”I could say the same to you.”
”Now! now! look here, boy.”
”Don’t boy me.” Both his manner and his voice were aggressive. ”I’m no longer a boy. I stopped being a boy when I stopped saying, Yes, Dad, No, Dad. And that’s some long time ago.”
”Please. Please.” Florrie had her arms spread out towards each of them as if to separate them and she pleaded now, ”Come in. Come in,” and she went ahead of them into the room. It was she who spoke first. ”Try to understand, Dick,” she said, ”about your father and me. ...” But turning his head to the side and flapping his hand at her, Dick cut her off, saying, ”I don’t want 194
to hear, Aunt Florrie. Anyway, I’M Hot the one y*§tt should be explaining things to.”
”Now look here. ...”
”Is that all you can say ?” Even as he spoke Dick was amazed at his own courage; then he added,
”Me Aunt Hilda sent me looking for you. Mrs Burrows died of shock when the bomb dropped. It dropped quite near. It could have hit us.” He now looked from one to the other, then said, ”It’s a pity it didn’t, isn’t it, it would have solved your problems ?”
As he turned towards the door to go out he knew that his Aunt Florrie was restraining his father.
He went into the passageway again and had opened the door and was going across the hall when he heard his father say, ”Don’t worry, it’ll be all right.”
When his father caught up with him, they walked out together in silence, down the gravel drive and towards the gate, and there they almost bumped into a small figure and became entwined in leads, at the end of which were two dogs.
”Bugger me! Look where you’re goin’.”
If Abel hadn’t picked out the bristling figure of Mr Donnelly in the light of his torch, the voice itself would have told him who it was.
Mr Donnelly now silenced the yapping dogs with, ”Shut your traps, will ya!” Then turning his torch on to Abel and Dick, he said, ”Oh, it’s you’s, is it?”
”Anything wrong ?”
To Abel’s question Mr Donnelly now cried, ”Wrong? No! I’ve only lost me bloody house. The whole bloody street copped it, an’ I would an’ all only I wasn’t there. They wanted to kip me down in the school with a lot of screeching women. I told them where to go.” His voice suddenly sinking to almost a whisper, he ended, ”Bugger me! T’was a shock to see the whole bloody lot gone. Anyway” - his voice lifted - ”Our Florrie ’11 put me up on the couch for the night.”
”There’s always a room around our place if you’re stuck, Fred.”
”Aye well, thanks, we’ll see; but let’s get the night over, ’cos I’m a bit shook up.”
With no further words he left them, and after a moment they, too, walked on.
They had gone some distance along the road before Abel said, ”I want to talk to you.”
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”I don’t want to hear, me eyes have told me all I want to know the night.”
”Your eyes have told you nothing.” Abel had swung him round by the shoulders, and now they were peering at each other through the dark with Abel hissing at him, ”Who got me into this situation anyway in the first place ? Think back, ask yourself. Do you think I would have trapped myself as I did if it hadn’t been for you? It was done to keep you off the road.”
”You didn’t lose anything by it as far as I can see. Me Aunt Hilda’s been good to you.”
”Your Aunt Hilda hasn’t been good to me ; you know nothing about it, boy.”
Dick now pulled himself away from Abel’s grasp, saying, ”Don’t keep calling me boy.”
”Well, don’t act like one.”
”Oh, I suppose I could be called a man if I would countenance you having two wives and a mistress.”
”God Almighty!” There was such a desperate note in the words that Dick remained silent until Abel said further, ”I’m going to tell you something. I’ve loved your Aunt Florrie from the first moment I saw her and I’ve just learned lately she felt the same way about me.”
”What! with all the men she’s had?”
The blow missed its aim and glanced off the side of his head; then Abel was holding him by the shoulders, almost hugging him to him, saying, ”Oh my God! what’s happening to us ? I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.”
After a moment of stunned silence Dick thrust Abel from him and, his voice holding a broken note, he said, ”Don’t you ever lift your hand to me again. If you do you’ll get as much back, as big as you are. Now I’m telling you and . . . and I’m going to say it : you stand there and tell me you fell in love with her the first moment you saw her, well, all I can say is you quickly forgot Alice, the Alice who was so wonderful, the Alice that drove us out on to the road. Less than a year and the great romance was over.”
For a moment Abel did not answer and when he did it wasn’tto retaliate, what he said now and quietly was, ”Yes, it appears like that. I grant you it appears like that, but it wasn’t that way at all. You’ll learn. Oh, you’ll learn some day.” And with a defi-196
nite plea in his voice now, he added, ”Can... can I ask you not to let on to Hilda ? I mean to tell her, I’ve been meaning to tell her for a long time, but . . . but not at the moment.”
They walked on side by side, the silence heavy between them, and it wasn’t until they were nearing the yard that Dick spoke, when, as if he were just continuing the conversation, he said,
”There’ll be no time you can tell her when it will be easier, there’ll be no way to soften the blow, you know that.”
”Yes, yes, I know that.”
”No matter how she goes on at times she cares for you . . . more fool her.”
Abel made no reply, he couldn’t for at this moment he was suffering a hurt which until now he hadn’t experienced. Of all the things that could happen to him in his life the last one he would have believed possible was the rejection of him by his son. The boy, the adoring boy, the boy who was no longer a boy but a young man ... a man, a man who had acted like one tonight. In
”ome corner of his mind there was pride in him that this flesh of his was making a stand against immorality. His own retaliation had been against the immorality of a nation, the immorality of killing, but his son’s was a more common kind. He was making his stand against the immorality of sinning if you like, the sinning of one person against another, and when he dubbed it sin his son wouldn’t be thinking of the social code but of the pain such immorality, such sin inflicts on another human being.
He had the urge to turn on him now and say, ”I’m going to tell her. Right now I’m going to tell her”: but what would that mean ? He would have to tell her not only that she wasn’t his wife but that he was soon to be the father of her sister’s child. . . . God! No! No! The boy was right, he couldn’t do it, for there was no way he could soften the blow; and she didn’t deserve to be felled, as the truth would surely fell her.
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”Look, dear.” Dick put his arm around Molly’s shoulder. ”It would have happened some time, she had a bad heart. And you haven’t a thing to blame yourself for. Good lord ! after the way you’ve looked after her, and what you’ve put up with from her?”
Molly lifted her head from her hands and as she stared over the table towards the door that led into the hall she said, ”You remember what we were talking about last night?”
”Yes, yes, I remember, we were talking about wishing people dead. We could have talked about it last week, last year, and it wouldn’t have affected you, but we just had to talk about it last night; and now you’re going to enjoy having a guilt complex about it.”
”Enjoy!” She snapped round in her chair, and he stared down into her face as he said, nodding his head, ”Yes, that’s what I said, enjoy.”
Molly made no reply as she looked back at him. Within the last twenty-four hours he seemed to have changed, he was a different person. Only once today had she seen any nervous movement in his shoulder. With an authority that sh
e would have attributed only to his father he had handled the funeral arrangements, he had directed the men when they moved her mother to the mortuary, and now he was speaking to her as he had never spoken before,, with a note of maturity in his voice.
As she stared at him a strange thought entered her head: she knew that he would never again laugh at his own shortness of stature, and that more likely he’d hit out if anybody mentioned it, even in a jocular way. He was right too about the guilt feelings, not that she was enjoying them, but that she was allowing herself to be plagued with them. It was stupid of her because she had nothing to blame herself for where her mother was concerned; 198
she had been a hand-maiden to her since she could toddle. But one thing she was sure of in her mind, she wasn’t going to say she should have loved her mother, for not even a saint could have stood the daily railings of a person like her mother. Even so, she wished . . • yes, she wished that they hadn’t talked as they did ’ast night, because after he had gone she had stood over there by the kitchen door and, looking across the hall, she had pictured the querulous creature lying under the table and when the voice had come to her again, crying, ”Do you hear me, Molly?” she had thought how wonderful life would be without her. And now here she was without her, and wonder was far away, and she was sick with the feeling of guilt and remorse.
”Come on. Come! Aunt Hilda’s holding dinner for us.” He smiled at her now. ”You know what she’s like if she’s got to wait for a meal. She likes her food, and she’s beginning to show it for she’s getting fatter. She’s always nibbling. They say it’s . . .”
He stopped himself from going further and adding, ”A sign <->f frustration, or to fill some need.” Recalling the open row that ne a had with his father last night, and his discovery of his Aunt Florrie’s condition, it was more than ever clear to him now that there was an emptiness that needed filling in the woman who had been a mother to him for so long and that she could only attempt to assuage it by eating.
”Come on.” He had her by the hand and just as he went to open the door he turned and, taking her into his arms, he looked into her face as he said, ”Everything’s going to be plain sailing for us two from now on; whatever happens to anybody else things are going to be right for you and me, understand ?”
She looked into the so familiar face. It seemed to have added a number of years on to itself overnight, and she nodded her head but made no comment, but when he kissed her with a short hard kiss on the lips she thought wryly, Funny, how compensations are handed out. His Aunt Hilda would say, ”God works in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.” And she knew it was a wonder. Oh yes, it was nothing short of a wonder that Dick loved her. She had only to look in the glass to realize how great was the wonder. And the wonder was intensified by the knowledge that Dick considered the luck to be all on his side.
On the step he paused as he said, ”We’ll cut across the field. Your field, do you realize that? It’s your field now.”
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IT
She glanced at him sideways as she said, ”I hope it’ll soon br ours.”
”Aw, Molly!” He shook his head. ”I wasn’t thinking along those lines.”
”I know you weren’t but -” She leant her head towards him and smiled a small knowing smile as she said, ”I bet it hasn’t escaped your Aunt Hilda’s notice.”
”No, you’re right, I bet it hasn’t. But it’s your land and you do what you like with it.”
”We’ll see.”
They rounded the back of the outbuildings and came through the passage into the yard; then both stopped and glanced at each other as the sound of raised angry voices came from the kitchen. *””
After a moment of listening Dick said, ”That isn’t Dad; come on. . . . Look.” He stopped and pointed to where the two dogs were tied by a length of string to the drainpipe, and he said under his breath, ”Mr Donnelly.”
When they opened the kitchen door both Hilda and the old man looked sharply towards them ; then almost instantly Mr Donnelly turned his verbal attack on Dick. Pointing at him but looking at Hilda, he cried, ”You could take them off the road, give shelter to any scum, but when it comes to your own . . .”
”Shut up!”
”Don’t tell me to shut up, girl.”
As the old man staggered towards the table and leant on it for support Dick realized that although his speech wasn’t yet slurred nevertheless he had had a lot to drink. He was again yelling at his daughter, ”Don’t tell me to shut up. You know what you are, you’re an ungrateful sod. You always have been and -” He half turned and, addressing himself to Dick and Molly, he cried, ”All I was askin’ was shelter, a room for few nights, an’ what did she say, no, not in her house. I could
’ave the rat hole up above the garage, but only for few nights mind. ...”
”They’re . . . they’re very nice rooms, Mr Donnelly,” Dick now put in quietly. ”We ... we lived in them; they were cornfortable ”
”Don’t you tell me how long ya lived in ’em. I ... I know how long ya lived in ’em, lad. An’ she had them all done up fancy for ya. But what’re they now, eh ? Woodwork shop ; least they were two years gone back when I climbed those stairs.”
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”There’s only one room a workshop, Mr Donnelly.”
”Well, t’other room ain’t gettin’ me, boy. If it’s so good you . . . you go up there an’ I’ll take your bunk. . . . Aye; aye. Now that’s fair, isn’t it?”
Before Dick could make any reply Hilda shouted, ”There’s going to be no exchange of any kind.
You’re just doing this on purpose to ... to upset me. You’ve got plenty of cronies down at your own end who’d give you shelter. . . . And what about out Florrie?”
”Our Florrie ?” He turned to her again. ”Our Florrie’d put me up like a shot if she could, but she’s only got one bedroom^ you’ve got four of ’em up ’bove.” He thumbed towards the ceiling.
”And anyroad she’s hardly room for herself, and when het belly gets emptied next month or so she’ll want all the room she can find. She put me up on the couch last night an’ me dogs an’ all, an’ it was your man who said, ’If ya want a bed come round, Fred.’ Didn’t he?” he now appealed to Dick. ”You were there, weren’t ya, on Florrie’s drive when he said it ?”
”What did you say? Where?” Hilda was walking slowly from the fireplace to the end of the table, but she didn’t look at the olc} man, she looked towards Dick as she said to him, ”What’s this ?
Were you at our Florrie’s last night ?”
He swallowed deeply. ”Just for a minute,” he said.
”Just for a minute ?” she repeated. ”You went to the post to get your father if I remember, didn’t you ? If he was at the post how did he come to be at our Florrie’s ?”
”He ... he had just called to see if she was all right.”
As she nodded at him the colour of her face changed, even het neck looked red; then turning her gaze on her father she demanded, ”What do you mean about ... ?” She hesitated and the old man cried at her, ”Go on, say it. Soil your mouth, lass, soil your mouth. I said when her belly empties an’ the bairn comes.”
As Dick watched her hand clutch at the end of the table there arose in him a momentary hatred against the old man, but more so against his father. But the latter feeling wasn’t momentary, it was already there.
”You didn’t know ? Well, you wouldn’t, would ya” - the old fellow was still yeiling - ”you never look the side she’s on. She’s scum to you, but you’re not fit to wipe her boots. Do you hear me?
You’re not fit to wipe her boots. An’ she’s done something 201
that you couldn’t manage, for all her age; aye, she has»^
”Get out! Get out this minute!” Her fingers began to claw along the edge of the table as if in search of something to’ grip, and then she was screaming at him, ”Get out ! Do you hear me ?”
and it stressed the height of her
feelings when she cried at him, ”God! I don’t know, I don’t know how I ever came to be connected with you. Out!” Her arm was outstretched, her finger pointing towards the door. But the old man didn’t move ; he had been leaning over the table supporting himself on his hands, but now slowly he straightened himself and seemed to take on inches and, strangely, both his voice and his mien appeared sober and there was a depth of deep fury in his tone as he said, ”Well now, lass, I’m gona relieve your mind by tellin’ you somethin’, aye, by tellin’ you somethin’. An’ it’s this, you’re not connected with me, do you hear ? Eh, do you hear ? What’ll you say if I tell you you no more belong to me than those two there do.” He flung his arm to the side. ”You’ll be relieved to know, lass, that you’re a bastard. You were born a little bastard an’ you’ve grown into a big bastard. Aye, by gum! if there was ever a true word spoken I’ve just said it.”
He paused and now he smiled, a rather terrible smile, as he said, ”You’re losing your colour, lass.
I’d sit down if I was you ’cos there’s more to come.”
Hilda didn’t sit down but she backed from the table as if from a reptile and when her heel touched the fender she stopped. Her lips apart, her eyes wide, she stared at him like an entranced hare as he now, in the same terrible tone, went on talking. He talked and he talked, giving her every sordid detail of his love life; and then there was almost the sound of tears in his voice when he said, ”I took you on as a sort of lost love, I devoted me life to you. Aye, I did, I devoted me life to you. Nothin’ was too good for you, the others could go to hell but you must have, and you know, there’s a thing called irony, and by ! I’ve often thought an’ all that God must have handed that out as a punishment to me ’cos the irony of it was you never took to me. Not from the time you could toddle you never took to me ; you took to Annie. Oh aye, you took to Annie, but not to me. You got under me skin but I put up with it ’cos I saw your mother in everything you did. But now” - his voice rose sharply - ”I know that if I’d married her she would have likely been as big a bitch as you, ’cos you’ve
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