Cotter's England (35 page)

"There's a bird with a most awful cry, a shriek; it must be a bird, on the heath at night. There's a fog there I've never seen before. It rises thick white, straight out of the ground and hangs about shoulder height, so you can just see a head moving towards you."

He put his head against her and said in a tremulous voice, "In the evening, it's a strange sight. They talk of other towns as if they were a hundred miles away and not even in the same century. They say that in Wisbech—"

He laughed lightly.

He went on, "You can hear sounds, things moving round your feet, in the fog. It might be a bush. You might stumble over something, the remains of masonry. You can't see your feet: you feel as if all the parts of your body are going along separately. If you take someone's hand, it's just your hand holding a hand. You lift your hand up over the fog and there are two hands holding together."

"Now, in July?"

"No, but I've seen it," he said flatly. Then he confessed that he had been in a camp near there during the war; "It's a bad climate: half the men had what I have, lumbago and back pains."

He bent his head, kept close to her.

"Tom, I don't know what it is, you give me a feeling that I can't stand. It's in my heart, a cold slipping struggle. You're taking me down with you in your swamp," she said with a slight laugh.

"Oh, I hope not," he said sitting up.

"You're a man could kill a woman. I don't want to marry you. I don't know what it is. You're only playing a game, you're cold and indifferent. You have smiles that no serious man has."

"I couldn't kill a woman, or anyone else."

"You're like a painted Christ in a blue and pink oleo."

"Beware of the man with the painted heart," he said seriously.

She said, "How can you be so cheerful and do what everyone asks, when you're so unhappy and lonely."

"I'm not happy. I never was. I don't ask for anything. But I like to feel all I can: I like to see a fireside sometimes, the air of the moors and heaths, strange people. Any sort of person can be strange."

He lighted a cigarette and began to chat. "You have curious experiences up there. I came down in a train that stopped at every dog-kennel. There were very few people in the train. We passed some lonely looking heaths with dark trees. At one stop a man and woman got into the carriage with a lot of luggage; so I thought they might be going to London. The man sat opposite, the woman sat next to me. They didn't say a word, but each got out a book. The man read very slowly; the woman was a fast reader and got to the end of her book before the man had turned three pages. Then she got down a bag, put away the book and got out another book, which she began on. She read everything, the title page, the foreword, and then started on chapter one. It was a novel I'd never heard of. As we were coming in to the next wayside station I got up and went to the other window and at that moment an express rushed past in the other direction; you could see people in different postures, doing things, scraps of actions and smiles. It was like a play.

He sat with a contented air, looking at her, "When I turned round, they had gone, their luggage was gone; and I hadn't heard anything. They had just traveled one stop."

He laughed outright, "I asked myself if they'd been there. But I wasn't at all sleepy. I looked to see if my chicken and eggs were still there. I take a glass of beer about once a week in Blackstone. I just go into the pub and take one glass and stay a bit. A man said to me the other evening, You're the man who came down from Scotland with a child nine years old, aren't you? I said no. He said to me, I recognize you because I happened to be over in Wisbech and you were there and the child was never heard of again. That's the kind of thing that can happen to you and get you a reputation. They don't know what I am. They think I have a Scots accent. And anyone who comes from ten miles away is a rollingstone. Because I come to London they imagine orgies. If anything horrifying takes place, I'll be the first man questioned. They give me the creeps too. They're off ducal estates, or else they're descended from Lady Hamilton's lackeydom. I hate Lord Nelson. Everyone talks about the national hero. I don't. He ran a navy manned by press-gang crews."

Camilla was at the window: she exclaimed, "I can see Nellie: she's in that top room. Caroline's there, isn't she?"

Tom jumped up and stared across the street. The window was open and Nellie seemed to be forcing Caroline out of it. Tom rushed out of the room, downstairs, into the house without closing the front door; and presently Camilla saw him struggling with Nellie and Caroline at the window. He closed the window. Astonished and frightened, Camilla sat down in Tom's little chair. Who were they and what were they doing? She sat there for a time, grew cold and tugged out of a chest a great black shawl she had once had for the theater. There, like an old Italian woman, she sat till it was time for the roast.

Tom got Caroline back to bed and ordered Nellie out of the room in such a tone, that she went, looking wild, hollow-eyed, insensate. He heard her talking on the stairs.

"To think one quiet girl should cause so much passion," said Tom.

"Yes," said Caroline, sinking into her pillow and drawing a breath.

"Sleep now. I have something to do."

The girl did not answer. He went away, leaving the door ajar. He asked in the kitchen, "And now, Nellie, what in the world were you doing?"

"I was showing her what you were. She wouldn't believe me. I said to her, Is that your wonderful man? Can you see him over there, with his make-believe, with that middle-class wanton, that harpy who's got her clutches into three men already and is now living with a love, keeping a tight hold on a man who wants a divorce and playing for marriage with a rich man, the grandfather. Do you see him? And there she was kissing you, fondling you, the old woman. Caroline said her eyes were heavy, she could not see. I made her see. I opened the window and pushed her over the sill to see you standing there with your harpy."

"Does she think I'm a wonderful man?" he asked.

"Aye, the poor sick brain. I love Tom. I'd die for a man so good. So your little fairy story makes its way. It's their desperation and they call it love to death. I can't understand you."

She went to the stove to put on some hot water to wash, came striding back, flung herself down and went on raging at her brother.

"It isn't you: it was this Alan in the office. It's the desperate seeking. It's not love. She doesn't know what it is. There are those who never know. Then they must learn to face life without it. What is it, this dirty swamp they want to sink in? I'll die for him. Aye, she'll have to. For this Alan picked for himself one of those cream-cake strawberry-filling dames."

"I'd go for that sort myself," said Tom, amiably.

Nellie blackened and told the story of Alan and Caroline again with spicing and stuffing, "I despise and loathe and have complete contempt for the knight-errant and minnesinger who goes around playing with things that are so deep."

"Am I a minnesinger? I like that."

He began a Northumbrian tune in his aeolian voice.

"What's that rubbish?"

"A song about me, the man without a heart," he smiled.

She became very earnest, "Tom, you had a chance, the best chance a man ever had, to be a decent pure man. I was so proud of you. Before you make another mistake, lad and ruin another life, like other men, hurt and harm, won't you take the beautiful chance you were given? You could have been always a brother to women, like you were to me, a beautiful thing: they need it. You need never have harmed any creature. You had a heart and head of gold. I always used to see your gold head all the way down the street and I thought, There's my own lad, a sweet true boy. Why were you tempted when you grew up? You threw away all that sweetness and purity. Let me plead with you now, to keep away from the women for ever, do them no harm. Oh, it would be a lovely thing to see such a man; I grant ye, you don't know all the harm men do; I know now. You mean well, you think. But you can do nothing but harm. Wouldn't you like to live alone, to meditate, to find the way for yourself, the truth? Don't go down the slippery steps again and sink into the mud. I beg ye, Tom. You'll never do any good unless you are a pure man, never touching a woman; and why should you? If only you would reconcile yourself to a beautiful destiny, to the purity of loneliness."

"Like Uncle Simon! No thanks," said Tom.

"I can't tell you what I've been told. I wouldn't spread evil and contaminate," she said bitterly, chewing her cigarette and her lip together. "You ought to do what I ask without questioning. I know. You know I know."

"You've heard a lot of dark stories from a—from an unfortunate friend, and that's all; it doesn't happen to everyone. There are happy lives."

"There are no happy lives. Those that are happy are blind and selfish. They're blind," cried Nellie.

He said he was going out. She told him not to come back before midnight; and then tomorrow morning early to get up to Blackstone; and to stay there. He was not wanted here by anyone, least of all by her.

"I'm staying for two days. I've got to go to the Industries Fair for the firm. What's more, I'm coming down every weekend," said he.

"While I'm away at the conference, too?"

"Every weekend, first train out and last train in."

"Then I must put an end to it."

He took no notice of this threat; but went out to see a friend of his called Monica. He had made up his mind to put an end to that affair, to begin with.

Nellie tried to sit with Caroline the two nights of the weekend, smoking many cigarettes to pass the time; but it was hard for her to sit without talking. She would go downstairs for tea or brandy, cut a wedge of bread, walk about whistling softly and ruminating. At last, she stretched out beside the sick woman and slept restlessly, coughing and uneasy; she had no covering.

When Caroline woke in the early hours, Nellie made her some tea, cut thin bread and butter and brought them up and put them beside her friend on a chair. She was too heedless to have a sickroom manner; and waited impatiently for Caroline to lie back, which she presently did.

Then Nellie said, sweetly, with a sigh, "I'm glad you're here with me, darling; me poor brother's off gallivanting again. I'm a fool, I must be to trust him. But when he's sweet to me, I trust him again. Aye, we women earn our troubles; and why was it I wonder that Nature gave the men those sweet ways to cheat us to make us the doting weak things we are? Otherwise, we'd see them as they are, no doubt. That must be it. It's the law of survival: aye, it is. For don't we naturally trust each other, more? So there has to be something to lure us; and if the man's your brother, no matter what he is, you can't help the love and pity."

"Yes, I can never forget how nice Tom has been to me, Nellie. You're a beautiful pair; you're a real brother and sister."

"Aye, you feel it, do you, that we're alike, that we have something in common?"

"Yes, goodness and compassion."

Nellie glowed; then lamented, "Yes, I have it, love. But he has not got it, it's a simulacrum: it's the veil of cheating I was talking about. He caught it from me, it's me shadow self, but it isn't him. Any word he says to you is false, for it isn't him and it has no outcome. If he were to say love, it doesn't mean love; things aren't what they seem: things are the contrary: if he were to say marry me, it would be nothing but the joke of a silly, yellow-faced, garlanded clown dancing in a hall of mirrors, but in all these hundred shadows, love, there is not one man. You can't marry him, for there is nothing to marry. If you stood up before the minister or went down to the Town Hall, it's no difference: you'd be the world's most miserable woman. He was married, did ye know that? And the marriage at once fell apart for he cannot play the husband's part; and the poor girl, always a girl, is left to mourn. Did ye not know that? Did he not tell ye? And because the poor simple creature, doomed to loneliness, cannot bear to face the truth, he will play the cat and mouse with all the women. Will ye marry me? Would ye marry me? Could ye marry me? It's a game; and playing the game he knows the women; and there's your lure and dead end of life for you, darling. Don't think of him! Root him out if he's put down root, crush him if he's made a paper flower in your heart, for it's nothing, there's nothing for a woman in him. I can't tell you, love, for it would crush you, the names of the women he has taken in and what has happened to them. Ah, don't let me see you join them. I couldn't bear it with you. I can't bear to think," she said stormily, "that he is doing this to you and to me, when we were so close, close as sisters, we were reaching the perfect understanding, the true love."

Caroline had understood that Tom might propose marriage to her very soon and Nellie's exhortation confirmed it. She became very agitated and said Tom was good and they were fond of each other.

Nellie began to croon, "Marriage is an illusion, it's not the paradise of women as they thought, the poor pitiful mothers and grandmothers. Ah, pet, if ye could have seen me poor mother down on her knees, waxing the lino and polishing the brasses for a man who had eyes only for the harpy's red smile and the fake brilliant in the false gold on her finger, you'd understand me. I see you going wrong. I've seen it before and let it go on, for I'm a great believer in destiny; but I've been punished for it and I'm punished now if ye go wrong. He has no need of you, me weak and wicked brother, Tom. He can do nothing for you and you nothing for him. But I can do everything, I'm the doer and seer. He can't offer you love, not even friendship, he's only playing with your tangled feeling to get relief for a moment, the moment of a cigarette's burning, love, from his own tangled confusion, the contemplation of his wasting and loneliness. I know it's a pitiful thing, I admire you for your kind heart, but it's the kind hearts are taken and consumed."

She leaned forward sharply, bent with her bright fierce little eyes over the sick woman, shaking cigarette ash on the bed, "Heed me, darling. I can see into hearts and I know what is in his and yours. You're not for each other: you're both for the lonely road."