Mick and Joyce went upstairs with Jack. Jack sat on his bed, with his bandaged hands against his chest, while Mick undressed him. Joyce took the fuel from her father, sent him out of the room and busied herself lighting the fire. “There,” she said, “now we’re all cosy. Thanks, Mick, you’ve been a dear.”
“I’ll be off now,” Mick said, “I’ll look in tomorrow morning, and see how he is.”
Jack lay in bed. He wanted to sleep, but he wanted still more to be alone with Joyce, to settle the questions that were tormenting him. He said, “Goodnight, Mick. Thanks a lot.” A thought, unexpected and startling, emerged from some recess of his mind. He sat up. “Here, Mick.”
Mick paused at the door. “What is it boy?”
Jack hesitated. He did not know what to say or whether, even, to speak his thoughts at all. “Never mind,” he said, “some other time. No, wait a minute. About Barmy.”
“Well?”
“Well, there’s something —” His courage failed him again. “Look, are you going to tell Rose?”
“Rose? I suppose she’ll hear about it in time. No reason why not. Why, what’s it got to do with her especially?”
Joyce had straightened up in front of the fire and was listening in an apprehensive, attentive pose. Jack glanced about him in panic, first at her, then at Mick.
“Well, I mean — Look, you’re thick with her?”
“Yes, you might say I was thick with her.”
“I suppose she’s told you a lot about herself.”
The points of light were gleaming in Mick’s eyes again.
“Yes, she’s told me a good deal about herself. Why?”
“And then, you knew Kate. Look, Barmy —” Jack paused. “He was her father, wasn’t he?”
Joyce stood as if afraid to move. Mick was as still as a statue. “Was he?” he said at last. “And why would you be thinking that?”
“Well, Kate’s husband — he wasn’t the father, I know that. And Kate and Barmy — well, I know that, too.”
“You do, do you?” There was a strange force in Mick’s harsh voice that touched Jack with fright. “And what do you know about Kate and Barmy?”
Under Mick’s burning, intent gaze, Jack felt doubt growing, but he plunged on, “They were — you know! I mean, like — Barmy told me. And it was in that letter.”
“Ah, yes.” Mick bowed his head, as if brooding, and his voice became heavy. “That letter.”
“I mean, I’m not even sure if Rose knows or not. I couldn’t see how she did, at first. Or she’d have done something for him. Then I thought, well, she’s a right proper bitch, I’ve learned that for myself. I reckon she could even turn her back on her own father, rather than have him round her neck.”
“So that’s your opinion of Rose, is it?”
“Yes it is. After what she done to me.”
“What did she do to you?”
“She got hold of a blank cheque of mine. With my signature on it. Filled it in for a hundred quid.” Jack hesitated. “I’d been going about with her. Only two or three times. There was nothing to it. Then I stopped seeing her. I thought it was all over. Didn’t know about the cheque till she’d cashed it.” He burst out, “She’s not what you’d call particular, is she? Pals with you, pals with me, pals with any chap got the money as far as I can see. I’ve heard a few things about her mother, too, that make me wonder.”
Mick’s face darkened, and he lowered his head like a bull, but he said nothing.
“So there you are,” Jack ended weakly.
Mick looked terrible. “Are you speaking the truth?”
“On my Bible oath I am.”
“Well,” Mick said, breaking a painful silence. “You can rest easy. Barmy wasn’t her father.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“But how do you know?”
Mick had opened the door. He paused again, and said, “Because I am.”
He lingered for a moment, as if to continue. “You go to sleep, damn your eyes,” he said, and went out of the room.
Chapter Three
As soon as the door closed Joyce abandoned her frozen posture and came to sit by the bed. “And now, what was all that about?”
Jack was still sitting up. He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. It’s got me beat, I tell you, Joycie. My brain’s going round and round like a bloody old gramophone record. Only I’m blowed if I know what it’s playing. Kate and Mick! Our Kate! I can’t — why, she was a bloody angel!”
“She was an old trot, by the sound of it.”
“Joycie!” He leaned back. “Oh, I don’t know! It don’t sound like the same woman.”
“Well, it was. The facts speak, don’t they?”
“Oh!” Lying back, he pressed his face wearily against the pillow. “I wish I could make head or tail of it. I could bloody cry! You wouldn’t talk like that if you knew.”
“Knew what? I fancy it’s my right to know, after these last few weeks.”
“Oh!” He shut his eyes. “Don’t start on that now! I wish I could tell you. I don’t know where to begin. I tell you, Joycie, I’m in the dark myself. Old Nance was going to tell me. I thought I knew them. Kate, Rosie, I thought they were like my own family. It’s as if all my life has only been a bloody dream. You open your eyes, and everything’s different, and you don’t know where you are.”
“Well, you’d better find out. Or I might not be there when you do wake up. Just for a start, what’s all this about Kate and Barmy?”
“Ah, nothing much.”
She looked at him sternly. “All right, have it your own way. If you won’t trust me you can start looking for someone that suits you better.”
He sat up in alarm. “Here, hold on, girl! Well, they — you know! — they had a sort of carry-on.”
“Those two? Ugh!”
Jack’s heart sank. He dared not argue.
“And Mick as well,” she went on, “according to him. You can see where the daughter got it from. Nice lot you’ve been brought up with, I must say.”
“Oh,” he protested miserably, “you don’t understand.”
“Don’t I? Then here’s your chance to educate me.”
He pondered, wondering how to defend what he had cherished without antagonising Joyce. “It was a good home. I don’t care what you say.” He laid his bandaged hand on her arm. “Tell you the truth, I don’t understand, either. What’s good and what’s bad? I mean, you can’t say.”
“I can.”
“Well,” he said in an obstinate undertone, “you know more than I do.”
Her look was scornful. “Then you’d better learn if you want to cut any ice with me.”
“How d’you mean?”
“Work it out for yourself, genius.”
She left him to his thoughts. Her unrelenting attitude had increased his mental confusion, but to his surprise he discovered that he was more comforted than dismayed by her demand for unconditional surrender. The sight of her sitting by his side, upright and vigilant as a schoolmistress, confirmed the flash of recognition he had felt earlier in the day, when she had staggered him with her blind outburst of violence. For the first time he saw in her a superior strength,which offered shelter to him from a bewildering world. He saw anew the stupid, chattering, heavy-fleshed girl who had hung obediently on his arm. For the first time he felt in her presence those impulses of mystification, fear and respect that what he called ‘real’ women had sometimes aroused in him; she was not to be patronised; she was no animated household furnishing to be bought with a marriage licence; but an independent, self-willed being, full of the passion and promise he had vainly sought in others, to be courted with care and anxiety lest he might lose her. Today he had seen the womanly flame in her. He said, “It is all right, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Us two.”
She pouted, and let a few seconds elapse before she said, “I’ll get you your hot milk. It’s time you got
some sleep. You’ve talked too much already. I shouldn’t have left you.” She spoke gently, but the hand that she laid on his forehead was cool, with no hint of fondness in its touch. “Your skin’s as hot as fire. It’s what they call the reaction. Ah!” The door had opened, and Mrs. Wakerell appeared with a tray. “I wondered where you’d got to with that milk.”
Mrs. Wakerell bustled into the room with the air of one about to take command. “And how’s the hero?” she trilled.
“Hero?” It was Joyce who answered. “Don’t give him ideas. Just because he burned his hands on the bonfire.”
“There’s a way to talk! You should have heard everyone while we were waiting for you to come back! They were all saying what a fine boy our Jackie was.”
Jack said, “I seem to remember it was ol’ Bernie done the most, and got the worst of it, too.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Wakerell, smiling broadly upon him and speaking in a horribly honeyed coo, “But you’re the one we’re interested in.” She inclined her head archly towards her daughter. “Aren’t we, Joycie?”
“Speak for yourself.”
“Well, hark at her!” Mrs. Wakerell gave Joyce a hurt incredulous look. “Haven’t you two made it up yet?”
“Never you mind. You’ll find out in God’s good time.”
“You’re a saucy one these days, and no mistake.” Mrs. Wakerell spun her great bulk round to face Jack and threw up her hands in a gossip’s gesture of relish. “What do you think about poor Barmy Naughton? Terrible! They say he must have suffered agonies.” Her voice rose greedily. “Mr. Cogger saw him when the firemen lifted him out. He says it was the most horrible sight he’s ever seen. Says he’ll never forget it to his dying day. The body was all shrunk, like a dwarf. And in that short while! Isn’t it a marvel? And he says you couldn’t tell clothes from skin, just all black and rough, like blistered paint.”
“Shut up, mother!”
“And no face you could see, and no hair on the head. Just a shrivelled little black lump. And the smell! Well, I was fifty yards off, and I felt sick!”
“Mother, I told you to shut up. Haven’t you got any sense? Can’t you see he’s all on edge still, and feverish? Do you want to give him nightmares? Out you go, now, and let him sleep.”
“Well!” Mrs. Wakerell let herself be ushered to the door, looking annoyed and bewildered at her inability to disobey her daughter. “I’m sure I don’t need advice from you before I say a few kind words to an invalid. You’re getting above yourself.” She made a last stand in the doorway. “Miss High-and-Mighty, you are! You weren’t so high-and-mighty an hour or two ago.” She craned her head to call to Jack, past Joyce. “You should have seen her, Jackie! Charlie Green come running past us, he was shouting, ‘Get the p’lice, Jackie Agass ’as burned ’isself to death!’ My Joycie here, she lets out a scream like a pig with its throat cut. White as a sheet she goes. She runs off, her dad behind her, she’s crying, ‘Oh, Jackie, Jackie, where are you?’ People get in the way, she says, ‘Where’s my Jackie? Where is he?’ Tears streaming down her face. And then she sees you, sitting on the ground there — don’t you shut the door on me, my girl, till I’ve had my say — and she catches hold of her father’s arm, fit to fall down in a faint she is, and she says out loud, ‘Oh, thank the blessed Lord Almighty!’ He wipes her eyes and she gets her breath back, then she says, ‘Why doesn’t someone give him a cup of water?’ And someone passes her one, and she walks up to you and gives it to you as if she’d never shed a tear in her life.”
With a last push Joyce managed to shut the door on her mother. She stood with her head bowed, her face scarlet. She said, “Your milk’s getting cold.” She crushed the sedative tablets in a spoon and emptied the powder into the milk. “Here —” Her attitude was shamed and surly “— Drink this up and go to sleep.”
Jack was smiling up at her.
“What you grinning at?”
“You.”
“Drink your milk.”
“How can I?” He held up his hands. “Can’t hold the glass.”
She put the glass to his lips. “There, drink! And don’t dribble.” Her voice was brusque. “What a big baby you are! Biggest baby I’ve ever seen!”
He sipped, fixing a steadfast grin upon her and watching the embarrassment gather in her hot face. He took his time. She snapped, “Hurry up!” He went on grinning at her and sipping slowly. At last she turned her head, to look directly and furiously at him. She said, in a strained, high voice, “Well?”
“Well?”
She held his gaze for several seconds. Her face remained pinched, angry and flushed. “Well, so you’ve discovered I’m not made of stone. Have a good laugh at that if you like!”
“Who’s laughing? Give us a kiss.”
“Oh, go away.” She went to put his empty glass on the mantelpiece. “Go to sleep now. I can’t stay up all night.”
“Come on, give us a kiss and I’ll go to sleep.”
She crossed the room again and seated herself in the wickerwork armchair by the window. “Big baby! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“Ah, come on, girl!”
She did not answer. She stretched her legs, lay back and shut her eyes. Jack listened to her breathing, long and fierce, and remained silent so that she might have time to relax emotionally. The sedative was working, and he felt sleep gathering in him. “Why don’t you go to bed?” he asked.
She opened her eyes and turned her head. Her colour was normal again; her lips were still compressed; but her face moved in a slight smile, faintly friendly, faintly triumphant. “When you’re asleep,” she replied. “Leave me alone, now. I’m thinking.”
Jack closed his eyes contentedly and fell asleep. He slept till eleven o’clock the next morning and woke up feeling radiant. It was only the throbbing of his bandaged hands that reminded him of the events of the night before. He was buoyant with relief and well-being. A vague puzzlement awoke in him when he recalled, after a few minutes, Mick’s parting words; but, although he asked himself many questions, he was unable to feel deeply concerned. Nor was he able to muster up an appropriately heavy grief at Barmy’s death; despite all the efforts of his conscience, Barmy kept vanishing from his thoughts. He heard noises at the street door from time to time, the trampling of footsteps in the hall and the murmur of voices in the parlour below.
Joyce came in. Usually on Sunday mornings she shuffled about in her dressing gown, unwashed and unkempt. This morning she wore a smart beige frock, her hair was neat and gleaming, and she did not wear her glasses. “You awake?” she asked, in a vigorous, unemotional voice. “Did you sleep all right? How are your hands? Half the street’s been calling to ask about you. Sit up and I’ll bring your breakfast.”
She returned in a few minutes with a tray. “Here you are, two eggs and two rashers. That’s my ration you’re getting, so look grateful.” Jack waited, like a baby, to be fed. “None of that nonsense,” she commanded, “you’re not as helpless as all that. Your fingers aren’t bandaged. You can use a knife and fork. Get weaving!” While Jack ate, she pulled the curtains apart, opened the windows wide and tidied the room. “There! The worst thing out is a stuffy room in the morning. More tea?”
She brought a bowl and a jug of hot water. “You don’t want to wash in the scullery this morning. Can you get up all right?” He climbed stiffly out of bed. “You can shave yourself. Then I’ll wash your face. Save you getting your bandage wet. Just suit you, won’t it, mummy’s pet, having your face washed for you?” She washed him and rubbed the towel mercilessly over his face. Through the folds of the towel he spoke for the first time since he had greeted her on her entry. “Here, I haven’t had that kiss yet.”
“Wipe your ears out.”
“Don’t gi’ me that nursemaid lark.” He put his bandaged paws round her waist and hugged her to him. “Come on.”
She returned his embrace, but she only offered a cool cheek to his mouth, like a mother humouring a child.
“S
atisfied?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Well, you’ll have to be for now. Here’s the comb. Your hair’s sticking up like the Mad Professor’s.”
He pulled at his hair with the comb. “All merry and bright again, eh?”
“I haven’t been in mourning that I know of.”
“Nah, I mean — us like this again. It’s all right, ain’ it?”
Her voice remained firm, but there was a hint of teasing in it. “You don’t see me swooning for joy.”
“Don’t give a bloke much encouragement, do you?”
“I’ve given you my eggs and bacon, and that’s more than you deserve.”
“Joycie, can I put the banns up next week?”
“It’s a free country, isn’t it?” Her eyebrows were raised in disdain, but under the lashes amusement glimmered in her eyes.
“Ah, don’t muck about.”
“Then don’t ask silly questions, with only four weeks to go.”
“All right, girl. Nod’s as good as a wink, eh? Look, Joycie, now that you are listening, for a change, I’ll say it again — it never meant nothing, between me and Rose. I mean, I can’t explain exactly what it was, but it was all over and done with before you found out. It is finished, honest it is.”
“It had better be.”
“I never give her that money. I’d forgot all about the cheque. She took advantage.”
“Well, no-one else ever will. I promise you that. Not while I’m breathing.”
“I’ll never see her again, I swear.”
“Say you don’t know.”
“What you mean?”
“You might see her sooner than you think.”
“Who says?”
“I do. She happens to be in the parlour now, having a cup of tea. Mick’s brought her.”
Jack put the brush and comb down. “Oh, Gawd! Here, I can’t see her. I don’t want to. Tell her to buzz off.”
Rosie Hogarth Page 32