Pure as the Lily

by Catherine Cookson

  Hadn’t he had enough of their ma? Couldn’t he see that Betty was a replica of their ma? She mightn’t be half the size of their ma, being tiny, petite they called it; but the first time she had met Betty she had seen beneath that petite surface, beneath that smiling face and childish manner, to a cast-iron character that was every bit as hard as their mas.

  She remembered their first meeting. It was on a Tuesday in September of ‘41. She remembered it because it had been given out on the wireless that the Shah of Persia had abdicated that morning and was to be succeeded by the Grown Prince, and that the Duke of Kent had returned from Canada on Sunday and that since he had left London he had travelled fifteen thousand miles by air. Little things like this always stuck in her mind when they were attached to events, and it had been an event meeting Betty, for she had acted baby-like and gushed and smarmed all over her. But her baby-days didn’t alter the fact that she was a lot older than Jimmy, seven years, in fact. She had longed to say to him, You’re mad, lad, you’re mad. “ It wasn’t so much Betty being older than him, as he not seeing that the front she put on was just an act.

  Betty had clear grey eyes and a sharp little face, and both the eyes and the face had a cutting effect on Mary. In a way she could have been her ma’s daughter. Yet because of her skittish ways, Jimmy imagined she was the antithesis of their ma. He saw her as someone he could rule while at the same time love, and pet. How wrong he had been, and how he was paying for it now.

  Jimmy, in a way, was her da over again. He was soft inside, kindly and sensitive, and in taking Betty he hadn’t got away from their ma, he had only saddled himself with a younger edition. But the strange thing about it was that her ma and Betty got on like a house on fire.

  When Jimmy had first broached the subject of marriage, she understood that their ma nearly went up the wall, and he ran the whole gamut of her recrimination: Look what she had done for him; how she had slaved for him; how her life had been ruined; how she had been left alone to work for him; and this is what he was doing; as soon as he was earning going off and getting married!

  But he had stood his ground and said he was going to marry Betty whether she liked it or not.

  This was one time when Mary wished her mother had got her own way. It would have saved a lot of trouble in the end.

  When she went into the room with a plate of meat pudding Jimmy was saying on a high note of surprise, “The Moat Cottage! Oh! I heard it was empty.”

  “And has been for the past six months,” said Ben; ‘that’s why it was going cheap. “

  “By!” Jimmy jerked his chin upwards; ‘you’ve got a business head on you. How many is that you’ve bought now? “

  “Oh, let me see.” Ben was smiling quietly, as the left side of his face showed, even though on the right side the corner of his mouth remained straight, held in stiffness by the jagged line running up to his eyelid, which now, although not drooping so noticeably, still pulled slightly downward.

  “Six. Yes, six,” he added.

  “And Mary there, she spotted the last two;

  she’s getting a dab hand. “

  “But isn’t it a risk?”

  “No, we don’t pay any rates as long as they’re empty, and the war can’t last for ever. When it’s over there’ll be a rush, not enough houses and everybody coming swarming back. Of course the property deals in places like Jarrow won’t be anything like those in the seaside towns. There’ll be quite a few fortunes made out of the properties along the coast... But still, I’m not grumbling, and if you had any sense’—he nodded now towards Jimmy, where he was tucking in appreciatively to the meat pudding ‘you’d give up that school-teaching and come in with us.”

  It was nice, Mary noticed, that Ben always referred to the business as theirs and not simply his. When he turned to her and ended, “What do you say?” she answered, “The same as you. But then’—she shook her head and made a face ‘we’d likely have to sack him, because he’d spend half his time sitting behind the counter scribbling that poetry of his.”

  “I ... I don’t write poetry.” Jimmy wiped each side of his mouth with his fingers, swallowed, then said, “I wouldn’t

  dare give it that name; verse, that’s what I do, verse. By the way, where are the hairns? “

  “Oh’—Mary glanced at the clock “ Annie should be in any minute, she’s gone round to a pal of hers. You’ll hear her long before you see her. And David is along at the Flake Street shop, can’t keep him away from there. He asked his dad yesterday’—she laughed towards Ben ‘if he could do a wangle and get him off school, a sort of war-work wangle, so that he could work in the shop. I’d like to bet that by the time he’s twenty he’ll have a chain of them stretching from here to Whitley Bay. “

  “Newcastle.”

  She laughed outright at Ben now and said, “All right, Newcastle.” Then turning to Jimmy, the laughter still on her face, she asked, “How’s Doo-lally getting on?”

  “Oh, Doo-lally!” Jimmy, about to take a drink from a steaming cup of tea, put the cup back on to the saucer and, wagging his head over it, he said, “Poor Doo-lally. But you know, it’s a shame Mary, she’s no more doo-lally than I am, it’s just the look of her. And yet why call anyone who looks like her, Doo-lally? Sophie Tucker would be a better title, because she’s all bust and buttocks. Note’—he looked from one to the other, laughing ‘how politely I described her anatomy.”

  They were all laughing when he said, “But seriously, she’s a good eyeful. How she came to marry that great, big lout of an individual I’ll never know. And Lord! when I hear him going at her I could go in there and land him one ... if I dared.” His head flopped backwards in self-derision.

  “But he’d just need to breathe on me and that would be me horizontal.” He demonstrated by throwing his arms wide. Then after the laughter had subsided again he said, “But still, it makes me mad.

  Saturday night after Saturday night, I don’t know where he finds the booze. I feel like asking him; I wish I could get as mortallious as that. “

  “Oh,” put in Mary, ‘it’s the booze you’re worried about, not her! “

  “Yes, perhaps you’re right. It could be.”

  “Why doesn’t she leave him?”

  asked Ben now.

  “Aw, I don’t know. The usual; she’s just had another miscarriage. They tell me this is the third. You know you can’t imagine her putting up with it, not the way she looks. You want to hear the lads when she passes the corner, it’s like a wolf pack. But she just turns round and laughs at them. She’s so good-natured. And they call to her, “ Hello, Doolally! “ I mean, fancy calling her Doo-lally to her face. But as Barney Skelton on the top floor says, “ Half the men for streets around would be only too glad to swop her for their wives. “ Mind, I don’t think she’s got any money sense, I think that’s what the trouble’s about between him and her, because they say even when it was possible to buy things, when they were first married at the beginning of ‘39, and he gave her his pay, she’d go straight out and spend the lot on the daftest things. They say she’d bring home huge collops of steak that would do a family for a week, and cream cakes, and things like that, or she’d go and rig herself out in something fancy ... and how fancy! But that’s the only daft thing I can see about her; for the rest, I find her, well, nice, kindly.” He laughed again before adding, AWe’ve been in that flat about four months and, you know, I don’t think I’ve gone through the front door once but she’s poked her head out of her door as if in great surprise and said, “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Walton. How are you?” And you know, I’ve nearly always got to check myself from saying, “Oh, all right, Lally.”

  It’s funny, but you want to call her Lally) “What’s her real name?” Mary asked now.

  “Jessie, I understand, so Skelton tells me. Jessie Briggs. It used to be MacAnulty before she married. Her father was Irish, her mother, of all things, was Spanish, and she’s as blonde ... well, as blonde as peroxide. Anyway’—he grinned as he rose
from the table ‘she ... she affords me a little amusement in my darker hours.... That was lovely, Mary, thanks. Now I’ll go home and have me tea.”

  ^

  “I bet you will an’ all. I wouldn’t care if you showed any thing for it.” Mary pushed him towards the door.

  “I’m the thoroughbred type, long, lean and laconic. Ah well, here I go. Nice seeing you, Ben. Ta-rah.”

  “And you, Jimmy, Ta-rah.”

  Mary followed him out of the room, across the hall and down the stairs, and when they stood in the yard she said to him, “How’s things?” It was as if they had just met, and, his face straight, his shoulders hunched, he replied, “Same as usual. No, no, that’s not strictly true, getting worse would be more correct. You know what the latest is?”

  “No, but I could give three guesses.”

  “She wants to come and live with us.”

  “Oh, I’ve been expecting that for a long time, ever since Grannie McAlister died.”

  “And Betty’s all for it. We went at it tooth and nail last night.

  Apparently both she and me ma agreed that the bit of money she’s earning would help the finances of our establishment therefore enabling me to save and buy a house. This is the latest, buy a house.

  No reason, they say, why I can’t get a job in a school say in Newcastle, or Whitley Bay, somewhere round the coast, in a respectable —refined quarter. “ He emphasized the last two words with a deep abeyance of his head.

  “Neither of them has ever known such a common place as Jarrow. Not only is it dull, dirty, and more depressed than before the war, but its people are dull, and vastly ignorant, and for the most part depraved. And this, mind you’—now he had his face down and close to hers ‘as you and I know, from two people who have never been more than a mile or two out of the town in their lives... Newcastle’s the farthest.”

  He straightened up now and looked at the top of the back yard wall as he said, “Oh Mary, I wish I weren’t teaching, I wish I hadn’t this smattering of education, because instead of it broadening my mind and enabling me to make allowances it does the opposite and makes me look down my nose at the pair of them. You know, their combined ignorance and bigotry is almost too much to bear at times.”

  As he brought his troubled gaze to her she saw the small boy who had, over the years, come rat-a-tat-tatting with his special signal on the backyard door, here, telling her his tale of woe, pouring out of himself the burden of his mother. At more than one stage in his young days he had begged her to let him come and live with her, until she was forced to say to him, “If you ever did that, Jimmy, she would do murder, and I’m not just saying that, I know she would, for she lost our da, she lost me, and’—she had stopped herself from saying, ‘she lost Ben’, and ended, Taut me da and me would be nothing because she never cared for either of us, but you, she always thought the sun shone out of you. No, Jimmy; get that out of your head, you can never come here, not to live. Pop in as often as you can, but be wary for, you know, once she gets wind of you coming she’ll put a stop to it. Oh aye, and bray you silly into the bargain.”

  It seemed strange that over the years her ma had never got wind of Jimmy’s visits to her. Whether she thought that he wouldn’t dare go against her wishes, and therefore had not bothered to watch him, she didn’t know. And there was one thing she thanked the neighbours for;

  if anyone had seen him coming in they hadn’t split on him. It didn’t sadden her to know that her mother was heartily disliked, even hated;

  rather it reassured her with regards to her own feelings, which at times she thought could be taken as unnatural, for after all, as the old women said, blood was thicker than water.

  Jimmy said now, “I didn’t say anything upstairs, I couldn’t, but it’s funny about you buying Moat Cottage because they were both on about it the other night, not talking to me, but at me. They conceded that to live there would mean still living in Jarrow, but on the outskirts of the better part, and me ma said she had always admired the cottage.

  By! I wouldn’t like to hear what she says when she knows you’ve got it. “

  “It doesn’t matter to me,” Mary said, ‘what she thinks or what she says, I’m past her and all she can do to me. “ She

  asked now, “Have you been along to me grannie’s this week?”

  “Yes,” he said; “I called in the night afore last. It was rather late.

  I’d been on fire watch. And me da came in. He was three sheets in the wind. “

  “Really!”

  “Yes. I don’t know where he got the money from. You been giving him any?”

  She glanced away.

  “I give him a little now and again.”

  “Well’—he walked towards the back gate “ I don’t blame him. If I knew where he got it I would have gone with him and we could have got blot to together. “ He grinned down at her, and she said sadly, “ Oh, Jimmy,” then added, “ I wish you wouldn’t. “

  “Wouldn’t what?”

  “Well, drink.”

  “Ben drinks.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You mean, I can’t carry it?”

  “It’s not that....”

  “It is that, and I know it’s that; but you’ve got to have a bolt hole, at least I have. I’ve got to scoot out from those two somehow to some place. God!” He put his hands to his scarf and pulled it tight. ‘you know what, Mary? At times I wish I were dead. “

  “Oh! our Jimmy. Our Jimmy. Stop talking like that!”

  “All right. All right.” He grinned down at her; then punched her gently in the cheek.

  “I’m only kidding. Well, I must be off; I’ll have the bellmen out else. Be seeing you.”

  Slowly she bolted the door behind him, and as slowly she went upstairs.

  Ben, crossing the hall, stopped and said, ‘now what’s up? “

  “Oh, nothing more than usual.” She smiled at him, and he put his arm about her shoulders, saying, “Look, you’ve got enough to worry about.

  Jimmy’s a big lad, you know. “

  “He may be a big lad but he’s a lost lad, and he’s drinking. What he needs is someone to....” She pressed her lips tightly

  together before adding, “Oh, why on earth did he marry her! Between the pair of them they’ll drive him mad.”

  “Oh, it takes a lot to drive a man mad. Look at me; I’ve put up with you for years.”

  “Mind yourself; you’re asking for it.” She slanted her eyes at him in mock harshness, and the next minute she was pressed close to him and, his mouth covering hers, he held her fiercely.

  After he released her they stood looking at each other, and he said quietly, “I never get over the wonder of having you;

  do you know that? Do you really realize how much I care about you? “

  Tes, I know. “ Her voice was thick and had a slight break in it.

  “I don’t tell you often enough.”

  She put up both hands and stroked his cheeks; she always made a point of not touching one side of his face only.

  His hands covering hers, he looked into her eyes as he asked, “It wasn’t just through pity, was it?”

  “Oh, Ben, you know it wasn’t’ She had forgotten completely that pity had been an ingredient of her love.

  “Anyway, what’s brought this on, at this time of day?”

  He now took her face between his hands as he said, “Because you’ve got a big heart and everybody takes advantage of you ... and because, Mrs.

  Mary Tollett, you’re beautiful. “

  “Oh Ben, now give over. Listen; here’s Annie coming.” She pointed hastily towards the stairs, then pushed him from her, saying, “Stop it, do! You know she gets jealous when she sees you making a fuss of me. Just look at me.” She went from him, straightening her hair, but glancing over her shoulder as she did so, and his own eyes answered the gleam in hers.

  When Jimmy heard Mary lock the door the sound was like a gate clanging shut on his main bolt hole, or rather,
private heaven, because in comparison with his own home hers had always appeared like heaven.

  9 “9

  Fifteen minutes later he entered the tall house in Haven Terrace that had been turned into four flats. As he went into the hall a door on the right opened quickly and he looked at Mrs. Jessie Briggs. She was as he had described her, big, blonde, with prominent bust and buttocks. She was no more than twenty-five; her skin was pale and her eyes were big and blue and arched with dark brows that contrasted strongly with her very fair hair.

  “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Walton; I thought it was Albert. How are you?”

  “All right, Mrs. Briggs, thank you Cold, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, yes, it’s very cold.”

  She came from the doorway and took a step into the hall. *I heard something about you today, Mr. Walton. “

  “Did you, Mrs. Briggs?”

  “Aye.”

  He waited while she smiled broadly at him and he noticed that an odour came from her. It wasn’t scent and it wasn’t body sweat, it was something about her, and whatever it was it was an attractive smell.

  “I was talking to Mrs. Wright in the fish-shop, and she got on about her boy—he’s in your class at school and mind, this is true’ she pushed her head towards him ‘she said the boys think the world of you, and she said you had written a book. Yes, she did; a book of poetry.”

  He felt himself turning scarlet, like any second-former being brought up before the Head for some misdemeanour, a personal sexual misdemeanour.

  “Oh, that’s not right, Mrs. BBriggs.” He was even stammering.

  “Oh, but she said it was. A book of poetry that’s what she said.”

  Oh my God! He closed his eyes and shook his head.

  “Oh. Oh, that was a long time ago before the war, Mrs. Briggs. I ... I used to dabble in it. Everybody does you know before they’re twenty; it’s something that comes with spots.”