The Invisible Cord

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Now look here, you hold your hand.’ He took her by the shoulders. ‘You just can’t walk out like this. Who was it anyway? What was it you heard?’

  ‘That Mr Partridge and his pal, he, he…’

  ‘Aw them! Gob skites, bloody gob skites, that’s all they are. Aw, I know them. I’ve got their measure, they don’t frighten me. Look…’

  ‘No…you look, Georgie.’ She pulled herself away from him. ‘We’re going home, at least I am. You can please yourself, but I’m leavin’ this house this minute.’

  ‘You’re bloody well not! You’re not gona bloody well show me up.’

  ‘I’m leavin’ this house, and now.’ Her voice was quiet, the tone coldly decisive.

  He stared at her. Then grasping his hair, he swung away from her, then back to her again before he said, ‘But what they bloody well gona think?’

  ‘They’ve thought already. In any case let me tell you something. This was the last time you were going to be invited here. She’s got no more use for you; you’ve got no more to carry from Madley. Get it?’

  ‘Yes, I get it, and I’m not such a bloody numskull as you take me for. I know that half me welcome’s because I’ve kept them supplied, I know that. You’re not tellin’ me anything.’

  ‘And what do you think the other half of your welcome was made up of eh? Go on, tell me. Not because they liked you.’

  ‘And why not? Why shouldn’t they bloody well like me? Look, I haven’t got the mange or anything.’

  ‘Oh!’ She bowed her head. ‘Oh, for God’s sake! Georgie, shut up. Are you comin’, or are you not?’

  ‘I’m not bloody well gona walk out of the house just like that because you found they haven’t fallen on me neck just ’cos of me personality.’

  ‘Georgie.’ Her tone was quiet again. ‘There’s more to it then that, but I’m not telling you the rest of it until we get out of this house…until we’re home.’

  His brows contracted, his cheeks moved upwards, pushing his eyes back deep into their sockets and through narrowed lids he said, ‘More to it? What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m saying no more until we’re out of here. Now are you coming?’

  ‘Look, I want to know. More to it, you say?’

  ‘You won’t get another word out of me until we’re out of here. An’ I’ve told you. Look, our things are in the case; you only need to put your hat and coat on. It’s up to you.’

  ‘Just give me an inkling of what you mean.’

  ‘I’m doing no such thing, not now, and that’s final…final.’

  His eyes on her, his mouth slowly dropped open while his tongue moved over his lower lip; then turning suddenly, he grabbed up his coat and cap from a chair, grinding out between his teeth, ‘Talk about a bloody kettle of fish! Nice state of affairs. An’ what you gona tell your mother, eh? What you gona tell her? That we’ve been thrown out?’

  ‘I’ll think of something.’

  ‘You bet your bottom dollar you’ll think of something. I’m not having her lookin’ down her bloody nose at me and saying “Ah! Ah! Georgie’s friends. There’s friends for you, turfed them out …”’

  ‘Shut up an’ come on.’

  There came a knock on the door and when Annie opened it Mona was standing there, her face white and her one good eye wide and staring. Sidling past Annie and into the room she looked from one to the other and asked in a whisper, ‘What’s it all about?’

  Annie shook her head and looked down as she said, ‘I can’t go into it now, Mona, I’ll just say I overheard enough to realise that we’re only here on sufferance, and to them downstairs we’re just a lot of…Geordie aborigines. That’s what they think we are, Geordie aborigines.’

  ‘What!’

  She turned and looked at Georgie. ‘That’s what he said we were. Geordie aborigines!’

  ‘Who the hell said that?’

  ‘Him, Partridge.’

  ‘I’ll Geordie aborigine him. By God let me…’

  ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort.’ She pushed at him, then turned quickly to Mona, saying, ‘I’m sorry, Mona, but it’ll make no difference to you…Where’s Arthur?’

  ‘He’s…he’s in the dining room raisin’ Cain.’

  Annie turned to Georgie now. ‘Have you got everything?’

  ‘No, I haven’t got everything; I’ve lost me bloody senses. If I hadn’t I’d slap your blasted mouth for you and put you in your place.’

  It was with a sense of weariness that she turned from him, saying, ‘That’ll be the day.’

  The trite expression seemed to deflate him and after staring at her for a moment he picked up the case and followed her onto the landing. There, he turned to Mona and said quietly, ‘Go and tell Arthur I want a word with him, will you?’

  A few minutes later they were standing in the conservatory with their faces turned from each other, looking out through the glass partition onto the overrun garden and weedy drive.

  A wave of high voices came to them as a door opened and closed; then Arthur hurried towards them, pulling on his coat. His usual pale complexion was almost scarlet, his eyes were blazing with a temper she would have never thought him capable of. He was looking at Georgie and it was a full minute before he spoke. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said; and it seemed just as an afterthought that he turned to her and repeated, ‘I’m…I’m sorry, Annie.’

  She did not speak but made a movement with her head and closed her eyes, and when she opened them again he was once more looking at Georgie.

  Georgie had his head to the side, looking down towards the floor. He hadn’t spoken to Arthur. His silence on the matter appeared odd to her, his manner appeared odd. She stared at him.

  It was Arthur who spoke again, saying, ‘Olive will drive you to the station; I won’t come along, Georgie, I’m packing up.’

  Georgie’s head jerked upwards at this and he began now, ‘There’s no need for you to…’

  ‘It was bound to come sooner or later.’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘To the Crawfords.’

  ‘Oh!’ Georgie was nodding his head slowly now as he repeated, ‘The Crawfords,’ but it didn’t appear that he was very enamoured of the Crawfords.

  ‘What about Mona?’

  Arthur turned his glance towards Annie, saying, ‘She’ll come with me of course. This will only mean we’ll settle into the other place sooner than I thought.’ He now pointed through the conservatory window, saying, ‘There’s Olive going to the garage. I’ll keep in touch.’ Again he was looking at Georgie, and Georgie said briefly, ‘Aye, aye,’ then turned away, opened the door and went out onto the drive.

  ‘I’m sorry, Annie.’ Arthur was looking into her face now. She didn’t answer him but stared back into his eyes. They were nice eyes, kind eyes. He was a nice fellow, seeming in no way connected with any of them back in the house. He turned hastily from her and, running out, caught up with Georgie. She watched him speaking earnestly for a moment before she moved, and before she reached them they had parted.

  Olive was standing by the car. She made no remark, she just looked at them, then opened the door and they got in. Nor did she speak during the three-mile journey to the station; not until they were again standing outside the car did she open her mouth, and then she almost repeated the words that Arthur had said, ‘This was bound to come sooner or later, you know. I mean, with Arthur. I’m sorry, I’m very sorry you’ve been involved in it. It…it isn’t fair.’

  There was a short silence, during which neither Annie nor Georgie made any comment. Then, her eyes cast down, Olive said, ‘Further, I…I must apologise for my husband, his attitude is unforgivable.’

  It was now impossible for either of them to make a comment.

  She raised her eyes and held out her hand, and when Annie took it Olive said, ‘I wish I could have got to know you better. And…and Alan will miss you; he quite took to you.’

  There seemed a slight hesitation before Olive held out her hand to Georgie
, and to him she merely said, ‘Goodbye,’ while he replied as briefly, ‘Goodbye.’ Then they turned from her and went into the station.

  Nobody but a fool would travel on a Christmas Eve. If she had heard that once from fellow passengers during the journey she had heard it a hundred times. When they did manage to get a seat they were packed like sardines, but for most of the time she had sat on the case in the corridor, that was when she wasn’t standing up to let people pass. The only time Georgie had made any comment on the situation was when they were changing trains at Birmingham. Standing on the platform he had muttered, ‘Bloody nice state of affairs…Merry Christmas!’

  She had made up her mind that what she had to tell him must be said before she entered the house, but she didn’t know how she was going to put the thing over, because as soon as they got out at High Shields he would most surely start questioning her, and he’d raise the street when he heard what she had to say.

  But when they left the station at High Shields and walked down the dismal and almost empty road leading into King Street he didn’t open his mouth. His head was down, his shoulders were hunched against the cold and he carried the case as if it were filled with lead. They walked up towards the market and crossed over it; it was no use taking the tram, it was quicker going up the side streets.

  When they were almost halfway home and he hadn’t spoken she suddenly bawled at him, ‘Well! You been struck dumb?’

  Still walking on and looking ahead, he answered her, ‘Do you want me to start in the street?’

  ‘Well, that would be better than starting when you get indoors.’

  ‘There’s no need to start at all.’

  ‘What!’ She paused in her walking, astonished at his attitude.

  ‘Well, put the onus on me if you like. Tell her I opened me mouth as usual an’ had a row with one of them. Tell her what you bloody well like. We’ll soon be out of it, so it makes no matter.’

  She was walking one pace behind him now, peering at him through the weak lamplight. Suddenly her hand shot out and, grabbing his arm, she pulled him to a stop and half towards her, and thrusting her face forward she hissed at him, ‘Do you know what he was saying about you? Do you? I didn’t tell you afore in case you would do something, like murder, but do you know what he was saying?’

  ‘Look, that fellow would swear that Jesus Christ was on the fiddle.’

  ‘It wasn’t anything to do with fiddles.’

  ‘Look, there’s folks passing, stop your bawling.’

  She drew her head back from him, and her eyes narrowed still further. Him checking her for raising her voice in the street! Him! There was something odd here. She felt a sickness in the pit of her stomach, and as if the nausea had suddenly erupted and burst from her mouth she spewed at him in a hiss, ‘He hinted as much as you…you and Arthur…were queers…pansies.’

  His face, which was usually fresh coloured, was tinged blue with the cold, but as she stared at him she watched the hue change into a dark red. She heard him rather than saw him gulping. She was about to endeavour to calm him by saying, ‘Now, Georgie. Georgie, look’ when his voice came at her, not bawling, in fact when he spoke he scarcely opened his lips. His wide mouth looked frozen into a thin line, and his words sounded thin and his indignation forced as he said, ‘Why, why didn’t you tell me this back there?’

  It was a second before she answered, ‘Because I was afraid of what you might do.’

  ‘If you had told me I would have knocked his bloody head off, the dirty minded bugger…You didn’t believe him, did you?’

  ‘Believe him? Believe him?…No.’

  ‘By God! If I had him here I know what I would do to him.’ He turned from her and walked on, the case seeming to pull his shoulder down more than ever now, and he had gone four full paces before she moved and then with each step she took she protested loudly in her head, ‘No, no! you’re crazy.’

  Anyway, it couldn’t be, could it, not with a fellow like Georgie, big, tough, strong? And he had given her a bairn! And he was full of it still, couldn’t satisfy him. And Arthur? Well, Arthur wasn’t big, or tough, but he was refined, educated, and he was going to marry Mona…Yet there was something, Something. She felt it inside of her, and it was making her sick. She wanted to vomit, really vomit.

  She had adjusted herself to his swearing, his uncouthness, giving herself compensation by thinking about his generosity and the certain kind of honesty he possessed, but there were some things you couldn’t give yourself compensation for.

  There was something between him and Arthur Bailey. What was it? It couldn’t be that, could it? Just look at him. She looked at him, and the very fact that he was walking on ahead and hadn’t turned and said, ‘What’s up with you? What you doddering behind there for?’ increased the sickness in her.

  She wished she could explain things to herself. She knew she was very ignorant about most things relating to sex at any rate. She would have said she knew enough to get by. A normal man took you, you became pregnant, you had a baby, and that was that. On the reverse side of the coin there were pansies and queers, yet what the name actually implied she didn’t know, only that it was something nasty. With a sudden movement she turned towards the end wall of a house, put her hand out, bent over and vomited.

  He was by her side now holding her head, saying, ‘God! What’s up with you?’

  When it was over and he had wiped her mouth on his handkerchief she leant against the wall and, her head down, she muttered, ‘I’m sick.’ And he gave an answer that made him normal to her again. ‘It wouldn’t take a bloody blind dog long to sniff that out. Come on,’ he said; ‘come on and get home.’ Picking up the case in one hand, he put the other arm around her shoulders, and thus they returned home.

  She was sick on Christmas morning; she was sick the following morning, and the following morning after that. She was pregnant again.

  PART THREE

  THE GARAGE

  One

  ‘Hold that bag up straight, Rance.’

  ‘Oh! Ma, I’m all mucky.’

  ‘You’ll be more mucky if you don’t do what I tell you. Hold it up straight.’

  Annie stooped down, thrust a shovel into a heap of coal and went to scoop it into the bag, but when Rance took one hand away from the top of the canvas sack and half the coal sprayed onto the ground, in one movement she threw down the shovel and thrusting out her other hand boxed his ears.

  When she saw the tears spurting from his eyes and his hand holding the side of his face, she had to stop herself from throwing her arms around him and hugging him to her, crying as she sometimes did, ‘Aw I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Your ma’s sorry.’ But tonight she felt worn out and irritated to the point of screaming, besides which she was filthy dirty with coal dust.

  As Rance ran across the yard towards the house door Anastasia, whose name had hardly been repeated from the moment the priest had spoken it, came towards her and said solemnly, ‘Will I hold it, Ma?’

  Annie sighed as she answered, ‘All right, Tishy, get a hold of it. But it’ll mean you’ll have to have a bath afterwards mind.’

  ‘Aye, Ma…I don’t mind havin’ a bath.’

  ‘Hold it steady.’

  Annie shovelled up more coal, and because her five-year-old daughter could not be expected to hold the sack as firmly as Rance, she did not throw the coal into the sack but tipped it gently forward, thinking to herself as she did so, I’ll get a long way in a long time like this, an’ it getting dark an’ all. By! I’ll have something to say to him when he gets in. Where does he think he is till this time? If he’s stopped at The Red Lion again I’ll eat him wholesale, I will. By God, I will! She had to stop herself from throwing the next shovelful into the bag, and this irritated her further and she said to the child, ‘Leave it down. Go indoors and wash your hands. I tell you what. Put the kettle on, and when it boils give me a shout and I’ll come and make a cup of tea. Go on, that’s a good lass.’

  ‘All right, Ma.’ As t
he child ran across the yard Annie paused for a moment to look at her. Of her four children Anastasia had the kindest nature. Sometimes she thought, and without vanity, that she was the only one who took after herself; yet at the same time she wished that it wasn’t only her nature that she had given to the child, but one or two of her presentable features as well; or that, if she had only inherited Georgie’s eyes, which were his one good feature. But Tishy was like nobody on either side of the family.

  From the moment she was born she was as plain as a pikestaff. For the first three years of the child’s life Annie comforted herself by thinking, They say it’s the ugly ducklings who turn into swans; but here she was now, five years old and there was no trace of the swan to be seen; nor did she think there ever would be. The child’s hair was a mousy brown and was as straight as a die, not a kink in it. Her brows too were straight, as was her mouth. Her nose was snub, so snub that, as Georgie said, you would think somebody had wiped it along the flags. Then her eyes, although quite large, indeed seemingly too large for her face, appeared colourless at times, while at others they looked merely a light grey.

  And so Annie would comfort herself with the thought, Well, there’s plenty of time, while telling herself that even time couldn’t alter her child’s nose or put a bow to her mouth. Her final thought always with regard to her daughter was that, apart from her temper, she had a nice nature, and that was something.

  Bill had arrived the year after Anastasia. Bill took after his father in looks, but already at four he seemed much brighter than Georgie, for he could read and count rapidly, and when he once started talking nobody could shut him up until he himself decided he had no more to say. His silences at times were as forceful as his conversations. Bill, Annie thought, was a case. Then her latest acquisition to the family was Kathy. Kathy was two years old, as pretty as a picture and the star in Georgie’s sky, as Rance was in hers.