Goodbye Hamilton

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Are you cookin’ your dinner?’

  ‘I…I’m not hungry, Janet.’

  ‘Oh, God in heaven! Christmas Day and no dinner!’

  ‘Oh, there’s plenty in the fridge, you know there is, and there are the pies and things you made the other morning.’

  ‘Well, get somethin’ into you. And there’s soup in the freezer. Now see you get somethin’. I’ll send him along right away.’

  ‘Thank you, Janet. Thank you.’

  I took my hat and coat off now and went into the kitchen. Harold was always hungry. I…I would have to prepare something, cold or otherwise …

  It was an hour later when the bell from the hall rang. I went out and I met the lift. As soon as it came to a stop, he was there, wearing a very nice new cap and coat; but in contrast he had on his feet, a pair of black and white sneakers, also new, something like you would have seen one of the gangsters wearing in an old film. I guessed these had come from one of his uncles, the one with the sense of humour. His arms were full of parcels, as were those of the young man who was standing awkwardly behind him. Before I had time to say hello, Harold made the introduction.

  ‘This is—er—Uncle Rod, Mrs Nardy.’

  I smiled at the broad-shouldered, square-faced young man, and he smiled at me, saying, ‘How do?’

  ‘Come in. Come in.’ I marshalled them across the inner hall and into the drawing room; and there, Harold, dropping his parcels onto a chair, again turned to his uncle, saying, ‘This is it, like what I told yer.’

  ‘Nice. Nice.’ The young man’s head was nodding as he turned it from one shoulder to the other, and he now added, ‘Yes, nice, very nice.’ Then, his tone changing, he looked down on his nephew and, in a voice very like his mother’s, he said, ‘You’re lucky, son. You know that? You’re lucky.’

  ‘Would…would you like a drink?’

  ‘No, thank you, ma’am. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll be makin’ me way back. It’s Mum, you see…loses her hair if we’re not all in for the dinner.’

  ‘Yer goin’ to the pub?’

  The young man looked sideways down on Harold now, saying almost under his breath, ‘You watch it. Mind your tongue.’

  ‘Well, are yer?’

  I couldn’t find words to save the young man further embarrassment, when Harold, turning to me, said, ‘Gag says they’re never out of the pub an’ they’ve all got bellies like poisoned pups…D’yer want to see what I got for Christmas?’

  ‘In a minute. In a minute. Take your coat and hat off and go into the kitchen and put your slippers on.’

  I could see from the young man’s face that he had great difficulty, not only in restraining his tongue, but his hand. And when his nephew, looking now at me, and then at his feet, said, ‘I’m not gonna take these off; me Uncle Max give ’em me,’ Janet was reincarnated in her son when he almost bawled, ‘Do what the lady says, an’ get ’em off! Go on, or else.’

  Harold went, but with a backward glance and a grin at his uncle, who now turned to me, saying in a tone that spelt his bewilderment, ‘You sure you want him to stay, missis?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘Huh!’ His head was shaking again. ‘It’s funny. It’s as Mum says, you can manage him, but you’re about the only one that can. He’s a holy terror. An’ him learnin’ to speak French. That nearly killed the lot of us.’ His voice trailed off now, his head drooped and he said, ‘I’m sorry, missis, about…about your loss. All me life I’ve heard me mum talk about Mr Leonard. He was a fine man. Well, missis.’ He moved from one foot to the other, and I said, ‘Yes, he was a fine man, and your mother was very fond of him.’

  He nodded, then muttered, ‘Well, I’ll be off now. You’re sure you’ll be all right?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be all right. Thank you. And thank you for bringing the boy.’

  ‘It was a pleasure, missis, it was a pleasure. And as the youngster’s always said, this room’s like a queen’s palace.’

  ‘He says that?’

  ‘Oh aye; he’s always talkin’ about Mrs Nardy’s queen’s palace.’

  He had reached the lift when he said, ‘I forgot to tell you, Mum’ll be along later.’

  ‘Thank you. Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mrs Nard…Leviston. It’s been a pleasure meetin’ you. Goodbye.’ …

  I now went into the kitchen, but Harold wasn’t there. I went into the drawing room, and there he was sitting on the rug before the fire with his slippers on, his Christmas parcels spread around him and Sandy lying amidst them. He was in the process of winding up an object that looked half animal and half human. But he got to his feet when I entered the room, and when I sat down in the chair he came and stood by my side and, looking up into my face, he said, quietly, ‘Yer were all on your tod, weren’t yer?’

  I pressed my lips together to try to stop their trembling. I widened my eyes. I sniffed audibly and when, his voice still low, he said, ‘I liked Mr Nardy. I liked him a lot,’ it was too much. My head drooped, the tears blinded me, and when I felt him climbing onto my knee and his arms go tightly around my neck, I knew that here was the answer, Nardy’s answer, to my lonely cry. This child had to be mine.

  Twenty

  The weeks passed into months. It was May again. I looked back and asked myself how I had come through this time. But since taking on the care of Harold, which included making arrangements for him to attend a small private school, my days had been pretty well occupied; but my nights had remained, for the most part, wide-eyed and sleepless…and lonely. I did not now have even the comfort of Hamilton and his Begonia. It would have been as puzzling to a psychiatrist, as it was to myself, that bereft of what the psychiatrist would have termed hallucination, I was dull, I lacked initiative, and was apparently very normal, whereas, generally whenever these two appeared on the screen of my mind I was happy and full of quirky humour, or at least alive to life.

  Definitely, I think that Harold could be given credit for saving me from a breakdown. Not that my new charge had been an amenable subject. My main trouble had been and still was getting him to understand that it wasn’t always funny to repeat the sayings of his uncles. And this matter had come to a climax today.

  Harold had dutifully brought me a letter from Miss Casey, the lady who had turned her private house into a school for middle-class children between the ages of five and eight. I had explained my situation to Miss Casey when I first proposed sending Harold into her care. And she smilingly said she understood. Her first report of him had come at the end of a month, when she proudly stated that she had only twice heard him use a swear word. And she was very pleased to inform me that he was above average intelligence for his age. And his grasp of elementary French was amazing in one so young and from his background. That was the first month.

  The second month his report was not so glowing. It seemed it was difficult to get him to concentrate on any subject for very long.

  Now here I was reading her letter, and the third month hadn’t expired yet, there being another week still to go, and the gist of the letter was that Miss Casey thought it would be better if my charge could attend a more ordinary school where his language would not be so noticeable. It was distressing to state, she went on, but she’d had complaints from three parents whose children had surprised them with their knowledge of other than standard English. She had to admit that all the words didn’t come under the heading of swearing but were, nevertheless, words that the parents did not approve of their children repeating. I took Harold into my study. I had found it was a better place to talk to him. The drawing room somehow altered my attitude towards him and his towards me, for there, he would curl up on the couch and beguile me with a smile or some funny remark, mostly about Miss Casey, or Miss Dawn, a wizened lady to whom you could only apply the word spinster, for she seemed to have dropped out of the middle of the last century. She was, I understood, a poor relation of Miss Casey. But in the study, which I have said was also a sitting room, I kept him from the
couch and made him stand to the side of the desk while I sat in the leather chair behind it.

  ‘Well, now, what’s all this about?’ I wagged the letter in the air.

  ‘That?’ He pointed. ‘It’s a letter.’

  ‘I know it’s a letter, and it’s from Miss Casey, and it’s about you.’

  ‘Bout me?’

  ‘Yes, about you, and your language.’

  ‘What lang-gage?’

  ‘Your swearing.’

  ‘I never. Well’—he turned his head to the side—‘just a little bit, ’cos Piggy Caplin said I didn’t know no more.’

  I sighed. ‘And of course you did know some more?’

  ‘Just them bits Grandad Stodd said.’

  ‘Gallstones?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Anty…mackassas.’

  ‘What?’ I screwed up my face, and he repeated loudly and slowly, ‘Anty…mackassas. Gag used to put ’em on chairs like.’

  ‘Oh, antimacassars.’ I didn’t smile, not outwardly. ‘Is that all you said?’

  Again he looked away.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Come on; let’s have it.’

  He pursed his lips, then brought out, ‘Sylvia Watson said that was nothin’; she knew a bigger one. Her mother had it in hospital.’

  ‘Well, what did she get in hospital? What word was that?’

  ‘Histry.’ I saw him thinking, then he added, ‘Rectory. Histryrectory.’

  At this I closed my eyes as if I was shocked. I put my elbow on the table, and leant my head on my hand. Hysterectomy. I kept my hand tight against my cheek as he went on now, ‘Nigel Broadhurst, he said it was nothin’ an’ all, an’ that you wouldn’t have to go to a hospital to get it, you would have to go to a church. And he should know ’cos his grandad’s a parson like, an’ wears a collar backside front, not like the Salvation Army crew.’

  I took my hand away from my face and said, solemnly, ‘And you didn’t swear, not real swearing?’

  ‘No, no, Mrs Nardy, I didn’t, not…not today.’

  ‘Oh. Did you yesterday, then? Or the day before?’

  I watched him thinking again, and he said, ‘I don’t know, but Sylvia did. She swore today, she did, Sylvia Watson.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Well’—his head wagged—‘she pushed me an’ said I was always swankin’ ’bout me words, an’ she didn’t believe there was an antymackassa. And when I said there was, she said, “Oh, you an’ your anty…bloody…mack…assa.” So, she said it, not me. And Miss Dawn came out and put her hands over her ears. She didn’t say anythin’ to Sylvia, but she slapped my hands.’ He held out his hands now; then brightly, he added, ‘But it didn’t hurt, not like when Gag wallops me…But it was her not me wot said it…Sylvia. An’ she didn’t belt her.’

  Anty…bloody…mack…assar. Children learn quickly. And Miss Sylvia Watson was apparently another one of the bright ones. What was I to do with him? The children at primary school really did seem to proclaim the truth of all the good things that I had heard went on there. But I was worried that he would have to follow that by going to the nearest comprehensive. I’d heard some of the boys as they scampered along the road, and their language was akin to that which Stickle had used on me. And as yet, Harold’s had not got beyond damn, bloody, bugger, and that word I couldn’t stand, which was sod.

  I said, ‘Go and wash your hands and have your tea.’

  He didn’t move. ‘You mad at me or summit?’

  His English hadn’t improved either under Miss Casey’s tuition.

  ‘Something, not summit.’

  ‘You still gonna ’dopt me then?’

  ‘It all depends on what your father says and on how you yourself improve.’

  He moved nearer to me, put his hand gently on my knee now, looked up into my face and said, ‘I…I don’t want to go back to Gag’s, I don’t…I won’t. I won’t go…I won’t, Mrs Nardy.’

  Now his lips were trembling, and I took his hand and said, ‘Don’t worry, you’re not going back to your gran’s. But don’t forget what I’ve told you before, your gran’s a fine woman, it is only that she has that large family hanging round the house that makes her impatient.’

  He blinked his eyes, moved one lip over the other, then said brightly, ‘Will I bring you a sup tea?’

  ‘A cup of tea. Where did you get sup tea from?’

  ‘Your gran says sup tea.’

  And Gran was here for only a day or two.

  I was about to say, ‘Yes, I’ll have a cup of tea,’ when the bell rang.

  Rising to my feet, I said, ‘Go on, have your tea, and take Sandy with you. I’ll see who that is.’ …

  I opened the door into the outer hall just as the lift stopped. The door gates swung open and out stepped a tall man. He was very thin; his skin was tanned to a dark brown; only his eyes and voice were recognisable. He moved into the hall and stared at me, and I caught my breath and said softly, ‘Tommy.’

  ‘Hello, Maisie.’

  Even his voice seemed to have changed. It had a rusty sound like that of someone unused to speaking.

  I backed from him, pushed open the door into the inner hall, closed it after him, then held my hands out for his hat and the light coat he was wearing.

  We exchanged no words as we went towards the drawing room, but I saw him smooth his hair back and noted that it must have been cut recently.

  In the drawing room he did not pause as I might have expected and make a remark about the room as he had done once before, but he followed me to the middle of the room, and when I pointed to the armchair, he sat down. And I sat on the couch, but towards the edge of it. He was the first to open the conversation, and he did so by saying, ‘You all alone?’

  ‘No…well, not really. I have Harold with me. You know, the little fellow. And there’s Sandy. They’re in the kitchen.’

  ‘How’ve you been?’

  ‘Oh…well, you know.’ I spread out my hands. Then I asked, ‘When did you hear about Nardy?’

  I watched him ease himself further back into the chair, then cross his long legs before looking from one hand to the other where they were resting on the arms of the chair; then he said, ‘I think I knew about it the day I received his letter. Although, I didn’t get confirmation of it until I got yours about six weeks later.’

  ‘Nardy…Nardy had written to you?’

  ‘Yes, yes, he wrote to me.’

  Nardy had never said anything about writing to him either.

  ‘You were travelling then?’

  ‘In a way, yes. I’d come down from the Rockies and was in Calgary. Then I went back again.’

  The old bitterness against him returned. He went back up again without writing a note of condolence after hearing that his one and only real friend had died. I asked with not a little sarcasm in my tone, ‘Did you find yourself up there? That’s what you were looking for, wasn’t it?’

  He didn’t answer for some seconds, but kept his eyes on me; then, his lips going into a twisted smile, he said, ‘Yes, Maisie, you could say I found myself, but I didn’t much like the look of me. Maisie’—he brought his body forward towards me—‘don’t hold bitterness against me; Nardy didn’t, and he should have.’

  ‘Yes, he should have.’ I was nodding at him now. ‘You, his so-called…lifelong friend, could walk out on him when he most needed you. Oh, yes, he had me, but you were in his life long before I came, and you walked out of it with never a care towards…’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ His manner changed abruptly, and I saw him now as I had seen him the night he had stood in this room and told us of his mother’s duplicity. ‘Who are you to condemn? You know nothing about it. While being the centre of it and the cause of it, you still know nothing about it.’

  This new tone and manner was like a physical onslaught: I sat back in the couch pressing my back tight against it as he went on, ‘I loved Nardy like a brother, but that love turned in
to an intense hate. I became eaten up with it. I…I…’ Suddenly his back straightened, his eyes closed and his teeth clamping down onto his lower lip drained the blood from it.

  The drawing room door opened abruptly and Harold came running in, and stopped halfway up the room when he caught sight of the visitor. Then, his steps slow, he approached us, and I, at this moment thankful for his presence, was about to say, ‘You remember Mr Balfour?’ when Harold said, ‘Hello.’

  But it was with an effort I saw Tommy reply with, ‘Hello.’

  Scrutinising the visitor, Harold said, ‘By, your face is brown!’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’ve been in the sun quite…quite a lot.’

  Harold now turned from Tommy and, coming to me, held out his hand, saying, ‘Yer’d better come, ’e’s done it on the mat again, all that yellow stuff. I told him yer’d scud his backside.’

  He had picked up the word scud from Gran: during her short stay here she’d often said in his presence that such a punishment should be meted out to him.

  I rose, saying to Tommy, ‘Would you excuse me a minute?’ And Harold ran before me out of the room, crying loudly, ‘E’s had fish. Yer told me yer weren’t goin’ to giv ’im any more fish, the little bug…beggar.’ We were in the hall now and this imp of a boy turned his head up to me and smiled his impish smile as much as to say, ‘There, you see, I didn’t say it.’

  Sandy greeted me with wagging tail and lolling tongue, but I demanded sternly, ‘What have you been up to now, you naughty boy?’ And his friend answered for him, ‘’Tisn’t ’is fault if yer stuff ’im with fish. Uncle Max can’t take fish, ’cos it’s oily, he spews…’

  ‘He’s sick.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your Uncle Max.’

  As I wiped up the bile with a wet disinfectant-soaked cloth, my charge stood by my shoulder as I knelt on the floor, his head level with mine; and his eyes looking into mine, he said, ‘Sick, not spewed.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Sandy was sick.’