He sat down, his great hands dangling listlessly over his knees. Georgie leaned forward.
“But what can I do, Uncle Eddie? The banns have been called.”
“Tell her to go to hell. Refuse her.”
Slowly Georgie straightened up again. He shook his head.
“I couldn’t do that, Uncle Eddie. It wouldn’t be honest.”
“Do you reckon it honest, to invite God’s blessing on a mockery?”
“It’s not a mockery. If two people decide to get married——”
“One person has decided this, Georgie boy. Only one.”
“I must. For the sake of her reputation.”
“She hasn’t got one. No one’s heard of her.”
“She slept here for nearly three weeks. She looked after me, Eddie. The doctor said that but for her I might have been very bad indeed.”
“So I suppose every man is obliged to marry his hospital nurse. Talk sense, boy.”
“I gave her my word, Eddie. She let me see she was fond of me, and I gave her my word.”
“Oh, it’s no use talking to you. I can see that. She’s taken you in and done for you. I may as well save my breath. Well. You’ve made your choice, boy. It’s the last you’ll see of me.”
“Oh, Uncle Eddie, that’s not fair. What harm have I done to you? Even if it is a mistake, and I’m going to be punished for it, why should you add to my punishment? I have hurt myself, if you’re right, but I haven’t hurt you.”
Eddie chumbled his jaws for a moment. “Welcome’s gone.”
“What?” Georgie cried. “Do you think for a moment I’d—Uncle Eddie.” He got up, flushing painfully, tears in his eyes. “You are welcome here every hour of every day, as long as I live.”
“Not you, Georgie. She. That one. I know you’d never bar your door to me. But she will.”
“What makes you say that? How can you tell? You don’t——”
“I’ve seen her.” Eddie’s face buttoned up as suddenly and completely as if he had no teeth. “Let’s say no more, Georgie boy. I know what I know.”
They went on talking for some time after that, but it was a broken-backed, broken-hearted talk. Eddie in the firelight looked shrunken and old, his great length collapsing on itself, as if he had gone hollow in the middle. Georgie watched him, sore at heart. The lump kept rising in his throat: he longed to be a small boy again, to weep and be comforted. What Was this terrible property of life, that it swept away one’s hold on all the old safe handfasts, and made one’s loyalties irreconcilable?
Earlier than usual, Eddie rose to go, and for once Georgie did not press him to stay. In the doorway he turned, hunching his shoulders under the collar of his old dirty mackintosh.
“I shan’t come to your wedding, mind. So no use to ask me.
Chapter 5
They went away for their honeymoon, shutting up the shop for a week. It was very hard for them to do this, but the doctor insisted that Georgie have at least a week by the sea, in some bracing climate, before facing the winter.
Georgie was worried. He spoke of getting someone in to look after things while they were away: but Grace would have none of that.
“What? Have a stranger poking and prying about and most likely robbing us? Not likely.”
Poking and prying! Georgie suddenly remembered his cache of tea, and said no more.
The honeymoon was a nightmare for him. It is doubtful whether even the sea air did him any good, so miserable was he. Away from the shop, Grace and he had nothing in common. There was a concert one evening, and, thinking to please her, he suggested hopefully that they should take tickets. Grace showed not the smallest interest. The most he could get her to go to was the new-fangled cinematograph pictures. These delighted Georgie. He was naif but sensitive, and he reacted directly to both humour and pathos. Grace sniffed.
“Silly, I call it,” was her comment: and she proceeded to argue, on lines of literal and prosaic realism, that the actions of the characters didn’t make sense.
“No, no, I suppose not. Not if you look at it like that.”
Georgie sat up straight, all his pleasure gone. He and the girl he had married were strangers.
The other aspect of the honeymoon, the bodily intimacy with Grace, left Georgie feeling both debased and inadequate. Emotionally undeveloped, and confronted with the wrong girl, he suffered a profound shock. There was nothing abnormal about him, but natures such as his need all the help a positive instinct can give them. Robbed of that, he was bound to fail. Only once or twice, when self-pity or dismay made her vulnerable, had he ever wanted to touch Grace. Nothing but care and genuine tenderness could have awakened him towards her; and, as often happens with such pietistic and prudish natures, once the conventions were satisfied by marriage she was capable of an avidity which repelled and frightened him.
The effect of all this on Georgie was disastrous. Again having nothing against which he could measure his experience, he concluded that he was a freak, an outcast, since he found no pleasure at all in something which the rest of the human race seemed to regard as a major delight. Worse, he knew that he was failing Grace in a contact from which she seemed to expect even more than tradition had suggested should belong to it.
It was a relief to get back to the shop and start work again; but, from the first day, things were different. It was Grace’s shop now. There was no doubt about that. She took charge of shop and Georgie too. Georgie had to wear a yellow canvas apron and work like a donkey. He found himself ordered about, sent to bed, made to get up and make early morning tea, wear a collar and tie all day long, and shave first thing each morning. The old easy-going friendly days were gone.
Within a fortnight, he had carried out orders to whitewash the walls of the back yard, give the shop window a cleaning such as it could not have had for forty years, whiten the ceiling of the living room, and paper it with a new paper depicting a multiplicity of blue swallows flying about in a distraught and aimless manner against a pink background. All this, of course, was on top of his work in the shop.
Grace then told him the garden was a wilderness and a disgrace. With wry memories of Charlick, Georgie put in such odd times as he could spare: but the long neglect needed more than he could do. Even Grace saw that. In the end, she let off most of it to an inoffensive man who wanted to grow vegetables, on condition that he kept her supplied.
Georgie asked nothing better than to work in the shop. It was his happiness and delight to serve his customers. He dearly enjoyed the conversations which accompanied nine out of ten transactions, the enquiries after the health of other members of the customer’s family, the sheer warm sociability of regular trade in a small neighbourhood. Grace frowned on this. She declared it a waste of time. If Georgie didn’t natter, and let the customers natter, he could serve so many more each hour, and take so much more money. When Georgie pointed out that there weren’t so many more customers, that he served all who came and kept none waiting, Grace at once grew snappish. She could not bear any sort of opposition; and, lacking the intelligence to argue, she could only get angry.
Georgie took a long time to realize the truth. Grace was jealous of his standing with the customers. The customers liked him, and did not like her. She would not have worried much over their failure to like her, as she was barely capable of imagining how she must seem to other people: but their behaviour made it obvious, even to one as insensitive as Grace. She hated to hear the warmth in their voices when they spoke to Georgie, and the contrast when she pushed forward and took over from him. It was typical of her that she invited the experience by pushing herself forward. More and more, she took the control of the shop into her hands and set Georgie to work in the background, or sent him errands.
There was plenty to do in the background. Trade was expanding fast. She made Georgie clear out two sheds in the yard, and these were stacked from floor to ceiling with fresh lines of stock: biscuits, household goods, all manner of cheap stuff: anything in fact which the neig
hbourhood required and could absorb.
Georgie found time, often, to marvel at Grace. She made the business prosper as he never could. He would never have wanted to. Left to himself, Georgie would have been content to develop it on the lines laid down by his aunt, make the few changes and expansions she had been too old to make, and do just enough to keep it and himself in comfort. He had a useful business sense; that much is clear from what he did before the ill-omened day when Grace walked in; but it matched his easy, peaceable temperament. He would never have allowed the business to outpace him, or force him into an alien way of living.
But Grace seemed possessed by a demon. She had an appetite for money. She chafed at the smallness of the shop, its poky little window, its poor neighbourhood. She would have liked one of the new garish stores a mile away in the Parade. But, in business at least, she had a realistic mind. Small though Number 3 was, it held an unrivalled position for trade with its neighbourhood. Its prosperity depended on supplying that neighbourhood’s wants. It did a cheap trade; and, to make money out of a cheap trade, you had to run a great number of cheap lines.
All this Grace seemed to know by instinct. It was a marvel how this colourless, ignorant girl, who used to get her inadequate living by, of all unlikely things, the practice of music, had acquired this certain touch for money-making. Georgie was appalled, not only at her vulgar acuteness, but at the iron in her soul. In business she was ruthless, stingy with credit, harsh to brutality with defaulters. Only when Georgie, with newborn cunning, pointed out to her that such a reputation would discourage fresh customers and be bad for trade, and that a customer who was allowed a reasonable amount of credit spent more than one who had to pay cash, did she unwillingly relax her harshness. But she never liked giving credit. To be owed money hurt her; until she discovered a profitable way of being owed.
So long as the money came in, Grace was not at all particular about the means. The pettiest, most ignominious way of getting it was as good as the best. Georgie was not one to notice very closely what was put before him on the table, but after a few months even he began to feel that the menu was getting thin. Grace was a good cook, there was no question of that. She was by no means lavish; the pats of butter were of an euclidian exactness, the pieces of steak cut to pattern; but she cooked well. Georgie would probably never have tumbled to what was going on if he had not been fond of fat and of gravy. He got precious little gravy, and the chops and steaks and small joints Grace bought never seemed to have any fat at all. It took him quite a while to connect this phenomenon with the enamelled basin of dripping in the shop. Dripping was a popular and remunerative line in a poor locality.
Some three months after their wedding Georgie received a sharp and ugly light upon Grace’s background. Characteristically he had never questioned her, and remained content with the few vague hints she had dropped. One did not question people who one thought had been brought up in orphanages. Anyway, what did it matter?
This particular enlightenment he was not able to avoid. He had gone to deliver some odds and ends at the house of an old and eccentric customer, a retired colonel, whose habit was to come in during the morning and give his orders, but who refused to be seen carrying even the smallest parcel. Wearing suits that dated from the seventies, and ancient, perfectly polished boots, the old gentleman clung to the last conventions of his former days. Grace grumbled at his finical ways, but, luckily, thought him unworthy of her personal notice, leaving him to Georgie, who understood and humoured him.
Letting himself quietly in by the side door, Georgie was astonished to hear voices in altercation: a vulgar, nasal, sneering man’s voice, and Grace’s, so distorted with fear and anger he hardly recognized it. He stood in the passage, hesitating. Then a sentence from Grace decided him.
“Clear out, d’you hear—or I’ll fetch my husband to you.”
“Husband! That’s a good one. Fancy cove, you mean.”
“I mean husband, lawful wedded husband, and I’ll thank you to keep your low insinuations where they belong.”
“No man’d be fool enough to marry you. ‘E’d cut himself on your collarbones.”
On the point of stepping in, Georgie checked himself. Indignant as he was, he saw that this would hardly be an ideal cue.
“Well, I am married, see. So clear out.”
“When you’ve handed over.”
“Not one ha’penny, to you or anyone else. Get out.” Her voice suddenly went shrill. “Don’t you touch me! Don’t you dare! Let go! Help!”
Without conscious thought, Georgie had flung open the door, and was in the room. Both occupants turned to face him. Grace was straining away from a thin, sallow-faced man in a bowler hat and a dirty mackintosh, who held her by the wrist. He had a small, drooping moustache, drawn back from nicotine-stained teeth. The whole effect was shoddy, vulpine, and revolting.
Georgie found himself shaking with rage. A shout broke from him, hurting his throat.
“You blackguard! Leave my wife alone.”
Before the man could speak, with a sideways twist Grace broke free, rushed to Georgie, and flung herself sobbing into his arms.
“Save me! save me!” she cried, and buried her face in his chest.
So violent was her onrush that Georgie all but overbalanced. Her hair was in his face. He had to crane his head around it in order to see her assailant
“There, there. It’s all right, darling. It’s all right.”
Her full weight was on him. She let herself flop inert against his chest. Clumsily, all dignity gone, he managed to dump her in the nearest chair, then turned on the stranger.
“I don’t know who you are, but the sooner you get out of here the better.”
“Oo am I?” The man sniggered, revealing the inside of a bony nostril. “‘Er dad, that’s oo am I.”
Grace looked up. “That’s a bloody lie. I’d sooner be dead than ‘ave you for my dad.”
“Well, stepdad, then.”
“Nor stepdad, neither.”
“Wot! you unnatural little bitch! deny your own stepdad, what brought you up, and played with you, and give you sweeties——”
“Yes, now and then, when you come out o’ prison, and so as to suck up to Mum. A cadger and a sponger, that’s all you are, Bert Deebles, and always was. Well, you don’t come spongin’ here.”
Even in the full heat of his protective zeal, Georgie’s ear noted how rage had worsened Grace’s voice and accent. He raised his arm to order the man out, when Grace turned to him.
“He’s a rotten crook, that’s lived on my mum for years, that’s all he is. Now I suppose she won’t give him no more to spend in the pub, so he comes here. Throw him out, go on. Throw the b——out.”
“Now then, now then. No vilence, or it’ll be the worse for you.”
Even as he said it, the man began to edge towards the door. Georgie felt a surge of power and pride. This rat was afraid of him.
“Get out, quick. And, if you show your face here again, I’ll give you in charge.”
This was a mistake. The man stopped.
“Give me in charge, eh? Wot for, if I may make so bold as to ask? Comin’ to pay a little friendly call?”
Georgie shrugged. “I’ve warned you. I don’t expect you want any more interviews with the police than you can help.” He took a step forward. “Get out, or I’ll call them now, and give you in charge for assault.”
The man hesitated, spat an unprintable phrase, and hurried out. Georgie followed him down the passage, and had the door slammed in his face. He locked it, and went back to Grace.
“Did he hurt you? Let me see.”
He took her thin wrist in his hands. It had red marks from the man’s fingers. Grace gave a perfunctory sob, but she was far more angry than hurt.
“Dirty, sneaking little beast! I don’t know how he found me. I never told Mum I was here.”
He stared. “D’you mean to say your mother doesn’t know where you live?”
“No fear.”
“Doesn’t she even know that you’re—that we’re married?”
“Fat lot she cares. No thank you very much indeed. Once I got loose from there…”
She broke off, and looked at her wrist. Georgie walked to the fireplace. There was a pause. He cleared his throat.
“You never told me you had a mother.”
“We all have, don’t we. Can’t be born without.”
“I mean, that she was alive.”
“She’s alive, all right. Trust her.”
“Well,” Georgie said, “we don’t have to worry about anyone but ourselves. I’ll see to it that man doesn’t annoy you again.”
“You put him to the rightabout, good and proper,” Grace told him, and he was thrilled to see a look of unwilling admiration in her eyes. Nothing more was said about the episode, but; the two of them were closer together that evening than at any time since the night Grace had come in wet and sat by the fire. She kept glancing at him from time to time, with a new expression on her face; and presently, after a long silence, more companionable than any other had been, she began to talk. Simply, and without any attempt at false pathos, she told him of her childhood, which alternated between spells at home, when Mum had a man friend able and willing to provide her with money, and longer spells at what she called school. The times at home had their high lights, but Mum was wholly undependable, making much of her only child when she was cheerful, spoiling and petting and dressing her up to show off to the neighbours, then falling into long and drunken fits of depression during which Grace was totally neglected. If she drew attention to herself, she was liable to get a clout or have a bottle thrown at her, so she soon learned to keep out of the way, and was fed by neighbours. Sporadic though these meals were, she greatly preferred them to the ministrations of “welfare” or the Little Sisters of the Poor. On the other hand, the so-called school, though bleak and hard, was stable by contrast. You did at least know where you were.
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