I must get out of here, she thought. I must go for the messages. I must talk to someone. The typewriter was now tapping. She could hear it quite clearly like a woodpecker. Funny she hadn’t heard it before. What a poor life that man had, what a dreadful life. Between his mother and Diana. Suddenly she had a terrible thought. She went into the bathroom. There was a Daily Record lying on the side of the bath where John had left it that morning. There was a headline. It said, ‘Diana expecting her second child’. She stared at it for a long time. No, it wasn’t false, he had been there. The photograph would show that. And surely, he hadn’t made up all that stuff about his mother. And he had said ‘Grant’. She could remember that quite clearly. She took out her straw message bag, shut the door behind her, and set off to the Co-op. ‘Savings on beans’, it said in the window. She walked in. There was a young girl with a gun pasting prices on tins. She smiled at her and the girl smiled back. The manager was standing at the far end of the shop watching what was going on.
“Morning, Mrs Mason,” he said.
“Good morning,” she said.
Music was playing gently. She bent down to take two pints of milk. She must also remember the cereal. She pushed the trolley ahead of her like a pram. The baby stirred in her belly. She placed the pints of milk in the trolley and wheeled it forward.
The ashtray, she thought. He smoked a cigarette. I remember that. She left the trolley where it was. She walked briskly out of the shop. Her heels clicked on the pavement as she hurried back to the flat. He had definitely smoked. There was ash on the tray: she could remember seeing it. There must be.
HUGH CAMERON WAS a big heavy man. In previous years he had been a long-distance lorry driver: now however he was a labourer. He had, in fact, been sacked as a long-distance lorry driver because of his heavy drinking. He still drank heavily, and much more aggressively. His aggression which ate him up couldn’t be contained for long. He often thought that if he had had a family this aggression would not be simmering so persistently inside him. There had been times when he had been taunted by his workmates with being impotent till they had learned the viciousness of his temper.
When he was a long-distance lorry driver he had had enough casual sex from students, for example, thumbing lifts, and it was understood that they would pay in the only currency they had. If sex was not freely forthcoming, then he would threaten physical violence. Thus he compensated for his wife’s fastidiousness, as he had done when serving in France during the war. He remembered those days with nostalgia; when there was terror, destruction, elation everywhere, and cigarettes could buy whatever one wanted. A good man could survive among those ruins, that wilderness.
He had actually been brought up by a stepfather, his mother having married twice. He hated his stepfather, thought him a scholastic poof. One day he had hit him and knocked him down. Then he had walked out of the house. His stepfather had said he must not communicate with them again. He had actually threatened to burn down the house, but his stepfather said that he would have no hesitation in calling the police. At that time he drank heavily. He thought himself unloved, unwanted. He felt that his stepfather had influenced his mother against him. Twice he was picked up by the police for brawling, once at a football match and once in a pub when he was demanding drink after hours.
He was a fanatical Rangers’ supporter, had worn the honourable blue scarf and carried the blue banner. He thought Catholics, Fenians, were the scum of the earth: they should not be allowed to live. At a Rangers-Hibernian match he had tried to jump on the bonnet of a car of a Hibs supporter, banging on the windscreen. The police had picked him up and bundled him into the van, where he had fought ferociously till he had been punched in the stomach and sat on.
“Would you say this gentleman was a Catholic?” one of the policemen said in the posh Edinburgh voice.
“I would say that,” said the other policeman. “Next thing you know he’ll be complaining about police brutality.” They stripped him down in the station and threw him into a cell where he sang Rangers’ songs.
“Not a nice voice,” said the first policeman, who wore spectacles.
“Not classical,” said the other one sadly.
He was fined fifty pounds. After that he hated policemen. In spite of the fact that he supported the Queen, he didn’t like the law, which was a paradox that he didn’t investigate.
The second time he was picked up he was demanding drink in a pub after he had lost his job as a long-distance lorry driver. Again he had been stripped and thrown into a cell. He called the policemen fat pigs: he shivered in his cell, but still continued to sing.
He was fifty-nine years old, but still strong physically. When drunk he sang hymns but with words like ‘Hang the Pope on an Orange Rope’. He had always wanted to go to Northern Ireland, but had never been. One day, however, he would go there. He talked a great deal about King William and the Boyne and the Derry boys. He imagined himself as a hero on a white horse.
The aggression simmered and seethed inside him. He knew that he had made a mess of his life. Working as a labourer on the roads was not an achievement for any man. He believed that his wife was to blame for what had happened to him: she was always so pale, so insignificant, and she would never go to the pub with him. Once she had thought of saving up for a boarding house, but he didn’t want that. In any case they didn’t have the capital unless they borrowed it. Working with his spade on a frosty autumn day he would look around him at the leaves, which were losing their lustre, and feel unaccountably sad. He also thought that he was not quite as strong as he had been, though he did exercises. How long could one last as a labourer? And there was no possibility of any other job. He watched the beautiful cars speeding past and envied their drivers. He wished that he was still driving a long-distance lorry through the night. It had given him a sense of power with its hugeness. He could manoeuvre a very large lorry within a very tiny area.
Friday and Saturday nights, he was usually drunk. When he came home at night he couldn’t stand the sight of his wife who looked so vulnerable and frightened. No matter how much and how often he beat her up she wouldn’t send for the police. Another thing he liked was tormenting Porter, who reminded him of his stepfather: he had the same cool distant remote look as if he thought you were dirt. He would deliberately stamp on the ceiling with his heavy boots, shift wardrobes and sideboards about.
His wife sat and waited for him to come in drunk. His aggression was an uncontrollable force. It ate into him, devoured him. There was hardly any moment when it would leave him alone. Nor could he explain this aggression to anyone else. It arose from his powerlessness in the world. His force, therefore, was directed against his wife: it was the only power he had. And her very vulnerability, her very pallor, was an invitation for him to hit her. Sometimes he thought that she enjoyed being hit. He savoured the idea that the police could do nothing about his violence unless she charged him. He remembered those nights of late driving, anticipating what would happen later. Such sweet young flesh. Now there was none of that. His wife had complained of his absences from home in those days: and he blamed her for the loss of his job. If she had left him alone he would not have become drunk so often: he hated anyone trying to run his life.
He had married her when they were both twenty-four. This was at the time he had left his stepfather’s house: he had met her at a dance. She came from a village about a hundred miles to the north, and had been brought up in a religious home. It was this martyred air about her that annoyed him more than anything else, her long suffering. She was afraid that if she sent for the police people would talk about her, and this in spite of the fact that they were doing so anyway, since she ran out screaming into the road at weekends, and she had black eyes continually, for whose existence she invented the most ingenious reasons. He wanted to laugh at the police, to show them that he wasn’t afraid of them, but they left him alone, they wouldn’t allow him that satisfaction. No matter how much she feared him, she didn’t want to see
him in prison.
Sometimes he thought, when he was hitting her, that it was his mother he was hitting. She had married a stepfather whom he hated; and had surrendered to his cold loveless nature. It was he who would say to her, “That boy is a lout, he has no sense of gentleness, tenderness: he is completely selfish, he won’t wash any dishes, he comes in at night drunk, he sings his barbaric songs and tells his barbaric jokes.”
By becoming a Rangers’ supporter, he had been in fact searching for love, security. Among these people he had felt at home, felt wanted. His blue scarf was a badge of togetherness. He had an aim in life, to drive his team towards victory: it would be a victory of his own by proxy. He sometimes imagined that he was back in the army wearing a uniform. But his stepfather hadn’t been interested in football: he had never played games in his life. He imagined him as cowering, bespectacled, in a toilet while the other boys were playing football: a winner of prizes, a poof. There was a complete and total lack of communication between the two of them. His stepfather didn’t drink.
But it was his mother whom he hated more than his stepfather. After her first husband’s death she shouldn’t have married at all, or she should have married a Rangers’ supporter. His stepfather wouldn’t speak to him at meals. His silences were oppressive and cold: he had made the house glacial. He had read the Guardian, talked a lot of crap about crime and criminals. Anyone listening to him would have thought that he was caring, loving, whereas he was the very opposite of that. He had thought his stepson loutish, a being from outer space. His stepson compensated by behaving worse than he might otherwise have done. He became the blue-clad alien that his father despised.
His twin hates were Catholics and his wife. “What do you know about the Boyne?” his stepfather would say to him. “Who was the English King whom William deposed?” And he didn’t know: he thought it was Henry the Eighth. His stepfather smiled his thin knife-like smile. Another triumph for him. But what did it matter if he didn’t know what King it was? He knew that he hated the Catholics, Fenian bastards. His colour was Orange: Derry’s wall would protect him. His happiest times were at football matches.
It was amazing that Greta had married him. But she too had come from a family that didn’t like Catholics. She belonged to the Free Church: naturally she didn’t drink or smoke. Catholics thought that by breeding furiously they would inherit the world. Maybe she should have bred freely too. But he couldn’t stand the fact that while the Catholics were breeding secretly and victoriously, he wasn’t. One should be doing one’s bit to keep these bastards in their places.
In fact he sometimes thought she looked like a Catholic herself, like the Virgin Mary. She was so pale, so white, like a plaster saint. She was long-suffering, patient.
During the week he could be friendly, companionable. He had a number of jokes about the Catholics that he told her. Some however, were very sick and she didn’t like them. He had even been known to make the dinner when he was in a good mood. But he would never wash or dry dishes. That was for women to do. Even when she was sick, disabled, he would never wash a dish.
But no matter what he did, the aggressiveness never wholly left him. He thought that people in the town despised him. Only Mrs Miller would speak to him. Porter would pass him on the stair without even glancing at him. Yet on Saturday mornings Hugh would dress up neatly, was bright and happy, as he set out for the pub. Why, he had been known to say “Good morning” to Trevor, though never to Mason. Mason was a Catholic bastard, beginning the process of breeding. All these Catholics went to the same butcher, the same grocer, stuck together. They were a secret society. On Saturday mornings he looked handsome in his blue suit, shaved closely but never used shaving lotion: shaving lotion was for poofs. The world seemed to him free and open on Saturday mornings. He was good-humoured, pleasant.
But as the day wore on, as he drank more and more, the devil began to possess him, the aggression simmered and boiled. Sometimes he would meet Mrs Miller at the station and they would sing a song together. Now there was a woman for you. She had the right ideas too, didn’t like the blacks or the Catholics.
When he climbed the stairs on Friday or Saturday nights he staggered from side to side. There was silence everywhere. He often thought that he should bang on Porter’s door or ring the doorbell and, when he came out, punch him in the face, he reminded him so much of his stepfather. But Porter was curiously quiet: he never met him on a Friday or Saturday night, though he might meet Mrs Porter who had once talked to him seriously about his wife. At least she had guts. She was tougher than her husband, she had once organized them against the landlord and won a respite from roof repairs. He admired her, but disliked her husband.
When he came home he would ask for his dinner and would eat it broodingly as the aggression built up inside him. His wife sat at the table watching him. He hated people watching him. Why didn’t they turn their eyes away? Sometimes she sighed heavily. Sometimes she was so nervous that she would drop a cup or a plate. If this happened he would become even more aggressive than before. He might smash some plates to match hers, She was so patient, he couldn’t finally break her. He could make her run screaming into the roadway, but he couldn’t break her. She would shout for help, but no one would come. Not the neighbours certainly. Once a tall fellow, a visitor to the town, who had been walking past at the time in the twilight, had tried to interfere but he had made short work of him. It was none of his business.
After he had beaten her up he would hear her weeping as she lay in bed. And her weeping irritated him even more than her silence. “Shut up,” he would shout, “shut up, shut your bloody mouth.” But she would still carry on weeping though she would try to stuff a handkerchief in her mouth. She didn’t have to go out labouring as he had to. She was too futile to earn money. If he drank, wasn’t it his own money he was using? She had never earned a penny in her life.
And yet in spite of everything, she was up on Sunday morning cooking his bacon and eggs. The house was quiet then, rested, as after a storm. You could hear yourself breathe, he could be tender to her, sometimes even remorseful. Could she not understand that he couldn’t help himself? Sometimes he even made good resolutions; he would work, he would have a future. But by the end of the week, following chaste virginal Sunday, the aggression had built up in him again.
She had once left him to go to her father’s house, but she had come back of her own free will. Why was that? He couldn’t understand it. The house was a mess when she returned, and she cleared dirty dishes away in silence. Her father, of course, had told her time and time again to leave her husband and to come and stay with him, but she didn’t want to. She was frightened of what the villagers would say about her, that she couldn’t keep her man, that her marriage had failed. And in any case, she didn’t have any money and her father only had his pension. And it was so quiet where he lived. It was extraordinary, almost as if she missed the noise, the din. She had loved her husband in the past, sometimes even loved him now when he was in a good humour: he could be quite charming. She could laugh at his jokes, but at other times she told him that he ought to see a psychiatrist. But of course he never would. Imagine a Rangers’ supporter going to see a psychiatrist! He wasn’t a poof like that. No, she didn’t miss the beatings: on the contrary, she dreaded them. She missed the good qualities that were buried inside him, what he could be on a good day. He should go to church, even though he was a rabid Protestant.
“How can you hate the Catholics so much?” she would say to him. (Her Free Church friends, some of them, didn’t like the Catholics, but she herself didn’t mind them.) “They go to the church. You don’t. They get up early in the morning to go to mass, they give a lot of money to their church.” But he didn’t see any contradiction in that. No, not at all. She could see it, however, and in fact she liked Linda and John. They were in love with each other, she had given them presents in preparation for the coming of the baby. Linda would sometimes invite her in for a coffee and be tactful about her bl
ack eyes. No, she wouldn’t tell Linda about her husband. Yet sometimes she almost wept when she saw Linda and John together. They were so happy, their child was about to be born.
The tenement would be renewed. At the moment there were only old people, single people, those who had no future. At least John and Linda had a future. And like the other young ones they would move into a council house when the flat became too small for their growing family.
She had often apologized to Mrs Porter. “I’m sorry,” she would say. And Mrs Porter would make a distinction between herself and her husband; “Why don’t you tell him to leave?” she would say.
“It’s his flat.”
“Why don’t you run away then? I would run away.” But then Mrs Porter was a clever woman: she had been a secretary in a school.
“You could get a job,” she would say to her. “One of these nights he’ll kill you. Is there no organization you could consult? There must be an organization who would help someone like you.”
“No, thanks,” she would say.
Mrs Porter’s house was always tidy, quiet. From one of the rooms she could hear the sound of a typewriter: Mr Porter never came in to see the two of them. He was much more remorseless than his wife: he didn’t understand, didn’t try to understand. Yet what could she do about it? Mrs Porter, on the other hand was a good woman. She helped that old man, and she was always putting flowers in the church. Mrs Porter would say to her, “Why don’t you come to church with me?” But she wouldn’t go, in case Hugh knew of it.
The Tenement Page 13