The Menagerie

by Catherine Cookson

  The thought that Lena was to be saddled with such another as Mary Tollet aroused a spark of pity in him, and he said, ‘She didn’t mean that. And who can tell anyway at this stage what a child’s going to turn out like? Come on, take a pull at yourself.’

  Larry’s words were meant to be soothing, but being unable to hide his real feelings for her they conveyed little sympathy and quite a lot of censure. And Lena was quick to sense this. Dragging herself up out of the chair, she faced him, and her voice, although controlled now, still held fury. ‘Take a pull at myself! Be calm, and ape the head of the house! You are calm, aren’t you? Two-bloody-faced, I’d call it, but you, Lord Almighty, would call it calm. We must all breathe, eat and sleep when our Larry says we’ve got to.’ She cast a malicious glance at Jinny, then went on, staring hard into Larry’s set face, ‘And now our Larry says I’ve got to take a pull at myself. Well, here’s one who doesn’t take orders from you. I don’t need to take a pull at meself. And why? Because I know that she, that mad bitch there’—she pointed to Lottie’s shrinking figure—‘isn’t far out. Yes, I know; I know.’ She turned on Jinny now, throwing the truth at her. ‘I’m not daft. And do you wonder at it if the bairn’s not right, looking and listening to that!’ Her arm was thrust out towards Lottie but her eyes still held Jinny’s now pitying gaze. ‘Looking and listening to her every day I was carrying. And what’s more I know all about everything. Yes, everything. How can you expect my bairn to be all right when your father was in the asylum—there’s no madness on our side. Aye, you can stare’—she nodded at Jinny—‘I know. You kept it dark, and I got to know.’

  ‘My father in the asylum?’ Jinny’s short figure was stretched taut now. ‘My father in the asylum? You’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick, lass. My father was badly shell-shocked when a bomb dropped on Palmer’s shipyard in Jarrow in the 1914 war and he was away for some time having treatment, but as for being mad, he was no more mad than you are.’

  ‘No? He had her!’ Again Lena’s arm was thrust out. ‘He had her before there was any war on, and do you mean to stand there and tell me that she’s all there?’

  It was Larry who answered this question, and angrily. ‘If you were half as wise as she is you’d be twice as intelligent as you are. And babies like Betty can happen to anyone, it’s got nothing to do with heredity.’

  ‘Oh, the clever bugger talking again!’

  The audible gasp from Jinny was more at the use of a bad word in front of a man than at Lena’s attitude towards Larry.

  ‘Lena!’ she said, stern dignity overriding her pity of the moment. ‘I’m having no language like that in this house. You’ve used enough these last few minutes to do for the day. The men don’t use it, and as long as I’m here the women won’t.’

  Lena stared back at Jinny, and a slow sarcastic smile touched her lips. ‘No bad language? Not in front of your gentleman son?’ Her voice was mocking. ‘My God! It’s laughable. He can pinch another man’s wife as soon as his back’s turned and whoring with her. No swearing! Why, I wouldn’t waste me spit on him, never mind me swearing.’

  Turning her gaze from Jinny’s tightly pressed lips to Larry’s blanched face, she laughed openly at him. ‘One at home and one away, Pam has. Good luck to her. You think you’re a clever pup, but what are you? A nowt…a sucker, a big sucker.’

  Slowly Lena left the kitchen and a silence behind her, a silence that tore at Larry, shrinking his manhood and reducing him inwardly to the lad who was always being pulled up on the carpet before the little Trojan who was his mother. Under the startled stare of her eyes he was forced to push back his shoulders. Well, it had to come out sometime. It was a wonder, knowing Lottie’s tongue, it had remained in the dark so long—he’d never had any fear of Jessie splitting. He turned to the window, saying, ‘Don’t take it like that, it can’t be helped.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ Jinny brought out the words painfully. ‘It’s wrong, you know it’s wrong. What can come of it anyway? And your father, he’ll go mad, he won’t let it go on.’

  ‘How can he stop it?’ Larry’s voice sounded flat and empty of emotion. ‘It’s nobody’s business but my own.’

  ‘You’re a fool…a fool! Do you hear!’ Her tone held half anger, half pain.

  ‘Doubtless.’

  ‘She took the other man because of his money. Do you think she’ll give that up?’

  Larry swung round from the window, and she was shocked at the glare in his eyes. It was a ferocious glare that would, she knew, not respond to reason, and as he passed her she did not try to detain him but looked after him, the lined skin of her face quivering. Then with a plop she sat down, and stared at the shining, scaly backs of her podgy hands. They were lying in the hollow of her lap, and she continued to stare at them until Lottie moved from the corner and stood near the fireplace. Then she lifted her gaze from them, and the sight of her sister seemed to galvanise her into life. Springing out of the chair, she advanced towards Lottie, who shrank back as she had done when a child, crying, ‘Aw! Jinny…aw, don’t.’ For answer, Jinny’s hand came up and caught her a blow alongside the face that sent her staggering back against the mantelpiece.

  ‘I told you I’d hammer you, didn’t I? Take that.’ Her hand descended on her sister again, on the other side of her face this time. ‘And that. All the trouble you’ve caused, you big, useless lump. By! I’ll make you remember this day.’

  As her hand caught Lottie another blow across the head, Frank and Jack appeared in the doorway. They both stood for a moment as if mesmerised, then Frank exclaimed, ‘Here, hold your hand a bit, woman. What’s up?’

  Jinny’s raised arm hovered, then dropped to her side, and she turned to her husband; and to his utter amazement she burst into tears.

  Jack looked from his mother to his aunt; then he raised his eyes to the ceiling. Directly above was his and Lena’s bedroom, and if he could believe evidence of his ears there was the sound of muffled sobbing coming from there, too. Throwing his bait tin onto the table, he took the stairs two at a time and burst in on Lena, saying, ‘What’s up, honey? What’s it all about?’

  Lena was lying across the bed, still in her outdoor things, and at his touch she turned and clung to him, crying, ‘It’s her! It’s her! I’ve always told you. And now she says Betty’s like…like Mary Tollet.’ There was no admitting now that she knew this to be the truth. She lifted her tear-ravaged face to her husband’s. ‘That’s what she said.’

  Jack, after gazing into her swimming eyes for a moment, pressed her head into his shoulder. He made no comment whatsoever, nor did his face show any surprise; but it bore a stretched look, as if his mouth was determined to pull itself away from the rest of his features. After a while he began talking, but kept his hand pressed firmly on the back of her head so that he could not see her face. ‘We had better take it to the doctor.’

  ‘I’ll not go to the clinic.’

  ‘There’s nobody asking you to go to the clinic; we’ll go to the doctor. They can do wonders these days.’ He did not add that he had no hope at all that his child would benefit from any modern wonder.

  ‘Jack.’

  ‘Yes, honey?’

  ‘I can’t stay here no more, we must get away.’

  ‘All right, all right, love. I’ll go down to the housing office as soon as I get me dinner, not that I want any. Come on now.’ He kissed her and dried her face. ‘We’ll face this thing together, eh?’

  ‘You think if there’s anything wrong it can be put right?’

  ‘Why woman—certainly.’ His voice was almost jocular. ‘Look, you lie down. Get your coat off, and I’ll bring you something up.’

  ‘Will you bring her up for her feed?’

  ‘Yes. Come on.’

  With the gentleness of a mother, he took off her shoes and drew the eiderdown over her, then went downstairs.

  His father was in the kitchen having his dinner; his mother was in the scullery; Lottie and Larry were nowhere to be seen. He wen
t and stood near his mother, but she did not look up at him, only continued to scrub the collars of the shirts before throwing them into the gas copper. Twice he made an effort to speak but seemed unable; and after a moment he walked slowly into the kitchen. His father went on eating as if he were unaware of his son’s presence, and Jack in his turn acted as if he, too, were not there. Stooping, he picked up the child. She gave off a strong smell of sick, and her napkin was soaked. He clutched at two clean napkins hanging from the brass rod, then went out of the room.

  Frank, laying down his knife and fork, rose from the table, and going to the fireplace took his pipe from the mantelpiece and knocked it on the bars, and the sound rang through the house with a hollow empty ring, as if it were vibrating in a place devoid of life.

  Chapter Seven: Emancipation

  ‘There’s something fishy about it all.’ Mrs Macintyre spoke quietly but pointedly as she took the spare needle from the heel she was turning and stuck it through her thick grey hair.

  ‘There’s nowt fishy about it.’ Willie, sitting at the corner of the table, his back half turned to his mother, bit on the thumbnail of one hand, while with the other he fondled his dog’s head.

  ‘No?’

  This monosyllable did not draw her son, but was followed by what she imagined was a telling silence, which forced her to continue. ‘Where’s she got the money from then? New furniture, new clothes—she didn’t get them all out of the insurance money. And she paid ready for the furniture. Young Ted Baker in Bygraves’ told his mother she paid cash for every article she got, and is still buying more. Ask yourself’—she turned to him—‘if you’re not supplying her with money, who is?’

  Willie’s fingers joined his thumb, and he bit savagely at them in rotation. That’s what he would like to know. As his mother said, there was something fishy—not about Jessie. No! his mind defended loudly—but there was something fishy somewhere. Yet he could see no way of getting to the bottom of it. It didn’t really matter so much to himself, but he had to satisfy his mother. Yet it did matter, because since she had got those new things Jessie was changed. Just how, he couldn’t say. He had nothing really to grumble about; things were going swimmingly. Wasn’t she going out with him the night? He had got himself worked up over asking her, but she had accepted like a shot, quiet like, and with no humming or ha-ing.

  ‘You’ve always given me your money to put by for you.’ Mrs Macintyre took the needle from her hair and concentrated her gaze upon it as she picked up the loops on the heel, but went quietly on: ‘Why couldn’t the cup-tie winnings go along with the rest? You don’t carry sixty-eight pounds around in your pocket.’

  Willie turned swiftly about. ‘How do you know what I got?’

  ‘I made it me business to find out. You’ve always told me what you got afore. Now you have a big win and you don’t.’

  ‘I gave you ten pounds,’ said Willie reproachfully.

  ‘That doesn’t matter, lad—not that I wasn’t thankful. But I knew you had money, and Jessie stocking up like that—well, I’m no fool, and I’m too old a cat to be hoodwinked by a kitten. If you’re going to set up a new house for her and buy her clothes like she’s getting and dress her up to the eyes, then I say, marry her. There’s enough scandal about the place without you causing any more.’

  It should have been perfectly easy for Willie to say, ‘I want to marry her. What do you think I’m going after her for? And I’m going to spend every penny of those winnings on a ring,’ but he knew where that would lead, for the fact that he was going to spend over fifty pounds on a ring would drive his mother frantic—the years of counting pennies had made her careful of even the farthings. He hadn’t bought the ring yet, for although Jessie was nicer to him than he had dared to imagine, he was more unsure of her now than he had been four weeks ago.

  The answer he gave to his mother was, ‘That’ll come in good time. I don’t want to rush things, her mother just dead, an’ all.’

  ‘Huh!’ Mrs Macintyre gave a derisive laugh. ‘Her mother dead. That certainly hasn’t affected Jessie. Only in one way. It’s given her scope. She’s going clean ’long to hell with show and pride.’

  ‘She’s not. I thought you liked Jessie. You always said she was too good to be treated like she was, with’—he added hesitantly, naming no names—‘one after another of them.’

  ‘She was. I did like her, but I’ve never seen such a quick change in anybody in the whole of my life. Look.’ She stood up, and folding up the sock, put it in the knitting bag hanging from the arm of the chair, and then facing her son determinedly, she went on, ‘You say you haven’t bought her those things?’

  ‘I’ve told you,’ snapped Willie.

  ‘You swear on it?’

  ‘Talk sense, Ma. Could I have bought her all that stuff for sixty pounds?’

  ‘No, you couldn’t. But you’ve had five pounds clear a week for yourself since you were demobbed, and that’s nearly nine years ago. And you don’t bet all that away, and there’s hardly a week passes but you have a win of some kind. I know’—she pressed her hand out towards him—‘I get me share, but you can’t spend all you’ve got left.’

  Can’t I? thought Willie, turning and looking down at the table once more. That’s all you know. He had never dared tell her what he put on horses, dogs, and pools during the course of a week.

  ‘And you swear you haven’t bought her those things?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve told you.’ His placid features were screwed up in annoyance.

  ‘Then’—Mrs Macintyre brought her hands together, and held them tightly against her waistline—‘it’s as Emily King says.’

  Willie waited, but when his mother did not immediately divulge what Mrs King had said, he turned to her, saying, ‘Well, come on, out with it. What does Ma King say now?’

  ‘Well, you’d better know sooner than later—somebody’s sure to tell you. That new parson fellow, Mr Ramsey from the chapel, he’s been in there twice every week since her mother died.’

  Willie stared for some moments at his mother in dumbfounded surprise, then he cried, ‘My God! Trust women! Why, Mr Dobson was never off the doorstep and nobody accused him of keeping Mrs Honeysett.’

  ‘This one’s not like Mr Dobson. Old Dobson was like a professional beggar—he went where he could get a free meal, or a backhander. This one’s got money, they say, and he’s all la-di-da. He’s making arrangements to send the bairns from six Bog’s End families to Shields for a week in the summer holidays, and standing all the expenses. But in spite of that he’s finding he can’t buy the members. Some of them are getting their backs up…Mrs King for one. She says it’s like listening to blasphemy to hear him preaching. And tell me this: why, when Jessie’s never been inside the chapel door for years, should she be going now, all in her fine toggery? Tell me that. No, lad, there’s something fishy, and you’d better find it out now.’ As she turned away from the sight of his troubled face, she left one final weight on his mind: ‘If it isn’t you, it’s him, and you know best which it is.’

  Some minutes later the clatter of dishes in the kitchen brought Willie to himself, and as if awakening from sleep he shook his head. It was fantastic. What would they concoct next? Women were terrible creatures—they turned on their own like wild animals. Jessie being kept! Why, it was almost laughable. Now if it had been one of the Podger girls, or Rene Fenton, or anyone else about the place…but Jessie. Women! He moved his head slowly, and as he did so the dog nuzzled his hand, currying for his attention, and he said, ‘Aye, all right’ and rose and took the lead from a hook by the corner of the mantelpiece. It was now ten minutes to six, and he reckoned if he walked for half an hour he’d feel better.

  With the dog pulling on the lead, he went through the scullery, but said no word to his mother, nor she to him—she had, as she said to herself, given him enough to set him thinking.

  Out in the lane, he was walking past Jessie’s back door when he pulled Bill to a stop. The door was ajar, which w
as odd, for she never left her door open. Tugging at the dog, he went towards it, and pushing it further open still he looked up the yard, and there, within the kitchen, he saw her, standing with her back to the window.

  It took some little persuasion and force to get Bill into the yard, for he was not going to be deprived of his walk without making a protest, and the scuffling he made brought Jessie to the door.

  ‘Hello, Willie,’ she said. ‘I got in early; Miss Barrington let me off. Poor Bill.’ She stooped and patted the dog. ‘Were you taking him for his walk?’

  ‘Yes; and I saw your door open.’ He looked at her questioningly.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Noakes came the back way for the National Savings. I forgot to close it after her. Come on in…come on in, Bill.’ She urged the dog over the threshold, and, as she closed the door behind him and Willie, she added, ‘I’m having all my visitors at once…Mr Ramsey’s just called.’

  Willie moved slowly into the kitchen, and a tall, thin young man put a half-empty cup of tea on the table and rose from his chair. ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘Hello,’ said Willie.

  ‘So this is Bill…I’ve heard of Bill. Hello boy.’ With both hands he rumpled the dog’s head, and Bill, as was most unusual with strangers, responded by grabbing the minister’s cuff in his great teeth and playfully growling.

  ‘You would, would you?’ As the minister ruffled his ears Bill became more excited, until Willie said sharply, ‘Stop it! Sit.’ Whereupon the dog ceased its playing and reluctantly sat down on the hearthrug. The young man straightened up and looked at Willie. ‘He’s a fine beast. They’re my favourite dogs, bull terriers. I had one when I was a boy, but it developed mange and my father had it put to sleep. Has he had mange?’

  ‘No,’ said Willie flatly.

  ‘They say that all bull terriers are born with it in their blood, but in the case of pedigree puppies they drain off the blood when they are born. Wonderful things they do now, don’t they?’