The Clogger s Child

by Marie Joseph

  The long corridor was carpeted, silent, anonymous, with closed doors either side. A lonely place for a man to come home to each night. In that strangely passive mood she stood by Bart’s side as he took out his key and opened a door at the far end of the corridor.

  ‘The telephone is there,’ he told her, pointing to a shelf in the square tiny hall. ‘I’ll go and mix you a drink. Through there …’ He opened a door leading into a sitting room, switching on the lights.

  And it was easier than she had thought it would be. John was asleep, the nurse told her, then actually thanked Clara for letting her know she would be late. ‘Enjoy yourself, Mrs Maynard,’ she said unexpectedly. And that was that.

  ‘What is that?’ Clara looked suspiciously at the drink in a tall glass borne in a kind of triumph by Bart from the kitchen leading off the sitting room. ‘It’s a funny colour.’

  ‘I call it Tiger’s Blood.’ Smiling, Bart handed it over to her, then came to sit beside her on the large sofa flanked by bookshelves on one side and a dining table set in the large window on the other. ‘Milk, honey and sherry, the best pick-me-up I know. Guaranteed to keep you awake for long enough for me to talk to you. Come on, drink it down, there’s a good girl.’

  To her shame Clara felt her eyes fill with tears. Kindness is too much, she told herself. All the other I can take – sarcasm, cruelty, the physical strain of looking after a helpless invalid. Work, too. Singing night after night to packed audiences, all that too. But kindness, compassion? No, I can’t take that.

  Gently Bart took the glass from her before drawing her close into his arms. He hadn’t meant to touch her, had steeled himself not to touch her, but the sight of those silent tears slowly rolling down her cheeks had unnerved him.

  ‘Let it come, sweetheart,’ he whispered. ‘Try and cry it all away. I’m here, my darling. I’ve always been here. You must have known.’ His fingers tangled in the scented softness of her long hair, loosening it from its pins so that it ran over his hand, so clean and sweet-smelling he closed his eyes, pressed his mouth against it, drinking in its beauty. ‘My little love …’ His voice was a sigh. ‘Do you know what it’s been doing to me, watching you, day by day?’

  She raised her head, saw the love in his eyes, recognized it had been there for a long, long time and, in that heart-stopping moment, accepted it.

  ‘Bart?’ Slowly, wonderingly, her fingers traced the contours of his dear familiar face. ‘Love me, please.’ Her green eyes were slumberous and yet filled with passion. ‘I need to be loved. I don’t think I can go on without love any longer. So please make love to me.’

  He couldn’t believe what she’d just said. It was so unexpected, so completely mind-shattering, he could only hold her from him, shaking his head.

  ‘You mean you … ?’ His voice was husky and deep as he gazed into her lovely face.

  ‘I mean that I love you too,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve loved you for a long time, Bart. I’ve been loving you and watching you, and now … well, there’s nothing we can do about it, is there?’ Her head drooped. ‘I’m only human, you see. And I have such a need of you and of loving, sometimes I think I will die of it.’

  Lifting her up into his arms, he carried her through into the bedroom and, as if she were a child, slowly undressed her. And their loving was so gentle, so tender in its total caring, it seemed as if they were taken to a higher place where nothing mattered but their love and their anguished need for each other.

  Afterwards they slept, and when they awakened became one again, moving tenderly, murmuring words of love, mouth against mouth, heart to heart, giving and taking, taking and giving.

  Still in a bemused state of adoration, Bart reminded her that she must go. Half expecting her to be immediately swamped with the guilt which he knew was a part of her. Steeling himself against the recrimination he was sure would possess her when, dressed and back in the sitting room, they faced each other in the shaded light from the lamp on the low coffee table.

  ‘I never knew that loving could be like that,’ she told him. ‘To think I could have lived the rest of my life never knowing love could be like that.’ She was actually smiling as she pinned up her hair. ‘Oh, I feel marvellous, Bart. Don’t you feel marvellous too?’

  ‘But we have to talk.’ He pulled her down to sit beside him on the sofa again, and leaning against him she pointed at the drink on the low table.

  ‘And I didn’t even need the Tiger’s Blood, did I?’ she teased. ‘You’d better drink it, Bart. You look more in need of it than me.’

  ‘You must leave him,’ Bart said. ‘You must leave him and come to me. We can see that he’s well cared for, but you must divorce him. He gave you grounds long before he had the accident. You can’t go on like this. I won’t let you go on. He’s killing you, my darling.’

  ‘Joe is dead,’ she said almost dreamily. ‘He told me last night that Joe had died all alone, asking for me. A long time ago.’ She reached for her purse. ‘I have no love for John, but I had loyalty, and when he told me that, there didn’t seem any need any longer for loyalty. Do you see?’ Holding up a small mirror, she applied a touch of coral lipstick to her mouth. ‘But I can’t leave him, it wouldn’t be right. I married him. For better for worse, and that’s a vow I can never break.’ She snapped the fastening of her purse close. ‘I made it in God’s name, you see.’

  ‘Oh, God …’ Bart stared at her helplessly. ‘I believe in God, too, but I break His rules because I’m human, because no one can live according to the Scriptures. Not unless they’re a saint!’

  ‘And I’m not a saint,’ Clara agreed. ‘I’ve just been unfaithful to my husband, so I’m a long, long way from being a saint.’ She stood up. ‘Will you ring for a taxi, Bart? Have you seen the time?’

  He insisted on going with her in the taxi, sitting close to her, holding tightly to her hand, bemused and baffled, but knowing that the time for talking, for making her see reason was not now. She loved him, that was enough, and somehow they would be together.

  He waited until he’d seen her open the big front door of the house in Conduit Street. He waited until he saw the hall light switched off. Then he tapped on the glass and told the driver to take him back to Maida Vale.

  The nurse was in the kitchen boiling a kettle for a cup of tea when Clara opened the door. Over her uniform she was wearing an old navy blue cardigan which showed the peg marks at the sides. Her starched cap was standing stiffly on the dresser next to a bowl of fruit. She had that look about her of slight abandon which people seem to get in the middle of the night, and Clara was glad it was she and not Nurse Edwardson who always looked as if she was back on the wards and expecting matron to come round at any minute.

  ‘Have your cup of tea, then go home,’ Clara said, smiling at her. ‘I don’t feel like sleeping. I’m too …’ She tried to think what she was, then added, ‘too strung up.’

  ‘Are you sure, Mrs Maynard?’ Nurse Bates said insincerely, as if she was objecting. She could be home in seven minutes if she pedalled fast enough and, with a bit of luck, if the kids in the flat next door kept quiet, she could sleep till noon. And if she slept till noon, she’d be nice and fresh for when she went dancing that night. Maybe this would be the night the young man she’d been going out with for six months would propose. ‘Well, if you’re sure, Mrs Maynard,’ she said again, turning the gas out beneath the kettle. ‘Your husband settled nicely for me.’ She unhooked her navy raincoat from the peg behind the door and stuffed the white cap into its pocket. ‘When I told him you were likely to be very late, he said how glad he was that you were thinking of yourself for a change and that he hoped you’d stay out all night if you were enjoying yourself.’

  Clara couldn’t help looking quickly over her shoulder towards the bedroom. John had said that? She smiled. ‘Have a nice weekend, nurse. And thank you for all you do. I’m very grateful.’

  There was something different about her, Nurse Bates muttered to herself as she ran down the stairs. All li
t up and excited, as if she was still on stage with the spotlight shining on her and the women in the audience unpinning their flowers to throw them at her feet, the way they’d done when Nurse Bates’s boyfriend had taken her to see Lovin’ You. As if she’d come straight from the arms of a lover, Nurse Bates thought, then tossed her head at the very idea. Mrs Maynard wasn’t like that … A pity really.

  The rusty bicycle was still there where she’d left it, hidden behind some basement railings. Not worth pinching, Nurse Bates supposed, as she wheeled it back up the stone steps and out to the kerb.

  Mr Maynard’s life had gone wrong, but that didn’t mean he had the right to be so nasty and mean-minded. Funny what adversity did to people, made some into saints and others into devils. Just think about the way he’d carried on! Catching her by the wrist and pulling her down on the bed beside him, knocking her cap off and nibbling her ear, pretending he was about to ravish her. Good job she knew he wasn’t capable and that it was all meant to be a joke.

  ‘Your beauty inflames me!’ he’d groaned, holding her down with arms as strong as wire ropes. Yes, a good job she’d found out right at the beginning that Mr Maynard was fond of a joke. Just as long as the joke wasn’t on him.

  Head down, Nurse Bates pedalled on, the Maynards forgotten before she’d turned the corner.

  Clara looked in on her husband before she went to her own room.

  John was lying quietly for a change, his face smooth and his arms stretched out before him on the turned-down spread. He seemed very remote to her somehow, lying there with all the ebullience drained out of him. The sleeping draught Nurse Bates had given him must have done its work. He looked as though he could be in a coma.

  Still in her dreamlike state, Clara pulled the high table closer to the bed, bringing his glass of water within easy reach. She would leave the standard lamp on in the sitting room as it was now and the door slightly open, so that if he awoke he wouldn’t be completely in the dark.

  For herself, all she wanted was the feel and taste of the dark on her closed eyelids so that she could relive the past hours over again. She was happy, happier than she’d been for a long time. Bart’s name ran like a hymn through her veins.

  Over and over again she relived each moment. The way his eyes had adored her, the way he’d knelt down by the side of the bed when she was pulling on her stockings, burying his head in her lap so that the sight of the incipient bald patch on the top of his head had filled her with a tenderness so great she had felt tears fill her eyes.

  He was … oh, he was the love she had thought would never be hers. He was gentle, and yet in his gentleness lay his strength. He would never hurt her, not mentally or physically, she knew that. Not like John, or yet like Joe. For a brief moment she grieved for Joe, then let him slip away into the shadows.

  She was tired, so filled with a languorous exhaustion, that the bed when she lay in it seemed to drop away beneath her. There was no past, no future in her thinking, merely the present filled with Bart’s love and concern for her, and the knowledge that he loved her. When she slept a small smile curved her lips. With her long pale gold hair covering her face like a silken curtain, the years fell away and she looked like a child again, secure in her bed in the house in the little northern cobbled street, with the sound of her father’s hammer lulling her into sleep.

  Raised on his elbows, John listened to the small sounds of her preparing for bed. He didn’t need to be told what had happened to her, because through half-closed eyes he had watched her almost float away from him and into her own room. He had known what was going to happen as soon as the nurse came with the message that his wife would be late.

  What kind of a fool did that Bart Boland think he was? John had seen the way he looked at Clara when he came to visit, standing almost to attention by the side of the bed, pretending that he cared whether the thing in the bed that had once been a man lived or died.

  Bart Boland was just the kind of man John detested. Upright and honourable, straight as a bloody die. Reminding John of his father, and irritating him beyond endurance because he did not want to be reminded. Remembering reluctantly his father despairing of him, locking him up in his room to swot for university entrance, when all he had wanted to do was to fly. And his mother, trying to hide her disappointment because her only son had been born with cloth ears and a voice that slid up and down the scales without hitting the right note once. He remembered his own bitter disappointment at the war ending too soon, before he’d had a chance to have a proper go at the bloody Hun.

  He coughed, holding his hand over his mouth to smother the sound. It rattled deep inside his chest and he pushed himself upright to cough again, experimentally with his head beneath the blankets like a tent. His lungs were shot. They hadn’t told him, but he knew. His cracked ribs had healed, but why had they taken him into hospital three times to tap the fluid from his lungs? Was he to die drowned in his own mucus, choked by his own phlegm?

  Fully awake, because after he had pinned Nurse Bates down on the bed she had forgotten to give him his sleeping draught, John thought of the day ahead. And decided he didn’t want it. He even murmured a prayer to his own particular god, a mythical being who, when beckoned down, came at once, occupied naturally with John’s exclusive affairs.

  Bart and Clara – they would be discreet, of course. Rehearsals, an extra show, a special matinée – the alibis were all there, ready to be used. And she would come straight from his arms, as John would swear she had done half an hour ago, and stand by his bed, not touching him. He stared at the diffused light coming from the sitting room. Did she realize that by not touching him, as she always did, she had given herself away?

  And because she didn’t want to hurt him, Clara would be extra solicitous, extra diligent in her caring. Her bloody guilt would see to that. She would be torn apart by that guilt which was as much a part of her as her own breathing. She would jump when the telephone rang, rush for the post when it came, because her beloved Bart was often away. She would avoid mentioning his name, only to blush when someone else did so. She would become an expert liar. She would walk over to the window when she was supposed to be doing things for him, to stand there gazing out at nothing. Dreaming of him, the tall one with the long legs that could cover the distance from here to the sitting room in four strides.

  Legs, proper legs with muscles and nerve ends that responded to a simple message from his brain. Jerking off the covers with a fierce swiping motion, John looked down at the lifeless, useless inanimate objects lying there, matchstick thin now, encased in the bottom half of his striped pyjamas.

  And that was all he had, for the leftover life he had to live. For weeks, months, even perhaps years, if he managed to keep breathing for that long.

  ‘Oh, God! If you are there in your heaven, listen to me!’

  Clara would say – Clara had said – that, if only he would accept, blessings untold would be added unto him. But were any of the things that Clara believed in of substance and reality?

  Reality was here. It was here in this sickroom, with the long curtains closed against the night. With the commode standing by the bed and the indignity of having to use it. With the bed sores on his backside and with the phlegm that choked his throat till he spat it out in the enamelled bowl always left within his reach.

  It was there now, shrouded decently and newly rinsed out with Lysol by that bird-brained nurse, and beside it a glass of water with a bead-trimmed cover. And hidden by the fluted folds, the bottle of disinfectant, carelessly left there when he’d frightened young Florence Nightingale half out of her wits. He could smell its antiseptic odour coming from the obnoxious chamberpot nestling inside the commode’s boxed-in lid.

  Oh, little Nurse Bates, who had told him she’d hated working on hospital wards because they were all mitred corners and no fun. Scatty little Nurse Bates who liked to jolly him along, and who had panicked like a schoolgirl when he’d made a grab for her. Little Nurse Bates, with her cap hanging by one
pin from her unruly hair, with her black stockings spiralled round her legs.

  Naughty little Nurse Bates, leaving a bottle of Lysol around for her patient to drink if he felt suicidal …

  John could reach it easily. The bottle was cold to his touch, grooved and dark. Unscrewing the cap he sniffed at the contents. Not unpleasant really, kind of clean and tangy, reminding him of his mother’s house after the cleaning lady had been.

  How much would it hurt if he drank it? Would it burn his throat, or would it slip down like whisky?

  ‘Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower, he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.’

  And if to continueth was an abomination? What then? John lifted the bottle to his lips. What then?

  As he finished draining the bottle, throwing his head back to catch the last drops, tearing agony caught him unawares. His eyes rolled back, his hands clawed at his throat, the top half of his body jerked in wild spasms of unbelievable pain. Then, at last, was still.

  Clara slept until the sunlight of a fresh spring morning gilded the flowered curtains with a haze of brightness. Opening her eyes slowly, she smiled and slid back into her dreams, to wake a full hour later with a suddenness that startled her.

  ‘I’m coming!’ Throwing the clothes back and swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she picked up the tiny round clock from her bedside table and shook it, unable to believe the evidence of her own eyes. How could it be half past nine when normally on a Saturday she was up before eight to see to John before she got his breakfast?