South Riding (60 page)

Why had she been born? she wondered, or if born, then why gifted with desires and abilities? She let her mind wander backwards through her short life. It seemed now to her that while her mother lived, she had known a period of perfect happiness. That rough ungainly figure, that sharp tongue, that vigour and impatience all presented themselves now before her memory as symbols of sheltering love and understanding. She had lost them—and lost them in such a way that her mother’s death mocked devotion and outraged loyal service. Lydia had tried to be good and loving and unselfish. She remembered her mother lying on the bunk, haggard and weeping. This was what came of love.

And Gertie was dead and Lennie always ailing. The baby, dragged up anyhow, was a little rat. Lydia hated it, refusing to give tenderness to what had killed her mother. Often she hoped that it might die, and feared her hope.

Her father had moments of jollity but no sense. He exasperated her as he had exasperated her mother. He would be coming in soon, wanting some cocoa, talkative, volatile, soft.

And these would be her companions now, for ever, since the Mitchells had left the Shacks and gone away. She had not liked Nancy Mitchell. A cat, if ever there was one, shrewish, nagging; but she was company.

“Don’t worry,” Miss Burton had said. “It’s all right, Lydia. We’ll find a way. Even if you have to lose one term, I won’t see you defeated. You know Alderman Astell? Well, he and three other aldermen and councillors are trying to get a new garden village built somewhere between Kingsport and Kiplington. If that happens, there’ll be work for your father, and you’ll be able to move into one of the new houses, and then there’ll be neighbours to come in and do the cooking and look after the baby. Even before that, we may get a woman out from Maythorpe.”

But there was no woman in Maythorpe willing to undertake the responsibility of the Shacks. Chrissie Beachall was more and more occupied at the Nag’s Head, where Lily Sawdon was now almost completely bedridden. Mothers of young girls ripe for service disliked the idea of their daughters having to cope with the turbulent Holly children. “They’re no better than gipsies. They live “like pigs,” said the respectable villagers.

So Lydia believed in promises no longer. She had seen too much of life, death, birth and poverty. At sixteen a forlorn cynicism quenched her once robust vitality. The charm of beauty no longer could seduce her; she had ceased to hope for any better future.

The wind whistled round the railway coach, rattling the ill-fitting tin chimney. The children had made some attempt at Christmas decorations; hedge clippings from the evergreens at Maythorpe had been stuck behind the picture of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee over the bunk. A string of coloured paper streamers, made at school, hung from one side of the carriage to the other. In the sugar box which was cupboard and pantry, lay the joint, the tea, the sugar; but Lydia had piled the oranges in an old pudding basin. They looked pretty. She could see them now, in the dim yellowish glow of the oil lamp.

Before he left Bella Vista, Mr. Mitchell had given her his copy of Shakespeare’s complete works. But Lydia no longer found in reading a solace for her spirit. She wanted to pass examinations; she wanted to take her matric. History, chemistry, algebra, maths and Latin. . . . She could do all these things and essays too. English was easy. She wanted problems, formulæ, long tables and categories to master. Her young mind was hungry for facts and propositions and solutions. She enjoyed its power. She knew that she was clever. But something had broken in her spirit; that resilient gaiety would elate her no longer. The Mitchells’ desertion had finally defeated her.

For she was not quite sure just what had happened. Fred Mitchell was drawing public assistance. That was all right. Any one did that if they could. And Peggy had not had measles. Then somehow Mrs. Whitfield, who was Nancy Mitchell’s mother, had come down one day and seen Nancy at her work, feeding her dusty chickens, the baby crying, Peggy and Lennie playing in the pen together, and Allie and Kittie and Daisy coming home for their meal. And that had done it.

There had been a row, a monstrous row, between Fred Mitchell and his mother-in-law. It brought to an end Nancy’s half-hearted labours. Mrs. Whitfield swept her and Peggy back to her home in Grimsby. Fred Mitchell was left to close the house at the Shacks, and sell the chickens; a van came for the furniture, and three days ago she had seen him off, pedalling away on his push-bike, into the unknown. She did not know whither he had gone. But during the tornado of departure Lydia had learned that her family lived like pigs, that Nancy had been disgracefully put upon, that gentle, nervous, kindly Fred was a wife-murderer worse than Crippen, because he did it slowly, and that the Shacks was a place of dirt, disease and misery. No wonder every one despised her; no wonder Sarah Burton let her down.

Miss Burton had gone, it seemed, to Manchester. From there she had sent to Lydia a lovely but maddening Christmas present—a school satchel filled with writing blocks, fountain pen, rulers, compasses, and all other equipment for her school work. It had arrived the day before Christmas Eve, and Lydia, in a burst of sullen rage, had given it to her father. “Go on. Take it. I shan’t want it. I never shall go to school again. See if you can get a couple of shillings for it. Kitty must have some new shoes, and Daisy needs hers soling.”

Not love, but hatred, underlay that gesture. Lydia did not sacrifice Sarah’s present to her sisters. She hated her sisters and her schoolmistress, and cursed the present from Sarah as a mockery.

So Mr. Holly had gone off that afternoon to Kiplington. “Let him sell it. Let him sell it,” the child swore, her head on her fists, her matted unkempt hair falling over her wrists, her elbows on the table. I hate him. I hate every one. Oh, Mother, Mother!

The door creaked and Alice stole through, “I’m thirsty, Lyd. Has Father Christmas come yet? Aren’t you in bed? I want a drink of water.”

“You get back to bed, or I’ll give you such a hiding you won’t know you’ve got a bottom for a week,” Lydia scolded; but she dipped a mug into the bucket and Alice drank.

“When’s Dad coming in?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it very late?”

“Yes. Get to bed.”

The clock was broken; Lennie had pulled it over. Mr. Holly had his watch with him. It might be anything between nine and midnight. Lydia shooed her young sister back to bed.

She opened the door of the railway coach and peered out into the night. It was Christmas Eve. Once she had really thought that the angels came and, singing, announced the birth of the Son of Gad.

As if any birth could be a matter for rejoicing! As if any night could be a holy time.

They were running extra buses that evening to Cold Harbour. One was coming now along the Maythorpe road. Its lights approaching and the rattle of its progress made Lydia feel a little less forlorn. The Shacks were not so isolated when those cheerful galleons of glass and metal, lighted and crowded, rocked past the campers’ gate.

This particular bus retarded; its brakes shrieked; it stopped.

That’ll be Dad, Lydia thought without enthusiasm. She turned up the wick under the warming kettle. The gate wailed as somebody opened it.

Lydia remembered other occasions when she had waited for her father. It must be memory which made her think now that she heard a woman’s voice as well as a man’s. She crossed to the door again. Surely there were two figures approaching along the cinder path?

She began to shiver. She was not a nervous girl, but the loneliness of the Shacks, the darkness, the misery of her vigil, had all played on her nerves.

Who was this coming?

Her father? She could hear his jolly voice:—market-merry, he was. If he’s drunk the money from my satchel! she thought Then—it doesn’t matter. It’s all the same.

She had no faith in him.

But this was a woman’s voice too and a woman’s laughter, torn by the wind, scattered along the air. A wraith? A ghost? Her mother coming at Christmas to reproach her because she had danced when Gertie died?

Oh, God! sobbed Lydia, and shrank back against the wall of the railway coach, the bread knife in her hand, ready to defend herself from spectres, brigands, bogies, or the returning vengeful dead.

It was thus that Mrs. Brimsley, her hands full of Christmas parcels, her cheeks flushed with a couple of Guinnesses, her future husband’s arm round her buxom waist, climbing up into the coach, encountered the girl who was to be her stepdaughter.

“Hallo, Lyd,” cried Mr. Holly, on the top of the world. “How’s doings, lass? I’ve brought you a Christmas present.”

Lydia and Mrs. Brimsley stared at one another. Mrs. Brimsley saw the bleak yet cluttered misery of the home, the pathos of the “decorations,” the queer girl, cowering against the wall, a knife in her hand, for all the world like one of those cinema films “Attacked by the Indians.” Lydia saw a plump and homely woman, middle-aged, panting a little, her hat slightly on one side. Mr. Holly saw nothing but his clever daughter and the lady who was to be his wife.

“Let me introduce you,” he said gallantly; setting Mrs. B.’s basket of groceries on the table. “Mrs. Brimsley, Lydia. Lydia, my dear. This lady’s your new mother.”

He’s drunk, thought Lydia. He’s brought home a drunken woman. Oh, well, she’s harmless, then.

Fear and shock had made her feel rather queer, but she went to the cupboard and put down a loaf with the bread knife on the table, as though she had held it there for simple reasons, instead of having armed herself against wild panic and the menacing unknown.

The woman stood holding her parcels rather helplessly, and said, in a voice that was both kind and shy, “So you’re Lydia.”

The girl stooped for the cocoa tin and did not turn her head.

“Yes,” she said, sullenly, resenting everything—most of all her own moment of unreason.

“Well, now——,” began Mr. Holly; but Lennie at that moment woke and wailed.

Lydia sprang to him.

“Hush up, Dad—you’ve woke him. It’s all right, all right, my lambie.” She bent over the thin little boy. “It’s all right. Lyddie’s here.” She knew his scares, his sudden starts of terror.

“Is this the little chap?” asked Mrs. Brimsley. She set down her parcels now and crossed to the cot. She looked at the kneeling girl and the shuddering child, still half asleep, choking with sobs, his stick-like arms round his older sister’s neck.

“You woke him,” Lydia said resentfully, and her sullen eyes sought for the first time the invader’s face.

“I’m sorry. I hadn’t realised he was in the room. I’ve only come in with a few presents for the children,” said Mrs. Brimsley, “just until the next bus. I didn’t mean to frighten him.”

“It’s your hat. He hates hats.”

“I’ll take it off.”

She did. She put it down on the table and stood, her neat hair parted, her mild face bonny in the lamplight.

“Maybe he’ll come to me. I’ve reared three lads myself,” said Mrs. Brimsley. “They’re grown up now. Let me have a try with him.”

Lydia rose slowly and stood back. She watched Mrs. Brimsley stoop to Lennie and speak to him. “Hush, Lennie, hush.” Her voice was low and kind, her arms were motherly. She sat down on the bunk and lifted the flushed sleepy child, still jerking with sobs, on to her knee. The kettle boiled. Lydia rushed to it.

Mr. Holly stood balancing on his toes and heels, hands in his pockets, letting his coppers tinkle between his fingers. He was pleased as punch with himself and his experiment.

“Make a cup for your stepmother as well, Lyd.”

“Stepmother! Get along with you, you haven’t got me yet. Hush, little Len, did we frighten you then, my laddie? He’s thin, isn’t he?”

“He had measles last summer,” Lydia defended him. “He was bad.”

She set the cups on the table, then saw that her father had brought back her school satchel.

“Oh—wouldn’t they take it?” she asked.

“I didn’t try. You’ll need it. Mrs. B. and I are going to splice up, my girl, as soon as we can find a house to go to.”

“A house?”

“I’ve got a bit of money. Not much,” Mrs. Brimsley said, half eagerly. She was treating Lydia like a grown-up person, explaining, propitiating.

“Oh.”

Lydia had a vision of her father and Mrs. Brimsley going off to a house and leaving her to look after the children.

“So you’ll be needing your school things,” said her father.

“How? Who’ll look after the children?”

“I shall. If you’ll let me,” said Mrs. Brimsley. “You’ll all come to live with me, and I’ll look after the little ’uns, and you can go back to school.”

And, understanding though she might be in many ways, she never knew why Lydia flung down the cocoa tin, and ran out of the coach into the night, sobbing wildly, wildly, because she could not trust promises, and because she did not believe that she could have been set free.

F
ROM
the ragged edge of the cliff the aeroplanes zoomed up into a midsummer-blue sky, catching the January sun on their silver wings. The big bomber carried a silken streamer on a long rope tied to its tail; the little fighter danced round it like a mosquito. Above the shore, above the yellow sands and blustering white-flecked sea, they dipped and roared and circled.