Written With My Left Hand

by Nugent Barker

  ‘Here we are!’ said Pollie’s mother suddenly, as the bus drew up; she had been to the hospital several times before, and now felt almost as at home there as though she were a patient herself. Over the hall and endless stone corridors there hung a pleasant, peculiar smell that frightened Pollie at first and made her feel sick, but after a time she did not notice it. Nurses hurried past her and she smiled at them, and she stared at the doctors in their white slops.

  They found their Willie lying back in his bed in the children’s ward; he was as quiet as a mouse, but from one of the other beds there arose a continual wailing. ‘Dearie dearie!’ whispered Willie’s mother, staring into a distant corner; ‘tch, tch!’; then, rubbing her stiff hands on her knees, and nodding her jet-trimmed bonnet, she said repeatedly to her son: ‘Well, lovey, we’ll soon have you home again, I’m sure!’ Her voice was suddenly so loud and cheerful that Willie thought he was going to die. And immediately after she had spoken to him, Willie’s mother would turn her head and smile at her daughter, whose face beside Willie’s looked as red and as shining as a tomato. So an hour went, while Pollie kept on grinning at her mother, showing her large teeth and glistening gums. But Willie’s feet were hurting him the whole time, although they were not there.

  And presently, on her way home, Pollie began to think of her own feet. She thought what a terrible thing it would be if she, too, were to have an accident, and if both of her feet were to be amputated, and the doctors and the pretty nurses were to see what black feet she had. ‘Oh, oh, they must be quite black by now!’ thought Pollie. She wriggled her toes, and both her feet felt as heavy as lead; she feared she would never reach home. And when at last she was home again, she hardly liked to walk across the nursery floor because of the black feet in her boots. ‘How’s Willie?’ the Barringtons cried. ‘How did he look? Does he miss them much?’ they wanted to know. But all that she could do was to say ‘ever so’, or just ‘yes’, or ‘no, Master John’, or ‘not so bad, I think’, to these eager questions, for she felt quite excited, and had forgotten her brother’s feet in thinking of her own.

  The little boy John slept in a room with Pollie; and that night, when he was fast asleep, and there was no one to hear her or watch her, Pollie looked at her feet by candle-light. Yes, there they were, both of them, just as black as could be—especially the tops of the toes, and the backs of the heels, and across the arch where the insteps and the ankles joined. She hid them at once in the shadows beside her bed; then she pulled them up again on to the eiderdown, wetted her handkerchief with her tongue, and discovered that she was able to make a good impression on her toes and insteps. Encouraged, she filled a basin with cold water, taking great care not to awaken the child; after that, she pulled up her nightdress, clipping it tightly between her fat knees; and with soap and a sponge, she washed her feet until they were perfectly clean.

  In the morning she hardly ever stopped talking about Willie and his feet. ‘Willie,’ she said, ‘poor Willie! Mother hoped he’d be a Messenger Boy.’ In the evening, when Mrs Barrington, wrapped in her smart cloak, had gone to the theatre, Pollie undressed and had a bath all over. For the first time since she had been with the Barringtons, she got into the bath properly. Now she sank like a porpoise, with only her head remaining above the hot water; now her plump body, standing up in the steam, grew shiny with soap from neck to knees; she held the sponge above her head, and in her exuberance she sang loudly, tossing the wet, dark hair out of her eyes, her famous nonsense song that the children loved:

  Coymi nairo,

  Kilda care-o

  Coymi nairo, coymi;

  Pim strimma strammadiddle

  Larrabona ring timma,

  Rig nam bullytimma coymi!

  From that time onwards, Pollie took a bath whenever she could; and she went about singing her nonsense song so often that everybody grew tired of it; and when Willie was home again, and she went to see him and her mother, she used to delight in carrying him about the room, for the sheer pleasure of feeling him in her arms; and as she walked, she would sometimes catch her feet on purpose in the rather ragged carpet, and pretend to be on the verge of stumbling, so that he should not feel embarrassed, nor herself ‘superior’.

  The Doll

  The youngest child had been put to bed for the night, though the sky still glowed with the March sunset, and people were still hurrying home from their work. The youngest child had lost her doll; but many of the people in the streets had lost their parcels, or their buses, or their heads, or themselves, or their reputations, while others had lost a mint of money and hadn’t the heart to open their newspapers.

  On certain occasions, such as this evening, when the unintelligible shouts of the newsvendors sped down the street, Cook would waddle up the area steps, hugging her elbows, for she liked to have a paper of her own to read in her bedroom; and should it contain a love-serial, the kitchen-maid was at once jubilant, and walked on her toes with excitement, for she thought there was nothing so urgent as love.

  ‘A Young Woman Shot.’

  ‘Eh, the pore soul!’ whispered the fat cook, rustling her paper in the servants’ hall.

  ‘—At ten minutes past seven last evening a report of firearms was heard in Cross Keys Square—’

  Cook ran her greasy finger down the column, and sighed, for the news must wait. There was so much to be done in a hurry, what with Mrs Barrington going to The Shop Girl at the Gaiety Theatre, and dinner being early. An ox-tail simmered in a stewpan, a smell of savoury herbs hung in the air; and upstairs in her bed the youngest child lay fretting and tossing because she had lost her doll between the sheets.

  The gentle sound travelled as far as the day-nursery, but nobody heard it. Nurse Taylor was interrupting the whirring of her sewing-machine at frequent intervals, in order to read out aloud, from an evening paper that Mrs Barrington had sent up to her, the important account of the Palfrey wedding; while Pollie, the under-nurse, was ironing, planking down the iron now and again with a soft thud on to its metal stand. The paper rustled, and the elder woman read out in her clear, significant voice: ‘ “Extra police had to be drafted to hold back the crowd.” But I’m not at all surprised,’ she murmured thoughtfully, gazing towards the window; the light over the Streatham roofs was dying, and the chimneys were losing the sharpness of their silhouettes against the sky. ‘Well, I suppose it’s all over by now. Light the light, Pollie, and draw the curtains. We can hardly see beyond our noses.’

  Fish-tail flames popped up at both ends of the mantel-piece, gay light flooded the room. Nurse Taylor had intended to read to herself the full account of the Palfrey wedding; but now, sitting in an easy-chair, the nurse caught sight of a greater, more pregnant item of news, and started at once on the Cardew Divorce Case, smiling at the quips of Justice Bingham. ‘Well, I ne-ver. Fancy that, now,’ she murmured, tapping her nail on the paper, and looking at Pollie from the corner of her narrow eye. The clock ticked; the cuckoo came out, and bowed seven times to the two women, while the churches echoed him with their multifarious voices; the lamp-lighter entered the dying street, and the youngest child fretted and grieved in her bed because she had lost her doll.

  After a time, one of the gas-brackets was seen to be smoking fiercely; the glass globe surrounding the flame was blackened with soot; as soon as Pollie had adjusted it, she went over to Nurse Taylor, and, leaning her arm on the back of the chair, began to read out, in her loud young country voice, a draper’s advertisement that had caught her eye:

  ‘ “COSTUMES, CAPES, and JACKETS for Spring Wear.”

  ‘ “THE NEW EMBROIDERED CAPES, in every shade of cloth.”

  ‘ “Young ladies’ BLACK CLOTH JACKETS.” ’

  Her eye shifted, and she read from the opposite page:

  ‘ “Murder at Ipswich Barracks.—Quartermaster-sergeant Parkin was murdered yesterday at the Ipswich Militia Barracks. Parkin was with a man named Walsh, a sergeant-instructor . . . when Walsh took down a carbine . . .” ’

 
‘Soldiers, you see,’ said Nurse Taylor, rather mincingly. ‘I expect it was over a girl.’

  ‘I sometimes wish I wasn’t a girl,’ whispered Pollie, staring across the room.

  A policeman sauntered down the street, pointing his lantern into the areas and on to the doorsteps, and articulating, with the beat of his heel and toe: ‘Law . . . and Order . . . Law . . . and Order.’

  The town hummed; the noise was everywhere, and nobody heard it; but the shrill, intermittent blowing of a cab-whistle, irresolute on the wind, yet promising to endure for evermore, filled the night-nursery faintly and sweetly with sound.

  A sigh of contentment passed through the lips of the little girl. All was happy now, everything was clear and the road made ready for sleep. She folded her arms carefully, and her thoughts went out of her, for she had found her doll.

  Mrs Sayce’s Guy

  I

  THE November wind had sobbed all night over Hannibal Terrace as though its heart were breaking. But dawn put an end to the monotonous sound, smiling at first, a little wanly, into those squalid windows, and eventually packing the narrow street with mist, and roofing the mist with a sulphur-coloured sky. Later, on to this shadowy daylight a back door was opened, and Mrs Sayce stood, dimly visible at the head of her yard, clutching at a plaid shawl and earnestly passing her tongue over her lips:

  ‘Ber-tie? Break-fust!’

  She could hear the voices of her neighbours. The dark morning seemed to invest each one of them with a peculiar detachment: the voice of Mrs Parslow; the voice of Molly Gunn; Lizzy Dixon’s querulous outcry; the measured, mournful tones of Thomas Cooling; Macquisten’s brutal laughter; Nancy Tillit, Arthur Tillit’s widow, calling stridently to Lily and Jack; the united, youthful clamour of the Glydds; Henry Glazer’s mincing, almost gentlemanly accents; the quick, high, frequent giggle of Edie MacKatter.

  ‘Ber-tie? Break-fust!’

  Wasn’t she an artful one? But whenever she opened her mouth, there was Macquisten’s mongrel dog opening his; the whole terrace reeked with the unsavoury yapping. The voices of the Tufnell children made a high shindy ten houses away. A boy’s head popped out of a window, and called. Close at hand it was possible to hear an undercurrent of more intimate things. Mrs Norgate’s baby was choking in a room next door; someone had lost, or another had stolen, something, somewhere—it was not to be found—it had fallen under the table—it had gone down the sink; while the everlasting cluck of a hen served to bind the whole conglomeration of near and distant sounds together.

  Suddenly Mrs Sayce began to cry.

  The tears were running down her cheeks. And in the tiny kitchen, where damp clothes sagged between the walls, there was no further necessity to hold back her sobs while she crumbled her stale bread, or lifted, but never as far as her lips, a cup of weak and flavourless tea. A cat was walking over the floor. Now it strutted in grotesque fashion, with erect tail, and sidelong glances at the woman at the table, who had buried her face within her hands; now it squatted upon its haunches, hind leg up, and tongue working roughly over the fur; a thin creature, finely marked, that came to her at last, and rubbed its wasted body against her leg. The action recalled her to her senses; with an impetuous movement she caught up the animal, and carried it to the bedroom above, where the ceiling was like a black cloud over her head, and the wallpaper had a saffron ground spotted with blue flowers.

  A guy was there, sitting stiffly in an elbow-chair, leering through the eye-holes of a magenta mask. Its body was the essence of dislocation. Its hands were black cotton gloves stuffed with straw.

  The cat began to struggle in its mistress’s arms, uttered a whimper, and ran from the room; and Mrs Sayce, starting out of her reverie, saw a cloth cap lying in a chair—a woollen muffler hanging on the knob of a cupboard door—the bed, tumbled and glimmering, pushed into the angle of two saffron walls. In addition to more important duties, there was the bed to be made. Whilst turning the blanket, she kicked against a pipe, a man’s pipe, that had fallen to the floor; and her hand fell upon a boy’s firework, a Catherine-wheel, that was to have spun round and round. She threw the pipe across the room, but she held the other for one short moment, pressed to her heart. As soon as she had tidied the bed Mrs Sayce sat on the foot of it, rocked her body, stared at her toes, fell at last into complete stillness; then she snatched her clasped hands from between her knees, clicked her tongue, and began those final touches that her son Bertie would have given to the Guy.

  Some faded piece of finery, found in a drawer; anything that might bring a shrug of jealousy from other children. Button up the coat. Wind the muffler on. Anything that should lend an air of conspiracy—there’s a big knot!—and gunpowder to the whole business. And allow the ends of this muffler to hang over the chest. Presently she stood back, with her hands pressed to her eyes.

  Into the tiny, grotesque body, Mrs Sayce had pushed, and prodded, and stuffed, and bundled, all the deformity of the world. Beneath a boy’s cloth cap, and from the voluminous folds of a muffler, the magenta face shone forth with a fierce, disturbing beauty. Stark and evil, it seemed to glow with a deeper light than that which was coming through the window. She carried down her precious burden, and sat it in an old perambulator that was covered with the thick dust of a year. One must go very carefully now. The thought occurred to her that this was the most important moment of her life. Force the shoulders down a little. Tuck in the coat. Set the cap jauntily over the eyes. . . . Lifting her head, she listened to the voices of far-distant children, chanting the Guy Fawkes song:

  Please to remember

  The Fifth of November . . .

  The rhythm was both cheeky and inspiring. After a while, it was broken, from somewhere in the terrace, by the quick, high, frequent giggle of Edie MacKatter. Mrs Sayce wheeled her perambulator to the door; and through the dark November streets she pushed her little Guy.

  II

  She had slipped out of Hannibal Terrace with scarcely a sign from her neighbours. Only once did she hear the voices of people who had recognised her—two voices, that spoke in thick, sudden tones from the morning mist:

  ‘Elf!’

  ‘Yus?’

  ‘Look, Elf! Ain’t that Emma Sayce pushin’ a guy?’

  ‘Mebbe,’ said Alfred Glydd; ‘mebbe it is. . . . Sayce come ’ome larst night. I ’eard ’im singin’. . . . Dassay ’e come back for little Bertie.’

  ‘ . . . It were Emma Sayce. . . . She were pushin’ Bert’s guy. . . .’

  ‘Mebbe,’ said Alfred Glydd. ‘Too far orf now, for a bloke to see. . . .’

  . . . And after that, the bend of the road had hidden her, and she had gone on and on, past Durrant and Lowe’s, and the shop where she bought her candles. ‘Too far orf now, for a bloke to see.’ But never too far for her to hear the buzz of their voices, in every beat of her timorous heart. No, never too far for that! She crossed the Avenue, skirted the High School, and tilted the pram towards Tinker’s Heath.

  She walked far that day. She was a little woman, pushing a Guy. Beyond Pewter Hill, the road to the Heath was long and lonely; but the length and the loneliness pleased her, for she was an artful one, and asked nothing better than to be left alone with the dark morning and the magenta face of her goblin Guy. ‘Ber-tie? Break-fust!’ Lor’! Hadn’t she been an artful one? Hadn’t she, now? Hadn’t she been a cunning one, jest!

  Here and there, the fog was lifting; and once, far ahead, she thought that she could see the figure of a man on that dim road. . . . But he went away, slamming a gate behind him. . . . Near Rington Cemetery, a sad-faced woman called to her, and she received the penny with a queer blend of pride and distraction, thanked the lady kindly, and hurried on. Hurried on, up the road to the Heath that was so long and lonely. She was a little woman, pushing a Guy; and she was tramping, tramping, until her thin shoes began to blister her thin feet.

  On the empty Heath a wind was moving, catching at the fringe of her shawl, peopling the air with voices.

  Amongst th
em she could hear the voices of children, the buzzing of the Glydds, the drunken tones of her husband, whom she hoped never to see again. . . . And suddenly a voice that began to materialise into a face, a face that she had not thought to see there, the thin-lipped, high-cheeked, brutal face of her next-door neighbour, Macquisten. It came towards her out of the pale mist, a thrusting, triumphant face, that followed her, and would not leave her, as she drew back trembling on Tinker’s Heath:

  ‘Come ’ome drunk, ain’t ’e—larst night?’ it was saying. ‘I ’eard ’im! Went orf agin, drunk—ain’t ’e, larst night? Wheer’s Bertie?’ It seemed to have no other thought but that. ‘Come ’ome drunk, ain’t ’e—larst night? I ’eard ’im! Went orf agin, drunk—ain’t ’e, larst night? Wheer’s Bertie?’ She turned to go; but the face followed her along the Heath: ‘Took the kid away wid ’im, ain’t ’e—larst night? I ’eard ’em! Left yer alone agin, ’as ’e—Missus? Lor’ lumme! No ’usband, no kid!’ She tried to go from him; but still the face followed; and when at last it changed its question for another, Mrs Sayce answered proudly, standing her full height, and looking at the Guy: ‘Well, it’s a great day wid the children, Mr Macquisten. It’s Guy Forks Day. Yass! And you knows orl right I’m doin’ wot Bertie would of wished!’ Macquisten’s dog came running up, and sniffed and barked at the Guy; and she hurried away, horrified, to the dwindling sound of the barking and Macquisten’s brutal laughter—hurried away, and away, across Tinker’s Heath, and down Dornford Ditch, and over the bridge by Fell Junction that spanned the railway-line.