She did not answer, and he moved a step further into the room, careful because of the huddle of things he sensed about him.
‘Do you hear me? I don’t want you here.’
He lit a match and held it above his head, and her face, a changed strange face, wavered in its flickering light. As the match died out he saw her sink on to a sofa, on which, judging by the jumble of clothes, she had been lying. He lit another match, and it showed him the old-fashioned stalk lamp in the centre of the table and the fire in which sticks were smouldering but with no sign of igniting. As he moved cautiously round the couch towards the table, she croaked, ‘There’s no use going there; there’s no oil in it.’
‘Where’s it kept?’
‘I told you to get out.’
‘Where’s your oil and your wood?’ His voice was almost a growl.
Only silence answered his question, and he muttered, ‘You’re ill. When I’ve fixed up the fire and light I’ll go, never fear.’
Still she said nothing.
‘Where’s the oil? You may as well tell me.’
‘There isn’t any.’ She was seized by more coughing, and he waited; then asked tersely, ‘Any candles?’
‘There’s only a bit left. Up there.’
He groped along the mantelpiece until he found the candlestick with the short stump of candle. He lit it, and when the light strengthened he did not look at her but towards the hearth, and with his back to her he asked, ‘Haven’t you any coal?’
When silence again greeted him he took the candle and made for the only other door in the room. Beyond, he found a rough stone-floor wash-house and scullery, in one corner of which there was a pile of wood neatly stacked against the wall, and an old tin bath beside it full of coal.
Placing the candle on the floor inside the room, he then carried in coal and wood, and within an amazingly short time he had the fire alight.
During this process neither of them spoke; nor did he look at her; but when the fire was roaring he turned and asked gruffly, ‘Is the can handy?’
‘What can?’ Her voice squeaked, and she began to cough again. And he stood and watched her press her hands into her chest.
‘The oil can.’
Her head was bent over her knees, and she swung it back and forward in a hopeless gesture. He said no more but went out into the scullery again, and with the aid of matches searched for the can. Eventually he found it in a little wooden shed outside the back door.
In the room once more, he asked brusquely, ‘How are you off for food?’
She looked up at him now and straight into his face. Stonily he returned her stare, showing no sign of the mad racing of his heart nor of how shocked he was at the change in her.
‘Tom Rowan…listen…to me.’ She was speaking in gasps. ‘I don’t want you here…now or any other time…Is that clear?’
After a moment he said, ‘Yes, clear enough.’
‘Well, then.’ She drew a blanket up round her shoulders.
‘I’m going for the oil. Is there anything else?’ His voice could have implied that his self-appointed errand was being done under protest.
‘I can get oil…One of the girls’ll be coming in on her way from work.’
‘That won’t be till six and the shops’ll be closed. Where’s the old woman?’
She looked up at him again, surprise showing in her red and swollen eyes. He could see the question there, ‘How do you know about her?’
‘She’s in hospital,’ she said.
‘Why don’t you send for your mother?’
Her head waved in the fashion of a mother’s who had grown weary of the questions of a precocious child. ‘She’s been dead for years.’
‘Isn’t there someone of your…?’
‘Mind your own damn business!’ She pulled herself to her feet by the head of the couch and stared into his face, now not more than a foot from her own. Then she tried to shout at him, ‘Are you clean mad?’ But her voice broke and her words became an unintelligible gabble. She sat down abruptly and ended slowly, ‘You never had any sense.’
‘Have you had the doctor?’
‘Oh, my God!’ She turned her face into the pillow.
‘I’ll phone him.’
She raised her head and addressed herself with slow laboured words to the back of the couch: ‘He’s been. I’ve only got a cold. I had a woman coming in, but her man took bad…But one of the girls will be calling in after work. I’ve got all I want…trouble an’ all; and if you want to lessen it, stay away from me.’ Her head sank back on the pillow and he turned from her and left the cottage.
Once out of the gate he ran like a hare down the road. The snow was still falling steadily and the night had come down without the usual twilight. But as if drawn by a magnet, he turned into the hedge almost opposite to where his bicycle was hidden, and within ten minutes he was in the town.
Not more than fifteen minutes later he was pushing his bicycle up the short path of the cottage. He leaned it against the wall under the low hanging roof and went to the door. But it did not give under his hand; and he pushed against it twice before realising that it was locked. His lips opened, but he checked the call they were about to make; nor did he knock, but he groped his way round to the back door. And it did not really surprise him to find that this too was locked. Next he tried the wash-house window, but it would not give. It was a square window, almost as big as the one at the front of the house. He struck a match and the light showed him the old-fashioned sneck similar to the one at home. It had been his job, as a young lad, to get through such another window as this when his mother forgot the key.
Within a matter of seconds his pocket knife had forced back the sneck and he had raised the lower half. He experienced some difficulty, however, before he finally stood in the scullery. After closing the window he went into the room. Beattie was sitting on the edge of the couch, her hands pressed tightly between her knees. She did not speak when he went past her to open the front door and bring in the can and carrier bag. Silently he went about filling the lamp.
After lighting it he filled the oil stove in the scullery and stood the tin kettle on the ring; but search as he might he could find no tea. The tins he opened showed him a variety of things, but not tea; and when the kettle bubbled he was forced to go and ask her, ‘Where do you keep the tea?’
For a while she neither moved nor spoke, she might have been unaware of his presence so near to her, then with a helpless gesture she pointed to a polished wooden box on the mantelpiece; and when finally he brought her the cup she took it from him without comment.
‘Are you hungry?’
She shook her head.
‘There’s bread in that bag.’ He nodded towards the carrier bag.
She lifted her eyes to his, and the pleading in her voice forced its way through the croaking. ‘For God’s sake go away! If you want to help me, stay away. Don’t you think there’s been enough damage done?’
‘You’re afraid he sees me.’
‘Who?’ The question was asked in genuine surprise.
Then slowly the dark gleam from his eyes made her aware to whom he was referring, and with her open palm she beat her knee, saying, ‘Men! Men! Look’—she waved her hand despairingly—‘I don’t want to go into all this. I’ve had enough. I’m asking nothing from anybody…help, sympathy or money. All I ask is to be left alone.’
‘Does he leave you alone?’
‘I’ve never seen him!’ Her voice rose, crackling and squeaking. ‘What do you take me for? The only thing I’ll tell you is this: I didn’t know who he was…I didn’t know he was your relation. And as I see it there’s been enough harm done, so don’t you come here looking for more. I can’t stand it. So there.’ She paused and leant her head to one side as if listening. ‘That’s the bus.’ She looked up at him again. ‘For God’s sake go! If you’re seen here…’
‘I’ll wait outside until she’s gone.’
He turned from her and picked his
cap from off the table.
‘You’re mad.’
‘Don’t bolt the doors again.’
He let himself out of the front door and, taking his bicycle, pushed it round to the back of the cottage; then, coming back, he crossed the road into the wood and waited.
After ten minutes, since no-one had passed him, he returned to the cottage again. Beattie was now lying down, and he stood at the foot of the couch listening to her laboured breathing for a moment before saying, ‘There was no-one on the bus.’
She lifted her hand to her head, and he saw that it was shaking. And he moved nearer, standing stiffly above her. ‘Are you cold? Will I get you a bottle?’
She opened her mouth to refuse his offer, but her teeth chattered so that she had to clench them.
‘Where is it?’
Her hand moved under the clothes and she brought out the water bottle and handed it to him; and when he returned with it filled she was lying with her hands covering her face.
‘Here.’
She did not take the bottle but turned heavily on to her side away from him. Her body was trembling, and the sound of her crying was too much for him, and he dropped down by the side of the couch, his hands hovering uncertainly over her as he implored, ‘Beattie, don’t. Don’t.’
Her crying mounted and became a source of agony to him. Sometimes there was nothing to hear at all as she held her breath; then when her sobs, weighing on each other, forced their release, he would implore yet once again, ‘Look…don’t. You’ll only make yourself worse.’ Once he nearly said, ‘Think of the…’ but his mind would not even allow him to harbour the word, even as a thought. Twice his hand almost touched her shoulder; but each time he withdrew it.
After a while, when her sobbing eased and she was lying comparatively quiet, the latch of the door was lifted, and she flung herself round and leaned on her elbow to gaze in startled surprise at the girl now standing in the room. Tom too, from where he was kneeling, gazed at the girl; but their surprise was nothing compared with hers. Her mouth agape, she stared fixedly at Tom. Then when she looked at Beattie she stammered, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sure…I missed me usual, and I took the through one and got off at the crossroads…Are you better?’
Beattie attempted to say something, but the words stuck in her throat. And the girl went on, ‘I got your rations and things.’
She put a bag on the table, still without taking her eyes from Beattie. ‘I got your pay.’ She placed a small packet beside the bag. ‘She’s filled your place.’
Her eyes flickered over to Tom, where he was standing now by the head of the couch. The action, slight as it was, betrayed her knowledge of the relationship between her boss and this man.
An embarrassed silence fell on them, until the girl spoke again; ‘Can I do owt? Get you anything, like?’
Beattie eased herself into a sitting position and drew in a sharp breath before she made to speak. But even as her lips opened, Tom said, in a flat unemotional voice, ‘I’ll be seeing to her.’
‘Oh.’ The girl pushed up her coat collar, and Beattie gasped out, ‘Peggy!’
And the girl said, ‘Yes, Beat?’
Beattie put her hand to her throat. ‘Will you stay…?’
Before she could finish the word, Tom, again in the same flat voice, said, ‘Perhaps you’ll be good enough to look in the morrow: I’ll be here this evening.’
He stared at the girl until her eyes dropped away. Then he turned towards the fire and kicked the tottering log into place.
The girl’s answer was stilted with her surprise, ‘Yes. Why, yes.’ Then she asked, ‘What about the oil, Beat?’
Over his shoulder, Tom said, ‘I’ve got that.’ Another silence followed: and when he turned round, the girl was staring at him, and Beattie, her eyes closed, was leaning against the back of the couch.
Again the girl adjusted her collar. ‘Well, I’ll go…We’ll be snowed up…Goodnight, Beat.’
Beattie did not answer, and the girl moved towards the door. Then with one backward glance at Tom she turned and went out.
Her eyes still closed, Beattie croaked, ‘I hope you’re…satisfied.’
He made no reply.
‘Your sister’ll know the morrow.’
‘That’s all right by me.’
She opened her eyes. ‘They’ll laugh at you.’
‘Yes. Well, I can stand that an’ all.’
‘They’ll say it was me again.’
‘I’ll soon tell them different.’
She raised herself and leaned aggressively towards him. ‘I’m going to have a bairn to your brother-in-law!’
To hear it put into plain words was like drawing a steel cord round his throat. The blood pounded in his head, and his teeth ground on the words, ‘You don’t have to stress that fact!’
‘There’s your mother; what about her? She’ll want to kill me.’
‘I’ve got my own life to live. What I do with it is my business.’
‘Look, Tom.’ She hung over the edge of the couch. ‘You shouldn’t need telling. I’m no good…never have been. I met your…that fellow once…just once…and this happened. Isn’t that enough for you?’
Her eyes never flinched from his, and he thought, with a wave of relief, he was right then when he said it was only the once.
‘It wouldn’t have happened if I’d had some gumption years ago.’ he said.
Slowly she drew herself back and leant against the pillows, dropping her hands helplessly on to the blankets. And her voice was but a whisper as she said, ‘You want to thank God you hadn’t, I’d have driven you mad.’
He remained looking down on her: ‘Aye, perhaps then, but not now. I’m quite capable of holding what is mine now.’
Her eyes came up to his, tired, swollen, weary eyes, that would never again hold the sparkle of youth that he remembered; but they held all his body, soul, and mind craved. He dropped on his knees by the couch. ‘Beattie.’
‘No…no!’ She made one more effort, thrusting her hands at him, trying to keep him off. But he took them and gathered them into his chest.
As she strained away from him another fit of coughing seized her, and he had to release her hands, but his arms went about her and he held her. And when the coughing ceased and her sobs broke out afresh, his hands gently stroked her head, and his eyes closed against the pain that he termed ‘happiness’.
Chapter Fifteen: The Hope Block
‘Hearts trumps? They would be. Anything in the love line, and trust me to be short of it.’
‘Shut up, Queenie, you’re giving the show away.’
‘Does it matter? I never have any luck.’
‘Your lead, Ann. What do you expect? You’re always moaning.’
‘If you’d had what I’ve had…’
‘Look. Are you going to play or not?’
‘You’re as bad as they are. Occupy your mind…use your hands…forget yourself…think of others…’
‘Mrs Holland.’
The four women turned their heads in the direction of the door.
‘Yes, Sister?’
‘Come here a minute.’
Mrs Holland hesitated; her heavily rouged lips pouted; then she slowly rose and with a half-defiant air walked up to the sister, and followed her out of the room.
‘Well, that’s put finish to the game. Anyway, it’ll soon be supper time. Where’s my knitting?’
The stout woman moved away and sat down in an armchair before the fire; and as she settled herself she said, ‘I can’t see her ever really getting better myself. Anyway, I never thought she was really bad; I think it’s just the way she’s made. I should imagine she’s been like that since she was born. You can’t blame the men for walking out on her.’
‘No.’ The young woman with the blonde hair and pastel complexion sitting beside Ann gave a little laugh. ‘What amazes, me is how she ever gets them to walk in.’
Ann rose, and taking a magazine from a pile on a side table also sat down
by the fire and set about the pretence of reading. She found she could escape quite a lot of needless talk that would invariably lead to pertinent questions, by this means. Sometimes she even tried to read, but she would read no more than a sentence or two before her thoughts would be on the page staring up at her, forcing her to go over and over them until the repetition became wheels that would gather momentum and whirl round in her head; and, in their turn, they would fill her with fear, and the fear would make her sick.
Still, she was better. Oh, yes, much better. Did she really want to get better though? That was the question Doctor Dickinson asked her this morning, and she had answered, ‘Yes.’
And then he had added, ‘But you don’t want to go home?’ To which she had answered, ‘No.’
Five months she had been here now, and they were like five years…or fifty, so full had they been of terror and thinking. But now she was better. Oh yes, she was better. Somehow in spite of herself she was better, for here she was in the Hope Block. She remembered when she first saw Hope Block. It was the day they made her get out of bed and walk down with the others for treatment. There was a nurse on each side of her, their arms linked around her waist; and one kept saying, ‘You’re doing fine.’ And then her legs buckled and she began to cry. They stopped beside a wide window, and through her tears she saw the horse-chestnut leaves falling. The tree was standing in the middle of a great lawn, and about its feet lay a carpet of bronze and gold. And the other nurse said, ‘You’ll be over there very shortly.’ And it was some time before she understood the nurse was referring to the house beyond the tree, the house that was nicknamed the Hope Block.
But it was quite some time before she went to the Hope Block; she continued to go each week down the grand staircase, with its great balustrade and its thick red pile carpet, and along the hall of mirrors to a door at the end, which seemed the dividing line between two worlds, the world of the grand mansion, full of strange and terrifying people, and a world of bare stone steps, leading in a spiral down to a tiled passage, then into a room with wooden benches and a lavatory that stank from overuse. When your turn came you were led through a green baize door into a room in which the familiar nurses and doctors were different—the trusted Doctor Dickinson was no longer in nice smelling tweeds, but in a white coat, sitting at the head of a high couch. He placed something on your head; it pressed against the temples…then bang. You were shot into nothingness.
Maggie Rowan Page 28