‘You wouldn’t,’ she said.
The memory of the first time he had struck her assailed her all in a rush and though many peaceful years had intervened, she saw in the demented set of his face, the capacity for another blow.
‘Wouldn’t I?’ he asked between gritted teeth and then with no more ceremony he straddled her and made his way into her ruined interior.
His appetite could not be sated. It knew no bounds nor could it be safely corralled within the privacy of the bed-chamber. This new ravaging lust could manifest itself at any time of the day or night. Bella could only hope that if James or Valentine woke in the night they would mistake the sounds Nick made – for he was noisy in his demands – as coming from the street, or the plumbing. He became like another child who had to be given in to or there would be a tantrum. Once or twice, when Bella demurred, he would take her in his arms by force, there in front of the little ones. There were scenes of degradation that Baby John witnessed that haunted her for years. She prayed that what the baby saw before he had words, would be lost in the murky depths and stay beyond the reach of the memory. Nick would have his way regardless of the location – by the lofts amidst the gurgle of the birds, in the scullery even when Bella was awash with Reckitt’s Blue. He came upon her one morning cleaning out the grate, a bundle of kindling in her arms, which was scattered on the rug in the parlour as he launched himself at her. What a sight she must have been, her brow smudged with coal dust, her bodice flecked with ash and twigs nestling in her hair. But Nick did not seem to see any of that, Bella realised. He saw instead some darkness that he desperately wanted to possess and she was merely the portal.
Her greatest fear was for the girls. Susan had just finished Final Standard at the Model School but had not proved bright enough to get the call to training. Bella was not altogether surprised; the girl’s spelling was atrocious and her mathematics a disgrace regardless of the time Bella devoted to her. They had fought bitterly over long division and square measure, matters Susan thought were open to disputation. She refused to believe there was only one method to achieve the right result. They were often at loggerheads like this; their natures seemed to grate against one another. In some of Susan’s strange refusals, Bella detected the whiff of Leeper, the father she would never know, but she pushed the thought away. He was finally out of her orbit and she was determined that was where he would stay.
‘The girl’s as giddy as a foal,’ Nick would complain.
Susan was his favourite, which in the past had been a comfort to Bella, the crowning glory of her deception. But in this new dispensation, it became a thorn. Susan had always had a way of insinuating herself into Nick’s good books, no matter how ill-favoured his temper was. With him she played the coquette, Adele to his Mr Rochester. If she wanted something of him, she would follow him out to the yard when he was feeding the birds, though she hated them as much as Bella did. Bella would watch as Susan billed and cooed, pretending to adore them, then giving a shrill frightened cry when they flapped about her. Nick would put his arm about her and draw her in, which was what she wanted all along. Then she would pounce with her request – a pair of button boots, a trim for her petticoat. That was all well and good before, but with Nick’s new recklessness, Bella did not know what he might make of such overtures.
All of her attempts to protect Susan from the arbitrary lusts of men had been rendered futile. Wasn’t it she who wanted Susan to pass from home to marriage without the slightest blemish on her character? Wasn’t it by her decree that Susan was idle at home to spare her from the precise danger that had now lodged itself at the heart of their home in the person of Nick?
She would make excuses to get Susan out of the house in the morning when Nick was at his most insistent. Bring the children to school, she would say, which the boys regarded as a great mortification – to be accompanied by their big sister to the school gates. Or she would send Susan off to pay some credit off at the dairy, or to O’Neill’s on Marlborough Street to buy blood pudding – best to get there early, she would tell her, practically pushing her out the door and into who knew what dangers on the street. Susan was perplexed by Bella’s queer requests to go here and there, but she complied with her mother’s wishes.
Guiltily, Bella worried less about Babsie. She had started work at the box factory. The very moment she turned fourteen she wanted out of the traps of school. Bella had tried to talk her out of it but she was determined to follow her friend Cissie Bayliss to Harrison’s Box and Card, where she had already got a start and was earning seven bob a week. Babsie was plucky and being next to two brothers she was better able to fight her corner. She had a bit of a temper – from the Beaver side – but that was no harm for Bella couldn’t see any man take advantage of her without getting a clout for his trouble. But Bella was not sure how any girl, even one with Babsie’s mettle, might deal with the improprieties of a wayward father, dressed in the mental uniform of a man half his age.
One Sunday afternoon she was at the Cadby in a rare moment of peace. Baby John was asleep, the boys were over with their Granny Casey and Susan and Babsie had gone to the Exhibition in Ballsbridge. She was tinkering with Handel’s Largo, reading from the sheet music published by Mr Boosey with engravings of trumpets, viols and vine leaves on the title page. She was playing pianissimo, using the under-damper pedal which made the music seem remote as if it were being played in another room. It suited her purpose entirely. She wanted merely to lull herself without rousing Nick who was taking a nap upstairs. But her touch wasn’t soft enough for after a while she heard the creak of a floorboard overhead and the tramp of his boot on the stair. Her music faltered, her ear tuned now to his tread as she tried to decipher the language of his footfalls. Without turning, she sensed him right behind her and held her hands quite still above the keys. She acted as if she were a statue in the hope that Nick would take her for a piece of the furniture. Lately, his eyesight was failing him so that he frequently mistook people if the light was low. Bella prayed he might take her for some figment of his imagination and walk on past.
The ruse did not work for suddenly he had her neck in an arm-hold almost choking the life out of her as he lifted her off her feet and sent her sprawling with a loud discord over the Cadby. Without the slightest ceremony he hoiked up her skirts at the back – his own encumbrances he had already unbuttoned – and parting her legs roughly with his hands he took possession of her – she could barely say it to herself – in the rear of the premises. Her face crushed against the edge of the Cadby raised a weal but that was as nothing to his depraved assault, all of it conducted without a word. The silence seemed to amplify the bestial act. Then just as casually, Nick withdrew, righted himself and set down a tanner on top of the piano like a liveried young fellow swaggering about a bawdy house. Lifting his coat nonchalantly off a hook by the door, he disappeared out into the street closing the door quietly behind him. Bella stared at the dully glinting coin. She wasn’t even worthy of silver.
When the girls returned, Bella told them she had missed a step on the stair to account for the mark on her face. They were so full of reports from the Exhibition – there was a replica of a Swahili village with natives dressed up in grass skirts and chiefs with war paint and head-dresses – that her explanation raised no queries. She was lying to everyone now, as if she’d been born to it. But the time came when she could dissemble no longer.
One evening, thankfully after the boys had gone to bed, Nick came home a bit the worse for wear. Bella made no remark about his state. Sometimes the drink invalidated his performance and it spared her. He would not eat, although she had kept dinner for him. But she did not labour the point. He sat by the fire and fell into a fitful doze. Susan was at the other side of the hearth at her embroidery; Babsie, at the table, was helping Bella darn socks. After a brief spell, Nick awoke suddenly, snorting and startled-looking. Babsie cast Bella a baleful look.
‘The dead arose,’ she said sourly. ‘And appeared to many.’
Babsie probably thought her craven, but she knew that Nick, hearing the tiniest wisp of conversation, would be convinced that he was the subject of it and that it must be derogatory. Too late.
‘What’s that, what’s that?’ Nick bellowed and rose from the chair, using his arms to lever himself up to full standing.
‘Nothing, Nick, nothing at all,’ Bella said, also rising and dropping the sock she was working on. ‘Babsie was just saying …’
He pushed her roughly out of his way and fixed on Babsie. She stared back at him in a way Bella knew he would take as defiant. It had become her habit to try to guess what Nick was thinking one step before he knew himself. Despite his lack of book learning, he had always been quick-witted, but lately it was as if his mind was slowing up like the inner movements of a clock that had not been wound.
‘The cheek of you, Sir,’ he said to Babsie. ‘What the hell are you doing in my house?’
Babsie looked at Bella, bewildered.
‘Are you making improper advances to this lady? This lady is my wife, I’ll have you know!’
His eyes narrowed but his expression was clouded as if even he wasn’t sure what he was seeing.
‘On your feet,’ he shouted at Babsie, ‘when an officer addresses you!’
In a kind of daze Babsie complied, for madness has its own authority.
‘Have you no respect for your superiors? You have no right to wear the uniform of the Liverpools, Sir!’
Bella could see Susan rising slowly behind him, open-mouthed. She moved to intervene, silently grateful that whatever phantasm had taken hold of Nick, he had mistaken Babsie for a soldier and not some glad-neck from the street. She interposed herself in front of Babsie just as Nick raised his fist so she caught the full force of the blow. It all but felled her and she staggered back, almost falling over. Susan was whimpering with the fright of it all, but Babsie was just plain aggravated.
‘Look what you’ve done now,’ she cried at Nick.
He stood there swaying gently, his brow more perplexed than stormy, then suddenly he retreated back to his chair and slumped into it.
‘Are you alright, Mam?’ Babsie asked, only now beginning to sound panicky.
‘There, there,’ she said. Useless words of comfort. ‘Your father was just moithered, that’s all. Woke up from a bad dream and thought himself still in it.’
They spoke in whispers as Nick had resumed his torpor. But he was wide-eyed and present – bodily, that is. Bella knew then she must quell the girls’ suspicions. With great trepidation, for she did not know what reception she would get, she went over to where Nick was sitting and put her arm around his shoulders, kissing the crown of his head. He closed his eyes and moaned softly.
‘How’s my brave soldier boy?’ Bella crooned as if he were a baby.
‘All serene, Ma’am,’ he replied, ‘all serene.’
THE SILVER CANDLESTICK
From then on, Nick became a full-time inhabitant of his past. He took to donning his old regimentals to go to work and had to be cajoled out of it. He looked a sight for it was his dress uniform he chose, the crimson coat with the full skirt. Since the trews of this outfit had long since gone the way of all evil, he teamed the jacket with a pair of knickerbockers laced at the knee that used to be worn for musketry. He’d gained some weight since the last time he’d worn the coat, so the gilded buttons didn’t meet and the torn scarlet lining was visible for all to see. Bella would have to strip him like a child and force him into his postal serge, all the while convincing him that he was not Lance Corporal Beaver of the King’s Liverpools presenting himself for duty. He had to be chastised firmly out of the notion that he was stationed in Aldershot and set to go off to India.
Then one morning, he failed to rise at all. Bella did not insist on rousing him for it saved her the usual dismal morning routine. She kept James back from school and bade him to run over to Amiens Street instead and tell the Station Master that his father was sick and would not be turning up for duty. It was a filthy March morning, dimpled pools on the street, the sky leaden with mournful cloud as if the very world were disconsolate with itself. James was back within the half hour and he was not alone. The Station Master was with him, all rigged out in a tailed coat but with a cape thrown over it to protect it, rather than him, from the weather. Rain dripped from the peak of his cap like a guttering eave as he stood on the threshold and poor James was soaked through for he’d gone out without his coat. Courtesy demanded that Bella invite Mr Devereux in, though she shuddered to think what Nick would make of his boss standing in the parlour, discussing him behind his back. She prayed that, like a fractious child, he might sleep through the entire encounter.
She put the kettle on and told Mr Devereux to unburden himself of his wet Ulster. When she’d made the tea and fished out the good cups to serve, she told James to go out and feed his father’s birds.
‘I’m sorry to hear, Mrs Beaver, that your husband is indisposed,’ Mr Devereux began as soon as James was out of hearing. He spoke in a confidentially loud manner. ‘But it comes as no surprise.’
Bella dreaded what he was about to say next – that the railways did not encourage malingering and that Nick would have to go.
‘The reason I’ve called today – and I hope you will forgive the intrusion – but I thought when the boy came, I should, in a manner of speaking, strike while the iron was hot.’
He slurped noisily at his tea. Bella noticed his large hands, wet and red from the cold, and worried that the china might slip from his ham-fisted grasp. He carried the cup tremulously to his nervous lips but lost all finesse on the return journey, so that it collided noisily with the slope of the saucer.
‘But it has been brought to our attention – when I say our, I mean, actually, Mrs Beaver, mine – that your husband has become, how shall I put this, a trifle distracted of late, which has impaired the efficient pursuit of his duties. We were, at first, inclined to put his forgetfulness down to over-indulgence at the wine lodge and were prepared to make allowances. What one of us …’
Here Mr Devereux halted and laughed nervously.
‘Well, be that as it may, Ma’am …’ He hesitated and made another attempt at the tea. Cup to mouth, then back again without a sip being taken.
‘Your husband, Mrs Beaver,’ he began, ‘your husband has taken to wandering.’
If only that was all, Bella thought.
‘And that’s not the end of it, I’m sorry to have to say. He seems to get agitated for no reason and has been witnessed raising his voice at members of the public in what I can only describe as a highly undignified fashion.’
He raised the cup again and then thought better of it. Another tiny crash ensued.
‘He became most irate with a woman on the platform the other day when she asked him for directions.’
Mr Devereux leaned forward, casting an eye over one shoulder and then the other before whispering dramatically. ‘He seemed to mistake her for a lady of the night, Ma’am.’
Relieved that he had got this unpleasantness over with, Mr Devereux reverted momentarily to his own vernacular.
‘We’re at our wits’ end, Mrs Beaver.’
Bella felt the urge to confide in this kindly man since his heartfelt despair chimed so closely with her own. But she stifled it. She knew she must, yet again, feign innocence. If she admitted she knew there was something amiss with Nick, she would only be handing Mr Devereux a club to beat her with. In her mind’s eye, she could already envisage the eviction notice, her children ragged and barefoot, their belongings heaped on a cart on the side of the street for all the neighbours to see … but no, she shook herself, she must not court disaster like this.
‘So we feel it’s no longer appropriate for him to hold a position of authority.’
There, at last, it was said. There was a certain relief in it. At least it was an end to pretence – though the pretence had been comfor
ting – that there was nothing wrong with Nick. She waited then for the final hammer blow.
‘So we’ve decided, given how impeccable his record has been, and the fact that he has served his country, that he should be given a less demanding occupation …’
He must have seen her face fall and mistook her relief for disappointment.
‘Until, that is,’ he hurriedly added, ‘he recovers his full health.’
Nick was put to work on half-pay sweeping the floors. He was forbidden to go near the Parcels Hall for fear he would be mocked by his former underlings, and being an army man, he followed these orders without objection. It was still a terrible comedown for him, even if he was too far gone to realise the full import of his demotion. Bella found excuses to pass by the station. There she would see him leaning on his broom, the dust-pan idle at his feet as he stared off into the mid-distance as if stalled in some deep entrancement, the warning drums of an approaching army that only he could hear. Sometimes he would point, hand raised aloft, his eyes shaded by his fingers as he peered through some red mist that seemed to have obscured his eyesight. He had always been fastidious, but in his new position this trait became enlarged. He would fix on one patch of the chequered tiles in the station forecourt and sweep it over and over again, chasing ribbons of dust only he could see. But as long as the Great Northern Railways would pay Nick, no matter how measly the remuneration, it was imperative that he turn up and clock in. For that reason, Bella sent James to accompany Nick to the station in the mornings and Susan to escort him back in the evening so that he wouldn’t stray en route. Then one Thursday when Susan went to collect him, Nick was nowhere to be found.
One of the counter clerks, Reggie Elliott, helped her to scour the station for Nick. Something of her distress must have bound them together for shortly afterwards they began stepping out, but on that night their mission was fruitless. It transpired that Rocliffe, one of the men in the Parcels Hall, had collared Nick on the steps of the station and had lured him off to Bergin’s. They’d stayed drinking until ten when the landlord refused to put any more up on the slate. The upshot of the escapade was that when Nick finally arrived home, he was quite evil with spirits, staggering and wild-eyed. He’d always been able to hold his drink, but now even a single measure seemed to inflame him. He demanded food, of which there was little in the house, it being the night before pay-day. Bella and the children had eaten earlier. Not much of a repast – a head of cabbage and some bread and scrape. There was one large potato left in the larder which she’d boiled and held back for Nick. When she set it down on a plate before him, it looked plain miserly.
The Rising of Bella Casey Page 17