Cotter's England

by Christina Stead

  Peggy was touchingly joyful, proud. He took them to a tea-shop where they had a large tea and Peggy bought two postcards: the two women kept giggling and exchanging jokes and allusions. But he was sorry for them and when he set them down at the gate, he invited his sister to the cinema for the day after. To his surprise, she hesitated and said she'd let him know. The next day, she made an excuse for staying at home: she could not leave her mother in the evening. He desisted and went back to his aimless wandering. He had his "businessmen's lunch," sat on the moor and came home, coming past the cinema to see the program. On the other side of the road, he noticed a pale middle-aged woman with spectacles, a strained face, a kerchief on her head, hurrying forward with a shopping basket. "What a typical Bridgehead woman she is," he thought, his heart drawn to her by her look of indoor privations, all of which he understood. Then he saw that again it was his sister Peggy. He was going to shout, when he saw her turn very sharp and go down a long residential road away from their shopping district. She had come out without the dog, although she was always afraid to leave it at home, saying that her mother or Uncle Simon would thrust it out of doors and lose it. He followed her. At the end of the long road, she turned into another busy thoroughfare where she went into a shop.

  Idling along, thinking he would get some cigarettes and thinking, too, that Uncle Simon's two hundred pounds would just about cover his cigarettes for one year, if he didn't give the amount to Peggy, he came near the shop and saw that it was the painter's. He thought he'd just go in and find out what the man was going to charge; for though Peggy was good at calculation, far-sighted, cunning, even miserly, he didn't know how far she'd go for a man's company. He dawdled at the door observing things and people, in his way, and turned towards the shop. It was an old-fashioned little place running back a long way with old flooring, counters on each side, a large skylight at the back, where there were stands of linoleum and wallpapers. The man he had seen at the gate was standing close to Peggy, who was talking eagerly into his face. He was dark, pale-skinned, listening with a slight satisfied smile, but uneasy. He put his hand on her upper arm: she kept talking to him, more softly.

  Tom went back home and after a while insisted on taking the dog out with him. "It's getting dark and I'm going to get Peggy: where is she?"

  "She's gone for some bread."

  "And A think maybe she's gone to see that painter again: she's not used to the excitement, Tom," said Uncle Simon reproachfully: "we lead a quiet life here and it keeps her steady." Tom took the dog and met her halfway along the street.

  "Where were ye taking him, man?"

  "He's just leading me to you."

  "Well, give him up, man: he's not easy with anyone but me."

  When they got home Uncle Simon started to nag about the painter and the cost; there was a scene. Tom took another walk. He went down to the river, stood by it a long while, crossed it, went to a pub down by the waterside, walked to Bridgehead Station and wondered what he should do. It was getting bitter cold: the air was jags of ice. Bridgehead! Here the rose in his heart had folded its leaves. All the pleasant things in the old days had folded themselves up. He had been married here, secretly, for Pop Cotter would have none of it. He spent his first married night with his young wife in a hayrick in midsummer; and then he went back to his engineering course. He was working his way through. He had no money for a wife. There were two people in their thirties who had been good to him; the wife had liked him and then that rose had withered too. He must get away. It was wicked to leave the old people, but he was leaving them. Coming back, he looked at the drawn curtains through the cracks at the people inside, no longer with yearning, wanting to talk to them. He shuddered and thought, "What wretches! What real wretches!"

  He opened the house door. His mother was sitting on the bottom stairs, laughing to herself. "He's getting more than he bargained for, Jack," she said to the newcomer.

  "Will ye learn, man?" shouted Peggy in the kitchen above the dog's barking: "will ye learn to be decent with women about?"

  Uncle Simon was making short coughing and hiccoughing sounds and saying, "Ye'll be punished in the end, hi-hi-hi, ye wicked woman. Mary!"

  "What's going on, Mother?"

  The old woman laughed to herself. Tom roared like an elephant. Peggy turned with the loop end of the leash in her hand. "I'm teaching the man good manners," she said firmly: "he'll not expose himself before women any more or I'll go straight to the police."

  Tom took the leather from her and pushed her across the room.

  "I've had enough of you," she said. She insulted him; but she had had enough of it. "Don't touch me, Tom Cotter; I've had enough of ye all for a lifetime. I do wish I was somewhere else and didn't know any of ye. Stop laughing like an idiot, Mother man, it's more than a soul can bear." She rushed into the back room.

  Uncle Simon was standing by the sink where Tom had seen him first, bending over and holding his loins in both hands. "She hit me on the belly," he said to Tom: "she knows what she's doin'. It made me trouble come back. Help me to the chair. A can't walk by meself." Tom picked him up, in his arms and carried him upstairs, Uncle Simon saying, "Be careful of yourself or ye'll get me trouble."

  "I'm strong," said Tom.

  "Aye, A was strong too, a ball of muscle, once; but A'm eighty now and no one seems to remember it." Tom put him on his bed with his knees bent and asked if he would get the doctor. "No, thank ye, A know how to doctor meself." It was a bitter cold evening and somehow he did not feel like going out to the yard to the closet. Supposing them safe and sound in the back room by the fire, he had shut the door and relieved himself in the waste bucket under the sink; and Peggy, always spying to find some fault, so he said, had found him out, crept back like the sly woman she was, for the dog's leash, rushed in on him while he "was still a naked man" and suddenly beaten him back into the corner by the sink, beat him in the face and nose and all over him, "from me knees to me forehead, A was savagely beaten all over, she has a strength in her revenge and malice: she's broken me belly and poor Mary sittin' there laughin' and bobbin' at the end of the hall: A'm afraid her wits are far away takin' a journey."

  "The house can't go on like this," said Tom.

  "Do ye hear her?" enquired Uncle Simon. The house was filled with Peggy's sweet piercing whistle.

  "I'd better come and look after you all," said Tom, in the bitterest tone.

  "The house can't go on this way," said Simon.

  "Has she been better since I was here?" asked Tom.

  "Naw, naw, she's been warse, far warse," Uncle Simon declared. "A'm the head of the family, she knaws, with her tricks, and if A roar at her A can get her to stop; but now ye're here, she doesn't respect me at all. She's got too wild this week runnin' in and oot and thinkin' the warld of herself and drinkin' beer which is forbidden to her: she's uncontrollable. And now she knaws where the money is, and A've given it to ye, Tom, it's done. A'm finished. Sometimes we used to get along champion, but then came your father's passin' and your mother not knawin' the day of the week and she got wilder. And you and Nellie came here, Tom," he said reproachfully, "and ye fixed every thin' up between ye, to give it all to her and never asked me me advice, though A'm the head of the family; and A sat there in the kitchen, thinkin' ye were comin' to ask me me advice, but ye never even thought of it. And A thought, There ought to be some return, A was waitin' for it all these years, and never expectin' any return; but I said to meself, there ought to be some return now. But ye fixed it all up to give it to her; and then she began to think of herself as a monied woman and fixed for life. But still she thought there was me money comin'. And now she knows A'm cleaned oot."

  Tom heard a sound and turned to see Peggy standing in the door with a smile.

  "Go away, Peggy," he said meaningly. She kept on smiling, and turned away. "Peggy," said Tom, "I'm not taking Uncle Sime's money. I wouldn't take it. He'll keep it and he'll leave it as he wants later on." She flashed a sarcastic smile at him and went
into the bedroom. "I'd better take you with me," said Tom, to the old man. "Peggy is always good to Mother and she can look after her. We'll fix up about the house later. I've got to go to London and try to get a job there. We'll go to a boarding house. There's a pretty good one not far from Nellie's where her postman lives."

  "Naw, naw, what wud A do that for?" said Simon. "A wudna go anywhere till Mary goes, she needs me; and then me time's oop. Help me to get oop, Tom."

  "No, I'll do anything you want."

  "Aye, but tomorrow A must get oop to go for me pension."

  "Why don't you let Peggy get it when she takes a walk?"

  "Don't be crazy, lad," he said testily; "A've enough of bein' called a pauper; she'd pocket it and say A'd never paid. She'll end oop a miser that gel."

  Peggy, in the bedroom, burst out laughing.

  But Tom could…

  BUT TOM COULD NOT leave for a while. He and Peggy received pathetic and cajoling letters from Nellie in London. She could not send any money, she was afraid she was losing her job, she had unforeseen expenses, she wasn't able to get her shoes repaired, she had lost two of her lodgers, Eliza Cook, George's sister, and Caroline Wooller, a poor ill-qualified waif, a middle-class unfortunate, who had wandered away. George did not seem able to send money. She knew Tom would have pity on the poor frail ones in Bridgehead and stand by; and she suggested that old Mrs. Cotter should apply for her old age pension; and Peggy for her "sickness pension." Mr. Cotter Senior had always refused to let Peggy get her disability pension, unable to admit that she had been ill; and Nellie was the same. Tom was worried; Nellie must be in a very bad way to write like this. He decided to go to London within a few days. In the meantime, his mother agreed to draw her pension; and suddenly found she was very glad of it. Peggy and she were very gay the first morning she had to sign the receipt for Peggy to carry to the post office. Tom left them in a good mood.

  George had written from Rome to say that he was getting a job in the I.L.O. office in Rome, would not be home for some time and could not send money yet, since he had some debts to repay. Nellie now found a room for Caroline Wooller in a small slum house nearby, owned by a Mrs. Hatchard: and the woman called Johnny Sterker was in the house, living upstairs in one of the Cooks' rooms. She was a heavy woman, with dark hair and a strangely pale face. Eliza had gone to stay with Irish friends who had a basement flat in a neighboring street and who always had a spare bed and a couple of shake-downs for those who came by. Irish girls coming to London came to them, found a job and a room and moved on.

  Downstairs, in the basement, Camilla did her sewing. Nellie was hangdog, swaggering, dirty and hungry. She was spending her money on Johnny. She talked in a loud voice in other rooms to Johnny who treated her with a high hand; but she never quarreled with Johnny. Nellie went in to her work, was out till all hours; and now had to go to a hospital in south London to see Venna, her Southwark friend, who was ill. Nellie came home late, wept and cursed, hung about in hallways, would bang the front door: two minutes later her nosy profile might be seen looking into some room.

  Sometimes Camilla stayed overnight at the house of an obese rich customer in the West End for whom she was making an outfit. The woman was ashamed to be seen out; and usually wore dressing gowns and gave parties to literary London in her bedroom. The Lamb Street house when silent was astir. There might be a slight wind; a bit of plaster fell upstairs; the staircase creaked. Camilla had a nervous attack so that she could neither think or sleep. She needed the sewing room, the house was nearly empty and yet she felt in the way. Once when she went upstairs to reach the kitchen, she found Nellie roaming about naked, except for the bandanna tied round her "bunch of scallions."

  "I was just going to take a tub, pet."

  There was no bath in the house. Bathers stood in the kitchen and threw water over themselves from the sink.

  "You could have a bath put in; there's room between the kitchen and the W.C."

  "There's a swamp underneath there; the house would fall in."

  "I ought to pay you something for the room, Nellie. I use it every day."

  "I don't come from your class, pet; I don't live off sweating walls and sweating blood."

  "If I ever lived in a house again, Nellie, I'd run it as you run this place; I'd see that it was open to everyone who needed a bed or a meal. But then I shall have to marry another sort of man, shan't I?"

  Nellie understood this as a disparagement of her house and as a hint that her men, Tom and George, were too poor for Camilla. Her pride suffered that they were regarded as slum people by Camilla. She went away to her friends and put it as best she could: Camilla could never get over her girlhood training, the head-hunting middle-class vanity.

  Camilla went to visit Caroline in her new quarters at Mrs. Hatchard's, and coming back said that it was a very nice room, good proportions; but then she said, "It's infamously dirty."

  This, too, offended Nellie. Millions in London lived worse and during whole lifetimes; but called it home, led good home lives and called it England; and England it was. Ah, the pitiless Philistine, the bourgeois dame! When she wrote her miseries to George in Rome, she mentioned this too: "this dame you say looks like a memsahib!"

  Thinking over these insults and rebuffs, sometimes cursing and sometimes with tears in her eyes, she tramped about. She ate as little as would keep her on her feet. Those feet limped and her knees shook. But she could not stay at home. She had to keep up the walking, the knocking on doors, the miserable complaints. Her nights were all fever and bad dreams about all the people she knew. She dreamed that Peggy was ill; that George was far away, she was penniless and could never reach him. She dreamed that she was back in Bridgehead, taking endless journeys by bus and train south to get a job and get away. On the way she talked to strange people; but when she got to her destination, she was back in Hadrian's Grove.

  Tom had come down, saying he would get a job at once and send money to Bridgehead and help her out. He answered advertisements, in London first, and waited for the letters in reply, sitting about the house, filling the empty rooms. But he soon saw that he was not wanted and began his roving, though Nellie warned him, "Keep away from the woman in Richmond; there's danger there for you. Don't go down to the family in Wargrave, pet, you mustn't make mischief."

  But he did as he pleased and she hardly noticed what he did. He called on Eliza and on Caroline whom Nellie was not seeing now; he went over to Camilla's to eat. Camilla was doing her sewing at home.

  Once when he dropped in at Nellie's, Mrs. McMahon was there. She was a little thinner, but when she saw him she glowed. Nellie was out; no one was in.

  Tom said, "It's nice to have the whole house to myself. Of course, there's you, Mrs. McMahon. That makes it like home."

  She had never cared for Tom, whom she compared unfavorably with his brother-in-law; but she sometimes asked him things about George.

  "There are letters from Mr. Cook. For Mrs. Cook and one for me. He was mentioning something about the Cold War. What is the Cold War?"

  "It's a bad feeling against Russia."

  "Oh! I asked my husband and he said the papers were always talking about it but he never knew what it meant."

  Then out of her handbag she got George's letter and showed it to him; as if she had to, in her pleasure. It began "Dear Mrs. McMahon," spoke of her last and his last and continued,

  I wish you were here to look after me. I have someone to fix things for me but no one like you. My dream would be to bring you over here. I never was so well cared for as when you were in the house: then it looked like a man's home. No such luck here; though otherwise the people are all very friendly. I have a boy to run messages for me and someone to teach me Italian. I am not very fast at it: my Bridgehead burr gets in the way. You Welsh ought to pick it up quickly. The principal thing is to open your mouth and say your vowels pure: now, you are good at that.... Perhaps I'll be seeing you soon. I hope Nellie will let you know when I get in; keep in touch with her. />
  Respectfully, George Cook

  "Have you been there, sir?"

  "Yes," said Tom.

  "Do you think I could pick it up?"

  "Yes, I am sure you could."

  "Do you think I could get something to do there?"

  "With the English or Americans perhaps—you would work like here: or better, if you could do office work."

  "That's what Mr. Cook said. But I need a machine to practice."

  "My sister has one. She'd lend it to you."

  Tom went up to the Cooks' sitting room to look for an interesting book. He found one that appealed to him, The Hampdenshire Wonder, by J.D. Beresford, and settled down to it. The front door opened and shut, people went in and out. Suddenly, there was a great noise about a blinking blighter, a blasted blooming bugger, a bleeding bourgeois bitch, who turned out to be (for Nellie was talking to someone) a woman interested in trades unionism and women's causes who had gone abroad to a congress meeting and met George in Rome. George had written to Nellie that they had eaten together in a place called II Notaio. Why were blistering blasted bourgeois buggers admitted to such congresses at all, either by card or press permit or gate-crashing, when their only object was to manhunt? Why were the beggarly blistered bourgeois bitches ever allowed near the labor movement when no one was safe from them, not even the worker born?

  Tom kept out of the way. It turned out that Nellie was exclaiming to Johnny Sterker. Tom disliked her. This went on for a long time. Tom put the book in his pocket and quietly left the house. When he returned there were still noises in the kitchen; it was Eliza who was there now, with Camilla. So it went on. Raving and weeping, trembling, mad with smoke, hunger and sleeplessness, and Johnny's strange tyranny, Nellie stumped here and there and when she could not cry any more to the cruel walls at home, she went elsewhere to rave.