Hannah massey (12 page)

unconsciousness. The whole universe could be made up of these levels of unconsciousness, and death could be a mere merging into the universe by way of this unconsciousness."

"It won't be a minute before it boils."

"Oh ... oh," I'm sorry, Hughie.

I.

I didn't mean to read it. "

"Oh, that's all right." He smiled widely.

"It's just some of my scribbling... Passes the time, you know." He sat down opposite to her;

their knees were almost touching.

"I... I stopped you writing," she said, "barging in. It reads very clever. I didn't understand it."

"There's two of us."

They laughed together.

"But I stopped you, and ..."

"That you didn't," he put in quickly.

"I was on the point of going home. It's on dinner time, isn't it?" i She lowered her eyes, then said, "I was just passing Waldorf Street when I saw Ronnie in the distance; he was going up the school cut. He stopped when he saw me, but I knew what he would do; he would come out in Baldwin Road and meet me full on. I was standing like a stook not knowing whether to go on, or to go back into the town and to take the bus to the top of our road, when Dennis came down the hill."

"He's married now, it'll be all right." Hughie's voice was low.

And hers was just above a whisper as she answered, "It wouldn't, Hughie, it wouldn't."

"Well, I suppose you know best." He cleared his throat, then smoothed his hair back.

Rosie looked at her hands encased in the fur-lined gloves that her mother had bought her yesterday, and she began to pick at the fingers as she said, "I half told my mother that I would stay home and get a job near, but I don't think I can now."

He did not speak for a moment, but kept his eyes intently on her

averted face before he said, "His wife's going to have a baby, I don't think he would" ----- "Oh, it isn't only him, Hughie, it's everything.... You change when you go away, you know, and in a way it's a good thing you do."

"I wouldn't know about that."

His tone held regret, and she lifted her eyes to his and said quickly,

"Oh, you don't need to change, Hughie." She shook her head at him, a gentle smile playing round her lips.

"Huh!rt His body moved in self-derision.

"Well, you don't, you've always been sensible. I mean you've thought for yourself, an' you've got more brains than all of us put

together."

She glanced towards the paper on the table which had read like double Dutch to her.

He leant towards her now.

"If I'd thought for mese lt Rosie, do you think I'd still be here?"

Both his look and tone were enquiring.

As she looked back at him, she had the urge to ask him questions, but found herself overcome by a sudden feeling of shyness. What she did say was, "You said you were leaving. What's made you change your mind, He looked at her a full minute before speaking.

"I've come into money, Rosie," he said.

"Into money, Hughie? The pools?"

"No, not the pools.... I don't know whether you remember of not, but I had a sister; I can hardly remember her me self

"I seem to have heard something about her."

"Well, she went to America just before the war as nurse- companion to an old lady. She was about twelve years older than me. And she wasn't really a nurse, not a trained nurse, and I never heard of her until two years ago, and in a really odd way. You see she wrote to the Vicar of All Souls, you know, the big Protestant church behind the market, and she asked him did he know of Hugh Geary who had been evacuated to

Fellbum during the war. Now you know me, Rosie. I never put me foot inside a church, either Catholic, Protestant, or Methodist, and it's ten to one any other minister but this Mr. Patten- den would never have heard of me but for the strange coincidence that he's always

brought his boots here to be mended. He always did in your da's time and he still does, and he came to me with this letter. He was as Happy about it as if it was affecting himself. And that's how it all

started. I wrote to her and she wrote back, a long letter, telling me all that had happened to her. It wasn't much when you summed it up.

She had looked after the old lady all these years, and a few months previous to her trying to find me the old lady had died and had left her a good slice of her money. She asked me if there was any chance of me coming to America, and I wrote back and said no, I was settled

comfortably here. I didn't want her to think that I was on the cadge but I told her that if ever she thought of coming to England I would be overjoyed to see her. Well, it turned out that she wasn't very well herself, apparently. and wasn't up to travelling; then just before Christmas she died. " From his seat he looked out through the glass door again towards the row of shoes, before he said, as if to himself,

" She must have been bad when she tried to contact me. She likely knew she was going then and she wanted to be in touch with someone belonging to her. I know the feeling. But, you know, I'd rather have seen her than had the money. "

After a pause Rosie said, "I'm sorry you didn't meet her, Hughie, but I'm glad for you, oh, I am. I would sooner it had happened to you than to anyone else I know of."

"Why me?" He turned his head and looked at her intently. And she dropped her eyes from his and said, "Oh, I don't know. Perhaps just because I was brought up with you, and... and I never thought you

got... well, a square deal. And you took everything so quietly, not bashing, or yelling, or swearing as the others would have done, if...

if me ma had treated them as she did you."

Following another silence, during which she kept her eyes cast

downwards, she asked, "And me ma knows nothing about it?"

"Not a thing. If Nancy, that was me sister, had written to the priest he would naturally have gone to the house."

She looked up at him.

"She's going to get a glif."

"Yes, Rosie, she's going to get a glif."

"When are you going?"

"As soon as they've altered the caravan."

"You've got a caravan" "Yes, I bought it second-hand, a Land-Rover and a caravan. I got it as a bargain an' all. The funny thing is, if I hadn't had enough cash I would never have got the chance of it at the price; I would have been asked to pay 'through the teeth ... It's die irony of life, isn't it?"

"Yes, yes. But why are you having it altered? Is it in a bad way?"

"No, it's in fine condition, but they used it mostly for sleeping.

There were five in the family and it's all bunks. I'm having a gink unit put in, and a cooker. " His face looked alight now.

"And a kind of desk-cum-drawers, and a wardrobe. It'll be like a house on wheels. I've taken the design from one I saw in a weekly, and old Jim Cullen, next door, is doing it." He nodded his head.

"You wouldn't remember him, I don't suppose, but he's a wizard with wood. In fact he makes antiques, you know, copies, when he has orders for them. But things have slumped in his line this past few years, it's with Brampton Hill gojng down and all that, and so I've given him the job.

And I know I won't even have to bother and look at it until he's

finished. He's that kind of a worker. The only thing is, he won't be hurried too much, he's a craftsman. If he keeps at it, it should be ready a week come Monday or Tuesday, and the minute it is I'm on the road. "

"Can you drive a car, Hughie?" Her eyebrows were slightly raised.

"Oh, aye. And I've got Dennis to thank for that an' all. I've got Dennis to thank for a lot of things. And Florence, too. When they had the car a few years ago he would insist on teaching me to drive; and then when I could he said, " You go and pass your test. "

"What for?" I asked.

"You never know," he said, 'you never know. " And you don't, do you, Rosie?"

She shook her head.

"But now they've sold the car because they've been trying to raise the money for a deposit to put down on a house. But what they don't know as yet" --he leant forward towards her, his elbow resting on his knee"--they're going to have a house bought for them." He nodded slowly. "

"A three-thousand pound one. But I can't do it until I'm on the road, because Dennis wouldn't hear of it. But when I'm away and he can't get in touch with me ... well, he can't do anything about it, can he?"

His plain face looked almost handsome, illuminated as it was with the joy of being able to give. And the look did something to Rosie that nothing else had been able to do for days. It penetrated the terror that was still encased in her body, the terror that had gone beyond fear. On Friday night she had thought when once she was alone in bed she would cry and cry and ease herself, but she had lain dry-eyed, staring through the terror into the blackness of the night; blackness that was disturbed only by the sounds below her; grunts, faint sighs, snoreg, splutters and coughs; and these had made the terror more

real.

All those men down there .

MEN .

MEN .

MEN.

, don't cry like that. " His hand hesitated as it went out to her shoulder; then it rested gently on it, and at his touch something

cracked in her throat and she gulped and gasped and held her face in her hands, while the tears ran through her fingers.

"There, there." He was kneeling by her side now, his hand still on her shoulder, and when, like a child, she turned her head into his neck, he stared at the wall opposite, and it looked as if he too was fixed with emotion, for his other arm hung by his side like a false limb.

Perhaps she felt the stiffness of his body, the unresponsivenes of his hand, for, pulling herself upright, she turned her face from him,

gasping and spluttering as she said, "I... I'm sorry, I'm sorry, He was on the chair opposite to her again.

"What's to be sorry about?

A cry will do you good. " His voice sounded flat.

She groped at her handbag, and taking out a handkerchief, dried her face; and again she said, "I'm sorry."

He did not make any remark for a moment, but when he did his words weren't put as a question but as a direct statement.

"You're in trouble, Rosie, aren't you?" he said.

There was no denial from her, only a downward movement of her head.

"Can you tell me?"

Now her head shook slowly from side to side.

"Well, you should tell somebody, it would case it. Why don't you go to Dennis?"

Again she shook her head. Then raising it, she gulped for breath a number of times before looking at him and saying, "If... if I could tell any... anybody, it would be you, but I can't."

"You're frightened about something, aren't you?"

"Not any more," she said.

"Isn't it anything you could tell your... your mother?"

She made a sound that was something between a groan and a whimper.

"My mother... ? I'd sooner jump in the river, Hughie. My mother? I'd sooner die than she knew. She'd want to kill me in any case. You know it's frightening when somebody lays so much stock on you as she does on me. You can't live up to it. But she'd never understand that. She

frightens me with her feeling, she's so so...." She searched for a word, moving

Y

her head the while, and he put in, "Irrational?"

"Yes, that's it, that's the word ... irrational. And in everything, in everything. I thought of them going to Mass this morning after the business of Friday night and yesterday morning."

"What happened yesterday morning?"

She sniffed.

"You didn't hear... ? The priest came with a wireless to be mended."

Hughie's face slowly stretched.

"The one Barny made for him?"

"Yes. He came bounding in, all chatter like he always does. When she opened the door to him she really thought it was them coming to search, you know."

Hughie bit on his lip, trying to suppress a smile, as he asked, '"And what happened?"

"He went for her because he said she had involved him. Then she threw in his face about keeping him supplied with bacon and butter and shirts and things during the war...."

At this, Hughie put his hand over his mouth, bowed his head and began to laugh. It was a silent laugh at first, evident only in the shaking of his body; then unable to control it any longer he gave vent to it, and as Rosie watched him her face trembled into a smile, then

stretched, and the next moment she, too, was laughing, but with more than a touch of hysteria.

How they came to grasp each other's hands neither of them knew, but as their laughter subsided their hands were joined breast high between them and their heads were almost touching.

It was Hughie who sobered first He released her hands, and, getting up, reached out and picked up a towel from a rail to the side of the desk and rubbed his face vigorously with it.

Rosie had a bout of the hiccoughs now, and between them she said, "Oh, Hughie, hie... I... I never thought I would... hie... laugh in me life again. Oh thanks, Hughie, thanks;

you've done me the world of good. "

"Well, if you didn't see the funny side of some things you would commit murder. It isn't often I get a real laugh. No, it isn't often."

And that's true, she thought. She hadn't, as far as she could

remember, heard him laugh heartily before. His laughter had always been controlled, just a shaking of the body.

She rose to her feet, saying, "Can I wash me face, Hughie, it'll be a mess?"

"Of course." He pointed to the sink.

As she washed her face and took a lipstick out of her new bag and made up her lips, he got into his coat, and put on a scarf, and picked up his hat and stood waiting for her, all without looking at her. It was as if he was embarrassed now by her personal acts.

As he locked the shop door behind them, Rosie said, "What are you going to do with it? I mean the shop, goodwill, and stock and that?"

"Oh," he said, "I'm passing it on to a fellow called Lance Briggs.

He's handicapped in the legs and works in Tullets factory. He's

delighted about it. He's a shy bloke . not unlike me self--he