Hamilton

by Catherine Cookson

  It sounded too beautiful. In a daze I nodded: ‘Oh, yes I agree with you, companionship is important. Oh yes, yes,’ I said.

  No word of love had been spoken, not even liking, but at the time it didn’t strike me as odd. I had nothing to compare this proposal with except the romantic stories I had read; and these I knew at bottom were but figments of the authors’ imagination, nice figments, but nevertheless, figments. So when he said, ‘Well, my dear, what do you say?’ I said politely, ‘Thank you, Howard. I would like to, I mean, become engaged. Yes, thank you very much.’

  At this he leant towards me and slowly put his lips on mine. I didn’t see what his face looked like because I closed my eyes. But his lips were moist and soft and sent a shiver down my spine.

  ‘That’s settled then.’ He rose from the couch and buttoning his waistcoat—he was always buttoning his waistcoat; odd, but I never saw him unbutton it, yet he was always buttoning it—he said, ‘I must now go and tell the happy news to May. She’ll be delighted. She’s very fond of you is May.’

  I made no answer to this. Even if I wanted to I couldn’t because there he was, that great black shining beast with the white tail, the two front hoofs and a spot of white between his eyes, galloping round the room like mad. He was kicking things right and left and as I walked towards the door with Howard he galloped between us and I stepped quickly to the side and Howard put his arm out, saying playfully, ‘Oh dear, you’re tipsy. It’s all the drink you haven’t had.’

  I managed to laugh.

  I opened the door and he stood on the step for a moment looking out into the night, saying nothing; then abruptly he patted my arm, said, ‘Goodnight, Maisie,’ and was gone up the street.

  When I turned into the hall, there was Hamilton sitting on his haunches, his front legs well apart, his head thrust forward, a wild angry expression on his face. As I passed him he said, Don’t kid yourself he’s in love with you or…And I snapped back, ‘I’m not kidding myself. As he said, it’s for companionship. In a way he seems as lonely as I am.’

  Lonely, me foot. You know what he’s after. George knew what they were both after. You must have been blind if you haven’t seen May’s envious eyes round the house. And they don’t own their property either. And they know you’ve got a bit of money.

  ‘Shut up!’ I thrust open the study door, went to the desk and started to write.

  I wrote to Hamilton rather than talked to him because I always seemed to come off second best when I talked to him, and at the moment I was upset. I was engaged to be married, I told him; I knew that no word of love or affection had been spoken, but that I didn’t expect it, I was lucky to get a proposal. All right, all right, May might have encouraged her brother along the line he had taken with her eye on this house, but I wasn’t marrying May, I was marrying Howard. May would have her house, Howard and I would live here. I would clear out the end room and he could bring his collection of bottles with him. He’d like that. And I must really learn to cook. I could never hope to serve him meals like May, but I would improve on what I was turning out now. So Hamilton, there it is, I wrote, it’s as much as I can expect from life, more, because you know I never thought any man would ask me, or would want to live with me. I have no brilliant conversation, I’ve talked too long to you to be at ease with people, but he seems to understand me, and…and I shall try to make him happy. So there, this chapter is closed, Hamilton. Once I am married, I…I’m not likely to want you any more and you can go back to…well, wherever you came from in me. But I’ll never forget you, never, because you have given me moments of glee that I would never have known otherwise.

  I took the pages, went up into the attic, raised the floorboard and put them among their companions, thinking, That episode of my life is finished.

  Some hope. The voice sounded like Gran Carter’s, but as I turned round there he was, jumping out of the attic, down onto the landing. As I myself reached the landing I saw him galloping through the window in the end wall, then right across the playing fields, across the park, on, on, that beautiful, shining, magnificent friend that my mind had given me for comfort during all the lonely trying years.

  Six

  ‘Aw, lass. What have y’been and gone and done? Promised to marry that fellow!’ The look on her face made me squirm and I turned my head away and walked to the fire and held out my hands towards it. And when she said, not intending to cause me any pain but nevertheless doing so, ‘Lass, if he’s proposed to you he’s after something, and it isn’t far to look. It’s your house and all the fine bits that’s in it, and your nest-egg. I’m sorry to say this but he’s the type, that man, and his sister an’ all, who don’t do things without a motive like. Aw, don’t be upset, lass, I mean it kindly. I…I think too much of you. You’re like me own and I don’t want to see you makin’ a mistake.’

  I turned to her, blinking the tears from my eyes as I said, ‘I won’t get the chance to make many mistakes, Gran, not me. All right, it might be a mistake, but I’ve got to take it.’

  I watched her sit down on the couch with a plop, then bend forward and lift up the bottom of her skirt, turn the hem towards her and start picking at it as if she were pulling at the threads, and as she did so she muttered, ‘Eeh! I wish our Georgie was here. He’d know what to do.’

  ‘Gran’—I sat down beside her and took her hand—‘I’m going to marry Howard. I know you won’t be the only one who’ll think he had ulterior motives in asking me, but over the past months I’ve got to know him and I think he’ll make a good companion.’

  ‘Oh, to hell with that, lass!’ She threw my hands off her. ‘Bugger companions! That’s not what you want out of marriage at your time of life. That’s all right for the old ‘uns. Even me, you wouldn’t get me at this stage taking anybody just for a companion. Don’t you know what it’s all about?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I know what it’s all about.’

  ‘Well then, all I can say is if you do, you’re a bloody fool to go on with it. Companionship!’ she snorted, then rose from the couch and went into the kitchen.

  I’d said I knew what it was all about. But what did I know all about? Quite candidly I knew nothing about marriage except what I’d read in the romantic books. There had been no whispered conversations in corners with other girls for me; there had been no innuendoes; no hints that I could pick up and dissect. Katie hadn’t been like that. And she was married and she would know all about it now. But she must have been unhappy for she had left her husband. If we had still been friends, we might have talked…I hadn’t understood Katie’s changed attitude towards me, nor her mother’s, not at that time anyway. It was her father who explained it to me. I met him in the street one day when he was very drunk. He had doted on Katie and so he was very bitter about this, and he said to me, ‘Life’s funny, Maisie. Aye, it’s funny. The wife was against you and my lass being pally because she thought it would spoil Katie’s chances, you being as you were then. She thought Katie wouldn’t be able to meet any suitable fellow if you were along, and who did she meet? That rotter. I never liked him, not from the word go. But here’s you now, comfortably settled in your own house. And you’ve filled out a lot, you’ve changed. And what is our Katie’s life? Two bairns, and separated from her husband. Life’s a puzzle, Maisie, life’s a puzzle.’

  I remember at that time I too thought it was a puzzle and how wrong he had been in thinking I was changed.

  But here I was at Gran’s, and she was dead set against my marrying Howard. Yet I knew firmly in my own mind that I would go through with it, Katie and her unsuccessful marriage were far removed from my mind.

  Perhaps it was she who sent Father Mackin to the house, thinking that if I was set on going through with it then it should be done properly. Anyway, there he was one day when I answered the doorbell, cheery and chatty, but both these facets of his character hiding a deep purpose. As he once said to me, there were different ways of driving a cuddy besides kicking it. And on that day and for weeks fo
llowing he did his best to use these ways to drive this particular cuddy into the Catholic Church. And he might have succeeded if it hadn’t been for Howard.

  ‘Now this is a nice house,’ Father Mackin said. ‘Oh dear me, what a surprise.’ And he looked round the hall and through the open door into the kitchen. The ceiling had imitation rafters and the units were all scrubbed oak. My mother had had them specially fitted. Then laying his hat down on the hallstand and rubbing his hands together, he said,

  ‘’Tis nippy outside. It is that, very nippy.’

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Father?’

  ‘Now whoever said no to a question like that? Yes, I would indeed, I would love a cup of tea. What is your first name again?’

  ‘Maisie.’

  ‘Oh…Maisie. It’s a very friendly name that, Maisie. Yes, Maisie, I would love a cup of tea. May I go and sit down?’ he said, already walking towards the sitting room door. This was half open and I pushed it wide and he entered, exclaiming loudly, ‘Well, whoever did this had taste: grey walls and a blue carpet, and those dull pink curtains. Now who would ever think about those colours combining into such harmony. ’Tis a lovely house. Have you been here long?’

  ‘I was born here, and my mother too. My grandparents came into it when it was first built, but since then there’s been a lot of alteration done.’

  ‘Well now’—he sank onto the couch—‘if I lived in a place like this the church would get the go-by, I’d promise you that.’

  I went out laughing and hurriedly made a tray of tea. And when I returned to the room he was examining some pieces of china in the cabinet that stood between the windows.

  ‘You don’t mind me being nosey, do you?’

  ‘No, Father, not at all.’

  ‘These are nice pieces. I know something about porcelain and I can say these are nice pieces.’

  ‘I understand my grandfather brought them from abroad.’

  ‘Yes, he would do, he would do.’

  He sat down on the couch once more, and I poured out the tea and handed him a plate on which there were some scones, and after biting into one he exclaimed loudly on its merits. But I had to tell him that I hadn’t baked them, that a friend of mine along the terrace was a very good cook, she had done them.

  ‘Now then, if she can bake scones like this, I bet she’s not single.’

  ‘There you’re wrong, Father, she is. And she is soon to be my sister-in-law.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes—’ he put his cup down on the side table, wiped his mouth with a coloured handkerchief then said, ‘I heard that you’re to be married. And really, to tell the truth, because I must do that sometime, mustn’t I?’—he grinned at me—‘that’s partly why I’ve come, to see what arrangements you are going to make for the wedding.’

  ‘Oh, Father.’ I made to rise from the couch but his hand stopped me, and he said, ‘Now it’s all right. It’s all right. Don’t take off in a balloon, I know that you’re not in the church yet, but I’ve got a strong feeling that you would like to be. I understand you used to come to mass with your stepfather at one time, so as I see it, just a little push and you’d be over the step.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Father, but my fiancé is not that way inclined at all.’

  ‘What do you mean? He’s an atheist, he doesn’t believe in either God or man?’

  ‘No. Well, I think, if he’s anything, he’s Church of England.’

  ‘But at present he’s nothing?’

  ‘I’m not really sure. We haven’t discussed it.’

  ‘Well then, if you haven’t discussed it, perhaps he and I can get down to a little natter, eh?’

  ‘No, Father, please. He has already suggested we get married in the registry office.’

  ‘Oh, now, now.’ The smile went from his face. ‘Registry office.’ For a moment I thought he was going to spit. Then someone did spit. Sitting behind him, just to the right, there was Hamilton. I gasped because I hadn’t seen him for some long time now. His head was turned and he was looking towards the floor, and then he brought his big lips into a pout and he spat. And I heard myself say, ‘Oh dear me.’

  ‘Now, now, there’s no need for you to get worried. But I maintain that a registry office marriage is no marriage, not in the eyes of the Headmaster.’

  ‘The Headmaster?’

  Father Mackin now turned his eyes upward until little but the whites of them could be seen, and, his voice lowered, he added, ‘Aye, the Headmaster, the Headmaster of men.’

  He was referring to God as the Headmaster of men, and I heard myself saying almost skittishly now, ‘And what about women, Father?’

  ‘Oh’—he put his head back and laughed—‘that’s good, that is, that’s good. Well, it’s a mixed school. A…ha!’ He was leaning towards me now, his head bobbing, and he repeated, ‘A mixed school. And there’s coloureds in it too, yes coloureds: blacks and browns and yellows and a few Red Indians if I’m not mistaken.’

  We were both laughing now and I wasn’t looking at him, I was looking towards Hamilton, and he was mimicking me. His big mouth wide open, his lips baring his teeth, he was doing a horse ha! ha! ha! bit. I could see that he didn’t dislike the priest but that at the same time he had taken his measure: the iron hand in the velvet glove so to speak with a dusting of laughing gas inside it.

  I don’t know what made me think of that bit except that up in the attic I had come across a glove tree. It was in its own box with a canister of dusting powder; it must have been used by my grandparents at some stage.

  He had three cups of tea and four scones and when he took his leave he put his hand on my shoulder and, his face and voice devoid of all laughter now, he said, ‘Think, seriously on this Maisie. It’s a big step and it’s for life. Never take marriage lightly. It’s for life.’

  How often I was to think of those words in the years to come, it’s for life.

  Seven

  I was married on the second Saturday in February 1969, and before the day was out I was to experience humiliation as I had never really known it before, although I’d been acquainted with it; but terror, with which I had had no acquaintance, was almost to paralyse me.

  It was ten days later when I ventured to Gran’s. She was out, and the woman next door said she had gone along to the Community Hall. The Community Hall was only two streets away, and so I went to the door and asked the volunteer porter if he would ask Mrs Carter if I could see her a minute. ‘Why don’t you come in, lass,’ he said, ‘an’ see her yourself? They’re having a sing-song.’

  ‘I’d rather not,’ I said.

  ‘Is it important?’ he said, and when I nodded he left me.

  A minute later Gran was standing on the pavement looking at me, saying, ‘Aw, pet. Aw, pet.’

  ‘Can you come home, Gran?’

  ‘Yes, like a shot, lass. What is it? Aw, don’t tell me. Let’s get inside first.’

  Inside the house, the first thing I did was to burst out crying and she held me in her arms, saying, ‘There now. There now. Oh, my God! What’s happened to you? Your face is like a sheet of lint. You never had much colour, but you never looked like this. Sit yourself down till I make a pot of tea, and keep talking. Aye, keep talking.’

  I sat on the couch, but I didn’t start to talk, I didn’t know how. It wasn’t until I gulped at the hot tea that I looked at her and said bitterly, ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Gran?’

  ‘Tell you what, hinny?’

  I turned my head away, only to have it pulled sharply round towards her again, and with her hand on my face she said, ‘I asked you, and you said you knew all about it. Is it that? That’s upset you?’

  ‘Oh, Gran.’ I bent my head deep onto my chest as I muttered, ‘I never dreamed. It…it was awful. It still is.’

  When she said no word I lifted my head and looked at her, and after a moment, her voice low, she murmured, ‘That’s marriage, lass. That’s marriage. Was he rough?’

  I gulped in my throat and turned my whole body away
from her. My head almost in my shoulder, I stared wide-eyed down the room. ‘Was he rough?’ she had said. Was a hungry lion rough? Was an insane man rough? Because that’s what he had been like. The only thing I was thankful for on my wedding night was that it took place in my own house and not in an hotel, for my screaming protests would surely have caused a disturbance. I wondered now if Mrs McVitie hadn’t heard me, but then the bedroom was to the front of the house and both hers and Mrs Nelson’s bedrooms faced the back. Anyway my screams had been smothered by his hand over my mouth and, his face contorted out of all recognition, he had hissed at me, ‘You are my wife.’

  The following morning was, in a way, as big an astonishment to me as the events of the night before, for his manner had reverted to the ordinary; it was as if nothing had happened between us, that dreadful struggle before the exhaustion overcame me had never been.

  I dreaded the second night coming, and when it did he spoke quite calmly to me before he got into bed. Standing by the bedside he looked down on me and said again those words, ‘You are my wife. I am only taking what is my due.’ I remembered stupidly reminding him what he had said about companionship. And his lip had curled as he reacted, ‘Don’t be so stupid, woman.’ It was the first time I had been called ‘woman’. I was eighteen and hadn’t felt up till then that I was a woman; however the previous night seemed to have made me into one. I begged him, ‘Please, please, don’t.’ And again he said, ‘Don’t be so stupid. You surely knew what to expect: being associated with a woman like George Carter’s mother you couldn’t have remained all that innocent.’

  Being acquainted with George Carter’s mother, I had remained innocent, not only innocent, but ignorant, blind. Not only was I afraid of the savagery of the intimacy, but I knew now that I didn’t even like the perpetrator. As for companionship, how could you make a companion of someone during the daytime who tore at your body like a savage repeatedly in the night?