The Menagerie

by Catherine Cookson

  And it was as he had forecast. When obliged, in turning, to place the stretcher on the ground, he sank down and was relieved for the moment of any more pain by an obliterating blackness, and together Frank and he were taken up into the daylight. The cage carried them slowly this time, even gently, as it had never done before.

  The town was still, the shops were closed, and no traffic moved on the main road. The day had started quietly and the quietness had grown with each hour. When people stirred they did so softly; when they spoke, their words, broad as they might be, did not rise with the sing-song intonation and fill the air, but hovered close about them as if loath to jar this day of sorrows. The funeral route was black with people; and as the long line of hearses moved slowly to the cemetery, women cried, men cried, and small children were unusually silent.

  Larry was the only representative of his family. The one uncle and three cousins he had were scattered over the country. The uncle was confined to his bed, and the cousins for varying reasons could not attend. Cables bearing frantic messages had come from Australia, but no-one expected anyone from there. Neighbours and friends flanked him, but seemingly he was alone. Of his father and Jack, he did not think ‘I am walking with them for the last time’ because for days now they had been strangely nearer to him than ever they had been when alive. Some part of each of them had burrowed into his being; he felt he was no longer one but three men. But he would recognise the responsibilities of two only, his own, and his father’s. His mother was his responsibility; so was Aunt Lot, but Jack’s child…Here his particular self was constantly proving the point against Jack’s pleading. The child was Lena’s; she should be found and made to take it. Yet within himself he knew that Lena had gone for good, and that what was finally to become of the child would rest with him. And at the moment these three people represented his world, and their combined pressure lay on his shoulders like a roof fall.

  The cemetery lay on a rising fell on the outskirts of the town, and from any part of it could be seen the shafts of the two pits. As the heartbreaking service went on, and names were called and the coffins lowered, and flowers sprinkled and muffled sobs and moans filled the air, heads would be lifted to the pit wheels, and like monster eyes in which was reflected nothing but indifference the wheels stared back and seemed to say, ‘You asked for it. Who started me anyway? You want coal and more coal. You must pay for it.’

  Frank and Jack were laid side by side, and as Larry stepped blindly back from the grave, he too seemed forced to raise his eyes over the mass of heads. The wheels looked at him. First the Venus then the Phoenix, and at the sight of them he yelled in his head, ‘Damn you! Blast you!’

  A woman near him quietly fainted, sliding down between two relatives as if she had just decided to sit, while another, unable to control her sobs, verged on hysteria. A man, whose son had just been lowered, gave a cry like a wounded animal and, turning from the grave, his hand shielding his face, he pushed his way aggressively through the crowd.

  At last it was over, the dead were left in the bower of flowers. And it was of the flowers that Larry was thinking as he walked out of the gates. Never in his life did he want to see or smell another flower. Always would he be reminded of that grave when he saw a bunch of flowers. The smell of them was strong in his nostrils now and filling his head with a sick ache. He felt their scent would remain round him forever.

  ‘The missis is making you some tea, lad.’ It was Bill Preston who spoke to him from the opposite seat in the car.

  ‘With Jinny being bad,’ he said, ‘we won’t come in.’ He included the others with a lift of his head. ‘We’ll show her wor respects later on. She’ll have enough on her plate the day, and the women are the best hands at dealing with that kind of thing.’

  Larry nodded. There was no need to express his thanks to these four men; some day the opportunity would arise and he would repay them for their and their wives’ kindness. Perhaps under exactly the same circumstances as this present one.

  They alighted from the car at his gate and each went his own way. Larry entered the house by the back door, and having closed it, he stood for a moment leaning against it. Lottie’s voice came to him from the kitchen. It was tear-filled and broken. She was saying to the whimpering child, ‘There now. There now. I’ll get you a bottle. Ssh, now! There now.’

  He moved from the door as Mrs Preston came into the kitchen. ‘You back, Larry?’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking: Wouldn’t you go to our house and have your tea?’

  ‘Thanks all the same,’ he said.

  ‘All right, Larry. I know how you feel about it. Jinny’s in a bit of a state, but don’t let it worry you too much. She’ll get over it. We all do. To a certain extent anyway. We’ve got to, else we couldn’t go on.’ She nodded sadly, confirming the truth of this, for she had lost her eldest son eight years ago.

  Larry went into the passage, then stepped back again into the scullery and said with some awkwardness, ‘I’m not ungrateful for all you’ve done, Mrs Preston, no matter how I might appear.’

  ‘Oh, go on’—she waved him away—‘I’m only too glad to do it. If Mrs King hadn’t been hit an’ all, I would have never got the chance to do anything. This street’s had it and no mistake this time. Five gone. I’ll do all I can for your mother, Larry, so don’t worry.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Before going in to his mother he looked into the kitchen. The table was set for tea, and the room was tidy. That was all that could be said for it. The sparkle and sheen of Jinny’s daily rubbing was no longer visible. A week had covered her lifetime’s effort—there was dust on everything. Mrs Preston was quite a hand at tending the sick but she could sit in a muddle and remain happy. As for Lottie, surroundings did not affect her. She too could have remained happy in a pigsty, provided she liked the pig.

  Lottie, catching sight of him, turned from the child. ‘Oh, Larry, you’re back.’ Her crying broke out afresh and he motioned her to be quiet, saying gently, ‘Don’t, Aunt Lot. Now, now. Now try not to.’

  She came to him and clung on to his hand, saying, ‘Oh, Larry, I’ve been crying and crying. I couldn’t eat nothing. And Betty cried, she did, Larry, right out loud. ’Twas as if she knew, ’cause she’s never cried out properly like that. She’s gettin’ to know me now. Will Lena come back, do you think? I hope she doesn’t. Mrs Preston says she will, if it’s only to get her share out of what they’ve collected. Thousands and thousands they’ve…’

  ‘Be quiet, Aunt Lot!’

  ‘Oh, all right, Larry, don’t be vexed with me…I was only saying. And I feel so bad, Larry. But don’t worry. I’ll look after you and Jinny, and the house an’ all. You’ll see, I’ll make you a pot pie like Jinny.’

  She too was looking to the future…the funeral was over. Firmly he loosened her hold and said, still gently, ‘All right, Aunt Lot. I know you will.’ Then leaving her still talking he went into the front room.

  The blinds were drawn and in the gloom Jinny looked an old woman of eighty. She was propped up and had fallen a little to one side, but her eyes searched his face and drew him to her. He sat down slowly on the bed and, leaning towards her, laid his head on her shoulder, and when her good hand passed over his hair the tears rose to his throat and almost suffocated him.

  Chapter Thirteen: The Answer

  Jessie, carefully placing the six long-stemmed rosebuds up to their neck in water, remarked to the young woman by her side, ‘It’s important that you see that the crocks are full, Clara. The water must come right up to the flower, if not they’ll die tomorrow.’

  ‘It would worry me, I want to get out. We’ve been closed for twenty minutes now, and it nearly six o’clock on a Friday night an’ all.’

  ‘Worry you or not,’ said Jessie sharply, ‘this is what’s got to be done, and the sooner you learn the better.’

  ‘I don’t intend to learn. And what’s to learn anyway? Stuck out in the back here, emptying smelly jars.’

  ‘They’re onl
y smelly when you don’t change the water. You’ll be having Miss Barrington after you, I’m warning you.’ She turned to the girl. ‘Why don’t you try?’

  ‘Try what?’ said Clara pertly. ‘Get used to this solitary confinement? No fear. I’m leaving the night, she can do what she likes. Me mother says I can. She says I was daft to come here, anyway, when I can start at four-seventeen in the factory. And it’s the Durham gala the morrow and she’s keepin’ open when the town’ll be nearly empty. Stingy old scarecrow.’

  Jessie turned to the girl, her intention being to plead the cause of the flowers and to point out that likely within a few weeks she’d be allowed to serve in the shop; but, looking into Clara’s mascaraed eyes, she saw the futility of it. She knew why Clara had answered the advert for a young lady assistant. She had seen herself waiting on men, men who would come to buy flowers, but who she expected would see a greater charm in her painted beauty.

  Very few men actually came into Miss Barrington’s shop; most of the custom came by phone from the residents of the Hill. That generally only women came to the shop was a blow to Clara. Her dreams of suddenly being swept off her feet by a fellow who could afford to buy three dozen roses had soon faded. No, Clara was fed up and she was leaving. ‘And,’ she repeated for the second time, ‘I’m leaving the night.’

  Without being told, Miss Barrington knew that her young assistant was about to leave, and without notice, and she was worried, but not about Clara. She’d had four Claras in six months. You could always get Claras, but the Jessies were hard to find at any time, and more so these days. Miss Barrington was asking herself now what she would do if Jessie should leave—Jessie knew the business as well as herself. She must, she told herself, take action immediately and do what she’d had in the back of her mind for some time, make her a partner. She’d had no intention of taking any step in this direction for some years yet, but now she feared she might have left it too late. If all she heard about this parson was true, he was a determined young man. Moreover, he seemed to know a good thing when he saw it, not like the other fool of a fellow who threw her up. If the parson had been staying in the town there would still have been a problem, for parsons want their wives as part-time workers. But the rumour said he was leaving and urging Jessie to go with him. Of course, it might all be quite a lot of exaggeration, but there was no gainsaying the fact that Jessie had become a new creature these past few months. In fact, since her mother died. And the change, Miss Barrington suspected, was not only outwardly. Jessie had an assurance now that she had not even shown signs of in all the years she had known her.

  Miss Barrington put her head round the office door and called softly, ‘Jessie.’

  Jessie came into the darkened shop. ‘Yes, Miss Barrington?’

  ‘Come in a minute. Has that girl finished?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘She’s no good, hopeless in fact. Not the type at all. She’ll be telling me she’s leaving tonight. I shouldn’t be at all surprised.’

  Jessie said nothing, but wondered, and not for the first time, at the sagacity of her employer. She certainly knew a great deal about girls, for it was only to herself that Clara had blown her head off these past weeks. To Miss Barrington she had been politeness itself.

  ‘Sit down a minute. Close that door.’

  Jessie, a little mystified, closed the door, which was rarely or never shut, and sat down on an old-fashioned high desk stool.

  Miss Barrington did not believe in beating about the bush and, in her usual way, she came straight to the point: ‘How would you like to come into partnership with me, Jessie?’

  Miss Barrington was looking down on her order book, and Jessie stared at her smooth, rounded profile. The proposal had shot through her with the force of an electric shock, causing her heart to race, her eyes to screw up, and her lips to fall apart.

  All day she had been praying inwardly to be shown the way, to be shown the right thing to do. She had prayed that before tomorrow she would know that the feeling she had for Alan, which she never likened to love, was foundation enough on which to say she would become his wife. He himself had no doubts but that she in time would love him as he did her. And she felt that once away from Fellburn and its painful associations this could even be possible. During these past three weeks she had been drawn closer to him than to anyone in her life before. Never had she been able to talk to Larry Broadhurst, even, as she had done to him. Something had quickened in her when she saw his compassion for the people during the disaster, and the tireless way in which he had worked. He had been mentioned in the paper, and his congregation, instead of censuring him, were speaking of him now as ‘our Mr Ramsey’. He had even been asked to reconsider his decision to leave, and two of the members who had been most bitter against him had spoken to her last Sunday.

  ‘Beautiful day, Miss Honeysett,’ they had said. And these words, she knew, spelt reprieve from scandal. Yet, in spite of their changed attitude to both herself and him, he was still determined to leave. Tomorrow she was to tell him if she would go with him…and here was her answer.

  A vague dream, a dream that floated in the backwater of unconsciousness, a dream that she had allowed no breath of air to sustain, for in her mind she had recognised the impossibility and the futility of such as her ever having a flower shop on her own, had been given life. Even when, some months ago at Madame Fonyer’s she had been jerked into a small conceit of herself, it had not embraced the idea of a partnership with Miss Barrington. If her dreams had taken shape at all, it would have assumed a little one-window shop in a side street, which would have been in no way comparable with being a partner in Barrington’s, with its double windows, its exclusive clientele, and enviable position in the High Street.

  ‘Well, Jessie?’ Miss Barrington continued to look at her book. She entered some figures and waited.

  ‘But, Miss Barrington, I have no money. Just what’s left. About a hundred and twenty pounds. It wouldn’t be…’

  Now Miss Barrington turned and looked at her. ‘I’m not asking you to put money in, you’d be a working partner. You’ve always worked hard for me, Jessie, very hard. I haven’t been blind all these years. What’s more, you love the flowers. You’ve got to love them to make a business like this really go. I’m not getting younger. When I die everything I have goes to my nephew in Canada, and he doesn’t need it, and he certainly wouldn’t want the shop. And I’d like to think that when that time comes you would take it over. Well, how about it, Jessie? It would all be done legally, no promises, no hearsay or she-say.’

  ‘Oh, Miss Barrington.’

  ‘You will then?’

  ‘Yes, oh yes. I don’t know what to say. I never dreamed. Believe me, I never dreamed of such a thing. Yet it is a sort of answer. I was thinking about going away, Miss Barrington.’

  ‘You were, Jessie?’ Miss Barrington simulated surprise.

  ‘Yes, but I couldn’t now. This is the answer I prayed for.’

  Miss Barrington smiled gently. There was something so simple, so honest, so kind about this big woman. She was a rare quality in these days of brashness. She leaned forward and actually patted Jessie’s hand. ‘I know you never aspired to the shop, Jessie. If you had, I doubt whether I would be making you this offer now. In a way, I was going to say, you are too self-effacing; but no, it’s a rare quality and pays in the end.’

  ‘Oh, Miss Barrington, I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Well, that’s a good thing, too. There’s too much talking these days. Talking without thinking. People don’t think any more, so they jabber. Which reminds me. Send in that potential film star, then give her those Esther Reads to deliver to the Pratts on her way home.’

  Jessie stood up. ‘I’ll take them, Miss Barrington; I think she’s…she’s thinking of leaving.’

  ‘Oh, so she is, is she? Well then, neither of us will be surprised. I’d have been more so if she hadn’t been. Send her in and let’s get it over. Candidly, I’ll be glad to see th
e back of her; that painted face of hers jars on the colours. And go when you’re finished, I’ll be here for some time yet.’

  ‘All right, Miss Barrington. And…and…oh, thank you so much.’

  Jessie moved into the shop on unsteady feet, and after telling Clara that Miss Barrington wanted her, she stood in the middle of the cool, stone-shelved room and looked bemusedly about her. She was to be a partner, a partner in this shop; from now on everything she did would be partly for herself; and one day the shop would be hers. Not for a long, long time, she hoped, but one day.

  It was the greatest thing that had ever happened to her, and she had the desire to drop on her knees and give thanks, or to tell someone the news, someone who would care. But who would care? Only Alan; and when she told him, it would be his answer. The thought brought with it a deep sadness. Perhaps if she asked him, he would stay on. No, no, she didn’t wish that he should stay on, nor did she wish that she should go. The fact that the swift events of the past few minutes had tied her to the town was filling her with relief, and she shook her head as if brushing something away that could not be removed by hand. Quickly now she turned to the bench and, taking the Esther Reads from a tall vase, she laid them on a sheet of green paper, through which the gold-printed words ‘Barrington: Florists’ shone. Her hands stopped their work and her mind came back to the present. How soon would it be before it read ‘Barrington and Honeysett: Florists’? A joy swelled her throat, bringing with it the rare feeling of gaiety. It was as she had realised in Madame Fonyer’s that Saturday afternoon; there were other lives to live. Yet before she had finished wrapping the flowers a sense of guilt had dimmed the joy and her mind was swung back to the immediate past. And she thought of Willie and of the house across the street where so many lives had stopped at once. Five weeks ago today …