Fenwick Houses

by Catherine Cookson

  I was four months gone and it could not be hidden any longer. The suspicions of those around me burst into the open and I was besieged from all sides. The scandal lit not only the street but the community of the church. They did not take into account that Cissie Campbell and a good many more were having the time of their lives, or so it was called, while their men were away, and that in certain cases children were being born when husbands had not been home for years. But they were married, they were sheltered by wedding rings, and if they were foolish enough to slip up once, and show evidence of their good times, they certainly did not repeat the mistake. Christine Winter had repeated it she was a bad lot.

  These reactions, strangely enough, hardened me. They dragged out from my depths some spark that enabled me to answer their stares with a straight look when I met them and put an air of defiance into my stride in passing. To these mothers and daughters who looked at me with a

  "Dear! dear? clicking of the tongue look, I wanted to shout, " I have been with a man three times, and out of that I've had two baims.

  You wouldn't believe it, would you? No, of course you wouldn't. "

  Dad, I knew, was stunned and he kept saying, "Why, lass? ... How? ...

  I never knew there was anybody." These words had a familiar ring.

  Sam, dear understanding Sam, even he looked at me as if I had changed into a different being and said, "Good God, Christine, what's up with you, anyway?"

  My Aunt Phyllis, I knew, said a lot but not to me. I heard her say to Dad, "Well, it didn't come as any surprise." Oh, you liar. Aunt Phyllis. But how happy you are, I thought.

  And then came Father Ellis, rigid of countenance and frozen inside against me. He stood in the kitchen by the side of my father and stared at me and, after swallowing and breathing deeply, he brought out, "May God forgive you." And my mind cried back at him, "And you, too." And then he said something that freed me from all fear for a moment.

  "And to think," he said, 'this has happened when only a few days ago Don was down having a talk with me about you. He put the whole situation clearly to me. He didn't pretend to be a saint, but he's got this in his favour, he made a good confession, and then he told me what's been in his heart for years, to make you his wife. And now--'

  "What!" I screamed the word at him, startling him and Dad. I screamed again, "What!" Then drawing myself up, I faced him squarely and said,

  "Father, I wouldn't marry Don Dowling if I had twenty illegitimate kids." The words sounded raw coming from my mouth, and I would have termed the person I heard speaking them cheap and common. But this a short while ago were in my ears, his voice was loud and clear as if he was standing in the room, and I felt a moment's terror, the quaking terror that only a Catholic feels when his immortal soul is said to be in peril. And this terror must have expressed itself on my face, for Mollie exclaimed, "Now what's the matter with you?" and I heard myself muttering, "I daren't go to that woman."

  "But you're willing to take stuff, it's just the same."

  Yes, it was just the same, but somehow different. If I took the stuff and it worked the child would come away in a sort of miscarriage, but to have it taken away was different. I couldn't explain to myself or Mollie, but I knew it was different, and because of the difference I knew I couldn't have this abortion. I heaved and ran towards the kitchen, and as I leaned over the sink Mollie held my head and soothed me, and not until I was in the room again did she say, "You're thinkin'

  of the priest, aren't you? That's what comes of going to mass every Sunday. Me, I gave it up years ago. They weren't goin' to frighten the liver out of me. I'm laying me stakes on what's down here.

  Nobody's come back to show us the prizes they get for being so bloody good, so dont be such a blasted fool. But you were always a bit of a priest's pet, weren't you?"

  A priest's pet! There rose in me for an instant a feeling of hate against all priests, particularly Father Ellis. If he hadn't come on us that night. If I hadn't laughed. If I hadn't led him to us with my laugh. If . if . A priest's pet!

  Then Mollie spoke, quietly and comfortingly as she said, "Think it over. Chew on it for a day or two. There'll be no time lost, and then we'll see what's to be done. But remember this, it's all the same to me whatever you decide on, you'll always be welcome here."

  One thing I've found in life, if there's not a cure for an ill, there's a solace provided, and Mollie was that solace for me, at least for a time.

  I was four months gone and it could not be hidden any longer. The suspicions of those around me burst into the open and I was besieged from all sides. The scandal lit not only the street but the community of the church. They did not take into account that Cissie Campbell and a good many more were having the time of their lives, or so it was called, while their men were away, and that in certain cases children were being born when husbands had not been home for years. But they were married, they were sheltered by wedding rings, and if they were foolish enough to slip up once, and show evidence of their good times, they certainly did not repeat the mistake. Christine Winter had repeated it she was a bad lot.

  These reactions, strangely enough, hardened me. They dragged out from my depths some spark that enabled me to answer their stares with a straight look when I met them and put an air of defiance into my stride in passing. To these mothers and daughters who looked at me with a

  "Dear! dear!" clicking of the tongue look, I wanted to shout, "I have been with a man three times, and out of that I've had two baims. You wouldn't believe it, would you? No, of course you wouldn't."

  Dad, I knew, was stunned and he kept saying, "Why, lass? ... How? ...

  I never knew there was anybody." These words had a familiar ring.

  Sam, dear understanding Sam, even he looked at me as if I had changed into a different being and said, "Good God, Christine, what's up with you, anyway?"

  My Aunt Phyllis, I knew, said a lot but not to me. I heard her say to Dad, "Well, it didn't come as any surprise." Oh, you liar. Aunt Phyllis. But how happy you are, I thought.

  And then came Father Ellis, rigid of countenance and frozen inside against me. He stood in the kitchen by the side of my father and stared at me and, after swallowing and breathing deeply, he brought out, "May God forgive you." And my mind cried back at him, "And you, too." And then he said something that freed me from all fear for a moment.

  "And to think," he said, 'this has happened when only a few days ago Don was down having a talk with me about you. He put the whole situation clearly to me. He didn't pretend to be a saint, but he's got this in his favour, he made a good confession, and then he told me what's been in his heart for years, to make you his wife. And now--'

  "What!" I screamed the word at him, startling him and Dad. I screamed again, "What!" Then drawing myself up, I faced him squarely and said,

  "Father, I wouldn't marry Don Dowling if I had twenty illegitimate kids." The words sounded raw coming from my mouth, and I would have termed the person I heard speaking them cheap and common. But this defiance was from the spark that was growing within me, it was not so much a spark of strength as of retaliation.

  "You might do worse. You wouldn't have been--' Shut up!"

  That I had startled my dad as he had never been startled before I could see, and, as my mother had punished Ronnie years ago for daring to answer a priest, so now my father stepped towards me, his face dark with anger, and he cried at me, "Don't you dare speak to the Father in that manner, for as much as I care for you I'll raise my hand to you."

  But now the spark was afire and I turned on him and cried, "Well, come on, do it.... Don Dowling! You'd know what Don Dowling is if you'd only open your eyes wide enough. Everybody in the town knows of his carry on, but there are lots of things that everybody in the town doesn't know. My mother knew. Oh, yes, she knew, and she tried to protect me from him. And Sam knows, and I know. Don Dowling!" I turned and confronted Father Ellis again and cried, "I could have got rid of the child but I wouldn't, I remembered what you said f
rom the pulpit.

  But I swear to you. Father, that if you side with Don Dowling and try to make me marry him, I swear to you that I'll have it taken away. "

  My voice had dropped to a low note as I finished, and after a long pause, during which the priest looked at me as if he hated me, he said,

  "There will be no need. Don could not be induced under any circumstances, I'm sure, to make his offer now."

  "Then we can thank God for that, can't we. Father?" I turned without haste and walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs, and when I got into my bedroom I stood gripping the knob of the bed and repeating,

  "Don Dowling! Don Dowling!" I cast my eyes towards the wall and spat the name at it-"Don Dowling!"

  The fire within me was well alight and burning out the old Christine.

  I was sitting in Mollie's house in the sitting-room. It was a bright afternoon, warm and sunny, and the room was tidy, even attractive.

  There was a tray on the table with a teapot on it, and the steam had ceased to come out of the spout, and the tea, I felt, would be very cold now. Mollie had made no attempt to pour it out since I began talking, nor had she interrupted me. It was odd for her, and when she got to her feet and turned her back to me I said, with a tremor in my voice, "It didn't seem like me going for the priest like that, but I didn't swear at him as they're saying, and now Don Dowling has taken on a kind of halo, for it's all over the place that we were going to be married when he found I was going to have a baim and it wasn't his. I could kill him, Mollie, I could kill him I hate him, he has started the tapping again on the wall and he sings sings filthy oh, God Almighty."

  It was not the first time I had thought "God Almighty' but it was the first time I had voiced it, and it sounded repulsive and I got to my feet and began pacing the floor.

  "Here, drink this. I've laced it." Mollie's voice was cool.

  I took the cup from her hand and swallowed it almost in one draught. I had got used, these past months, to the taste of whisky and I liked it.

  It not only warmed me, it did more. A glass of whisky could ease the pain inside of me and could make me think in a quiet way, "Oh well, such is life."

  The whisky was like a stream of fire running down into my stomach, and I pressed my hand on the rising globe, then sat down in the chair again and turned my eyes towards the empty grate. I was changed. I knew I was changed. That tall, blonde girl who was nice in spite of having a child, nice inside, easy for Christine Winter to live with, even made as she was, more of feeling than of sense, and knowing she would have accepted Martin's wife and become his woman, she was still nice. But she had vanished, dissolved when a plane had hit a hill and out of the wreck had risen a new Christine Winter, and she wasn't easy to live with, except when her nerves were eased and her stomach warmed with a drop of whisky. Sam was coming down from the wood with Constance as I returned home.

  The child waved to me crying, "Mummie! Mummie!" then ran towards me, holding out some flowers she had picked. As she thrust them into my hands she said, "I picked them for you." Then catching sight of one of the Campbell grandchildren she asked in the next breath, "Can I go and play with Terry, Mummie?"

  I nodded.

  "You'll put them in water, won't you ?"

  I nodded again.

  Sam followed me through the front room and into the kitchen and remarked, "I'll make you a cup of tea, you look under the weather."

  I did not want any tea but I did not stop him making it. Then as we sat, one on each side of the table, the cups before us, he made this remark, "I'm leaving, Christine."

  In spite of the worry that was eating me I was startled by his news and exclaimed, "No, Sam!"

  "I'm not going far but if I dont get away from there he nodded to the fireplace walls which divided the kitchens 'something'll happen that we'll all be sorry for."

  "Where are you going?"

  He raised his eyes shyly to mine and said, "You'll be surprised," and, nodding his head in the other direction, he said briefly, "Mrs.

  Patterson's. "

  "Mrs. Patterson's?"

  "Aye, I've always liked Mrs. Patterson. She's always been kind to me.

  Many a copper she gave me when I was a hairn. The only other one who ever did that was your mother. "

  "But she's a Methodist." God! had I not got rid of myself altogether?

  Were fragments still sticking to me? Mrs. Patterson was worth a hundred of my Aunt Phyllis, and her a supposedly good Catholic.

  "That was a daft thing to say," I now put in.

  "They're a fine couple. You'll be better off there." I found I was relieved that Sam was still going to be near.

  "Christine, I want to ask you something." He was not sit ting forward in his usual position with his hand hanging between his knees, but was upright in the chair looking straight at me.

  "And I'll thank you not to laugh on the one hand, or go for me on the other, and no matter what you might think I'm doing this because I want to, because I've always wanted to. Will you marry me?"

  I didn't laugh or go for him, I didn't even speak, but I dropped my eyes slowly from his fixed gaze and groaned inside, Oh, Sam, Sam.

  "I know you dont care for me, not in that way, not as you did for him, but we get on together like a house on fire. We always have done.

  You know that. And I can't see me self ever wanting anything but just to be near you. Don't think I haven't tried to thrash this out of me self I have, but that's how it is. "

  He was talking as I had never heard him talk before about himself, and I kept groaning to myself, Oh, Sam, Sam.

  "I was fifteen when it came to me how I felt about you, and I thought, Not me an' all, there's enough with our Don and their Ronnie."

  So he had known about Ronnie. Sam knew everything. No, not everything.

  He didn't know I was so changed that in the dark of the night when lost in the blackness of despair I searched for ways of hurting someone as I'd been hurt, and I never had far to seek. Taking Martin's watch from under my pillow I would grip it between my palms and see myself parcel ling it up and sending it to her. Then out of the darkness she would rise with the little package in her hands and I would watch her open it. I would see her groping at something for support, then quickly search the wrapping for the post mark, and having found it, she would lift her eyes to mine and in her look I would find my compensation.

  She would have been paid back for her deception, I would be content.

  But when the dawn broke I knew I could never do it. Even in the dark the old Christine would never have contemplated such a mean revenge, but I was changed. Everybody was changed. Except Sam. Sam was unchanging. Sam was the kindest man on earth. Although he was only nineteen I thought of him as a man, for he was a man in sense. If Sam had made this offer some weeks ago when I had still been in ignorance of what had befallen me, then I would have accepted it, because to Sam I didn't appear bad. I knew that. But that road of escape into peace, and even respectability, was closed. Sam did not deserve what I had to offer him.

  "And now that I'm on the face and making good money there would be no worry that way, and I'm savin' ; ."

  "Sam I forced myself to look into his face " I liiRTyou better than anybody on earth, anybody I stressed the word 'and if I could, I would marry you tomorrow and thank you Sam, thank you from the bottom of my heart for asking me. "

  His face showed a mixture of pleasure and disappointment, and he leaned towards me and said, "Well if that's how you feel, what's to stop you?

  I wouldn't... I mean ... well, what I want to say is that we could go on just as we are until you felt different." His hand came out and covered mine.

  "I know what you mean, Sam, but I can't do it. Anyway you should be going around with some nice girl. You've never had a girl. I feel I'm to blame there, too."

  "I've always had a girl." His other hand came out and my hand lay between his two rough palms as he said, "There's not a better girl in the world."

  "Oh, Sam."
My head bowed in shame before his love. When his next words came to me I knew that I had no power to measure such love as Sam's, for he said quietly, "And there's another side to it, Christine.

  Once you're married you'll be sort of safer somehow. Our Don's never spoken to you, has he?"

  I made no movement, and he went on, "But he talks, he talks to me ma, and he talks at me and that's bad, for you see I know every shade of him. It would have been better if he had come in here and gone for you, far better. You would have known where you stood, at least as far as anybody can know with him. But I feel all the time that he's brewing something. What, I dont know. You never know with him until it's done. But there's one thing sure, he'll have his own back." He paused and nodded his head slowly as he said, "It's funny but when a man's mad but harmless he's put away, yet when he's bad and harmful he's left to roam. Our Don is bad, Christine. I've said it afore. And bad isn't the right word for him, he's something more than bad. I feel sometimes the earth will never be clean until he's off it. That's why I thought it best for all concerned to put more space at ween us."

  At this moment Constance came running into the kitchen and Sam got to his feet, and I got to mine and there the matter rested. Rested for years.

  Sam went next door to live and my Aunt Phyllis blamed me and upbraided Mrs. Patterson. She went as far as to suggest that I had corrupted him and that the coming child was his. But what Aunt Phyllis was worrying over most was the loss of Sam's money, not Sam. She wouldn't have blinked an eyelid if Sam had dropped down dead, and I knew this, and Sam knew it. And, as Sam had warned me, Don never forgot. His repayment was to go on for a long time. It had started with the tapping and singing but now it took a more vicious form, and I had my first taste of it one Friday night 194

  a few days after Sam had made his home with Mrs. Patterson. It was just on dark, and Dad being on late shift I had locked up and was getting ready to go upstairs to bed when a knock came on the front door. I thought as I went to it, "There's no light showing, the blackouts are all right' - a few weeks previously a warden had come to the door to tell me that a light was showing from the top of the blind.