She hadn’t reached the man when she saw him move, just his body, not his legs. His body twitched like Ronnie Shelton’s did when he was going to have a fit. She followed the man’s gaze and saw Billy Cruikshanks go into the house where Beattie Watson lived…Her mother said Beattie Watson was no good except in bed, and she was good there. Somehow she couldn’t make this out, for she herself was good in bed, she went straight to sleep, and she couldn’t see how anybody was no good ’cos they were good in bed. She’d have to ask somebody about this some time.
She reached the man and said, ‘Are you waiting for the pictures? They don’t start till half past six and you’ve got to queue. But not if you go in the plush seats.’
He didn’t answer, and she walked directly in front of him. And then he moved. He must have known she was there, for he pushed her to one side, and she watched him walk towards the door Billy Cruikshanks had just closed. And she followed him and stood at his side as he knocked on the door. It was a soft knock at first; then he made it louder. And when the door opened, her interest became so intense that she pushed against his legs to get a good look at Beattie Watson. Beattie Watson was frightened; she had never seen anyone so frightened, except perhaps her mother, the day she took her to try the gas masks on.
Eeh! Beattie Watson was swearing. She was saying, ‘Jesus! Jesus!’ Eeh! The Sunday-school teacher said you’d go to hell if you said Jesus like that and not in a hymn. The man was staring at Beattie, but he didn’t speak. Perhaps he was dumb. But he wasn’t blind at all, for when Beattie said ‘For God’s sake go away, and I’ll see you later,’ and she tried to close the door, he put his foot in it.
Then the door was suddenly pulled wide open and Beattie wasn’t there any longer; but Billy Cruikshanks was. He was in his sailor’s clothes an’ all.
She was very interested in Billy Cruikshanks’ sailor suit, because she was on the concert for Christmas, and she was going to do the sailor’s hornpipe. And only yesterday, Billy had come into their backyard and showed her how to do the hornpipe. And he let her put his hat on. She liked Billy. He was strong and could lift her up with one hand, even though he wasn’t tall like this man. He was talking to the man now like her da talked to her ma at times when he was busting for a fight, like as if he was joking but he wasn’t.
Billy was nodding his head and saying ‘Oh yeah! Now I know. Come to see Miss Beattie Watson have you? And find out how things stand? Chum, I can tell you how things stand. I can tell you all you want to know…lugfuls. Shut up, you!’ He pushed his hand back into the room.
‘I should tell you you’re a dirty swine, shouldn’t I, sneaking a fellow’s lass? A fellow who’s fighting for his country mind, and not hiding down the pit! Oh, I know you’re down the pit. Chum, I know lots; you’d be surprised. All right, all right, keep your fists, you’re goin’ to need ’em. But you’re goin’ to hear me first; I’ve been wanting to catch up with you.’
Beattie’s voice came to the child, crying, ‘For God’s sake, Bill, come inside!’ And Bill laughed back into the room, ‘Aye, anything you say, Beat. Yes, I’ll come inside. And he’ll come an’ all, won’t you? Come inside, you poor bugger, and see the home I’ve got for her.’ He flung the door wide, then bent forward to put his hand on the man’s shoulder to pull him over the threshold. But it was knocked away, and the sound of wrist meeting wrist was hard, like the meeting of stones. Then after what seemed a long time to the child, during which no-one spoke, the man went into the house and the door was closed.
The child ran to the window, but when she saw the blackout up she ran back to the door and stood on the step with her ear to the large keyhole. And Billy’s voice came plainly to her, saying, ‘She’s had my money: not only the day or yesterday, but since I was a nipper. She gets you…don’t you, Beattie?’
There followed a stillness and the child pressed closer to the door, when the voice came again, ‘You drive a fellow up the lum, don’t you? And when you’ve got him there you vamoose. You’re not the first, pitboy. Oh no, not by a long chalk.’
‘Don’t believe him.’ Beattie’s voice came through the keyhole, high and thin, like the last vibration of a shrill whistle.
‘What about Red Macintyre?’ Billy’s voice sounded playful.
But Beattie’s was more shrill as she shouted back, ‘I was finished with you then…you know I was. And I’m finished with you now, for good! Tom, I am.’
‘Tom…I am, I am! Hear that? Well, what d’you think? Do you want this brothel bitch?’
The child waited for the man to speak; and when he didn’t she thought: He’s daft. But when she heard a quick shuffling of feet she thought again, No, he’s not. And as Beattie’s voice came to her, shouting, ‘No! No! Stop it!’ she dashed away from the door and up the street. They were fighting and she knew where that would end…in the back lane. But just as she turned the corner of the last cottage she saw the old woman again, the one who had been to Beattie Watson’s in the afternoon. She was standing close against the wall by the far corner.
The child stopped and stared across at her, and for no reason she could explain she connected her with the man, and she shouted, ‘They’re fighting!’ before dashing off again.
Beattie’s back door was open and the men were in the yard. They were hitting each other with their fists…bang, bang, bang! And the man was hitting as hard as Billy. But Billy was very strong, and his fist hit the man under the chin and lifted him up, and he fell…plop. And she jumped to one side of the doorway, for she thought he was going to fall on top of her. She looked down on him now. Billy had knocked him clean through the opening of the yard door, and he came and stood over him. The man blinked slowly, then shook his head. And before she had time to say ‘Jack Robinson’ he was up and they were at it again…bash, bash, bash!
And now the man seemed to be real mad, like her da got when he had a lot of money on a Saturda’ night. He punched and punched at Billy, and she had to dodge this way and that. And she began to shout, egging Billy on. Then she saw the man step back and his fist come up. She could see his knuckles shining white like the bone that stuck out of the half-shoulder of mutton her ma got from the butcher’s. As the man’s fist hit Billy she closed her eyes for a split second, and before she had time to open them she felt herself lifted into the air. She actually experienced herself sailing through it. Then she remembered no more of the fight.
And now the back lane was full…full of faces, and somebody crying. Oh, that was her ma. She could always tell her ma’s cry, ’cos she hiccupped all the time.
‘You’ll be all right, hinny.’
It was Mrs Jamieson from next door looking down into her face. And she meant to answer ‘Yes, I’m all right’ and raise herself from the ground, but when she tried to move the pain went up her back, and she couldn’t say anything. She closed her eyes; and when she opened them again there was Billy. He was kneeling on the ground and he was stroking her cheek, and his face was all blood. Then quite suddenly she forgot about Billy, for he disappeared abruptly from her view as she was lifted in the air. She knew immediately what she was on—it was a stretcher, like they had in the dugout. She was on a stretcher, and when you were on a stretcher you went in an ambulance. She wished she could have sat up to see it better and all the people who were watching her. She tried to smile when she saw the bobbies, but she felt too hazy. There were two bobbies and they were standing by the ambulance. Then her gaze was drawn from them to the man. He was staring down at her, and his face was different, all crumpled and sorry-like. She hoped he wouldn’t cry; she got a funny feeling inside when men cried. Her da sometimes cried. Then suddenly she was lifted above his face, and as she went upwards there arose from the murmur around her one clear sentence, ‘If she kicks the bucket those two are for it.’ And she knew it meant her, and that she was bad and might die.
PART THREE
STEPHEN
Chapter Eleven: A Bit of Jollification
Had the war not reached such a point in S
eptember 1940 that it could only be continued by the exertion of the limit of the strength of each individual, the affair of Billy Cruikshanks and Tom Rowan and the child, Jennie Forester, would have set light to Fellburn, and the Newcastle Daily Courier would have blazoned the story across its headlines . . . Men Fight Over Fellburn Girl . . . Child Flung Against Wall . . . Doctors Fear She Will Never Walk Again. But instead of such headlines there appeared a few lines only, at the bottom of the second page, wherein it said that a child had been injured during a fight, and it was a very regrettable state of affairs.
That was all. With husbands and sons dying, with wives going off with other men, with men stationed in far-off places that seemed like forgotten worlds deemed safe in which to have a bit of fun, fun that seeped through to the wife in Fellburn as if by supernatural means, with daughters joining WAAFS or ATS and leaving mothers praying that they keep themselves to themselves, there was little time or inclination to talk about the Rowan affair.
What was the affair, anyway, against the drama of the Battle of Britain? London was ablaze; the country was gasping for its life; many thought it would die; instead pilots and gunners died and planes disintegrated; and the country received its first blood transfusion.
Within a week of Tom appearing in the police court the incident was forgotten by everybody except the members of the chapel and the Rowan family, who, each in his own way, carried the burden of the disgrace. It maddened Maggie; it filled Ann with pity; it stunned George; Nellie for a time seemed to break under it; and its effect on Tom was to change him into a morose man. He talked little and walked a lot; in his turn, he did his firewatching, he put out his quota of incendiaries, and during the latter part of 1941 he worked until he collapsed, helping to extricate twenty-three of his trapped workmates. His efforts were commended by the management. This too was but a pinprick in the world of catastrophe. During the next year events, depressing and elevating, took place; in February Singapore fell; and on 21 October began one of the greatest battles of all times—El Alamein—and in it Fred Taggart was killed. In 1943 most people were of the opinion that the war would go on forever; yet on 6 June 1944, everyone saw the war ending within a few weeks; but it was many months before VE Day came. And Fellburn, together with the rest of the country, went mad.
It was three o’clock when Tom came up above ground, and he had his work cut out to get through the streets. People were calling to each other; they called to him; strangers greeted him as if he were their kin; a woman caught him around the waist and waltzed him off the pavement, and she laughed and called ‘Go on, old sobersides’ when he pushed her away.
Already his street was being decorated with flags by the women, and he cut through the lane to avoid their chaffing. Nellie greeted him before he had closed the door.
‘It’s great news, isn’t it? Oh, won’t it be grand to buy stuff again! We’ll soon come off the ration now. Ann’s just gone…she’s so excited, it’s done her good. Now the raids are over she’ll be better. And Stephen’s been in…Chris brought him. Maggie wants us all to go up there to tea the morrow. Not that I’ll go, but it’s nice of her to ask us, isn’t it?’ She did not wait for his reply, but went on, ‘Come, have your dinner. It doesn’t seem real, does it, now it’s all over?’ She took his coat from him and hung it up. She seemed unable to stop talking, and he listened to her with slight wonder, for rarely did she chatter. As she placed his dinner before him she said, almost frivolously, ‘Now we can go back to normal, eh?’
To normal. He looked at her. When had she been other than normal, grimly normal and sensible? And irritating?
On the last thought he attacked his dinner, saying, ‘There’s still the Japs.’
This statement, or his tone, seemed to take the exuberance from her, and she said rather flatly, ‘Yes, you’re right; there’s still the Japs.’
She went into the kitchen and he stopped eating and stared at his plate. Why must he do it? He just couldn’t seem to help it. He pushed the plate away. If only she would leave go of him. Never had he dreamed the time would come when she would irritate him beyond endurance—her very kindness and her solicitude were the worst irritants. Oh, why hadn’t he made the break five years ago and taken no notice of her pleading? Why had he allowed it to tear him to shreds? He could feel her yet, crying on his breast, sobbing and entreating…sobbing and entreating. And then there was the child too. Yes, he must be fair, it hadn’t been she alone who had tied him.
He pushed his dinner still further from him. Somehow the child still tied him, and he still had nightmares in which he slayed children by the score, sometimes beating them on the back until they couldn’t move. Yet the nightmares exceeded a thousandfold their cause, for altogether Jennie had lain only a year on her back. He could never recall the relief he had experienced when the doctors found there was nothing structurally wrong with her; all he could recall was the anxiety of that year during which once a week he went to see her. Even when the doctor, trying to lighten his remorse, told him the strangest tale he had ever heard, still his nightmares did not lessen. The strange truth was that the child did not want to walk; she was exceedingly happy as she was. If she walked she would have to return home, and she didn’t like her home. In hospital she was waited on and petted, she had numbers of people come to see her, and she amused everybody with her chatter. And she was proud of this last achievement.
When the doctor proposed placing her in a home for specialised treatment under a psychiatrist, he had willingly agreed, although it meant that it would take every penny he made, for he had taken it upon himself to pay for the child during her illness. He remembered now his mother’s eagerness to share this burden, but he could give her no credit for it, because he knew she was using it as another invisible cord with which to tie him.
Although Jennie had been walking for the past two years and was now leading a happy normal life, the pressure of her still lay heavily on him. She seemed to weigh on his mind; for he continually found himself thinking, But what if she had died? He could see her dead and he her slayer. Although it had not been his arm that knocked her flying he held himself responsible for being the primary cause. Had he not gone to the house that day it would never have happened; and further, if his mother had not told him he never would have gone. It was this fact that had kept the barrier raised between them. If she had minded her own business the child would not have been hurt; and he would have had Beattie. By Beattie’s own choice he would have had her.
Rising, he went and stood near the fireplace. He hadn’t thought of Beattie Watson for months now—it was almost like the time immediately after the fight—she had sunk into a pocket of his mind, pushed there by the weight of the child. He was aware of her being there, and her presence hurt him, but consciously he didn’t or wouldn’t allow himself to think of her. She had stayed fast, secured against thoughts, until the doctor told him about Jennie using her back as a means of escape, and then he knew that he too had used Jennie as an escape. And realising this, his longing for Beattie became as fresh as if he had parted from her but yesterday. Yet during these past few months he knew that time had drawn a curtain between him and her, for he could no longer remember her face clearly, or recall her voice or the sound of her laugh; she was like a poison working out of his blood. And looking at himself now, he saw that he was quite willing that it should go. Only by ridding himself of the poison could he look at Rosemary.
Twice he had gone to tea at Ann’s knowing that he would meet Rosemary there…Did he like Rosemary? Yes; she was a nice girl. Could he love Rosemary sufficiently to marry her? He swung away from the mantelpiece and went out of the room and up the stairs, and as Nellie called after him, ‘Why, you haven’t eaten your dinner, lad,’ he thought at least it would be a means of escape, a way that would not hurt his mother; in fact it would give her pleasure.
Nellie looked down at the meal she had prepared with such pains, and her head shook pathetically over it. Nothing seemed to please him; the more she did
for him the more he seemed to hold her at arm’s length. Oh, if they could go back, back to before the war when he used to talk and laugh with her. But no-one could go back. At times she thought he still resented her pointing out to him the kind of woman that Beattie Watson was. But then again she thought no; he must have been glad in his heart that he found out in time. It was hurting that child that had really altered him. And God forgive her, but at the time she had been thankful that the child was hurt, for it had kept him at home. Yes, she should thank God for lots of things. And she did this day: especially that she still had him…and whole. Many a poor mother was shedding bitter tears at this moment…Kitty had cried broken-heartedly over Fred. Although she still had seven sons left, on this particular day Kitty must have missed Fred as never before. Yes—she took the plate into the kitchen—she had a lot to be thankful for. God had been good, and she would pray that He would be even better and let Tom take up with young Rosemary Monkton. She was a nice lass, quiet, with no airs about her, and a regular chapel-goer. If she got him she would likely get him back to chapel, and, who knew, to preaching again. It would be an ideal match; and they could be comfortable, for he was making fine money. Times had changed. George was making only a pound a week when they were first married, and now Tom was getting nearly twice that a shift. And then there was all the overtime he could put in. It was the miner’s day. And not afore time. She nodded at the sink…no, not afore time. Never would things be as they once were. Wars were funny things. They brought sorrow, yet they created chances that a lifetime’s struggle in times of peace would never offer. Look at Christopher. Who, in their wildest dreams, would have imagined that he would ever have had the money to buy a house on Brampton Hill? It might have been Maggie who wanted the house, but it was Christopher’s money that bought it. And all out of scrap iron. Twelve rooms and a great garden. There again, they would never have got it for the price they had if the war hadn’t been on and houses going for a song.
Maggie Rowan Page 18