Colour Blind

by Catherine Cookson

  Bridget’s head drooped, and for a space there was an uncomfortable, startled quiet in the kitchen. But it was soon shattered by a squeal from Kathie. ‘Blame him be damned! If my Matt dies it’ll be a rope’s end for him. As it is, when they get him he’ll get ten years for what he’s done. Blame him, the…!’

  ‘What?’ Tony swung round on her. ‘He isn’t dead, then?’

  It was Mr McQueen who answered. ‘It’s touch and go; he may not last the night. We’ve got to go down in an hour or so. Terry’s gone in the van. It was Mr Steel on his motorbike that got them here so quick. He brought the pollis back an’ all.’ Cavan stopped and looked about him with a helpless air. ‘I’d better go and tell them we’ve got the bairn.’

  Matt wasn’t dead, then, and there was the chance he would go on living. Although Tony knew that Matt’s survival had lifted the dread of hanging from Jimmy, at least for the present, a sense of disappointment enveloped him, and he experienced a feeling of shock that was not unmixed with horror when he realised that Mr McQueen felt the same with regard to his son.

  As Bridget took the child from his arms he wondered why, loving her as he did, he did not mind her being married to a black man, yet had always hated the fact that she spent a moment alone with her brother. If Matt didn’t die and Jimmy couldn’t come back, what would happen? There would only be him to stand between Bridget and Matt. And he would stand. He was eighteen and he was no longer a boy. Matt laughed at him because he was skinny and had a limp; they all either laughed at him or were sorry for him; well, he would show them. He struck Kathie speechless for a moment by saying, ‘You want to get yourselves all away home and let Bridget and the bairn get some rest.’

  Eva let out a laugh, then checked it abruptly and stood for a time looking somewhat shamefaced, until Cavan said, ‘He’s right; come on. Some of us must go down to the hospital, anyway.’ Then she said, more to herself then anyone else, ‘Well I never did. What next!’

  Kathie took up Eva’s words. ‘What next! Aye, God Almighty, I wonder what next!’ She stood behind Tony and her wavering forearm told of her desire to ‘land him one’. But Cavan said authoritatively, ‘Come on, the lot of you…I’ll see you later, lass.’

  He went out, followed by Eva and her docile husband, but Kathie stood for a moment longer glaring at the uneven line of Tony’s shoulder. Cavan’s voice calling, ‘D’ye hear, you?’ broke the concentration of her gaze, and she swung up her coat from the chair and flung it about her, saying, ‘Some people are getting too big for their boots and they’d better watch out.’ Her voice broke as she remembered her trouble, and she went on, ‘As if I hadn’t enough to put up with, me lad bein’ battered to death an’ all, without ye trying to be cock o’ the midden.’ She went out, shouting warningly, ‘I’ll see ye later, me lad!’

  As the door banged Bridget sat down again, holding the child tightly to her. She looked vacant, as if her mind was emptied of thought, and when Tony said gently, ‘Put her to bed, Bridget, and go yourself, and I’ll bring you up a cup of tea and clear up here,’ she looked up at him, saying, ‘If they catch him before the pollis they’ll beat him up.’

  He took her elbow and raised her to her feet. ‘Don’t you worry, they won’t catch him.’

  As he led her to the stairs, she said, ‘I can’t go to bed, Tony, I’ll get her to sleep and come down. And Tony’—the tears flooded her swollen eyes again—‘will you stay with me until I know?’

  ‘As long as you want me, Bridget.’

  He watched her going up the stairs, lifting one foot slowly after the other as if they were weighted, and he knew a queer feeling of possession. So surprising was it that it caused him to flush, and he turned sharply and started to clear the kitchen.

  The McQueens had made no effort to straighten the upturned articles of furniture; even the broken crockery had been kicked under the dresser to make room for their feet. The fireplace was still a shambles, and for a moment Tony looked around helplessly, not knowing where to start. Then abruptly he took off his coat and hung it behind the door. The act of doing this made him pause, and his hand rested for a moment on the nail…his coat hanging behind Bridget’s door! It held a significance.

  In his wide-awake dreams of the night he imagined wild, wild things, such as something happening to make Bridget lean on him. Lean on him! That was laughable and fantastic. He knew this in the daytime, but in the night it was feasible. He had even pictured himself doing just what he had done this minute…hang his coat up…for when a man hung his coat up in a house…

  What was he thinking, when there was poor Jimmy running for his life! If they caught him he’d be gaoled; if they didn’t catch him he would come back some day, as he said. So wasn’t Bridget still married? Slowly he dropped on to his knees and started to clear the fireplace.

  Chapter Six: Rose Angela

  All the children in the class knew that Miss Flynn didn’t like Rose Angela Paterson; and when Miss Flynn got at Rosie, all their attention would be riveted on Rosie’s face. They would screw round from their various positions to watch her, and they would wonder if her eyes could possibly become any larger, and how long she could stare at Miss Flynn without blinking. A day seldom passed without their being entertained in some way; but today Miss Flynn had been at Rosie twice…this morning because she hadn’t danced the way they all did, and this afternoon because one of her long jet-black plaits had come undone.

  As Rosie stared at her teacher she knew that she must remain silent, for it was no use trying to answer the question of how she lost her ribbon; if she said, ‘Ribbons won’t stay on my hair,’ Miss Flynn would say she was insolent. She had long since learned that silence was the best defence, although she knew she would be punished for this too.

  ‘Come out here!’ Miss Flynn’s voice was as thin as her body; the combination of her prominent boned face and thinly-covered scalp had justifiably earned her the name of ‘Scrag-End’ among the children.

  Even the motion of Rose Angela’s walk was enough to arouse a deep feeling of resentment in Miss Flynn. As she watched the child thread her way among the desks towards her she wanted to dash at her and shake that quiet, maddening poise out of her. She did not question herself as to her reason for hating this child; consciously she told herself that the child was the outcome of a sinful union; she was a half-caste, and looked it, with that thick olive skin and those great eyes. She didn’t need to have thick lips and a pug nose for anyone to see that her father was a black man. That’s what came of sinning. All men were sinful. She was glad, oh God, she was glad, that never once in her life had she done anything wrong or impure; she had never been out with a man and she never wanted to. She stared down on Rosie and wet her lips, one over the other, as she arched the cane back and forward between her two hands…she’d knock some of the sin out of her.

  ‘Hold your hand out!’

  Rose Angela held out her hand, trying not to think that when the cane lashed her palm her heart would leap. She kept her eyes on the piece of cabbage fixed firmly between Miss Flynn’s front teeth, but when the cane descended for the third time she closed her eyes tightly.

  ‘Now perhaps you’ll keep your hair plaited. No-one wants to see the length of your hair. If I had my way I’d cut the lot off and relieve you of your vanity.’

  If a pair of scissors had been at hand at that moment, Miss Flynn would not have been accountable for her actions. Of all the things she disliked about the child she disliked her hair most of all. She also resented the fact that this half-caste, with a runaway bully of a Negro for a father and a mother who was a daily servant, should be cleaner and better dressed than the other children. But of course there was that other man—that cripple. He was, she understood, the mother’s fancy piece. That’s where the money came from to dress the child like this…oh, the sins of some people!

  ‘Get yourself to confession tonight and ask God to forgive you for your pride, for the proud can never enter into the Kingdom of Heaven,’ she threw at Ros
e Angela’s unsteadily retreating figure; and she added, ‘Your road to Heaven, in any case, is going to be long and thorny…if you ever get there.’

  After this outburst Miss Flynn felt curiously better, and for the rest of the afternoon peace reigned; but the children’s minds, as porous as sponges, absorbed the feeling Miss Flynn had given out, and when school was over four of the girls who were usually Rose Angela’s travelling companions to and from the fifteen streets dashed away and left her.

  Walking alone out of the school yard, the sadness that this wholesale desertion always created settled on her. Although she knew that tomorrow they would be pally with her again, she could never understand why Florrie Tyler, her best friend, should leave her and go with the others, when they hadn’t quarrelled in any way. This had happened before. She found she was either with them all or she was standing alone, facing something that she could feel but as yet could not fathom.

  Turning the corner of the school wall, she came face to face with her schoolmates. They had formed a blockade across the pavement, faces strained to keep from laughing, eyes wide and hands joined.

  Janie Wilson, who lived next door to the McQueens, was the spokesman. ‘We ain’t goin’ to let you play with us any more, are we?’

  The other three shook their heads vigorously.

  ‘An’ we don’t want a loan of your school bag. An’ you can keep your Saturday penny and stick it, can’t she?’

  Again there was vigorous nodding of heads. Then in silence they waited for some response.

  The quietness with which it came left them at a loss, and aggravated them more than any shouting would have done. ‘All right, it doesn’t matter.’

  Rose Angela watched them as they formed a ring and whispered together; then, with one accord, they broke from each other and ran some way along the road before turning and shouting, ‘Rosie Paterson, you’ll never go to Heaven. Even if you get up there they won’t let you in, ’cause you ain’t white.’

  The startled expression on Rosie’s face amply repaid them for her previous lack of response, and Janie Wilson’s voice came above the others. ‘Miss Flynn’s got it in for yer…you ain’t white and you can go to confession, but you’ll not get to Heaven. I asked me ma, and she said yer da was a blackie, and you’d never get into our Heaven. You’ll go down’—she pointed her thumb violently towards the pavement—‘and be pitched into the fire.’

  For a long time now it had seemed to Rose Angela that she had been gathering to herself different kinds of fear. There was the fear of going home and finding her ma crying, sometimes with her head on her arms on the kitchen table, sometimes lying across the bed upstairs. At these times the fear would paralyse her limbs and she would want to be sick. The fear would disappear if, as sometimes happened, her mother put her arms blindly about her and there was no smell of whisky from her.

  Then there was the fear that Uncle Tony might die…that he would fall under a tram, or that on a dark night he would slip into the water of the slacks, for if anything happened to Uncle Tony who would she have to talk to? Or, what was more important, listen to? What would happen if a Sunday should pass and he didn’t take her for a walk and sit or stand at the same spot on the slack bank, and tell her what a grand man her da was and that she must never be ashamed of him, for one day he was coming back? She knew why they stood at the same spot, for when she stood there a voice, deep and thick and melodious, echoed through her mind, murmuring words that were only intelligible by the feeling of warmth they created in her.

  Then there was that other fear, the fear that caused her to wake up, trembling and sweating, in the night, and cry for her mother, but being aware as she cried that her mother could lift this fear from her did she so wish, that hers was the power to say to Uncle Matt, ‘Don’t come into this house any more!’ In her Uncle Matt Rose Angela saw her idea of the devil; the jet-black eyes in the white face, with one end of the long scar on his cheek pulling down the corner of his eye while the other end pulled up one side of his mouth, were terrifying to her. When her Uncle Matt stood looking at her without blinking she wanted to scream. She had done so once, and her mother turned on Matt, saying, ‘Get out!’ But he didn’t go, he just stood with his head bent, muttering, ‘That’s it…you turn on me too. The lasses go in their back doors when they see me comin’. And who’s to blame, eh? I didn’t start this.’ Matt’s voice sounded to Rose Angela as if he were crying, but his eyes remained dry and hard. Her mother had sat down and beaten her fists slowly on the corner of the table…that had been terrifying too.

  So because of her Uncle Matt Rose Angela had a great desire to qualify for Heaven, for in the other place there’d be a man like him. And now here was Janie Wilson saying that she wouldn’t go to Heaven.

  She stood still, watching the girls hitching and skipping into the distance, and, try as she might, she could not stop her tears. As they rained down her cheeks she reassured herself: she would get to Heaven—she’d be good and she would go to Heaven. She wouldn’t miss Mass and she’d go to Communion every week. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, say she would get to Heaven…Her tears threatened to choke her. Why was everyone so nasty? Miss Flynn and the girls and Uncle Matt, and even Granma. What had she done?…She made her way with bowed head along the road. She’d go into church, it’d be quiet there and she would get over her crying. She couldn’t go home like this.

  In the empty church she knelt out of habit in her class pew, and endeavoured to pray. But as her thoughts, dwelling on Janie Wilson, would form no set prayer, she made a mental note that she must confess the sin of ‘wilful distractions at prayers’ when she next went to confession. She knelt until her knees ached and her head swam; but her tears had stopped, so she rose, genuflected towards the main altar where Christ stayed, and left the church.

  She was standing in the porch blowing her nose when the door opened behind her, and Father Bailey came through. Startled, she looked at him, wondering where he had sprung from, for the church was empty. She dropped her head as he said, ‘Hallo there, Rosie.’

  ‘Hullo, Father.’

  ‘Have you been paying a visit to the Blessed Sacrament?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’ She began to breathe more evenly; he hadn’t heard her crying or he’d surely be saying something.

  ‘That’s a good girl. Always keep a devotion for the Blessed Sacrament and you won’t go far wrong in life.’ He placed his hand on her hair and felt its silkiness. ‘By, it’s beautiful hair that you have, Rosie; it has the sheen of the starling on it.’

  Forgetting her tears, she gazed up into his round, red face and her heart swelled. It wasn’t wrong to have nice hair then. Here was the priest saying it was nice…she wasn’t sinful, then, as Miss Flynn made out, because she kept her hair nice. But what was the good of having nice hair if you were destined for Hell? Suddenly Rose Angela knew that she couldn’t bear the indecision—to go on all tonight and all the morrow, and perhaps for ever, knowing she mightn’t be going to Heaven was unbearable. But here, standing right before her, was Father Bailey, and if anyone could tell if she were going to Heaven he could…he could even send her there if he liked, for he knew so much about it.

  ‘Father, could I ask you something?’

  The pleading in her eyes that always affected the priest brought him a step nearer to her, and he whispered jocularly, ‘Anything you like, Rosie. But mind, I’ll charge you tuppence for it.’

  A smile appeared for a moment on her face, but was gone again as she asked tentatively, ‘Father, will they let me into the white Heaven?’

  ‘The white what?’

  ‘The white Heaven, Father.’

  ‘Are you getting mixed up? You don’t mean Heaven, surely. Are you meaning the public house on the Cornwallis Road, The White Heather? Now what would you be wanting to get in there for, might I ask?’

  ‘I do mean Heaven, Father…God’s Heaven.’

  The priest straightened his stubby figure and tugged at the bottom of his waistcoat with both hands.
‘Now what makes you ask such a question? Of course you’ll go to Heaven, providing you’re a good girl.’

  ‘But they said…’

  ‘Who said?’ he asked sternly.

  She hung her head again. ‘The girls said, Father…because me da was black I won’t get into the…proper Heaven.’

  The priest remained silent, staring at the bowed head of this eight-year-old child who was already feeling the weight of ‘man’s inhumanity to man’. The tears in the church were the forerunner of many she would shed. God help her. Although he smiled at her there was an unsteadiness in his voice as he said, ‘Look at me, Rosie, for I have something to tell you. You’re a very ignorant child, you know.’ He shook his head with a hopeless gesture. ‘Has no-one ever told you that God is colour-blind?’

  ‘Colour-blind…? No, Father.’ Her eyes were stretched to their widest.

  ‘Haven’t they now? Are you quite sure?’

  ‘Yes, Father…is he?’

  ‘He is so…as blind as a bat where colour is concerned…of course, mind, he can make out the flowers, but not people; he doesn’t know a black from a white, nor a yellow from a red…God help him.’ Father Bailey threw back his head and laughed; and with a mixture of appreciation of his wit and profound relief Rosie joined him.

  ‘Ah! Rosie’—Father Bailey wiped his eyes—‘the good Lord appreciates a joke, even against himself. Now away home you go. Goodnight and God Bless you.’

  ‘Goodnight, Father.’ Rose Angela paused in her turning from him. ‘And I’ll get in, Father?’

  He patted her head gently. ‘You’ll get in, Rosie. You of all people, I should say, will get in. And remember what I’ve told you about God being colour-blind, for it’s the truth—one of the great truths.’

  ‘I will, Father—I’ll always remember.’