Colour Blind

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Honest to God, we didn’t touch him, Rosie,’ Murphy put in. ‘We never got near enough to him, or I don’t know what we might have done at the time…but we never laid a hand on him, did we, Pete?’

  Pete gave the usual reply with his head.

  ‘If there are enquiries, you’ll have to be careful.’ She was talking quietly now, as if it were an ordinary, everyday topic. For the moment all the turmoil seemed to have been swept away on the flow of her tears, and being thus quiet she asked herself questions, and the answers brought no pain. She asked herself did she hope Matt was dead; and the answer came: Yes, oh yes! She asked herself why she had pleaded so much with Stanhope. Had she stormed at him, as most women would have done under the circumstances, would she have convinced him? Her head shook slowly from side to side. No. Anyway, she could never have stormed at him.

  All her life she had been humble because openly and in covered ways she had been given to understand that her mixed blood was like a poster advertising some inferior form of human being, and she had never used the argument, ‘Is it our fault we are what we are? Must we go around searching for others like ourselves to form a world apart? The blame lies with them that bred us.’ To have taken this view would have meant criticism of her mother and her da. Yet in this moment she dared to wonder what life would have been like had each stuck to his own kind, for it was borne in on her that Stanhope’s unrelentlessness, whether he realised it or not, was due not so much to the fact that he had been duped before but that this time it had been done by a half-caste…The thought laid hold of her. Last night when he said that colour did not matter it was because he wanted her—men would say anything to get what they wanted. Life had taught her that lesson thoroughly. Last night he and God were colour-blind; now there was, as before, only God.

  She surprised Murphy by rising abruptly and saying, ‘I’ll go now. Don’t come…I’ll be all right,’ and adding calmly, ‘If you are questioned you’d better say you were in with us till ten o’clock. And Hassan too…we must all say the same thing, mustn’t we?’

  They did not answer her, and she turned from them and went out of the railway carriage, and together they moved towards the door and watched her walking away with a step that had in it some quality that reminded them strongly of James. And as she walked, Rose Angela herself had the strange feeling inside her, in some depths where no white mind could reach, that most of her father walked with her.

  Murphy watched her until she disappeared from view, then he turned to Pete. ‘What do you make of it?’

  Pete shook his head.

  ‘She was ready for the high jump then, all right. Think she’ll be all right now?’

  Pete nodded.

  ‘Can’t understand the guv’nor taking notice of them letters, can you? He don’t take no notice of what nobody says as a rule. What do you think we best do?’

  Pete brought his eyes from where in imagination they were following Rose Angela, and said briefly, ‘Tell him about Hassan?’

  ‘Aye, that would be the best thing.’

  Murphy pulled the door of the railway carriage to, then they set off walking slowly over the sleepers—slowly, as if they did not relish coming to the end of their short journey. Murphy did not speak again until they reached the wharf, when he said, ‘What if he’s mad?’

  Pete’s answer was to indicate the door with a motion of his head, which said plainly, ‘Knock and find out.’

  Murphy knocked four times on the door, but received no answer. It took courage to go round the house and ring the front doorbell; but even this brought no response, and only when they came to the back door again and knocked once more was the studio window thrust up with a bang; and Murphy and Pete stepped back and looked up at Stanhope. No word was spoken for quite some seconds, for Stanhope’s expression froze Murphy’s tongue. He was used to hearing the guv’nor going off the deep end and to see his face become furious with sudden temper, but the man up there was not in any way connected with the guv’nor he knew. His face was white, almost livid, and he did not yell at them, as usual, with, ‘Well, what the devil do you want?’ but stood waiting for them to speak.

  In keeping with the unusual that seemed to be the order of the morning, it was Pete who spoke.

  ‘Can we have a word with you?’ he said.

  Murphy looked swiftly from Stanhope to Pete and back to Stanhope again, who asked curtly, ‘What about?’

  ‘Well’—it was Murphy starting now—‘it’s like this, guv’nor. Y’see…’ His Adam’s apple jerked swiftly and he swallowed and brought out, ‘It’s about Rose Angela.’

  ‘What about her?’ The words seemed to take their time in reaching them; they were weighed with something that chilled Murphy and curbed his ready tongue.

  ‘Well, there’s been a mistake made, guv’nor’—he dared not say ‘You have made a mistake,’ and went lamely on—‘about Hassan. The Arab fellow, y’know.’

  ‘Yes?’ This word came sharp now, like a rapier.

  ‘Well, she said you…Well…you’ve got the idea—’ Murphy hesitated. ‘It’s a bit of a mix-up, guv’nor.’

  ‘And she sent you along here to explain it away?’

  ‘No, no. But we thought you should know…’

  ‘She’s living in Holborn, isn’t she?’

  ‘Aye, she is.’

  ‘Who with?’ Again the words were heavy. Once more Murphy brought his gaze down to Pete’s. Here was a complication they hadn’t given themselves time to foresee. If they said Jimmy, one thing would lead to another and before they knew where they were they would be talking of Matt; then of last night; and the less who knew about that affair the better.

  But Murphy was not required to answer this particular question, for Stanhope threw another at him. ‘Who gave her the black eyes?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Murphy’s mouth was agape as he stared up at him. It was as if he hadn’t heard, or having heard, the question did not make sense to him.

  This pose of stupidity seemed too much for Stanhope. In a moment he became the guv’nor they recognised, only more vehement than they had ever seen him before.

  ‘Get the hell out of it, the pair of you! Get!’

  It was as if he would topple out of the window on to them with the force of his passion.

  ‘But look here, guv’nor…’

  ‘I’ll give you a minute to get going. If you aren’t gone by the time I come down I’ll throw the pair of you in the river!’ His voice rose to a yell, and before he had crashed the window down they were off the wharf, for they were too experienced to attempt to reason with anyone in the state he was in.

  ‘What do you think we’d better do?’ asked Murphy as they returned to the railway carriage.

  ‘Wait and tell him the morrer.’

  ‘But what will we tell him then?’

  ‘The lot.’

  ‘The lot?’ Murphy stopped in his stride. ‘Oh, I think we’d better see Jimmy afore doin’ that.’

  ‘Aye,’ Pete assented with a nod.

  ‘Will we go now?’

  Again Pete nodded.

  ‘But how about taking a look round first in case he’s…’ Murphy did not add ‘come up’. And once more Pete’s head inclined agreement, and without further words they walked along the river bank, their eyes turned towards the water.

  Chapter Fourteen: Colour

  The quietness was still with Rose Angela as she mounted the stairs to James, but it was now a frozen quietness, and she knew that when it melted there would be pain to bear greater than ever she had known before.

  James’ eyes, burning in their great sockets, fastened on her from the moment she opened the door, and his voice came as a hollow, cracked whisper from the bed, saying, ‘You not long.’

  ‘No.’ She went straight to him and took his hand. ‘How do you feel now?’

  ‘Oh, a lot better…heap better.’ He stared up into her face, his eyes searching hers. ‘What wrong now? Something more wrong now? They
find him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, what wrong? You been crying mightily.’

  ‘Don’t talk any more. Now lie quiet.’ She put his arms inside the clothes, then turned from him and took off her hat and coat.

  ‘Your face pain?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Rose Angela…’

  ‘Yes, dear, what is it?’ She turned at the entreaty and bent over him.

  He stared at her in silence for some time before answering, ‘I feel in here’—his hand was moving under the bedclothes with its old gesture of patting his chest—‘things not right with you…Painter…Mr Stanhope, he all right…him not mad at you staying off?’

  She had to prevent her eyelids from closing to shut out the pain, for now the quietness was melting, and it was a moment before she answered, ‘Yes, he’s all right.’

  ‘And you hear nothing about…the other one?’ James could not bring himself to pronounce the name.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes. Now don’t talk, dear; I’m going to make you a drink.’

  ‘I got to talk. It won’t make no difference, one way or other. Sit down by me.’

  She was lifting a chair to the bedside when a tap came on the door, and to her ‘Come in’ Hassan entered, and she saw immediately that he was disturbed.

  ‘You’ve heard something?’ she asked hesitantly.

  He shook his head, but said nothing, only continued to stare at her, and James called feebly, ‘Hassan! Here!’

  Hassan went to the bed and James motioned him to sit down. ‘What happen?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No sign of him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Perhaps him get back home somehow.’

  ‘No; they’re looking for him.’

  ‘You been up?’

  ‘I sent up.’

  There was silence in the room for a time until Rose Angela came to the bed with a drink for James and she said to Hassan, ‘Could you stay for a short while? I’ve got to get some oil and things.’

  He nodded, but still he did not speak to her, only stared up into her face.

  She put on her hat and coat again, and saying, ‘I won’t be more than a minute or two,’ she left the room.

  She had hardly closed the door when James hitched himself up on his pillows and said urgently, ‘Something wrong with her—something more wrong. She come in and she been cryin’ sore. You know what ’tis, Hassan?’

  Hassan looked away, and James urged, ‘If you know, you tell me—I not long for top and I want her be happy.’

  ‘Jimmy’—Hassan leant forward and took James’ hand—‘I want to marry Rose Angela. You know that, don’t you, without me telling you?’

  James stared fixedly at the Arab without answering, and Hassan went on, ‘I can make her happy. I know I can.’

  James shook his head.

  ‘I tell you I can. What have you against it? You married a white woman.’

  Again James shook his head, and his voice rose above its whispering quality, and for a moment there was the echo of the deep timbre note in it again. ‘It very wrong thing for black man marrying white woman. It bad enough for man, for him sore inside all his days, but for white woman it hell. And bigger hell for children. What you think the real reason I no let my wife know I’m here? It because I know she happy with white man. That’s as should be—colour to colour. But me…I not blaming you, Hassan, for wanting my Rose Angela, for only when fellow near death can he be wise. When life leaps inside him no man wise.’

  ‘But Rose Angela’s different…she’s not all white.’

  ‘She is’—James was sitting up now in agitation—‘she’s white. I tell you she is white.’

  ‘All right, all right, Jimmy,’ Hassan said soothingly. ‘Outside she may look more white than black, but inside she’s all you—and that’s a good thing.’

  He smiled into James’ troubled eyes, and James leant back and said between gasps, ‘You say kind things, Hassan. I always like you, but I near death and I must speak truth. I no want my Rose Angela marry you. Anyway, the…’ James looked down on his hands, almost transparent in their thinness, and went on lamely, ‘I think she loves painter fellow.’

  ‘Yes, and he’s turned her out.’

  Hassan had risen to his feet, his voice harsh and angry, and James’ eyes darted up his thin frame to his face. ‘What you say?’

  ‘That fellow Matt wrote and told him she was living with me, and without any evidence he believed it. That’s the kind of white god he is. And he turned her out, and she nearly threw herself…’

  Hassan pulled up too late, and James said fearfully, ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s all right. She was a bit overdone—I’m sorry I said anything. She’s all right now.’

  James bent over and gripped Hassan’s arm. ‘She try throw herself in river?’

  ‘She’s all right now. Don’t you worry.’

  ‘My God! You say don’t worry. Go after her. Don’t leave her, and bring her back.’

  ‘But she wants me to stay.’

  ‘Go now—go.’

  Hassan turned from the bed; then swung round again. ‘If I ask her and she will marry me, what then?’

  James closed his eyes. ‘I said my say, Hassan.’

  When Hassan had gone, James lay back weak and exhausted, and for some time he did not move. Only his fingers clutched and gathered up the white Marcella bedspread. After a while he moved his head to one side on his bank of pillows so that the knob of the bed should not obstruct his vision, and now he could see the three statues standing on a shelf to the side of Rose Angela’s shakedown. There was a statue of St Joseph and one of the Virgin, and another of Jesus. Years ago he had bought them at the door of the church because the man there, who said he was a brother of St Vincent de Paul, also said that many blessings went with these statues. He remembered Rose Angela, from when she was a tiny child, claiming them as hers, and they were among the few possessions she had brought here. Now, in his mind, he began to talk to the statues, as he had often done of late, but this time with added urgency. ‘You not let this come about, you not let the painter fellow believe this. You can’t do this. You not let her marry Hassan, or kill herself in river.’ He hitched himself a little farther to one side and appealed across the distance, ‘I not want to die till she fixed up right. You can understand that. Don’t let me die till she fixed up right.’

  He waited in his thinking, and a narrow shaft of sunlight, the only shaft in the day that ever found its way into the room, fell across the face of the figure of Christ, and for the moment obliterated it in light; and James became still inside in wonderment.

  He lay quiet and at peace now, watching the streak of sunlight narrow before it disappeared altogether. When it had gone he shook his head at himself. ‘Me, I imagine things. All my life I imagine things.’

  He lay staring at the statues until the drowsiness which was becoming more frequent of late took hold of him, and as he dozed off he wondered whimsically if, when he went into the long sleep, he would meet the people the statues represented.

  He did not know what he would find in the coming long sleep. Perhaps he would see God, perhaps not. Perhaps God died when the brain could function no more. Perhaps he had done his work then. But if, on the other hand, he did meet him, what then? What had he to show for his life? Drowsily he shook his head again. Only a kindness here and there…and loving. Yes, he had loved. Love had been the driving force, the force that had brought him to this way of dying. Then perhaps it had to be…perhaps he had followed the pattern cut out for him. But it did not matter either way. He allowed himself to slip farther down the bed. All that mattered was that his Rose Angela should know happiness, happiness such as he knew existed but which had escaped him. If his daughter could have this happiness, then the pattern of his life had been a good pattern; and working it out was like paying in advance for another life—Rose Angela’s life.

  Hassan guessed
that Rose Angela had gone to a little group of shops off Commercial Road, and he made for there. But as he turned the corner of the street he actually ran into her, and in her surprise at seeing him she clutched at his arm, exclaiming, ‘He’s not…?’

  ‘No, no—he’s all right. He asked me to come and help you with the basket.’

  She looked at him in disbelief. ‘What’s wrong, Hassan? There was something the matter when you came in.’

  She started to walk rapidly towards the house, and he took the oil can from her hand and said without looking at her, ‘There are two men I’d like to kill, and one’s that painter.’

  She stiffened, and he went on; ‘I must talk to you, Rose Angela. Will you come to the café for a minute?’

  She shook her head. ‘I must get home.’

  ‘Just for a minute.’

  With the appeal of his voice she turned her head towards him and said kindly, ‘You know I can’t leave him for long.’

  They were crossing the yard now, and it was empty of people, as was the dark hallway, and inside he brought her to a halt. ‘Listen just one minute, Rose Angela. Tell me, are you afraid of me?’

  ‘No, oh no, Hassan!’ Her answer was so spontaneous that it brought a smile to his face.

  ‘Thank you, Rose Angela. Do you…do you like me?’

  ‘Yes, I like you. No-one could help liking you, Hassan.’

  ‘You are not afraid of me and you like me.’ He took the basket from her hand and laid it, together with the oil can, at the foot of the stairs. Then he gathered both her cold hands in his. ‘Will you believe me when I say I can make you love me?’

  She stared into his eyes and saw there the released fire of his feelings.

  ‘Will you believe me?’

  ‘Oh, Hassan!’

  She bowed her head, and he pulled her to him. ‘I love you so much, Rose Angela, that I would give my life for you. You cannot believe it at this moment, but there would be no pain with my love as there would have been with his.’