Cotter's England

by Christina Stead

  "Ah, no, pet; it's no good, Camilla. No, no, your suspicious mind can't turn me against Walter. We're old friends. And Mrs. McMahon's no maid, pet; she's our friend. She's been with us since before we were married."

  Mrs. Yates held out the dress. Mrs. Cook shed the faded overalls she was wearing and stood in her cotton shirt and long fleecy bloomers, holding out her arms. Mrs. Yates stood back and looked at the hang of the dress.

  Mrs. Cook said absently, "You're nervous, Camilla. You feel hunted. So you think your husband is divorcing you, eh? You must be the headlong sort; you rush into the baited trap."

  "I married for love."

  Nellie now undressed again, was smoking furiously, hanging on to the mantelpiece, waving to the child in the bed. She said rapidly, "It's a grand thing, aye, I don't blame you. Will I do then, pet, in that dress? I won't be an eyesore at the airport when I welcome home my hero? I'll go and make a pot of tea and we'll sit down quietly. You've earned your crust. I'm glad to take it easy on my Saturday off. I'm generally on some off-the-record assignment, or visiting a sick friend, or fixing up the income tax or the mortgage, or running messages for me carefree lad.

  "Eh, Camilla, there's a rooster in the hencoop! I expect they were glad to get him out of the navy. He laid out a plan of action for the admiral, or they feared he'd commandeer one of the lifeboats and sail for Tahiti. There he is making the French dames step to his tune. Eh, what a man, what a man! And do you think, Camilla, I'll do in that dress? For I want it now to go to see me mother in, to show Bridgehead, me old home town, that I'm respectable. For there's a skeleton in me cupboard. George and I lived together before we were married, pet. A cat and dog life it was; we didn't think we'd be able to stick it out. Eh, what a bloody egotist, love; but what a man! And to meself I said, My lass, you must submit, you must give up the fine free-lance life. And the wonder of wonders happened, Camilla; the perfect marriage, the perfect counterpoint, aye. Well, before that, I had to tell my folks that I was married, for I had my sister down here to visit, and Bob Bobsey, the dear old elf, who's now gallivanting with me boyo, you don't know her, a real pal, who looks as if she was a shriveled soul, but what's inside is as the meat of the walnut. Bob was in Bridgehead and she called upon my family, the Cotters, and she had to answer my mother's thousand questions. What time of day was it? Did it rain or shine? What dress did Nellie wear? For she swore to my mother that she'd been present at the wedding. Bob's a glorious old bohemian, but she's old fashioned and she didn't approve of us living in sin. It would break my heart if a daughter of mine did it, she said to me solemnly, shaking her dear old head, that great old stone face that's like the face of Grandmother Fate—"

  "She must look like a gargoyle," said Mrs. Yates laughing.

  "Ah, no, pet; that's your acidulous nature. She's my standby in storms; loyal and staunch. And she said to Mother, being up against it, Your daughter wore a nice blue dress. Every time since, when I go up home, Mother harps on it. Why don't you wear the nice blue dress you were married in? Because I'm keeping it in camphor out of sentiment, I said. So take the tacking threads out, darling, or you'll ruin me; and I've bought a cake of camphor to rub over it. My mother was always a foxy little deducing creature; that was her compensation for a life of defeat." Nellie, in her long bloomers and cotton shirt, went out the back to get tea.

  There were three rooms on each floor of the little three-story brick house. Down short stairs here on the ground level, was an old-fashioned W.C. with the handle in a wooden seat and a blue flowered bowl. There was no light and no window; so that generally they sat with the door slightly open looking at the grassy back yard. At the side, a long paved kitchen. There were no windows; the door to the yard was usually kept open here, too. The small back yard was enclosed by brick and low stone walls and contained two small trees and a couple of sheds. On the left, dark old terrace houses with long back yards ran at right angles. They were occupied mostly by immigrant workers, Cypriots, Maltese, Greeks, doing sweatshop labor. On the right, along Lamb Street, were big garages, filling the space of houses knocked down by the bombs. The houses in Lamb Street, all low and narrow, like Nellie Cook's, were occupied mostly by machinists and other garment trade workers. Mrs. Yates lived across the street, with her two children, in two rooms over a small grocery shop. She lived separated from her husband. Her lover, a painter, a tall bulky ungainly man, visited her every day, ate there, used her as a model, looked after her children.

  Nellie was a strange thing, her shabby black hair gathered into a sprout on the top of her small head, her beak and backbone bent forward, her thin long legs stepping prudently, gingerly, like a marsh bird's, as she came over the hogback ground floor, stairs up, stairs down, to the front room with her tea tray. The tea tray was neatly set, with a tray cloth; and she had cut thin bread and butter.

  Camilla sat with her head bowed over her work. The hooded daylight came from the areaway into the middle of the room and shone on the bright wiry hair. Her neck and curved strong shoulders, dull and smooth, bent down in the plain blue cotton blouse, gathered on a cord and rather low. Her long thighs were apart to make a convenient sewing lap. Opposite her sat Ellen Cook, slouching, her elbow on the chair arm, her fingers to the cigarette, her nose and hair sprout in the air, the other hand on her hips. She spread her legs jauntily apart, in their gray knee-length bloomers, wrinkled black stockings. She wore pointed black shoes, the toes turned up, the thin heels turned down with wear. The light fell on the hollows in face, neck, chest and bony arm and darkened the exhausted skin. Her small eyes, dark blue, looking out sharp between half-closed lids, were tired. She sat smoking, drinking tea and nonchalantly ruminating. At length, she mentioned that she had had a budget of mail that morning, something from George. He had been to Geneva, looking for a job in the I.L.O. office, and was back in France. He was not coming home yet but was going on with the dear old elf, Bob Bobsey, to Florence. Bob had the money.

  "He promised it to her long ago, and she says this may be the last time. Eh, old age is a high wall you can't climb and she's coming to the foot of it."

  To save money George and old Bob had taken one room with two beds in their travels through France. George went to the Gare du Nord to meet old Bob and brought her to the hotel. Everyone in the hotel ran forward to have a look: Mon Dieu, ces anglais! George thought it was a great joke. When they went out for breakfast in the morning again everyone ran to look at them. George thought they admired him for being above prejudice.

  After a pause Nellie said that she also had a letter from a sweet friend Caroline, she wanted Camilla to meet.

  "She's known the tragedy of failure and the dead end on the lonely road."

  Not long before, Nellie had been working in the offices of the Roseland Estate Development in Buckinghamshire. Nothing had developed. There they all sat in the naked old villa, with grass growing over the old avenues; but no new house had yet been built.

  "It's all bourgeois waste and caprice anyway. Someone taking the ideas of some Frenchman, great blocks of flats with angles and courtyards, a brick prison, it won't suit England; no fireplaces, no chimney and everything laid on from a center. Suppose there's a strike! The whole place can be without fire or water or heating; the mothers and children sick and the fathers grousing. All they have to do is sabotage and hundreds of families can't get their tea or wash their faces. I've seen pictures of it in France. It's the home turned upside down. The British, Camilla, will never give up their fireplaces and their cosy little back rooms. You sit in front of the fire and look into it and you begin to relax after the day's work. You throw in your cigarette ends and your rubbish. How will they keep the place clean? You'll have matches and cigarette butts all over the floor, and where will you relax? Ah, Camilla love, there's nothing better than to come home when you can't go on anymore and brew your pot of tea and sit before the blaze and dream. With this Corbusier there'll be no relaxing and no dreaming; only a soulless measured-off engineer's world with no place for us."<
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  She lit a fresh cigarette. Through it she murmured, "Caroline, aye! There's a beautiful soul, Camilla, who didn't see the wrongs of it. She believes in the world, she wants the world to be beautiful. She's lonely, aye, living there in a wretched room with a wicked old landlady. Ah, the landladies! And what rooms can you get in a one-street country village? So the only reality to Roseland is a broken-down villa with grassy rises and a landlady's damp cell with peeling walls. I've made her see it. You won't help the world, I said, with building stony streets of barracks with stone cells for the soul of man. They're tearing down the tenements, I said, to put the workers into prison; won't it be easy to isolate and machine-gun a workers' prison? There'll be no freedom then; and no desire for it, I said. Just watch your step and watch your neighbor. She's leaving it. She's coming here for a few days. She's not happy. No; there's another cause. A broken marriage with a dull man, a wandering man."

  She sighed and continued, "The parents are the innocent cause. She had a hopelessly middle-class country parson background. You don't venture to say the Queen has unsuitable shoes: But it's the Queen, dear. And the big thing to look forward to, taking a stall at the fete to raise funds for the church hall. Aye, she tried to escape. But can the bird break the iron bars by fluttering? You are likely to see bloodied and broken wings; and the close tendrils of parental love were in this case iron bars."

  Nellie sighed and blew smoke; "The old, old problem, sweetheart. Even here, where the parents are of a fine old type, the father's word obeyed and the Bible called upon to prove and refute and have the last word; and the mother with a life of unquestioning frustration and the daughter a full-blooded woman with the passions sealed in."

  "How old is she, the daughter?"

  Nellie hesitated; then, "Twenty-eight and she was married; but not a woman, a girl. The husband tried to get her away; but he hadn't the appeal. He took her to America; but they wrote and they begged. Poor things! She felt the guilt. She came back; but then it was, You'll go back in the spring; you'll go and pay him a visit when the American summer is over; and then, Our dear daughter could not bear to leave her parents alone. Ah, poor things!"

  Nellie brushed the tears from her eyes. She drank her tea and said dryly, "Caroline's only outlet is what she thinks is writing. She's published a thing or two, little clouded mirrors of life, that no one ever heard of. I've asked. No one ever heard of her. In one she tried to show her husband; it's pitiful. Life—no more like the stormy, hot-blooded, passionate, unruly, unbridled thing it is, Camilla, than a cup of tea is like a river in flood. But she's fine, and it's a damn shame to see her the prisoner of sterility. Aye, she took my advice. She left home and took this room; and the parents too have nothing. I'm sorry for the older generation. Ah, true marriage, pet, when it comes, is perfection. To think they never knew that! So many generations of wasted joyless lives; and only in our own day and here and there, the perfect flower of married happiness, a rare unforgettable thing, the only earthly joy. It's a grand thing, Camilla, perfection in union; to know each other as man and woman in perfection."

  She placed her hands on her knees, leaned her topknot forward and looked earnestly at the dressmaker. Camilla gave her an enquiring glance and bent to her sewing.

  Nellie, in the same posture, said, "What George, and I have is the flower of perfection. Physically, George is a wonderful man. It's joy, it's heaven; there's nothing like it when it's natural and sweet; a blessed union. That's what I have with George, perfection."

  The dressmaker made no reply. After a short silence, she said, "Try this on, Nellie; let me see."

  She made some marks with a piece of chalk. Nellie took the dress off and sitting down, smoking away, she continued to make comments along the same lines, until Camilla gave her an irritated glance. She then went on to talk about parenthood and its solemn responsibilities. Our parents, she said, were poor, pitiful, frail human creatures.

  Here she was interrupted by a bad fit of coughing. She got up and lounged over to the sofa, where she lay prone, her head hanging down, coughing and hawking, gasping and puffing.

  She got up, came back to the chair, picking up her cigarette, "It's me bronchitis."

  She took a few puffs, inhaling deeply, and continued, like a chant, "They brought us into the world in sorrow and ignorance and haste, young people then, with their lives before them, taking us like packs on their backs, along the pike; and from then on destiny had only one voice, it came out of the crying mouths of little children. Taking a strange dangerous chance with us, fighting against poverty and death with us in their arms. That's the thought, isn't it, pet? It's pitiful. We must take up the burden of repayment. We've not fulfilled their hope, I'm afraid, darling. That's beyond our poor human powers."

  Camilla, won by the inner melody of the northern voice and its unexpected cry, its eloquence, considered her. Nellie was looking into the smoke. She had paused and settled herself in a businesslike way. She cocked her head, like a journalist envisaging his paragraph.

  She continued, "My brother Tom doesn't think like me. The poor lad's grown heartless, nothing but the flame of the moment, a poor trifler, out of work and living like a tramp. I had a letter from him this morning, Camilla; a sad change. He was my friend. We were together in everything. I led, he followed. I led them all. But he wandered away from me. He left his beliefs in socialism, the light went out of him: a spendthrift, a ne'er-do-well, an unemployable, a mischief-maker; that's what it's come to. The poor lad, Camilla. A tragedy. Stumbling after happiness, which eludes him like a will-o'-the-wisp, getting deeper into the swamp and clutching at a straw. The misery of it breaks my heart. He's in the clutches of a harpy, Camilla, wandering round the country, like two gypsies with no home, desperate that this iron ration of happiness will be taken from him." When she spoke of her brother, she used the home accent. She said puir la'ad.

  "What is she like?" enquired Mrs. Yates.

  Mrs. Cook rose and stood at the fireplace swinging one leg and shaking ash into the fire.

  "No good, I'm afraid. It's the case of the snake and the fascinated rabbit. She's much older than he, though she doesn't look it; the cosmetics and the hairdresser. She'll leave nothing undone to hold him, every excuse to keep him from humanity! Persuades herself of the higher motive. She's woven him into her web. She's taken the poor helpless fly and made him her parcel. She's carrying him away to death and beyond! That's the type, that preys upon men. And he's promised to die with her!"

  She leaned her head on her hand on the mantelpiece.

  "What!" said the dressmaker.

  "Ah, Camilla, the tenacious, bloodsucking, unscrupulous harpy! It's hard to understand; for he's a bitter man, disenchanted. He's not like me, pet, apt to glamorize everyone."

  She sighed.

  Camilla, sewing, said, "Yes, you must feel it to lose a great friend like that!"

  Nellie stared. She turned, put her hand behind the clock and drew out a tan envelope, took out a sheet of engineer's squared paper and held it out to Camilla.

  "There! It came this morning from my brother. It'll show you the hopelessness. Spending the little they've got on every quack remedy, a typical woman's trick. And there's no black or white in her mind, every method is fair. A superstitious roving, looking for the impossible; and costing George and me money. There's a London doctor in it and we footed the bill to the tune of forty pounds. Read it! You'll see him like a fly in the gluepot."

  Camilla, after hesitating, took the sheet of squared paper and read,

  Nellie:

  I am sorry Mother is sick but I cannot leave Marion now. We must try everything. We have hope in a cure we are trying now. I had to bring her away from the nursing home and she depends on me. In two or three months we will know if this salve will work. It is supposed to cure third-degree burns. She is fighting it out. She will take no drugs for she says the doctors will kill her. I don't know how she stands the awful pain. I cannot leave her. If she begins to mend, I will go up to Bridgehead a
nd see Mother.

  Affly, Tom.

  The dressmaker read this slowly.

  Nellie sat with a sparkling angry face and said, "You see? You see the situation? Relentless to the last."

  "It's a terrible thing for the poor man. Is he alone with her?" Nellie put the note away, saying vaguely, "No, pet. I think there's someone else. They've no money for a nurse. It's a case of destitution."

  Camilla bent her head over the dress.

  Nellie said, "You see what it is? He has no reason for living and he goes off the deep end over a thing like this."

  She got up and lounged about the room. She came and stood near Mrs. Yates, looked down at her, said melodiously, "I'm the guilty one. I brought him to London from the home climate and everyone doesn't transplant. I was the pathfinder. I thought I'd go out and find a way for them, my brother and sister. I threw up the college work because they kept grinding our noses into the footnotes on Shakespeare. It's the living word that matters in our day. That's the way to disgust you with Shakespeare. And then, pet—there are some things that it is not right, even in Shakespeare, to offer to innocent minds. It's enough to make you think ill of Shakespeare. It did for me. I walked out and got a job. I was getting five pounds a week when most of them had nothing a week; and I was the leader, I was the dashing Jack Malone. So I influenced them too much perhaps. I knew I had something in me. Aye, I was guilty. I walked out of a good job with me poor mother depending on me pay. Me Dad, the old soldier, was wearing out his strength lifting the elbow. He made good money but it went down the gutters of Bridgehead one way and another. Ah, the grand old humbug; he's been the plague of our lives. I never liked it here, pet. They still make me feel like an invader from the north. But I had to come. It was my destiny. There it is, pet, in a nutshell. Now you understand us."