‘I’ll ask Bill.’
‘And if not there, then somewhere else in Sheffield: some park, or some tea place. Promise!’
‘All right,’ he said evasively.
‘You don’t really want me,’ she mourned.
‘Oh, I know I love thee an’ a’. But when there’s a big distance atween two folks what’s love? — But I s’ll see thee then, i’ Sheffield.’
And a little light broke into his eyes as he said it, and he smiled faintly but intimately to her. She waved her hand and went. He made her feel irritated and depressed. Facts of circumstance meant so much to him in his stupid man’s mind. To her facts of emotion were everything. But she believed that whether he knew it or not, he loved her and would find he could not live without her. In spite of all the things he said, something would draw him to her.
Two weeks went by. August Bank Holiday, which meant for Constance the outbreak of the war, also passed. Then she had a letter from Parkin. ‘Dear Lady Chatterley, My friends Mr and Mrs Tewson say they will be very pleased for you to come to tea here on Saturday if you care to. Respectfully. O.P.’
This was a chilly communication indeed: especially the ‘Respectfully. O.P.’ Constance was offended and tempted to reply, ‘Dear Mr Parkin, I am afraid I don’t care to. Contemptuously. C.C.’ But then it might merely be clumsiness and not knowing how to proceed. So she sent the reply to Mrs Tewson. ‘Dear Mrs Tewson, Many thanks for your invitation to tea next Saturday. I shall come, if I may, about half-past four. Yours sincerely—’
But still, even as she posted the letter, she felt angry. What did the man mean by it! Was this his manner of showing that he was not a gentleman?
However, on Saturday afternoon she drove into Sheffield. It was not much more than an hour’s run. She saw the pall of smoke ahead, and it looked ominous. She dreaded something, something in the very atmosphere of this unattractive town. She felt an ugly hostility.
Nevertheless, she did her shopping and called on the doctor with whom she had made an appointment. He was a clever and well-known man, and treated her with great respect. He told her she was going to have a child, but that she was perfectly well in every way.
Without thinking, she took a taxi to Blagby Street. The driver leaned out of the car and said, ‘Where?’ with such emphasis that she stammered. He seemed to think for a moment. Then he called to another driver: ‘Hey, Luke! Wheer’s Blagby Street?’
‘Up Stanswell Road — after King Alfred — just after th’ Crown and Anchor.’
The driver gave a long nod and started the machine.
Blagby Street was one of those steep streets paved with setts and lined with solid lines of dwellings whose roofs go uphill in jagged steps. It was as hard as a stone shaft and there was an endless succession of square windows and doors with two doorsteps on the pavement. The driver pulled into low gear, and the car ground dismally up. There were few people in the street’s ghastly rigidity, a few children holding large slices of bread and jam, a man here and there, the queer, ghoulish men of the ironworks, disappearing into one of the little entries between the houses. All the doors and all the windows were shut, though it was a fine afternoon. But they were parlour doors and parlour windows, which Constance did not know.
The car pulled up on the tilt of the hill. Yes, the number on the hermetically sealed door was 47. The window-curtains of Nottingham lace were rigid. In trepidation, Constance paid the driver, realising as she did so that never in her life had she been up one of these streets and never in her life had she entered one of these so-called houses that seemed to her more like the kennels of some gruesome animals. Yet, of course, it was a decent street.
She knocked, standing on the upper stone step. Everybody had turned to stare. The taxi man, swearing, went on up the diabolical hill, crawling with noisy abhorrence. And at last, after a cruel age she heard someone unbolting the door.
It was Parkin, in his shirt-sleeves. He looked tired and pale and somewhat irritable.
‘You’ve come to th’ front door,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she replied, not knowing what he meant.
‘Shan’t you come in?’
She stepped into the small parlour that was furnished with a ‘suite’ in green cotton-velvet brocade, a black piano, various ‘stands’ with photographs, a gramophone, and huge ‘enlargements’ of photographs. The inner door was open. She heard scuffling in the inner room and saw children peeping.
‘Shall yer sit down here or go in the’ living-room?’ said Parkin.
‘I’ll sit here a moment.’
She sat on the green cotton-velvet sofa and looked at him. How tired he looked, almost haggard! The heavy work had gone hard with him after his easy gamekeeping life. And he looked a workman now: he used to look different. He had sat down awkwardly on the piano stool, laying his hands on the imitation rosewood table. She was shocked when she saw his hands scarred and swollen, almost shapeless. They had been so quick and light.
‘Your hands!’ she said, shocked.
‘Ay, that’s where it catches you,’ he said dully, opening his hands and looking at the swollen, inflamed callouses.
But he would not look at her.
‘Have you found it very unpleasant?’ she said.
‘It takes a bit o’ gettin’ used to,’ he admitted slowly.
‘But why should you get used to it?’ she asked.
He looked up into her face now.
‘It’s what every man has to,’ he said.
She pondered. Every man! To him it was every man. To her, of course, it was just — oh well, no man she ever thought about.
‘But you don’t have to,’ she said.
However, he picked slowly at a half-healed wound on his thumb, and answered not at all.
‘Don’t do that!’ she said softly, and he glanced up at her swiftly, startled like a boy caught in misdemeanour.
‘I’m a working man like all the rest of us,’ he said into her face with challenge.
‘Yes — but — do you want to be? — That kind of work?’
‘Oh, I s’ll be all right when I get a driver’s job.’
‘When will that be?’
Again he was slow in answering.
‘You never know. ‘Appen come New Year.’
How slow he was! How unforthcoming and irritating.
‘I went to the doctor here,’ she said.
He glanced up again swiftly, he had fallen to picking the wound on his thumb again, helplessly, revealing the state of his nerves.
‘You did!’ he said. And she guessed that he had been to the doctor too.
‘Yes! He says the child will be born probably in February. He thinks it’s three months almost.’
He ducked his head and left his thumb alone.
‘Have you told Sir Clifford?’ he said, very low.
‘Not yet.’
‘I have to go up for my divorce next week,’ he said.
‘Do you?’ And she asked him a few particulars.
She saw how much this matter of a divorce meant to him.
‘Why do you care so much?’ she said. ‘She probably would never bother you again.’
He stirred rather stiffly and wearily.
‘I’ll be rid of her anyway,’ he said.
It was as if something had stiffened in his soul and would not relax. It was some sense of injustice perhaps: certainly some form of anger which included her as well. She could not soften him.
‘Yes, it will be better,’ she said softly.
A voice said insinuatingly in the passage:
‘I’ve mashed th’ tea.’
‘Comin’!’ he said, rising to his feet. Then to Constance: ‘Shall yer come in an’ have yer tea then?’
She could tell he hated the thought of this meal: he would feel a bit ashamed.
‘Yes!’ she said. ‘It’s very kind of them to have me.’
He went in front of her through the stairfoot passage, where the coats and hats hung, and where the pantry
door opened darkly under the stairs. The living-room door had been shut so that they should be private. He opened it, and she became aware of another small room that seemed full of people, and a table that seemed oversized, spread with a white cloth and many glittering things.
‘Oh how do you do? You’re Mrs Tewson,’ said Constance to a brown-eyed woman in a rather elaborate buff silk dress.
‘That’s right! On’y we usually say Towson in these parts, though we write it Tewson. Well where shall you sit? You must make yourself at home, you know.’
The woman, rather lean-faced and worn but with nice dark eyes, was pushing forward a chair.
‘Hold on a minute, missis, there’s me!’ said a man in the background. He was medium-sized, pale-faced, but with alive grey eyes perhaps a little impudent. ‘How do you do, Lady Chatterley!’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘I’m Mr Towson — or Tewson — whatever you like to call it: otherwise Bill! Pleased to see you! Make yourself comfortable if you can. I know it’s a poky business.’
Constance shook hands with him, laughing because she did not know what else to do. He had queer, bright fair hair that went up from his temples.
‘And the children. You must introduce me to the children,’ said Constance.
For in the corner in the background was a boy of about eleven and two little girls rather younger.
‘Ay!’ said the mother. ‘There’s bound to be th’ children. I tried to shunt ’em off, but would they — ! Not when they knowed there was cump’ny! — Come here, Harry, and show you know how to behave yourself. Say how do you do to the lady. Come Dorothy! Come Marjory love!’
Constance shook hands with the confused but honest boy and patted the cheeks of the two girls. The children were pale and nervous-seeming, except the little one: Marjory love!
‘But she’s a bonny little girl!’ said Constance.
‘The only one as doesn’t shame ’er cupboard,’ said her mother.
‘Oliver, hadn’t you an’ me better put us coats on?’ said Bill suggestively.
‘It’s what I’ve been tellin’ ’em,’ said the wife. ‘But they that obstinate, you can’t move ’em. And I’m sure they make one another worse. Now we’ve got Oliver here — Mr Parkin you know — I’m nowhere. No use what I say.’ Bill had gone into the passage and got the two coats. There was a great shuffle, in the small place, of everybody getting to a seat. Constance was seated next to Oliver. Marjory love sat in a high chair beside her father, the other two children on the sofa.
‘Not much elbow-room, is there?’ said Mrs Tewson. ‘I keep on at Bill to get us a bigger house, but it’s like movin’ a mountain. Let’s see — do you take sugar an’ milk?’
The tea cups were handed round.
‘I can see my husband lookin’ at these small cups — he’s used to a big one. And so is Oliver — Mr Parkin — they both like plenty an’ swilkerin’. But you’ve got to drink it up slow today, my lad!’ she added to her husband.
‘Yo’n made it that sweet, looks like I shan’t be able to drink it o’ nohow,’ said Bill.
‘Well drink a drop up, an’ I’ll fill it up. — What shall yer have now?’
Constance felt breathless. On the table was tinned salmon and boiled ham, tinned peaches and tinned strawberries, though it was fruit season: brown bread and butter, and white, and currant loaf —besides various home-made cakes and pastries.
‘Have a few strawberries! Oliver — serve a few strawberries, if your hand’ll let yer.’
Oliver very awkwardly served a few strawberries.
‘Well ’ow do you think ’e’s lookin’?’ said Mrs Tewson. Constance looked rather blank.
‘Mr Parkin I mean. How do you think he’s lookin’?’
‘Oh! Rather tired, I think,’ said Constance.
‘Rather tired! Ay! I should think so! It’s cruel, you know, when you not used to it. Handlin’ that iron all day long, an’ those raw edges an’ all, oh, it’s cruel work at the best of times, an’ when you’re not used to it it punishes you something terrible. I really thought we was goin’ to have him bad, what with a sprained shoulder and his hands in a mess you never saw. But he’s got over the worst of it now, he’ll soon be hardened to it. An’ Bill’ll see as he gets a driver’s job as soon as one comes vacant. Bill ’as his say almost like one of the bosses, as you may say, in that. — Bill, can’t you see to th’ child. Marjory love, not on mother’s clean tablecloth — no!’
Marjory love was emptying tea and tinned salmon with a teaspoon on to the fine white cloth.
The fine white cloth, the sparkling glass bowls, the bright knives and spoons, the pretty china — it was quite wonderfully refined! Constance marvelled all the time at the queer energy that kept it all going. Only the dessert spoon, with the tinned strawberries, did taste a little of metal.
The elder children were very good. Bill looked after the Marjory love casually, taking her little hand in his huge one and wiping it on her feeder. Then he proceeded steadily with his meal — for it was a meal to him and to all of them. They would not eat much supper.
‘You’re makin’ no tea at all!’ said Mrs Tewson. ‘Isn’t it to your fancy? Oh, you must eat or we s’ll think it’s not good enough for you.’
This was a dilemma. Constance started on currant loaf.
‘How are you gettin’ on at Tevershall, like?’ said Bill to her. ‘I’ve been over there, you know! Yes! I’ve stopped wi’ Oliver over Saturday night in the cottage at Wragby — ’aven’t I, Oliver.’
‘Ay!’
‘Really! But I didn’t see you,’ said Constance.
‘No! I kep’ mysen out of sight. But I seed you an’ Sir Clifford in th’ park. It’s a lovely park, an’ a’! But that was afore you took much notice, like, of Oliver.’
‘Yes!’ she said. And she wondered how much the man knew — how much Oliver had told him.
‘Your ladyship never took no notice of me till we raised those pheasants this spring — and then we got sort of friends, if it’s not sayin’ too much,’ said Oliver quietly.
‘And if a man’s kind to a person, be she lady or be she who she may, she’ll feel kind back again. An’ that’s friends if you like to call it such,’ said Mrs Tewson flatly.
‘Oh, I consider Parkin and I are friends,’ said Constance.
‘You do! Ay!’ The brown eyes of the other woman looked at her shrewdly, caustically. Constance flushed. She did not realise that Mrs Tewson was offended with her for calling him ‘Parkin’. In Mrs Tewson’s ears that was almost an insult. It was displaying her ladyship.
‘Well!’ said Mrs Tewson, after a pause. ‘’Appen there’s friendship possible between them what’s higher up in the scale an’ them what’s lower down. But it’s bound to be one-sided. And it’s silly to brood over such things.’
This was a shaft at Oliver. He was uncomfortable.
‘Do you mind now,’ said Bill to Constance, shifting uneasily in his chair, ‘do you mind now if I ask you a plain question?’
‘Not at all!’ said Constance, flushing.
‘Do you think there is much difference between people in one walk of life and in another, like? You know I don’t want to say nothing I shouldn’t, don’t you? Ay! Well — do you think there is much difference between your sort of people and people like us? You see what we are — it’s obvious. Everybody knows what we are. We’re just decent working-class people. What would be the good of pretending anything else. But people like you! We never meet you. We don’t know you. We don’t know what you’re like! And is there very much difference, do you think? Do you think there is?’
He had laid his workman’s hand earnestly on the edge of the table, and was leaning forward, gazing at her with those wide, wide-open, perplexed eyes, under his rather thick, perplexed eyebrows. He was intensely in earnest in his wide-mouthed, anxious way.
‘Not really!’ she said, nervously turning one of her rings. And at the same time she was shrinking in a kind of fear from that pale, forward-thrusting, wi
de-eyed, intense face that gazed so full into hers.
‘No!’ he said, slapping the edge of the table. ‘Not really! Really, really, we’re alike. What I mean to say, our feelings are about the same. — I know we’re not refined nor none of that. We’re not gentry. But take the most of the feelings — they’re the same? Aren’t they? Most of your feelings are the same as most of ours, aren’t they? I don’t mean you personally, because your father was a painter, and artists are more free anyhow. That’s how I can understand you might like to come here — something new for you, like, to see us in our own homes. But Sir Clifford! Sir Clifford! He’s not free like you are. He’s more one of the stuck-up ones, if you know what I mean. I mean —well, you know what I mean — he’s more of a gentleman on the snobbish side. I can understand you better, being the daughter of a great artist —’ Oh, if Sir Malcolm could have heard! — ‘But take even Sir Clifford! His feelings and my feelings, are they so very different?’
Constance had thought many things during this tirade. So! They took her visit for a sort of bohemian curiosity. And they didn’t mind, they put up with it. And they had not the faintest suspicion that she was Oliver’s lover. The sly little devil, he had not let them suspect in the slightest. Even the woman didn’t suspect. They thought it was bohemian curiosity and boredom. She longed to say to their noses:
‘I’m pregnant by this Oliver Parkin here: been pregnant for three months.’
At the same time the queer white flame of earnestness on Bill’s face opposite her was pathetic, pathetic. Were his feelings the same as Clifford’s? Good God, no!
‘Yes!’ she said in her soft, composed voice.
‘Eh?’ he started. ‘Yes?’
‘Yes!’ she repeated.
He stared at her with those bright, grey, intense eyes for some moments as his tension slackened.
‘You mean to say there is a difference between my feelings and those of a man like Sir Clifford? You mean to say there is?’
‘Yes!’
‘There is? And a big difference? Big enough to matter?’
‘Yes.’
He sat slowly back in his chair, his face very pale and as if bewildered. Then he quickly rubbed his forehead and ruffled his hair so that it stood on end. Then he gave a queer, quick, deep little laugh as he looked round, half-rueful, half-roguish, at Parkin.
The First Lady Chatterley's Lover Page 20