‘I shouldn’t mind,’ said Nora.
‘You’ve got quite as much cause to as I have,’ said Annie. ‘But we’ll drop on him one of these days, my girl. What? Don’t you want to?’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Nora.
But as a matter of fact, Nora was much more vindictive than Annie.
One by one Annie went the round of the old flames. It so happened that Cissy Meakin left the tramway service in quite a short time. Her mother made her leave. Then John Thomas was on the qui-vive. He cast his eyes over his old flock. And his eyes lighted on Annie. He thought she would be safe now. Besides, he liked her.
She arranged to walk home with him on Sunday night. It so happened that her car would be in the depot at half past nine: the last car would come in at 10.15. So John Thomas was to wait for her there.
At the depot the girls had a little waiting-room of their own. It was quite rough, but cosy, with a fire and an oven and a mirror, and table and wooden chairs. The half dozen girls who knew John Thomas only too well had arranged to take service this Sunday afternoon. So, as the cars began to come in, early, the girls dropped into the waiting-room. And instead of hurrying off home, they sat around the fire and had a cup of tea. Outside was the darkness and lawlessness of wartime.
John Thomas came on the car after Annie, at about a quarter to ten. He poked his head easily into the girls’ waiting-room.
‘Prayer-meeting?’ he asked.
‘Ay,’ said Laura Sharp. ‘Ladies only.’
‘That’s me!’ said John Thomas. It was one of his favourite exclamations.
‘Shut the door, boy,’ said Muriel Baggaley.
‘On which side of me?’ said John Thomas.
‘Which tha likes,’ said Polly Birkin.
He had come in and closed the door behind him. The girls moved in their circle, to make a place for him near the fire. He took off his great-coat and pushed back his hat.
‘Who handles the teapot?’ he said.
Nora Purdy silently poured him out a cup of tea.
‘Want a bit o’ my bread and drippin’?’ said Muriel Baggaley to him.
‘Ay, give us a bit.’
And he began to eat his piece of bread.
‘There’s no place like home, girls,’ he said.
They all looked at him as he uttered this piece of impudence. He seemed to be sunning himself in the presence of so many damsels.
‘Especially if you’re not afraid to go home in the dark,’ said Laura Sharp.
‘Me! By myself I am.’
They sat till they heard the last tram come in. In a few minutes Emma Houselay entered.
‘Come on, my old duck!’ cried Polly Birkin.
‘It is perishing,’ said Emma, holding her fingers to the fire.
‘But — I’m afraid to, go home in, the dark,’ sang Laura Sharp, the tune having got into her mind.
‘Who’re you going with tonight, John Thomas?’ asked Muriel Baggaley, coolly.
‘Tonight?’ said John Thomas. ‘Oh, I’m going home by myself tonight — all on my lonely-O.’
‘That’s me!’ said Nora Purdy, using his own ejaculation.
The girls laughed shrilly.
‘Me as well, Nora,’ said John Thomas.
‘Don’t know what you mean,’ said Laura.
‘Yes, I’m toddling,’ said he, rising and reaching for his overcoat.
‘Nay,’ said Polly. ‘We’re all here waiting for you.’
‘We’ve got to be up in good time in the morning,’ he said, in the benevolent official manner.
They all laughed.
‘Nay,’ said Muriel. ‘Don’t leave us all lonely, John Thomas. Take one!’
‘I’ll take the lot, if you like,’ he responded gallantly.
‘That you won’t either,’ said Muriel, ‘Two’s company; seven’s too much of a good thing.’
‘Nay — take one,’ said Laura. ‘Fair and square, all above board, and say which.’
‘Ay,’ cried Annie, speaking for the first time. ‘Pick, John Thomas; let’s hear thee.’
‘Nay,’ he said. ‘I’m going home quiet tonight. Feeling good, for once.’
‘Whereabouts?’ said Annie. ‘Take a good ‘un, then. But tha’s got to take one of us!’
‘Nay, how can I take one,’ he said, laughing uneasily. ‘I don’t want to make enemies.’
‘You’d only make one’ said Annie.
‘The chosen one,’ added Laura.
‘Oh, my! Who said girls!’ exclaimed John Thomas, again turning, as if to escape. ‘Well — good-night.’
‘Nay, you’ve got to make your pick,’ said Muriel. ‘Turn your face to the wall, and say which one touches you. Go on — we shall only just touch your back — one of us. Go on — turn your face to the wall, and don’t look, and say which one touches you.’
He was uneasy, mistrusting them. Yet he had not the courage to break away. They pushed him to a wall and stood him there with his face to it. Behind his back they all grimaced, tittering. He looked so comical. He looked around uneasily.
‘Go on!’ he cried.
‘You’re looking — you’re looking!’ they shouted.
He turned his head away. And suddenly, with a movement like a swift cat, Annie went forward and fetched him a box on the side of the head that sent his cap flying and himself staggering. He started round.
But at Annie’s signal they all flew at him, slapping him, pinching him, pulling his hair, though more in fun than in spite or anger. He, however, saw red. His blue eyes flamed with strange fear as well as fury, and he butted through the girls to the door. It was locked. He wrenched at it. Roused, alert, the girls stood round and looked at him. He faced them, at bay. At that moment they were rather horrifying to him, as they stood in their short uniforms. He was distinctly afraid.
‘Come on, John Thomas! Come on! Choose!’ said Annie.
‘What are you after? Open the door,’ he said.
‘We shan’t — not till you’ve chosen!’ said Muriel.
‘Chosen what?’ he said.
‘Chosen the one you’re going to marry,’ she replied.
He hesitated a moment.
‘Open the blasted door,’ he said, ‘and get back to your senses.’ He spoke with official authority.
‘You’ve got to choose!’ cried the girls.
‘Come on!’ cried Annie, looking him in the eye.’ Come on! Come on!’
He went forward, rather vaguely. She had taken off her belt, and swinging it, she fetched him a sharp blow over the head with the buckle end. He sprang and seized her. But immediately the other girls rushed upon him, pulling and tearing and beating him. Their blood was now thoroughly up. He was their sport now. They were going to have their own back, out of him. Strange, wild creatures, they hung on him and rushed at him to bear him down. His tunic was torn right up the back, Nora had hold at the back of his collar, and was actually strangling him. Luckily the button burst. He struggled in a wild frenzy of fury and terror, almost mad terror. His tunic was simply torn off his back, his shirt-sleeves were torn away, his arms were naked. The girls rushed at him, clenched their hands on him and pulled at him: or they rushed at him and pushed him, butted him with all their might: or they struck him wild blows. He ducked and cringed and struck sideways. They became more intense.
At last he was down. They rushed on him, kneeling on him. He had neither breath nor strength to move. His face was bleeding with a long scratch, his brow was bruised.
Annie knelt on him, the other girls knelt and hung on to him. Their faces were flushed, their hair wild, their eyes were all glittering strangely. He lay at last quite still, with face averted, as an animal lies when it is defeated and at the mercy of the captor. Sometimes his eye glanced back at the wild faces of the girls. His breast rose heavily, his wrists were torn.
‘Now, then, my fellow!’ gasped Annie at length. ‘Now then — now — ’
At the sound of her terrifying, cold triumph, he suddenly started
to struggle as an animal might, but the girls threw themselves upon him with unnatural strength and power, forcing him down.
‘Yes — now, then!’ gasped Annie at length.
And there was a dead silence, in which the thud of heart-beating was to be heard. It was a suspense of pure silence in every soul.
‘Now you know where you are,’ said Annie.
The sight of his white, bare arm maddened the girls. He lay in a kind of trance of fear and antagonism. They felt themselves filled with supernatural strength.
Suddenly Polly started to laugh — to giggle wildly — helplessly — and Emma and Muriel joined in. But Annie and Nora and Laura remained the same, tense, watchful, with gleaming eyes. He winced away from these eyes.
‘Yes,’ said Annie, in a curious low tone, secret and deadly. ‘Yes! You’ve got it now! You know what you’ve done, don’t you? You know what you’ve done.’
He made no sound nor sign, but lay with bright, averted eyes, and averted, bleeding face.
‘You ought to be killed, that’s what you ought,’ said Annie, tensely. ‘You ought to be killed.’ And there was a terrifying lust in her voice.
Polly was ceasing to laugh, and giving long-drawn Oh-h-hs and sighs as she came to herself.
‘He’s got to choose,’ she said vaguely.
‘Oh, yes, he has,’ said Laura, with vindictive decision.
‘Do you hear — do you hear?’ said Annie. And with a sharp movement, that made him wince, she turned his face to her.
‘Do you hear?’ she repeated, shaking him.
But he was quite dumb. She fetched him a sharp slap on the face. He started, and his eyes widened. Then his face darkened with defiance, after all.
‘Do you hear?’ she repeated.
He only looked at her with hostile eyes.
‘Speak!’ she said, putting her face devilishly near his.
‘What?’ he said, almost overcome.
‘You’ve got to choose!’ she cried, as if it were some terrible menace, and as if it hurt her that she could not exact more.
‘What?’ he said, in fear.
‘Choose your girl, Coddy. You’ve got to choose her now. And you’ll get your neck broken if you play any more of your tricks, my boy. You’re settled now.’
There was a pause. Again he averted his face. He was cunning in his overthrow. He did not give in to them really — no, not if they tore him to bits.
‘All right, then,’ he said, ‘I choose Annie.’ His voice was strange and full of malice. Annie let go of him as if he had been a hot coal.
‘He’s chosen Annie!’ said the girls in chorus.
‘Me!’ cried Annie. She was still kneeling, but away from him. He was still lying prostrate, with averted face. The girls grouped uneasily around.
‘Me!’ repeated Annie, with a terrible bitter accent.
Then she got up, drawing away from him with strange disgust and bitterness.
‘I wouldn’t touch him,’ she said.
But her face quivered with a kind of agony, she seemed as if she would fall. The other girls turned aside. He remained lying on the floor, with his torn clothes and bleeding, averted face.
‘Oh, if he’s chosen — ’ said Polly.
‘I don’t want him — he can choose again,’ said Annie, with the same rather bitter hopelessness.
‘Get up,’ said Polly, lifting his shoulder. ‘Get up.’
He rose slowly, a strange, ragged, dazed creature. The girls eyed him from a distance, curiously, furtively, dangerously.
‘Who wants him?’ cried Laura, roughly.
‘Nobody,’ they answered, with contempt. Yet each one of them waited for him to look at her, hoped he would look at her. All except Annie, and something was broken in her.
He, however, kept his face closed and averted from them all. There was a silence of the end. He picked up the torn pieces of his tunic, without knowing what to do with them. The girls stood about uneasily, flushed, panting, tidying their hair and their dress unconsciously, and watching him. He looked at none of them. He espied his cap in a corner, and went and picked it up. He put it on his head, and one of the girls burst into a shrill, hysteric laugh at the sight he presented. He, however, took no heed, but went straight to where his overcoat hung on a peg. The girls moved away from contact with him as if he had been an electric wire. He put on his coat and buttoned it down. Then he rolled his tunic-rags into a bundle, and stood before the locked door, dumbly.
‘Open the door, somebody,’ said Laura.
‘Annie’s got the key,’ said one.
Annie silently offered the key to the girls. Nora unlocked the door.
‘Tit for tat, old man,’ she said. ‘Show yourself a man, and don’t bear a grudge.’
But without a word or sign he had opened the door and gone, his face closed, his head dropped.
‘That’ll learn him,’ said Laura.
‘Coddy!’ said Nora.
‘Shut up, for God’s sake!’ cried Annie fiercely, as if in torture.
‘Well, I’m about ready to go, Polly. Look sharp!’ said Muriel.
The girls were all anxious to be off. They were tidying themselves hurriedly, with mute, stupefied faces.
REX
SINCE every family has its black sheep, it almost follows that every man must have a sooty uncle. Lucky if he hasn’t two. However, it is only with my mother’s brother that we are concerned. She had loved him dearly when he was a little blond boy. When he grew up black, she was always vowing she would never speak to him again. Yet when he put in an appearance, after years of absence, she invariably received him in a festive mood, and was even flirty with him.
He rolled up one day in a dog-cart, when I was a small boy. He was large and bullet-headed and blustering, and this time, sporty. Sometimes he was rather literary, sometimes coloured with business. But this time he was in checks, and was sporty. We viewed him from a distance.
The upshot was, would we rear a pup for him. Now my mother detested animals about the house. She could not beat the mix-up of human with animal life. Yet she consented to bring up the pup.
My uncle had taken a large, vulgar public-house in a large and vulgar town. It came to pass that I must fetch the pup. Strange for me, a member of the Band of Hope, to enter the big, noisy, smelly plate-glass and mahogany public-house. It was called The Good Omen. Strange to have my uncle towering over me in the passage, shouting ‘Hello, Johnny, what d’yer want?’ He didn’t know me. Strange to think he was my mother’s brother, and that he had his bouts when he read Browning aloud with emotion and éclat.
I was given tea in a narrow, uncomfortable sort of living-room, half kitchen. Curious that such a palatial pub should show such miserable private accommodations, but so it was. There was I, unhappy, and glad to escape with the soft fat pup. It was winter-time, and I wore a big-flapped black overcoat, half cloak. Under the cloak-sleeves I hid the puppy, who trembled. It was Saturday, and the train was crowded, and he whimpered under my coat. I sat in mortal fear of being hauled out for travelling without a dog-ticket. However, we arrived, and my torments were for nothing.
The others were wildly excited over the puppy. He was small and fat and white, with a brown-and-black head: a fox terrier. My father said he had a lemon head — some such mysterious technical phraseology. It wasn’t lemon at all, but coloured like a field bee. And he had a black spot at the root of his spine.
It was Saturday night — bath-night. He crawled on the hearth-rug like a fat white teacup, and licked the bare toes that had just been bathed.
‘He ought to be called Spot,’ said one. But that was too ordinary. It was a great question, what to call him.
‘Call him Rex — the King,’ said my mother, looking down on the fat, animated little teacup, who was chewing my sister’s little toe and making her squeal with joy and tickles. We took the name in all seriousness.
‘Rex — the King!’ We thought it was just right. Not for years did I rea1ise that it was a sarcasm
on my mother’s part. She must have wasted some twenty years or more of irony on our incurable naïveté.
It wasn’t a successful name, really. Because my father and all the people in the street failed completely to pronounce the monosyllable Rex. They all said Rax. And it always distressed me. It always suggested to me seaweed, and rack-and-ruin. Poor Rex!
We loved him dearly. The first night we woke to hear him weeping and whinnying in loneliness at the foot of the stairs. When it could be borne no more, I slipped down for him, and he slept under the sheets.
‘I won’t have that little beast in the beds. Beds are not for dogs,’ declared my mother callously.
‘He’s as good as we are!’ we cried, injured.
‘Whether he is or not, he’s not going in the beds.’
I think now, my mother scorned us for our lack of pride. We were a little infra dig, we children.
The second night, however, Rex wept the same and in the same way was comforted. The third night we heard our father plod downstairs, heard several slaps administered to the yelling, dismayed puppy, and heard the amiable, but to us heartless voice saying ‘Shut it then! Shut thy noise, ’st hear? Stop in thy basket, stop there!’
‘It’s a shame!’ we shouted, in muffled rebellion, from the sheets.
‘I’ll give you shame, if you don’t hold your noise and go to sleep,’ called our mother from her room. Whereupon we shed angry tears and went to sleep. But there was a tension.
‘Such a houseful of idiots would make me detest the little beast, even if he was better than he is,’ said my mother.
But as a matter of fact, she did not detest Rexie at all. She only had to pretend to do so, to balance our adoration. And in truth, she did not care for close contact with animals. She was too fastidious. My father, however, would take on a real dog’s voice, talking to the puppy: a funny, high, sing-song falsetto which he seemed to produce at the top of his head. ‘’S a pretty little dog! ’s a pretty little doggy! — ay! — yes! — he is, yes! — Wag thy strunt, then! Wag thy strunt, Rexie! — Ha-ha! Nay, tha munna —’ This last as the puppy, wild with excitement at the strange falsetto voice, licked my father’s nostrils and bit my father’s nose with his sharp little teeth.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 627