Bell Timson

by Marguerite Steen

  Dear old George! He couldn’t believe his eyes one evening when he found me at the table, with my fingers pushed into my hair, trying to make head or tail of a chapter on anatomy. I threw myself back in my chair and burst out laughing at the sight of his face.

  I’d asked George in a time or two, partly because I gathered he was pretty bored at home, and partly for my own sake; for, I admit it, now Harry was gone, I was lonely. One gets in the habit of having a man around, and, believe me or not, there are times when you would even welcome a black eye for the sake of a little company. I expected I would enjoy getting the place clean and having it to myself, without tobacco ash ground into all the covers and beer rings along the mantelpiece; but a clean house doesn’t amount to much if you have no one to share it with. The girls were not old enough to be real company — I was never one of those mothers who enjoy playing baby games — and as a matter of fact they were giving me a bad time. I’d begun to wonder if I was growing into a nagger; for what with Kathleen’s impudence and Jo’s nasty little habits, like scratching her head (which was as clean as a whistle) and picking her nose, there always seemed to be a row on, and I was often worn out by the time I got them to bed.

  George was a real comfort, and I had grown fonder of him than ever — although not, of course, in the way he wanted. And if the neighbors chose to talk — well, I thought, let them. We were going to get out, anyhow, as soon as I had paid up the back rent.

  “What’s all this about?” asked George, coming round to look over my shoulder. I closed the book, because there happened to be a diagram that would have given him a jolt in his sensibilities. People like George like to think that women think that men are made like the wax dollies you see in toyshop windows.

  “George,” I said solemnly, “have you ever heard of your extensor digitorum longus?”

  I nearly burst at the look on his face; George, in fact, was getting in the habit of expecting me to be rude. It tickled him, actually, but he felt it was his duty to be shocked.

  “Or your tibialis posticus, George? Do you happen to have that about you?”

  He gave a sort of uncomfortable chuckle, and I took pity on him.

  “It’s all right; they’re two quite respectable muscles in the lower part of the leg. At least that’s where they are at present. This time tomorrow evening they might as well be behind your left ear, so far as they concern me. I’ll never know anatomy, George, and I’m beginning to suspect I’m wasting my time.” And I threw the book on the floor. Then I had a good stretch, and a yawn and a blink, and prepared to make myself agreeable over the darning basket. But no; it appeared that was not George’s idea at all.

  “What about a glass of port at the Haymakers?”

  “Why, George!” He knew I never left the girls at night. There was a common sort of pub on the corner of the street and some of the rough customers made a din at closing time. I didn’t want Jo to wake up and start her roaring if she found herself alone with Kathleen.

  “I’ve brought Hetty along with me,” said George.

  “Hetty?” I understand, until I remembered a nice little girl they had had for several weeks in the cash desk: always very pleasant to me and the children when we went in to do the shopping. I gave George rather a sharp look; for what was this about Hetty? Had she taken such a toss for George (it had happened with two or three of the assistants) that she would sooner help him along with another woman than have him take no notice of her? And I felt a bit vexed with him for taking other people into his — or I might say, our — confidence. So I was a bit stiff about Hetty, while George, serene in his innocence, went on.

  “She happened to mention she’s lodging farther down the street, and she’d be glad to take the kids off your hands now and again in the evenings. She’s a real nice girl, Bell; you can trust her.”

  Well, to cut it short, I opened the door, and there was Hetty, quite pleasant, making no fuss, and I thought, You must have fallen for George, if you’ll just stand about in the street when he asks you to, to see if you’re wanted! She came in, and I thanked her very much and asked her to sit down and make herself comfortable, and we wouldn’t be gone long; at which I saw George give her a wink. But I got my hat and coat, and, telling Hetty she would easily hear the children overhead, we went out into the lamplight.

  Believe it or not, I felt quite excited and girlish, for I had not been out at night since Harry’s departure, and I had almost forgotten what the streets looked like in the dark: the bright patches of yellow light lying on the pavements, the slippery bits like wet mackintosh on the cobbles, and people’s shadows stretching out like elastic as they hurried away from the lamps; and at the end of the funnel which was our little street the reddish flare, reaching halfway up the sky, which meant the front of our new cinema on the main road, with busses and trams roaring past, sending flashes of blue electricity up into the red. I was for all the world like a child at a fair. And when we got to the end of the street, and George turned left and I turned right, so that we cannoned into each other, I stood giggling like a simpleton.

  “What are you doing, George? This isn’t the way to the Haymakers.”

  Then he grinned and put his hand in his pocket and brought out — two seats for the Empire, our local music hall! And they weren’t complimentary, either, although I knew he got quite a few from the manager, for Monday nights. But this was a Saturday, the one night, in the suburbs, when the free list is suspended.

  “There’s a good bill this week — Harry Lauder and somebody’s troupe of acrobatic dancers; they’re supposed to be fine. We’re in nice time for the second house, and we can get a drink before we goin.”

  “The second house! But we shan’t be out until after eleven. George, what’s come over you?”

  “It’s all right,” says George, as cool as you please. “Hetty’ll wait.”

  Well, I was tickled. I had never seen George in this masterful vein before, taking the lead and laying down the law as if we had been married twenty years! And although I wished he had let me know before, so I could have put on my hat with the blue wings, and not come out in a pair of old woolen gloves, I let out a bit of a laugh as George took my arm to steer me across the road. He did not let go of my arm again until we were walking up the steps of the Empire, when he gave it a pinch — the nearest he had ever got to familiarity, I bet, with any woman! — and said:

  “You’re a real sport, Bell — game for anything!” — which was almost fulsome, for George.

  There’s something about the music hall that ‘gets” me. Even a bill in the provinces, when there isn’t a name that means a thing. I’ll pay my money for a stall, or a box, if I can get it, and I’ll have two hours and a half of what does you good. The girls tease me about it; Kathleen is all for Noel Coward and Laurence Olivier, and it would break Jo’s heart to miss one of Ivor Novello’s first nights. I like them myself; there’s something kind and warm and glowing about Ivor that comes right over the footlights, besides being a real artist. But I wasn’t educated for Shakespeare, and as for the sort of people Noel Coward writes about, in his Private Lives — I see enough of them, in my own private life, to last me a lifetime.

  The music hall is different. To my way of thinking, the audience matters as much as the people on the stage, and I always say you see people at their best in the music hall. I don’t mean on their best behavior; behavior is a cheap sort of thing we slip on like a mask over our real selves. I like the music hall because it’s vulgar and simple, and nobody is trying to appear something they aren’t — at least that’s the way it was in the day I am talking about. There were women with breasts and bottoms, and not ashamed of them either; and little men with red noses, who did a strip tease that finished up with a pair of red flannel underpants. Now the West Ends gone genteel; but go down East, or into some of the little suburban or provincial halls, and you will still find the good old stuff, that gets the belly laughs and helps the digestion. And now and again, even in the West End, you come
across somebody like Nellie Wallace or Sophie Tucker — “She’s a Yankee,” says Kathleen; but I say, “No, my girl, she’s universal.” There’s more plain, elemental humanity about Sophie Tucker singing “Yiddisha Mama” than you’ll find in a trip round the whole of the legitimate stage today. And even she’s ancient history. Now we have Arthur Askey and Tommy Trinder; nice clean boys and a nice clean show, because, of course, they have to keep topsides with the B.B.C. The B.B.C.’s done more to ruin entertainment in England than Mrs. Ormiston Chant — who was before my time; but I guess her descendants are running Broadcasting House today.

  We were in the third row of the stalls, and George bought me a box of chocolates. We were a bit on the right, which meant we were near the percussion, but who cares? The man with the kettledrums gave me the glad eye and I winked back at him. No harm in it; it was just part of being warm and jolly and all friends together. The man on my left had a big blonde with him, all sables and Jockey Club perfume; we got quite friendly and had a drink together in the interval. George was a bit awkward — he was never easy with strangers, like me, and he never took people on face value. “What does it matter what they are,” I used to say to him, “if they’re good company?” Poor old George; he was always missing the fun, with his starchy notions.

  I didn’t care for Harry Lauder, because I never can think what makes the Scotch think they’re funny; and the acrobatic dancers worried me a lot. It really upset me, to think what those girls were doing with their ileocaecal valves and their transpylorics while they were tying themselves in knots, as they had to do in the course of their routine. Then Cissie May came on, and it was as if the lights went up full strength and the band pushed the roof off and, all running round the stalls and the circles, there was one big smile.

  Little did I think, the first time I listened. to her number, “I Don’t Mean What You Mean,” that was the foundation of her career in the West End, that the time would come when I would be spending my Sundays with Cissie down at her place at Sunningdale. I just rolled about in my fauteuil, and George, who, to begin with, wondered if he ought to laugh, was carried away as well.

  It wasn’t her voice or her looks that made Cissie a top liner; it was just her way. She would come down to the footlights and pop a line across in that hoarse, cozy voice of hers, and the next thing there’d be a crack of laughter from the house that split your ears and went on for minutes, while Cissie stood rubbing her nose and looking as if she knew she had forgotten something important but she couldn’t quite think what it was. Every line she spoke was one just between you and her, and the wink she gave, when the band was playing her finale and the curtain was swinging down on her, was, “Well, cheery-o, old dear, see you again soon.” Cissie was the music hall: all its warmth, its friendliness, and its light; its understanding of the common man, its sympathy with his joys and his sorrows, its big, heart-swelling courage. She would bring a lump in your throat and, a minute after, have you splitting your sides. I say to Kathleen, “Show me your Oliviers and your Evanses that can do that.”

  We had a lovely time, and when we came out I felt as if I had had a tonic. Sometimes I have felt like saying to the people who come to me for treatment, “Go and spend an hour at the music hall, my dear; it will do you more good and cost you less than the guineas you spend with me.” Of course it would be bad for business; but it’s God’s truth. Half the women who come crawling to me don’t want anything but taking out of themselves. They only need a good laugh at themselves (as well as at the performance), and that is what people like Cissie give us.

  I told Alice next day that if being a masseur meant learning all those unnatural names I might as well give it up and find a job as a shopwoman or something. I told her so perfectly boldly — and I didn’t give a damn. Cissie had done something for me; she had made me sure of myself as a woman, and when you have got that nothing else matters. I felt that if I could not do massage there were dozens of other ways in which I could make a living for the three of us, and it was only a matter of a little time before I had another bright idea. But Alice encouraged me.

  “Never mind the names,” she said. “The main thing is to get a kind of map inside your mind of the bones and muscles and the principal organs; if you’ve got that in front of your mind’s eye, each time you lay your hands on a human body, you can’t go far wrong. And in time you’ll forget all about it, and it’ll all come to you through your fingers.” My hands were much better already, for I had taken her advice and wore rubber gloves even for the lightest work, like dusting; I was doing all sorts of wrist and finger exercises too, which improved my circulation, and each morning I used to touch my finger tips, and I was surprised to feel how delicate and sensitive they were growing. Especially the left hand; I suppose that is the one that takes the least punishment in the ordinary course of one’s work.

  I want to take the next part as quickly as possible, for some of it is not very pleasant, and there is never anything to gain by dwelling on disagreeable subjects.

  I was setting so much apart each week toward our debts, and this, as you can imagine, kept us very short of money. I knew better than go short on food, but I couldn’t have sent the children to school if I had wanted, for I couldn’t have fitted them out. There were several charities that would have helped me, but I would not start them off on charity. I was having enough trouble as it was, from the inspector who kept calling to know why they were not at school. If your income is below a certain level you’ve got no rights over your children, according to the L.C.C. I had a tussle each time he called, for I didn’t mean to be jumped into anything before I had time to make up my mind.

  Then, in spite of my promises, there was trouble with some of the creditors, who got together and sent the broker’s men in. I was in a state about that, because I had taken everything I could spare to the pawnshop, and what we had left was barely enough to represent civilization. The long and short of it was, I had to get a loan; and this meant that, although I had paid off a little of what was owing, I was worse off than I had been before, because there was the interest to pay back.

  I went to my brother Stanley. It was about the bitterest moment in my life so far. The only way I made myself do it was by saying to myself, Now, my girl, you’re going to have plenty of pills to swallow before you’re finished, so you may as well get in practice. My bit of boasting to Nora didn’t make it any pleasanter. I must have been what the French call entêtée that day when I got my divorce; I seem to have flounced round making a fool of myself everywhere.

  I could have gone to Alfred or Oswald, but I chose Stanley because I knew he would be the most bloodless of the three. Alfred would have blustered and bargained, and reminded me of Father, and asked how I meant I’d go on, if this was the way I started — as if it was any business of his! — and grumbled at me for not getting more alimony; and Ozzy would have gone white and shrill and shaky, and terrified he would never see his money back. One couldn’t blame him, for he and Mona were only just managing, and there was a baby coming along soon.

  Stan only sneered. He went to his desk, got a piece of paper, and wrote something on it which he asked me to sign. I’m not the sort of fool who signs anything without reading it, and I saw he was letting me have fifty pounds for two years at five per cent interest. I picked up the pen and wrote “Bell Timson” across the bottom of the paper, and he made Nora witness it! That’s the sort of thing you may expect when you have no securities and have to go to a relation instead of the loan companies. If I had known Cissie in those days I would have gone to her like a shot; I can hear her bawling me out if I’d mentioned interest. Well, it was not necessary to mention it to Stan. Nora did a bit of overtime with her face, and the two of them had it worked out, without saying a word. People like Nora must keep out of a lot of trouble, through never having to talk.

  After this was straightened out we would have got on pretty well for a while if it had not been for the trouble with Kathleen.

  It was a Monda
y afternoon, and I was in the middle of the wash. I always tried to keep the children clean, and change them as often as they needed it, which, in a grimy district like ours, was almost every day. As they had not nearly enough, poor little souls, to keep them going for a week — especially not Kathleen, who was shooting up like a beanstalk — there was always a line of damp clothes somewhere about the place; but Monday was the big wash — sheets, towels, tablecloths, and my own body linen. The house was full of steam and I was kept going like a machine, with meals to get, no proper place to set anything down, and the children to occupy in some way so as to keep them from quarreling and getting into mischief. So I was thankful to get them out of the way, if only for five minutes.

  About halfway down the street there was a little hardware store, and I had got in the habit of sending the children down for any odds and ends I happened to want. I would give Kathleen the coppers and tell her to hold Jo’s hand, and as they were never out of sight of the front door it did not seem as if anything could happen.

  I wanted starch and a piece of sandpaper, I remember, that afternoon. I gave the money to Kathleen, made her repeat the order after me, and reminded her to say ‘please” and “thank you,” and I left the front door ajar, so that they could come straight in without knocking. Plenty of people in the street did not use their front doors, but I never let the children go out at the back, which opened on an entry where some of the people threw out their rubbish, instead of using the dustbins; and there were always bad smells and cats with mange, eating stinking fish heads. You couldn’t keep Jo’s hands off a cat, and I was scared of her catching something through stroking the poor beasts. Boys played in the entry and wrote rude things on the walls and did rude things in the gutter; it wasn’t a fit place for the girls, and I always kept the yard door bolted, though it sometimes meant going out in the rain for the coal and garbage men.