Hamilton

by Catherine Cookson

  It was fifteen minutes later when, seemingly reluctantly, he came through the open doorway and, after glancing first at Miss Stickle, turned to me and said, ‘What’s this? What’s this?’

  ‘She’s had a turn.’

  He knelt down by my mother’s side and, taking her hand from her chest, he felt her pulse. Then quietly he said to her, ‘Mrs Carter, it’s all right. It’s all right,’ then rose and looked about him. Addressing me again, he said, ‘The couch in the sitting room, we’ll put her on there.’ And now turning abruptly to Miss Stickle, he went on, ‘You can give me a hand.’

  I was now surprised to hear Miss Stickle say, ‘She’s had a heart attack; is it wise to move her?’ especially after what she had previously said.

  ‘What do you suggest, madam, leave her on the floor all night? Take hold of her legs and help me lift her.’

  Miss Stickle obeyed him, albeit somewhat slowly, and between them, with me hovering at the side, they managed to settle her on the couch in the sitting room. And now he turned to me, saying, ‘Get some bedding and cover her up, then make a hot drink.’

  ‘Don’t they usually send them to hospital in such cases?’

  ‘What cases, madam?’

  I stopped for a moment and looked at them. They were both bristling.

  ‘I think she’s had a heart attack.’

  ‘You’re not paid to think about such matters, that’s my job. Now, I’d be obliged if you would leave us.’

  As Miss Stickle marched from the room, I followed her, and in the hall I caught up with her and said, placatingly, ‘Thank you. Thank you, Miss Stickle, for your help.’ But all she said was, ‘That man! He’s most unprofessional.’

  However on the doorstep, she turned and said quite kindly, ‘If you need me, you’ll know where to find me.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you, Miss Stickle.’ I sounded grateful, and indeed I was: neither Mrs Nelson nor Mrs McVitie would have come in and helped. I knew that.

  Blankets. I dashed upstairs and brought some, and a top sheet, from the linen cupboard, and when I entered the sitting room Doctor Kane was sitting by my mother’s side talking to her. ‘Come on,’ he was saying. ‘Come on. There’s nothing wrong, not what you think. The feeling will pass. I’m going to give you something to make you sleep, really sleep, then we’ll have a talk. Now you are going to be all right.’

  Nothing wrong? Nothing wrong?

  He turned to me and motioned me out of the room, and in the hall he said, ‘Don’t look so worried, it’s nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Hysteria.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nervous hysteria.’ He nodded. ‘I’m not surprised; I’ve been expecting it.’

  ‘Hysteria?’ I repeated.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I said, hysteria. Her nerves have got the better of her, causing her to show all the symptoms of a heart attack. It happens again and again: they think they’re going to die, they don’t. But one thing I do know.’ He wiped his fingers. ‘She should go away and have treatment. I’ve been telling her this for months past. What brought this on? Some climax, eh?’

  ‘I…I got a present; it’s my birthday. George had sent me a gold watch.’

  ‘Oh.’ His eyebrows made the usual effort to disappear into his thick brown wiry hair. ‘That would do it. Dear, dear. These women.’ He shook his head. ‘Ah well, I’ll be passing this way in a short while and I’ll drop you in some tablets. See that she takes one at night; it’ll make her sleep. But don’t encourage her to stay on her back during the day, she’ll be much better going about. And tomorrow make her a tasty light meal; and get her to eat it.’

  At the front door he turned and, looking at me, he said kindly, ‘No use wishing you a happy birthday, is it?’

  I didn’t answer, for, holding the door half closed, I was thinking: A tasty light meal. I knew nothing about cooking: she had never let me try my hand at anything in the cooking line. Dust and polish, yes, and clean brasses, especially the stair rods. She would see that I took them from their sockets every week. In fact every piece of furniture in the house was moved every week, especially those pieces standing on carpets, so the moths wouldn’t get a chance to breed.

  The sun coming through a narrow window near the front door fell onto the wrist watch on the side table, and the glinting light drew me to it. I picked it up. It was beautiful; and yet it had been the means of causing her to have hysteria. On thinking about the word and its implications, it didn’t surprise me because, looking back, I could see that she had always been hysterical. Yet what did surprise me was that the effect could resemble a heart attack.

  I went back into the room and drew a chair to her side. After a while I realised she was awake but she didn’t open her eyes, and so I said softly, ‘You are going to be all right. The doctor says you are going to be all right. He’s bringing some medicine.’

  Her only response was to turn on her side, her back to me, and as she did so it came to me that she was not only wide awake now but had been so all along.

  Four

  It was from my sixteenth birthday that May Stickle became a regular visitor to the house. Strangely, my mother took to her. And it seemed natural that her brother Howard should at times call in too.

  His manner towards my mother was very sympathetic: he spoke to her as if she was an invalid, and she seemed to enjoy this. I knew she looked forward to his visits but, as I put it naively to myself, she couldn’t fall for him because he was only twenty-six and she was thirty-seven. But then, George had been younger too. Anyway she was still married to George and divorces took a long time. So this situation didn’t worry me; in fact, I was pleased when he came in because he was always very nice to me. I say very nice, he was quietly polite, asking me how I was; and how was I progressing with my secretarial course which I’d taken up since leaving school. Looking at him as I often did now, I realised he could have been very good looking if he’d had a body like George, but he was too thin, weedy…scraggy.

  During this time, as Gran Carter put it, George was going strong with Peggy Wicklow; and Gran Carter wasn’t altogether too happy about it. Flibbertigibbet, she called Peggy Wicklow. What George wanted, in Gran’s opinion, was a steady lass who would give him bairns, because he loved bairns. That was why, she said, he was so fond of me. And he was fond of me; she emphasised that he thought the world of me.

  During the months that followed, my life seemed to enter a quiet period. I spent a lot of time up in my room; and I talked a lot to Hamilton. I’d had to have an understanding with Hamilton. He had sat on the foot of the bed one night, and he looked no bigger than myself, and this was strange about him because most times when he appeared, he did so as a full-sized stallion, and generally on the move, either galloping in front of people, or pawing the ground, or flashing his white tail from side to side. Yet this night, there he sat, his forelegs tucked under him, his back legs stretched out, his tail gently flicking the counterpane, and his face, his beautiful big strong face, looking fully at me. And when I said to him, ‘Now look here, Hamilton!’ he said, Look where?

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I replied.

  Well if we can’t be silly here, we can’t be silly anywhere, can we?

  That was right. I had to be on my guard when I was talking to people. If they were people I liked, then he rarely appeared, but if I didn’t like them and I felt any animosity at all, he galloped like mad around them. Sometimes he kicked them in the bottom and let out a great neigh. And at these times I had to mumble and explain myself in some way or other. It was very disturbing. So I talked to him plain this night. ‘Look! it’s all right for you,’ I said; ‘you haven’t got to stand the racket.’

  You’re talking like Gran Carter.

  ‘All right. I could do worse,’ I answered.

  True. True. He threw his head back and his mane bounced and a piece fell down between his eyes and covered the white spot on the top of his nose. I said now, ‘Promise me that you will keep your pla
ce when I meet strangers or someone I don’t like.’

  Well now. Well now. He jerked his back legs out. That doesn’t rest with me, it’s up to you, isn’t it?

  He was right in a way. Yet I didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it. Every time I thought contrary, there he was.

  As I stared at him, I said, ‘I wonder if other people talk to horses…or…or things or…?’

  Yes; yes, if they’re like you they will.

  ‘I doubt if there are many people like me.’

  You’d be surprised. You can never judge anyone by their outside. Take your mother for instance. Everyone thinks she’s such a refined creature, but you know she’s not. Don’t you?

  ‘I don’t want to talk about my mother.’

  Better if you did.

  ‘Who would I talk to? There’s only George and Gran and it’s like giving her away to talk to them.’

  There’s the doctor.

  Yes, there was the doctor. I nodded my head, then added, ‘He knows all about her in any case.’

  But he doesn’t know all about you, does he? Or about me.

  I looked at him. His eyes were on me, great dark orbs, and after a moment he said, That would be something, wouldn’t it, if you told him about me. What do you think would happen then?

  ‘He’d think I was up the pole. He’d likely want me to see a psychiatrist.’

  There’s no doubt about it. But don’t worry; if he does I’ll go with you.

  ‘Oh, Hamilton.’ I threw my notebook towards the bottom of the bed and it went through him and hit the wooden foot and he was gone.

  That night I wrote about Hamilton for the first time. I filled ten closely written pages telling how I’d first made his acquaintance, and after I had finished it I saw him for a moment. He was standing near the bedroom door, full-sized now, and he said solemnly, I would tear that lot up if I were you; it’s dangerous to leave it about. She’s only got to see that and…well …

  I knew he was right. So the next day, which was Saturday, I waited until she had gone out, then went up into the attic. I had a job to pull the swing ladder down, it was a tricky apparatus. Only once before had I been up here, and that time George had carried me up.

  I tore the ten pages out of my notebook and put them in a brown envelope, then looked for a loose board under which to place them. I hadn’t far to look, there were numbers of them, mostly where the roof sloped down sharply towards the floor. I chose one, prised it up and there, underneath, were the rafters and, about nine inches below, a layer of plaster.

  I laid the first pages of Hamilton gently down on the plaster, replaced the floorboard, then hurried towards the trapdoor; but on nearing it my eye was attracted to a trunk stuck in the corner to the left of me. It was covered with foreign labels. I lifted the rounded lid and saw it held clothes. Putting my hand down by the side, I felt the layers and layers of them. The material felt like soft silk, but in the dimness of the room I couldn’t distinguish exactly what they were. I pulled down the lid again, telling myself that someday I would come up here and go through it. It would be exciting. When I eventually did, it was, and saddening, so saddening, that I cried for the torment my mother had created in herself.

  Five

  My mother died a fortnight before my seventeenth birthday and four days before her own. She’d had two pseudo heart attacks during the past months, the second one occurring shortly after Miss Stickle told her that Howard had become engaged to be married. The third and final one occurred when there appeared on television one evening the smiling face of George being interviewed by a B.B.C. man and being praised for his bravery in rescuing a mother and two children from a burning building. He laughed about his hair being singed and his lack of eyebrows and made light of his bandaged hands. The interviewer had eulogised this man who had gone back into the blazing house again after bringing out the mother and one child. He had dropped the second child from an upper window into safe arms, then had, himself, been almost overcome by smoke and fumes but had somehow managed to get downstairs before collapsing. The woman he had saved had put her arms around him and kissed him and George had laughed his big hearty laugh.

  I was sitting wide-eyed, my mouth agape and my heart beating rapidly with pleasure, and my mind was crying: Oh George, George. I knew you were a brave man, I always knew you were a brave man. Oh George, George.

  The television screen went blank. My mother had turned it off, and she stood and stared at me before rushing from the room. I heard her run upstairs; then I heard her call. When I got into her bedroom she was writhing on the floor.

  I didn’t send for the doctor but helped her onto the bed, saying all the time, ‘It’s all right. It’s all right. It’ll pass. You know it’ll pass. Lie still now, lie still. I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  I wasn’t long downstairs making the tea but when I brought it up she wasn’t on the bed. The bathroom door was closed, so I put the tray down and waited. She was likely being sick. I waited for ten minutes before I knocked on the door, saying, ‘Are you all right, Mother?’

  When I got no answer, I tried the door. It was locked.

  For the first time in my life I experienced panic.

  We had by now got the phone in and I rushed downstairs and phoned Doctor Kane.When the nurse said he was busy in the surgery with patients, I yelled at her, ‘It’s important! I think my mother has done something silly.’

  At that she put me through to him, and after a moment he said, ‘Quiet. Quiet. Tell me what happened.’ And when I told him and finished, ‘She’s been in there now over a quarter of an hour, more,’ he said, ‘I’ll be round directly.’

  He was as good as his word. He, too, tried the door but couldn’t get it open. He called, but there was no answer. He told me to stand back, and then took his big foot and rammed it against the keyhole. There was a crunching of wood but the door didn’t open. The third time he kicked at it, it sprang back.

  She was lying on the floor. There were two empty bottles near her and one on the basin top. He said quietly, ‘Go and call an ambulance.’

  I rushed to do as he bade me. The ambulance was there within five minutes; within another five minutes she was in hospital. I went with her, and I know they worked on her for hours, but she died at eleven o’clock that night.

  George and Gran Carter were with me. I don’t know how they got to know but they reached the hospital about half past nine. I slept at their house that night.

  At the inquest the verdict was suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed.

  After the funeral George and Gran sat with me in the sitting room.

  ‘Well, lass’—George looked at me—‘what you goin’ to do? I know you’re goin’ to this typing school, but you can’t live here on your own. My advice to you is to sell up and come and live with us. You were never one for fancy things. As you know, it’s no palace, but you’ll be happy.’

  I knew I would, but at the same time I also knew that somehow I didn’t want to leave this house. Why? I couldn’t explain. It wasn’t only because I’d been born here; perhaps it was because I knew that this house was mine now, I actually had something of my own, I wasn’t dependant on anyone. What money my mother had left would be mine too. I should know tomorrow when I went to the solicitor.

  Gran Carter took my hand and said, ‘He’s right, lass; you couldn’t live here on your own.’

  I surprised them by saying, ‘Yes, I could, Gran. I…I could live here happily, comparatively happily anyway, now there’s no-one to…to…’ I had almost said, torment me, but I replaced it with ‘look after’; then added, ‘In a few days’ time I’ll be seventeen; and so I should be able to look after myself.’

  ‘You’re still a bairn.’ George had his hand on my shoulder, rocking me gently.

  ‘I don’t feel a bairn, George. Well, I mean part of me doesn’t. And yet another part feels so simple, I sometimes think I haven’t been born yet.’ I smiled at him.

  ‘It isn’t good f
or you to live on your own,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I won’t be on my own really. I shall be at the school most of the day, and then I could pop in on my way back to see you, that is when you’re not off gallivanting.’ I nodded towards him even jovially. And he, taking it up, said, ‘Aw! now, now, don’t be like me ma; let me have me fling when I’m young, I’ll never be eighteen again.’

  Oh, George was funny.

  Gran Carter now said to me, ‘Does that Stickle woman come in often?’

  ‘Yes; she’s been very good, very kind.’

  ‘Some piece that.’ George grinned. ‘A pickle of Stickle to handle, that one. Once round her, twice round Penshaw Monument.’

  ‘It was nice of them to come to the funeral,’ I said, and looked from one to the other.

  Now they both nodded, saying, ‘Aye, yes, it was.’

  Apparently the manner of one’s dying still affected many people and some in the terrace must have stayed away from the funeral because my mother had killed herself.

  Then Gran said, ‘Does he pop in often, young Stickle?’

  ‘Sometimes he did, to see Mother; that was until he became engaged.’

  ‘Oh, he’s engaged to be married? That’s good. That’s good.’ Gran nodded at me, and I said now, ‘And he’s not young, Gran, he’s nearly twenty-eight I should say.’

  ‘Oh is he? Well, that’s a terrible age, isn’t it?’ Gran pulled a face at me. ‘It makes our Georgie here old enough to be his father.’

  ‘Oh, hold your hand a bit, Ma. Hold your hand a bit.’

  And so went the talk in the sitting room. Only when I persuaded them that I was quite all right and that I would be happy on my own, did they leave me; but not without qualms, I knew.

  The door had hardly closed on them when Miss Stickle came in the back way. She had the habit of tapping on the door and at the same time opening it.

  ‘How are you now, dear?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I’m all right, Miss Stickle.’