdog jumped up and down snapping at her gloves and scarf. He got a glove and tore it quickly. Nellie called soothingly, "Eh, there, Tom man, down man, eh, ye dumb dog, how are ye, Peggy darling? Where's Ma? Stop it, Tom then man, sure he knows his old Nellie! Eh, Peggy darling, call him off, pet!"

Peggy, a short doughy woman with dark eyes and brows in an oval face, and in apron and pink rubber gloves, said she was just doing the silver. "I didn't hurry," she explained, "because I thought it was Pop; and I thought if he can choose his time, I'll take my time."

"Well, sweetheart," said Nellie cheerily, "so old Pop Cotter's going to come home early? It must be the year of the comet. And where's me old sweetheart, where's Mary Cotter, where's me Ma?" She pushed open the door of the front room, where as well as the piano, the expensive leather suite with sofa and smoking chair, the little tables, the sideboard stacked with bric-a-brac and books, there was a double bed in which lay old Mrs. Cotter.