As the doctor buttoned his coat I said to him, ‘Will it be all right if I go home?’
‘No, it won’t!’ His words came from deep within his throat. ‘You’ll have the place infested with reporters once they know you’re there. What’s more, you’ll have to put up with the neighbours. You stay put, here with your granny for a few days.’ And he added, with a laugh, ‘The neighbours around this quarter will be more in sympathy with you, because if some of them had been with you, they would certainly have helped you with your pelting, imagining they were getting one back on their own men. Isn’t that so?’ He looked at Gran, and she said tartly, ‘If you say so.’
Doctor Kane and Mr Pearson shook hands with Nardy, and the moment the door closed on them, Gran said, ‘Now that you’ve got company for a bit, I’ll get out and do me shoppin’. That all right with you?’
‘Yes, Gran.’
I knew the shopping idea was a pretext; she wanted to leave me alone with Nardy so we could talk. She’d had her own ideas about him and me long before this morning, and as I said, it was no use telling her that, as I saw it, she was barking up the wrong tree.
Once we were alone, we sat quietly on the couch looking at each other. I broke the silence by muttering, ‘I’m not sorry.’
‘I’m not either. I’m glad.’
‘He kicked Bill. That was the breaking point. But I’d meant to do something, anyway, even before that. I didn’t know what. And then there were the bottles right to my hand as if they had been placed there on purpose.’
‘Perhaps they had; God works in strange ways His miracles to perform.’
‘Oh’—I turned my head away—‘I don’t think anything I did could have been under the directive of God. I know now that I went mad, I did really, I went mad for a time. It seemed as if I was jealous of the bottles, because he was always tender with the bottles, washing them carefully, drying them, polishing them, arranging them in sizes and colours…What do you think will happen to me?’
He hitched himself towards me and caught my hands and, pressing them firmly, he said, ‘Nothing that cannot be overcome. You seem to have a very good man in your solicitor…and your doctor; well, he’s just as you described him in the book. And when he says his piece, and that tape is played through…By the way, that was a brilliant idea.’ He nodded at me. ‘That, I’m sure, was God-inspired. And then the fact that you are a writer, and I, and everyone else in the office, think the book is going to be a great success. Well, when that is revealed, it should quash any ideas that your husband has with regard to your mental deficiency.’ He ended by pulling a face.
‘Do you think he’ll try to get back into the house?’
‘No, I don’t think there’ll be a chance once the judge knows of the woman and the children…if they are his. Anyway, your solicitor saw to that, side of it; his personal belongings have been sent to him.’
‘But…but what—’ I found that I could hardly speak the words that I was thinking now, and when they did come out they were low and muttered, ‘But what if things don’t go as you think they will and I’m sent to prison?’
‘Maisie.’ He had lifted my two hands and was holding them against his chest, and slowly he said, ‘Look at me.’ And when I looked at him, he went on, ‘Whatever happens, do you hear? Whatever happens, just remember this, I am your friend…and more than a friend. You understand?’
I did and didn’t, because what I thought his words meant conveyed something that was really beyond contemplating. This man, an educated man, well-born, because that much I had gathered from his house and his style of living, which was as natural to him as breathing, this man was suggesting…What was he suggesting? No, it was impossible. I wasn’t going to dwell on that with all the rest of the things raging in my mind. He said he was a friend, more than a friend. That meant a dear friend, and that was enough, quite enough. I wasn’t going to bark up the wrong tree.
The leading northern papers had carried headlines of my escapade. The Battle of the Bottles, it was called. They had described, each in a different way, my raining the bottles down onto a crowd in the street.
‘The neighbours say the victim was a quiet, gentlemanly man’ said one paper. Another heading was: ‘Little termagant wages bottle battle against husband’. And the third one began, ‘Virago goes berserk with bottles. Husband in dangerous state in hospital. Policeman’s head split open’.
Then on Saturday morning came the local paper. Gran had gone out to the butcher’s and she brought it back with her. She almost burst into the room and threw the paper at me, crying, ‘Read that! Read that!’ She pointed to the right-hand corner and the last column on the front page. The headlines were: ‘A Reason for the Bottle Bashing’. Then followed the words: ‘So far no-one seems to have got to the bottom of why a wife should attack her quiet gentlemanly husband, a man who was well-known in the business centre of the town, but new light was thrown on the situation yesterday when a woman visited Mr Stickle in hospital. She was accompanied by two young boys who spontaneously addressed the patient as Dad. A reporter, who happened to be visiting a patient in an adjoining bed, took the matter up with the woman when she later left the hospital and she aggressively stated that she had lived with the man for over twelve years. Moreover, she had been engaged to him before he had married his present wife, whom she said, he found it difficult to live with because she was unbalanced.’
There was more but I didn’t read on. I looked up at Gran, and she said, ‘There’s your divorce, lass. There’s your divorce.’ And I said, ‘Yes, from an unbalanced woman.’
‘Oh’—she jerked her chin upwards—‘that will be knocked on the head when the case comes up and they find out what this so-called unbalanced woman has done and is now the famous writer…’
‘Oh, Gran! Gran!’
‘Well, you will be. You know I don’t read stuff like that, but when I read that copy you brought back, well, I was laughin’ one minute and cryin’ the next. It’s that kind of a book, ’cos in a way it explains things, you know, like talkin’ to yourself. I never realised that I’ve been talkin’ to meself all me life. That’s when I had nobody else to talk to. And that’s just what you did. You had nobody to talk to, so you made up a horse. By the way’—she looked about her—‘where’s he got his big feet now?’
‘I haven’t seen him for days.’
She seemed to recognise the sad note in my voice and she said, ‘Well, the quicker you get back in touch with him the better if you’re goin’ on writin’ about him. Eeh’—she wagged her head—‘didn’t those men laugh when I said he should have left some manure for the garden…I think I could write a book meself.’ She turned about and took off her coat and the silly woolly hat with the red pom-pom, that from the back made her look like sixteen; more and more she was wearing younger type clothes, even going out in trousers. I often thought some young lads must have received a shock when they got round to her front.
As she went into the kitchen I said, ‘I’ve just made the tea.’ And to this she answered, ‘Good.’
Then she called, ‘What d’you say, lass?’
And I called, ‘After reading this’—I tapped the paper—‘I think it would be all right to go back home, because the neighbours might now be thinking a little differently and seeing things perhaps from my point of view.’
She came to the kitchen door. ‘Well, it’s up to you, lass. I know this place must be getting on your nerves, only being able to creep out at night with that fella.’ She pointed to Bill.
‘You won’t mind?’
‘Don’t be silly, lass. Anyway, once you’re gone I’ll be able to get out and to me bingo. I’ve never won anything this week. Well, I wouldn’t, would I? ’cos I haven’t been.’
‘Oh, Gran.’
Two hours later, as I was about to leave, she said, ‘I’d better tell you that I wrote to our Georgie, telling him about it, ’cos I don’t suppose they get our news down that end of the country, so don’t be surprised if he’s on th
e doorstep any day from Monday.’
Funny that. I hadn’t given George a thought in days. Was it possible that people once loved could take a back seat in your mind? I’d thought of George as my protector for years, whether he was with me or away from me. But now I thought of him no more, not in that way, because his place had been taken by Nardy.
Six
It was the day of publication. I received two telegrams, one from Mr Houseman and Mr Rington, and a separate one from Nardy saying simply, ‘Congratulations’. Then followed two bouquets. The man who brought the flowers said, ‘Is it your birthday?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ I left the flowers as they were, all wrapped up, in a bucket of water. They were bringing no joy, for my heart was like lead.
I went back into the sitting room where, before a big coal fire—I had discarded the electric one—on the rug lay Bill. On each of the past three days the vet had called, and he said there was nothing that could be done: Bill had kidney trouble. What was more, he was having hallucinations, when he would urge his weakened body to rise and go for something on the wall.
I knelt down beside him and stroked his dear head, and he turned his eyes towards me, and his tongue came out, but he couldn’t lick me. ‘Oh, Bill. Bill. What am I going to do without you?’ I was moaning aloud. At this moment I had nobody in the world but Bill. Gran, Nardy, the doctor, the solicitor, George, they didn’t matter, only this animal which had been the only creature I had been able to hold tight to me during the past long years. I began to plead with him now, ‘Don’t go, Bill. Oh, please don’t go. Don’t leave me.’
And when I knew his breaths were numbered I crouched low down until my head was on a level with his, and his round dark eyes looked deep into mine and they were full of love. Slowly he lifted a fore paw—it was a form of shaking hands—and when his whole body jerked as if he was going to get up and run, I put my arms about him and he became still, so still, that his head fell onto the side of my arm.
I sat rocking him and crying, and Hamilton came and sat by my side. He had been with me all day, that is, as long as I was in the room with Bill. He never followed me out of it, but when I returned, there he would be sitting on his haunches, his head drooped, looking down on Bill. I looked at him now and cried brokenly, ‘There’ll never be another Bill.’ And he answered, No, there’ll never be another Bill. There might be a Simon, or a Sandy, or a Rover, but there’ll never be another Bill.
‘No! No!’ I knew my voice was almost a yell. ‘I’ll never have another. Do you hear? Never. Never.’
All right. All right, he said. Calm yourself, or you’ll have Mrs Nelson in. She is very attentive these days.
‘Yes, yes’—I nodded at him—‘she’s very attentive these days when I don’t want her to be. If only she or one of the others had given me their attention or even noticed me eight or ten years ago, I wouldn’t have had to rely on you so much, would I?’
No, no. He nodded at me. That’s true; but there again you wouldn’t have had a book out today, would you?
Oh, a book, a book. What did it matter? What did it matter? I’d lost Bill.
I was unaware that the back door had opened or that someone had come across the hall, until the sitting-room door opened and there stood Gran. She came towards me slowly, and I looked up to her through a blur and I said, ‘He’s gone.’
‘Well, you knew he was going, lass. You knew it was coming.’
‘I can’t bear it, not any more. I’ve had enough; I can’t bear this, Gran.’
‘Lass—’ She bent down to me as if she was going to take Bill from my arms as she said, ‘He’s only a dog, lass. Now look at it like that, he’s only a dog.’
‘Shut up, Gran. Shut up. He wasn’t just a dog to me. He was the baby I lost; he was the husband I never had; he was the friend I never had. Don’t you say he was just a dog, Gran. He had more consideration for me than anybody else in my life.’
‘Aw, lass, that isn’t fair. You’re not thinkin’ of me or Georgie when you’re sayin’ that. Well now, come on. Come on. Put him down.’
‘No, no, I’ll not put him down.’
I wasn’t surprised when she walked straight out. When presently she came back, she said, ‘Let me hold him while you drink this cup of tea.’
‘No, no. I can manage.’
But when I lifted my arm from him to take the cup, he slipped gently from my hold and onto the rug again.
I found myself gulping at the tea because it was the first drink I’d had that day.
During the following half-hour, Gran kept walking from the sitting room into the hall and back, in and out, in and out. And then, when the bell rang, she hurried to the door, and the next minute there was Doctor Kane looking down on me. So that’s what she had done. Well, what could he do for Bill? Nobody could do anything for Bill now. I said that to him. Looking up at him, I said, ‘You can’t do anything for him.’
‘No, I know that, but I can do something for you. Come on, get to your feet.’
‘No, no.’
‘Maisie. Look, behave yourself.’ He was talking to me as if I was a child, and now he gripped me by the arm and hauled me up. Then pointing down to Bill, he said, ‘You’ve got two choices: one, he goes to the vet and they’ll dispose of him; two, we bury him in the garden.’ And now his voice softened and he said, ‘In that way you can make a little grave and you can tend him every day. What is it to be, he goes to the vet?’
‘No! no! no!’
‘All right then, let’s see about it.’
I wrapped Bill in his rug and laid him in a large packing case I’d brought down from the attic. I put his rubber bone and his toys by his side, and when that was done, the doctor forced me to close the lid. He himself dug the hole at the bottom of the garden. I realised, even as I watched him, that he wasn’t used to digging, but when I went to help, he thrust me aside. Although it was an icy cold day the sweat was dripping from his beard.
It took us all our time to lift the case down the garden, even with Gran helping, and when it was in the hole and covered over, he had to pull me away back into the house.
Gran made more tea, and I sat staring into the fire, the tears raining unheeded down my face.
‘So it’s come,’ he said. He was holding out my book to me. That morning I had received the six free copies that I was told were allotted to every writer on publication. His voice held an excited note as he said, ‘It’s a splendid cover, isn’t it? A horse sitting at a table, its forelegs crossed on it—’ and he chuckled as he added, ‘as if he was talking to you. And I suppose that’s you sitting at the other side. It isn’t unlike you, you know.’
There was a pause, and now he was reading aloud from the back cover of the book.
‘This is a funny book. It will make you laugh. But there are places where it may make you cry, because many will identify with the woman in this book who is so lost and lonely that she conjured up a horse and clothed it with flesh and bone until it became real. And this story tells what happened to Rosie and Hamilton. Take it to bed with you, but don’t expect to sleep.’
Nardy had written that. They called it a blurb.
‘Aren’t you proud of yourself?’
I looked up at him and said simply, ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Don’t be silly, woman. Look, you’ll get another dog. In fact I know where there’s some pup…’
‘I don’t want another dog. Bill wasn’t just a dog.’
‘Bill was a dog.’ He was shouting as loudly as I had done.‘All right he was a good companion, but nevertheless he was a dog…an animal. What you’ve got to do now, Maisie, is to concentrate on human beings.’
‘I’ve never found any worth concentrating on.’
‘Thank you.’ His voice dropped now, and when he added ‘Thank you very much,’ I put my hand to my head and stood up and whimpered, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. But can’t you see, I’m…I’m so distressed.’
‘Yes, yes.’ His voice was soothing now. ‘
But you will soon have other things to think about that will certainly take your mind off Bill. I happened to meet Mr Pearson this morning and he thinks your case will come up early in the New Year, and you will be charged with grievous bodily harm, and from what I gather, your husband is going to sue you for everything that he can think of with regard to the damage you’ve done him. He’s suffering headaches, impaired memory, loss of work, facial scarring, et cetera, et cetera. But, as I understand, you would have to take his cap off to see the evidence of the last. Anyway, as I see it, he knows he stands no chance of getting the house, but he does stand a chance of making you pay so much compensation that you would likely have to sell it. Now think on that.’
I couldn’t think on it, not then, I could only think of Bill lying out there in the cold ground.
I started to cry again, and he left me, saying, ‘It will do you no harm to cry it out.’
But when the following day Gran came and found me still crying, there he was again, in the bedroom this time, and he stuck a needle into me and I went to sleep, and slept for two days, and when I eventually woke up fully I knew that tears would not bring Bill back, but that I would carry the weight of him in my memory forever.
Seven
My case came up in February. It was to extend over two days and I returned home after the first day slightly stunned and very apprehensive.
Nardy was with me, as were George and the doctor, and no sooner had we got indoors than George demanded of Nardy, ‘What did she need a bloody counsel for? What did he do? When that swine was on the stand, he treated him as if he was defending him, not against him.’ And Nardy said quietly, ‘Wait until tomorrow; he’ll spring a lot of surprises tomorrow.’
‘He’ll bloody well need to. To my mind the defence and the prosecutin’ counsels should change places ’cos that fellow Taggart had some force …’
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