His head lifted out of his shoulders and his hump seemed to straighten for a second as he squared himself, giving her the fleeting impression, as she had received once before, that he was a normally built man. She watched his open coat gape further as he took in a deep breath before saying quietly, ‘Now I’m going to me mother’s for me breakfast. I’ll get two eggs and a rasher and fried bread and as much tea as I can drink. And if you don’t want me to keep this up you’d better see what you can do in the way of grub.’
He was gone. Maggie’s two hands went to the table and, gripping the edge, she pressed herself against it, leaning over it, making it act as a bulwark to her emotions. Now the mist was gone from her eyes and the green was deepening to almost black, and their expression was not unlike that of an enraged and caged beast.
Chapter Seven: Beattie Watson
The fells lay under a shimmering heat, the blue haze deceiving the eyes and giving the impression that the earth was visibly moving, panting slowly, tired with trying to draw breath. The sun was going down but gave no promise of coolness to follow, and Tom sat on the biscuit-coloured grass watching it. On three sides of him was low bush and scrub, and in the open space before him lay a broad stretch of broken ground, with the fringe of the town just visible along its horizon.
From time to time he would stand up and look back over the bushes to where in the distance, standing out against the light, couples were wandering about searching for a sheltered place such as this; and the sight of them once again deterred him from walking to the main road to meet the bus, and Beattie.
Beattie liked this spot—it had become theirs. When, as happened sometimes, they found another couple in possession, she would be annoyed, for she did not like sitting in the open. Yet now, after three weeks of almost daily meetings, he was wondering if her only objection to being stared at was when she was with him, for she would meet him nowhere else but here, and this secrecy seemed foreign to her open, free nature.
At first he had been glad she preferred the quietness of the fells, for he had not the courage to flaunt her openly. But this he knew could not go on. Soon he would have to face the family with her…face his mother.
He snapped off a long dry grass and drew it between his teeth, putting them on edge and causing him to shudder…But his mother would like her once she got to know her properly. Who could resist liking her or loving her? He drew his knees up and put his elbows on them, and rested his head on his hands. He had never thought about love until he met Beattie, only the love of God and, of course, his mother. But this feeling was different; it had scorched him like the heat had this grass. Inside he was lifeless and sapped with it; the pure beauty of its first touch had been mangled in the torturous desires it had aroused in his body; the fierce heat of its flame had even thrust up a barrier between him and God.
He rolled over on the hard earth and pressed his body to it. It wasn’t sinful to feel like this, it was natural; he was a man. God would understand and help him to keep this thing under control.
His thoughts, turning on God at this moment, created a shamefaced feeling. It was as if he had let someone down and was now crawling back to Him for help. He had lost touch with the feeling of oneness with God that for years now had draped him like a cloak; he lost it when Beattie came into his life. If he could only get back to God, He would understand and help him. He must pray. He would pray…now, before she came. He breathed deeply, and began:
‘Dear Lord, give me strength to combat this temptation…Jesus, You who were a man and knew all the desires of man, strengthen me with Your strength.’
As always when he prayed, he attempted to conjure up the face of Christ. But now he was not successful; so he willed it to come clear before his eyes. And as he willed, a face rose into his vision; but it was the face of his father. Surprise checked his praying, and he flung round on to his back, and in greater surprise looked up at Beattie Watson standing over him.
‘Well, I must say! Breaking your neck to see me, weren’t you, lying asleep there!’
Her voice was harsh and throaty, but any reproach the words implied was contradicted by the laughter in her eyes.
Tom was on his feet. ‘Which way did you come? Why, it wasn’t a minute ago I was on the lookout for you.’
‘Oh, I got off the bus way down the road—it was so flaming hot I came across the top end.’
‘The top end?’ he questioned quietly.
‘Aye, the top end.’ She laughed at him. ‘Where the soldiers are camped, you know.’
She was teasing him, yet the sane part of him knew that she was speaking the truth. Likely, she had got off the bus to pass near the camp; but what could be said to anyone so frank as she was?
‘Sit down and don’t look so grown-up!’ She pulled at his trouser leg from where she had dropped on to the grass. And he repeated in a puzzled tone, ‘Grown-up?’
‘Aye; and don’t keep repeating everything I say. God, but it’s hot!’ she said, flinging herself back on the ground, her arms spread wide.
He gazed down at her; then lowered himself to her side, and lifted her hand and held it gently to his face.
‘Ah!’ She sighed and wriggled her body. ‘That’s one thing I like about you, Tommy. You act like a film star.’
‘What!’ He dropped her hand, and she let forth a peal of laughter.
‘Oh, I wish you could see your face. Don’t you think it’s a compliment for a pitman to be called a film star?’
‘About the same thing as saying I’m a cissy.’
‘Come here!’ She caught the lapel of his coat. ‘Aren’t you going to kiss me?’
His face stayed for a second above hers, his eyes flashing from one feature to another before coming to rest on her mouth. Then his own, closed hard and tight dropped on hers. When he finished she lay smiling at him, with an amused tolerant smile like that of a teacher who had watched the clumsy efforts of a favourite pupil.
‘You’re nice’—she stroked his cheek, and he sought to bring her fingers across his lips—‘but you’re funny.’
‘Funny?’
‘There you go again. Aye, funny. You know, I was thinking the day that you’re not like a pitman at all. I’ve never known a pitman like you, who reads poetry and is a parson.’
‘I’m not a parson! I’m what you call a lay preacher. And a poor one at that, God knows,’ he added quietly.
‘Oh, I think you’re clever. There’s not many like you. You don’t think enough of yourself.’
‘You don’t know pitmen.’
‘Don’t I, though!’
‘Do you know Ralph Foley and Peter Cremer?’
‘No. Who are they when they’re out?’
‘Ralph Foley does grand paintings of up here on the fells. He gave an exhibition of his own, more than fifty. And Peter Cremer taught himself to play the fiddle and has been picked to join an orchestra in Newcastle. They’re doing things.’
‘Well, what’s that?’ she cut in. ‘Our Lance can play the cornet, the bugle, and the penny whistle. And he can clog dance when he plays the whistle, an’ all.’
Tom pulled at the grass but made no comment on the achievements of Lance, for it was rarely she mentioned her family.
‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘if I had your brains I’d do something.’
‘What would you do?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. But I wouldn’t stick down the pit.’
‘I like the pit.’
‘Eeh’—she shook her head—‘you’re really queer, you know. I suppose it’s because you’re aimin’ to be an Almighty God’a.’
‘An Almighty what?’
‘God’a…a parson. Haven’t you heard that one before?’
‘No, it’s a new one on me.’
‘It’s really me da’s name for them. I wonder what he’d say if he…’ She stopped and looked past him reflectively towards the sky; then exclaimed, ‘Oh God, but it’s hot! Mind a minute’—she sat up—‘I’m goin’ to take me stockings off. Do
n’t look.’
Obediently Tom turned his head away, and her hands, unloosening her suspenders, became still, and her face for a moment took on a sad, almost regretful expression, to be replaced by her smile as she murmured, ‘It takes all types to make a world.’
‘What?’
‘I said it takes all types to make a world.’
He shook his head. He could not follow her, but he laughed softly.
Then, taking her shoe, she slapped him on the back with the sole of it, saying, ‘All clear.’
He turned and looked at her wriggling toes, and she said, ‘I’ve been wanting to do this all day. It was so hot in that damn factory that I wished somebody would set light to the cordite, and we’d all go up, and that’d finish it…No, I didn’t, not really; I’d hate to die.’ With her swift change of thought she went on, ‘Oh, I’ve brought your book back.’
She reached over the grass and dragged her bag towards her, and Tom said, ‘But you couldn’t have read it, I only gave it to you the night afore last!’
‘I’ve read some.’ She shook her head at him. ‘It’s no use, Tommy. What’s the good of pretending? Them kind of books aren’t in my line. And, anyway, I’m frightened it gets messed up or lost. And it’s got such a nice cover…Oh, don’t look so sad, man.’
‘I’m not sad.’
‘Yes, you are…But honest, I read some. And one bit even made me laugh. Where that fellow said: “An’ when they gets to feelin’ old they ups an’ shoots theirsels, I’m told.” Lord, I did laugh at that. “An’ when they gets to feelin’ old they ups an’ shoots theirsels, I’m told.”’ She repeated the lines musingly; then suddenly lay back and laughed loudly. ‘It’s funny, you know.’
Tom did not laugh with her, but looked broodingly down on his beloved Rupert Brooke, and told himself that this was one of life’s lessons to be learned: when you loved someone you had to prepare yourself for him or her not liking the things you did…But what matter, so long as she kept on loving him. But did she really love him? What if she left him?
A hot wave, akin to terror, passed through him, and he was impelled towards her by the fear. He put his arms about her and held her closely, and almost immediately she relaxed against him, the curves of her body falling into his.
‘Do you love me, Beattie?’
His lips were against her neck.
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know what to think.’
‘I’ll give you three guesses.
‘I don’t want to guess; I want to hear you say it…Say you love me, you’ve never said it.’
‘Come here, and I’ll give you proof.’ She brought his head from her shoulder. Slowly her open lips covered his. Then with a swift jerk his mouth was lost in hers, and her soft yielding body became hard and tight against him. For the moment he seemed to become mad and to grapple with her as if she were a wild beast, pressing and pounding at her body in an attempt to push it into the earth. Then with an equal ferocity he suddenly tore himself from her and rolled over on the grass and, shielding his face in the crook of his arm, lay still.
But for the slight twitching of her legs Beattie, too, lay still. Her full lips were drawn close together, and her eyes were no longer filled with laughter. After a while her hand groped for her bag, and, finding it, she took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one, drawing on it with short, quick draws. When after some time she slowly raised herself up she did not look towards Tom but, sticking the cigarette in the corner of her mouth, she pulled on her stockings and shoes again.
With a heavy movement as if his body were packed with lead, Tom turned over and edged towards her. Then he too lifted his body from the ground and sat with his hands hanging limply between his knees for a while, before saying thickly, ‘I’m sorry, Beattie.’
With the slightest turn of her head she looked at him coldly out of the corner of her eye, and asked in a flat voice, ‘What for?’
He met this new tone with one of surprise, and said haltingly ‘For…for nearly forgetting myself.’
If he had misread the scorn in her look, there was no mistaking it now in her voice. ‘Ha ha! That’s a good ’un. You’re too soft to clag holes with, man. I’m going home.’
She was on her feet; and he was facing her. Too soft to clag holes with, was he! He took her roughly by the arms. ‘You won’t say that to me again.’
‘No?’
‘No! Listen. Will you marry me?’
Her mouth fell agape; the stiffness left her face and a ripple of laughter slowly moved across it. But on this occasion her laughter found no outlet; it seemed to be checked by an obtruding thought, which she voiced: ‘You serious?’
‘Aye. Of course I’m serious. You don’t ask a lass to marry you for fun.’
His face was grim; the philosophical layman did not exist at this moment; he was a man and he wanted Beattie Watson, and to hell with the consequences! The men needn’t listen to him. It had never done them any good what he said to them, anyway…people could only be influenced if they wanted to be. And the family? Well, let them take it or leave it. If they wouldn’t accept her, then they wouldn’t have him, that was all. He’d ask for a transfer to another pit, and him and Beattie would start life together where no condemning eye would be on her…Who were they to condemn, anyway? Just because, as most of them had, she hadn’t experienced the privilege of a decent upbringing. What chance had a girl, with six brothers and a drunken father and mother?…He would make it up to her. Their marriage would be as perfect as a marriage could be.
Yet, as he gazed down into her face, it was borne in on him that, whatever her upbringing, she had been and still was happy in it, and it had left no scar on her. Instead, the stamp of it seemed to be laughter and a capacity for enjoyment. Up to a moment ago he had never seen her other than happy.
She pulled herself gently from his arms and stared away across the moor to where the town was lifting itself out of the heat of the day like a city rising out of the sea. A little breeze swept over the hills, rustling the grass about their feet, and absentmindedly she took the front of her blouse and wafted it back and forward.
‘What do you say, Beattie?’ There was no pleading in his words, they were more of a demand, and she glanced at him as if he was new in her sight.
She did not answer him directly, but said, more to herself, ‘You’re the first fellow who’s asked me to marry him.’
His heart leapt at her words. He knew she’d had other fellows—a girl like her was bound to have a swarm of men after her—but he’d got in before any of them. ‘You will?’
She laughed. Her chin lifted and her eyes swept the endless blue of the sky.
‘Beattie, don’t keep me hanging on like this.’
He swung her about and took hold of her arms again, and she brought a sobered face down to his. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are. If I didn’t know you were a bit of a sap and I liked you, I’d say yes. Hold your horses a minute!’ She raised her hand to check the impetuous flow she knew her words would evoke, and before his eyes she seemed to change from Beattie, the laughing girl, to a woman, twenty years instead of two years older than himself. ‘Listen to me, Tommy. I don’t want to marry…you or anybody else; I’ve seen enough of it in my time. I don’t mind having a bit of fun.’ She paused and the light deepened in her eyes for the moment. But as she saw no change in his she went doggedly on, her face hardening with an expression he had never seen before. ‘And I’m goin’ to have me fun and without the usual consequences either. You understand?’ Again she paused, and whether he understood or not she could gain no indication.
‘Well, there it is. I’ve been straight with you. And mind’—her finger jabbed his chest—‘many a one wouldn’t. But you’re such a…sap.’ The word was in no way derogatory. On her lips it even conveyed tenderness. ‘It’s well seen I’m the only lass you’ve had. And mind, I’m telling you, in one way you’re lucky you struck on me. If it had been that other clinging vine, she’d have you
hooked up. But I’ve got me principles, no matter what else I haven’t got. You can thank your lucky stars it was me you gave your seat to in the bus and not the lass I was with, or else…Well’—she snapped her fingers—‘she wouldn’t have let eight months go by and made no move to see you. You would’ve been hooked by now, me lad.’
She was talking, he thought, as women talked; it was not the talk of a girl. He had been wrong. Her life had left a mark on her; it had aged some part of her. But she was good and square, and as straightforward as even a man…She had principles.
His love for her created another plane whereon to spread itself. How many girls would have answered him with utter truth as she had done?
He caught her hands and pressed them into his breast. ‘You’ll marry me…Some day you’ll marry me. I can wait; you said you liked me.’ He did not insist on the word love, for, strangely now, he accepted the fact calmly that her kisses and passion had not meant love to her. ‘That’s enough for the time being,’ he went on. ‘I’ll wait.’ His voice sounded like that of a settled man. He too seemed to have aged; the responsibility of this love was already lying heavily on him.
Her smile reappeared, flashing into life again, accompanied by a shrug of her shoulders. ‘Well, mind, don’t say I didn’t warn you. And don’t start yapping at me when you’re left high and dry.’
‘Never you fear.’ He nodded slowly at her. ‘I won’t be left high and dry.’ He squared himself. ‘We’re going to start courting in the proper way…I’m going to take you home to see me mother and them.’ And at this moment he felt it would be bestowing an honour on his family should she visit them.
‘Oh no, you’re not!’ Her smile was gone once more.
‘Why?’
‘Because I’ve told you, we either meet up here or not at all.’
‘But, Beattie, we can’t go on like this. Some of my family know already we’re going together. Our Ann saw us up here.’
Maggie Rowan Page 13