Slinky Jane

by Catherine Cookson

  He was standing by the window, and he did not show that he knew she was there, but his head dropped to his chest and she knew he was crying. As she watched him she seemed drained of all emotion, good, bad or indifferent. When a man cried over a woman …

  After a moment or two she watched his head lift, and he turned to her, unashamed of his tears, and with a deep sense of shock and renewed loss she saw that her lad had gone from her forever. Not even figuratively would she be able to apply the name to him again for here, before her, stood a man, stronger in spite of his tears than the three back in the room, stronger even than Grandpop. Dead or alive, the girl had done her work, and when he said thickly, ‘I must talk to you, Mam—I’m leaving,’ she made no protest, but sat down in case the rapid beating of her heart should cause her to collapse.

  Chapter Eight

  It was just sixty minutes later, but to Peter it could have been sixty years, so much had happened, so much decided. Yet on the other hand he knew that it hadn’t taken any length of time to establish his plan, for from the moment the doctor had spoken to him in the bar-yard everything he was going to do was already in his mind, it only needed formulating, and that had taken place when he’d said to his mother, ‘I’m leaving.’

  When he had stood at the other side of the table and added, ‘I want to sell up, straight away,’ Rosie had made no protest whatever, and in her very silence he was made to realise the depth of the hurt he was dealing her. Yet, in this moment, he had no compassion to spare for her.

  After a seemingly long time and in a voice he hardly recognised Rosie had said, ‘If she’s bad, why go?’ and he had answered, ‘Even if she would stay it wouldn’t work. And, anyway, this place has suddenly become—’ he had stopped and glanced in bewilderment about the room, but his look had embraced the entire village, yet he did not finish what he had been going to say—‘too small for me.’

  But Rosie knew what he meant, as she also knew that if she didn’t agree to selling the garage he would go in any case and with bitterness which might prevent him from ever coming back, whereas if the girl died…She had not let her thinking go any farther at the moment but had said, ‘Selling’s not going to be easy. Although they’ve got nothing to do with it’—she inclined her head towards the kitchen—‘they’ll be up in arms, they’ll go mad.’

  And Rosie’s statement turned out to be correct. Although Harry, Old Pop and Grandpop had been touched to the heart by Peter’s words, for the girl upstairs was fundamentally their kind of woman, yet from the moment Peter and Rosie had come back into the kitchen and Peter had thrown his news with the effect of a hand grenade into their midst, the girl was thrust aside by the disaster facing them, for it would be a disaster for all of them. The loss of the garage just at this time would mean the loss of money and prestige. With each of them the prestige came first, but things being what they were they knew they couldn’t have the second without the first; to have a strong financial footing in the village was power, and power was prestige. Each in his own way needed power and each had suffered when watching power growing in, to his own way of thinking, the wrong hands. It was no solace to any of the three men that their neighbours were held in little respect for, say what you liked, in one way or another money talked and always would.

  The mere thought of selling the garage was bad, in fact it seemed that nothing worse could happen; then came the greatest blow of all. Peter had almost stupefied them with it when he said, ‘I’m going to sell to the Mackenzies.’ Even Rosie had gaped, then balked at this. But Peter, the surprising possessor now of cool reasoning, had explained that three hundred pounds was three hundred and he could run them up to that amount over and above what the estate agent was now offering.

  From this point had started a non-stop battle of bitter words, which, but for the brief break when Peter went upstairs carrying a hot drink he had himself made, had not stopped. And now Harry, holding the floor, was resorting to compromise.

  ‘Look, what’s going to happen when the money’s gone? It’s only half yours, you know. You’ll have to start from scratch again and you’ll never have the cash to buy another place. You’ll come back here and tear your hair out when you see them sitting pretty on what they’re making out of the garage alone. Look, if you must do this bloody mad thing, let them have a share, and they can take over for the time being. But even that makes me want to vomit.’

  ‘I want no shares with Davy Mackenzie—it’s sell or nothing!’ Peter’s face was grim, but he continued to speak quietly.

  Old Pop’s voice joined in the fray but he addressed himself pointedly to Rosie now and said, ‘Mad! Clean, stark, staring mad! Summat should be done—he just can’t do it. An’ you standin’ there and lettin’ him get on with it! You’ve made your mouth go for years ’bout other things, now when it should be snapping like a trap you’re standing there like…’

  ‘Me!’ All the blame for the inner fires which were consuming Peter and directing him along this mad course was transferred with the inflection of her voice back to the accuser, and his father, and his son.

  ‘Me?’ she repeated again on a higher note. ‘Who’s he following in this, and everything else, I’d like to know? Blaming me! For as many years as this village can remember the name Puddleton has been a byword connected with loose—’

  ‘Shut up!’ Harry barked angrily, while at the same time pushing his enraged father back into his chair.

  ‘Be quiet, all of you! Listen!’ The command brought their eyes to Peter, where his were directed towards the door, and Grandpop muttered, ‘’Tis only the lads.’

  But it wasn’t the lads. As Peter reached the door and pulled it open Leo stepped slowly into the passage from the stairs. She had his coat about her and her face looked more ashen even than when she entered the house, and her eyes seemed to have sunk deep into the back of her head.

  ‘Why did you get up? I was coming…go on back.’ In a flurry of anxiety he took hold of her hands, and she left them unresisting in his, but she shook her head saying, ‘No. No, I can’t go back. If my dress is dry I’d like it. And—and I’d like to see your mother.’

  He moved his head in perplexity, then guiding her towards the front room, he coaxed, ‘Come in here, there’s no-one in here. You shouldn’t have got up.’

  When she was seated she did not look at him but kept her eyes directed towards Grandpop’s empty seat on the dais before the window, and then she said quietly, ‘I must see your mother. All this trouble over me, will it never cease?’

  ‘It isn’t over you,’ he lied firmly. ‘Come back to bed. Come on. You can see her in the morning.’

  ‘No, it must be now.’

  ‘But Leo…’

  ‘It’s no good.’ She moved her head with a weary motion. ‘If you don’t let me see her I’ll walk out this minute and go back to the Hart. They can’t forbid me entry. I must get my things anyway, and Miss Tallow might put me up for the night.’

  ‘Look at me, Leo.’ He had dropped onto his hunkers before her, and there was no indecision in his tone, or in his manner, as he brought her face round to him. ‘Whatever you’ve got to say to me mother makes no difference. I’m leaving here…we are going together. It might take a day or two for me to get things settled up but I’ll make it as quick as possible.’

  ‘No.’ She jerked hastily at her hands, trying to force them. ‘Oh, no. You’re not coming with me, now or at any time. You don’t understand—you understand nothing. I tell you, you’re not coming.’

  ‘Be quiet.’ He patted her hands as if she were a child. ‘Nothing you can say will stop me. Nothing. I love you and that’s just that.’

  It was a casual sounding comment, and he made to rise on it but she grabbed at him, staring into his face in a puzzled fashion. Then she said, ‘You’re different. Why—why aren’t you pelting me with questions? Asking about Tiffy and Roger and them all…why?’

  After a prolonged stare she said in a whisper, ‘You know already, you know who they are. Yo
u know about…’

  Quickly he pulled her hands to his lips, and pressing them to his mouth he spoke through her fingers, passionately and urgently, in a way he had never imagined himself capable of: ‘I only know I love you…I worship you. I never want to be away from you…not for the rest of me life.’

  Slowly she pressed herself back in the chair and turned her face away from his gaze, and repeated in an agonised whisper, ‘A moment of your life!’ Then bringing her eyes to his again she said, ‘You know that’s all it will be, a moment of your life. Oh!’—she seemed to regain some of her energy, for she tossed her head and moved as if searching for a way of escape—‘why had this to happen? Why had they to come? They, of all people.’

  ‘Well, they did,’ he said gently. ‘It seemed as if it was all planned. I’ve a feeling now that I’ve been marking time for years, just waiting for this. And I know this much, at least: if I was to see you no more after tonight these few days with you would be equal to a lifetime of happiness with somebody else. So’—he smiled gravely at her—‘in the next few months I’m going to live a number of lifetimes. There is only one thing I’d like to know, and then you needn’t tell me that if you don’t want to…do you love me a bit? It—it wasn’t only a passing fancy?’

  As her fingers tightened on his, the tears spilled from her eyes and her words were almost lost in her throat. ‘Love you? Oh, Peter!’

  In a moment he was kneeling by her side and holding her close and marvelling that the emotions of sadness and joy could at one and the same time flood his mind and body and make themselves equally felt by him. He stroked her hair as he said, ‘Don’t, darling, don’t cry like that. Come on.’

  ‘Peter.’

  ‘Yes?’ He waited.

  ‘I feel so tired I can’t fight any more.’

  ‘Well, that’s one good thing anyway.’

  ‘You may as well know—I’ve…I’ve loved you from the word go. And so much, so very much.’

  She lay against him quiet and relaxed, and over her head he looked about the room. There was Grandpop’s seat. There was the sideboard with the dish of artificial fruit situated dead centre. Arranged at angles so that you could move round them were the couch and the other chair belonging to the three-piece suite. There were knick-knacks on the mantelpiece and pictures on the walls. He should know these things—he had lived amongst them for twenty-eight years—they should be familiar, unconsciously loved or hated things. But now they were neither, they were strange to him, and the walls that housed them were surroundings that had held a man who no longer existed. In this moment if he had thought of the niggling worry occasioned by Mavis and Florrie he would have believed that they had never existed either. Never again would there be the path of least resistance for him. That road was closed.

  He moved his lips to her hair when she said, ‘What’ll I say to your mother now? I was so sure a few minutes ago, I had all the words ready. “I’m not taking your son away, so don’t worry,” I was going to say to her, but now, how can I start?’

  ‘Don’t worry, she knows.’

  ‘Everything?’ It was a whisper.

  ‘Yes, everything.’

  ‘Oh, Peter!’ Then in a voice even lower now she said his name again, ‘Peter?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I must tell you about Arthur.’

  Arthur. There was no need to question, he knew whom she meant. ‘I don’t want to know about him,’ he said.

  He lifted a strand of her hair, and she reached up and caught his hand and brought it between their faces so that she could look at him. ‘I want you to know.’

  ‘You can tell me later.’

  ‘No, now. It might be too hard to tell later.’

  ‘All right. But it makes no difference.’ He rose from his knees and, pulling a chair close to hers, sat down and took hold of her hands again.

  ‘I lived with him for a year as his wife.’

  Involuntarily his fingers stiffened and the joy was pressed temporarily out of him, but he kept his eyes steady and their expression unchanged until hers dropped away and she began slowly and haltingly to talk.

  ‘It happened after I had finished a year touring the provinces. I had saved up a little and I wanted a car. I knew a lot about cars. There was one of the Company, a Mr Fuller. He was getting elderly and had a mania for collecting car brochures and catalogues. On long, boring journeys he would talk cars, and I became bitten with the bug, and it was…it was when I went to a second-hand car mart that I met him—Arthur. He tried to sell me one car after another, but I took a fancy to the old Alvis. He was called away at one point and I continued to look round, and I was examining a car when a man came up to me and asked my opinion of it. Perhaps it was because I was hatless and in jeans that he took me for one of the staff. And it tickled me so that I kept it up. And when he got his eye on the Alvis I remembered all Mr Fuller had told me about that particular make, her being a grand car but very spirited on the brakes, and so on, and I was ladling this sort of thing out when I became aware that he—Arthur—was standing listening to me. But instead of being wild he winked encouragement. Well’—her voice became weary—‘to cut a long story short I sold that man a car, and Arthur said that if I’d work for a month in the showrooms he’d give me the Alvis, sales or no sales, he would take a chance.’

  She looked up at Peter. ‘That’s how it started. He was married and soon I got the Misunderstood Husband story. But when I met his wife I could well believe a little of it, for when there was nothing more between us than the business of selling cars she suspected the worst. After eighteen months he asked her for a divorce. She wouldn’t give it, so he left her and we lived together.’

  She paused here and wetted her lips, and drawing her hands from his she rubbed the palms together. ‘I had a baby.’

  Her words caused something to jerk within him, as if he had received a blow in the ribs from inside, but he still kept his eyes, unwavering, on her face. And she kept hers fixed on her hands.

  ‘It was born too soon—it died. I never felt the same after. Not ill, but not well.’ Her hands parted and she turned one palm upwards and examined it as if it were new to her, before continuing. ‘Then one day I found myself in hospital. And that was that. From then he suddenly developed a conscience, he remembered he had a lawful wife and he hadn’t played fair by her.’ Her voice trailed off. ‘There was never anyone else. Doctor Patterson—that was the short one, Roger—and the blond one, Tiffy, they helped to keep me sane. Tiffy did—did the…’

  Not swiftly, not slowly, but with a steady sureness he gathered her hands together again and their eyes met as he said, ‘It’s all past. Forget it, forget everything but you and me.’ He smiled, and had he analysed that smile he would have discovered it was, in a way, a smile of relief. There was no-one else, she had said. Somehow, deep down, knowing how she reacted on men he had imagined a train of them.

  ‘Listen, beloved.’ He paused at the sound of his own voice softly speaking the endearment, for it was the first time in his life he had used it. Then, his smile growing more tender, he went on, ‘You’re not to worry about a thing, not a thing. From now on I’ll do that. Think for you and’—he nodded—‘talk for you. Just you lie back there while I see about your dress.’ He would have liked to add to this: ‘My mother’ll bring it.’ But on this point he could not even let himself hope, so after holding her face for a moment close to his he left.

  In the kitchen all was quiet. Old Pop and Grandpop were seated, but taut, in their chairs. Harry was standing, his arm resting on the mantelpiece. No-one spoke when he entered the room, but they all looked at him. And when he saw that his mother wasn’t there he just returned their glances for a brief second, then went into the scullery without saying a word.

  Rosie was at the table making an effort to prepare the supper, and she did not move or raise her head when he asked, ‘Is the dress dry?’ but replied curtly, ‘You’d better find out.’

  With his face now set stiffly
he went to the airing rack and taking off the dress felt it, then moved to the table. And there he stood looking at her, watching her hands moving swiftly and fumbling over the dishes.

  ‘Mam.’

  She did not look up.

  ‘Do one thing for me, will you?’

  ‘I didn’t think you needed me to do anything for you.’ The moving of the dishes went on.

  ‘Take this in to her. Talk to her. She needs you…someone like you, more than me.’

  Rosie’s answer was to draw in a deep breath and turn from him to the sink. After a moment of watching her clattering with the dishes, he moved towards the door, and then her voice, gruff and biting, halted him. ‘Put it down,’ she said.

  It was enough. Putting the dress on a chair he went out of the scullery and through the kitchen again and into the passage.

  He was lifting his old mac off the rack when Harry appeared at the kitchen door. ‘Where you off to?’ he asked, unable to keep the acid note from his voice.

  ‘Mackenzies’.’

  ‘My God!’ Harry’s chest swelled. ‘Can’t you leave it for a day or two?’

  ‘No, I can’t.’ Peter spoke below his breath and drew his father back into the room again by pushing past him. Then he turned and closed the door so that their voices would at least be muted as Harry cried indignantly, ‘If you want to act Sir Galahad isn’t this as good a place as any for it? If she’s in the condition you say, you’re mad to move about.’

  The quip of Sir Galahad touched Peter to a flashing retort, but he bit on it and said with somewhat heavy sarcasm, ‘And enjoy the nice, quiet village life? It’s no good talking, you might as well save your breath.’ And on this remark, which was in no way calculated to soothe, he turned abruptly and swung out, while Harry, after a number of quick movements which appeared as though they might be a prelude to his wrecking the room, strode into the passage after him, and he, too, went out, but down the back garden and over the fence into the sodden fields.