Hamilton

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘You must call me May, dear. Miss Stickle sounds so stiff, so formal, and I’m your friend.’

  I didn’t think I could ever call her May. She didn’t look like a May. May trees bloomed and smelled nice, they were the harbingers of summer. Miss Stickle conjured up a thistle in my mind, proggly, not to everybody’s taste. Yet she had been very kind to me.

  She now walked through the kitchen, then through the hall and into the sitting room.

  She seemed to like our sitting room. When she sat down on the couch, she put her hand out and drew me down beside her. It struck me for a moment as if it was she who was at home and I the visitor.

  ‘Well, what are you going to do, dear? What are your plans?’

  I answered calmly, ‘I mean to stay on here, Miss Stickle.’

  ‘You are not going to sell the house then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’ll be very lonely for you.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind that. I’m used to being alone.’

  ‘But you’ll miss your mother.’

  I paused, ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘perhaps. But I…I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to finish my course at the typing school.’

  ‘Yes. Well, that’s wise.’ And her head on one side, she added slowly, ‘I suppose you would like to be a secretary?’

  She said this as if she thought there was very little chance of my ever becoming one. It had surprised the teacher at the school that I had taken to the typing so well. When I had first applied for the course she seemed dubious that I would be able to type at all. But all I did was sit slightly sidewards, draw my right arm in and stretch my left one to its full extent. It had been natural for me to do so many things this way, and I didn’t feel awkward. In fact, she asked me if I had been practising at home. One of the pupils had said spitefully when she thought I was out of earshot, ‘She’ll pass in shorthand without taking exams.’

  That was one of the times Hamilton had appeared and galloped all over her.

  I answered Miss Stickle now by saying, ‘No, I have no intention of putting in for such a post, but I would like to set up a small business at home here.’ I looked about the room now. ‘Do typing for other people, writers and such.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a very good idea. But…but in the meantime will you have enough to live on?’

  It was a question and I said, ‘Yes; yes, I suppose so. I won’t get details until tomorrow when I see the solicitor.’

  ‘Oh well, I hope everything works out as you would wish. Anyway, you know we are always at hand. Howard is very concerned for you.’

  ‘He is?’

  ‘Yes; yes, he is. He was just saying yesterday that you’ve had a very sad life; that you never seem to have much fun or pleasure. Not that he thinks young girls should gad about. Oh, no, he’s got very strict ideas, but as he said, there are limits, one must have a little recreation. We used to play tennis a lot when Father was alive. We lived in Gosforth then and our circumstances were so different from what they are now. Oh yes, so different.’ She sighed, then went on, ‘Howard wasn’t intended for the tailoring, you know. Oh, no; it was rather a come down. But there, that’s all in the past. As he says, life must be faced squarely. But my dear, I’m not at all in favour of the partner he’s chosen to spend his future life with.’

  ‘You’re not?’

  ‘No. No, I’m not. Between you and me she isn’t of the same class. You understand?’

  I remained silent.

  ‘Common. Utterly, utterly. She’s in the office of the establishment. Proximity, you know. This is what it’s all about, proximity. Half the people wouldn’t be married today if they weren’t thrown together haphazardly by fortune. Proximity.’

  Proximity, proximity, proximity. Hamilton was galloping round the couch. I followed his progress and when he stopped at the end of it, his head over Miss Stickle’s, I looked at him imploringly and when he bared his teeth and took a strand of the top coil of her hair, I closed my eyes for a second, and opened them quickly again as Miss Stickle’s hand came on mine saying, ‘You’re tired, my dear, and slightly overwrought. I can see that. I’ll go and let you get to bed. You’re sure you’re not afraid to sleep alone?’

  ‘No, no.’ I rose hastily from the couch, she more leisurely, but as she preceded me down the room there he was again right behind her, and he turned his back on her and kicked her, as George used to say, in the back of the front, because my mother had objected to his frequent use of the word backside. I saw her rise in the air and land in the middle of the hall.

  In the hall she turned to me and said, ‘You’re half asleep now, you’re dropping on your feet; I’ll say goodnight, my dear. But don’t forget, we are always near, we are always thinking of you. You need never be alone.’

  After bolting the door, I came back into the hall and I thought of Hamilton swivelling round on his forelegs and kicking our guest, and I started to laugh.

  My mother had been buried that day and here I was laughing. Was there something wrong with me? Perhaps, because the fact that Hamilton didn’t like Miss Stickle at all should have warned me. Yes, it should have warned me, but it didn’t. I just thought it was that funny side of me that would emerge at the most odd moments. Some years were to pass before I realised there was more to my funny side than that, much more.

  I look back on the months that followed as a happy time. And so many things happened. I passed my typing exam and got top marks; and as a result of this I put an advert in the paper:

  Home typing done. First-class work.

  (I thought I was qualified to say that.)

  Grammatical corrections.

  (That was a bit of a nerve; but still I’d been very good at English at school, especially essays, and seldom had red ticks against my punctuation or grammar.)

  Paper provided. One and six per thousand words.

  Gran Carter saw the advert and was highly delighted; especially, as she said, about the grammar bits. Professional like it sounded, she said. And I laughed at her and hugged her when she went on, ‘How about giving me a few lessons, ’cos eeh! I know I talk awful.’

  I knew she talked awful. Often when thinking about her, my thoughts would run as she was apt to talk: ‘What time it is!’ she would say. I’d even said this out loud once or twice, only to hear my mother cry, ‘There you are! There you are! That’s what comes of that association.’ And then there was her habit of interspersing the word ‘like’ at the end of every sentence, or sticking it in the middle of one: ‘You know what I mean like. As I said like. Eeh! it was awful like. I nearly had a fit like.’

  I often wondered how this word came to be used as it was. However, my advert promised to do away with such deficiencies, at least in the writing of them. But when I saw the advert in print I went hot from head to toe. Who was I to say that I could correct people’s writing when my own went rambling on, especially when I was writing about Hamilton. Sometimes I could do a full page on him without one dot or curl of punctuation.

  During this time, too, my appearance changed a little but I don’t think for the better. Gran had me go to Peggy Wicklow’s to have my hair done. Peggy Wicklow had two assistants but she did me the honour of attending to me herself. The result was startling to say the least. She had cut my hair shoulder length, permed it and curled it, and the reflection from the mirror showed me a mass of fizz with a small face in the middle of it. And the face looked all eyes and mouth because they were both wide in astonishment.

  ‘Now, how d’you like that?’ she said.

  What could I say? I said, ‘I look different.’

  ‘Yes, you do, you do, indeed. It’s an improvement, I should say. What d’you think?’

  ‘I…I’ll have to get used to it.’ Once outside the shop I took my scarf from beneath my coat and put it over my head, pulling it tight in an effort to hide the corkscrews surrounding me.

  When five minutes later I took off the scarf in Gran’s kitchen, she looked at me without speaking for a moment, then s
aid, ‘Aw, lass, I don’t think that style suits you. She should have done something different.’

  ‘Can I wash it out, Gran?’

  ‘You’ll have a hard job, pet, it’s a perm. Still if you get at it with one of those wiry brushes you might get it flattened a bit. Eeh! you know something?’ She screwed up her face. ‘She’s a bit of a bitch. And our Georgie is finding that out, for since he’s got free, you know, since your mam died, she’s been at him to get hooked…you know, married.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Doesn’t he want to, I mean get married?’

  ‘Not to her, lass, not to her. She was all right on the side. You know what I mean?’

  Yes, I knew what she meant. I imagined I knew a lot of things by now. It was a pity that I had to learn later and painfully that I knew nothing about life or people; I was infantile, and an idiot as far as reading character was concerned.

  ‘You know what?’ Gran handed me a cup of tea now, then sat down on the black imitation leather couch fronting the fire. ‘He’s for doin’ a bunk.’

  ‘He…he hasn’t done anything wrong? I mean . . ’

  ‘No, no. That’s me, not explainin’ meself properly. Although mind, it wouldn’t surprise me if afore long he hadn’t to do a bunk…that kind of a bunk, because Peggy Wicklow’s brother is on the fiddle in more ways than one—runs a bloody orchestra if you ask me—and they’ve pulled our Georgie in with them, things droppin’ off lorries, you know.’

  It was I who now screwed up my face as I looked at her and repeated—I had a habit of repeating people’s words; this is what I suppose caused many people to think I was dim—‘You mean…dropping off lorries?’

  ‘Aye, I mean just that, lass.’

  ‘Stolen goods?’

  ‘Well, not exactly stolen. You know what I mean. Lightenin’ the loads on lorries you know, a bit here an’ there. Oh, the bosses can afford it. An’ they’re all at it, ’specially them drivin’ stuff to the docks. Wicklow’s brother is one. But he’s got to have a lifter, somebody to pick up the stuff when it’s dropped, if you get what I mean.’

  I got what she meant all right and I felt a bit sick. Fancy George doing that. But worse still, if he ever got caught and was sent to prison.

  ‘Anyway, his heart’s not in it. He’s not that type, our Georgie: he’d give his boots off his feet then go an’ buy a pair of laces an’ find he had nothin’ to put them in. That’s how his mind works. He does things without thinkin’ and then when he thinks after, he thinks what a bloody fool he’s been and says it’ll not happen again. It usually doesn’t, not in the same way, but there are lots of other ways left. Still, that’s our Georgie. Anyway, it wouldn’t surprise me if he goes off down south and not afore long, and oh God! lass, I’ll miss him. But I’d rather he go than get hooked up with Wicklow. And he’ll be killin’ two birds with one stone, getting out of her brother’s clutches an’ all. As I said to him, fancy goin’ along the line for a box of safety razors. They thought they were gettin’ small radios, you know the kind that the bairns carry round with them, but no, hundreds of little safety razors, when most men are using ’lectric ones! He brought a box here’—she thumbed towards the back kitchen—‘and I said to him, “You can get that lot out of here, an’ quick. Anyway, what the hell did you bring them for? What can we do with safety razors?” An’ he said, “I thought you might want to shave your legs.”’

  She pushed me and knocked me almost sideways on the couch and we both laughed as she cried, ‘Me, shave me legs! Look at me varicose veins.’ She twisted her leg towards me. ‘The knots are standing out like plonkers. Shave me legs, my God!’

  Her legs were a dreadful sight. Yet here I was laughing at them, almost doubled up. Then I happened to turn my head towards the corner of the room where the sideboard was, and there was Hamilton. He was sitting on it, looking like an enormous dog. His head was back, his mouth was open, and his lips were not only revealing his teeth but his gums, and, like me, he was shaking with laughter.

  ‘What is it?’ Gran said, following my gaze; then she exclaimed loudly, ‘Oh, don’t look over in that corner; I’ll get down to the sideboard sometime. There’s no place to put anything, so everything gets pushed on there. Paddy’s market isn’t in it.’

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t looking at the sideboard, Gran. Well, I wasn’t thinking about it, just about you and your legs.’ I laid a gentle finger on her knee.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about them; they’ll be here as long as me. You know, I remember reading a story somewhere when I was young and it had a rhyme in it and it went: It wasn’t the cough that carried her off, it was the coffin they carried her off in. I can never remember where I read it, but I often think of it an’ laugh.’

  ‘Where’s George now?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, somewhere across the channel, as far as I can gather; he’s taken on the long journeys. He enjoys them. Hissy on parlour francis. That’s what he said when he came in that door last week. Eeh by! I hissy on parlour francised him, ’cos he was tight.’

  Ici…on…parle français. Oh, her granny was a scream. Better than going to the pictures.

  When I left her on that particular day her last words to me were, ‘Does that woman still come in…big May?’ And I said, ‘Yes; she often pops in.’

  ‘Does she ever try to borrow anything?’

  ‘Oh no.’ I shook my head.

  ‘Well, that’s a good thing. I believe in the saying, never a lender or a borrower be.’ Then with a wicked grin on her face she leant towards me and whispered, ‘Have you got half a crown to spare until Monday, hinny?’ before pushing me away …

  Two things happened that week.

  It was about nine o’clock on the Friday night and I was up in the attic hiding away some more bits I had done on Hamilton. I’d only asked myself once why I should hide scraps of writing, and the answer was that if I were to die through an accident or some such and anyone was to find them they would think I was nuts. Well, sometimes now I thought I must be nuts, because Hamilton was becoming more real to me than the people I met during the day; that was except Gran and George. May, although I saw more of her than of anyone else, was excluded for some reason or other; Hamilton didn’t even take to her. Yet she continued to be so kind and thoughtful.

  Anyway, I knew why I hid these bits of writing; I also knew why I didn’t like going up into the attic at all now. I had been through the trunk that I’d looked into the night I had first hidden my writing on Hamilton and the condition of the contents told me more about my mother’s life than a whole book could have done, for under the layers of silk underwear I found what remained of her wedding gown. I say what remained, the gown was all there. It was white satin and cream lace, but it was torn into shreds. There must have been at least a hundred pieces of it, but these had been meticulously laid out on tissue paper, one layer to form the skirt, another layer to form the bodice, and the third layer the long narrow sleeves.

  Sitting on the floor with the evidence of despair around me, I cried and cried for her. Whether she had done it before my father left her or after I don’t know. But she had done it, and systematically ripped the symbol of marriage into shreds.

  Poor Mother. I had at one time hated her and felt I had reason to, for she had never given me any love, but now when she was no more I loved her with a deep compassionate love.

  I had replaced everything in the trunk as I found it, but on my journeys up to the attic my eyes were always drawn to it and the sight made me sad, for in it lay a life of disillusionment that had led to despair.

  But there I was, the floorboard in my hand, stuffing some more Hamilton sheets down to join the others when I heard the doorbell. It was the front doorbell, so I knew it wouldn’t be May.

  It rang four times before I reached the hall and opened the door, and there stood George.

  ‘What’s kept you so long?’ he said, passing me. ‘I knew you were in; the light’s on in the sitting room. Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Up in the attic.’<
br />
  ‘In the attic! What were you doing up there?…Can you pull the steps down?’

  ‘Oh yes; I’m a big girl now.’ I grinned at him and he put out his hand and ruffled my hair, which still wasn’t flat, and he remarked on it: ‘By, she made a mess of you, didn’t she? Me ma was flaming mad. She didn’t let you know that, but she was. She did it on purpose, I mean Peg. She’s a bitch you know, a jealous bitch. Have you got the fire on? It’s enough to freeze you out.’

  ‘Yes, the electric’s on in the study. I’m using that as a kind of office now.’

  ‘Oh, aye. I hear you’re in business. How’s it goin’?’

  ‘Up till now I’ve been swamped with silence.’

  ‘Aw, never you mind; it takes a time to get started.’

  When we were seated in the study, one each side of the electric fire, I looked at him and noticed he had on his best suit and overcoat. I said to him, ‘Aren’t you going to take off your coat?’ And he answered, ‘No, pet. I haven’t much time. I’m meetin’ a fellow round quarter past ten in the market.’

  ‘Oh, George.’ I lowered my head and he came at me now, saying, ‘What d’you mean, oh, George, like that?’

  ‘Well, Gran told me. You’ll get into trouble.’

  ‘Aw, lass.’ He reached out and took my hand. ‘He isn’t that kind of fellow. He’s just a man who’s giving me a lift down south.’

  ‘You are going down south?’

  ‘Yes. I’m popping off once again. People are always popping out of your life one way or another, aren’t they, lass? And you know something, I hate to go for one thing, no two: I’m going to miss you and Ma. But I’ve got to get away. You see, it’s Peg. She’s aiming to get me up the aisle. Now things weren’t too bad when your mother was alive, there was a time limit afore I could get a divorce, but these last few months since she’s gone, oh, my, the pressure’s got so bad. It’s funny what pressure does, it sort of pushes your eyes open, makes you see things. If the hand is light on you, so to speak, you can carry on happily, never trouble to work things out, come day go day, God send Sunday, so to speak. You know what I mean. But once the pressure starts it gets your old napper workin’—he tapped his forehead—‘and you ask yourself how you would look at this kind of life if it was legal like. An’ that’s what I’ve done, and I know I’m not up to it.’