by Gavin McCrea
“Shall I call Dr. Allen?”
She shakes her head.
“We’ll dress it, then, and you’ll be right. I hope you’ve learnt your lesson this time.”
She lifts her head and wipes her face.
“Come now, Pumps. It’s not the end of the world.”
Laying on liberal with the sniff and blubber, she lets herself be led to my room. There I put a tincture on the wound that leaves a purple stain all about her mouth and cheeks. It looks a fright, from three paces like a regular mutton chop, so I allow her to put the scarf back on, but only as far as the nose and not over it; I’ll not have her going around looking like a sneak-thief. I tell her where I’ve hid the cake and send her down to it.
“Get it into you quick and don’t dawdle, there’s work to be done.”
Left alone, I stop a minute at my dressing table. Take my favorite brush from the tin. Run it through once. Pull a handful round. Start at the ends. There’s relief in this stolen moment, and I’m certain there’d be pleasure too if the tart I baked yesterday hadn’t just now crowded in on my mind. I wince remembering how Spiv and Pumps looked at it coming out of the oven, hard as stone from too much rolling.
I put the brush down. It’s not the big but the petty things that keep us from sitting. It’s against the little mistakes that we bear on, on, on. Through the mornings of upped nerves and wasted breaths, the breakfasts warmed with a sup to steady us. On into the lonely lunches and the afternoons of blaspheming in the mind and reflecting on what can’t be helped. On across the halls and landings, the seeing-afters and well-doings, the fires and folds. The book room. The cook room. The privy. The parlor. On and on and into the bedroom again, where again we pale at the filth of the windows and the chimneypiece caked and the mirror smeared, and we catch the cut of ourselves, nuddy but for our workaday dress, head bare of a cap and in want of attention, exhausted and deserving of a sit-down, if only we could learn proper how to air the dough.
Back downstairs, Spiv has the possing stick and is beating the linen. I send her out to make a start on the supper—I suppose we can’t have Frederick starving—and I give the job over to the man himself. He takes the stick without complaint. But then he starts to enjoy himself too much, whacking at things and creating a mess, and making lewd gestures to put Pumps into convulsions, so I put the two of them to shave the soap and do it myself.
We take turns rubbing in the jelly and throwing the water. I wait till the soda is done before coming away to the kitchen to check on Spiv, leaving them alone to do the blue. When I come back some minutes later, I see they’ve come round to be on the same side of the copper, and are stood close enough to hold the holy host between their hips, three hands in a line down the stirring pole—hers, his, hers—and for an awful minute I’m reminded of himself and Mary, standing in that boat in the river, the hold of the oar shared between them, him showing her how to push off.
I elbow between them and look down into the pot. “Have you mixed it well through? If there’s streaks it’ll be your head, Pumps.”
After a minute, I take her off to the kitchen to dab the woolens and silks. “Start with this light conduct and you’ll always be taken light. Easy to put on, easy to cast off.” I leave her there to sulk.
Back in the scullery, I tell Frederick to follow me to the garden with the load, for there’s a strong breeze and still an hour or two of good winter sun left in the day.
“I’m sorry about my niece, Frederick,” I says when the largest sheets are up and hiding us from the house.
“She is certainly a personality,” he says.
“Do you find her handsome?”
“Lizzie!”
I snatch at his sleeve. “She’s a young thing yet. I’ll not have her meddled.”
Startled, he steps back, tugs at his arm to free it. “Lizzie, I am appalled.” He looks about as if waking up in a place he doesn’t recognize. “Do you need me for anything else?”
“Nay, go on.”
He shakes his head and marches back inside.
“Don’t disappear, Frederick,” I call after him. “We’ll need you for the flatirons.”
Is there a loneliness more lonely than mistrust?
Boating on the river was his idea. He comes back to Manchester from the Continent full of them. His first, straight off the boat, is to take up with Mary again, to take up with her as if no time has passed to make him wiser, though in fact it’s been a full eight years. Eight years he’s stayed away, writing his books and chasing the great revolutions around Europe. And for the same length she has lived here, as she has always done, a tiny cog in the Manchester machine, only now with her heart locked in a secret box that she believes only he can open. And here he returns, the prodigal son, to run his father’s mill—the job that family duty more than poverty has forced him to resume—and he comes to Mary with his idea, his big idea, which is to have her again as his woman. And what does she do, only spring open with gratitude. And from there are born further ideas. To travel to Ireland on holidays. To move in together. To one day marry . . .
But first there’s the river: what will be Frederick and Mary’s first daytime outing as a reunited pair. They’ve been seeing each other as they always did, at night and behind curtains, but now they’ve decided to go broad with themselves, and they insist I come along (not for my good company, mind, but to take some of the philistine gape off them). I’ve vowed never to play the goose for them again, not since last week, when they dragged me around every music hall in Ancoats and then ditched me in a hush-shop to go up the stairs together, so I tell them I’ll come only if I can bring a friend.
“Which friend?” says Mary.
“Lydia,” I says. “Lydia from the carding room.”
Says Lydia: “Not a chance in highest hell.”
But she shows mercy when I grease her with the promise of beer and a free lunch. “He’ll pay for everything,” I says.
“Is it right, though?” she says. “Going about with yer man?”
“It’s himself who wants it, Lydia. And Mr. Ermen knows about it and can’t do anything. Isn’t it a free country? Don’t worry, you won’t lose your place, you have my oath.”
She thinks on it a long time. “All right,” she says, “I’ll do it.” But only if she can bring her sweetheart Jamie. Which puts me right back in the muck. There’s no road left for me but to tell Lydia to bring someone else, a man, to even the numbers.
She brings Moss. His real name is Donal Óg, but they call him Moss because of the fair hair that grows in small clumps on his cheeks, never quite joining to become the full beard. It’s a name born out of envy, of course; a name devised by men who won’t ever look half as handsome as him. He’s a dyer at the same place our own father used to work. We once met at a wedding in the Grapes, and I’ve noticed him on other occasions since, but in truth I could whistle down the wind for all I feel for him. His fifteen shillings would never get you anyplace.
We meet at the park gates. Moss is late, but he comes with flowers.
“Picked not bought,” Mary whispers.
Frederick puts himself between Jamie and Moss, takes their elbows. “They’re called Pomona Gardens after the Roman goddess of fruit trees and orchards,” he says, and leads them ahead towards the water.
The men made themselves neat, but put beside Frederick they seem but cadgers, their efforts to spruce and shine themselves only making them look wretched, as if they’ve come straight from the early house. Understanding this, and prickled by Frederick’s high talk, Jamie flashes back and gives a face. Lydia and Mary trade tittles. Moss understands the rareness of the occasion—it’s not every day you’re put level with the powers—and acts the brown-noser, looking to where Frederick points and nodding along to whatever he’s told, the effin’ eejit.
I look down at my flowers. Not bought and looking beaten. But fair’s fair, Mary, he’d have had to walk out to the fields to find them.
We spread the rug while Frederick goes
to talk to the boatmen about renting a boat.
“Don’t come with us,” says Mary when we’re sitting. “Let me go out alone with him. Say you’re scared of drowning or something and you’d prefer to watch from here.”
The men shrug. Lydia winks. I look daggers.
“I got us a good deal,” says Frederick when he comes back. “Two hours for only a little more than the price of one.” He looks thrilled with himself. “It’s always worth your while to bargain.”
They nod. I pick at the grass.
Mary gets up and takes his hand, makes a show of dragging him away to the banks.
“Aren’t you coming?” he calls back to us.
“You two go on and have a turn,” says Lydia. “We’ll join you in a bit.”
Jamie moves to take Mary’s place on the rug to be closer to Lydia. In the fuss of arses and limbs, I stretch my legs and spread out my dress, leaving only the corner for Moss. He doesn’t seem to care. He takes two bottles from the basket and walks on his knees into the sun. There he rolls up his sleeves to the shoulder and his breeches to the knee, and puts himself out to bask. He’s watched by the people drinking tea at the little tables under the creepers. Farther down river, there’s a spot where the men swim in the next-to-nuddy and the women take off their boots and show their shins, but we’re not there now; we’re here.
“Piss-artist,” goes Jamie, as if to say he himself is the kind that stays covered if there’s ladies about and drinks only what he’s offered or can afford.
Lydia is glad to gob the bait. “One beer goes further in a poor family than two in an oiler like him.” Her smile is crooked. His is cruel. Mine is faint-livered and craven, for though I want naught from Moss and wouldn’t be happy if folk put me together with him, I do hate to hear a bested man drubbed further. He’s had it harder than most, I’ve heard, a father that ill-used him and kept him from his meals, and he’s turned out a lovely looker and kind enough, considering.
“Moss,” I says, putting the sandwiches on a plate, “come and have something to eat.”
“In a minute,” he says without turning his face from the heat.
For a time then there’s silence, just the flies and the moving water, and for another time we play a game where we guess what dodge Mary is going to try next to make Frederick handle her. Rock the boat? Splash the water? Grab the oar? When we tire of this, we turn our attention back to Moss.
“You’ll get burnt,” I says. “Come back into the shade.”
“I’m grand,” he says.
“Arrah, come on, Moss,” says Jamie. “We’re missing you here. Come and tell us one of your stories from Ireland.”
“I’ll do no such thing, I’m fine where I am.”
“Arrah, Moss, don’t be like that,” says Lydia.
“I’ll be how I like.”
“Leave him be,” I says. “Isn’t he grand where he is?”
I bring him a beer and a sandwich.
“Go raibh mile, lovely Lizzie,” he says, and gives me his teeth. White and strong, they are, the ones that haven’t been knocked out. He bites the sandwich, takes a gulp, then puts the bottle and what’s left of the bread onto the grass and rolls onto his side as if to sleep. I pick up the old bottles and bring them back to the basket.
“I’ll tell you what, then,” says Jamie once I’m settled, “I’ll tell one of Moss’s stories.”
“Go on,” says Lydia, nudging him, “go on, tell us.”
“Oh, Christ, Jamie, spare us,” I says.
“Lizzie!” says Lydia. “Remember yourself! We’re only here for you. Doing you a good turn.”
He tells a story of Moss when he was a boy back in Tipperary. How one day at the river—a river like this one, only called the Ara—he had his clothes robbed and had to walk home stitchless except for the bit of sack he picked up to cover his vitals. It takes Jamie an age to tell it, going into all the particulars about Tipperary town and who did the robbing and how, and making sure to mention that Moss already had clumps of hair growing up and over himself even though he wasn’t yet ten.
I watch Moss through the telling. He doesn’t show himself to be hearkening. He doesn’t kick up or cut in. Doesn’t move at all, except to swat a wasp or scratch his tummy. It must be he knows Jamie’s jealous. It must be he knows Jamie would take on all of his troubles if it meant being a stunner the same. So he turns the deaf ear.
But when Jamie is over and Lydia has balled out her laughs, and when there’s been pause enough for a bit of guilt to be felt for telling another man’s tale, Moss does get up and come over.
“You didn’t tell the end of it,” he says, dropping his empty onto the rug and rummaging in the basket for another. “What you’ve told is only the beginning.”
He keeps us biding while he drinks from the new one, and then while he swallows and wipes and staggers over to lean on the tree. When final he gets round to it, I can’t help but think he’s putting on to be tipsier than he is, for the scene it makes.
How he tells it, when he got home from the river, starkers as he was, his mother wouldn’t open to him, the news of his shame having reached her before.
“Off with you and find your father,” she called at him through the door. “If the sight of you doesn’t bring him home, Christ only knows what will.”
Knowing she’d not be talked round, he set off on a tour of the drinking houses and, by the time he’d found the one holding his father, the whole of Tipp was laughing at him. His father himself was laughing till he understood it was his own son that had come through the doors. And when he understood this, he was quick to turn the laughing to his favor, the cute hooer, by keeping on laughing and making a song and dance of ordering his son a spirit from the bar.
“Give the boy something to warm him,” he said. “Can’t you see he’s half-froze?”
To the delight of his intimates, he gave Moss his shirt for the walk home.
“A double act! There’s a pair of you in it now!”
Some sight they were on the roads, father bare of chest and son bare of leg, the two of them three sheets to the wind. Moss—watching his father wave at the people who turned to mock, listening to how his father caught their sly sniggers and threw them back as heartful bellows—began to feel light, near happy, and well nigh forgot what he was going home to receive.
His father’s high mood vanished when the door of the homestead was thrown closed. But when Moss looked at his father, he saw that it wasn’t only his humor that was changed but something else too. What it was, his hair had gone white. White complete. Some time between the pub and the house, he’d lost all the color out of his locks. His father’s hand was raised to start the thrashing, but seeing how Moss was looking at him, not with fear but with gaping disbelief, he broke off and went to check himself in his shaving mirror. Being as vain as he was handsome, he thought the thing was lying, and he put his fist into it. Then he pulled it out of the wall and used it on Moss.
“That’s how I got these scars here,” Moss says, opening his shirt and taking it down to show his neck and shoulders and back.
I turn away. On the other side of the green, at the little tables, people are peering out from under their hats. “Cover yourself up,” I says.
He obeys. Puts his hands in his pockets. Spits in the grass. “I’m going for a jimmy-riddle.”
We watch him go off towards the bushes. A fine figure, no question, but it’s his own fault everybody knows his trials.
“Do you even think he’s from Tipperary?” I says.
Jamie and Lydia shrug together.
While he’s gone, Frederick and Mary bring the boat to the banks and beckon us to join them.
“You two go on,” I says. “I’ll bide here for Moss.”
I’m still here waiting when the four get back.
“Where is he?” says Jamie.
“Must still be looking for a private spot,” I says.
Lydia hisses and folds her arms across. “Well, we’re going to the
roundabout. Are you staying here?”
I look at the hole in the briar where he disappeared. “Nay, I’m coming with you.”
Frederick buys tickets for everybody. Jamie and Lydia take theirs without a thanks and climb up onto the same horse.
“Woo-hoo,” cries Jamie.
“Yippee,” cries Lydia.
Frederick laughs and calls out to Mary. “Come, Mary, let us ride together like Lydia and James!”
“Nay, nay,” she says, waving her hands and shaking her head. “Nay, please, Frederick, nay.”
I look at her. Nay, please, Frederick, nay? Aren’t these public displays what she lives for?
“Come on, Mary,” says Frederick. “It is going to start in a minute. It would be fun!”
“I’m sorry, Frederick, but I can’t, I can’t.”
I give her a stern look. “What’s wrong with you? Can’t you get up there with him now he’s paid for you?”
“I can’t, Lizzie,” she says, touching her belly. “Not in my condition.”
I want to fetch my picnic up. And in fact, that’s what I do, only I put a hand up to stop it coming past my lips.
“Are you all right, Lizzie?”
The roundabout creaks to a start, and the three of them, the wanton couple and the lonely German, go round. The music rings a pain in my temples. I swallow down and look around for somewhere to sit.
“You’re no more pregnant than I am,” I says as I move away. “Wasn’t I washing the run out of your sheets just two weeks ago?”
I sit on a bench by the bandstand. Mary stays by the roundabout, gives a weak-looking wave every time Frederick passes. When it stops, Jamie and Lydia come off arm-in-arm, swerving and wobbling and all-round acting like topers. Frederick rushes to Mary and pours his foreign concern over her. From where I’m sitting, I can’t be sure if he knows what game she’s playing. He brings her over to sit at the tables. I wait till the tea is brought before joining them.
“We ought get the rug and basket,” I says. “They’ll be robbed.”
But no one moves.
Moss doesn’t come back.
“Typical,” says Jamie.