Cotter's England (7 page)

Someone came into the house; and Nellie explained that it was Eliza Cook, George Cook's sister. She had a back room on the second floor. She was working now as a door-to-door salesman and had many friends who kept her out.

"You'll get to know her, Caroline. Stay here. I need you both. I made up me mind to get drunk after facing that chamber of horrors at Bridgehead and if there wasn't a homing letter from my George. Wait up for me, darling. I'll bring a bottle and we'll drink it together. We'll steep our tribulations in gin in the good old way; and then we'll look at them fresh. There's nothing better. It keeps you from a world of black. And what faces me in Southwark, Caroline, is pure tragedy. She doesn't see why she should live. She has stuck her knife into the carcass of men's truth; and what's in it, is unspeakable. Only the brave can face it. Ah, I couldn't tell you yet: you haven't faced life yet. . . . Aye, and from tragedy I took the train down here."

"I'm sorry about your mother."

"Ah, she's aged before her time, poor pet, the doctor said. It's my father that's worn her out with his women, his pubs and his debts. They should never have married; that's the root of it all. And the way she clings to him, it's pathetic. It is that. I saw a sad ruin. And she's alone there, I feel so guilty with only my poor sister there; and me brother as good as a deaf-mute to it all."

"And how is your sister now; Peggy—is it?"

"Aye, sweetheart, it's Peggy. I don't know, I don't know. Not much better, I'm afraid. That's the terror and it haunts me. I feel so guilty towards the poor pitiful creature. Ah, the poor thing. The frail white camellia. It's a house of storm. I have bloody dreams; and I wake up in terror, all in a sweat, every night in a sweat, dreaming she's over the edge. The beautiful thing that she was, an early bloom, pure white, and now like a flower crushed by a rough hand, only a dark shred where there was a miracle."

"Isn't she likely to marry? She's young yet, isn't she?"

"I'm afraid not, sweet; no, darling; that's not likely now. She's not interested in those things now. You see, it was a bloody rotten, hanging fire affair with a bloody teaser of a man that did it; eight or nine years he had her hanging on and her mind bent. Ah, poor pet. No, no that's impossible now."

"But there's your father. Isn't he at home?"

"Ah, he's at home in a sense: that's his address. He never had any heart. He's out to his football club—wine, women and song it is. He betrayed her with women the first week they were married and she, poor pet, never knew; at least not then. Perhaps later, and it twisted her. It made her the ever-ailing, complaining headachy, artful little thing she is, calling us the guilty ones when we were little: for she worshiped him and never would admit the guilt in the house was his."

Nellie broke into her piercing sweet whistle and lit a cigarette. This started a strangling cough, which shook her thin body in spasms. She took no notice, meditating all the time through the smoke and coughing. She sighed, "Ah, yes, it's a bloody tragedy, you're right. The frustrated lives."

"You're afraid she won't live long."

"It isn't that that worries me, Caroline. It's the bloody harpy he'll drag into the house the next week. I'd like to take ye with me, show you a bit of England with the lid off, no Roseland, the furnace beneath the green moor that'll blow up into a blistering volcano one of these days. Aye, it's a bit different from your green and pleasant fields. But it's a very normal tragedy."

After a while she laughed; "But I didn't tell you about Uncle Sime."

"Ah, he lives there too, then?"

"Certainly he does. He always lived there. We daren't speak to him remember. He'll never answer us, pet. The kitchen's his sitting room. He sleeps up in the attic with the bats, always did. He doesn't get up till eleven."

She began to speak faster, in deeper dialect; "He goes and sits in the kitchen, speaking to no one. He's queer in the head and a penny spared, puir lad, a confirmed bachelor, one of life's beached wrecks, aye. Eh, he'll never forgive ye if ye turn the gas up on the stove; that's his field of action. He's a reactionary, puir pet, he never knew any better. You'd never get on with the ould lad: the best thing is never to take notice. I'm afraid the picture's depressing. It's a house of terror and storm."

"Poor old man; I like odd people. They go their own way."

"No one could like Sime: no one ever did. But then he never had a woman, darling. It's a bloody awful shame in a man's life: it makes him an old maid. He belongs to the generations that had no happiness. Eh, a poor elf."

After a moment, she said, "I'd like to show you Bridgehead, but if you said to me, Remember Bridgehead, I'd say, not the Cotters and their woes, but some blue, red and white advert over the rivers or a dockers' pub down between the quayside railway tracks with some sandy youngster laughing at ye, like me own brother. He was a canny lad—but they twisted him, the bloody women!"

She wiped her eyes, "It's not the High Bridge, nor the coaly Tyne. I'd say, D'ye see that place with the bloody fake Corinthian pillars? That's the Atheneum Club! Old Pop Cotter was peeing against that wall one night when the cops got him. They took him to the lockup. What a man! You can't do this to Thomas Cotter! They must have done it for a bloody lark. And he ran amok in the station and gave one of them a broken jaw and one a black eye; and he was in all night. It's like the kids sing, What's his name? Tom Cotter! What's he got? Whooping cough. And what else? And a black eye. And what else? And he got run over. They took him to the hospital and put in stitches and sent him home without his britches. He'll tell that story over and over and say; And they did that to Thomas Cotter. For he knows every cop from South Shields to Peterlee, that's his proud boast; and he can stop his car and say, How are you? What's the time? And the cop'll say, I'm fine, it's twenty to twelve, Mr. Cotter. That's his achievement. Eh, but he's a darling! Fuddled every night, the ould humbug, and me mother polishing the hearth and the woodwork and the brasses; and him without eyes but for the brasses in the pub. Eh-eh-eh! What a lad, what a lad! A fine-looking lad, the Tommy Atkins of me heart. And a big handsome dandy he was, until he ran into the back of a tram and lost the argument; and the drink's done for the rest."

She finished her tea; "So will ye stay a bit, then, Caroline; and give the house a soul?"

"Why not? I'm lucky. It's a new life here."

"Ah, bless you, pet; that's sweet."

Nellie, going out, paused at the door and looked at her, her deep-carved half-moon face pale against the door frame; "Then you like me, pet?"

"Why, Nellie, you're pure English, old English. Why, if they elected the Queen and she wasn't born to it, they'd elect you."

"Sweetheart, you're an angel born."

She went out, with a deep smile.

Nellie returned when the night was not old, with a bottle under her arm and came chirping up the stairs to her friend's attic room, where Caroline was in bed.

"What were you doing, pet, whiling away the time?"

"You're not late after all."

"Ah, no. My friend had to go to work."

"She works?"

"It's work. Tramping her feet to the bone, doing what none of you would do; taking chances with the vultures."

Caroline looked at her with compassion.

Nellie said, "Come on down to me boudoir; we'll have a drink and a chat and get to know each other; and no misunderstandings this time."

The Cooks occupied on the floor below, a front room and a bedroom. As Caroline entered the front room, she noticed a large painting of a short-haired grinning boy in blue overalls coursing on a bicycle. It was a talentless painting, but spirited; and she exclaimed, "Who's the handsome boy?"

Nellie turned quickly, paused; and with a brilliant smile, "That's me, love."

"Who did it?"

"A friend, my friend Vi. I'd like you to meet her. She's the daughter of me old friend, Ma Pelley. A genius, born into a family of three dull boys. She's married, but there's no hope there, Anthony, a man with a rattletrap tongue and no stuffing. Eh, what a struggle! When I was there last, Ma Pelley and I sat in the kitchen and opened our gin and dropped our tears in it. The house, love, is like a battlefield fought over by vegetables and rags, all torn, muddy, dead and rotten. Vi's no idea of housekeeping, her poor Ma had to go to work to keep them and the poor waif cannot cope. The place is coming down round their ears; but there's no help for it. He hasn't the interest and she hasn't the strength. Eh, the poor man can't help it: no steady job and a psychological down-and-outer, a frail waif. Ye can't blame them."

Nellie opened her bottle and poured out the drinks.

"My friend Vi took me to Spain to write me play; but I couldn't, for the misery of the people; and she came back for him and married him. Eh, eh! And now children and the life of struggle."

"What does he do?"

"Who, love?"

"The down-and-outer, the man."

"I don't know, love. What he can. He's a mechanic by trade, I think; an honest sort, a guid man, but no ambition. Poor waif! Aye, Anthony Butters."

"Anthony Butters! Not the one who was in the papers this week? He's fighting for leadership of one of the big unions. They say if he gets in it will be the ruin of England."

"Ah, I don't know, pet. It might be. I don't know. But he hasn't the go. The wasted lives."

Nellie handed Caroline a glass of gin mixed with lime juice, "I take mine plain. You drink that and I'll go and get off me outdoor things. Thank goodness this is my late week. I can stay up and talk out me troubles."

Before going out she gave Caroline the brief letter from her brother Tom; "Read that and you'll understand partly what I mean. He's coming to London. And not alone; but with that bloody leech that's taken every penny and now is coming for some of ours."

She brushed her eyes and began to curse heartily; curse her brother for his treachery and weakness; the woman, for her treachery and vampirism. In the beginning, her brother Tom brought the woman to see her; he liked to have her approval; "And when I heard it was an older woman, that was taking an interest in the poor lad, I was grateful to her and found out where they were staying and sent her a spray of orchids and she came here, the bloody damn traitor wearing them on her shoulder, and full of charm. Aye, she's got charm and spends money on dress; young for her age and knowing all the tricks. She came in here, the—" and Nellie cursed her. Nellie had been charmed and kissed her and begged her to be friends and she had promised; but she meant not a word of it. She had come only to pull the wool over Nellie's eyes, the better to trap the poor baited fish. She had stayed there three days and Nellie had felt sure of her; she had begun to love her; and then, she, Marion, the woman, had gone away with Tom and never come again.

"I resented it bitterly. It was as if she came to spy me out and try me weight and then when she had me weighed up, she knew how to plan her campaign."

"Is she pretty?"

"Pretty enough; big dark eyes and a taking way."

"He didn't marry her?"

"She's married. She's got two of them," said Nellie dryly.

She went into the bedroom, and was away a few minutes. Caroline sat with her back to the door, taking in the room, a low broad room with two windows on the low-built street, the flat night-lighted sky over the flat roofs like an old engraving. The room had bookcases, a record player, a piano and lamps, a daybed; the walls were covered with dark red paper. A large vase, dark blue with a white flower design, was on a stand in the corner. She got up to look at the books and took out one after the other eagerly; all fascinating titles, new to her;
Merrie England, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Priests and People in Ireland, Fields, Factories and Workshops;
one after the other. She picked out one and stood with it.

Nellie returned, poured out more drink and said, "Sit down, pet. What have you got there?"

"There are so many books here I never heard of. I can learn something here if you'll lend them to me."

She came over with a little book in her hand and sat down. She glanced at Nellie and looked away. Nellie, with a lively, hard smile, was sitting opposite, knees wide apart, her eyes fixed on her guest. She was wearing a blue shirt, as in the picture, and a pair of riding breeches, horribly bloodstained. Her hair was tied up with a colored handkerchief, her feet were in Spanish rope slippers, and, leaning on one elbow, she held a cigarette in the air. She leaned forward and told Caroline that what she had with George was a wonderful thing, a rare rare thing, the perfect union; and that if you hadn't known that, you hadn't known what life meant. She shook her cock's crest knowingly, her face darted forward with delight; "Ah, Caroline, if you only knew what a man George is, a real man, he's made for ecstasy. If a woman has a man like that, she can't forget it."

She paused, waiting for an answer. Caroline replied nothing; but got up and went to the bookcase and began looking through one book after another; and then said, she was taking one to bed,
The State and Revolution,
because she had often heard about it; "I always wanted to understand that."

Nellie had launched out on a description of some friends of George's, a writer and an artist living together, two women.

"Me bold hero is a great one for the dames; they're at his feet and no wonder; but what he has is the rare gift."

It turned out that these two women had had a general servant and this servant was Mrs. McMahon; "George saw she admired him and just like you, pet, she wanted to learn something, better her condition. So she came here for one day a week; and presently she gave them up and came to us. That was ten years ago and there she is yet, the good old faithful, the true, loyal working-class woman, better than ye read about, for she's a beautiful loving soul, patient and uncomplaining. Ah, but she thinks the world of George and he is very patient explaining things to her; and what a womanly care, love, for his bits of copper and pewter and china. Such simple devotion. Aye, I'd be jealous if I didn't know the woman's pure loyal heart. But the idea of wickedness never came to her."