by A. J. Cronin
The clock struck five, and shortly after the tramp of feet echoed along the Terrace, the slow tramp of tired men. Nine hours from bank to bank and the Terraces to climb at the end of it. But it was good honest work, bred in their bones, and in her bones too. Her sons were young and strong. It was their work. She desired no other.
The door opened upon her thought and the three came in, Hughie first, then David, and finally Sammy with a sawn balk of timber tucked under his arm, for her kindling. Dear Sammy. Always thoughtful of her. A rush of warmth came round the brooding coldness of her heart, she wanted suddenly to have Sammy in her arms and to weep.
They were searching her face; the house had been oppressive these last days; and Martha had been oppressive too, hard on them and difficult. She knew that and she knew that they were searching her face. Though she had been to blame it hurt her.
“How, mother,” Sammy smiled, his teeth showing white against the black coal dust that sweat had caked on him.
She loved the way he called her mother, not that “mam” in common usage here; but she merely nodded towards the bath that was ready and turned back to set the table.
With their mother in the room the three lads took off their boots, jackets, their pit drawers and singlets, all sodden with water, sweat and pit dirt. Together, naked to the buff, they stood scouring themselves in the tiny steaming bath. There was never much room and it was always friendly. But there was not much joking to-night. Sam in a tentative way nudged Davey and grinned:
“Ower the bed a bit, ye elephant.” And again remarked: “Whey, mon, have ye swallowed the soap?” But there was nothing genuine in the way of fun. The heaviness in the house, in Martha’s face, precluded it. They dressed with no horse-play, sat in to their dinner almost in silence.
It was a beautiful dinner, huge helpings of savoury stew with onions and floury potatoes. Martha’s dinners were always beautiful, she knew the value of a good dinner to a man. Now, thank God, that the wicked strike was stopped she could let them have their food. She sat watching them eat, replenishing their plates. Though she did not feel like eating herself, she drank some tea. Yet even the tea didn’t help her much. A stray pain started in her back, tugged at her breasts, and slipped out of her again before she recognised the nature of the pain.
Her sons had finished dinner. David was the first to rise, going to the corner where his books were kept, seating himself on a low stool by the cheek of the fire with a pencil in his hand and jotter upon his knee. Latin, Martha thought glumly, he’s doing Latin now, and the thought, striking across her bitter mood, irked her strangely. It was part of Robert’s doing, this education, this wanting the boy to go to college, to sit for the scholarship next year, to get above himself. Robert had started him with Mr. Carmichael at the old Bethel Street night classes. And she, coming of a long line of pitmen, a proudly class-conscious woman, despised book learning in her own kind, and felt that no good would come of it.
Hughie got up next, went into the wash-house, returned with a hammer and last, his old football boots and twelve new leather studs. At the back of the kitchen, away from everyone, he squatted down, bent his dark head, still shiny from the bath, and began, in his own way, both taciturn and absorbed, to hammer in the studs. Last Saturday he had kept back sixpence of his pay from her, never saying a word, simply keeping it back. She might have guessed why. Football! Not just the love of the sport, though he loved it with all his heart. No, no. Hughie’s interest, she knew, lay deeper. Hughie wanted to be a star, a footballer in the big league, an athlete who drew six pounds a week for his supreme cleverness at the game. That was at once the secret, the ambition of Hughie’s soul. That kept him from cigarettes, from touching even one glass of beer which he might have had on Sundays; that kept him from talking to the girls—Hughie never so much as looked at a girl, she knew, though plenty of them looked at Hughie; that set him running miles at night, training he called it; tired or not he would go out, she might rest assured, the minute he had finished his boots.
Martha’s frown deepened. She approved with all her heart Hughie’s spartan life, nothing could be better. But to what cause? To leave the pit! He, too, striving with all his soul to leave the pit. She had no faith in his glittering illusion and no fear that he might achieve it. Yet it worried her, this queer intensity of Hughie’s, oh yes, it harassed her.
Instinctively her eyes turned to Sammy, who still sat at the table, restlessly making patterns on the oilcloth with the back of his fork. He was conscious of her gaze for, after a moment, he laid down the fork and sheepishly got up. He hung about with his hands in his pockets, then went to the tiny square of mirror above the sink. He took the comb that lay always on the back of the enamel soap rack, wetted it, and carefully parted his hair. Then he took a clean collar, she had starched and ironed it only that afternoon, which hung on the rail by the fire. He put on the collar, arranged his tie freshly, smartened himself up. Then, whistling self-consciously, he whipped up his cap and moved jauntily to the door.
Martha’s hand, lying upon her knee, clenched so tightly the knuckles showed like bone.
“Sammy!”
Sam, half out the door, turned as if he had been shot.
“Where are ye going, Sammy?”
“I’m goin’ out, mother.”
She would not let his smile soften her.
“I know ye’re goin’ out. But where are ye goin’ out to?”
“I’m goin’ down the street.”
“Are ye goin’ down Quay Street?”
He looked at her, his plain honest face flushed and dogged now.
“Yes, I am goin’ down Quay Street mother, if ye want to know.”
Her instinct was true, then: he was going to see Annie Macer. She hated the Macers, distrusted them, the improvident father, that wild Plug Macer, the son. They were in the same category as the Leemings—not quite respectable. They were not even colliers, they were “fisherfoak,” part of that separate community which lived an uncertain life—“waste and wantry” Martha called it, faring on the fat of the land one month, boat and nets mortgaged the next. She had nothing against Annie’s character, some held she was a decent lass. But she was not the lass for her Sammy. She came from the wrong stock, she hawked fish in the open street, she had even gone to Yarmouth, one bad year, to retrieve the Macers’ fortunes, as a herring gutter. Sammy, her own dear son, whom she hoped one day to see the finest hewer in the Neptune, married to a herring gutter. Never. Never! She drew a long, deep breath.
“I don’t want ye to go out to-night, Sammy.”
“But you know, mother, I promised. Pug Macer and me was goin’ out. And Annie’s comin’ too.”
“Never mind that, Sammy.” Her voice turned harsh, strident. “I don’t want ye to go.”
He faced her; and in his loving, dog-like eyes she saw an unexpected firmness.
“Annie’s expecting me, mother. I’m sorry, but I’m going.”
He went out and very quietly closed the door.
Martha sat perfectly rigid; for the first time in his life Sammy had disobeyed her. She felt as if he had struck her on the face. Conscious of the covert glances of David and Hughie she tried to take command of herself. She rose, cleared the table, washed the dishes with hands that trembled.
David said:
“Shall I dry for you, mother?”
She shook her head, dried the dishes herself, sat down with some mending. With some difficulty she threaded her needle. She took up an old pit singlet of Sammy’s, so patched and darned scarcely any of the original flannel remained. The sight of the old pit singlet tore at her heart. She had been too harsh with Sammy, she felt suddenly that she had not taken him the right way, that she, not Sam, had been to blame. The thought pierced her. Sam would do anything for her, anything, if only she treated him properly.
With clouded eyes, she made to take up the singlet when all at once the pain in her back came on again. The pain was bad this time, transfixing her, and in the instant she knew i
t for what it was. Dismayed, she waited. The pain went, returned. Without a word she got up and went out of the back door of the kitchen. She walked with difficulty up the back. She went into the closet. Yes, it was that.
She came out, stood for a moment surrounded by the quiet darkness of the night, supporting herself against the low dividing fence with one hand, holding her swollen body with the other. It had come upon her then, while her husband was in prison, the last indignity. And before her grown sons. Inscrutable as the darkness which lay about her, she thought rapidly. She would not have Dr. Scott, nor Mrs. Reedy, the midwife, either. Robert had flung away their savings madly in the strike. She was in debt, she could not, she would not tolerate further expense. Within a minute her mind was made up.
She returned to the house.
“David! Run round to Mrs. Brace. Tell her to look in to me now.”
Startled, he looked at her questioningly. She was never a great one for David, who had always been his father’s boy, but now the expression in his eyes moved her. She said kindly:
“Never worry, Davey. I’m just not well.” As he scurried out she went over to the kist where she kept such linen as she had, unlocked it. Then, awkwardly, lifting one foot up to the other, she climbed the ladder to the lads’ room above.
Mrs. Brace, the neighbour, came in presently from next door. She was a kindly woman, short of breath and very stout: indeed, she looked, poor soul, as though she were going to have a baby herself. But it was not so. Hannah Brace was ruptured, as she phrased it, she had a big umbilical hernia, the result of repeated pregnancies, and, though her husband Harry faithfully promised her the article every Christmas, as yet no truss to restrain it: every night when she went to bed she solemnly pushed back the bulging mass, every morning when she got up the thing bulged out again. She had become almost attached to her rupture, it formed a topic of conversation, she spoke about it to her intimates as people do about the weather. She went up the ladder very cautiously too, and disappeared into the room above.
David and Hughie sat in the kitchen. Hughie had given over his cobbling, and now pretended to interest himself with a paper. David also pretended to read. But from time to time the two looked at each other, confronted by the mystery secretly unfolding in the room above, and in the eyes of each there was a strange shame. To think of it; and their own mother!
No sound came from the bedroom but the heavy thump of feet as Mrs. Brace moved about. Once she called down for a kettle of hot water. Davey handed it to her.
At ten o’clock Sam came back rather pale about the gills, his jaw set to meet a most tremendous row. They told him. He flushed, as he did so easily, and remorse flooded him. Sam never could bear ill will. He lifted his eyes to the ceiling.
“My poor mother,” he said. It was the most any of them dared to say.
At twenty minutes to eleven Mrs. Brace came down carrying a small newspaper package. She looked saddened and put out; she washed her red hands at the sink, took a drink of cold water; then she addressed herself to Sammy—the eldest:
“A little lass,” she said, “a bonny thing, but dead. Ay, still-born. I’d have done as well as Mrs. Reedy, don’t yon fret. But I niver had no chance. I’ll come in te-morrow an’ lay the littlin out. Take yer mother up a cup of cocoa now. She’s fair to middling; an’ I’ve my man’s bait to see to for the fore shift.” She lifted the package carefully, smiled gently at David who saw that red was coming through the newspaper, then she waddled out.
Sam made the cocoa and took it up. He remained about ten minutes. When he came down, his face was pale as clay, and the sweat had broken on his brow. He had come from his courting to look on death. David hoped that Sam might speak, say that their mother was comfortable. But all Sam said was:
“Get into bed, here, lads. We’ll sleep three thegither in the kitchen for a bit.”
Next morning, which was Tuesday, Mrs. Brace came in to see to Martha and, as she had promised, she laid out the still-born child. David returned from the pit earlier than the others; that night he had been lucky and ridden to bank two cage-loads ahead of the main shift. He entered the kitchen in the half-darkness. And there, upon the dresser, lay the body of the child.
He went over and looked at it with a queer catch of fear and awe. It was very small, its hands no bigger than the petals of a water lily. The tiny fingers had no nails. The palm of his own hand would have covered its face; the pinched, marble-white features, were perfect; the tiny blue lips parted as in wonderment that life was not. Mrs. Brace, with the real professional touch, had stuffed the mouth and nostrils with cotton-wool. Looking over his shoulder now, not without pride, she explained:
“It looks mortal pretty. But she couldna bear it upstairs wi’ her, your mother, Davey.”
David hardly heard her. A stubborn resentment surged within him as he gazed at the dead-born infant. Why should it be so? Why shouldn’t his mother have had food, care, attention, all that her condition demanded? Why was his child not living, smiling, sucking at the breast? It hurt him, stirred him to a fierce indignation. As on that occasion when the Wepts had given him food, a chord vibrated deeply, painfully within his being; and again he swore with all the inarticulate passion of his young soul to do something… something… he didn’t know what or how… but he would do it… strike some destroying stroke against the pitiful inhumanities of life.
Sam and Hughie came in together. They looked at the baby. Still in their pit clothes they ate the fried bacon Mrs. Brace had prepared. It was not the usual good meal, the potatoes were lumpy, there was insufficient water for the bath, the kitchen was upset, everything untidy, they missed their mother’s hand.
Later, when Sammy came down from upstairs he looked at his brothers furtively. He said awkwardly:
“She won’t have no funeral. I’ve talked an’ talked, but she won’t have it. She says since the lock-out we can’t face the expense.”
“But, Sammy, we must,” David cried. “Ask Mrs. Brace…”
Mrs. Brace was called to reason with Martha. It was useless, Martha was inexorable, an iron bitterness had seized her over this child she had not wanted and which now had no want of her. No funeral was exacted by law. She would not have it, none of the trappings or panoply of death.
Hughie, always clever with his hands, made a neat enough coffin from plain pit boards. They put clean white paper inside and laid the body in the rude shell. Then Hughie nailed on the lid.
Late on Thursday night Sam took the box under his arm and set out alone. He forbade Hughie and David to accompany him. It was dark and windy. They did not know where he had gone until he came back. Then he told them. He had borrowed five shillings from Pug Macer, Annie’s eldest brother, and given it to Geddes, the cemetery keeper. Geddes had let him bury the child privately in a corner of the graveyard. David often thought of that shallow grave; he never knew where it was; but he did know it was not near the pauper graves; this much Sammy told him.
Friday passed and Saturday came: the day of Robert’s release. Martha had been confined on Monday night. By Saturday afternoon she was up, waiting… waiting for him, for Robert.
He arrived at eight o’clock, to find her in the kitchen alone. He entered so quietly she did not know he was there until the sound of his cough made her spin round as she stood, still bent over the fire. They stared at each other, he quietly, without rancour, she with that terrible bitterness burning like dark fire in her eyes. Neither spoke. He flung his cap on the sofa, sat down at the table like a weary man. Immediately she went to the oven, drew out his plate of cooked dinner kept hot for him there. She placed it before him in that same terrible silence.
He began to eat, casting quick glances at her figure from time to time, glances that became charged with a strange apology. At length he said:
“What’s like the matter, my lass?”
She quivered with anger.
“Don’t call me your lass.”
He understood then what had happened; a kind of wonder stir
red in him.
“What was it?” he asked.
She knew he had always wanted a daughter. And to cut him more she told him that his daughter was dead.
“So that was the way of it,” he sighed; and then: “Did ye have a bad time, lass?”
It was too much. She did not deign to answer at once; but with embittered servitude she removed his empty plate and placed his tea before him; then she said:
“I’m used to bad times like, since ever I knew you.”
Though he had come home for peace, her savage attitude provoked his tired blood.
“I canna help the way things hev gone,” he said with a sudden bitterness to match her own. “I hope ye understand they gaoled me for nowt.”
“I do not understand,” she answered, hand on her hip, facing him.
“They had their knife in me ower the strike, don’t ye see!”
“I’m not surprised,” she retorted, panting with anger.
It was then that his nerves broke. What, under heaven, had he done? He had brought the men out, because in his very marrow he feared for them in Scupper Flats, and in the end they had scoffed at him and spat upon him and let him go to gaol for nothing. Fury seethed in him, against her and against his fate. He lifted his hand and struck her on the face.
She did not flinch, she received the blow gratefully. Her nostrils dilated.
“Thanks,” she said. “That was good of ye. ’Twas all I needed.”
He sank back into his chair, paler than she. Then he began to cough, his deep booming cough. He was torn by this paroxysm. When it had passed he sat bowed, defeated; then he rose, threw off his clothes, got into the kitchen bed.
Next day, Sunday, though he awakened at seven, he stopped in bed all forenoon. She was up early and went to chapel. She forced herself to go, enduring the looks, slights and sympathy of the Bethel Street congregation, partly to show him up, partly to establish her own respectability. Dinner was a misery, especially for the lads. They hated it when open anger came between their father and mother. It paralysed the house, lay upon them like a degradation.