The Menagerie

by Catherine Cookson

  At this Jessie was quite unable to hide her resentment and indignation. ‘Will!’ she cried. ‘What for?’

  He turned and faced her from the street, as, flinging her arms wide and taking in the room and its furniture, she said, ‘If this is what you call property, it won’t need a will to dispose of it—anyone can have it for the taking. As regards a will, what had my mother to leave? I have worked to keep her and this house going for years.’ Her voice rose. ‘Years! Every penny I have ever earned has gone to keep her. A will!’

  ‘Ssh! Ssh!’ Glancing up and down the street, Mr Dobson cautioned again, ‘Ssh; ssh! Now, now, don’t get upset. I know, I know.’ His voice was soothing. ‘You have been a good girl…woman,’ he substituted. ‘I just wondered. And I thought if there were legal matters to be dealt with I’d be able to help you. It’s very difficult at such times for a woman, especially a woman all on her own. Anyway, I am always here to help you; you have just to call on me as did your dear mother. I will look in tomorrow after the service, Jessie, there may be something I can do. Goodnight. Goodnight, my dear, and the good Lord strengthen you.’

  Unable to speak a word in farewell, Jessie closed the door and stood for a moment with her back pressed tight against it. An anger, new to her placid nature, was flaring through her. The scheming old hypocrite! But for his being away for the past few days she would never have known what was in that box. Quickly she went through the kitchen and up the stairs, and once in her own narrow room she took the precaution of putting the bolt on the door—Ma Broadhurst would be over any minute, for she had insisted on sleeping in the house with her, and with the privilege of an old neighbour she might walk in on her even here.

  Pulling the tin trunk from the corner to where the dim bulb of the centre light shone down on it, she took from the top drawer of the stained wooden chest the key, and for the sixth time in as many hours she knelt by the trunk and opened it. First she took out a small wooden box, and moved with her finger a number of golden sovereigns. They looked dull and naked out of their wrappings—each one had been carefully wrapped against its rattling. Seventy-eight, there were. They must have lain in this box for the last thirty years, and likely many years before that. She knew from where they had originally come, for her father had often said that her grandmother, who was an old skinflint, had left a bit, even though when he had tackled her mother she had always protested that there had been only sufficient to bury the old lady.

  Once again Jessie lifted out the old clothes, vests, knickers, petticoats and woolly things, all heavy with the smell of camphor, and there beneath them lay the notes, rows of them. The one-pounds neatly stacked in tens; the ten-shillings also in bundles of ten. Twenty-two bundles of one-pound notes and thirty-four bundles of ten-shilling notes. Three hundred and ninety pounds in notes, and seventy-eight pounds in gold. Four hundred and sixty-eight pounds. And the sovereigns were worth double.

  Where the notes had come from she could only guess—the pinching and saving of a lifetime, for there had been no compensation when her father died, only the money that the pitmen themselves had subscribed and the bit from the lodge. Together, they had come to nearly two hundred pounds, and she remembered having almost to fight to make her mother use it towards the housekeeping. Always she herself had turned her earnings over to her mother, who would then begrudgingly dole out a few shillings to her. And right up to the last six weeks Mrs Honeysett herself had seen to the paying of bills and the ordering of food. Everything except food was bought from the store through clubs. Jessie had never been able, during any part of her life, to walk into the shop and buy herself an article of clothing, and had it not been for Larry Broadhurst, never would she have been able, even if she had had the time, to move outside the town. And all the time her mother was hoarding this money. Her father, for years and years after leaving the pit, had gone without his baccy, and rarely, like other men, would he have a shilling in his pocket, except when a mate would slip him something.

  In this moment it was anger for her father that was tightening Jessie’s muscles. Her hands clenched on the bundles of notes—her mother would have given every penny of this to that fawning little hypocrite. ‘Promise,’ she had said. Well, she hadn’t promised. But even if she had, she knew she would not have kept the promise.

  It was evident now that Mr Dobson hadn’t known what to expect. Her mother had likely held him attentively to her over the years with promises and hints of benefiting the church and incidentally himself. Before she would allow him to touch a penny of it, she would put the whole lot in the fire. She took the money out of the trunk and locked it in the top drawer. Out on the landing she stopped for a moment and looked towards the closed door behind which lay the trimmed, bloated remains of her mother.

  Then on a deep intake of breath she turned away and went downstairs.

  Chapter Four: Pam

  ‘You don’t mind me talking about Jessie, do you, Larry?’

  ‘No,’ said Larry, banging the door of his clean locker shut. ‘Carry on.’

  He spoke truly when he said he didn’t mind hearing Jessie’s name mentioned. Now that Willie was in the running for her the burden on his own conscience was eased a little, and the longer Willie talked, the less time it gave him to think. It was six days since Pam Turnbull had come back, and there was no immediate sign of her going. Willie had tentatively informed him that Mrs Turnbull was bad…something wrong with her inside, she was going to have an operation. And he had added, ‘I know how you feel, but that girl’s not worth a second thought. She’s no good, not to you or anybody else.’

  Now Willie went on talking of Jessie. ‘She’s not the same, if you know what I mean. I think she should see a doctor. Me ma says so an’ all. All the pictures are down, every damn one of them…and she’s given a mountain of stuff to the ragman. Old-fashioned, but good. And the coffin was hardly out of the house, me ma said, when Sam Collet from Bog’s End came with his lorry and loaded all kinds on it. The cottage looks as bare as a coot’s backside.’

  They entered the lamp house and picked up their lamps and tallies, and when they were in the yard again and making for the steep iron steps that led to the cage, Larry, knowing that some remark was expected and awaited of him, muttered, ‘Seems a damn good job to my mind, ridding the house of that clutter.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Willie, eagerly picking up the threads again. ‘Some of the stuff should have gone, I’ll admit, but she’s clearing everything out. I called in on me way down the day, and the minister was there. I don’t like that old fella, I nearly give him a mouthful. You wouldn’t believe it, man, but he was almost cursing her because she had got rid of the texts. But the funny thing about it was, she didn’t act a bit like you would expect, she wasn’t nervous or anything. She didn’t give in like she usually did to her mother. No, she looked him in the eye and stood her ground. It was fair surprising to see her standing up to him. There was another bloke with him, the new minister or some such. He’s taking Dobson’s place. He looked a decent enough fellow…youngish. He didn’t open his mouth.’

  Sitting on their hunkers, knee to knee, their bait tins swinging from their hands, they took the swift and sickening descent of the cage in silence, and when they stepped out into the narrow roadway their silence continued, for all about them were men, silent, too, for the most part, and all hurrying with the eagerness of lovers towards the coalface. Only when the shift had actually begun would the tongues become released.

  The talk today was divided between two subjects—the strike and the cup tie. Twenty-six thousand miners in the Doncaster area had come out on strike three days previously in support of the strikers in the Markham main colliery—and the fight for the Cup was two days ahead. The only man on the shift who had a ticket was Willie, and his answers to the others’ chaffing were today unusually erratic, for his mind was on Jessie. When he’d discovered how he stood with Larry last Saturday, things had seemed plain sailing—he had even given the match the slip to come back and start �
��getting in’ with her. But from when he had seen her, all kinds of difficulties had come his way—her mother dying like that, then the funeral—he hadn’t been able to give her an inkling of what he was after. Well, the way was clear now, and if Newcastle won, every penny would go on the ring. It would that. Last Saturday he had intended asking her to come up to London with him to see the cup tie. By, he had thought, I’ll give her a day…she’ll enjoy herself. But now, although his interest was still with Newcastle, the great day could not monopolise his mind entirely; and this Willie found disturbing. He wanted to go on talking to Larry about Jessie, but Larry’s face looked tight and his eyes were narrowed to slits, as if to shut out the dark world about him.

  Unable to find release in listening to the others, Larry was endeavouring to shut the sound of their voices from his mind, and as the shift went on and on the minutes became eternities filled with anger and questioning and pain, and when at ten past five he saw the light of day slashing at the rough walls as the cage rose to the surface, he sincerely thanked God for the release. This particular shift, more than any other this week, had been pure hell. It was hard to say which was more tired, his mind or his body; his body was aching inside and out, but the fever in his mind overlaid the aching. He wasn’t saying now as he had been saying with every blow he had struck during the last seven hours, ‘I’ve got to see her’, but he was saying grimly, ‘What good will come out of it if I do? It’s done…and if I don’t watch meself I’m going to crack. I should have gone as I intended last week…But it’s not too late even yet. I could tell Bradley tomorrow, and tell them at home tonight.’

  Parting as usual at the top of the street, Willie went down one back lane and Larry branched down the other. There were women here and there at their gates. Some said, ‘Hello there, Larry’; some said, ‘Another over?’; some said nothing. Among the latter group were three Podger women, mother, daughter and daughter-in-law. They lived a little way below on the opposite side of the lane, and their back garden was railless and had the appearance of a miniature rubbish dump, covered with weeds. These selfsame weeds had caused his father to make a strong protest last year, for his garden-loving soul had been outraged at the neglect and the flying weed seeds. The protest had been verbal and strong, and had been answered more strongly still by the Podger men. Larry and Jack coming to their father’s defence had evened the affair, with the result that the two families no longer hailed each other. Larry, passing the fixed stare of the women, knew exactly what they were thinking, and when he got inside the house he thought, Damn them. Laughing up their sleeves. And their malicious glances seemed to set the seal on his decision, for when Jinny, coming into the scullery to meet him, said ‘Hello, there,’ he replied ‘Hello,’ and added, ‘Is there anybody in, Mother?’

  ‘Lena and your da,’ she said. ‘Why?’

  He took off his coat and hung it on the back of the door before saying, ‘About the money in the store—you remember I asked you on Saturday—can you get it out for me by the weekend? I’m leaving.’

  ‘Leaving!’ The word sprang out and left her lips vibrating like a tweaked wire.

  ‘I’ve got to go.’ He turned his back on her.

  ‘Oh, lad…don’t! She’ll be gone soon…she can’t stay. Emily King says she thinks they’re flying back Monday. It’s only a day or so more…don’t go, Larry.’

  ‘I’ve got to go. I was going in any case.’

  She watched him go out, and her eyes followed him as he went up the stairs, then bringing her pinny to her mouth she bit on it.

  ‘Is that Larry come in?’ Lottie, in a red jumper and an old-fashioned green skirt, came laughing into the scullery. Jinny had not included her when Larry had asked who was in…Lottie in or out was of little consequence.

  ‘Be quiet, you,’ Jinny barked at her. And Lottie, apologising with word, look, and manner, said, ‘Oh, all right, Jinny. I’m sorry.’ And blinking rapidly, she went into the kitchen again to continue talking to Lena in an endeavour to make Lena like her, so she wouldn’t ever again ask for her to be sent away.

  Jinny, following her into the kitchen, took a buff-coloured envelope off the mantelpiece and going up the stairs to Larry’s door she said softly, ‘There’s a letter here for you.’ Then turning the handle she went in.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He was pulling a clean shirt over his head, and she put the letter on the desk. While still buttoning the shirt he looked down on it. The address was typed, that meant it was from the correspondence school. Well, that was finished.

  ‘Won’t you wait, Larry?’

  ‘I can’t. I’m telling Bradley tomorrow. I’ll be off next week. I’ve had it in mind for some time.’

  She stood quiet for a moment before saying, ‘Where do you think of going?’

  He tucked his shirt into his trousers. ‘Italy.’

  ‘Italy!’ She stared at him for a moment longer, then went out.

  She had yelled a lot in her time about making them all alike, but in her heart she knew that when Larry left home, and this time of his own accord, he would never come back, and the breach made in the family circle, which covered a radius of six miles, to Hylton on one side and Birtley on the other, would be such that not one of the others would be able to close it. For in a secret recess of her heart, into whose chamber she allowed herself only infrequent visits, was locked a passionate love for this son. The only clever one of her brood; the only fine set-up one of her brood; the only one of her brood who at odd times ever thought of her as a woman, like that time when he had torn up Frank’s old topcoat which she wore around her when sitting waiting for their coming in from the night shift or getting up to see them out on the fore shift. Three Christmases ago it was, when he had bought her that blue dressing gown, padded all over and fit for a queen, and she had almost cried when she had had to cut nearly a foot off the bottom. Yet she rarely wore it, thinking it much too good and that it would be a shame to muck it up for everyday wear. She did, however, wear it for him, but for her husband’s and younger son’s reception she went to the trouble of putting on all her clothes.

  Dressed now for outdoors, Larry was about to leave the room when he remembered the letter. He reached for it on his way to the door and, having ripped the end off, he pulled out a single sheet of paper which bore the date and two words: The Barn.

  Once, many years ago, he had taken cramp while swimming in the river below Durham. It had been a frightening experience. The cramp had attacked his legs, and the pain had brought fear with it, and the fear had caused heat to flood his body even though his leg felt dead and cold. Somehow he had reached the bank and lain for what seemed to him hours, face downwards, gasping for breath. Now he felt like that again, as if he were drowning, and the fear was on him, and he gasped as he stood staring at the sheet of paper.

  When he went downstairs he did not go into the kitchen but into the scullery. Jinny was taking a covered dish from the gas oven, and he said, his voice steady, ordinary and low, ‘I won’t have it now. You can leave it out…I’ll warm it up when I come in. Don’t wait up…so long.’

  She made no protest. ‘So long,’ she said and watched him walk down the garden path to the back gate and into the lane, upwards towards the fells, not downwards towards the town, and she said to herself, ‘Now why?’

  The barn was derelict; holes gaped in its roof, and the timbers at the sides had been torn off here and there by wood hunters. It stood within a few yards of an even more derelict cottage. Roofless, with only its outer walls standing, it gaped starkly to the heavens. Both buildings showed signs of target practice, and both appeared as a scar on the bright, budding green of the copse under which they sheltered. They were a good three miles’ walk from Fellburn and a mile from the nearest main road, which touched Fatfield and led to Chester-le-Street.

  Sometimes the barn was invaded by a scrounging party of boys, but mostly it was the haunt of lovers in the evening, and men of the road at night. As regards the tenancy of the courtin
g couples, it was first come first served. But in the afternoon or early evening, on any day except Sundays or holidays, you could almost be sure of finding the barn deserted. It was here that Larry and Pam had met during the first secret weeks of their lovemaking, and it had remained a rendezvous through their courtship.

  The sweat running in his oxters and his shirt clammy on his back, he now approached the place which he had thought never to see again except in the torment of his dreams, and as he came to the copse his pace slowed until it stopped. The thud of his heart pounded against his ribs and reverberated through his ears until he could hear nothing but the agitated beats. He passed his hand over his mouth, then pulled at his collar, stretching his neck out of it. There was no anger in him, only a longing and a feeling of excitement, but as he moved on, more slowly now, he endeavoured to work up his fury, telling himself that at the sight of her he would become mad, he would kill her. He moved round the back of the barn. There were gaps in the wood on that side and if he could see her before she saw him it would, he hoped, give him something of an advantage. But he could see no sign of anyone through the holes. With a weighed step as if walking through snow he made his way to the front, and to the big doorless gap, and here he paused a moment before stepping over the threshold. The beats of his heart were all converging in his neck, swelling it and pressing out the sinews like muscles. He made a small movement forward, and there she was, standing in the far corner. The blood in his veins was no longer blood but water. His body was without support, he had to grab wildly at his anger, forcing it into his eyes and his thrusting lower lip. And as she came slowly towards him he found it easier to hold it, and thrashed himself into a state of vituperation. The nerve of her, daring to send for him. She’d be sorry she had made that mistake, by God she would, when he had finished with her. She had walked right into his hands, miles away from anyone. He’d spoil that polish, that complacency. He took in the fact that she was dressed plainly as usual, but he knew that it was a more expensive plainness than ever before. Her face looked paler, smaller, and her eyes larger, and altogether she looked older, much older. Thirty, not twenty.