The Menagerie

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The Menagerie Page 10

by Catherine Cookson


  Once on high ground where the wind was fresh, she had her work cut out to keep the skirt of her dress down and her hat on her head. But there was no-one about to laugh at her efforts today. It was safe to say at this moment that ninety per cent of the community of the Tyne had their eyes glued to the television sets, or their ears to the wireless, but tomorrow, weather permitting, the fells would be like a park with strollers.

  Knott’s Corner was about twenty minutes’ walk from the house…where the main road touched the fells. From it was a good view of the town sprawling in the valley between its two grim guardian pits, and to the right, as if rearing its head out of the mire, was Brampton Hill, its large houses clearly visible from this point in their wooded surroundings. A hawthorn-hedged lane led from the main road at Knott’s Corner onto the fell top. It formed a breakwater to the wind. But gaps showed in it here and there as if to afford the strollers a quicker access to the open ground. It was when nearing one such gap that Lottie saw the car. Its interior seemed to light up the narrow lane, and she stopped dead. The wind making a fresh attempt to dislodge her hat at that moment caused her to totter sideways in an effort to hold it on, and in doing so she found herself looking into the front of the car, where sat Pam Turnbull, and she was smoking.

  Lottie stared, her mouth slightly open. Jinny didn’t hold with women who smoked. She wouldn’t let Lena smoke in the kitchen where there was food about, or cook with a cigarette in her mouth. But eeh, didn’t Pam Turnbull look lovely…smart, like the pictures that were in the books in Doctor Kent’s surgery.

  When Lottie saw Pam suddenly open the door and step out into the road she moved quickly out of sight away from the gap. She didn’t want Pam to see her—Pam would think she was spying on her. Then as Pam’s voice came to her, she felt herself stretching. Her head went up and back, and her ears seemed to extend in an effort to make sure she was hearing aright. Pam was saying, ‘Larry. Larry.’

  Lottie’s hand went to her mouth, and she tried to stop herself from breathing. The voice from behind the hedge said, ‘I thought…Oh, it doesn’t matter—you’re here. Darling, I’ve been waiting an hour all but five minutes.’

  Lottie pressed her mouth tightly to still the loud sound of surprise that jumped to her lips when Larry’s voice said, ‘I got involved. I had to go over with Mum and Dad to Florence’s. Oh, my God, it was awful…the bickering. Why don’t they let people do what they like? They’re going to Australia, the whole lot of them. I’m sorry you had to wait. Oh, my darling.’ There was a pause. Then Larry’s voice, different now, was saying, ‘Come on.’

  Lottie’s amazement would have been comical to an onlooker, for her widened eyes and mouth were stretching her long features still further, until her whole face looked like an elongated ‘O’. That was Larry. With extreme caution she turned slowly and looked through the hedge, and there they were not two feet away from her. If either of them had turned and glanced sideways, they couldn’t have but seen her through the thin sprinkling of green on the bushes. With startled eyes she watched Pam Turnbull look swiftly up and down the road, then press herself close to Larry saying: ‘Kiss me again—quick.’

  She watched Larry’s arms swiftly round her, and when she saw his mouth cover the lips held up to his as if he would devour them, her head drooped as if she were witnessing an indecent action, and shame that such an action would have aroused went through her, until from her goose-pimpled neck to the rim of her hair she looked aflame. Not until she heard the car move did she raise her eyes—and then it was gone. She stood peering through the hedge for a long while before turning and retracing her steps, and with each she thought, ‘Eeh, Larry. And she’s married.’

  Stopping suddenly and staring in her perplexity towards the town, she muttered, ‘It’s wrong. Mrs King says the man’s nice. Larry can’t have her, he’s doing a bad thing.’ Her mind became clouded and her thoughts fuzzy, and she could quite easily have let the matter slip and be lost in the confused jumble that formed the greater part of her thinking, but she hung on to it, trying to straighten this bad thing out. Larry was her world. She had gone to her room and laughed and cried her relief when she knew he wasn’t going away; she had done it quietly so’s Jinny wouldn’t hear, for Jinny had been short all the week, and was making on Larry’s going was just like anyone else’s. Yet she knew that Jinny was upset…but not so upset, she imagined, as she herself was, for hadn’t Jinny all the others, while she had only Larry. No-one was as kind to her as Larry, and she was afraid of no-one’s displeasure as she was of his. Larry never said sharp or hurtful things to her, yet all the combined upbraiding of the family could not touch her as did a reproving glance from his eyes or his voice saying ‘Aunt Lot’, like that. If Larry had gone away today, as he said he was going to do, she would have been upset and in a state, but it wouldn’t have felt like this.

  She was incapable of describing to herself how she felt. She could not say that because her god was a god no longer, but as other men, she had been deprived of a standard wherewith to judge within the limits of her mentality. When he had deserted Jessie her world had rocked, but had steadied itself again as the sanctity of the approaching marriage had shone a purifying light around him. That it wasn’t to Jessie he was to be married had remained a constant ache, yet because it concerned Larry, the wonder that all marriages held for her was magnified a thousandfold. But now he was carrying on, and with this same Pam Turnbull after all she had done…and her married, and to a nice man.

  She moved on, slowly now—there was no joy left in the day. The nice walk was ended. She was not thinking as she had done on the outward journey, I wonder what Jinny’ll bring back? Perhaps some prawns—the bus stopped opposite Tiffley’s in the market place and they always had piles of prawns. Or perhaps she’d bring tripe, and they’d have it done in the oven for their supper. Tripe and onions and new oven-bottom cake! Her mouth had watered and she had given a little skip. Then remembering Jinny’s caution that outside she must behave herself, she had given a hitch to her cape, and walked for a dozen or so steps with studied, sedate primness…But that had been before she had reached Knott’s Corner.

  She was now within five minutes’ walk of home and at the juncture of the paths that led, one to her own quarter, one straight down to the market place and the centre of the town, and one going directly left to the disreputable Bog’s End, when she stopped again. She didn’t want to go home, not yet anyway, until she could be sure she wouldn’t split on Larry. She mustn’t do that or there would be murder in the house. And Jinny would go mad and Frank wouldn’t stand for it. He’d have no nonsense like that, would Frank. But she knew that her tongue had dominion over her, and that she had no power to check her words once they started flowing, and she was worried.

  A dog barked on the Bog’s End path and she saw it in the distance coming racing towards her. She liked dogs, little ones…not like Willie’s Bill. Oh, he was a holy terror was Willie’s Bill. But this one was little and brown and soft.

  As the spaniel puppy came panting and yapping to her feet she stooped down unafraid and patted it, whereupon it went into a frenzy and rolled onto its back with joy. She looked down on it laughing gaily—the effervescence of the puppy seemed to have the power to sweep away her trouble for the moment—and like a mother with a child, she lifted it up and hugged the wriggling, squirming animal to her, laughing gleefully when it licked at her face.

  ‘Now, mam, you mustn’t let her mess you up.’

  Trying to control the capers of the dog she turned to where the voice came from, and as she saw its owner her hold on the puppy slackened, and the dog, for its own preservation, clung to her cape, and in a moment both were on the grass.

  ‘Here! Here!’ The man silenced the yapping animal with a sharp slap, and picking up the cape, he handed it to Lottie.

  ‘It’s sorry I am, mam…I hope she hasn’t done it no harm.’

  ‘No, no.’ Lottie’s voice was high. ‘It’s only an old thing. Jinny’s been goin
g to burn it for years.’

  ‘It maybe is, mam, but it becomes you.’ The man’s eyes held covert laughter, and he screwed them up in appearing to consider her before continuing: ‘I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?’

  For the second time that afternoon, Lottie blushed; not only her face but the whole of her body felt the surge of blood. She said softly, ‘I like to listen to you.’

  ‘That’s nice of you, mam, very nice of you. You appreciate good music; it isn’t everybody that does.’

  Emotion engulfing her, Lottie let her gaze dwell on the dog. It was running round in circles now. Perhaps it was the remembered feel of the fur or the attraction of the stale mixture of cheap scent that had emanated from it that checked its galloping, but stop it did, and giving a surprising leap for so small an animal it snapped at the cape dangling from Lottie’s agitated hands.

  ‘Away wi’ you!’ cried the man. ‘Drop it, you divil! Drop it, I say.’

  But it was Lottie who dropped the cape, not the dog, and before the man could lay his hands on it the puppy was away, scrambling down the path dragging the bedraggled fur after it.

  Her hands held to her mouth, in great distress, Lottie watched her precious garment being trailed over the dirt and the frantic efforts of the man to retrieve it, and not until the dog, the cape, and the man disappeared from her sight did she give a startled, agitated cry. Taking to her heels with the agility of a girl, only slightly more erratic, she fled after them down the pathway, running the whole length of its twisting five hundred feet until she reached the bottom.

  Gasping and panting, she came upon the man. He had the cape in his hands, and she could see that it was rent its full length in at least two places. The man’s polite, easygoing manner was gone, he began stamping around, crying, ‘I’ll murder you! I will. Come here, you damn brat.’

  Then, on seemingly catching sight of Lottie, he came to her, and his manner was soft again. ‘I’m sorry to the heart, I am, mam. But look. Look’—he pointed to her—‘don’t you worry, I’m a dab hand with me fingers—it isn’t only the fiddle I can play. Let me get a needle and thread into me hands and I’ll make it as good as new for you.’

  Lottie lifted her distressed eyes from the garment that was, for her, the epitome of gentility. It lay across the man’s hands, not only moth-eaten now, but a lacerated thing. Her face crumpled pitifully. ‘Could you?’ she asked in a small voice.

  ‘I can, I can; I’m as good as me word in all things. Don’t distress yourself, mam. And I’ll kill that animal stone dead before your eyes.’

  ‘No, no! Oh, no, please. Oh, don’t hurt it. But if you could do something to me cape…mend it.’

  ‘I can, I can. Would you care to step in a minute…look, over there.’ He pointed past the allotments to where an old Gypsy caravan stood on the railway embankment. ‘And while I’m doing it you’ll have a cup of tea, for all the trouble me and mine have caused you this beautiful afternoon. Come on, come on. I was never so happy as at this moment to know I’ve rented this fine place to entertain you in your distress.’

  For a moment even the thought of the cape was wiped from Lottie’s mind. She was being asked to have tea with the fiddler in his house, and he spoke so beautifully to her, and treated her as nobody else had ever done, not even Larry. With each moment she was feeling more like her idea of a lady. Perhaps he’d even play to her.

  The joy of being a recipient of any great honour comes only once in a lifetime. All the events of the day were forgotten; Lottie’s being became alight and the reflection was seen on her face. It was the fiddler’s answer. As if he were escorting unexpected royalty, he walked deferentially a little to the front and to the side of her with one arm outstretched towards the caravan, the other hugging the cape. And with the air of royalty, Lottie followed.

  Jessie had looked in Binns’ and countless other shops in Newcastle and decided against getting herself anything today. On leaving Fellburn her resolve had been high and forceful—she was going to buy herself a complete rig-out. Let them think it was out of the insurance money or what they liked. It had already been prophesied, she knew, that she would run herself into so much debt she wouldn’t get out of it in a hurry. Seeing the new things coming in yesterday, Mrs King had said, with the licence she thought her motherliness and age permitted, ‘I’d go steady, lass. It’s all right getting a bit on the hire, but you can overdo it. And don’t I know it.’ No-one had suspected that she had paid outright for the furniture in the kitchen—that is, no-one except Mr Dobson. If he had dared Mr Dobson would have attacked her openly. He knew there had been money in that box, but he knew he was helpless to prove it. How could he prove that a woman who had for years accepted charity from her neighbours in the way of meals, and very often money, had been storing up a hoard, and had used it as a power to draw his attention and prayers? He would come out of it badly if he tried, and he knew it.

  Although, because of her sufferings at her mother’s hands, Jessie would have fought him to the last breath for the money that was rightly hers, she was glad and relieved that he was leaving Fellburn, for beneath her newfound courage she was nevertheless afraid of him and what his hate of her might give rise to.

  But now her earlier high resolve had dwindled to ‘There’s always another day; I’ll come and look round again; I’ll find something that I want.’

  It was while these thoughts were occupying her mind that she cut through a side street towards the bus stop and came upon ‘Madame Fonyer’s’. In Madame Fonyer’s window reposed a suit, with a long coat to match, together with the hat, gloves, bag, and rolled umbrella. There was no price attached to any of these articles, nor was there anything else in the window. Jessie stood staring at the symphony of browns. That was the kind of thing she would like, the kind of clothes she had dreamed of. But they wouldn’t fit her, at least, she didn’t think so.

  Her doubting eyes lifted over the curtain that was hanging from a shining brass rail around the window, and she could see that the shop was empty. Half her indecision not to buy anything today had been because she was afraid to face the smart pressing saleswomen in the big shops. But this was a small shop, tiny almost…but good class—too good class for her, she could see that. She just wanted something a bit out of the ordinary, away from the store type. But that was a lovely brown.

  Before she had allowed herself to think further, she had tentatively opened the door and stepped on the deep pile carpet, and as she did so a woman emerged from a curtained doorway.

  She was a small woman, fat and dark, and dressed in black, and she resembled Mrs Broadhurst so closely as to be her sister—that is, until she opened her mouth.

  ‘Good afternoon, madam. Can I help you?’

  The broken English made Jessie regret her impulsive entry. She would never be able to afford anything here—she wasn’t going to throw the money away. ‘The suit in the window,’ she said. ‘Could I price it please?’

  ‘Oh that.’ The woman looked Jessie over, her small bright eyes playing on her shoulders, her bust, and her hips. ‘It would never fit you, madam, it is only a thirty-eight hip.’ She shook her head. ‘It is such a pity. You have a fine figure, allow me to say so…you would dress well.’ She lifted her finger as one would to a child, and continued, ‘And I have the very thing that would fit you. The very thing, fortunately.’

  ‘But I only wanted…’

  ‘All right, all right.’ The little woman raised both of her hands shoulder high. ‘Look at it, madam, that is all. If you do not like it there will be no harm done. None…none.’ Madame’s smile broadened. ‘None in the wide world. I like my clients to return, and all of them return, year following year…the people who like to look well without having their pockets drained. Will you step this way?’

  As in a daze, Jessie stepped that way, and beyond the curtain Madame pointed to a Louis XIV armchair in gilt and faded rose. ‘Be comfortable,’ she said. ‘Let us enjoy ourselves, eh?’ Whereupon she pushed open the sliding door of a
cupboard which took up the complete side of one wall, and her hand went straight to a dark, dove-coloured costume, its lapels edged with gunmetal grey, and bringing it to Jessie she laid it across her knees. ‘Feel,’ she said, pushing the material into her hands. ‘Beautiful, yes?’

  ‘Yes. Yes it is.’ Jessie gazed hungrily down on the suit, and Madame Fonyer gazed at her.

  Jessie’s eyes lifted to the Frenchwoman, and she said softly, ‘But the price?’

  The Frenchwoman stared into the face before her—part of her life’s work had been to study people. Certainly she owed her exclusive and very successful business to her capacity to judge and judge correctly. Before her she saw a woman with a figure modelled on the old Greek proportion, and clothed horribly. Certainly some women could get clothes off the peg to fit them; this one, never, unless it was an exclusive and expensive peg. And the woman’s face…it was intriguing in that it showed so much purity and pain. Madame Fonyer had lost her husband in the first war and two sons in the second. She knew what pain was. But there were varying kinds of pain. This woman’s face recalled the child they had brought to her house in Marseilles. She was fifteen and had been in the hands of a German soldier; the same look was here. She leaned forward until her eyes were on a level with Jessie’s. She did not mean her pocket to suffer through sentimentality, but she decided to be kind, and she smiled into Jessie’s face. ‘I would like to dress you, madam. Try what I will show you. If it is too much for your pocket, then’—she shrugged her shoulders—‘I will have enjoyed myself, and so will you.’

  Never before in Jessie’s narrow life had she come across anyone of Madame Fonyer’s personality. Suddenly she was filled with a recklessness. Her whole body relaxed, and she returned the smile, and Madame Fonyer’s plump white hands shot out, and she touched both of Jessie’s cheeks with a sharp uplifting tap. Whereon both women laughed, and Jessie thought a surprising thought, There were other kinds of living. You could get over and forget lots of things if your days were filled with people like this one here.

 

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