‘Yes…yes, I think I would.’ He did not look at her as he spoke, and when she reached the kitchen she stood near the table with her two hands cupping her face. It had been a mistake—she shouldn’t have told him; she shouldn’t have told anyone. It came to her now that Hughie was the last person she should have told. She liked Hughie and she knew he liked her. She wanted him to think well of her. She had imagined that in telling him what had happened to her he would have seen that she wasn’t to blame, well not altogether, and the burden of guilt would have been lightened. But somehow he hadn’t. He said he wasn’t shocked, but he was shocked as much, or even more, than any of the lads would have been if she had told them.
She became overwhelmed by a feeling of emptiness, as if she had lost something she valued. But she had never valued Hughie, not until this moment. How much she valued his good opinion came to her now almost in the form of a revelation. And she whimpered to herself: No, no, not that. Why couldn’t I have known before I told him?
Thursday
When her mother opened the back door to let her out the air cut their breath from them and Hannah exclaimed, ‘My God! Every place is like glass; all that slush frozen hard. Now mind how you go, lass; it’s far too early to make a start to my mind.’
‘I can go later tomorrow but the buses mightn’t be running to time and I don’t want to be late the first morning.’
‘No, that’s understandable the first mornin’, but keep that coat buttoned up.’ She put her hand towards the top button of Rosie’s coat and went on, ‘And mind, go and get a good dinner into you, no sandwiches and tea mind, and I’ll have somethin’ hot and tasty ready for you the minute you enter the door. About six, you say?’
‘Yes, if I can get a bus. But you never can tell.’
‘Goodbye now, lass; mind how you go.’
‘Goodbye, Ma.’ As Rosie stepped carefully onto the icy path Hannah, turning into the room, exclaimed, ‘Are you off an’ all now, Jimmy? Well you can go some of the way with Rosie, here. See her to the bus or she’ll be flat on her back afore she gets to the end of the street.’
‘Aye, Ma, aye. So long.’
‘So long, boy.’
When they had let themselves out of the garden gate Jimmy took Rosie’s arm up the lane, saying, ‘It’ll be all right when we get on the road, the lorries will’ve been out with the gravel. You won’t want me to come with you to the bus, Rosie, will you?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘I would but I’m a bit late, an’ if you’re not on the job afore the whistle they cut your time, crafty bastards.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m going up Tangier Road, anyway; it’ll bring me to the bus depot and I’ll have more chance of getting a seat from there.’
‘Aye, aye, you will.’
Just before they neared Tangier Road Jimmy asked in an assumed offhand way, ‘You and Arthur went to the pictures last night?’
‘Yes.’
‘No kiddin’?’
‘Of course we went; where else do you think we would go?’
‘Well’—he laughed—‘I know where Arthur would go if he got the chance, an’ I thought he might have given you the slip or somethin’. I can’t see him sitting in the pictures all night when he could be with her.’
‘Well he did…he was.’
Rosie didn’t ask herself why it was necessary to lie to Jimmy. Instinctively she knew she didn’t trust Jimmy; of all her brothers she trusted him the least; he was too close to her mother.
‘Well, I’m turning off here,’ she said. ‘Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye, Rosie, an’ mind how you go. An’ see you work for your pay.’ He laughed as he turned from her.
It was not yet fully light, and as she hurried as fast as she could down Tangier Road, the scurrying figures of the men making their way to the factories, and to buses to take them into Newcastle, and as far away as the docks on the Tyne, all looked like black huddled phantoms. Collars up, cap peaks down, their breath fanning out from scarves, they went their particular ways. Some had travelled the same road at the same time each day since they were lads, and would go on until they retired or died, or, fearful thought, were stood off. But Rosie, although she had not been a part of this scene at this time before, was unconscious of any strangeness, for it was almost the same scene as was enacted at the other end of the day. She had been familiar enough with that.
She did not go straight to the bus terminus, but she cut down a side street, and this brought her to the bottom of the hill where Hughie’s shop was. When she reached the shop she passed by with just a glance towards the window and knocked on the door next to it, thinking as she did so that if this was a door to a shop it gave no indication of it because there was no window in the wall to the side of it, just a board hanging there with the faded letters on it, reading, JAMES CULLEN—Furniture Repairer.
After knocking three times on the door and receiving no answer, she looked at the key and the paper she had taken out of her bag. Hughie had asked her last night if she would take the key of the shop and the written notice to Mr Cullen. He, Hughie said, was always in his shop around seven. Rain, hail or snow, he’d be there, whether he had work to do or not, and he would see to any customers who called for their shoes.
Now, after knocking yet once again, she was left wondering what to do. Hughie had added that if for some reason Mr Cullen shouldn’t be there, she should put the key at the back of the hopper head on the top of the drainpipe. She would have to give herself a boost up from the step, he had said. And she could push the notice through the letter box. But that he knew she wouldn’t have to do, for there had never been a morning in years that old Jim hadn’t been in his shop before him.
Hughie had not asked her to do this service for him until Florence and Dennis had returned, and it had created the impression that everything was normal. But she knew that it wasn’t.
But this was the one morning when Mr Cullen wasn’t here before Hughie, so she pushed the piece of paper which said, ‘Closed for a few days. Please apply next door,’ through the letter box, and standing on the step and putting one foot on the coping of the wall, she gripped the drainpipe and hoisted herself up. She just managed to place the key on the ledge of the hopper where it joined the wall. This done, she made her way carefully down the hill again and to the bus station.
Although her new job, which she found very pleasant and knew she was going to like, kept her on her toes as it were, on this first day there still remained a section of her mind that was not touched by it. All day long, from the moment she had got up, she had not been able to get the thought of Hughie out of her mind. She wished now, oh she wished from the bottom of her heart that she hadn’t talked last night. She had felt sure that telling him would ease her, and that he would comfort her. That’s what she had thought, he would comfort her, saying, ‘It wasn’t your fault, Rosie, you’re not that kind of girl. You would never have got into that scrape on your own.’ She had thought he would tell her the things she tried to tell herself, and coming from him she could believe them, then she would again be able to like herself…just a little. But Hughie’s reaction had taken the form of silence. Except for an odd word now and again, he had said nothing until Dennis and Florence had returned. It was as if he had again been hit on the head, and this time the blow had knocked him stupid.
Just before she left the office Mr Bunting again expressed his pleasure at her work. ‘I see you’re going to do fine,’ he said. ‘And as Joe down below said, it’s a change to have something good to look at, for there’s no getting away from the fact that although Miss Pointer was good at her job she had the kind of face that put you off, if you know what I mean. Joe always said it was like a battered pluck. He meant no offence, but that’s how she appeared to him.’ He had hunched his rounded shoulders at her as he ended, ‘An’ to me an’ all.’
As Rosie left the office she smiled ruefully to herself. A face like a battered pluck…no offence meant! It was fun
ny. People were funny, the things they said. But Miss Pointer with her face like a battered pluck had run off with a married man. Love was another funny thing…Love! She found her lip curling backwards from the word.
A thaw had set in and the market place was a river of slush when she alighted from the Newcastle bus. As she went to cross the square Shane’s voice came from behind her, calling, ‘Rosie! Rosie there!…Gettin’ the bus?’ he said as he came up to her.
‘Oh, hello, Shane. Yes.’
‘Isn’t this hellish? It’s never going to end. We’ll all be in the workhouse if it keeps on; we’re not goin’ in the morrow.’
‘You haven’t been working on the building today, have you?’
‘No, they’ve kept us busy inside the last few days, but that’s finished. It means the Exchange the morrow. The bloody dole. An’ what’s that?’
Shane talked about the work on the building, and the uncertainty of it; the rotten gaffer; the way they were throwing the houses up on the estate; the money the speculators were making out of them; the Labour Party; the bosses; and the scapegoats in the Union, until they got off the bus at the top of the road. Shane never needed answers. But as they were making their way down the back lane to the garden gate he said something that did need an answer. ‘What really brought you home, Rosie?’ he asked.
‘Eh?’ The question, apropos of nothing he had been talking about, startled her, and he went on, ‘Well, I mean to say. Well, we got talkin’, the others and me, and we wondered…well, if you’d had a row with a fellow up there…Had you a fellow?’
‘No, no, I hadn’t a fellow.’
‘All right, Rosie, all right, don’t snap me head off.’
They were going up the garden path now between the mounds of snow and he put his hand out and touched her shoulder, saying, ‘Don’t be ratty, Rosie; I don’t want to know anything; it was just…’
She hurried from him, and opened the kitchen door, and the warmth flooded at her. And so did her mother’s voice, crying, ‘Three lots today there’s been. Two lads at dinner time sayin’ they wanted their boots. Where would they find them, they wanted to know. An’…an’ I told them to go to hell and he’d likely be there.’
Shane, looking at Rosie, pushed his brows up and wagged his forefinger under his nose. He was about to lean forward to whisper something when Hannah heralded her approach to the kitchen and came in, saying, ‘Oh, there you are. Did you meet up? You go out with one and you come home with another.’ Hannah was nodding at Rosie, her face one large beam. ‘Well it’s been a day and a half, hasn’t it? Come here and let me have your coat. Oh, look at you, you are clarts up to the eyes! I’ll let it dry and then give it a sponge down. Away into the room and get warm. Your da’s just in. I’ve been baking, that Swedish cake with the apples that you liked, and steak and chips it is, afore that, with mushrooms.’
‘Pass it along! Pass it along!’ Shane went into the kitchen sniffing the air, and Rosie followed him. She hadn’t opened her mouth; it wasn’t necessary when her mother was in this happy mood…
The meal over, the boys upstairs getting ready for their nightly visit to the club, she sat for a while telling her father about the work at the office and Mr Bunting, while her mother, her ears wide, busied herself about the room. It wasn’t until Karen came in that she went upstairs and changed; and when she came down dressed for outdoors once more Hannah exclaimed tersely, ‘Where you off to? You’re not going out again? I thought you were telling your da you were goin’ to look at the telly.’
‘Yes I am, but later on. It’s Thursday. I’m…I’m going to church.’
‘Ooh! Aye!’ The ooh brought Hannah’s chin up and the bun of hair at the back of her head nodding loosely from its pins. ‘Oh, aye, I forgot it was Thursday. That’s a good lass. Are you going to confession?’
‘Yes, Ma.’ Rosie did not look at her mother as she spoke.
‘You won’t be long then,’ said Hannah loudly. ‘There’s not many that’ll turn out the night.’
‘No, I don’t suppose so. Bye-bye, Da.’
‘Bye-bye, lass.’
‘Bye-bye, Ma.’
‘Bye-bye, lass.’ Hannah followed her into the hall. ‘If it wasn’t so treacherous underfoot I’d come along with you.’
Rosie made no remark to this but went hurriedly through the door that Hannah held ajar, and she walked up the street because that was the way to the church, and she knew her mother would be at the front room window, and the street was well lit.
When she got out of sight around the corner she doubled back down the next road and made her way to the shop.
The long cul-de-sac at the top of the hill was not well lit but she could make out by the light from a distant lamp that there was no notice in the window.
With her foot on the coping and gripping the drainpipe once again, she found the key where she had left it that morning. She opened the shop door and, switching on the light, picked up the folded piece of paper that she had dropped through the letter box. On the shop counter there was a reel of sticky paper used for sealing the parcels; she tore off a few strips and with them pressed the notice onto the window.
She should now go to Dennis’ and tell Hughie that Mr Cullen hadn’t been at his shop today. Hadn’t she come here to give herself some excuse for going to see Hughie? All day long she had felt she must go and see him tonight. But she wanted an excuse; it wasn’t enough to say she had come to see how he was. He had money now, and then Dennis and Florence might think…Well, you never knew what people thought. Relations were the worst. She stood looking about her for a moment sniffing at the dry, musty air. She was uncertain what to do. She had the excuse but she was afraid to use it, afraid, not really of what Florence and Dennis might think but of the silence with which Hughie would greet her, the awful silence that had come between them after she had finished talking last night. And his opinion of her would likely be no better tonight than it had been last night; with time to think it might even have got worse.
She went into the back shop and switched on the light, then putting out the shop light she closed the door to the back room and pulled the blind down over the glass half of it. And as if she had been used to doing it every day she put a match to the oil stove, lit the gas and put the kettle on; then sat down near the stove and waited for the kettle to boil. She didn’t really want any tea but she wanted something warm, and she wanted to do something, occupy herself in some way. After she had made the tea she remembered the whisky that Hughie kept in the cupboard underneath the desk, and as she took out the bottle she thought, Hughie won’t mind. Then she poured a good measure into the cup of tea. She didn’t like whisky, or brandy, or gin. She knew she had no real taste for liquor of any kind, but she needed something; as her hands needed to be busy to check the unrest in her mind so her body needed warmth. The fact that Hughie had offered her no warmth last night was affecting her strangely. She had never imagined she would lay such stock by his good opinion.
After she had drunk the laced tea she pulled the chair nearer the desk, and more because her hands were restless than out of curiosity she opened the drawer. It was filled with neatly stacked sheets of paper, and she sat looking down at them for some time. If she read them she would be prying she thought. Perhaps Hughie wouldn’t like her to read what he had written. Well Hughie wasn’t there, was he? She moved her head as if asking the question of the desk, and she wanted to pry, to pry into his affairs, into his mind. She lifted a few sheets from one pile and put them on the desk; then closing the drawer, leant over them and began to read. There was no title to the first page, it just began:
‘What is more important than education today? What will get you in, what will give you preference is…an accent, just an accent. Accent still has the power to give one person an advantage over another, and strangely enough it has nothing to do with intelligence or learning but everything to do with background. So the solution for success would seem to be get yourself born with a background; then automatica
lly you’ll have an accent…’
Underneath this piece of writing were the words ‘Strip and extend. Could be made amusing.’
Yes, it could at that, she thought. Fancy Hughie being funny.
On the next page, headed ‘Return to the soil after imprisonment’ were the words:
‘I walk on you, my soles tight pressed; I lie on you, and my body wallows in your lushness; I weep my tears of love and see them soak into your groin; my sweat lies on you in glossy globules. In ecstasy I rise and take up the blade and in your rich black blood my soul is reflected. I am one with eternal life.’
After reading this three times, Rosie looked at the wall opposite. Her eyes were narrowed and her mouth hung slack. She couldn’t associate the writing with Hughie, not any part of the Hughie she knew. When she had poured out her troubles last night she had been seeing the man who sat in the corner of the kitchen, but the man she had been talking to and who had fallen silent was the man who wrote stuff like this. She didn’t know anything about this man.
She brought her eyes down to the papers again and began to read the next page. It had no heading.
‘From the bed I rise and fly, my body draped in skin alone. The air, the width of the universe, the length of eternity, is my raiment and enfolds me but does not hide me, and I care not. I pass over nations all peopled with faces of my neighbours, and they look at me and I laugh and cry down to them: “Why be afraid of your body? Look at me, look at me.” And they look and I laugh. And on I float, and glide, and soar, and whirl in wind pockets, and I grip a tall spire and dance round it and my feet bounce off the air as off a trampoline, and I shout at the life that I know is within me: “You’re there! You’re there! This is you…jumping, jumping.” And my shouting cleaves the clouds as it always does. And then I fall and fall and land in a field full of men, with one woman in the midst, and she is standing up to her waist in filth, and I awake in the blackness and wonder if I’ll ever drop into a field of flowers…’
Hannah Massey Page 16