‘Really!’ Queenie was standing erect and indignant. ‘This has gone beyond everything.’
‘Oh!’ Nellie put up her hand and softly patted the air. It was a pat that ignored Queenie as a whole and pushed her forcibly into her place. ‘Don’t, as your mother would say, take on, please. Should anybody feel indignant it should be me. What do you say, Tim?’ They were still staring at each other. ‘Wouldn’t you think they would all be rejoicing to see me in the money?’ She smiled with one side of her mouth. ‘I’m sure you’ll be happy, because now I’ll be off your conscience, and you have enough to put up with without that.’
‘Get her out before I…’
Rooney watched the scuffle to keep Ma in hand. But neither the scuffle nor Ma’s voice seemed to have the slightest effect on Nellie. It was as if she heard neither, for looking deep into the shamefaced eyes of the big fellow, she said: ‘I’ve always had one advantage over you, Tim…I’ve been a freelance. Even in my misery I was a freelance.’ On this she turned from him; and Rooney, stepping quickly aside, let her out.
She went past him with her head up, giving him no sign of recognition. And he stood in the doorway watching her mount the stairs while the room to his side became a bedlam.
‘By God! Who’d believe it? And to turn on me, and me always sticking up for her.’
‘Stop crying, Ma. Look, you’ll be ill. And there’s tomorrow, remember.’
‘Well, thank God Harry and his people aren’t here.’
‘I’ll throw her out. I will, I will.’
‘All right, Ma. All right. Only stop crying.’
‘“And the worm when it turned had an elephant’s hoof.”’
‘Oh, for God’s sake stop your clever quotations, Jimmy. Just because she said you could think.’
‘All right, Queenie. I’m sorry if my quoting upsets you. But it was very nice of her to realise it…Don’t take it so badly, Tim, it’s life.’
‘He’s not taking it badly. And you shut up.’
‘Now, Queenie, that doesn’t go with all your accoutrements. And what about letting Tim speak for himself?’
‘She’s nothing but a prostitute! She admitted it, didn’t she? And to think, all these years and what I’ve done for her.’
‘There, there, Ma.’
‘Where are you going?’
The big fellow, his face now devoid of colour, went quickly past Rooney and out of the front door without answering his wife, and Rooney, moving quietly, made for the stairs.
In his room he stood with his cap between his hands looking towards the wall at the head of the bed. The babble of voices coming up to him was not more confused than were his feelings, for only a small part of him was now in sympathy with her. That she had planned her entry he was sure. And he should now be waving a flag for her. But she’d got drunk, or pretty near it. And to him that had taken something out of her act of retaliation. He did not name it dignity. If she had come in, dressed up to the nines as she was, and with a few cool words, as they would have done on the pictures, passed through the room leaving them all flabbergasted, that would have done the trick. Her dressing up and staging her entry had been something like the pictures anyway, but she failed to carry it through. The big fellow had likely deserved all he got. But, by God, he had looked awful. Drunk or sober, she had certainly carried that part out all right—she couldn’t have hit him harder or better. Yet somehow or other he now felt sorry for the chap. One part she hadn’t done very convincingly. That was about the old fellow. Her laughter had not the effect of denial as she intended it should, but appeared to him a poor cover-up. She had perhaps been taken off her guard by Ma’s knowledge.
He threw his cap on to a chair, and having pulled off his clothes got ready for bed. But he did not go to bed. The bed was too near the wall that separated him from Nellie and he did not want to think any more about her or of her business. She had got herself fixed up and his pity would not be called upon in the future.
He sat before the fire, his feet stretched out on the hearth, and as time went on the voices became more subdued, rising only once when he guessed Doreen had come in.
He heard the car starting up outside, which meant the big fellow was back; then voices from the street, one in particular, Dennis’ high reedy tone. And he remembered with some surprise that he had been about the only one who hadn’t opened his mouth during the do, yet he had looked the most astonished of the lot of them. Of the bunch, it was that bloke Dennis, Rooney thought, he disliked the most.
He was still sitting before the fire when he heard Doreen and Ma coming upstairs, and he put out the light in case Ma, when sanity should return would mention his extravagance. But he still sat on. The firelight glowed darkly on his dresser, and his pieces of china responded with their usual glints. The glass trinket set from his dressing table, after trebling itself in the mirrors, sent silver streaks across the lino. The brass knobs of the bed twinkled at him, saying, ‘Come on, man, don’t be a damn fool.’ His bits all spoke to him, bringing their usual comfort, and he rose thinking, Aye, well, I wish her luck. And no doubt she’ll need it with an old bloke like him. And I hope she gets some comfort out of her fancy furniture. It did strike him that she was becoming compensated for an antique with more antiques, but he was in no mood for jests.
He made his way to bed, telling himself that he was definitely going to make a move from here, but until he could get away he’d move his bed to the other wall.
Chapter Five: The Bashing Feeling
The movement in the house started early—it was the unusual sound of a fire being raked that woke Rooney, and he looked at his watch—it said ten minutes to five. And try as he might after this he couldn’t get to sleep again. The consequences were that he lay tossing and turning until, a good half-hour before his usual time, he made himself rise and get ready for work.
He had a thick head, like he sometimes experienced at Christmas when he went over his allowance and took on a drop too much.
For no particular reason, or so he told himself, other than that he had woken too early, he found himself in a devil of a temper. The appearance of the whole room irritated him; the electric light seemed to be starkly glaring, showing up his bits as no light had shown them up before. And it crossed his mind that his bed looked a monstrosity. As he combed his hair before the mirror he was surprised at the sight of himself. His mouth looked set and his eyes dark, and his whole expression vaguely reminded him of Albert.
Downstairs, somewhat to his surprise, it was a subdued Ma he met. She made no comment on his early appearance, but poured him out a cup of tea without a word, and while he was drinking it she went into the kitchen and fried his bacon and eggs. And when she placed his meal before him she took herself a cup of tea and then sat down at the corner of the table and, staring down into the steam rising from the cup, she asked, ‘Well…now, what do you think?’
He chewed on his food before saying in a voice that sounded to himself almost a growl, ‘It’s no business of mine.’
Ma nodded at the steam. ‘No, I suppose not, but you can’t help thinking. Nobody can. An old man, and with a name like he’s got. He’s been living with this woman up Harton for years. And he has a wife in Harrogate…I’m so ashamed. Well, she won’t stay here…she’ll go.’
As Ma took a quick sip of her tea, Rooney thought, She’ll go all right—there wouldn’t be much point in the whole business if she didn’t.
‘The wickedness of her! And to come in like that, drunk, like…a…a…’ Ma refrained from repeating last night’s denunciation and substituted ‘Hussy’. ‘And all the upset. She did it on purpose…Oh, she did it on purpose all right.’ Ma shook her head slowly from side to side as she corroborated her own statement. ‘Don’t you think she did?’
The point-blank question caused him to move uneasily, and without looking up from his plate, he said, ‘I’m having nothing to say in the matter.’
‘Well, you’re right there. But as I said, you can’t help thin
king. And you thought a bit last night; you were as astonished as any of us.’
That she should have noticed his reaction surprised him. She should, he thought, have had enough to think about without taking in how he looked.
‘And to go on to Tim like that. He didn’t know where to put himself, did he? She would make anyone believe who didn’t know that she had really meant something to him. And she never has; they were only friendly…Look at the size of him to her. It would have been grotesque. They were like Mutt and Jeff, the long and the short of it.’
She could go on until she was tired here, Rooney thought, and she would never convince him other than what Johnny had told him and what he himself had surmised from the big fellow’s face. He had been going to marry her all right, and if the truth were told he was now damn sorry he hadn’t.
A movement on the landing caused Ma to get quickly to her feet. She had momentarily forgotten the great day. But the sound of Doreen made her bustle sharply about, saying, ‘I don’t know where I am this morning. Oh, she’s got a lot to answer for, that one. God is slow, but He’s sure.’ Her voice became ominous. ‘As she is sowing so shall she reap. And I’ll see her brought to her knees in the gutter yet!’
For the moment it shocked Rooney to realise that she could couple God with her innate desire to see the little one brought low; it seemed to him now that in some odd way she had derived a satisfaction from the drab, colourless creature that Nellie had become, and had experienced some form of pleasure in keeping her like that.
Covertly glancing at her as she darted between the kitchen and the living room, he came to the conclusion that there were some folks who were past understanding. A man or woman could be jailed for assault, for robbery, for defamation of character, yet a woman like Ma, a regular churchgoer and a woman who, he had to admit, had done all in her means to further the welfare of her family, could slowly and painfully strangle one of her own kind while professing to be doing her nothing but good; but when the victim escaped, as the little one had done, she could become so consumed with the desire to see her brought low that she would stop at nothing to achieve this end.
Rooney’s mind up to now had not been used in trying to explain the intricacies of human nature, and he was finding the process rather trying. He could come to no conclusion or cut-and-dried explanation of the social behaviour he was now encountering in this house. All he could say to himself was, Some folks should be fetched up for what they do.
But seeing the cupidity of Ma did not put the little one in better focus. If she had to go on the loose why hadn’t she done it years ago? Why had she waited till now? Yet it was undoubtedly the pressure of life in this house of late that had driven her to it.
‘I won’t see you at dinner time,’ said Ma, as he went out, ‘but I’ll leave everything ready. Betty’s coming round. She’ll pop it in the oven.’
‘You’ve no need to bother,’ said Rooney; ‘I can get my meal out. I should have mentioned it sooner.’
‘Well, I won’t say that won’t be a help. We’ll leave it at that then…you’ll have your dinner out. Once this is over we’ll be back to our own quiet life again.’
He did not wait to hear more, but saying ‘Goodbye’, he closed the door. Quiet life! Not if he knew it, he wouldn’t. There’d be no quiet life for him there. The young one and the little one gone would leave him alone with her. And Ma, he was beginning to feel, was a very uncertain quantity. It could be mothering, marriage, or getting him to God, any one of the three, or all of them…he wouldn’t put anything past her. No, no. He was bolting, and as quick as possible.
Walking through the rows and rows of streets, he thought, Surely there’s some place for me where I won’t meet trouble.
These houses were mostly of three rooms on the ground floor and four rooms on the upper, and each floor was classed as a house. And these were the more spacious kind! In Alice Street and thereabouts there were only two rooms on a floor. But each one appeared to him like a palace, and he wished that a miracle would happen and he could get one.
His desire for the accomplishment of this miracle was as fervent as another man’s to win the seventy-five thousand pounds’ pool; and in the depot, where he met Danny, and with hardly any preliminary, he voiced this to him yet again.
Danny, looking hard at him, said, ‘Trouble?’
‘No,’ said Rooney. ‘I just want to get away from there.’
‘Who is it, the old one or the…?’
‘Neither. I just want to move.’
Although he had already told Danny about the little one, he found he could not pass on the latest developments. He could no more have said ‘She’s gone on the loose,’ than he could have talked of his own mother’s lapses.
‘Why, man, I don’t know what to make of you.’ Danny rubbed his nose with the side of his finger. ‘Well, in any case, whether you stay or go Mrs D wants you to come to wor place for Christmas.’
Rooney smiled. ‘I’d like that, Danny. Thanks…Thank her.’
Bill and Fred joined them and, after the usual cursory greetings, they stood together waiting for Albert. And when at last Albert put in an appearance, hurrying across the yard towards them, Danny muttered under his breath, ‘Aye, aye! Something’s happened here, an’ all.’ There was a sheepishness about Albert that was unusual, especially since lately his whole attitude had been one of aggression, and Bill, never able to keep his observations to himself, remarked, ‘Pinched the cat’s milk, Albert?’
‘What! No.’ Albert lit a cigarette, then looked from one to the other. And after a long, sustained draw he remarked with forced casualness, ‘I’d better tell you. I’m…I’m going to give me notice in.’
They stared at him. A chap didn’t give his notice in just like that. It brewed up for a long time. He threatened it, he talked about it. Then one day he did it and no-one was really surprised.
‘Got another job, Albert?’ asked Danny.
‘I’m goin’ in the pits.’
‘The pits! Well, I’ll be damned! After the big money?’ said Bill.
‘Why not?’
‘Why not at all,’ said Bill. ‘But I thought that, like the rest of us, you preferred to meet your number above the gutters.’
‘When me time comes I’ll go, and not afore.’ Albert turned away, and after a quick glance had passed between the others they followed him.
It was not until the middle of the morning, while in the privacy of a long tradesmen’s entrance, that Albert, able to contain himself no longer, said, ‘She’s come back, Rooney.’
Rooney stopped in his tracks and asked slowly, ‘You’re taking her?’
His eyes following his hand, Albert dusted down his jacket. ‘She’s turning over a new leaf.’
Albert was now surveying his feet. ‘She won’t stay in Shields…we’re goin’ to Darlington. I’ve got some relations there; they’re letting us have a room until we get settled. I can’t tell the others; you could tip them off for me, if you will. They’ll say I’m daft, barmy, but it’s me own life.’
Sidetracking the main issue, Rooney said, ‘But you always hated the pits when you were down as a lad, Albert.’
‘I’ll get used to ’em again. And me money’ll be double what it is now, that’s the main thing.’ He looked up. ‘I’ll miss the lot of you. But you more than any of them…we’ve been good mates. But’—his mouth and eyes became hard as he turned away—‘nothing or nobody matters. I’ll work in hell if it’s goin’ to make things right.’
Rooney walked behind him up the path, through the gate, and out on to the road. What was it that got into a man that would allow him to take back a woman after he knew she had been with other blokes, coloured an’ all? What was there to measure the torment of knowing your wife was like that against the torment of wanting her back in spite of it?…The emotions bred of living were beginning to worry Rooney. If it should happen to him it would drive him mad. But he was consoled that it wouldn’t happen…he would never be eaten up with t
he passion or whatever it was that drove men to do what Albert was going to do. Again came the consolation that if he had missed any of the transient joys of marriage, he had also missed the more concrete woes.
On top of this came the uneasy thought that things were going to change and change quickly. Albert going, Danny due for his pension next year, and with a new charge-hand they would likely be changed all round. Nothing would be the same. And when he came to consider it, the change had already begun, because nothing had been the same since he went to Filbert Terrace.
At twelve o’clock, after Albert had departed and before they dispersed from the depot, he told the gang the news. Bill swore long and loudly, as Rooney had thought he would. Fred said, ‘Well, he’ll have no sympathy from me. He deserves all that’s coming to him.’ Danny, quiet as usual, remarked, ‘I guessed it was like that. Mrs D won’t be surprised either…she said that’s how it would be. Well, it’s his life.’
Although it was bitingly cold, the sun was shining as Rooney made his way home, and he was vindictive enough to be thinking it was more than that Madam Doreen deserved, and that it would have served her right if it had snowed and hailed.
Betty was in the kitchen when he went in, and she greeted him affably. ‘Oh, hallo,’ she said. ‘I was hoping you’d be in shortly. Are you going to stay long? I’ve lit your fire.’
‘Well,’ he considered, trying to arrange in his mind just how long he could stay in without running into Ma and the party on their return, ‘well, I’ll be going out about three.’
‘Oh, I’ll be back before then…I just wanted to pop home to see to Johnny and if everything’s all right. I won’t be half an hour. It’s only because of Grandpa…She’s in, but I wouldn’t ask her anything.’
Rooney was quick to notice this change in Betty’s attitude. Nellie had become ‘she’—not so much, he considered, if at all, because of her lost virtue but because of her remark last night to Johnny. It was a case of prick a husband and you stab a loving wife.
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