Pure as the Lily

by Catherine Cookson

  fe For the first time in forty years she was alone in this house |S and for the first time in forty years there was no one to call 1^ her name, bring her attention to them. She had achieved the |j, state for which she had longed, the state of freedom. All the I;;1;! time in the future was her own.

  % She leant forward and, resting her forearms on her knees, looked at the floor. She had at last got what she had, wanted ; but now she had got it, what was she going to do with it? She ^ hadn’t thought it would be like this, she had thought it i; would be exhilarating. She had seen herself dashing down | i into the shop, grabbing up a couple of cases and packing. She | had seen herself telephoning a travel bureau and asking when the next ship was going to Norway, or how did she go about taking a plane to New York. She had gone over it all in her mind scores and scores of times.

  She moved her head and looked around her. She was ; doing none of the things she thought she would do. She was just sitting here feeling like a lost old woman . 65 . 75, not 55. What was she going to do with herself in the future? Whether it was to be short or long how was she going to fill

  it? Even tonight, what was she going to do with herself? She looked at the television. She could switch it on. She looked at the book shelves. She could read a book. There was her knitting, there was a pullover for Ben half finished. She could pick up the morning paper and look over the Stock Market;

  she hadn’t looked at it for two or three days. But all she wanted to do was to sit here and cry.

  Well, she wasn’t going to!

  She would start packing, because, whether she liked it or not, she must be out of here within a month, and there was all that stuff down in the shop to be rid of. And whichever house she took she’d start from scratch. She wasn’t going to carry bundles of memories with her, even wrapped up in furniture, she had enough in her head to last her the rest of her life. Yes, she’d start sorting out in earnest, she’d work it off. It was a good slogan that, work it off.

  She worked it off all the week. She burnt business papers going back to when Ben’s father first took the shop. She gave away boxes and framework and sweet bottles and all the paraphernalia that had gone to make up the shop, to the children and handymen around the doors, and most of the contents of the room she allotted to the various neighbours to collect when she was ready to go. And in this way, miserably, she passed the first days of her freedom. Now it was Friday and she was longing for the morrow when Ben and Pat would return.

  It was about five o’clock when she decided to call it a day. She had a bath, dressed, made herself a cup of tea and was just settling down in the sitting-room when there was a hammering on the back door and she heard a childish voice shouting, “Mrs. Tollett! Mrs. Tollett! Are you in, Mrs. Tollett?”

  She went down the stairs and opened the door. It was dark in the yard, but standing on the step, shown up by the light from the stairs, was a small boy well-known to her, Mrs. McArthur’s grandson, Freddie.

  “What is it, Freddie?” she said.

  “This man, Mrs. Tollett, he’s been luckin’ for you. He asked us if you was still livin’ hereabouts ‘cos the shop’s all boarded up, an’ I said aye, an’ you’d be in round the corner. An’ you are.”

  Mary peered over the boy’s head into the darkness. Then she lifted her hand and switched on the yard light, and there she saw the man standing midway down the snow-covered yard. He was a tall man, broad, wearing a heavy coat with a sort of astrakhan collar; he had a trilby hat on, which he now took off. He walked towards her, and when he was close he looked down on her and said in a thick slow drawl, that spoke of an American, “Mary Walton? I mean Mrs. Tollett?”

  Yes, yes. “

  She stared up into the face, then slowly raised both hands to her mouth and whispered, “Hu... Hughie Amesden!” She still continued to stare at him, then on a high note she cried, “Well! come on up. What are you standing in the cold for? Oh thanks, Freddie, thank you. See you in the morning.”

  “Aye, Mrs. Tollett. All right, Mrs. Tollett.”

  She stood aside, her arm outstretched, her hand pointing up the stairs, saying, “Go on up. Go on up. Please, go on up.” She closed the bottom door, then ran up the stairs, and in the hallway they stood and looked at each other.

  Hughie Amesden! She would hardly have known him. She could have passed him in the street. He seemed to be twice the breadth he had been when they last met. But the greatest change was in his face. His skin was tanned to a ruddy brown ness She remembered it had been very fair, beautiful skin, a beautiful face. He was still not a bad-looking man, but different, rugged looking. There were lines all around his eyes and two deep lines running from his nose to the corners of his mouth.

  But he was Hughie Amesden.

  “You haven’t changed a bit.” He was gazing at her.

  “Oh, that’s silly. All these years! What is it, twenty-five?

  twenty-eight? But come along in. What are we standing here for? “ She led the way into the sitting-room.

  “I was just going

  to have a cup of tea; wait till I get another cup. “ She almost ran out of the room. When she returned he was still standing, and she said, “ Take your coat off, do, and sit down. “

  “Thanks.”

  She took his coat and laid it over a chair; she noted that his clothes were very good she had an eye for clothes, quality clothes. She picked up the teapot and as she poured out the tea she said, “Fancy!

  the last person on earth I expected to see. “

  “It’s been a long time.”

  “Are you on holiday?”

  Sort of. “

  “Have you been in England long?”

  “No, I only arrived yesterday To tell you the truth I haven’t long got off the train from London.”

  “From London?” She stopped, the teapot poised in her hand.

  “Why! you must be famished, I’ll get you something....”

  “No, no, I had a good meal, in fact two on the train. Quite good, quite good.” He kept his eyes on her all the time he was speaking.

  “Well, drink that cup of tea.”

  He sipped at the tea, than said. Tea . this is English if nothing else, I drink mostly coffee now. “

  “Oh, I’ll make you a coffee if you would....”

  “No, no, no!” He shook his head.

  “I love a cup of tea.”

  She sat down on the chair opposite to where he was sitting on the couch, and biting on her lip, she said, “I really can’t believe it.”

  “Nor me.”

  “And you know, it’s odd you calling at this time for I’m. x I’m packing up. Another week or so and I’d be gone.”

  You’re leaving here? “ He raised his eyebrows slightly “ Yes; they’re demolishing the whole place. “

  “Really! Oh, well, I noticed the change as I came in the cab from the station, even in the dark and the snow, the whole landscape is changed.”

  “Yes, it isn’t the same old Jarrow anymore. It’s better in lots of ways though, I suppose. Nicer for more people, al though some still grumble and long to have the old times back ... you wouldn’t believe it.”

  “And so you are leaving?”

  “Yes,” she nodded; ‘beginning of the New Year,” “ Well’—he jerked his head a little to the side “I’m just in time.

  Lucky to find you. I . I didn’t really expect to find you here. “

  “No?”

  “No, I thought you’d bound to be gone .. > well’—he pursed his lips ‘married again.”

  “Oh no.” She shook her head.

  “I never married again. Anyway’—she laughed now “ I hadn’t time. You see, there was my father, and my husband’s cousin who was bombed out and came to live here; then my own daughter Annie, and my brother and his child his wife died’—she always referred to Lally as Jimmy’s wife ‘and with one thing and another I’ve had my hands full over the years, until. until this last week. My father died just over a fortnight ago. “


  “Oh, I’m sorry; but he must have been a good age.”

  “Seventy-six. And then my nephew, Ben, he’s my brother Jimmy’s only son. I brought him up, well, he got married to my granddaughter a week ago.”

  “Your nephew married your granddaughter?”

  “Yes; it’s quite complicated but that’s how it is. My brother’s son married my daughter’s daughter if you can work it out.”

  He smiled, closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head and said, “Just.”

  “And there I was, I mean here I am, my own boss after all these years.” She paused for a moment and stared at him across the space between them, then asked, “Your wife, is she over here an’ all?”

  “No, she died a month ago, Mary.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “I should say I am too, but I can’t; for her sake I’m glad she went. You see, she’s been in a sanatorium for the last six years, and she didn’t know me or anyone else. She ... she never got over losing our girl; she thought going to America would erase the memory of it all, but it didn’t.”

  “I’m very sorry.”

  He nodded his head slowly, and now she asked, “How do you like America?”

  “Oh, very well, very well indeed. I must say I wouldn’t have done as well business-wise in England. You see Rene’s brother-in-law was in the car business, and he took me in with him and we went from good to better. Now, we’re quite a going concern, spread quite a bit.”

  “Isn’t that strange. My Ben, I mean my nephew Ben, he’s in the car business an’ all, he’s got his own garage.”

  “Oh, that’s good.”

  They smiled at each other; then after a moment he put his head on one side and said, “I can’t get over it. I can’t get over it, Mary.”

  “Can’t get over what?”

  “About you not changing. You’re just as I imagined you over the years.

  And this’—he put his hands down and patted each side of the couch’I’ve imagined me sitting like this talking to you. “

  She became still. She swallowed, while she stared at him. Not a line from him in twenty odd years, nothing since she received that letter he had sent her telling her he was going to America. If he had been thinking of her, why hadn’t he written? She said now with a slight trace of coquetry, “Oh, go on with you! If you’d imagined that why didn’t you send me a Christmas card to let me know you were alive?”

  He didn’t answer for a full minute; then he said slowly, “It wasn’t because I didn’t want to, Mary, it was because, because I was afraid to. Right from the time I left these shores I was afraid to.”

  She became still again.

  Now she blinked, gulped, moved on her chair and, leaning

  3”

  towards the table, picked up the plate and said, “Would you ,i like another scone?”

  ;; “No, I don’t want any scones, Mary.” His voice had a deep, ; :.

  rough sound to it now.

  “I ... I want to talk to you, say ,%; something to you. An’ I’ve come a long way to say it. I came ^ just on the off chance, but I had to come. I didn’t intend to ;|’ go at it like a bull at a gap, but here I am not in your house 1^ ten minutes’—he stopped and looked around Do you “ I know something? This is the first time I’ve ever been in this ||, room but the nights that I’ve stood outside yonder in front of H Peel’s doorway and looked up at that curtained window’—he pointed over his shoulder ‘after you had married Ben Toll—ett. Well, they were countless. “

  Her mouth was slightly agape. She said softly, ‘you did that? “

  AYes. “ His lips twisted into a smile. You must have jJ||:’ known?”

  fe “No. No.” She shook her head emphatically.

  “No, I didn’t P dream.

  You see you never let on; in all those years you never spoke to me. Only once did you open your mouth, and then III” you said one word. hello. That’s all you said. “ ||j?j “ Well’—he laughed a deep soft laugh as he shrugged one Itl11! “ shoulder “ I wasn’t a talkative fellow, and I was terribly shy. I is I used to let Paul, you remember Paul Connelly, I used to let jii him do the talking. Did you ever receive a card from a silent j ij,; admirer? “

  I it, She joined her hands together and brought them to her (I , breast as she said, “Then it was you who sent it?” And he | I, nodded.

  “Yes, I sent that card. I paid threepence for it, and I ,i didn’t rub the price off the back because it was a lot to pay for a card in those days.”

  She bowed her head and bit on her lip as he said softly, “And then, well, when you married Ben, I was sort of flabbergasted.”

  “But Hughie’—this was the first time she had called him by his name ‘you could have spoken to me.”

  “Yes, I could, but I suppose there was a real reason why I didn’t, fear.” He turned his head to the side. You see my dad was carrying on with a woman at the bottom of our street and I seemed to bear the brunt of it; my mother would talk to me for hours on end, and she nearly always ended by warning me to keep off the lasses.

  “If I catch you going round with any of them,” she used to say, “I’ll....”

  Oh well’—he spread his hands—’you know the jargon. “ He laughed again.

  “There was every lad in the place courting, in back lanes, over by the allotment, and the slag heap, I used to trip over them, but I didn’t want to court anyone but you, Mary.” He got to his feet.

  “That’s why I came over. I had to come even if it was only to find you married, or dead.”

  He put out his hands and, taking hers, drew her up towards him.

  “I

  knew it might be one chance in a thousand but I had to take it. She’ll be married, I thought, she’s bound to be married, looking like she did. I had no means of finding out because we have no connection in Jarrow now. Why haven’t you married, Mary? “

  She was trembling from head to foot; she looked away from him as she said, “I had too many responsibilities, like I said.” When she turned her head towards him again, she added, “Yet I nearly did, twice, three times, but something came up.”

  She could not keep looking at him, she had to bow her head, and it was bowed when he said, “You’ve been the only love of my life, Mary. It sounds improbable I know, and very old-fashioned, but there it is. And now it seems as if a miracle has happened, to come and find you still where I left you. But about to fly. Can ... can I ask you to fly in my direction, Mary?”

  She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. They were the same eyes that she had dreamed about years ago, they hadn’t altered; they were the same eyes that she had once walked towards, and they had dissolved into a white light. That white light she knew now had been love in its first unfolding, love as pure as the lily in the dell; love before it was touched by hand, or marred by life; love as pure spirit.

  S^

  It had been a spiritual experience, that walking into the light. She had realized in past years that she had been fortunate in coming into the awareness of love like that before Ben had touched her.

  She had loved Ben, but it had been a different love, an earthy love, a love linked to self-sacrifice from the day she had brought him back from the hospital and had accepted the death of romance and taken life as it was, and been thankful that she was loved by a man like him.

  But now it seemed that the white light that she had walked through over forty years ago had been the beginning of the rainbow, and it had arched the years, and here she was at the other end. She wasn’t seeing Hughie through a white light now; he was a man, he looked what they would term a well-set-up man of the world, but underneath he was still Hughie Amesden, the silent admirer.

  He was saying, “I’m not going to talk about love, it’s too early days yet, in fact I can count the minutes we’ve been together. But I know how I feel, how I’ve always felt about you, Mary, and if you’ll have me I’ll do everything in my power, God willing, to make you happy. To me it will be like picking up
from where I left off standing across the street. Well, how about it, Mary?”

  Her heart was racing. She blinked, she gulped, she was about to say, “Oh! Hughie,” when her head jerked to the side as there came to her the faint sound of a key being turned in the staircase door.

  The next minute there were pounding feet on the stairs. They came rushing across the landing, and the sitting-room door was burst open, and there was Ben and Pat, snow—covered, radiant, laughing. They came to a dead stop.

  She hadn’t moved from Hughie and they gaped at her, and she gaped at them, but just for a moment. Then she was going towards them gabbling.

  “Oh! oh! love.” She took hold of both their hands.

  “I’m ... I’m glad you’ve come. Oh, you look so happy.”

  “We ... we thought you’d be alone.” They said it together;

  then they looked at the tall man standing before the fire.

  “No, I’m not alone. This’—she drew them towards Hughie—’this is Hughie. We knew each other years ago when we were young. He’s ... he’s come all the way from America and’—she shook her head. And now the tears spurted from her eyes as she said brokenly, “ I, I don’t know how to tell you, I don’t, I don’t really, but . but I’m going back to America with him, we’re go . going to be married . and. “

  She did not finish. She was swung round from them and into the man’s arms, and they stared open-mouthed as he kissed her hard and long, and when he had finished and she turned towards them again, Ben, who looked bewildered but was now grinning, said, Well! What-d’you-know.

  Talk about it never rains but it pours. Anyway, we can show you how to go on, Mam; it only takes seven days for a special licence. “

  “Oh, my dears! Oh ninnies!”