Cotter's England (44 page)

She was twenty-eight; George was over fifty: it seemed to her that they would be happy. With grave confidence and patience she faced the prospect of all that was to be done before they could marry.

When she left the house in Lamb Street where she had worked for years and where she had been happy and in love, she was weeping.

Nellie saw the downcast, downtrodden figure in the limp black rags go past the window. She saw her afterwards passing along the other side of the street with her shopping bag half full of greens. She always tried to give her family milk, greens, fruit. Nellie noticed that she trod weakly and looked pale. The little girl's thin fingers curled into Gwen's and Georgiana skipped. They did not look at the house. Nellie felt a pang realizing several things, Gwen's pain, her patience, her weakness. She thought of George's cool tricks.

In a few minutes, with her tea, smoke and ruminations, she had forgotten and presently she was fooling herself. What was between them was a bit of flirtation.

When George came, she began on him. Their quarrels at present were not so pleasant. George wore a pleased tranquillity.

"Leave me alone, don't bother me," he said often, unlike himself, "I'm quitting, you're getting rid of me. You can't get rid of me any quicker, I'm doing my best."

He kept spending money and had a fine outfit now, the outfit of a clerk going out to India, say.

Nellie confided some of her anxieties and doubts to Eliza who was now often in the house. To George she said sharply, "You're treating me like a second-best wife."

Nellie waited for the weekend and her brother's trip down with the bodily impatience of a lover. Tom had the trick of satisfying her love and although they quarreled, she could never lose him. Her boy! He never changed, never grew older, and from him she got the illusion of being young. The women interested in him filled her with savage indignation. On the telephone, she pressed Tom to get a London job. Here she could watch over him, save him from trouble.

Tom did not answer Nellie's letter about Caroline; and when she telephoned, he told them to say he was out, a thing he had never done to anyone. He did not go to London. But because of this, he lived in misery and was only happy at work.

The bird that howled in the heath was howling in the heath. There was a wind blowing. Tom slept badly, got up early and the landlady made trouble about his getting in so late. He had only been walking and walking, looking for a site for a caravan. But the only hotel left in town that suited his purse was this, the River-Ouse; so he took her scolding and smiled at her.

The River-Ouse was a building from the previous century built for and always used by poor travelers and locals with a small pocket. There was a lantern and a table with old magazines in the lobby, which had once been the carriage entrance to a yard. This lobby was the roomiest and most cheerful part of the house.

It was a night of broad moonlight; the smell of the heath drifted in. The bedroom was small, narrow. There was a table under the window. Tom always wrote in his diary there till the light faded. He could write by the faint bulb but not see what he was writing.

A button had come off the middle of his shirt. He cut off a button lower down and sewed it in the middle. His dress was always spotless and in order. If anything went wrong, even a spot of grease or an ink scratch, the girls would laugh and try to attract his attention. He thought for days about what people said of him, though he knew it was just lonely anxiety.

He woke up in terror in the early hours. The yawning weary moon was flat over the shrunk houses. There had been voices in the room; he had heard voices calling him. It was still; the light was so gray. What needed him? He trembled because he could not answer. What thing called him? If it would swallow him up, yet he would answer it, if he knew what it was. He could not bear to be called on and not to respond. He got back into bed, fell asleep, once more heard calls and woke up. Was it Nellie?

He telephoned her Monday after work but she was at work.

He was so exhausted the next night that he slunk up to bed at nine thirty, tidied his room, moved his valises from the fireplace and was asleep by ten. He woke up suddenly about two. The moonlight was retreating quickly from his room and now shone, in its last beam, on the hearthstone, where he seemed to see words freshly engraved. He stared without moving, trying to make out the words before they faded. What he saw was a date, 1679. The moonlight moved like a spotlight; and at first he thought it might be a spotlight or a searchlight. It lighted the old gas bracket, withdrew, made merely a block of moonlight where the window really was. He got up and went over to the hearthstone. It was an engraved stone and read:
Here lies Joel Gammon of this parish, died Mar. 12, 1679. R.I.P.

Tom could hardly sleep all night, wondering how a dead man had got into his bedroom. He did not like to mention it to the landlord, for it might have meant his moving again and there was no other cheap hotel in town.

When he got back for dinner at six thirty, he went upstairs first and, having seen at lunch that there were only two or three guests, he tried the door of another room, thinking he'd ask for it, if empty. It was bigger and ready for a guest, but to his amazement, the hearthstone read:
Sacred to the memory of Job Blondel, who departed this life, September 9, 1693. At rest.

He went back to his room and, sitting on the bed, began to laugh mutely, "Dead guests! It is the first time I've heard of a hostelry being so reverent."

He could not help a flitting thought that the voices he had heard were those of Job and Joel; yet their dust had flown long ago; it must have reached other planets by this time; he was not afraid of the poor men. But then, he reasoned, this hotel was not standing on those dates.

He went down to his eating as if he had not observed the hearthstones; and became acquainted with the other boarders, an engineer from another factory, a forester.

After dinner he began talking to the engineer and said, "Do you have an odd hearthstone in your room?"

The engineer had heard that the man who built the hotel had bought an old graveyard and no doubt the tombstones had gone along with the site; "If he was a practical man that would explain it."

"I'll try to stand it," said Tom.

In his diary he wrote a letter to a woman, no name, telling her about the voices and the gravestones. He wrote, "I should like to have a hotel like this, a poor hotel, and run it well and call it The Weary Traveler."

Tom was working…

T
OM
WAS
working in Blackstone some months when the old mother died. Nellie and George Cook, over on a visit, and Tom, went up to Bridgehead for the funeral and to decide on family matters. For the moment there was enough, with contributions from Nellie and Tom, for Peggy to live on comfortably, but they had to look to the future.

The aunts, Peggy and Tom sat in the back room having tea. Two cakes had been brought and the fruits, cheeses and fancy breads on the table showed that Cushie was in the house. Peggy held court. Tom, reduced to back room routine, had shrunk into a corner by the radio. "Now I have the house to myself," said Peggy, sitting by the fire with her knitting and the dog on the floor in front of her. "There's no reason why any more meat should enter this house, except a bit for the dog, he's without reason and ye can't make him understand; but human beings who know what they're doing are another matter. I think I'll try my hand at preserving fruit and vegetables."

"Well, you might try your hand at it but it's troublesome," said Tom.

"Do you know how it's done?"

"I know how they're canned. The vegetables must be absolutely fresh, have a double cooking and some injection because they have no acids to prevent the development of bacteria. Fruits have that."

The aunts and Peggy were fervidly interested and pressed him for details.

"And how are the tops put on? By machine?"

"You'd think they'd spill if they're full to the top," said Peggy thoughtfully looking at the fire and unconsciously imitating her mother, "we didn't see many peas this year, hardly any. Mother was always asking for them. Uncle Sime bought her some canned peas. I said, What's the use of canned peas? So they have no bacteria, is that it?"

"Where's Simon, Peggy?" said Aunt Bessie.

"I told him to keep to his room for a bit. We've had enough trouble round here, with two deaths in the house. We want the place to ourselves for a bit, I told him. Don't be always sitting in other people's furniture."

"That was heartless, Peggy. You forget that he's lost his sister."

She crooned, "It's no use pampering him, Tom man, or he'll be going to bed and expecting nursing: and there's no one going to do it for him. We've had enough real sickness: we don't want shamming. You go away and stay and you lose your sense of reality, man. You ought to live in the house with people like I do. You never know a person till you've lived with them, man, then you know the ins and outs of their selfishness and their scheming."

"He likes his bed, he'll learn nothing new there," said Aunt Bessie looking round for approval of this old joke. For some reason, it fell flat.

"I saw the old man with the blind dog," said Aunt Jeanie. "He was asking me about my sister, just like every day and I told him she left us. He said he was very sorry to hear it, she was a nice woman. He never saw her in his life. Why, was she an old flame of yours? I said: you never saw her in your life. He-he. No, he said but I'm sorry when a nice woman goes; she was Tom Cotter's widow; he always had a good word for me."

"How did the dog get blind?" said Peggy, with a censorious, pale, strict face, putting herself forward again. "How was it then? Is it old? But it always was blind. Then how was it?"

"Ask no questions and I'll tell you no lies," said Aunt Bessie.

"It was blinded," said Mrs. Duncan, "it was a cruel deed. Some boys flung pepper in its eyes and it was blinded. It nearly went mad and it was ill, but it got better. It never trusted a boy near it again."

"Do you mean they blinded the dog?" said Peggy in a strange hypocritical voice. "Oh, I never understood why the dog was like that. Isn't it funny? I asked and asked and they never told me. Mother refused to tell me but she must have known. Oh, how cruel. And was it blinded by boys, Aunt Jeanie?"

"Yes, dear. That was the way of it. There's no need to talk about it."

"Oh, how cruel! Oh, I think that's terrible don't you? There are such terribly cruel people. But did you see the dog recently this week then, Aunt Bessie?"

"Yes, like I told you, with the old man, hinny."

"Oh, there are such wicked people in the world. Doesn't it show a cruel nature?"

"I went to see Mrs. Laws," said Aunt Jeanie. "She was always interested in Mary. She had an attack of asthma and, as usual, was spraying."

"Yes, isn't it an affliction! It spoils the joy of life," said Mrs. Duncan.

"That sort of thing makes you not want to go on living," said Aunt Jeanie.

"Yes, it's a cruel thing," said Tom, "I don't know how they get their work done."

"Oh, I don't think it could be as bad as that," said Peggy naively, "as not to want to go on living. People all want to go on living, don't they? I don't think you should let anything get you down like that, should you? Should you, Tom? After all, it can't be as bad as that? Nothing can be as bad as that, isn't that so, Aunt Jeanie? People shouldn't lose their grip like that. You need a sense of measure, don't you?"

"Well, it's serious, Peggy. It can be very bad. Look at your Uncle Simon. Mr. Pike's is a very bad case," said the neighbor, Mrs. Duncan.

"People may suffer a little, but everyone wants to go on living, why if they've got one foot in the grave, they want to go on living: why if you push them right into the grave, they're clinging on with their fingers to the edge. There's no such thing as an invalid giving up the battle for life."

"Well, but people d—" began one of the aunts. "Well, dear, of course, they fight for life."

"Aye, we all fight for life. We hang on long after we ought to be thinking about dying," said she, "aye. It's human nature, I know: and to hang on where you're not wanted you've got to be deaf and blind and old and daft, you've got to get a thick skin and hear the voices of the long ago, so you'll blind yourself to reality. Aye, fantasy's a bad thing, it blinds you to reality. And they say the sicknesses you get are what you wish for, that's the latest theory, isn't it, Tom? Aye, that's it. For if you remained normal, you'd have to see how things are, that you're taking up the lives of the young. It's a wonder they don't see what they're doing, wanting to be waited on when they've had their turn. It's like guests who came early and stayed late. It's a sad thing to see an old man trying to edge back when he's being put to the door."

"Where's Mr. Cook?" Aunt Jeanie said in joking tone.

"He's out somewhere with a bottle of sherry. He can't stand the house of mourning any more," said Peggy. "And I'm glad he is. As soon as he comes in, he swarms over us all to get to the fireside chair and there he sits for all the world like Pop Cotter himself. No wonder Nellie grovels before him, exactly like Ma Cotter herself. Get me this and do this and hurry my dinner and where's my tea? It was a dark day for this house the day that man crossed the threshold. Nellie gave up a good fifteen-pound-a-week job to please him and now she's down to five pounds a week, he's sick of it and he's wanting to leave her. It's only to be expected when a woman has no sense."

"Hush, pet, she's your sister and a sister's a sister," said Aunt Jeanie.

"A sister's a sister. That's funny: a sister's a sister. What are we coming to?"

"All right, pet: now I'll clear the table," said Aunt Bessie.

"Better watch her, send Tom out to watch her," giggled Aunt Jeanie, "or she'll eat the rest of the cake. Bessie's always the one to volunteer and then she stops a long time in the kitchen. Send Tom out and he'll bark when he sees her at it."