The Rocking Stone

by Jill Rutherford

  ‘Tom?’ I said.

  He didn’t respond.

  ‘Tom, please tell your mother our plans. I’m going to wash you and take care of you when you come home. Cook your rice pudding and everything. We decided.’

  He turned his head and looked at me, his eyes pleading. ‘I’m sorry,’ was all he said.

  I felt betrayed. Had I married a man or a mouse? How could anyone change in such a short time? He wanted me to help him wash as much as I did. I was well aware that Tom’s reasons were different to mine, he was a man after all, but for me, it was about sharing intimate moments like a husband and wife should, to have silly secrets and behave like juveniles, at least until the novelty wore off. I wanted to be a real wife to him, and to me, real wives took care of their husband’s baths. It was a matter of pride. Tom paid the rent and was the man of the house and that made me the woman of the house, not his mother. This was our marriage and I should be the most important woman in his life. I had superseded his mother, or at least, I should have. It was a matter of dividing the roles and the pecking order.

  The two of them looked at me, Tom pleadingly and his mother challengingly.

  ‘I see,’ I said to Tom, ‘so that’s the way it is, is it?’

  His pleading look didn’t change as he looked down into the blackening water, remaining silent.

  I had no choice but to collect his filthy clothes and take them out the back. I hid my tears until I was outside and pegged his clothes to the washing line. I was furious as I picked up the clothes’ beater and thrashed those clothes so hard, it frightened me. I would speak to Tom when we were alone.

  *

  As we got into bed, Tom, all nice and clean from his bath and his belly full of dinner, tried to kiss me but I pushed him away.

  ‘Tom,’ I said.

  ‘What is it?’ he whispered.

  ‘You know what it is,’ I whispered back so that Mrs Mallow, in the next bedroom, wouldn’t hear. ‘Why didn’t you stick up for me when your mother took over your bath? You should have done.’ Annoyingly, tears rose up.

  ‘I’m very sorry, Kate, my lovely Katie,’ he said trying to cuddle me. I pushed him away again.

  ‘You have to answer me. Why? Just tell me why? I don’t understand. I’m your wife now. I’m your first priority. Not your mother.’

  ‘But it’s not a big thing. We couldn’t have done anything anyway. She made it obvious she wasn’t going to leave us alone. We’ll have our nights together. That will be our time, we don’t need bath time. It’s not nice anyway, all that filthy water, it’s best this way. She’ll be happy and we have our nights together.’

  He sat up and the moonlight shone through the thin curtains onto his face and muscled body. He looked so handsome.

  I sat up too and he looked at me in the moonlight and stroked my cheek. ‘Kate, please. I know you’re disappointed, but it’s only a small thing.’

  I tried not to show my anger. ‘You might call it small, but it’s a battle between us over you. I can see that so clearly . . . and I lost the first round. I wouldn’t call that a small thing.’

  ‘Oh, Katie, please understand. It’s hard for her to adjust. She’s always been in charge, even when my dad was alive, she was the boss. We didn’t mind, my dad was happy about it, anything for a peaceful life was his motto.’

  ‘And you’re going to be like him? Weak?’

  Tom’s silence made me realise I’d overstepped the mark. He glared at me. ‘Don’t you ever talk about my father like that. He was not a weak man as you put it. He was brave, braver than you will ever know. He loved my mother, he wanted to please her and if that was how to please her, he was happy. Don’t you ever talk about him like that again.’

  I took hold of his hand. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m very upset, that’s all. I never knew your dad, I’m sorry, Tom.’

  He smiled and put his arm around my shoulders. ‘It’s all right. I understand your feelings, but please try to understand my mother’s. As time goes by, she’ll get used to us as husband and wife, you’ll see. She’ll settle down. You don’t want to make an enemy of her do you? It would make life very difficult for all of us. Have patience. We have to win her around, not go against her.’

  ‘Oh, Tom, I don’t know how we do that. If we give way to her she’ll be encouraged.’

  ‘Well, lovely girl, I’m caught in the middle of you both. I love you, you know that. But I also love my mother. She saved me, gave me a good life after my father disowned me. I owe her everything. She made so many sacrifices for me. I can’t go against her in such a small thing.’ He looked at me. ‘I just want a peaceful home life. I get enough aggravation at work. I don’t need it at home. What do you want, harmony or upset?’

  ‘I want your support,’ I answered, frustrated. ‘You’re my husband now. It should be us against the world.’

  ‘Families should stick together. It’s family against the world.’

  I could see he didn’t understand my point of view, so I snuggled down and turned my back on him. He went to sleep well before me. I lay there and wondered if I’d made a mistake. Did Tom see my acquiescence as acceptance of his mother’s dominance over me – I didn’t fight for it so it can’t be important? But I didn’t know what else to do. We were at the beginning of our marriage and I didn’t want to cause bad feeling. I was young, inexperienced in such matters, and if I’m honest, I was afraid of his mother. She was so confident and a powerful figure. She had authority and I always respected authority, it was the way I was brought up. I didn’t know how to counteract it.

  But I did win a considerable victory over her through her own fault. It was at the end of Tom’s first week in work as a married man and I was expecting him to give me his wages. He came in as usual and was stripping off in the passageway. Before he took off his trousers, he delved in his pocket and took out his wages. Two ten shilling notes and a few coppers. He hesitated as his mother came down the passageway and then offered it to her. I was furious. She took it without comment and walked back to the kitchen. ‘Tom!’ I hissed. ‘How could you give your wages to your mother? I’m your wife!’

  He looked sheepish as he struggled out of his trousers, trying to keep the coal dust from flying everywhere. ‘I had too. She’d been taking my wages since I started work and took my father’s before. It’s what we always do.’

  Before I could answer she yelled from the kitchen, ‘Come on you two, I haven’t got all day. I’ve got a nice surprise for you, Tom.’

  He shrugged his shoulders in that way I was beginning to hate, and walked off to the kitchen. I picked up his dirty clothes and as I approached the kitchen I heard Tom say, ‘God, mam, you’ve lit the fire. It’s only August, mun.’

  ‘I know, Tom,’ she said as I walked through the kitchen, ‘but it’s cold and windy today, even though it’s August. I thought I’d give you a nice treat. You deserve it.’

  I noticed she put the ten shillings notes on the mantelpiece with the coppers next to them.

  As I went out the back with Tom’s clothes my anger increased as I realised she was toadying up to him. As I put Tom’s clothes over the line ready to beat them, the coal dust was blowing up in the wind and into my face and I got overtaken by a bout of sneezing. I opened the back door to get a hankie at the very same time our next door neighbour opened the front door, calling, ‘Hello, Mrs Mallow, it’s only me, Mrs Jones.’ The two doors opening at the same time in that strong wind exacerbated the through draft and blew the two ten shilling notes from the mantelpiece and into the fire. Tom leap out of his bath.

  ‘No, Tom,’ his mother shouted, but it was too late, his hands went in the fire and he pulled out the badly burned notes. Mrs Jones had come in by this time and had seen what had happened. She was carrying a jug of ginger ale she had made and was a gift for Mrs Mallow. Her quick thinking by throwing the contents over Tom’s hands saved him from a lot worse than he got and put out the flames on the money. I took what was left of the notes from him as his m
other rushed him out the back to the tap and ran his hands under the cold water.

  ‘Get a bowl and fill it with cold water,’ she shouted to me. I filled it and shouted that it was ready.

  She poked her head around the door. ‘That’s it, Kate. Put it on the table, far end.’ She nodded to the place. She brought him in and sat him on a chair, covering his nakedness with a towel. ‘Put your hands in there, Tom, love. Keep them under the water for fifteen minutes. You’ll be better then.’

  I could see it hurt him but he didn’t say anything, Miners never do. They are used to discomfort and injury and their pride makes them shrug off things that would floor a lot of people. So, he just sat there with his hands in the water. Miners’ hands are tough, tougher than old boots many say, and that saved Tom from serious burns. He had sore hands for a while, but that was all.

  He went down to town the next day to visit the bank. He told them the story and showed them his damaged hands and what was left of the notes. They believed him and gave him two replacement notes. But from that day onwards, he gave his wages to me. Serve his mother right for toadying I thought.

  *

  Life settled down to a routine. Mrs Mallow and I divided up the jobs around the house to her liking. She cooked, I washed up. She dusted and tidied whilst I swept the floors and beat the rag mats. I hung them on the washing line in the small back garden and beat them with my wooden beater until all the dust flew away. The mats were cathartic in a way as I imagined they were Dudley and every beat I gave was a bull’s eye on Dudley’s head as I smashed it to smithereens. I knew then that I wanted to kill him: I was capable of killing him. And more dangerously, I didn’t care. He was festering inside me.

  Mrs Mallow cleaned the kitchen, and I, in my lowly status, the privy. But I didn’t mind because it got me out of the house. It was at the end of the garden and I could take my time in cutting up the newspapers we used for toilet paper into neat squares and putting them on the spike that was screwed into the door. On Fridays I scrubbed the wooden toilet seat with carbolic soap and vinegar. It was a large piece of pine, long and wide with a chamfered hole cut into it, made comfy by bottoms on countless visits. I loved that toilet. It was my place of solitude and I was in charge of it. Every day I brushed the pan until it shone. I made sure there was always a candle, some matches and a library book in there. You could sit there and rest your back on the wall in great comfort as you enjoyed your book. We were connected to sewage pipes, thank goodness, but we had no flush, so I made sure the bucket of water used to flush it was always filled up and ready for use. When we were doing our ablutions at the outside tap every morning, we caught the waste water in a bucket. We prided ourselves on keeping clean – we may have been poor, but we didn’t smell. We stripped off for a good wash outside and only ever washed indoors in warm water when it was icy. Then, we all had to use the same bowl of water as it was too expensive to heat up that freezing water more than once. Therefore, we all stuck to washing outside until the weather turned us blue.

  Dudley came to the house every Sunday for dinner and stayed until the early evening. He never looked happy to be with us and I wondered why he bothered until I realised it was his way of annoying us. None of us wanted him there, but Mrs Mallow said he had a right to come and so he did. I think she felt guilty about him. I remembered her telling me she thought she’d let him down when he was a child and loved Tom more. I suppose this was her way of trying to make it up to him.

  I always tried to keep out of his way, keep close to Tom, but he’d take every chance to speak dirty to me if he could get away with it without anyone else overhearing. He’d whisper, ‘How’s your love life, Kate? I bet that Tom is a softy in bed. You need a real man. I’m always free whenever you need my services.’ And when he was in a bad mood, he’d colour it with crude words that he knew embarrassed me. If I could have stuck a knife in his cold, spiteful heart I would have. If Tom saw Dudley whispering to me, he’d glare and ask later, ‘What’s he been saying to you? If he upsets you, I’ll get him, I swear.’

  I would cajole him and say Dudley was just being stupid, trying to work Tom up so that he had an excuse to pick a quarrel. I persuaded Tom he wasn’t worth it.

  And then, something extraordinary happened.

  Mrs Mallow was always over bright during these meals, trying to include Dudley in our chats. One afternoon she said, ‘And what have you been doing, Dudley, since I last saw you - anything nice?’

  ‘Well, let me see now. I went to church a few times and helped several old ladies over the road and with their shopping. I gave some money to beggars. I think I might study to become a priest. I can ogle all those lovely young girls who come in to pray, get them alone in the vestry and tell them God wants me to–’

  The clatter of Mrs Mallow’s chair as she threw it back made me jump as she stormed over to Dudley and slapped him hard across his cheek. ‘How dare you,’ she said in a low threatening voice I was glad was not directed at me. ‘How dare you talk about the Church and to us with such disrespect. You never set foot inside this house again. Get out. Now.’

  Shock, and something more flashed into Dudley’s eyes. He tried to hide it and it was only fleeting but I saw into his soul during that look. He loves her, I thought. He really, really loves her. He wants her approval. I remembered how upset he became when I threatened to tell his mother about the rape. And then I realised he can’t help himself. He can’t help the nastiness in him coming out. Tom’s right, I thought. He is mad. And then he astounded me.

  ‘I deserved that,’ he said softly. He looked up at his mother. ‘I really deserved that. I’m sorry, Mam. I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry.’ He looked down at his dinner and then up at her again with puppy dog eyes. ‘Please forgive me, Mam, I promise to be nice. I don’t know what came over me.’

  I was shocked to my core. I didn’t know he could speak like that. Tom was looking at him with his mouth hanging open.

  Mrs Mallow looked at him closely and I could see her anger dissipating.

  ‘Please, Mam,’ he said again, still with his puppy eyes pleading.

  She looked unsure, but after a while said, ‘Well, if you promise. I won’t have that kind of talk in this house. You speak respectfully.’

  I expected some look of triumph from Dudley, but he smiled at his mother and looked grateful.

  Mrs Mallow picked up her chair and sat down to her dinner. She put her hands together and said, ‘May the Lord make us truly thankful,’ and picked up her knife and fork and started eating. She kept her head down and I risked a look at Dudley. He too, had started to eat again and I caught his eye. I expected to see a look of triumph, but I only saw sadness. Again, it was fleeting before he looked down again. Tom and I exchanged a look of incredulity. What had just happened?

  But it didn’t last long. Since the rape Dudley had left me alone, and it was blissful. But about three weeks after the row with his mother, he was obviously in a bad mood. He took every opportunity to be particularly obnoxious to me, as if he had something to prove. He knew I’d seen into his soul and he didn’t like it one bit. We’d all finished our dinner and I needed to go to the outhouse urgently. I always made a point of staying within touching distance of Tom or Mrs Mallow when Dudley was with us, but sometimes nature gives us no choice. I hurried as quickly as I could but when I came out, Dudley was walking up the garden path towards me. I tried to rush past, but he grabbed hold of my arm.

  It was the last straw, I’d had enough. ‘If you don’t stop pestering me,’ I hissed, ‘I’m going to tell your mother about the rape. I don’t care anymore. You’ve pushed me too far.’

  He paled. ‘You dare,’ he hissed, ‘and I’ll make sure you suffer even more.’

  ‘You can’t make me suffer anymore than I have. And I’ve found your weak spot. You love your mother. You want her to love you but you don’t know how to make it happen. You’re weird. You’re not normal. You don’t know how to act in a civilised way. There’s something cr
uel and nasty in you. You know it and I know it. Your mother knows it too. She told me.’

  He squeezed my arm even harder. ‘Let go of me,’ I hissed, ‘you’re hurting me.’

  He increased his pressure. ‘What did my mother say about me?’

  ‘Leave me alone,’ I almost screamed. I tried to keep control through the pain.

  ‘Tell me or I’ll make your life unbearable,’ he hissed.

  His face was inches from mine and I could see no humanity there. I wanted to hurt him as much as he had hurt me. ‘Let me go and I’ll tell you.’ I challenged his look with one of my own. Two can play at this game. I’d discovered his weak spot and would be as hurtful as I knew how to be.

  ‘Tell me and then I’ll let you go,’ he snarled.

  My heart was beating hard and my knees were shaking. ‘You squeeze any tighter and I’ll scream and then everyone will know everything.’ I’d almost reached the point of no return, it was only my love of Tom that stopped me screaming.

  His look intensified and then he suddenly let me go. My arm dropped painfully to my side. I pulled myself up to my full height and looked into his eyes. ‘Your mother told me,’ I said glacially, ‘that if she hadn’t seen your red hair and screaming, ugly face attached to her cord when you were born, she would not believe you were hers.’ Then I added maliciously, ‘She said you were born bad and you grew up bad, and she wished you were not her son. That she didn’t want you to be hers. That she hated you. That she wished you dead.’ She hadn’t actually said that in so many words, but hell, he deserved it and I had no qualms in digging in the knife.

  Shock was written all over his face. His cold eyes bore into mine in icy disbelief and then turned to hatred. I turned and ran from him as fast as I could. I slowed as I approached the kitchen and Tom opened the door and looked out. ‘Oh, there you are. I saw that bastard sneak out and thought I’d better check you were all right.’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you, Tom.’ I put my hand on his arm and squeezed it lightly and smiled in an effort to reassure him.