He rose slowly to his feet. Well, let her try it on, that was all, and she would experience the result of her efforts and fighting to mould him to her pattern…
The artificial logs burned steadily yet without diminishing in size, the supposed flame moving round and round them. Every twentieth second it would light the top of the central log, giving to it the silvery hue of ash. It had reached its two hundredth flicking of the main log when Maggie stirred. She had been sitting on a pouffe, staring unseeing at the fire, and now she bent forward and switched it off. Then, rising, she looked around her drawing room as she always did last thing at night, switched off the candelabra of lights and went upstairs.
Her room was on the opposite side of the large landing from Christopher’s, and she walked through it and into an adjoining room, separated from her own only by a curtain. The fact that the room was in darkness made her head flick with annoyance and brought her thoughts from their dark dwelling. That was the worst of foreigners…the Overmeers were always pretending they did not understand her orders, he outside the house and she in. And now the night light was out. It had never been lit! She would not allow herself to think that Stephen had put the light out, for he had promised her never to put it out again. Years ago she had been surprised that he preferred to go to bed in the dark, until one day she heard him talking to a boy as he came out of school. He was telling him that he played going down the pit in bed. She thought now of the look she had seen on his face that day…anger because he had given away his secret and, mixed with the anger, a kind of fury that she should again have come to meet him to make sure he did not go to his Auntie Ann’s. He had not tampered with the light since she told him that if he did it again they would move away from Fellburn. So she now repudiated the idea that he had once again put the light out. No, it had never been lit. That Mrs Overmeer couldn’t be trusted to see to even the lighting of a night light.
When the candle was steadily glowing in its rose-coloured bowl she lifted it up above the bed. Stephen was sleeping in a contorted heap, one knee drawn up almost under his chin, the other pressed down on top of the bedclothes; his pyjama coat was open and rumpled up his back, and his whole appearance suggested he had gone to sleep fighting.
Maggie did not immediately cover him up, but stood, her body bent over the bed, gazing down on him. Her eyes roamed back and forth from his narrow waist and thin chest to his equally thin face, until finally they rested on his face. And as she had done countless times before, she asked herself, why should his features so like her own, combine together to make him beautiful…beautiful and maddening, for he was becoming as maddening in a way as her father. Yet the more he annoyed her the greater became her determination that he should obey her. But above all these arbitrary feelings there stood her love for him, her love full of pain and gnawing, which, together, filled her mind with suggestions and ideas that put into practice would, she imagined, gain for her the love of her son. She wanted to bend now and gather him into her arms and fondle him…always she wanted to fondle him.
The lines of her face stiffened as she thought of his taut body whenever her arms went about it…And who had she to blame?
She put down the light, covered him up and returned to her room and slowly began to undress. All she had ever really wanted in life had been a child, someone to belong to her and her alone. The desire for money and power had been a secondary thing. It had taken its own place in the scheme of things after Stephen was born as a means on which to build his environment, education and future. When its power had enabled her to move on to the actual Hill—although at times this made her physically weak with a feeling she termed joy—she looked on this success mainly as a background for her son, the son through whom lay her only means of expression…some deep-ingrained honesty told her that she herself would never acquire an importance that would make her stand out from the crowd. Her present success might have made her the envy of those people among whom she was reared, but she had found out, and bitterly, that this did not guarantee acceptance, even with the camaraderie of war, by the remnants of the class on whose ground she had dared to tread. Another woman might have used her charm to force the wedge, but she had to accept that this means was entirely beyond her power. She often drank deeply of gall when she saw Christopher, with his deformed body and tongue littered with homely phrases, being treated as an equal by them. At these times, she confronted herself with the thought: ‘They can hardly do anything else…fire-watching together.’ Yet when she found herself in the same position with the…ladies, the same excuse could not be applied. So if she were to rise, it would have to be through her son. Her expression must come through him.
For a long time now she had been thinking of a prep school, and beyond, on the glorious horizon, a university…Oxford or Cambridge. She felt that, left to herself and without interference, she could make Stephen turn this dream into reality. But only if he was left to her, and not if his emotions were being constantly worked on. She closed her eyes wilfully to the fact that her own attitude towards him came under this last heading. Her actions, she countered, were the natural outcome of mother-love. It was…that one who caused the conflict. Her mind, which was never really free of Ann, now swung open to the devilish joy she had experienced on seeing David lust-bemused with that woman…Mrs Fuller, or Beat Watson, as she once was. Strange, wasn’t it, how things worked out?
She paused in the act of pulling a nightdress over her head. It was a month ago since she had sat in her office and looked at Beattie Watson asking for work under the name of Mrs Fuller—the woman who had caused so much trouble in her family. Not that she cared two hoots for Tom’s lacerated feelings, but she had cared, at the time, for the scandal. Although the woman had changed considerably she had recognised her; and only because she was very badly in need of workers had she taken her on, warning her that she would have to accept being moved on to any job, even in the wash-house. And she could remember being annoyed at the airiness of the reply, as Beattie Watson said, ‘Oh, I don’t mind what I do. I might look thin, but I’m all right. I had to leave the munition factory because the cordite got on my stomach, that was all. You can send to Hereford and ask them…they’ll tell you.’ And now here she was, having an affair with a man, you might say, of the same family, so closely were the two families connected.
If she had schemed for a thousand years never could she have brought about anything so liable to strike at her sister…The good David, the solicitous husband, the upright man, the man who even pretended he didn’t mind not having bairns so as not to hurt his dear wife, and all the time he was ‘playing away’ on the quiet. The despised sayings of her people seemed to fit perfectly such events as this, and for once she didn’t chide herself for thinking them.
As she stooped to throw the bedclothes back a knock came on the door, one distant rap, and she cast towards it a look of irritation not unmixed with astonishment. The Overmeers slept above the coach house, it couldn’t be her; it could only be…
The door opened, and she turned on Christopher a cold look but one which still held her surprise.
‘You could have knocked, couldn’t you?’
‘I did.’
‘Well, you could have waited.’
‘Why should I?’
Now her eyes widened and her back straightened, and for a flicker of time she thought what it might have been like if that voice that now had a ringing note of command in it and was the voice of her husband could have issued from another body. But the thought was merely a flicker, for her eyes seemed to dwell longer than usual on his braces, which, she knew, were arched like a bow across his back.
‘Well?’
His lips tightened and his head made quick little movements from side to side. By lad, if she was some men’s wife and she spoke like that to them they would skelp her gob as quick as look at her. Once upon a time he had put up with her manner because he was sorry for her, thinking that she was made that way; but since he had come to gain the respect
of men he had resented more and more her attitude towards him. And now he lifted his head out of its scoop and said, ‘It’ll pay you to remember it isn’t a dog you’re talking to. I’ve had about enough of it, I’m nearing the end of me tether.’
Only her silence showed her surprise. She stooped and picked a green dressing gown from off the chair and put it on, throwing her long thick plaits, first to one side then the other as she folded the lapels of the gown across her chest. And as he watched the quick smooth actions he, in his turn, thought, If only that hair had been on some other lass. Its gleaming brown against the green cloth was right bonny. The contrast brought him to notice the dressing gown. It looked classy. He didn’t know she had things like that for indoors, no more than he knew what she had in this room of hers, for if he wanted to visit the boy in bed he went in by the landing door. Queer, when you came to think of it, a room in your own house, your wife’s room, and not knowing what was in it. He cast his eyes quickly about it…Aye, she had done herself well…all green and yellow hangings and rugs, and brown furniture…a nutty brown.
‘I’ve got to get up early in the morning. What do you want?’
‘What do I want?’ His eyes became as hard as her own. ‘Just to say this. You want him to go to a posh school, don’t you?’
She made no answer, and he went on, ‘You’ve got it all planned out—a prep school, and finally a university. It’ll take getting on for two hundred a year at Conifers, won’t it? Of course, that includes everything—’ There was mimicry of pseudo-refinement in his last words, and her expression caused him to say, ‘Aye, I could talk like your Mr Maitland Byrnes if I wanted to, but it’d be a fake, just like him being headmaster of Court College is a fake. If you knew owt about human nature you would see he’s all wind and water. No. But as clever as you think you are, anybody can put one over you if they talk refeened…blah!’ His hand, nose and mouth combined to make a deprecating movement, and Maggie actually cried out, ‘You haven’t dared to go to the school?’
‘Dared to go?’ He became quiet. ‘Why shouldn’t I? Who pays, I’d like to know? But put your mind at rest; I didn’t go to the school. But your mighty Mr Maitland Byrnes actually sought me out…Aye, that surprises you. But you see I’ve got what Mr Maitland Byrnes wants…money. And his tinpot college is going to need money when the proper schools come back and take their own again…Aye’—he nodded at her—‘he left the crowd of councillors in the Town Hall lobby and made himself known to me when I was getting me permits. All over me, he was. Said I must go to Speech Day.’
He could see her body tightening under the dressing gown, and he laughed, and the sound was even painful to himself.
‘Don’t worry. I won’t go. But let me tell you this. You’ll bring him more harm than my hump or my pitmatic voice could do.’
Her expression did not alter, and he went on, ‘Well, all I came to tell you was that you’d better lay stock to what I said earlier on the night. If you tell Ann or anybody else what you saw there’ll be no posh schooling for him other than what you can provide. And your gold mine of a laundry will be like Mr Maitland Byrne’s school shortly, it’ll be up against big competition. Perhaps you didn’t know that before the war Cannings bought the ground behind the Square to build a modern laundry. The ground’s still there. But, anyway, one thing’s certain, you can’t play the big bug on your own’—he flung his arms wide—‘not in this way, you can’t, for long.’
Maggie looked at his large, square face, at his great brown eyes, now almost black with feeling, and her eyes travelled from the tremendous width of his chest down his thin legs to his feet, big feet in thick boots, feet that were a match for his head and chest but ludicrous as attachments to his legs.
She had hated his feet almost as much as his hump. Seeing them, or feeling them, it was the same. For the short time she had felt their proximity in bed she had been maddened by them. In his sleep they had floundered about as if in futile search. Tonight they looked even bigger and seemed to her the symbol of his commonness, and the commonness of the other members of his family and their associates. The commonness seemed to spread over all but a few of the residents of Fellburn. And he would see that his son should know nothing but this commonness if she dared to use the knowledge she had gained tonight. The very fact that he had come to this room proved he would go to any lengths to save Ann from being hurt.
As she stared at him she realised what she had not known before, that part of her hatred of Ann was because he loved her. And she was surprised at the pain the words evoked when she said, ‘You would sacrifice the boy’s future for her?’
It was some time before he answered, ‘Aye, I would…for her peace of mind. If it’s the only way to check the devil in you, I’ll do it.’
She gave a twist to the belt of the dressing gown. ‘You talk as if I’m the only one who saw him. What if someone else tells her?’
‘That remains to be seen. There’s nobody going to run to her with that kind of news, nobody but you. And it’s my opinion, anyway, that the thing’s a flash in the pan—he was tight or something.’ He shook his head at this point, being almost unable to believe himself what he said, for he could not imagine David to be tight enough to go whoring in the street. ‘But,’ he went on, hitting on the truth in his fumbling to find an excuse for his brother, ‘he was likely only out for a bit of jollification and he met up with her.’
‘Jollification!’ Her lip curled. ‘Well, jollification or no jollification, I’m going to tell you this. Unless you find some way to keep her off my boy I’ll risk all you say you’ll do.’ Her lips parted in the imitation of a smile. ‘And won’t I delight in telling her that while she’s been neglecting her husband for my son he’s found solace somewhere else.’
Christopher ran his thumbs down each brace, pulling them away from his chest, then letting them snap back with a crack that held its own significance.
‘All right’—he turned—‘try it on, and we’ll see who comes out on top.’
She watched him go out, and waited for the door to be banged. But it was closed quietly, and she realised that the whole of their conversation had been quiet, tense and quiet, so as not to wake the boy.
Slowly she got into bed, and as of habit she picked up a book from the bedside table. But she didn’t read, for a tiredness was assailing her, not the tiredness of sleep, but the tiredness that was in some way connected with the feeling she used to have before Stephen first moved in her womb, the tiredness which was bred of her fight against loneliness.
Chapter Twelve: The Thinnest Strand
Stephen walked down Brampton Hill on his way to school. Until recently Friday had been the one glorious day in the week for him, because on this day his mother did not drive him to school; on this one day a week her time was completely taken up with the laundry—it was pay day and accounts day and bank day—and he was free . . . until four o’clock.
The sun shone hot on the back of his neck; the birds were flitting swiftly to and fro on the branches of the trees behind the high walls that guarded the privacy of the houses on the Hill. It was just the day for going over the fells. If he could dash round now to his Auntie Ann’s and say, ‘Come on, on the fells,’ she would come. He could see them both running and laughing and falling on their faces on the grass. His mind tried to carry him back to one Friday last term when they had done just that. But it failed and, instead, dropped him into the middle of the morning, to the point of time when he must show his arithmetic to Mr Newman. He didn’t like arithmetic and he hated Mr Newman.
Mr Newman had only recently come on his horizon. Last year, and even the year before, he could remember vaguely hearing stories of the White Devil. But then the second form had seemed thousands of years away. But on the first day of this new term the years had vanished as if touched by a magician’s wand, and within a matter of hours he knew precisely why Mr Newman was called the White Devil. He was fat and pale-skinned, and the paleness was emphasised by his hair, which was blac
k and wiry and which, of its own accord, jutted straight out from above his ears; and when rage swayed him, which it did at least once a day, his hair took on the appearance of horns.
From his very first day in this form Stephen had continually encountered the real devil in Mr Newman, and the devil seemed to pick him out to be the recipient of his spleen. This was remarked on during the first break of the term by his form mates, who, with the cruel candour of youth, plus patent relief at their own escapes, told him, as one wit put it, he was to be the chosen of the God of the Underworld.
Stephen soon learned too that Mr Newman was a homework devil. He would fling examples on to the blackboard, bark ‘Got that?’, rub them out before the flustered minds had even begun to sort out the jumble of figures, then he would call out a succession of numbers, each denoting a terrifying example in the textbooks, which were to be done as prep.
Of the ten examples of yesterday’s homework Stephen had completed six, and of the six only one gave him any comfort. This he had managed to work out, the others he had merely guessed at. He dug now into his satchel and brought forth an exercise book, and looked into it in troubled perplexity. It was no use…he would never be able to see any sense in them…he must be stupid. But he wasn’t stupid. Mr Rankine, the English master, knew he wasn’t. He hadn’t said so, but his eyes had looked nice at him when he read his composition aloud to the class. And after class he had asked him what he wanted to be; and because he wasn’t afraid of him he had dared to tell him the truth…a miner. And Mr Rankine had laughed and cuffed his ear in a nice way…He knew he wasn’t stupid. But Mr Newman and…
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