Dido let the women’s talk go past him. Something about it vaguely disconcerted him. There was something different about his mother. Then he realised what it was. The vagueness had gone from her face. She spoke in the same weak voice as ever but she was rattling away as if she had just found out what words were for; and her eyes darted at Grace as bright and alert as those of a sparrow. Grace was talking nineteen to the dozen as well. It was queer, here were these two women who’d always seemed to him too frightened or something to say much, and now they were together they were chatting away like billyoh.
He was glad they talked. He felt detached from it. He was bored by the whole affair. After that astonishing episode in a dark doorway all the madness had suddenly gone. The girl did not interest him any more. He could have happily forgotten her. The trouble was, he was a man of his word. A chap had to be straight, to do the right thing. And there was another side to it. He had walked arm-in-arm down Rabbit Marsh with her and though there had been hardly anyone in the street he knew that the news would be all over by tomorrow: Dido Peach with a young lady. He didn’t care. More, he felt like chuckling over it. He despised the people round here. Let them talk. He could hear the old hags telling each other how la-di-da she looked, a stuck-up piece, a proper lady, and pleasure swelled in him. That was what he wanted. To be respectable. To be looked up to. A respectable fellow settled down, didn’t he? A man had to settle down some time.
Grace’s voice came to him. “I think you’ve made it lovely. You’d never dream outside it was so nice inside. I mean, you’ve got to live where the business is, haven’t you?”
“Oh, did Dido tell you about the business?” Mrs Peach was surprised that Dido had talked about the rag shop; she had thought he might be a little shamefaced about it. She knew how proud he was. But she saw now that he must have been telling Grace of his mother’s struggles and achievements in bringing up her boys. “I don’t mind telling you it’s been very hard work.”
“I can imagine,” Grace said. “Still, now that Mr Peach has employees to do the work —.”
Dido came awake at these words. Having lied to Grace out of pride, he had been too proud to warn his mother. The two boys were gaping. He cut in, “We don’t make a bad thing out of it. Do we, mother?”
He looked a warning at Mrs Peach. She said, “Oh, no. My boy looks after me wonderfully.”
“I can see that,” Grace said. “You have the best of every thing here. It doesn’t matter what the street’s like, does it, if you have a good home.”
Dido spoke curtly, still looking at his mother. “We live where our trade is. The people round here are nothing to us. Scum.”
Mrs Peach said, “I’ve never let the boys have anything to do with them.”
“I should think not,” Grace said. “It’s bad enough having to live here.”
Dido stood up. “Go for a little walk, eh? Before I see you back.”
Grace said, “Oh, I must help wash up.”
Mrs Peach said, “Don’t you worry, my dear. I’ve nothing else to do.”
“Oh, please. Where’s the scullery?”
Shonny blurted, “Scullery —?”
Angry eyes, his mother’s and Dido’s, cut him short; and Chas nudged him under the table.
“At least I can carry the plates out for you. It’s less bother once they’re in the sink.”
Mrs Peach was still brooding upon “It’s bad enough having to live here.” If the girl found out that there was not even a sink in the house.
“Mother frets when she’s idle,” Dido said. “She’ll potter about all evening. Best thing, leave her get on with it”
Grace did not resist; she was dying to get to a lavatory; and with a prolonged exchange of farewells, the ceremony ended. The ordeal was over for all of them. Mrs Peach was glad to be left alone in the kitchen. The boys were glad to escape upstairs to their bedroom, where since their reaction to the new turn in their lives had not yet gone beyond simple wonderment, they talked about Chas’s adventures of the previous day.
Dido and Grace walked for an hour, arm-in-arm, up East Road to Islington, and down from the Angel to the hostel door. Dido uttered only a few commonplaces, and Grace spoke even less, mainly because her bladder was full to agony.
On the hostel steps she hastily agreed to his appointment for tomorrow; then waited. Seeing her upturned face, Dido realised that he was now accorded the right to kiss her. He dabbed a kiss on her cheek and she ran in.
He walked away with sinking heart. He was in for it now. There was still a faint hope that it might peter out somehow; but he could not see that it was likely now that the women had got together. He was in the cart all right. Then the thought of the women together called up a picture that changed his mood. He saw again the two women sitting upright and dressed like ladies, on each side of a splendidly laden table with a snowy cloth. Wasn’t that what he wanted life to be?
Chapter Thirteen
They were married four weeks later, in mid-March.
It came upon them as unexpectedly as a railway accident. Once more they obeyed fatality.
After the rape in the doorway, Grace had already missed her first period when Dido took her home to meet his mother. She had been late before and she knew that it was possible to miss a period in cold weather. She tried not to think about it. But there was a core of fear inside her all the time as impossible to ignore as a pain, and it was perhaps this unacknowledged but growing desperation that emboldened her to claim with such spirit in Mrs Peach’s kitchen her status as Dido’s young lady.
By the end of February she was so demented with fright that she was able to blurt out the news to Dido. She was neither ignorant nor innocent about life. She lived in a world of young women. They were all poor and overworked. Some were led into sexual adventure by the hunger for a little fun. Some even found it a way to augment their pitiful wages. Grace in her distant way remained on friendly terms with everyone. In the teashop and at the hostel she and the other respectable girls tut-tutted among themselves and would not become too intimate with the fast ones but listened eagerly to their tales. She knew about their good times. She also knew about abortion and disease. Behind her prim face she was not easily shocked.
She knew enough after missing her first period to buy camomile tea and brew it in the hostel kitchen. It was a furtive business for she dreaded being found out by the other girls; the respectable ones always showed a certain vindictive relish when one of their number fell. The camomile tea did not work; nor did the pennyroyal pills which she nerved herself to buy at the chemist’s when she missed her second period. She did not even consider an abortion. She had heard of girls dying after they had been to those horrible old women and she knew some who had never been the same again. In any case only one course leapt to her mind. She would have married the devil to stay respectable. The man had made a promise to her. When she told him her news — incoherently, for she was frightened of him — she had his promise in mind though she did not dare to remind him of it. She did not have to. After some moments of silence Dido said, “I told you I’d wed you, didn’t I?”
From now on she was as passive as a match in the current of a river. Her courage was spent in the effort of telling him. Dido, as cold and curt as he had been to her ever since the rape, made a rapid decision. There was no time to lose if they wanted to pass the baby off as legitimate but premature. He went to the chapel and fixed the date.
He had a series of disagreeable tasks to perform. The first was to break the news to his mother. Ever since his father’s death Dido had felt himself master in the house and had spoken to her with a quiet authority that permitted no questions. Now he discovered that he was as timid as a little boy. He dreaded the look in her eyes when she knew what he had done.
One day when they were alone in the kitchen he told her, gruffly and briefly, when the marriage was to be. He gave no reason.
He was sitting at the table. She was stooped over the dirty-water bowl, washing up, her
back to him. She did not speak or turn round but continued to rinse a plate. Finally she said, “Where will you live?”
“Here.”
She scrubbed at the rim of a saucepan. “When is she expecting?”
“October.”
She kept her back to him. He knew just what she was thinking. Grace had made a good impression. Now it was all gone. He knew the blow his words had been. Most other women regarded what had happened as a natural part of courtship. It was the way many a marriage date was decided, and people made good-humoured jokes about it. Not so his mother. She would blame him for having acted the beast like his father. The thought of it upset him. Or else she would choke with bitterness against the girl who for all her good manners and demure face had lured a good boy to behave like an animal; had trapped him, taken him from his mother. He said, “It was my fault.”
She did not answer. He repeated, “It was my fault.”
She said, “It takes two.”
He felt pity for the poor girl. He wanted to defend her but he could not bring himself to confess what had happened. He said, “Wedding’s on a Monday.”
“That’s a mercy,” she said. There were less people in the street on a working day.
“All the girls’d be comin’ otherwise. Girls from ’er hostel.”
“There’ll be others to talk.”
“Talk!” His voice was contemptuous. “Let them talk.”
He stood up and took his cap. He nerved himself once more. “Mother — it’s not her fault. Give the girl a chance.”
Her mouth stayed tight. All her attention was on the pan as she held it to her chest, burnishing it fiercely, while he went out.
Dido was a man with decent feelings but he had to crush them to perform his second task. He needed a room for himself and his wife. He would have to take one of the two rooms on the top floor. To do so he would have to turn out either the Irish labourer and his family or the Valentines. It was hard to choose between the two because although the Irishman was a rough his family was in a pitiful state. However, the front rooms in the house were larger than the back rooms. Dido was determined to have the front room, and this was occupied by the Valentines.
They were broken creatures, old and ailing. They had found a refuge here and if they were ejected from it, there was no knowing what a pit of misery they might fall into. Dido was ruthless to the strong but he had never bullied the weak. He had scarcely noticed the Valentines in the past but when they had come to his attention he had felt a vague pity for them as he did for all those who were too weak to fight.
Well, they were in his way now. He had to have the room. His wife must have the best he could provide. He went upstairs raging with misery and he turned the rage against the old couple. A man must look after his own, he told himself. He was sorry for the old couple but it only showed that the weak went under. He’d given all his strength since he was a boy to look after his family and if he had been weak they would all have gone under. He couldn’t spare any pity. No one had ever pitied Dido’s mother. No one had ever pitied Dido. He had to go on and not look down to see who was under his feet. And now his burden was to be increased. First a wife, then a child. Damn that old couple. He wasn’t a charity. He couldn’t worry about their troubles or anyone else’s. Life was one long, dirty trick. He only wanted to live quietly with his wife and it had brought him to this rotten job. It did not occur to Dido that he might live elsewhere than in his mother’s house.
He showed a grim face to the Valentines and told them at once, curtly, that they must get out within a week. He needed the remaining time to redecorate the room. They did not say a word. All their questions were in their terrified eyes. Where were they to go? Where were they to find another room at half a crown a week unless it was some wet verminous den that would kill them both? What was to become of them?
He faced their pleading eyes and said, “I’m sorry. I’ll tell the collector.”
The rent collector called every Friday. He came from “the office”. No one in the street knew whose office it was.
Dido put five pounds on the table. It was all the money he had, and he told himself it would make them better off than they had been for years.
They trudged off at the end of the week, pushing a hired barrow piled with their sticks and parcels. Mrs Peach hovered in the hall as they went past and followed them as far as the doorstep. She looked stunned. Dido had done no more than tell her that they were going and when she had gone upstairs to them they had only looked at each other and murmured fragmentary and unfinished sentences that conveyed nothing. Suspicions which she could not believe moved in her mind. She gave Mrs Valentine a large parcel into which she had put food and some warm clothing; and received in return a pallid smile and mutter of thanks. She called goodbye to them when they moved off. They looked round, Mr Valentine raised his old-fashioned square bowler hat and they trudged away behind the barrow with heads bent.
Dido had gone out that morning. He would not let Mrs Peach lend them the family barrow and he would not let Shonny help them to their new abode; for he did not want to know where they were going.
His third task was easier to face but in some ways rankled even more deeply. He needed money, all the more since he had emptied his pocket for the Valentines.
So far he had not asked the shopkeepers for tribute. He had merely accepted it. His wants were modest, and the half-sovereigns, the gifts in kind offered by the tradesmen had sufficed. The discovery of Chas’s petty exactions had angered him. They had been a stain on the family’s pride.
Now he himself had to inflict a greater blow on his pride. He had to ask, and since he proposed to tell the street nothing about his forthcoming marriage, to ask without apparent reason.
He reckoned that it would take all of twenty-five pounds to furnish the bedroom. It was more than he had ever had in one sum. He had no strong feeling for the girl yet he was determined — it was like a brazier in his breast — to give her better than she dreamed of. On that first Sunday when he had walked her down the street he had not been insensitive to her thoughts nor careless of them. He knew that she had been bitterly disillusioned. She asked him nothing about his supposed business as a rag merchant but she must be wondering how much of his boasting had been true. He felt her expectations keenly. To be found out by her would be a cruel humiliation. Besides, he felt responsible to her. He could not help seeing that she was his victim. Her situation was all his doing.
He would not take her to a room furnished with second-hand sticks. Theirs would be a room such as Rabbit Marsh had never seen. He had looked out a bright new wallpaper and best quality lino. He had his eye on a bit of nice carpet to go by the bed, a mahogany suite of dressing-table with three swivel mirrors (he would buy all the slap-up brushes and whatnots to go on it), chest of drawers and double wash-stand. He would get the best chinaware, a couple of comfortable armchairs, the finest brass bedstead he could buy, as well as a brass fender and irons for the fireplace, a new wall mirror and ornaments for the mantelpiece, and Grace could pick out pretty curtains and bed covers and all the rest, and he would buy her a new outfit of clothes, money be hanged. He wanted to console her for what had happened to her. Yes, he wanted her to be happy. He also wanted to so surround her with comforts that she would never quite realise what lies he had told her. He needed the respect of people and most of all the respect of his wife.
To satisfy these new needs he began to levy taxes. Each subject paid as Dido judged his means. When a shopkeeper protested that it was taking the bread from his mouth, Dido showed him a threatening face. It was enough for Dido to look at them. They paid.
He kept away these days from Barsky’s shop. He had not asked the man in the past and he could not do so now. There were in fact only half a dozen shopkeepers in the street who could afford half a sovereign and Dido spared the others since he could not bring himself to accept less. He always felt that Barsky’s black-button eyes could see through him; and he was afraid that if he we
nt in the wife would come with a basin of eggs for his mother. He knew that he would take them, and say, “Thank you,” and not be able to say a word more. He did not go in.
As for his regulars, he had devised a formula that inflicted the least hurt on his pride. When the customary half-sovereign was put down on the counter, he said, both parties recognising the fiction, “Make it a pair. I’ll give you a hand in the shop.”
He was faintly surprised by his own weakness in offering this excuse. Of course he did not make good his word. On the contrary he never stayed on the neighbours’ premises even for a chat these days. He was embarrassed by the demands he made upon them and wanted to see as little of them as possible. Also he did not want any news of his coming marriage to reach them and to further insure against this he made all his family shun the neighbours even more than usual.
One day he went in to Blakers’ shop. Ever since Dido had refused to be Blakers’ threatener, the tobacconist had shown his coolness by paying Dido his half-sovereign and going about his business in silence. This time he greeted Dido with a “Mornin’,” and after a moment’s pause added, “Quite the toff these days, I see.”
Dido answered with a questioning grunt. Blakers said, “Nice young lady I see you with. Takin’ ’er ’ome, are you?”
Dido said, “I mind my own business.”
“Do you?” Blakers was a head taller than Dido. The habitual lack of expression in his pudding face and the deliberateness of his speech gave him a certain air of power. He tossed a half-sovereign on the counter. “This what you call mindin’ your own business?”
Dido did not offer the customary excuse. He said, “I’ll have another o’ them.”
“Will you now? What for?”
Dido looked straight at him, grinning slightly. “Token of your esteem.”
“Ah!” Blakers pursed his lips at the sight of Dido’s eyes deadly above the grin. “You know, I’m not so green as I’m cabbage-lookin’.”
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