A woman came and bent over him and helped him to his feet, and when he was upright, with his hand covering his damaged eye, he stood swaying.
Looking at Joe, who was standing taut within the man’s grasp, he said between gasps, ‘You’ll get it for this. What’s up with you? I’ve done nowt to you. But you’ll get it for this. See if you don’t.’
Joe Lloyd was struggling again in an effort to free himself from the man, who now shouted at him, ‘Get yourself away and quick!’ And when he didn’t move, the man added, ‘Unless you want some more.’
He backed a few steps, then stopped again. And looking from one to the other, he said, ‘You’ll get some more; the lot of you’ll get some more. Don’t think you’ll get away with this.’ But as he turned to go he looked towards the bushes, where he had seen the girl standing with nothing on; and then, in spite of the pain of his bruises and the shock that the attack had caused, he gaped again, for although he could see only a bit of her hair and face he knew he was seeing Brid Stevens. And it was revealed to him why he had been attacked. Dragging his eyes from the bushes back towards Joe again, he cried, ‘You won’t get off with this. Just you wait, you mad bugger!’ and the words seemed to impel him to get away, and quickly, for it was obvious the man could hardly hold back Joe Lloyd.
He was trembling as he mounted the motorcycle. He could only see out of one eye. Half of his face seemed to be extending to the end of his shoulder. He touched his cheekbone. It felt as if it were cracked, and as he opened the throttle he said, ‘Wait until I tell them! Just wait!’ And he glanced in the direction of the clearing before driving off…
Ten minutes later Mrs Talbot, looking at her son standing in the doorway, exclaimed, ‘My God! You’ve come off. Well, I knew you would one of these days. What happened? What did you hit? Don’t just stand there. My God! What a face!’
‘I didn’t hit nowt.’
‘You didn’t hit nowt? How did you get that, then? Bill!’ She threw back her head and called to her husband: ‘Come here and see this. This is what I’ve said would happen all along.’
‘I tell you, Ma, I didn’t hit nowt.’
When his father appeared in the doorway he said again, ‘I didn’t hit nowt, Dad. I went to me granny’s, as you know, and I was comin’ back. I got off me bike up above the bay, near the little wood, because Sandy and them—’
‘Sandy and them?’ His mother’s head went back. ‘That Sandy Palmer will lead you to no—’
‘Oh, shut up, Ma, and let me tell you! And give me something for me eye. You won’t shut your mouth. I haven’t seen Sandy. I went to see him; I thought they were swimming. I thought I saw him behind the bushes and I went up and I saw—’ He stopped, and then said more slowly, ‘There was a lass behind the bushes. She had nowt on.’ He watched his mother’s face shrink into primness. ‘And then a fella came at me. I didn’t know what hit me. He knocked me to the ground and pummelled me until another bloke pulled him off. It was a fella called Joe Lloyd, and the lass was Brid Stevens from along the road.’
‘Brid Stevens? D’you mean to say she was the lass with nothing on?’
‘Aye; yes, she was. She was behind some bushes and she had nowt on. Neither had he.’
‘And because you caught them, the fella went for you, was that it?’
‘Aye. He came at me from behind. He went mad. But he won’t get off with it. When I tell Sandy—’
‘You say it was Brid Stevens?’
‘What’ve I been tellin’ you…? Dad’—he appealed to his father who had remained silent all this time—‘haven’t I been tellin’ her, and she keeps on. It was Brid Stevens and this fella Joe Lloyd.’ He turned back to his mother: ‘Get me somethin’ for me face, will you? Have you any steak? They say steak’s good.’
‘I’ve got no steak. How would I have steak on a Sunday afternoon? The meat’s cooked. My God! Look at the mess you’re in…and your suit. And that Brid Stevens. This is through her, the dirty little bitch. Goin’ the same road as her mother…Well!’
‘That’s enough! That’s enough!’ It was the first time the man had spoken, and his wife turned on him angrily now, saying, ‘Oh…that’s enough. It’s the likes of her who get sympathy. Disgrace she is, and the trouble she’s caused. Look at poor Olive Palmer next door. Ruined her health and everything the carry-on has, for years.’
‘That’s enough, I said. It’s got nothin’ to do with this. He butted in on the fella and the girl, and the fella turned on him…Were you looking for it?’
‘No; no, I wasn’t. I tell you I was just lookin’ for Sandy and this fella came at me. And I wouldn’t have been lookin’ for it; you just have to go on the beach if you want to see that.’
‘Keep your voice down.’ The father looked at his son, whom he didn’t like. The boy was a weak-kneed, dim little ignoramus, and a sneaking, light-fingered liar into the bargain, whose one desire in life was to be like that lout of a Palmer next door. Bill Talbot wondered, and not for the first time, how children could be so different from their parents. He hadn’t much time for John Palmer and his carrying on with Alice Stevens, but the man didn’t seem to be of the type to breed a Sandy Palmer, nor did Olive Palmer seem the kind of woman to breed such a son. Funny things happened with offspring. He would have wished to have been able to say there was something of himself in his son, but look what he had been saddled with. His lad was eighteen and he was no good. No good whatsoever. He shuddered to think what he would be like at twenty-eight.
He said now, ‘Well, a black eye won’t kill you.’ Then his attention was brought sharply from his son to his wife as she stood taking off her apron. He watched her smoothing down her hair with quick strokes of her fingers before he asked, ‘Where d’you think you’re goin’?’
‘I’m going along to the Stevens’.’
‘What for?’
‘What for? You’ve got to ask what for and his face like that! I don’t know this Joe Lloyd, but I know Brid Stevens, and anyone with any sense knows why he got his face, ’cos he saw her when he shouldn’t have seen her.’
‘Now look here, you’re not—’
‘You can talk as much as you like. You’ve never done anything in your life for him but criticise him, and I don’t expect you to defend him. Well, that may be your way of looking at things, but it isn’t mine. I’m goin’ along to the Stevens’.’
Bill Talbot rested one hand on the table, the other he rubbed across his mouth. It was no good and he knew it. He could stop her going to the Stevens’. Yes he could stop her by force: he could push her into the room and give her a clout, and it wouldn’t be the first time. But when he was at work he couldn’t stop her from doing what she wanted to do. If she didn’t go to the Stevens’ now, she would go the minute he went out of the house…He turned and went back into the front room and took up the paper.
‘Come on.’
‘Aw, Ma!’
‘Never mind aw Ma-ing me. Come on, I say.’
‘Look Ma; I’ll see Sandy—’
‘You’ll see Sandy when I’m finished with you. Come on.’
‘What about somethin’ on me eye?’
‘I’ll see about that later. Come on, it’ll keep.’ She yanked him by the upper arm across the kitchen and out of the back door and down the long back garden. As they reached the gate a voice from the next garden said, ‘Anything wrong, Mrs Talbot?’
Olive Palmer had always addressed her neighbour as Mrs Talbot. She was of the opinion that her family were a cut above the Talbots, and she imagined she made this evident by never resorting to Christian names. Christian names made for familiarity. From her seat behind the glass porch adjoining the scullery she had heard the Talbots going at it, and now she rose from the deckchair and looked down the garden towards where the mother and son waited.
‘It’s that Brid Stevens. Charlie here was going looking for your Sandy, when he was attacked by a fella, all because of Brid Stevens.’ Mrs Talbot was well aware of Mrs Palmer’s condescending attitu
de, and her own retribution took the form of pity and vindictiveness; what affected Brid Stevens affected John Palmer…and so on.
‘Brid?’ Mrs Palmer was slowly advancing down the garden, and she said again, ‘Brid?’ And now the two women were facing each other close over the fence, and Mrs Talbot gave the rest of her information in tones which were low and hushed, as the subject warranted. ‘She was up there in the wood naked, so my Charlie says. He came on them, and this fella went for him. Just look at his face.’
Mrs Palmer looked at Charlie Talbot’s face and her body began to quiver, though not noticeably. She said again, ‘Brid?’ and added, ‘like that?’ And Mrs Talbot made a slight obeisance with her head before pushing Charlie forward and moving away.
Olive Palmer returned up the garden path more quickly than she had come down it. Her walk was even spritely, and this was rather surprising, for she was a semi-invalid, carrying in her body aches and pains which were the symptoms of no known disease. Yet they were there and gave, from time to time, evidence of their presence by sending her heart into a panic of beats and her nerves to screaming pitch. When she reached the kitchen her husband was putting the last of the dinner dishes away. He had washed up as he always did on a Sunday, and every other day, for that matter. The dishes were always in the sink to greet him on his return from work, but this did not disturb him.
John Palmer’s disposition was such that he could take the chores of housework in his stride. He was at heart a kindly man, aiming to hurt no-one, but nevertheless hurting, through weakness, all those people who touched on his life.
He turned at the unusual sound of his wife’s quick step. He had a side dish in one hand and a tea towel in the other, and with a not unusual feeling of apprehension he waited for her to speak. But she stared at him for a full minute before saying, ‘There’s trouble up there.’
The words were ordinary enough, and it wasn’t the first time he had heard her utter similar ones, but he could see now she was excited about something, even pleased. He knew every phase of his wife’s reactions to practically every situation and he knew that whatever the trouble was now, it was bad. He had never heard her walk so briskly or look so bright for a long time.
John Palmer never criticised his wife, even to himself; he knew that for whatever had happened to her he was to blame, and he remembered that she hadn’t always been like this. At one time she had been lively and pleasant. If the war had not brought him and Tom Stevens together again and renewed their boyhood friendship, and if Alice Stevens had been a different woman from what she was, things between them might have been different. If only Tom had attempted to prove, back at the beginning, that Brid was not his, things would have come to a head and been finished with. But apparently Tom couldn’t bring himself to do it. He likely fooled himself that women were known to be a few weeks over their time. It was not unusual. And if only Alice had been a bit decent to him and not treated him like a mucky rag; after all, she lived in the same house and took his money.
The first time he had refused to leave Olive and the two youngsters and go off with her, Alice had threatened to go off on her own and leave both him and Tom high and dry. And since that day she had repeated the plea and the threat at least twice a year. But she had never been able to carry out the threat. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. That was the funny thing about this business, John Palmer thought: that he could have principles which tied him to his wife and children, yet he could still go on taking his pal’s wife whenever he had the chance. It was this facet of his life that made a mockery of decency and troubled him not a little. Even now, when the desire for Alice nearly drove him up the wall and the solution would be to do as she had always wanted, go off with her—there were no young bairns to think about now—he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He had only to look at Olive and see what he had reduced her to, and that would be enough. He put down the side dish and said, ‘What’s the trouble? How d’you know?’
‘It’s Brid. Mrs Talbot’s just dragged their Charlie along to them. His face is all knocked about. He said a fella hit him because he came upon them, this fella and Brid, in the copse above the bay near Stockwell Hill.’ She now lowered her eyes demurely and delivered the barb: ‘Brid had nothing on, he said.’
‘What! Nothing on? I don’t believe it. Brid? I know what Charlie Talbot is, he’s a little rat of a thing, is Charlie Talbot.’
Olive Palmer saw that her husband was angry, agitated and angry, and hurt, and she wanted him to be hurt. She watched him roll down his sleeves, then go to the back of the door and take down his old coat.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Where d’you think?’ His tone was unusually sharp, to her, that is.
As he passed her, Olive Palmer warned herself to say nothing: if he knew her reactions she also certainly knew his. With this knowledge she had kept him where she wanted him for years. She had experienced all she wanted of one side of married life long before Sandy was born. Her husband’s affair with Alice Stevens had broken her up, but rather from the fear of losing the security that a nice home and a regular pay packet ensured than of losing the love of her man. She hated Alice Stevens, but more so did she hate her daughter Brid. Not only because she knew without a shadow of doubt that her husband was Brid’s father, but because of the fear that had grown in her these last few years that their Sandy was getting sweet on her. The only thing that had stopped her from telling her son the truth was the fact that he would be nearly sure to turn on his father, and if things were dragged into the open there was no knowing what John might do. He might, even at this stage, walk out on her—there were no children to hold him now and Alice Stevens was always ready and waiting.
She picked up the tea towel that had dropped to the floor, and as she was about to hang it on the rack near the stove, Sandy appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘I’m off,’ he said.
‘Sandy!’ She had her back to him.
‘Aye?’
‘There’s trouble down below. Your Dad’s just gone along.’
‘Trouble? What kind of trouble?’ Sandy was standing stiffly with his hands by his side, his eyes narrowed. He was staring at the back of his mother’s head and she still didn’t turn to him as she spoke.
‘It’s to do with Brid. Apparently she’s been sportin’ in the copse above the bay with some fella and Charlie Talbot saw them. He was looking for you.’
‘Sportin’?’ The sparse flesh on his face moved into furrows as he repeated the word. The questioning tone he had used made her reply defensive.
‘Well, what else would you call it, her running around up there stark naked?’
‘Brid? Nak—’ He did not finish but stared at his mother as she turned towards him.
‘Well, I don’t know how far it’s true. You know as much as me, but that’s what Charlie Talbot came back and said, and he’s brought his face to prove it. You should see it. He’s along there now with his mother.’
She watched her son’s eyes drop away from hers. She did not care if Brid Stevens ran around stark naked with the whole of South Scardyke so long as it wasn’t with her son. She saw the fury behind the tightness of his face and it confirmed her opinion of his feelings for Brid Stevens. She felt sick. Pray God this business today would put the damper on it. She watched him spin about and run along the passage, and then she heard the front door bang, to be followed almost immediately by the faint click from the garden gate. He must have taken the path in a couple of leaps.
‘All right, Mrs Talbot. All right.’ Tom Stevens was speaking in a quiet way, a toneless quiet way. ‘You’ve had your say and Charlie’s had a beatin’ up. Well, you’re not going to hold me responsible for that, are you? And don’t say again’—he held up his hand almost in front of her face—‘and don’t say again that it’s Brid’s fault. When I see all you’ve said I’ll believe it, and not until.’
‘You think he’s a liar then, you think she wouldn’t do it?’
‘I’m sayin’ nowt u
ntil I see her.’
After the scene of the morning Tom Stevens seemed strangely calm. He moved now towards the back door and, opening it, indicated that he wished Mrs Talbot and her son to leave. And Mrs Talbot, pushing Charlie out in the same way as she had pushed him in, said, ‘Of course, you won’t want to believe it. That’s natural, I grant you. But something’s goin’ to be done about this, an’ I can tell you straight I’m goin’ to report that fella to the police, and you won’t be able to hush things up then.’ She looked around the assembled company from Tom Stevens to Alice Stevens, and then to the corner of the triangle, as she thought of him, John Palmer, and said plainly, ‘There’s been too much hushin’ up, if you ask me.’
‘Aw, come on, Ma. Come on out of it.’ Charlie’s voice pulled her after him.
Tom Stevens closed the door quietly on the pair, and then with the knob in his hand he stood looking at it for a moment before turning to face his wife and his pal. It was a different Tom Stevens now, entirely different from the one who had just denied Brid’s lapse to Mrs Talbot, for, after staring first at his wife and then at his pal, then back to his wife again, he brought out between stiffened jaws, ‘Nice set up, isn’t it, eh? Playin’ games in the wood stark naked. That’s for you, eh?’
‘I don’t believe it, Tom, and you shouldn’t either.’ John Palmer’s voice was quiet, and he was startled at the bellow that answered him.
‘No, you wouldn’t believe it! No! Of course you wouldn’t, not you. But I do. I believe it all right, and I’ve got good reason to believe it.’ His gaze swung to his wife, and his voice dropping slightly, he said again, ‘Runnin’ round naked in the wood. By God! I hope she’s still naked when I get me hands on her; I’ll take the skin from her ribs, you see if I don’t.’
As he dived across the kitchen, pulling at his shirt collar to bring the ends together, Alice Stevens found her voice and in a high squeak demanded, ‘Where’re you goin’?’
The Bonny Dawn Page 10