Cotter's England

by Christina Stead

  She burst into a ringing laugh.

  He continued oak-faced, speaking quietly in a low baritone, with his northern burr and inner song, slightly bowed, with his hands clasped on his knees.

  "I remember those stairs. I don't like walking downhill; my feet go before me. They slip. I can't get shoes to fit."

  "You ought to have them made to order."

  "I saw some in a paper yesterday for three pounds. I sent off for them."

  "That's not enough to pay."

  "I'm not obliged to take them."

  "Are you tired? Do you want to be alone?"

  He looked at her anxiously, passed his hand down his cheek, "I put up my cotbed and I'm used to it, but it isn't comfortable. There are no sheets. My head falls over the top of it. When I'm worried I sometimes do the contrary, I get farther and farther down under the blankets and I wake up almost suffocated. So my sleep is broken."

  He got up and went to the mirror hanging on the wall near the door, opposite the sink.

  He came back and explained earnestly, "I'm small and bony, but I'm very fit. I've always been nothing but skin and bone. My father didn't like me because of that. I told him Caesar and Napoleon were little men; but he wanted me to play football. We weren't fed as children. They didn't know enough. I think I should have died once of inanition but for a movie called Bill Barter's Adventures. I had a horrifying experience when I was about fourteen. I was riding on the moor on my bike with another boy when I fell off and broke my arm. I didn't go to the emergency ward till next morning; no one seemed to think to tell me. When I got there, I had to wait and there was a man before me, groaning and bowing up and down with pain. My sister Nellie, and my other sister went away for a holiday and I thought they were punishing me, leaving me at home. I had to stay with an aunt who could not look after me, because of her new baby. One day I walked to our house which was shut up, just to look at it and I walked back to my aunt's. It was a long walk and when I got opposite the big general hospital I sat down on a stone wall and felt so feeble and weak that I thought I would die. I thought, I will die right now; why go any farther? A man in the porter's lodge was watching me for quite a time. Then he called out to me. I was afraid but I got up and went over and he held out his hand to me. He had two eggs in it. Take these, he said; go home and cook them and eat them. So I did that and ate them. My aunt came in and said, What is the matter? I said, I feel so weak, I think I am going to die. She said, Here's sixpence, go to the pictures; there's a boy's picture on. I still felt weak and tired, but I went; and somehow the movie turned the tide for me. It was about a boy's adventures. I don't remember it now; but I never wanted to die again."

  When Camilla went to the front basement room to do her sewing, he went with her and he sat there, interested in her work, talking, telling her endless tales, "horrifying things," and she listened, smiled. It was easier to work with him there. He asked her nothing about herself or her children. When she went up for lunch, he went too. He went out for a walk but was back for tea and brought something for dinner. Then he took her out for drinks in a pub and when they came back he went over to her rooms with her, smiled at the children but without making up to them; and she sat, smiling, musing, surprised, while he went on with his reminiscences. When her lover Edmund came, Tom went. Her lover was very busy with an exhibition of pictures, his own and others', and even slept on the other side of town at present.

  They spent two days in this way. Tom, who had now bought a cheap, second-hand car, was to go to East Anglia the following week to a factory, where he hoped to get the position of works manager.

  "Do you think you'll get it? Have you experience?"

  "Yes. I had three hundred men under me in the last job and in the job before that about fifty. I gave up one to come and be near Marion; and then I gave up the last one to nurse her."

  "I know nothing about England. Here I sit all day, all the year, making clothes and curtains and chair covers."

  "You have West End customers."

  "Yes. They're nearly all West End. The workers round here all work for West End tailors and dressmakers. Round the corner in Johnson Street are sweatshops for the multiple stores; it's a different trade."

  "You work hard, Camilla. Could you take a day off to go with me when I go, and see the country?"

  "I could arrange it."

  He thought for a while, looking at the tablecloth as if considering a map.

  Then he said, "Well, there is Grimes's Graves, in southwest Norfolk. They are flint mines; and about four thousand years old or more. There are about three hundred fifty of them and some of them are lost. I know a flint-knapper there and he prepares the flints just as they were prepared four thousand years ago. It's not a lost art. He introduced me to the caretaker. He showed me how they used to hang axeheads on trees till the handle grew into the axehead. It's a quiet grassy heathland in the middle of a lot of low forest. It's bleak and desolate in winter, but it's lovely in summer. I was just walking there once and I flushed about fifty pheasants. They were sitting there in the grass enjoying themselves. They whirred all round my head."

  He laughed. "You ride along. You must keep blowing your horn. The road is thick with grasshoppers. Wild birds and rabbits just sit there, and pheasants stalk across the road in front of you or sit calmly on the fence looking at you. Grimes means something like Peter Grimes perhaps; he's a sprite. And they aren't graves. They did a big trade in flints four thousand years ago and there's a sort of flint track all the way to the river where they shipped to the sea. They dug with antlers and antlers are still there in the mine galleries. Would you like to see that? I don't like to drive alone. I'm not used to it."

  She was excited. All her poverty and imprisonment by work was perhaps her own doing. She had never tried to get out of it. So she thought for a moment, studying the quiet man, now fresher looking, younger.

  When Nellie returned on Sunday evening Camilla left them together, but in a different mood, as if she had part of him, too. He gave himself so freely.

  Later, Nellie, inquisitive, came over to see her.

  "I heard you were so good as to talk a little to the poor lad. It's good of you, pet. And where's Edmund?"

  "Your brother doesn't seem very sad."

  "Ah, pet, he keeps it up before people; but it's an act. It's what the Chinese call face. He's proud. But with me he's different. Now I have to face the night, Camilla, and I don't know if he'll see the morning. There's the awful prospect. But don't think badly of me for saddling you with my family troubles. Where's Edmund?"

  "He's away for about a week. He has this exhibition to arrange."

  She said excitedly, innocently, "Ah, that's lovely, pet and you'll be going to have a look."

  When she recrossed the street, Tom was on the stairs, saying he was going for a ride.

  "Where are you going, pet?" said his sister anxiously.

  "Just for a ride."

  "Let me come with you. We'll have a chat."

  He said in the crooning they both used, "No, Nellie, you stay here. I'll be back later."

  She asked and asked anxiously, in her thin wailing voice and added, "I'm afraid Marion will be riding with you."

  "Perhaps I won't even think. I'll just ride."

  She stood at the door, watching him to the corner.

  She went in. She told Eliza, who was staying overnight, "He's gone. I don't know if I'll ever see him again. He's gone to talk to the dead."

  "Give him time. I think he's quite sane for a recent widower."

  "Eh, Eliza, sweetheart, don't say that word: that's a misnomer. No Eliza, he's no widower. He was not married in any sense, legally, physically, mentally, morally. We must deny he had anything; for he had nothing. Fantasies can grow and eat up the brain. He's out there now, speaking to her now, thinking of what they said to each other and begging her to explain. I made him confess everything. The man's a hollow man, he's not a real man, remember that, Eliza; and let us do what we can to save the poor lam
enting thing."

  Eliza gazed at her uneasily. She was puzzled, but moved by Nellie's upset. They went to the kitchen for the usual pot of tea. Nellie was restless, kept going to the door and eventually went out. She was headed for a pub up the hill.

  Tom soon returned. He said smiling, "I just wanted to breathe."

  "You're a funny coot," said Eliza.

  She began telling him things he did not know about the early Bridgehead years; and he her.

  He said, "When I was ten we had a little fox terrier called Doggo. They never would believe me that he was vicious. As soon as we got outside the gate he chased me till I got up on a pile of leaves or dirt and he ran round barking. As soon as he got inside the gate he wagged his tail and turned sweet and peaceful. They thought I made it up."

  She told him that Nellie and George had clubbed together to buy her an oak chest because she'd been pleasant about the divorce.

  "I didn't like it, that they did it when I agreed. It cost me nothing, not a minute's thought. The chest cost them eight pounds and they couldn't afford it, setting up house. They called me here and presented it to me and told me to stay here, too. It was after the war and I was living in the attic of a house that had been badly bombed. I didn't like living in the house with them. But Nellie insisted."

  Tom presently went to bed.

  Nellie came restlessly prowling in, "Where's the boy? Where's young Cotter?"

  She leaned against the door, looking Eliza over, smoking; and said in a moment, in rather a bullying tone, that she had learned that Camilla was going with Tom to East Anglia for a ride.

  "It's good of you, Eliza, pet; aye, it's good of you girls to mother the poor waif. He needs it."

  But she was very uneasy, lounged about the house, went to bed and got up.

  In the morning, as soon as Camilla came over to her workroom, Nellie went in to see her and asked what day they were going to East Anglia, for the ride. It was to be two days after that, a Wednesday; and Edmund was coming to look after the children. Nellie communed with her cigarette for a while and said, "Talk to him, then, Camilla. You've got the day before you. Bring him to his senses. You're a mother. You've no time for his silly nonsense. I want you to make him see what he's been through and let him see what death is; not a subject for play-acting. It's the end, total extinction, the big question mark. Act the sister to him. But sweetheart, you must understand what he is. He was at a feast of illusion and himself was a ghost eating with a ghoul. You've faced total failure, Camilla: your man left you, you had nowhere to turn and but for your children, you'd have been willing to die, because of the misery, the unsuitableness of life as you see it. You're brave, pet. I admire it. And he's not. He's a child playing with a sunbird, in an empty moldy room. Show him. Let him shiver and shudder before it. I'm bloody tired of his weeping and wailing about a worthless dame who deceived me, tried her smile on me to get him away. I sent her a corsage when I heard she was coming and she had the blasted cheek to come here wearing it and smiling at me and calling me her sister. As if I would have a sister like that!

  "Then she went off with him, hid him from me. There he was, eight bloody years, without a thought of me or the poor things at Bridgehead, playing like a child with a doll and, now, I have to hear this trifling trash about his broken heart. He has no heart. He's without a heart. Some vulture took it out of him long ago, a woman of thirty when he was seventeen. And long before that we had faced the facts and I made him see he had no one but me, only me for his life long; and he had admitted it. Then he married one of my best friends; and after that, when that failed, nothing but whims and sensual amusement. Ah, Camilla, the suffering of a sincere and loving heart—that's mine; and the shame to see him what he is."

  Nellie had been leaning against the doorpost and knew that Eliza was behind her. She did not mind; it had brought on a deeper melancholy.

  But Eliza turned red and hit her on the shoulder, "I'm not going to listen to such lies, Nellie. You don't know what you're saying. Why do you run him down? He's loyal to you. I never met a more loyal soul. He has a true heart. Can't you see you're just a jealous sister? You can't bear him to ever have had anyone but you! That's mean. It's so mean, I canna bear it."

  Nellie, smoking, turned round, leaned against the door and said, "Ah, bless you, darling, for your good heart. You pity the poor waif; and I'm grateful. But don't be taken in with his rainbow stories. The women are. He's a great hand with the women, telling his heartbreaking tales."

  She spread her arms, took in both women, said, fierce and strong, "Ask him if he has a heart! See what he will say! Ask him what and who he cares for? See what he will say! You don't know yet what a burden I've had all these years, Eliza. I've been the leader and guide of the family and he's been nothing to anyone, not honored a single promise or debt, felt no guilt, no heartbeat. You must forgive me if my bitterness suddenly rises to the surface, Eliza; but I'm tried of the silly flimflam and the shallow corruption of the whole thing."

  "I think he's a good decent man and I'll hear nothing against him," said Eliza; and she went off to work, saying abrupt goodbyes. She was quite upset.

  Nellie said, "Ah, Camilla, Eliza's a good true soul; there's a heart without corruption. Bless her. She'll always be true working class, not like her big bluffing brother George. What a pity, Camilla, that she never married, didn't become a mother. She's had men, aye; but pitiful little travesties of love they were. There isn't a man good enough for her; and the men don't see pure pearls."

  Camilla looked at her, hesitated, and then said, "Don't you remember you told me that Eliza is George's first wife. I do think she's a wonderful woman. Not many would do what she does."

  This unbalanced Nellie for a moment. She waved her head, her long earrings, her cigarette, her elbows, her legs, expostulated, exclaimed and in a very sweet voice, kept praising Eliza over and over. Switching dizzily, she told Camilla about the poor pitiful creatures in Bridgehead, with their wasted lives, the frustrated mother and betrayed sister; and in the end Camilla understood that she was excusing herself for Eliza Cook. She forgave her. Nellie with her bright eye cocked, knew when she was forgiven; and at once changed her tone, pleading as if for a very great favor, "He'll have a good long talk with you, with your beautiful common sense and he'll stop talking to her ghost; for her ghost is still here, tearing him away from me. She's upstairs there at night with him. She comes out of that trunk. That's the tragedy of it, that he still takes it for real. And she laughing at him still, a ghostly laugh. I hear it, I hear it."

  And Nellie turned to her and laughed a horrible laugh. She startled herself. She paused to. light another cigarette, choking, blowing a cloud to hide her face; and when she could, continued in a gentle voice:

  "You will do me this favor? Save me from disillusionment. Let the man coming back with you on Wednesday be a sensible man, who admits it all, defeat and hopelessness and the bitterness; but sanity."

  "But I don't know why I should," said Camilla, seriously.

  "Won't you do what I ask, love? I know him, poor lad. I know what's best. I don't want him roaming the countryside, footloose and aimless and perhaps in some pub, on some roadside pick up some other harpy, instead of swallowing the bitter pill and facing the lonely road."

  "I don't understand why his fate should be loneliness. He likes people."

  Camilla was stroking in some fine pleats round the neck of a blouse, and she bent over her work, stroking slowly, delicately.

  "He's born to it, sweetheart, aye, it's a sad fate. No wonder he's depressed and acidulous. He has missed the best thing in life, the glory of perfect love. Aye, I understand. But—I can't bear, I won't endure the women who ride him wild, dangling in front of his nose the carrot he can never have."

  "Why can't he have it?" asked Camilla, more and more puzzled.

  Nellie bent over and wagged her head, "Ah, no, it's a tragedy. The man without a shadow. Aye, my eyes fill with tears. It's not for him, love, wife and child. It's hard to
bear. Fate is a wrinkled beldame, a cruel stepmother."

  As Camilla had not got her bearings and Nellie sank into reflection, no more was said for a while; when Nellie suddenly got up from the doorstep and said in a businesslike tone, "That's right, then, chick. I leave it to you. You're a sweet waif, bless you."

  She gestured elegantly with her cigarette. She went out to the kitchen to wash in the sink and to get a bite before work.

  At night on Tuesday, Eliza and Nellie sat in the kitchen and waited; but Tom was home very late.

  He slipped in, sat down smiling meekly and apologized to Nellie, "I'm sorry I am late. I was thirsty and went down a street I know near Piccadilly Circus. I saw a sort of café near Wardour Street which I knew in the war, but the door was closed. I rapped and was let in and had something; I don't know whether it was coffee or tea. There was a man there, a pimp and three girls outside on parade. The man studied me and came up and I thought, he thinks I'm a prospect for a girl; but no. He said, Are you superstitious? I don't know what I said. The man said, Because a man dropped dead in that chair, this night last week, that chair you're sitting in. He came in late like you and rapped at the door and he looked like you. I thought perhaps the man was warning me off; but he was dead serious. He pulled out a newspaper nearly a week old and showed me an account of it. We got to talking about superstitions and he said he was superstitious. I told him one time I motored up north, I stopped late at night at a hotel in Doncaster and the woman said to me, You were here last week. I said, No I haven't been this way for months. She said, Well, there's your name in the book and the police were here asking for you. And she showed me, Tom Cotter."

  "What did you make of it?" said Eliza.

  "I didn't know. I knew a Tom Cotter in the war, but he died. When I came out of this café, I saw a bike trying to take a piece out of a horse and I got to talking to the driver and he told me of a good fried fish shop round there. When I was in the ammonia works, there was a jealous horse, one of a team of two which brought round soft drinks for the canteen. This gelding would edge the mare up onto the pavement and try to take bites out of all the cyclists along the road. I suppose that was a bike that remembered. I used to see this jealous gelding working after hours. I had some sugar for him; but I was careful. He had a laugh in his eye."