‘Nothing’s the matter.’ She moved the child to the other arm and began to fling the clothes back on to the cot.
‘Here. Give him to me.’ His hands were about the baby.
‘No.’ Her voice was suddenly quiet. She stopped her arranging and, again putting her hand on the child’s head, she walked past him and went into the scullery, saying, ‘You would come in when you’re not wanted, wouldn’t you?’ Her tone was flat and without reprimand. And he turned to Ann and asked, ‘What’s up?’
For a moment she found it difficult to answer him.
‘She’s going to give him to me.’ Her voice was scarcely audible.
‘What!’
‘I didn’t ask, Tom; I wouldn’t have dreamed. I couldn’t believe it when…’
‘But she thinks the world of him.’
Ann bowed her head. ‘I know.’
‘Look, Ann. You can’t take him.’
Ann’s head drooped lower, and he turned from her and went into the scullery. Beattie was standing looking out of the window into the tangle of back garden. He stood close behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, and he looked down into the child’s face as he said gently, ‘You mustn’t do this.’
‘It’s settled.’ Her voice was calm now.
‘But you’ll miss him.’
She said nothing; and he turned her about, and they gazed at each other, until she whispered, ‘Help me to do it as I want to do it.’
Again they stared at each other. Then Tom brought the child’s hand to his cheek and gently held it there. ‘All right…when?’
‘Now.’
‘Now?’
‘It’s better done right away.’
‘All right then. Have it your own way…I’ll move in tonight.’
‘Tom! Will you?’ Her eyes lost their sadness for the moment, and he said, ‘I should have done it sooner. Anyway, this is it. I’ll go now and get my things. I’ll have a taxi, then I can take Ann…and him back.’ He dropped the child’s hand and took her face between his palms. ‘You’re big. I always knew you were. I love you, lass.’ Leaning forward, he kissed her on the lips before turning away; and under the pretence of blowing his nose he wiped her tears from his face as he passed through the room; and with just a nod to Ann he left the cottage and went to do battle with his mother.
Nellie and George were sitting, one on each side of the fire, when Tom walked in. He was glad to see his father there; it would be better than tackling her alone. His entry, he saw, had taken them both unawares, for he had not long left the house, and the light that appeared in his mother’s eyes hurt him. He knew what she was thinking…something had gone wrong and it had brought him back home to her. They never lost hope…mothers of sons.
His father said, ‘Hallo, lad.’ He didn’t add, ‘What’s brought you back so soon?’
Nellie, staring at him, said nothing. And when he went to bring a chair up to the fire she picked up her knitting from her lap and the steel needles began to click briskly. She kept her eyes averted from him as he sat between them; it was years since he had done this, and her heart began to pound against her ribs. And its pounding became louder and louder in her ears. Her relief was pitiable, even to herself but it was transformed with the swiftness of lightning to cold apprehension when, without moving his hands from between his knees or turning his gaze from the fire, he said, ‘I’ve come to tell you something.’
It was George who, after a moment, asked, ‘Aye, lad; what is it?’ and with an attempt to resurrect his old jocular self, he added, ‘Hast won the pools? I’m down as usual. If it hadn’t been for Blackpool and Arsenal…’
‘I’m leaving home.’
The needles stopped their clicking; George’s hand, moving towards the hob to knock out the noddle from his pipe, stopped, and his head turned stiffly to look at his son. Then his hand moved on again, and there was the sound of the knocking of the pipe against the bars. The taps rent the quietness like hammer-blows.
Tom slowly raised his eyes to his mother. She was staring at her knitting. It was a sock, and as usual one of a pair for him. With a movement that startled him she picked it up and flung it into the fire, and in an instant she was on her feet. They were all on their feet.
‘Steady,’ said George. ‘What’s got to be will be.’
‘Be quiet! Has it got to be that your son has lost all decency?’ She addressed herself solely to George, as if Tom wasn’t there. ‘Has it got to be that he makes us the talk of the town by going to live with a common prostitute? Not enough that she was the means of crippling a child, she has to take his sister’s man and drive her into the asylum. And this son of yours…what does he do? When she has a bairn to his brother-in-law he goes and keeps her!’
It was evident to both men that the emphasis for the first time in her life was being put on his son, not hers.
‘Look here,’ said George.
‘Yes…look here!’ she cried. ‘See reason! Like father like son, as I’ve said before. You’ll find excuses for him because he’s doing the same as you did. The only difference is his woman’s worse than yours was.’
‘Shut up!’ Tom’s voice drowned her shouting.
And now Nellie looked at him; and in spite of the anger that was filling him there was room left for amazement—the expression in her eyes he could only interpret as loathing. And he knew that nothing he or anyone else could do or say would alter her opinion. Yet he said, ‘You don’t know her; you’ve always condemned her without reason.’
‘Without reason!’ Nellie flung her head back.
‘Yes, you have. She’s worth a thousand of your so-called…good girls. And I’m telling you…’
‘You’re telling me because you’re besotted with lust. Yes, lust…Leave be!’ She flung off George’s steadying hand from her arm. ‘Night after night you’ve been with her. Your clothes have reeked of her cheap scent. And what’ll happen when she’s finished with you, when her lust is satisfied? You know what it’ll be as well as me…another man. And then another.’
Tom’s face looked like a white mask on which eyebrows, eyes and moustache had been painted black. ‘She’s my wife…we’ve been married nearly four months; and we haven’t lived together yet! So much for your lust. If she had said the word I would have left here months ago; but she wouldn’t because you were ill. And another thing; she’s done what you nor nobody else would do…she’s given the bairn to Ann.’
It was George who moved forward, saying, ‘To Ann? The bairn? She’s given her the bairn?’
‘Aye.’
‘She wants it?’
‘She begged to go and see it. She’s crazy for him.’
George turned towards the hearth muttering. And Nellie said with a strange quietness, ‘It would have been far better for you if you had gone with Davie…History repeats itself.’ The look in her eyes now was almost vindictive. ‘You married her? You fool! And you’re glorifying her because she’s giving her bairn away…’ The words came deep and slow. ‘Oh, you blind idiot! Would any woman worth her salt give her bairn away if she could keep it? Ask yourself that. She’s got rid of that responsibility; and when she tires of you she’ll get rid of you. And even the time she’s got you, do you think she’ll be satisfied with one man? You’ll never know a minute’s peace.’ Her voice rose rapidly again. ‘Every minute you’re at work you’ll be thinking…’
Unable to trust himself, Tom flung round from her and out of the room and up the stairs. But Nellie, in her passion, could not let him be. Her walking was like the stalking of a tigress as she went to the bottom of the stairs and called, ‘The truth hurts…Once a whore always a whore! I said that if you went to her I would curse you, and I do. Do you hear? You’ll rue this day, me lad…nothing’ll go right for you. I’ll put my prayers on that…You’ll curse the day you clapped eyes on her…’
‘Here, lass, that’s enough of that. Stop it! Stop it now! Come on away.’ George, not to be shrugged off this time, alternately pulled and led her ba
ck into the room. He closed the door behind them; then pressed her into a chair. ‘Calm yourself now.’
Whether because of his stern command or because she was spent, she became quiet. He stood close to her, his arm about her stiff shoulders, saying, ‘There now. There now.’
His grip tightened when the sound of Tom’s steps came to them from the passage. There was the heavy thump of a case, then his footsteps again on the stairs. Three times he returned upstairs; and as he came down for the last time, the taxi drew up at the door.
On its sound, a vibration passing through Nellie conveyed itself to George, and he pressed her tightly to him. And when the sound of the car starting up told her that her son was gone she shivered and her head moved in little pathetic jerks, until suddenly a cry was torn from her, and she turned and buried her face in George’s arms.
Gently he gathered her to him, as he had not been allowed to do since the early months of their marriage. Stroking her hair, he soothed her; and when, between her sobs, she cried, ‘What am I to do? Tell me, what am I to do?’ he did not answer. Never before could he remember her appealing to him. Nor had she ever clung to him. No, never…not even when they were first married.
The jealousy for his son he had kept well in hand over the years, but now his son was gone and she had only him. His arms tightened about her.
Christopher walked towards Ann’s for the second time that evening. She was out earlier when he called, and his purpose then had seemed more clear in his mind than now. His intention had been quite plain; he had it all planned out: he meant to look in on her now and again and take her things, but say nothing, of course, for some months yet. In the meantime, he would sound Maggie on the matter of a divorce. This would mean a devil of an uproar in the family, but he’d never been anything but a wooden Catholic, so what did it matter. He had taken the first step in this direction by writing to Maggie to ask if he could see her. And to his surprise he had received what he termed a decent letter, with not even a mention of Stephen in it. The attitude she now adopted towards the boy was quite beyond him; it was as if she had never possessed a son; she did not come to his mother’s to see the lad, or waylay him, as it had been expected she would do. She could have been dead for all he and his family heard about her. But she wasn’t dead; and knowing her as he did, he often imagined the hell she must be going through. And often too—and this was strange, even to himself—he would gladly have sent the boy back to her if he could have been induced to leave him and his granny.
That was another thing. His own mother was one of the best, but she was treating Stephen as she had never treated her own sons…she was spoiling him. Her handling of him was at the other extreme from Maggie’s, and he was now wondering which in the end would have the worse effect. Added to this, he had realised whilst living back at home, something which had surprised him not a little…he had grown away from the life he had been brought up to. It had been fine to drop in now and again and enjoy the slipshod, easygoing practices of the house; but to live in it after the years spent in Maggie’s ordered establishment was, he found, irritating. And this, in his turn, he expressed in his constant censuring of Stephen; which, however, did not create any gulf between them. On the contrary, the boy seemed each day to become more attached to him.
He was, he now admitted frankly to himself, fed up with being at home; and in his daydreams he looked into the future and saw himself sitting with Ann at a new fireside. Not hers…no—David’s presence still lingered about that hearth—but at one he himself would provide. And there, with Stephen, they would begin a new life. But this picture never stayed put. If Stephen was in it, Ann wasn’t; and if Ann was there he couldn’t get Stephen into the picture at all.
Ann’s attitude towards Stephen since she had come back from that place was past his understanding. To put it plainly, it looked as if she wanted no truck with him. But Stephen had not been as upset about this as he would have supposed; likely due to the fact that for months he had been running wild with Dennis and Jim.
When he reached the back gate he could see her light was on, and almost jauntily he went up the garden and tapped on the door. And when his knock was answered by an airy ‘Come in,’ he hesitated for a moment. Had he not known it to be otherwise, he would have sworn she was laughing; that was how her voice used to sound when she laughed. Passing through the scullery, he came into the kitchen, and if he had found her enjoying love in the arms of a strange man his surprise would not have been so great…she was sitting before the fire with a baby in her arms, and the look on her face was ecstatic.
‘Come in, Chris.’ Her voice was light, like the voice of the girl from the past.
He walked slowly towards the fireside; then halted in front of her.
‘Whose?’ Why did he feel a dread, even before her answer came?
‘Mine.’
‘Yours?’
‘Yes.’ She looked down into the sleeping face of the child, then straight into Christopher’s eyes. ‘Yes, mine now…and Davie’s.’
‘She’s…she’s let you have him?’ His face betrayed his bewilderment.
‘Yes…Yes.’ She shook her head with the wonder of it.
He could only stare at her.
‘I’ve been to see him before. And today, just two hours ago, she gave him to me. And Tom brought us home.’
He could find nothing to say to this; but he felt strongly there was something indecent about her acceptance of the child, and of the whole situation. He looked at the child his brother had given to another woman, then again at Ann, and found it impossible to make any comment.
His lack of response did not seem to affect her, for she went on talking. ‘I’m going to call him David…I think he would have liked that, don’t you?’
Suddenly he was bitter and angry, yet he managed to cover it and to say tersely, ‘Why, yes…I suppose so.’ The whole thing was indecent. What had come over her? She wasn’t like the same person.
She looked up at him again. ‘Chris…she’s good, she’s not bad. I’ve never been able to hold anything against her somehow, and when I saw her, it’s funny, but I liked her. No-one need worry any more; she’ll make Tom a good wife.’
‘He’s not going to marry her?’
‘They’ve been married for months.’
He could only stare and remember the row he had heard coming from the Rowans’ earlier in the evening. Poor Nellie. This would about finish her…So Tom had done it. My God, what a mix-up!
Ann rose, hugging the child to her, saying, ‘He must go to bed. His cot’s upstairs. If you’ve got a mind to wait…’
He shook his head. ‘No. No, Ann; I’ll be getting along.’
‘All right then. I’ll be seeing you again.’ She had already turned towards the door.
Slowly he left the house by the way he had come only a few minutes before. The dream was over; gone; finished; spun into thin air by the child of his brother. There’d be no fireside with Ann now…He moved his hand around his face as if wiping away a veil. Somehow he had always known it was just a dream. That child would be her life; she already looked happier than he had seen her for years. And Dave only dead a few weeks.
It wasn’t right somehow. No; it wasn’t decent. Yet, was it any more indecent than him coveting his brother’s wife? His head drooped as he walked down the street.
Dave had never said a word about Maggie’s accusation concerning him and Ann. Perhaps it just appeared ludicrous; definitely, he couldn’t have considered it worth mentioning, not even to accuse Ann and so help to even the scales against himself.
Now Dave was gone. His death had been a blow; it still lay heavily on him, for he had thought the world of Dave. Yes, he had. But that hadn’t stopped him from wanting his wife and from planning how to get her before he had been dead a few weeks. God! Human nature was funny…awful would be a better word. And Tom had gone and married a tart like Beattie Watson! This was more baffling than anything else.
He walked on until he reached t
he fells; but here he turned back; a couple-strewn landscape was no place for him at any time, he’d be suspected of snooping…Odd, how love and the need for love was denied you if you happened to be like him…and Maggie. Why, he asked himself, should he think of her in that connection? Well, wasn’t she in the same boat as himself? Yet, if you happened to be born like Dave or Tom on the one hand, or Ann and that Beat Watson on the other, love came as naturally as the seasons…And the consequences of love, an’ all. Aye, if you had the pleasures you had to have the pains. But, he told himself, he would have risked the pains for a few of the pleasures.
He had walked, unheeding, for some time; and now he looked about him, wondering where he was. He gazed up at the half-finished building in front of him. This must be the new factory they were putting up, next to the electric component place. He only had to cut round the building and he’d be in Wallace Street.
He had almost reached the street, in fact one of its lights had shown him a heap of shingle he must skirt, and he was doing this when he stepped into a water-filled hollow that lay in the shadow. Muttering to himself, he attempted to step backwards, but his foot slipped, and to save himself from falling face forward into the water he twisted round and fell on to his hands; and in this way pulled himself out.
With a good round oath he moved nearer the light and examined himself. My, but he was in a mess! There must have been lime and cement and God knows what in that water. Why the devil wasn’t there a red light near it! His boots and the bottom of his trousers were thick with a greyish plaster, and his hands and coat sleeves the same. This would happen to him! And he’d have to walk through the streets in this sight. On a Saturday night an’ all!
The sound of footsteps coming down the street behind him made him move back into the darkness from which he had emerged. He stood with his back to the light and waited for the steps to pass. But they halted quite near him, and a surprised voice said, ‘Is that you, Christopher?’
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