Colour Blind

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Who bring you?’

  ‘Murphy, and he’s practically drowned, but he wouldn’t stay—it’s blowing a gale.’

  Murphy had not brought that light to her eyes, but as yet she did not wish to tell him who had, so he had turned the conversation.

  ‘It blowing great guns all day—river’ll be in a temper. I no like wind much. You like wind, Rose Angela?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ She touched his brow with her lips. ‘That’s another thing I’ve got from you, you know.’ She looked lovingly into his face. ‘You look heaps better today.’

  ‘Me? I’m fine.’ And to prove it he had hitched himself up and talked to her as she emptied the basket and set about preparing the evening meal. ‘Me? I never like wind, ’cause I don’t understand him, how him come about. Harvest—it no mystery; you put seed into earth. You can see the earth and see the seed, but you no can see wind. Only things that it touches you can see. Me, I see it touch one part of tree, other part still as death; and I see it wave one blade of grass—just one. Clever fellow on boat, he say it was worm or insect at bottom. Wasn’t worm or insect on the tree. No, I no like wind. I hate fog and I no like wind, yet I love the water. And water and wind are cousins, they say. Strange. Me, I can never understand it. You like fog, Rose Angela?’

  ‘No, I can’t stand it either—it makes me afraid. I always expect something strange to loom up out of it.’

  He nodded understandingly. ‘Me same.’

  The tie of kinship seemed to be stronger because she had inherited his fears, and he became silent, content just to watch her.

  Later she told him she had seen a little house they could rent, not actually out of Holborn, but away from this quarter, and it pained him to witness her disappointment when he said, ‘I no move from here, Rose Angela; Matt not get down this part. If I no sick I not mind, but…’ He left the sentence unfinished, then went on, ‘I be able to get up next week, and you go back home.’ He hung on her reply, and it was like new life pouring into his veins when she said, ‘You are my home.’

  Was it any wonder he lived only when she was near him? But would he live enough days to make up for the years they had been separated? With the hope that is the heritage of the consumptive he thought he would and longer…

  He was lying now, still and unmoving, his great eyes watching the door, but at half-past six she did not come. Nor yet at seven o’clock, and the fear of the wind became lost under the weight of apprehension filling his wasted body. And when half an hour later the noise and clamour of voices that always filled the house became gradually still and into their place came a scuffling of feet on the stairs as if someone was being dragged up them, he hitched himself up in the bed and waited, the sweat pouring down his body; and he fell back almost in a faint when the door was pushed open and a man was thrust into the room by Murphy and Pete.

  Across the bed rails James and Matt surveyed each other, and both for the moment forgot all else but the terrible change that time had brought to each face.

  Then the years fell away, and the hate that had reached its destroying climax in Bridget’s kitchen sixteen years before filled the room. Matt’s body jerked spasmodically with it; he made sounds in his throat but did not speak; only his eyes, riveted on James, spoke for him.

  Murphy and Pete released their hold on him but remained threateningly close, and Murphy said to James, over the bed rail, ‘We had to bring him up—the Greek tipped us off he was watching the house. We couldn’t nab him in the street, we had to wait until he got into the yard.’

  Matt growled again, and Murphy, raising his forearm, warned, ‘Mind yersel’.’ Then he repeated, ‘We had to bring him up; he knew you were here, Jimmy. He would have come up on his own or got the pollis.’

  James made no comment, but lay returning Matt’s stare, and Murphy asked, ‘What’s to be done with him?’

  The ominous question brought Matt’s gaze from James and he glanced from Murphy to Pete, then swiftly around the room.

  ‘Aye, have a good look,’ said Murphy. ‘The only way out is the way you come in.’

  As Matt’s eyes darted to the door the sound of running footsteps, intensified by the quiet of the house, came to him; and the other three men also turned their eyes to the door and waited. When it opened, Matt looked at Rose Angela standing there with her hands over her mouth, and a flash of his old power wiped out for the moment his own fear. Where was her bravery now? His eyes held hers as she came into the room and backed towards the bed, and when, without looking at James, she groped for his hand, Matt growled, ‘Thought you were smart, didn’t you? Well, you weren’t smart enough, were you?’

  ‘Shut yer gob, else I’ll shut it for yer!’ Murphy lifted his hand threateningly, and James interposed in a surprisingly calm voice, ‘Let him talk, Murphy. There lots he wants off his chest.’

  The sight of Rose Angela’s fear seemed to restore Matt’s courage, and he cried, ‘There’s one thing I’m gonna say, you needn’t think I was fool enough to come down here without lettin’ on to anyone, so you can tell these two tykes of yours they better be careful what they’re up to.’

  ‘Why you come, anyway?’ James asked.

  ‘You know bloody well why I came…to get you!’

  ‘You too late.’

  ‘I don’t know so much about that.’ Matt’s eyes darted to Rose Angela. ‘I’ll never be too late as long as that ’un’s about.’ Matt’s sense of power mounted as he saw James’ calm vanish and the hand holding his daughter’s visibly shake. ‘One of you’ll pay for this.’ Matt jerked his chin to indicate his scarred face.

  James said, ‘You no blame anyone but me…you asked for what you got, you try to ruin…my wife.’ The word wife had a stilted sound, as if stiff for want of use.

  ‘Your wife! A bit of a lass you took down when she was drunk. Your wife! I wonder, if she could see you now, what she’d think of her great, swaggering nigger. You made a mess of me, but, by God, it’s a flea bite to what you look like! That’s why you didn’t send for her on the quiet, eh? Didn’t want her to see what a fool she’d been.’

  The jerking of James’ fingers within her palm told Rose Angela that Matt’s surmise was one of the reasons why her father hadn’t wanted to see Bridget; and when Matt went on, ‘She knew she’d been a fool all right, long before you went, and you weren’t gone five minutes before she had another bed-warmer,’ she cried out, ‘Don’t believe him; he’s lying! It was years after, years and years.’

  She looked pleadingly down on James, and he, calm once more, reassured her. ‘You no worry; that no matter…makes no difference.’ He lay back and, staring at Matt over the bed rails, said quietly and pointedly, ‘When Bridget took other man I not know, but you did. Must have been very devil for you that!’

  The words, like a knife thrust, turned Matt’s face to the colour of dirty silver. ‘You black swine!’

  He drew his body up as if to spring, and Murphy cried, ‘I wouldn’t if I was you.’ And as he said this Murphy stepped a little to the front of Matt to prevent any movement he might make towards the bed, leaving exposed to Matt’s right the little kitchen table, on which stood a lamp, an old-fashioned affair with a painted iron stalk and an oil container in the shape of a round flower surmounted by a tall lamp glass.

  In this tense, passion-filled atmosphere, Matt’s mind was attuned to take advantage of any opening, and in the lamp he saw the weapon to his hand. Like a cat he sprang sideways, and in an instant he was at the far side of the table with the lamp in his hand. For a second, surprise made the others still. They stared at him, unbelieving, as if he were some demon capable of conjuring up separate selves. It was Murphy who made the first move, and Matt yelled, ‘You stir from there and I’ll hurl this on to the bed!’ Slowly his eyes ranged from one to the other, and he said softly, ‘Now who calls the tune?’

  As Murphy made to move again Rose Angela cried, ‘Don’t Murphy, don’t…he’s mad…he’ll do it.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do it…y
ou know your Uncle Matt, don’t you?’ He spat across the table at the term ‘uncle’. ‘But before I do it I’ll do something else…come here, you!’

  ‘You no move.’ James was sitting upright, his voice hoarse with fear. ‘I go.’

  ‘I don’t want you yet, I want her. I’ll deal with you later. You come here. If you don’t, you know what I’ll do with this lamp.’

  Wild-eyed and staring, as if her eyes were already fixed in death, Rose Angela loosened James’ fingers from her coat, and pressed him back into the bed; and skirting Murphy and Pete, slowly walked towards the table.

  ‘Not that side…this side.’

  Like a marionette she obeyed him, until she was standing less than an arm’s length from him, with the table at her back. Now she knew the summit of all fears…the total fears of her childhood and her teens were one minor tremor compared to the emotion now paralysing her. She felt that all her years had been a waiting for this moment. In the ecstasy of Stanhope’s kiss she hadn’t told herself, like most girls would, that all her life she had been awaiting such a moment…that this was what her thoughts and dreams had promised her, but now, standing fascinated under Matt’s diabolical stare, she knew that this was the moment she had been awaiting, this moment in which he would destroy her face. Every atom of feeling in her was transformed into fear; it was shaking her limbs as if with ague.

  ‘You’re sick with fright, aren’t you? Go on spew—you always spew when I frighten you.’

  Without taking his eyes from her face Matt spoke to Murphy. ‘Stop that dirty nigger from getting out of that bed, and you two listen to me. I’m gonna do something, and if any of you as much as move a finger when I’m at it I’ll hurl the lamp into her half-breed face, d’you hear me?’

  The desire to destroy both James and Rose Angela was burning its way through Matt like an acid. Inside his tortured mind he sensed that, whichever way things went, this was the end for him, but end or no end he was going to do things in his own way. For the first time in his life the desire for Bridget was lost under a greater desire—he would crash the lamp into her face if it was the last thing he did! But first there was something else he would do. For how many years had he wanted to feel the contact of his fist between those eyes? He could not remember a time when this urge had not swayed him. As he glared into Rose Angela’s blanched face he realised that his hate of the daughter exceeded a thousandfold that of the father.

  His body began to sway and his hand with it, and the lamp sent the shadows of Murphy and Pete across the ceiling like crouching demons leaping through space. The room for the moment became strangely silent, with all the figures motionless and stiff. Then Matt, shouting another warning to Murphy, flung the silence into pandemonium.

  As his fist crashed between Rose Angela’s eyes Murphy sprang. He hurled himself on Matt, or more correctly where Matt had been, for Murphy’s hand slid off Matt’s twisting shoulders as if they were greased and he measured his length with a thud on the floor.

  Pete did not move, but his unblinking eyes never left Matt; not even when James’ swaying body rocked towards Matt did he remonstrate. Not until Matt threw the lamp did he spring. Then, like an enraged monkey he hurled himself sideways across the table, knocking Rose Angela flying as she stood swaying and moaning, her hands covering her face. Still with the antics of a monkey, he caught the lamp, and fell to the floor with it, balancing it upright like some circus clown.

  Murphy, rising to his knees, clawed wildly at Matt’s legs as he rushed towards the door, but he did not succeed in checking him…It was James, looking more weird and grotesque than ever, his long, wasted legs sticking like props from beneath his shirt, who blocked Matt’s way. Once more he and Matt confronted each other, and James’ anger was even greater now than it had been on that faraway night, but his strength was as a child’s. As his feeble hands were raised to strike, Matt’s foot shot out, aiming at his stomach, but catching him on the thigh and sending him sprawling against the wall.

  The way clear now, Matt flung himself out on to the landing and went down the stairs, rocketing against the walls as he went, and through his brain rocketed only one regret—the lamp had missed her! All through that blasted dwarf! As he neared the hall he knew by the thundering on the stairs above that they were after him, and in the yard, where no vestige of light showed, not even a glimmer from the street lamp, for that had been put out, he knew himself to be running for his life, and that every man’s hand was against him. By a stroke of luck he found the alleyway, but in the street, shadows that seemed darker than the night loomed at the end by which he had entered, so he turned in the other direction.

  He was running as he had been wont to do years ago, with long loping strides, springing from one foot to the other. He became conscious as he ran of a strange and new feeling of freedom; his body seemed light and young once more…he would beat them yet…When had he last felt like this? The night he had run home to see Bridget and saw the black swine for the first time…Bridget, Bridget, why did you do it? It was as if the years were being flung off with each flying step until he was back to that very night, walking the black streets and crying like a child as he walked, ‘Bridget, Bridget, why did you do it?’

  He was now in a maze of buildings, warehouses mostly, and this told him he was near the river. If only he could find an alleyway. He paused in his running and listened. Yes, blast them, he could hear their feet pounding the cobbles…Where was there a damned alleyway? He groped along one wall and laughed in relief as the wind, rushing up the alley, brought him the tang of the river. Once on the bank, he could make his way to the Mill Dam; he would slope them yet. His legs became infused with revitalised life; he was young again, really young. He had done something he had wanted to do for years—he had bashed that one’s face. And now he was going to tell his Bridget that the nigger was alive, but was less than useless. He wouldn’t trouble her, but it would put paid to Mister Tony, and his Bridget would be alone again, and would turn to him. Oh, Bridget, Bridget! His running cut through the wind like the keel of a ship through the water, and his head filled with the wind. It swelled and swelled, making his body so light that he was no longer on the ground. The wind became a whirlwind; until finally the roaring of it culminated in a bang and his head burst into stillness.

  He came to a sudden stop on the very edge of the wall that hemmed in the river, and below him he could hear the lap-lap of the water against the wall. He put out his hand and felt the walls of the warehouses that closed him in on both sides. He put out his foot and there was nothing. This last action conveyed only one thing to the hollowness of his mind—he must not jump down there because he couldn’t swim. He lifted his hand to his brow and his fingers groped at the emptiness under them. What had he been thinking when he was running? Had he been running? Yes, he had been running…but what had he been thinking? He must try to remember what he had been thinking. The sound of the pounding feet came to him again, and they carried another single thought into the hollowness…he must hide. But there was only the river, with the sheer wall down to it.

  It was impulse that made him lower himself over the wall. Alongside the warehouses the shelf of the wall was scarcely more than a hand wide, but the finishing stones had been left in parapet form and to these he clung, and edged himself a foot or so out of the line of the alleyway. His legs were in the water up to his thighs, and when his toes, scraping against the wall, found a niche where a brick had been washed out, he thrust his feet in, and this lifted the weight from his hands; and he hung there, listening to the footsteps, their coming and their going, and he began to laugh softly.

  Chapter Thirteen: The Feet of the Beloved

  It was ten o’clock when Rose Angela stumbled over the last sleepers towards the clearing, and the white-painted door and windows of the house shone at her like welcoming beacons. Never had she loved the house as she did at this moment; nor needed its comforting warmth and colour so much; and once inside, with Michael’s arms about her, all he
r mental and physical pain would be eased.

  She pressed her hand to her brow, where the pain was most acute. How would he take the sight of her face? She must tell him everything…everything but how she came by the blow. She would say that she fell—she must not tell him Matt did it, for not even to him must she say that she had seen Matt last night, for as yet she did not know what had happened to him. Hour after hour she had sat waiting by the side of James for Murphy or Pete to come back with some word, but they hadn’t come. Nor yet had any of the neighbouring men looked in, or the women, and this augured bad, so she must not say she had seen Matt.

  The terror of last night would remain with her, she thought, until she died, and after, and the terror had not ceased when Matt had flown, for the scarlet blood pouring from James’ mouth had been equally terrifying. But this morning he seemed better, yet she knew that last night’s events had precipitated his end, and she had been loath to leave him even for the short time it would take to tell Michael the reason for her absence. Oh to be with Michael just for a few minutes, to rest against him and have his sympathy flow over her. She broke into a run, and when she rounded the narrow shingled path to the back door she could not restrain herself from calling his name aloud, ‘Michael! Michael!’ If he was up in the studio he would hear her and come bounding down the stairs, to stand horrified for the moment at the sight of her face—yes, she knew her face would shock him.