Bridget, getting up to refill the cups said, ‘Then I wouldn’t let on to Father O’Malley about it.’
And while they were all laughing together Rose Angela thought: This is nice, just the three of us here. If only there could be more times like this. She listened to her Granda with only half her mind—she was thinking how strange it was that he should have become so altered by the reading of a few books, and him an old man. Perhaps when she was old she would get to love books, too; but now she only wanted to look at things, and listen. If only she could go to faraway places, where there was colour—lots of colour—earth colours and water colours and sky colours. And if only she could sit and listen to music. Oh, if only she had a wireless, a wireless all her own, so she could listen to music—any kind of music, for any music was better than none.
‘Do you believe in God, Rosie? Do you believe Jesus Christ was God?’
‘Of course, Granda.’
‘That’s right, then, that’s right. Stick to your belief. But I wonder, would you still believe if I was to lend you some of my books? Now there’s one by that fellow called Darwin—a right stink that fellow kicked up at one time.’
Cavan’s voice went on, getting more excited, and Bridget rose and cleared the cups away, and Rose Angela, her eyes intent on her grandfather, followed her own thinking. She would always believe in God—life would be unbearable without this belief. How often, when a child, had Father Bailey’s words ‘God is colour-blind’ soothed and comforted her. And how often now did she turn to that saying for comfort. Should she lose her belief in God, then she would be lost indeed, for she had come to know that He alone in all the world was…colour-blind. Even her mother, whom she loved with a deep, unshakeable love…she wasn’t colour-blind. Rose Angela knew that when Bridget stared at her without seeing her she was seeing her husband. She looked at Bridget now, and not for the first time realised just how lonely her mother’s life was. She had been alone for years. Even loving Uncle Tony hadn’t filled her life.
Rose Angela could look back to the day when she first discovered that her mother loved Uncle Tony. It was a Sunday, and Uncle Tony came to take her for the usual walk. As they were leaving Bridget said, ‘Don’t tell her that any more.’ And she had watched her mother and Uncle Tony stare at each other; and when they were outside Tony looked happy, and suddenly he laughed. But from that day he never again told her that her father would come back. Was her father dead? Sometimes she thought he was. At other times she was strongly convinced he wasn’t. Now and again she experienced an odd feeling that he was speaking to her, in a sort of pleading way, as if he were asking her not to forget him. There was no fear of her ever forgetting him—he was too much a part of her, too deeply buried in her being, to ever throw him off, even if she desired to. And never once had that been the case. Even as a child, realising he was black, she did not want him to be other than he was; for it was the man himself she loved, not in the way she loved her mother, but in a protective way. The term seemed silly to apply to the great black man she could still remember with astonishing clearness…but would she know him now if she saw him?
She was recalled to what her grandfather was saying by him tapping her knee. ‘And did you know there is a fly that flutters about in a horse’s stomach and drives him mad? Did you know that?’
‘No, Granda.’
‘Well, there is. And can you explain this? When the horse sees that fly buzzing around him, trying to find a sore patch to lay his eggs on, he nearly goes mad and no-one can hold him. Off he dashes, hell for leather. Now how does the horse recognise that fly? And how does he know what it will do to him? ’Cause if he’d already had a dose of him, he’d be dead…Now can you explain that?’
‘No, Granda.’
‘No, nor nobody else…And here’s another thing that’ll surprise you…’ What the other thing was Cavan didn’t explain, for the kitchen door opened and Matt entered. And the harmony of the kitchen was immediately shattered. Cavan spat into the grate and said, ‘I’m sorry, lass, I’ve marked yer hob.’
‘That’s all right.’ Bridget took up a paper, and, folding it, began to swat flies vigorously.
Rose Angela, after one startled look at Matt as the door opened, remained still. It was difficult to sit still with Matt’s eyes on her, but lately she had told herself she must run no more—she must show him by her stillness that he could scare her no longer. If only she could make a pretence of not being afraid it would be something, for inside of her, always and forever, she knew she would fear Matt and what he might do. Her voice sounded a little cracked as she said, ‘You were telling me about the horse, Granda.’
‘Aye, aye, I was.’ Cavan, now slowly and laboriously, went on talking, while Bridget banged the paper against the walls, on the table and against the window pane.
No-one spoke to Matt, nor he to them. He had moved into the kitchen and was standing leaning against the cupboard door, picking his teeth with a broken matchstick. The years had brought a stoop to his thin figure, and his face had grown two different kinds of skin—the puckered side was faintly blue, with the scars showing silver, like a winding river seen from a great height, while on the other side the skin was of a deadly whiteness and unrelieved by a trace of colour. His hair was sparse over his pointed head, and his eyes seemed to have narrowed to slits, from which jets of red light darted. For a time his gaze followed Bridget and her banging; then it again became focused on Rose Angela. The matchstick worked up and down the crevices of his teeth as his eyes swept their menacing light over her. They came to rest at length on her face, and forced her eyes to meet his. And when, despite her efforts, he saw the fear in their brown depths, his lip curled and he said, ‘Been at your whoring again, eh? And got the…?’
Before he could finish speaking the newspaper struck him across the mouth. ‘I’ve warned you, haven’t I?’ Bridget’s face was livid.
Matt made no answer, but stood looking at his sister. The red light from his pupils seemed to have diffused itself into his skin, for the top part of his face was pink-hued. Dead flies from the swatter were sticking to the stubble of his chin; and their squashed bodies, adding to the terribleness of his face, together with his accusation, were too much for Rose Angela. Pressing her hands over her mouth she fled upstairs.
Cavan, too, felt a great sickness rising in him as he looked at his son, and not for the first time he wished with all his heart that the nigger had done the job properly, for he knew that Bridget’s blow had been in the nature of a caress to him—Matt did not mind what Bridget did as long as she noticed him. Why should this be? Cavan asked himself. Why should he have bred a man with this unnatural feeling? He could find no answer within himself, nor would his books be able to provide him with the reason, as they did for so many things; and it wasn’t a question he could ask of anyone, so he would never know the answer.
Chapter Eight: The Job
The night had been exceptionally close, and Rose Angela lay waiting for the light to break. She had slept hardly at all. The heat of the past few days had made the houses like ovens, and the nights were not long enough to allow them to cool before another day dawned and their bricks were re-baked. As she lay listening to a baby crying in a house across the street she knew that she should be everlastingly grateful for having a room to herself, when all around her four to a room was privacy. Yet she could feel nothing but a great anxiety—what was to become of her? For three weeks now she had walked the streets of the towns on both sides of the river, but when there were girls with good references what chance had she? To every place she went she had to admit that her last mistress wouldn’t be likely to give her a reference. When asked why, she could only say, ‘We had words.’ She would offer the name of her previous mistress, but with the women practically lining up for jobs why should a mistress bother herself about this person, who dared to ‘have words’, and who was undoubtedly a half-caste—it would be inviting trouble. Rose Angela could read the thoughts of prospective mistresses as their c
alculating eyes surveyed her. Now, after weeks of tramping, her mind and body were tired and a despair was settling on her. It would have to be that café—he said he would always set her on—the manager with his big red hands, and his fat body which seemed to have been poured into his greasy suit. And there wouldn’t be him alone, but the riff-raff of the waterside, with whom, in comparison, the men of the fifteen streets were gentlemen. But she must have work of some kind, things were getting desperate. Her mother had only been able to secure two half-days a week for some time now, and so she was afraid the necessity might arise when her Uncle Tony would stop the extra he now gave to her grandma to give to them. And this would mean more bickering, more rows, with her grandma yelling for all the world to hear. Oh, what would it be like to really live in one of the houses in which she had worked, where you couldn’t hear what the people in the next house were saying?…Or in Uncle Tony’s house, that little red house all by itself? Why had he never gone to live there? Was it because of her mother? If only he had taken them away from the fifteen streets years ago when he had first come by it. In that quiet, sheltered house she would have been free from her Uncle Matt’s eyes, and the fear of him would have died. Why had her mother stayed on here? Was she waiting for her father to come back? He would never come back now after all this time. Anyway, what would she do about Uncle Tony if he did come back?
She turned restlessly over and lay on her stomach, and one long black plait hung down by the bedside and brushed the floor. The light through the blind began to change, and she lay waiting to hear the sound of the barrows as the men passed the street corner. This was usually her time signal, a signal without pain now, for the men would be dry and warm. But in the winter the creaking of the barrow wheels filled her with pity and despair…there they were now, the wheels on the bricks. She could hear a man singing…‘Oft in the Stilly Night’…the song of reflection,
‘The eyes that shone,
Now dimmed and gone,
The cheerful heart’s now broken.’
Oh, why must they sing? And that song with the heartbreaking words. She thrust her fingers into her ears, shutting out the unquenchable spirit of man, but almost instantly she released them as the unusual sound of the front-door knocker being banged came to her. Who on earth could it be at this hour of the morning?
She was on the landing pulling a coat round her when Bridget, opening her door, said, ‘Wait, I’ll go.’ She had forgotten it might be her Uncle Matt. So she stood aside and let her mother go downstairs; but when Cavan’s voice came to her from the kitchen she ran downstairs and asked, ‘What’s wrong, Granda?’
‘Wrong? Nothing, lass.’ He wiped the dust and sweat from his face with a piece of rag. ‘I’ve just been telling your mother if you’re lucky you’ll be getting a job this mornin’.’
‘A job?’
‘Aye, lass. You know Ted’s wife was in a good place in Shields? Well, she’s ricked her foot.’ He tried to cover his excitement and to appear sympathetic. ‘Bad job altogether. Poor Ted’s proper cut up about it, and he doesn’t know what’s going to be done now.’
He wiped his face again and sat down, while Bridget and Rose Angela watched him, waiting for him to go on.
‘It’ll likely be weeks before she can go back there again, for it takes a young ’un to climb over them sleepers and suchlike to get to the house; and then there’s the stairs; and with him a bit cranky—he has the house cleaned every day.’
‘What you talking about, Da?’ asked Bridget impatiently. ‘I thought you said it was a good place.’
‘It is.’
‘Well, what’s this about getting over sleepers?…And who’s the mistress?’
‘Where is it, Granda?’ asked Rose Angela. ‘I don’t mind how much work there is.’
‘Off Holborn, hinny.’ Cavan rubbed the back of his hand sheepishly under his nose.
‘Holborn!’ Both Bridget and Rose Angela spoke the name together.
‘Off, I said. Look, give me a chance to tell you. Do you know Cassy’s Wharf? No, you don’t. Well, it’s by a cut off the Mill Dam bank afore you get to Holborn proper. It’s never been used for years as a wharf, but long ago—God knows how long—somebody built a house there. By all accounts the builder must have been as cranky as the chap who lives there now—great windows it has. Anyway, there was once a field all round the house. That was God knows how long ago, too, but it was gradually surrounded by sidings. Then the field became the graveyard for all the old bogies and wagons. But the house still stands there, and this painter fellow has it done out white twice a year, and everything’s to be cleaned every day. And he hardly ever sees it, ’cause he’s always up top painting. Ted says Bessie used to get tired going up trying to get him to come to a meal. When he’s the mood on him, he’ll paint night and day, then sleep for days and get up roaring for something to eat and go for her if it isn’t ready.’
‘But, Granda’—Rose Angela’s voice was quiet—‘there isn’t a woman there? He’s not married?’
‘No, lass, that’s what I was going to tell you. You see’—he looked apologetically from her to Bridget and back to her again—‘you see, you won’t need to fear him—Ted’s Bessie says he dislikes women. He never paints owt but men and boats, and they’ve both got to be on their last legs afore he’ll do either.’
‘Is he mental?’ asked Bridget.
‘No, he’s just cranky. But cranky or not, he makes money; and he must spend it, ’cause he gave Bessie a free hand. And she makes quite a bit, so Ted says, out of the housekeeping. So, lass, if you get a place like that…’
‘If she gets a place like that, we won’t depend on anything out of the housekeeping,’ said Bridget, stiffly.
‘Well, I was only saying, lass,’ said Cavan, getting up; ‘I was trying to do me best.’
‘Look, Granda,’ Rose Angela said soothingly, ‘sit down a minute and I’ll make you a cup of tea. And go on, tell me more about it. When did this happen to Mrs Grant, and what’s the man’s name?’
‘Just last night, hinny. She tripped over a sleeper, and a bloke found her and went for the painter chap; and he put her in a taxicab and sent her home. Ted says all you’ve got to say is you’ve come in Mrs Grant’s place until she’s better. But mind, hinny’—he nodded cautiously at her—‘you’ll have to give it up when she’s better. Ted was clear about that.’
‘Oh yes, Granda, I understand—that’s only fair. But what’s the man’s name?’
‘Stanhope. It’s easy to remember…like Stanhope Road in Shields. Mr Michael Stanhope. And there’s another bloke; but he’s away most of the time. He’s in Austria now, in a place called Teeroll or some such. He’s another painter. Although he’s madder by a week than this one, Bessie says, you can have a laugh with him, where you can’t with the Stanhope bloke. I think Bessie’s just a bit scared of him.’
‘Are you sure he’s not mental?’ asked Bridget again.
‘Not as far as I can make out, lass.’
‘I’ll soon find out when I get there, Ma.’ Hope had almost made Rose Angela gay. ‘And I don’t care if he is a bit mental, I’ll look after him.’
‘You’ll have nothing to do with the place if he’s not all there; you’ll go and get yourself—’ Bridget was about to say ‘murdered’, but she feared the word, so she substituted ‘in trouble’.
‘There’s always been trouble down there,’ she went on. ‘Look at that Saturday a few years back, when the Arabs rioted around the shipping office and stabbed them three policemen.’
‘You couldn’t only blame the Arabs for that,’ Cavan put in sharply; ‘it were our blokes agitating them not to sign the PC5 form that did that, together with those bloody Arab boarding-house masters who bleed them dry. Look what them masters did a while back…sent the Arabs in droves up to the workhouse. Blackmail it was, just to compel the town to give them outdoor relief, so as the poor skinny scabs could tip up their dibs to them again. It was the white agitators and the black masters who caused t
hat shipping trouble, I’m telling you…Anyway’—he turned towards Rose Angela—‘you won’t be near them. As I’ve told you, Cassy’s Wharf cuts away from Holborn.’
‘What time did Mrs Grant start, Granda?’
‘Eight, hinny.’
‘All right, I’ll be there at eight.’ She touched his stubbly cheek. ‘Thanks, Granda. You know, it’s a good job for me that you read.’
‘How do you make that out, hinny?’
‘Well, if you hadn’t got interested in books you wouldn’t have had Ted Grant for a friend, and he would likely have given someone else the chance to fill his wife’s place.’
The deduction pleased Cavan, and he laughed. ‘Aye, there’s that in it.’ And when Rose Angela handed him his cup of tea he raised the cup to her, saying, ‘Here’s to Bessie’s slow recovery. Not that I’m wishing her any harm, mind you, but—’ He chuckled and winked at her. ‘Good luck, lass.’
Rose Angela took the seven o’clock workmen’s tram into Shields. The appellation was a mere courtesy title—now only a sprinkling of miners and odd workmen occupied it. She alighted by the slaughterhouse, where the piteous bellowings of the beasts were already to be heard. She had left the tram earlier than was necessary in order that she might ask the way of some ‘white person’, for beyond the Mill Dam lay Holborn, and Arabs. And strange though it appeared, her dislike of Arabs exceeded that held by most white people. When on one or two occasions an Arab had spoken to her, his very approach had seemed an insult. Yet it was this feeling of revulsion which gave her the insight into how the Negro was viewed by a white, and helped her to understand a little the white man’s deep dislike of the Negro who was penetrating his preserves. But her understanding did not make her situation easier to bear, even though the touch of colour in herself, at least outwardly, was slight.
She reached the top of the Mill Dam bank without meeting any women, so she stopped an old man and enquired of him the whereabouts of Cassy’s Wharf.
Colour Blind Page 12