Fenwick Houses

by Catherine Cookson

  I wasn't thinking, I wasn't even breathing, or so it seemed for I was so still. I was only feeling. feeling comfort. And when a child feels comfort, it feels security, and with security, love. And I had so much security that I was swimming in love.

  It was some time later. I was still lying on the mat, but on my back now, looking up into the ceiling of entwined colour, because now my view of the fire had been obscured by the loaf tins my mother had placed on the fender before she had gone next door to make it up with Aunt Phyllis. But she was not gone more than a few minutes before she was back again. She came in the front way, through the from room and into the kitchen, pulling her coat from around her shoulders as she did so, and making straight for the scullery, and on her way she said to my dad, "Here, I want you a minute." Her tone roused me from my dreaming, and I sat up and watched Dad follow her.

  "She's near mad," I heard my mother say. Then her voice fell and became a mumble. But Dad's voice was loud as he replied.

  "Well dont say she hasn't asked for it, lass. To my mind it's long overdue, and I have an idea who the woman is an' all."

  "Sh! sh!"

  The kitchen door was pulled close and I turned my gaze to the fire again. The bread had risen well up over the tins, and the paste of one of the loaves was drying and cracking, and so, taking a clean tea-towel and a piece of cloth I covered the bread over, and when some minutes later my mother came from the scullery she applauded my action and gave me a pat on the head as she said airily, "You're learning, hinny."

  Then she added, "How would you like Sam and Don to come in with us the morrow?"

  She had placed Sam first, and it was only of Sam I thought as I answered, "Oh! yes, that would be lovely, Mam.... For dinner and tea?"

  "Yes, all day. And the morrow night we'll have a bit of jollification."

  oh, Mam. " I flung my arms round her waist and drew into; myself more happiness. It was Christmas, and tomorrow poor little Sam would be in our kitchen all day and I would make | him eat everything and see that he laughed. I did not give a " thought to my Aunt Phyllis and her trouble. ;

  The rift was closed between my mother and Aunt Phyllis, but a rift that was never to dose opened between Aunt Phyllis | and my Uncle Jim, aqd as the months built up into years the| rift widened. My Uncle Jim, I gleaned, had a woman in Bog's "I End, yet he still continued to live next door. Whenever he | earned an odd shilling or two above the dole or beyond the f means test he would throw the money on the table and my Aunt Phyllis would pick it up, and they never spoke.

  The woman in Bog's End kept a little shop and, out of | curiosity one day, I went in and bought some sweets. She was ') just the opposite of Aunt Phyllis, being round and fat with a happy face, and she spoke to me nice and put an extra sweet in the bag. I liked her, and when I came out I wished Aunt Phyllis would die, so that my Uncle Jim could marry her and Sam could have a nice mam.

  Sam spent more time in our house that he did in his own, and Aunt Phyllis didn't mind. But if Don came in and Aunt Phyllis heard him through the kitchen wall she would call him to fetch water or wood, or just to come into the house.

  I was about eleven when Cissie Campbell drew to my notice something that should have been evident before.

  "You can't move a step without them lads," she said. Perhaps this was jealousy on Cissie's part, for neither Ronnie nor Don would have anything to do with Cissie, and Sam was too young for her notice. But her words set me thinking, although I remember that, as usual when confronted by the smallest problem, I wanted to shelve it. Yet I did give this statement some thought, for as far as I could ever work myself up into a state of annoyance, I was annoyed, and by the fact that I seemed always to have to walk in the middle of a triangle, with one of them at each corner, Ronnie, Don and Sam. Going to school, coming back, running down to the river, darting through the wood, they were there. I knew why our Ronnie was always with me, for I heard my mother saying to him one night, "You must never leave her alone with the lads, you hear? Now understand what I am saying to you. Never leave her alone."

  And he had said, "Yes, Mam."

  My mother had said "Lads', but I knew that she just meant Don, for she would leave Sam and me together in our kitchen while she slipped down into the town. But she would never leave me alone with Don.

  From the time I became aware of this pressure around me I had a desire to thrust my way out, but the desire had no strength and, as in other things, in this I took the line of least resistance.

  It was when Ronnie was thirteen that he began to argue. He had always been a great talker, but as Dad said he never knew when to stop. At this age his talking became aggressive, and he became restless, chafing at the days until he could leave school and perhaps get set on, above ground, at the Venus pit, which, even while it was standing off older men, was still setting on young ones.

  It was about this time that he started a funny game. We had an old dictionary and he would open it at any page, and with the aid of a pin and closed eyes choose a word. Then he would start talking about the word and telling Dad all he knew about it, and Dad would try to keep his face straight. Sometimes he went to the library and came back with thick books, which he would throw with a clatter on the table. Many of the books he never read, not even the first page, for the subjects were as foreign to him as would have been books in French or German.

  There was one word though that the pin picked out which really did catch his attention, and he did read the book that he got from the library on this subject, although when my dad picked the book up he laughed and exclaimed.

  "My God, he's not going to tell me he understands this." The subject was evolution, and in some measure Ronnie did understand it, and one day he brought forth my awful admiration even while I was astounded at his temerity of daring to argue with the priest.

  It was Friday tea-time, and Father Ellis was on his weekly visit, and work or no work my mother still greeted him with the slab of lardy cake, although the week after my father came out he admonished her saying, "No, no. Now we'll have no more of this... a cup of tea and that is all."

  My mother had spoken to him in the same tone she used to us, as if he wasn't a priest at all.

  "Get it down you," she! said, 'and let it stop your noise. " He had laughed and got it| down him. | My dad liked Father Ellis although he was often chided by| him for not going to mass on a Sunday; he wouldn't take thej excuse that his clothes weren't decent enough. I heard Dad|

  comment on Father Ellis one day, saying, " He's a priest asl God and me self would have them. "

  This linking of himself|| to God added to my father's importance in my eyes and gavej Father Ellis the prestige usually allocated to angels.

  And her&J we were this Friday, all of us around the table, and we were listening not so much to Father Ellis as to our Ronnie.

  He had brought my mother's mouth agape by saying flatly there was no such thing as the Garden of Eden; he had brought my eyes popping by talking about chimpanzees and orang outangs and gorillas. At one point he became embarrassed, buti recovered himself and went on, grimly this time, about ape men and prehistoric men, whatever they were. My father's face was straight, but his eyes were alive with laughter and I knew he was finding difficulty in suppressing it. Father Ellis's face was serious, and he looked deeply impressed as if he was drinking in every word that fell from Ronnie's lips, and when finally and quite abruptly Ronnie stopped and dug his thumb into the palm of his hand as if making a full- stop to his oration, the priest nodded thoughtfully at him and | said in a deeply serious tone, with not a hint of laughter in it, "You're right, you're right." Ronnie came back, bumptious and arrogant: "Yes, I know I'm right, Father, and them what doesn't believe in evolution are ignorant."

  He cast a defiant yet scared glance around the table, but nobody spoke except the priest, and he said, "Well I for one believe in evolution, quite firmly. Now look, let's get it down to ordinary level and ordinary meaning. For instance, take Mrs. McKenna, you know; her who sings a
bove everybody in church."

  All our faces answered this with a smile, and Father Ellis followed the smile from one to the other and brought us all into this discussion by saying, "Now you're a sensible family, there's not a more sensible one.

  Now ask yourselves, would J the good God have made Mrs. McKenna just as she is, feet, hands and all? No, when he first made her she was as bonnie a thing as ever stepped out of Paradise, but evolution has done this to her. She's got worse and worse until she is, as you know, a bit out of the ordinary, God help her. Now mind, I'm not blaming her and dont any one of you speak a word of what I've said, do you hear me?

  But I'm just using her as an illustration. She is a good woman, God bless her, although she has a voice like a corncrake We all tittered, all except Ronnie. He sat there, straight of face, and there was a deep furrow between his brows, and he screwed in his chair before leaning towards Father Ellis and saying sharply, "It's no use. Father, turning it funny and going on about Mrs. McKenna, she's no illustration. We all likely started like Mrs. McKenna and--' "

  Ronnie, be quiet! "

  It was my mother now, brought out of her bemusement at the talking on such a thing as evolution and horrified that a son of hers should speak so to a priest. She could use any tone she liked to Father Ellis, but then she was grownup.

  "And dont you dare interrupt the Father," she cried.

  "Name of goodness, what is things coming to?"

  Ronnie's lids were blinking now and his tone was much more modified as he put in, "But I read it, Mam, it's all in my book. And it's true, I know it's true."

  "Take that!"

  It wasn't a hard slap, it was just a reproving slap across the ear, but it brought Ronnie quickly to his feet. He stood for a moment looking ashamed, and Mam's hands went out to him apologetically, but he brushed them aside and went into the scullery.

  The great debate had come to an end. Father Ellis got to his feet, shook his head, patted my mother's arm, winked at Dad, and went into the scullery, with me at his heels.

  "Come on, walk with me down the hill," said the priest to Ronnie.

  "There are things you can't get elders to understand."

  Ronnie was standing with his head bent, looking at the boiler. He turned and grabbed up his cap from the back door and went out, preceding the priest, which was very wrong, but under the circumstances could be forgiven him. Once clear of the house we walked abreast, then Father Ellis, putting his arm around Ronnie's shoulder, laughed, "Don't look so downcast, Ronnie."

  "I'm not downcast. Father."

  "No, you're only annoyed and boiled up inside. Right?"

  "Right."

  He didn't add "Father' and I bit on my lip.

  "About this evolution, Ronnie..."

  Before the priest could go on Ronnie came to a stop and exclaimed, "I was right, Father."

  "Yes, you were and all." The priest drew him gently on again, but now his voice sank to a confidential note.

  "But man to man, Ronnie, I ask you, do you expect me to explain the theory of evolution to you in front of your mother and dad and the like, and in five minutes? It is a wide subject, deep and wide you must confess, and they have no interest in it what ever at their age."

  He spoke of my mother and dad as if they were very old, but he was the same age as my mother thirty-two. Dad was three years older but looked much more, that was with being down the pit so long.

  We walked in silence for some yards, then Ronnie started again, and he used the tone which he used when he was going to go on talking for a long time.

  "About the Garden of Eden, Father...."

  "Look ..." Father Ellis almost pushed him into the ditch, then grabbed his shoulder and pulled him straight again, be fore throwing back his head and laughing.

  "We will have to go into it all another time, right into it, head first into the Garden of Eden, but at the present minute I'm up to my eyes in work. I should never have stayed so long in your house but your mother makes one so comfortable that the time flies and all thought of my duties goes out of my head. But I promise you one of these days we shall get down to evolution and the Garden of Eden. Now I've got to hurry away. But listen, Ronnie, dont you talk about evolution in the kitchen for you'll get them all mixed up not that I'm suggesting you're mixed up. No, you go on reading about evolution or about anything else you can find in that book of yours, but dont annoy your mother with it."

  He gave Ronnie a gentle punch with his fist then, cupping my chin in his hands, he shook his head saying, "Here's one who doesn't bother about evolution. Do you, Christine?"

  "No, Father."

  "You're too busy living, following the wind in the trees and the voice of the river."

  I wasn't quite sure what he meant, but I replied, "Yes, Father."

  I expected that Ronnie would be sullen when the priest had gone, but instead he grabbed my hand and, laughing, ran me over the field towards the river, and when we reached the bank and sat down with our feet dangling above the gurgling water, he said to me without looking into my face, "Do you think I can talk good, Christine?"

  "Oh, yes, Ronnie, I love to hear you talk."

  He turned his face quickly to me.

  "You do?"

  "Yes, I think you're clever, oh, so clever."

  He turned his eyes away and looked across the river and said, "Some day I will be clever and I'll talk and talk and talk, and I'll make people listen to me. Do you know what I want to do?"

  "No."

  He laughed and, turning and kneeling at my side, he grabbed my hand, saying, "I can always talk to you. I can tell you things. Well, I'll tell you what I want to do. I want to tie people in chairs so that they'll have to listen to me. In the middle of the night I wake up thinking things and nobody wants to listen, so I tie lots of people in chairs, Mam and Dad, Uncle Jim, Mr. Graham' ~ he was the schoolmaster"

  Aunt Phyllis. Oh, yes. Aunt Phyllis. "

  "And me, Ronnie?"

  "No, never you, Christine, because you listen. Will you always listen to me, Christine?"

  "Yes, always, always."

  That summer the heat was intense and water became scarce, and for only part of the day it ran from the tap in the backyard. By each evening I would feel so hot and sticky that I would beg my mother once again to let me go in the river with the boys. Ronnie had said he would teach me to swim. But Mam would have none of it.

  "You can pledge and that's all," she said.

  So I would pledge in the shallows, shouting across the distance to where the boys sported in- the deeper water. They would dive like turtles, the water spraying up like a fountain

  when they disappeared, then their heads, black and shiny, and their faces running with the cool water would break through a fresh surface.

  On and on they would go, and I would think, "Oh, if only...."

  At night we didn't go to bed early but sat around with all the doors and windows open. Dad used to sit on the front step reading aloud from the paper while my mother sat at the front window doing her mending or knitting; never did she sit down with idle hands. Gists of his reading stuck in my mind. The Dionne Quins were born, a man who had started to make bicycles with a capital of only five pounds was now a millionaire and they had changed his name from Morris to Nuffield. There was a woman found in a trunk in some station cloakroom, and there had been a lot of jollification over the King's jubilee.

  I knew about the jubilee because they had had one or two tea parties in the town, but we hadn't had anything at Fenwick Houses. There had come a tentative suggestion from Mrs. Brown that something should be done for the hairns.

  "What," said my dad, 'and have a means test on the cakes? " Also from his reading I remember there was a man called HoreBelisha, and he had something to do with lamp-posts, and this made my dad laugh. Then there was another man called Musso who had attacked the poor Abyssinians. Dad said it would be our turn next, and this worried me during a lot of hot, restless nights.

  A number of times th
at summer I walked over Top Fell down to Bertram's Farm with Father Ellis, and Mrs. Bertram always gave me a cup of milk, then asked me, "Was that nice?" And I always said, "Yes, thank you."

  She had the idea that I was hungry, but I was never hungry. I had only to dash into the house gasping, "Oh, Mam, I'm starvin'," and my mother would say, "Well you know where the knife is and you know where the bread is, if you can't help yourself I'm sorry for you." But I was well aware that this practice wasn't prevalent in Fellburn at that time, and not even in Fenwick Houses, certainly not next door in my Aunt Phyllis's, for both Sam and Don always came in with me when I said I was hungry and always went out with something in their fists.

  It wasn't the drink of milk that I looked forward to on these walks with Father Ellis to the farm, but the fun we had.

  To my mind he was as good fun as our Ronnie or Sam. I never, even in the vaguest way, coupled Don with Sam, Ronnie and fun, although he was as much my constant companion as the other two.

  Once we were on the fells proper, Father Ellis would give me a start, then race me to a tree, or taking my hand he would run and leap me into great leaps, higher than I could jump when I flung my arms round myself. On some of the leaps I could see over the far fells and catch glimpses of the entire town. Sometimes he would tell me a Pat and Mick story, and sometimes I would tell him one, and we both laughed long and loud.

  One day, for some reason or another, I had missed him, but I knew he had gone to the farm and I went to meet him. The sun was going down and I stood on the top of High Fell straining my eyes into the dazzling rose and mauve light trying to make him out against the shades on the hills. But I could see nothing, for the sun was making my eyes water.

  Yet I remember I didn't turn my face away from the light. I was so high up that I felt on top of the sun, and as it slipped over the brow of the hill yon side of the river it seemed so near that I had but to bend forward, put out my hand, and I could press it into the valley beyond.