Pure as the Lily

by Catherine Cookson

  She sprang to the side as the stick came down with a sickening thud on the counter and across the spot where she had been standing.

  With lightning speed she lifted the hatch and was in the shop confronting Alice, with only a yard between them.

  Her whole body shaking, she cried, “Get out of here this minute! or I’ll send Andy there for the polis.”

  Andy couldn’t have got out of the shop door at this stage because Alice was standing in his path. Nor did she seem to hear the threat for she screamed back, “You think you’re on to a good thing, don’t you? You think you’re going to marry him and be set fair for life an’ all this!” She waved her stick widely.

  “But by God! I’ll see you don’t; if it’s the last thing I do I’ll put a spoke in your wheel.

  You’re under age, you know that, you can’t do it without my consent. I can get you put away in a home. That’s something you didn’t know, isn’t it? I can get you put away in a home. “

  “Get out! Get out this minute!”

  “Tell me to get out, would you?” She threw her stick aside and her hands came out like talons and clawed at her daughter’s hair.

  Mary screamed and struck back, and now Andy didn’t need to be told to run for the polls. But whether he would have gone searching or not he was never able to answer, for there, not ten yards from the shop, was Constable Power on his round, and so he yelled at him, “She’s at Mary!

  Her mother’s at Mary. “

  The constable followed the boy’s pointing hand and hurried into the shop, and he had to use almost brute force before he could disentangle Alice’s hands from Mary’s hair. Holding the screaming woman by the shoulders, he shook her, shouting, “Be quiet, woman! Be quiet, do you hear me?”

  When Alice, gasping and spent, stopped her screaming he said to her, ‘now look. Now look you here, missus. Take my advice and get back home. “

  “She’s me daughter and ... and she’s not stayin’ here and....”

  “Listen to me, missus. I’m giving you a bit of advice, it’s up 101 to you to take it or leave it, but if you don’t go quietly home this minute you might find yourself alongside your husband. Now it’s up to you.”

  Alice drew in a deep shuddering breath.

  The policeman stooped down and picked up her stick, which he handed to her, and like someone drunk she stumbled to the door. But there she turned and, looking back at Mary, where she was standing leaning on the corner, her pinafore hanging from her shoulder where it had been ripped, and her hair tousled into a busby round her face, she cried, “You’ll never know a day’s luck in your life. That’s me prayer, and I’ll say it every night for you. You dirty bitch you!”

  The policeman did not follow her into the street and through the small crowd, mostly children, that had gathered outside, but he closed the door after her and turned to Mary and asked, “Are you all right, lass?”

  She pulled herself up from the support of the counter and moved her head wearily.

  “She hurt you?”

  She put her hand through her hair. He scalp felt as if it had been torn apart in several places and as she drew her fingers bver it the loose hair came away in her hand. She looked at it, and the policeman said consolingly, Don’t worry, it’ll grow again. But are you all right otherwise? “

  “Yes, yes, thank you.” As she looked up at him slow tears welled into her eyes, and he said, “There now, there now. Lock up and get yourself to bed.” Again she nodded at him. He was the same policeman who had locked up her da, he was the one who had come into the shop and found Ben on the floor; he knew all about her, he knew all about everyone on his beat. And nobody liked him; she wondered why.

  He said to the boy, “Get what you want and come on.”

  Andy looked at Mary. His eyes were wide. He had seen some fights in his time between women in the back lanes but he had never seen anyone look as mad as Mary’s mother.

  “Wait a minute.” She went to the till and took out threepence and handed it to him, and he said, “Ta, Mary,” and went with the policeman.

  She locked the door; then put the lights out and went slowly upstairs, and just as she was she threw herself on the bed and sobbed her heart out. What was happening to her? What was happening to all of them?

  Life had gone mad.

  The following morning she put her hair up for the first time. She combed out her plaits, twisted the hair into coils and pinned it up on the back of her head with hairpins from the shop, and immediately she felt different.

  She didn’t realize how different until eleven o’clock in the morning when Hughie Amesden came into the shop. He had never been in the shop before, at least whilst she had been serving, and somehow she guessed that he didn’t usually come at all for he lived streets away, near Staple Road.

  She had been stooping down, stacking some blue-wrapped pound bags of sugar that she had just weighed, and when she stood up there he was, as tall and as handsome as ever, more so, beautiful. and young.

  “A packet of tabs, please,” he said.

  She was a second or two before she turned round to the box and picked up a packet of woodbines. As she placed the packet before him he pushed the twopence towards her, and with their hands on the counter they looked at each other.

  He stood gazing at her through narrowed lids as if he had never seen her before. He had likely come in, she thought, to see if she had changed, and was finding that she had. Yet the putting up of her hair that morning hadn’t made her into a woman, she had been a woman for days, inside; the putting up of the hair was only the outward sign.

  She knew in this moment that she would never feel young again.

  “Ta,” he said.

  “Ta,” she said.

  He turned and walked slowly out of the shop. He was her youth gone.

  Had she ever loved him? Had she ever seen him enveloped in a white light? Yes, yes, she had; once a long,

  long time ago. Did she still love him? He had spoken to her. She had heard his voice say something, more than that one word “Hello’, and she was surprised that it wasn’t beautiful like him. It was an ordinary voice, like that of any of the lads about the place. She had heard he was no longer at school, and had gone into the mercantile docks to serve his time as a draughts man

  But did she love him?

  It was almost as if she had taken her own hand and impatiently pushed herself back from the counter; for, leaning against the rack, she was confronted by the question, what was she on about. She was thinking like a lass, a girl, and she was no longer either. She was carrying a hairn inside her. In an odd way, she realized that from now on her life would be weighed down with responsibilities.

  Her surroundings seemed to fade away, and as if she were looking at a film, she saw the responsibilities stretching down the years: starting with Ben, a disfigured Ben, and his child, and her child; her father, and her Grandma Walton, and her Granda Walton, and their Jimmy; and strangely there was tacked on to the end of her responsibilities the little crippled figure of Annie Tollett.

  And then to ask herself that fool question. Did she still love Hughie Amesden?

  Chapter Nine

  alec was tried at Durham. It was the end of the day and his was the last of a long line of cases. The court was practically empty but for a few sightseers, mostly unemployed men, and a young woman dressed in a brown coat and a brown felt hat which merged with the colour of her hair.

  Mr. Justice Broadside glanced at the prisoner as he listened to the prosecuting counsel. He looked an inoffensive enough creature, slight, thin; yet he had nearly murdered a man, so the prosecutor had just informed him. But it would appear he had had provocation. He looked over the court to the girl sitting in brown. Was she whom it was all about? A pretty piece, and likely more to blame than the man concerned Girls of her age played havoc with older men, and this particular man had nearly paid with his life. He looked around. He wasn’t in court. He motioned the two men below him to the bench, and to his questio
n the Clerk to the Court, said, “From medical report.

  Your Worship, he will be badly scarred, facial scars. “

  “And that, you sa/—Mr. Justice Broadside now lowered his head and looked over his glasses in the direction of the brown-dad figure ‘is the person in question?”

  Yes, Your Honour. “

  The man in still in hospital? “

  “Yes, Your Honour.”

  “Hmm!”

  Mr. Justice Broadside slowly straightened his back and the two figures solemnly receded from the bench.

  Well, let him get this over; He was hungry, it had been a long day. “Alee James Walton, you have admitted causing grievous bodily harm to one Benjamin Arthur Tollett.”

  Mr. Justice Broadside now paused as if he were waiting for some comment from the prisoner, which would have surprised him had it been forthcoming. Then he went on to tell the man in the box that he couldn’t do this kind of thing and hope to escape the consequences, not in this country, and not in this particular county. People like him, if they couldn’t restrain themselves, would have to be put under restraint by those in responsible positions. True, he had been provoked, and he was taking into consideration the understandable feelings of a father, and, therefore, would not make the sentence

  actually fit the crime but would show leniency towards him. He ordered him to prison for a term of eighteen months.

  The prisoner made no response, neither of surprise nor of dismay. When he was turned about and taken from the box his actions were those of a puppet.

  “Eighteen months! Oh Da! Oh Da!”

  Mary stood waiting in a bare room. They said she could see him for a few minutes. How could she look at him? How could she bear to look at him? Eighteen months in prison. But then she supposed he had got off light, because they had been making bets in the street on the length of time he would get. Jimmy said some of them were betting it would be five years because it had been close on murder, and he was lucky he wasn’t swinging.

  She didn’t remember him coming through the door, she wasn’t aware of anything until his arms were about her and he was saying, “There lass.

  There lass. It’s all right, it’s all right. Look. Look at me. “ She looked at him.

  “I’m not worried, I’m not, only for one thing.” He paused, then said with a break in his voice, “Do something for me, will you, Mary?”

  “Yes, Da, any... anything, anything.”

  Tell Ben, I’m. I’m sorry. “

  She nodded, then clung to him; and after a minute he gently pushed her from him and said, “You’ll come an’ see me?”

  She was unable to answer, she could only nod her head, and then he was gone. But it was queer, she thought, him wanting Ben to know that he was sorry, for the fact still remained that Ben had given her the hairn. Her da had never mentioned her condition, it was as if it had escaped his memory, yet that’s what it was all about, wasn’t it?

  All the way down in the train from Durham to Newcastle she cried, and people looked at her. One woman sat beside her and patted her arm and said to those sitting opposite, “She’s likely had someone gone along the line,” and they all nodded.

  At Newcastle she was so confused she got on to the wrong platform for the Shields train and missed it, and had to wait for the next. When she alighted at Jarrow the twilight was deepening and she walked slowly back to the shop.

  Mrs. McArthur was waiting for her.

  “What did he get hinny?” she asked.

  “Eighteen months!”

  “Oh, that’s not bad. I thought it’d be twice that. If he behaves himself he’ll get out afore his time, too.”

  Oh, she wanted to die, she did, she did; she wanted to fall on Mrs.

  McArthur’s neck and sob out her misery. But she must wait until she got to her grannie’s later on. Neither of the old people had been able to come to Durham with her because her gran da was in bed, bad with his chest. They were afraid of angina or something and her grannie couldn’t leave him. She felt responsible for this too, for whatever her gran da had, had been brought on by worry.

  When Mrs. McArthur put her arm about her shoulders, she didn’t wait any longer before giving way completely.

  A week later she took Ben’s clothes down to the hospital and for the first time saw him without the bandages on his face, and she hardly stopped herself from exclaiming aloud.

  The red scar started near his scalp, came down over his eyebrow, taking the corner of the top eyelid with it, then went on down the cheek to the chin. He had another scar that ran in a diagonal line across his neck. But it was the scar that pulled his eyelid down that gave his face the strange sinister effect. It made him look, she thought, like one of the men in the squeally vampire pictures.

  When she put the case down by the bed their faces were on a level, and he stared at her and said quietly, “Well Mary?”

  She made herself look at the good side of his face as she said, “It’s all right, Ben; it’ll get better.”

  “That’s what they tell me. They say the redness’ll go; they

  say it’ll tighten. But the more it tightens the more me eye will be pulled down. That’s how I see it. How do you see it, Mary? “ His voice was as tight as the skin of his face.

  “Aw, Ben, Ben.”

  “It’s all right,” he closed his eyes. Don’t distress yourself;

  we’ll talk about it when we get home. Did you order a taxi? “

  “Yes.”

  “Well then, I’ll get into me things.” He got up and pulled a dressing-gown around him and, having picked up the case, went through a door, while she sat by the bed waiting.

  When he came out dressed, he had his face turned to the side as he spoke to someone, and he was Ben again, and she told herself she must keep looking at this side until she got used to the other side. She mustn’t let him see how it affected her because he was still the same;

  no matter how he looked, he was still the same.

  She noticed that the sister and the nurses were nice to him. They were all shaking hands with him; he seemed very popular. Then he would be:

  Ben was attractive, at least he had been. Oh what was she thinking?

  She was acting small, mean, ordinary, letting herself be affected by the look of him. She should be ashamed of herself, she should that.

  She would never forgive herself, never if she made him feel worse than he already was.

  She smiled at the sister and added her thanks, and then they were walking out of the hospital, and the taxi was waiting for them.

  She did not know whether or not it was on purpose, but he placed himself in the cab with his bad side next to her, and although he held her hand all the way home he didn’t speak.

  When they entered the house Mrs. McArthur set the pattern for future reactions. The sight of the scarred face brought her mouth open and she exclaimed, “Oh my God! lad; he did make a mess of you.”

  After swallowing deeply Ben made an attempt at lightness,

  although his tone was grim as he retaliated, “I was no oil painting to begin with.” But Mrs. McArthur imagined she was helping matters when she stated flatly, “Oh! now, that’s a lie, if ever there was one....”

  Mary had the desire to take the kindly woman by the shoulders and run her down the stairs.

  “Where’s David?” she put in quickly.

  “Oh; Katie Smith and young Bella took him to the park. I thought it’d do him good, he hasn’t been out much lately.”

  Five minutes later, when Mrs. McArthur had gone, Ben took Mary by the hand and led her into the sitting-room. There, sitting her down on the couch, he brought his face squarely to hers, saying, ‘now take a good look. She’s right, Alee did make a mess of me. Let’s face up to it, let’s try to face up to the whole bad business. Your da’s in gaol, I’m marked, and’—he lifted her hand now and placed it over his eye ‘what you’ve got to realize is that I’m going to be like this for the rest of me life. You won’t always be able to look at
this side. “ He patted his cheek.

  “The only hope they’ve given me of improvement is that later when the skin heals they might be able to cut the lid and lift it. But that’s in the future; now, as you know, I want to marry you, Mary. I’ve wanted you’—his voice dropped low now “ I’ve wanted you since the day you first set foot in the shop. You know all that, and if I hadn’t gone mad that night none of this would have happened.

  But I did go mad; you can’t undo what’s done. But the point is now I’m not going to hold you to it; you can have the baim and I’ll bring him up as me own, but I’m not going to hold you to marrying me. “

  The bigness of him, the kindness of him, and even the wonder of a love such as his for somebody, as she put it to herself, with nothing much about them and no education, brought her falling against him, and she cried, “Oh Ben! Ben, I would marry you if it was on both sides.” Now she made herself put her lips to the corner of his drooping lid, and the act completed her transition into a woman.

  Book Two. Jimmy, Jarrow 1943

  Chapter One

  ‘burrows I’ “Yes, sir.” The tall boy unwound himself from his desk and stood up.

  The book held before him, he blinked a number of times before saying, “The twentieth sonnet, sir.”

  Jimmy smiled inwardly.

  “Cany on,” he said.

  “A woman’s face, with Nature’s own hand painted, Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;

  A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;

  An eye more bright than theirs less false in rolling. “

  “There’s a comma in that line, you must use it. It reads: