Maggie Rowan

by Catherine Cookson

  His supplicating hand waved the air like a conductor’s baton, but helplessly. Then it dropped to his side as he watched her back away from him. At the door she turned swiftly and fled from the room. Only her flying feet could be heard on the stairs, there was no sound of her crying.

  David passed his hand across his eyes. Well, it had to come. Hadn’t he known it would come? For weeks now he had seemed to be waiting for it…That car. Why was it some fellows could carry on with a woman for years and get away with it, yet he could trip up once, only once, and his life lay in fragments, tormented fragments? His head rocked again.

  That had been part of his torment…because it could only be once; and because deep in his heart he could not regret that night, or forget the woman who had made it possible. He had even to stay in the house in case he should meet her, for in that one night she had moved permanently into his life…as she had into Tom’s. He lifted his dazed eyes to where Tom was standing staring at him, and greater misery was piled on his head…he hadn’t forgotten her either. He was looking like murder.

  David’s eyes dropped before the wild glare in those of his brother-in-law. God, what had he done? Just that one night, and now this. And above all and everybody there was Ann…Ann. If only he could talk to her and make her see. But what would he be able to make her see? That he wanted another woman? Jesus in Heaven, what had happened to him? He loved Ann. Yes, yes, he loved her. The other thing was different…like a craving for drink, or something. If only he could make her see. She had been so nice to him lately. He had felt like a bairn at times, wanting to be comforted, and she…The word bairn brought Maggie’s words racing into his mind. She had said there was a bairn coming. But it wouldn’t be his…that one night!…Fool. That one night had had power to create a thousand bairns…and he knew it.

  His head swung again. She could have been with anybody. But that night she was with him! And if there was a bairn, it was his, because he had taken her unprepared. No joy came to him at the thought. Apart from his having been with another woman, what would the fact of him being able to give her a child mean to Ann? In his heart he knew that Ann had laid the blame of their childlessness at his door. Now what he must do was to convince her it was only she who mattered. He must, even though he no longer convinced himself.

  He went out blindly, groping at the door, and Christopher listened to him mounting the stairs and to him calling, ‘Open the door, Ann.’ He listened until the pleading became unbearable, then he turned to Tom and said, ‘Don’t think too badly of him, Tom, he was tight.’

  ‘Is it…Beattie Watson?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And…and the bairn?’

  ‘You know as much about that as me.’

  Tom looked up at the ceiling, and Christopher said, ‘Look, lad, don’t get bitter about this. It’s not as if you still knew her or anything. And you know what she…’

  His voice trailed off as Tom’s eyes came down to him, daring him to go on; and he lifted his huge shoulders in a helpless gesture and turned away.

  Tom stood still. Stephen’s moans were faint now; but David’s voice was getting louder as he pleaded with a note of desperation, ‘Ann, say something…What you up to in there? I’ll bash the door in, mind.’

  As if escaping from the voice, he turned and rushed from the house. But the voice went with him, the voice of his mate, deputy or not, the tolerant voice that poured oil on the turbulent tempers of his own particular workmen, the voice that would come down the face, making him pause to wipe the sweat from his eyes, ‘Dodging the gaffer again? You’ve never been the same man since I left you,’ or some such chaff, the voice of his sister’s husband, and now the voice of the man who had held Beattie Watson in his arms and given her a child.

  His walk through the town was on the verge of a run. Once on the fells he let himself go. Although it was quite dark and there was no moon, he did not stumble; over the years since he had last seen her the unmarked road to the place that had served as a rendezvous for him and Beattie had become as familiar as his own street.

  Christopher had memories still vivid in his mind of sleepless nights when ‘Jerry’ had strafed the town, when in the sandbagged cellar of his house he had sat with Maggie and the Overmeers and watched Stephen peacefully sleeping in a bed as comfortable as the one in his own room. Maggie had seen to that. There was the memory of a week when night after night he had helped to fight incendiaries and put out fires, and worst of all, to carry maimed bodies from wrecked buildings. But these had become memories without pain, for he had lost no loved one in the war. True, his brother had been killed, and for a time he had been sorry; but between being sorry and feeling sorrow there was a wide gulf. Yet the memory of last night, with its weight of anxiety and sorrow, would remain with him all his life.

  Twenty-four hours had passed since Maggie had revenged herself, and so much had happened that life would never be the same again, not for him, or David, or Stephen, or Tom…Maggie…and not for Ann.

  He was driving slowly past the actual gate through which Stephen and Mr Rankine had walked so happily yesterday morning when he stopped the car and got out, and leaned on the gate. He looked across the peaceful field to where the trunks of the trees were blackening and their foliage was seeming to bend under the flame of the setting sun. He did not consciously see this, or even think about it, but he felt that beauty persisted, even seemed more beautiful, when the mind was in pain. He wanted to lay his head on his arms and give vent to his crying, for all his body was crying and only his eyes were dry…Where was Ann now? Was she frightened? Perhaps it would be as well if she was, for then she’d be feeling and speaking, giving voice to her hurt. Never had he imagined how terrible silence could be when imprisoned in the human body. To see someone you knew, and loved, unable, or refusing, to utter a syllable was more torturing than to see that person writhing in pain.

  As he said he would do, David had bashed the door in, and there he had found Ann lying on the bed, stiff and wild-eyed and silent. Only when he touched her did she move, and then it was more in the nature of a convulsion…nervous hysteria the doctor afterwards called it. And now they had taken her away to that place. They could say it wasn’t an asylum—nerve centre, they called it. Then why was it attached to the asylum? My God, it was unthinkable, Ann in that place. And what was even more unthinkable, she had seemed quite willing to go.

  He had stood in the kitchen with Nellie while the doctor talked with David, and his own sorrow had been dimmed for the moment by the sight of David’s face as the doctor said, ‘It had to come, you know; she’s been leading up to it for years.’

  Christopher thought now of that last sentence, but it did nothing to shift the blame of this terrible upheaval from Maggie. Nor did the fact that if Beattie Watson was going to have a bairn to David it would have been bound to leak out sooner or later. No, to his mind Maggie was responsible for it all.

  And then there was Nellie. He knew that her real anguish had not begun when they took Ann away but when she realised that once again Beattie Watson was tearing at the vitals of her son. He had stayed out all last night, coming home only to change for work. That, to her, was all the proof she needed. Christopher left the gate and got back into the car, and proceeded slowly up the hill. He had said he would leave the house if Maggie dared to open her mouth about this affair. Well, this was one time he would stand firm; he was going now to collect his things and tell her. But in spite of his resolve it wasn’t going to be easy. Had he been leaving the boy with her he would have had no hesitation in walking out; but like Ann, the boy had broken. It was strange that their collapse had occurred on the same day. He wondered again what the doctor had said to Maggie today that had prevented her from coming tearing to his mother’s and snatching her son from the coarse proximity of his family. It must have been something strong, whatever it was, to keep her away. Yet, surely, he would not have dared to say to her what he had said to him…‘if you want to keep that boy sane, keep him away from
his mother.’ Surely no man could find an assortment of words to soften that blow. ‘Let him run wild,’ he had said…‘tear his things…get dirty. Send him to a school where he’ll mix with the rough-and-tumble, or that twitch of his will go here.’ He had tapped his head significantly; but in his brusque way he had remarked, ‘Don’t worry unduly; I’ll do what I can with her.’ And as he went to go out he asked, ‘Why don’t you come down into the town again so that the boy will be near his people. Hill’s no good for any of you. His Granny Taggart and the lads will be the best medicine for him.’

  Well, Stephen was with the lads now; but how long would he be allowed to stay there? What worlds could be overturned in twenty-four hours! His home such as it had been was broken up.

  He brought the car to a standstill at the bottom of the steps, and as he entered the house he thought: I’ll sell it, and quick. She can get a place of her own.

  He paused outside the drawing room door…His hand went out to the knob. Then he turned abruptly away and went up the stairs. He’d pack his things first and tell her on his way out.

  His packing did not take long; two suitcases held all his belongings; and he carried first one then the other out on to the landing. And as he placed the second down a man’s voice, shouting from downstairs, came to him. He paused with his back bent, listening. The words were unintelligible, yet they plainly conveyed anger.

  His brow puckered with his thinking…that was George’s voice. He had intended to take the cases down one at a time, for even now, with all his improved health, he still found his strength taxed when he lifted a heavy weight, but the voice, louder now, impelled him to lift both cases, and stumbling hurriedly down the stairs he dropped them with a thud at the foot.

  The drawing room door was open, and standing sideways to him was George Rowan. Maggie was facing him.

  Last night he had seen Maggie’s face look almost inhuman with temper. Since first knowing her he had seen it express many emotions, but none in such a way as it was doing now; it was livid, with a startled, almost frightened lividness. George was leaning towards her. His face, in contrast, was red, and his words almost choked him as he said, ‘You’ve hated her since she was born. And now you’ve driven her mad.’

  Christopher moved into the room, and George jerked round towards him. He was wearing his flat pit cap and his pit clothes, and Christopher remembered that he was down below when they took Ann away, and that he would not have learned about her until he arrived home.

  ‘It’s you, is it? Well, you might as well hear this.’ George tossed his head in Christopher’s direction. ‘She’s your wife, and I pity you for it. I’ve always pitied you. And if I’d had me way she’d never have brought it off.’ He turned towards Maggie again; and more quietly now but more ominously he went on, ‘As I said, I’m going to put you back where you came from…the gutter. You may make money and live in your big house, but this’ll stick in your mind till you die, it’ll cover everything you do. It’s been bad enough for me, but it’ll be a hell of a sight worse for you, because you’ve got the idea that you’re somebody, that you’re a cut above us lot. That’s right, isn’t it?’ He waited, and when no muscle of Maggie’s face moved he went on, ‘If I’d had me way you’d now be in the backwash of a Liverpool slum where you were spawned. A bob a time your mother used to charge. Aye…your mother.’

  George smiled a slow smile with his lips alone: ‘I can see you believe me. Now you know why I hated your guts…I fell for your mother. No, not Nellie; but a prostitute. I was a daft young lad, and I thought I could save her; and I took her out of the mud to a respectable street. But even when you were filling her belly she was supplying gentlemen at a shilling a go.’

  Christopher, looking at Maggie’s face, felt he could not bear it. God! God, it was awful! She didn’t deserve this. He put his hand tentatively on George’s arm and murmured, ‘You’ve said enough.’ And George, with a sweep, swung it off, crying, ‘No, by God, I’ve not! Not by a long chalk. I’ve waited years to tell her this.’

  His eyes, filled with a mixture of pain and hate, turned back on Maggie. ‘You’re wondering how you came to look on Nellie as your mother, aren’t you? Well, I’ll tell you. I met and courted and married her all in a flash. It was the rebound, the full swing of the pendulum from the gutter to the church. But after a few months the gutter pulled again and I went back…And there you were, an unwashed brat, lying in a box in a windowless room; and there you would have remained for me, only Nellie found out what I was up to, and she found out about you. And you became her trump card. Nothing would stop her but she would have you to bring up. Oh, she was clever in her way, was Nellie. She put my sin before my eyes, for the ugliness of the gutter never dimmed as long as you were there; you grew more like it every day…dark, ugly and mean.’

  ‘George…here, steady on!’ Christopher’s voice was a command, and George swung round on him. ‘Steady on, you say. You can tell me to steady on when you’ve been through just a bit of what I have…years and years of that!’ He thrust his finger in utter contempt at Maggie. But still she made no move. ‘Years and years of her high-and-mightiness; her sneers, and her treating Ann as if she were a halfwit. And then there was that time of the strike, and we all had tight belts and hungry bellies, and she with her money in the bank—but would she give Nellie a penny over her board, the board money that wouldn’t keep a school bairn? That got me. And but for Nellie she’d have been in the same trade as her mother. Things like that rankled. And you tell me to steady on? Why, I’d have told her this years ago if I’d had my way, and shown her the door.’ He paused, and his eyes left Maggie and Christopher and they seemed to look inwards. ‘If only I’d defied Nellie I’d have saved my lass. Aye, I know I would. But now…’ His shoulders lifted slightly and his eyes saw Maggie again, and he said, ‘There was nothing you didn’t try, was there? That time you took her down the pit, it was to scare the wits out of her. And now you’ve succeeded…you’ve robbed her of her reason. And what have you got out of it? What have you got, I ask you?’ His voice rose to a shout. ‘Nowt! Nowt! Nowt, d’ye hear! For you haven’t got your son; he hates the bloody sight of you. And you’ll never have him again. D’ye hear that? The doctor says just a few more months of you and he’ll be put away an’ all. Now how do you like it?’ He moved a step nearer to her, his face almost touching hers. ‘How do you like your own medicine, eh?’

  Still there was not the slightest movement from Maggie. George might have been spurting the suppressed bitterness of years on to a plaster cast, so little response did he get. But he was not deceived by her immobility; and he went on, ‘You’ve got nowt; you haven’t got a soul that’d give you a kind word. You’ve got no mother and you’ve got no son; and your man’s goner leave you. And he’s left it nine years too long. So there, me fine lady who aimed to live on the Hill, what d’you think of that?’

  Again there was a pause, during which George pulled his cap more firmly on to his head. ‘You don’t say nowt, but I know what you’re thinking. I’ve hit you where it hurts. Now I’m going, and I’m leaving you as you left my lass, with nowt.’

  He moved backwards a step. His head nodded at her. ‘It was ninety-nine chances out of a hundred she’d have never heard of Beat Watson if you hadn’t made it your business to tell her.’

  Again he waited for some response. But when none came he passed Christopher and walked towards the door, and there turned, saying finally, ‘But I’ll leave you one thing…your mother. If you have a fancy to look, you’ll likely find her in the same place, or what’s left of her…Pinwinkle Street. Ask anyone. Ask any sailor—or anyone, for that matter—where Polly Harkness lives. They’ll show you.’

  Christopher listened to George’s slow tread across the tiled hall. He could not bear to look at Maggie.

  He went to the window and stared out on to the drive. George was now walking into the dusk of the evening. He looked an old man, bent and unsteady on his legs; it was as if the weight of bitterness he h
ad thrown off had left his body without support.

  Christopher put a bewildered hand to his mouth and rubbed it slowly, pulling his lips first one way and then the other. How was he going to walk out on her now? It seemed as if in one fell swoop she was being stripped of everything…As ye sow so shall ye…No, he wasn’t going to do any preaching. But what was he to do?

  As if only she herself could tell him, he turned towards her. She was still standing in the same place. The only difference in her position was that she held one arm across the level surface of her chest, and her hand, gripping her other forearm, was showing up the knuckles like bleached bones.

  She looked so utterly alone, so desolate, standing there in the middle of the room, that the dead pity he still housed began to resurrect itself. It urged him to go to her and say something, but he shook his head…he couldn’t. If he hadn’t hit her last night he might have been able to act differently now; but under the circumstances it would smack too much of the hypocrite. No, he could offer her no word of sympathy; but there was something he could do; he could stay on for a while; he needn’t go off right now; a day or two wouldn’t make much difference either way. He would stay until she got herself pulled together.

  With averted eyes he passed her and went into the hall, and, picking up the cases again, made for the stairs; only to be brought to a stop by her voice, ‘You’re going the wrong way.’