Hannah massey (21 page)

"

As Rosie left the office she smiled ruefully to herself. A face like a battered pluck . no offence meant! It was funny. People were funny, the things they said. But Miss Pointer with her face like a battered pluck had run off with a married man. Love was another funny thing.

Love! She found her lip curling backwards from the word.

A thaw had set in and the markft place was a river of slush when she alighted from the Newcastle bus. As she went to cross the square

Shane's voice came from behind her, calling, "Rosie! Rosie there! ...

Gettin' the bus?" he said as he came up to her.

"Oh, hello, Shane. Yes."

"Isn't this hellish? It's never going to end. We'll all be in the workhouse if it keeps on; we're not goin' in the morrow."

"You haven't been working on the building to-day, have you?"

"No, they've kept us busy inside the last few days, but that's finished. It means the Exchange the morrow. The bloody dole. An'

what's that?"

Shane talked about the work on the building, and the uncertainty of it; the rotten gaffer; the way they were throwing the houses up on the estate; the money the speculators were making out of them; the Labour Party; the Bosses; and the scapegoats in the Union until they got off the bus at the top of the road. Shane never needed answers. But as they were making their way down the back lane to the garden gate he said something that did need an answer.

"What really brought you home, Rosie?" he asked.

"Eh?" The question, apropos of nothing he had been talking about, startled her, and he went on, "Well, I mean to say. Well, we got talkin', the others and me, and we wondered... well, if you'd had a row with a fellow up there.... Had you a fellow?"

"No, no, I hadn't a fellow."

"All right, Rosie, all right, don't snap me head off."

They were going up the garden path now between the mounds of snow and he put his hand out and touched her shoulder, saying, "Don't be ratty, Rosie; I don't want to know anything; it was just..."

She hurried from him, and opened the kitchen door, and the warmth

flooded at her. And so did her mother's voice, crying,

"Three lots to-day there's been. Two lads at dinner time sayin' they wanted their boots. Where would they find him, they wanted to know.

An'. an' I told them to go to hell and he'd likely be there. "

Shane, looking at Rosie, pushed his brows up and wagged his forefinger under his nose. He was about to lean forward to whisper something when Hannah heralded her approach to the kitchen and came in, saying, "Oh, there you are. Did you meet up? You go out with one and you come home with another." Hannah was nodding at Rosie, her face one large beam.

"Well it's been a day and a half, hasn't it? Come here and let me have your coat. Oh, look at you! you are darts up to the eyes. I'll let it dry and then give it a sponge down. Away into the room and get

warm.

Your da's just in. I've been baking, that Swedish cake with the apples that you liked, and steak and chips it is, afore that, with mushrooms.

"

"Pass it along! Pass it along!" Shane went into the kitchen sniffing the air, and Rosie followed him. She hadn't opened her mouth; it

wasn't necessary when her mother was in this happy mood. The meal

over, the boys upstairs getting ready for their nightly visit to the club, she sat for a while telling her father about the work at the office and Mr. Bunting, while her mother, her ears wide, busied herself about the room. It wasn't until Karen came in that she went upstairs and changed; and when she came, down dressed for outdoors once more Hannah exclaimed tersely, "Where you off to? You're not going out again? I thought you were telling your da you were goin' to look at the telly."

"Yes I am, but later on. It's Thursday. I'm ... I'm going to

church."

"Ooh! Aye." The ooh brought Hannah's chin up and the bun of hair at the back of her head nodding loosely from its pins.

"Oh, aye, I forgot it was Thursday. That's a good lass. Are you going to confession?"

"Yes, Ma." Rosie did not look at her mother as she spoke.

"You won't be long then," said Hannah loudly.

"There's not many that'll turn out the night."

"No, I don't suppose so. Bye-bye, Da."

"Bye-bye, lass."

"Bye-bye, Ma."

"Bye-bye, lass." Hannah followed her into the hall.

"If it wasn't so treacherous underfoot I'd come along with you."

Rosie made no remark to this but went hurriedly through the door that Hannah held ajar, and she walked up the street because that was the way to the church, and she knew her mother would be at the front room

window, and the street was well lit.

When she got out of sight around the corner she doubled back down the next road and made her way to the shop.

The long cul-de-sac at the top of the hill was not well lit but she could make out by the light from a distant lamp that there was no

notice in the window.

With her foot on the coping and gripping the drain pipe once again, she found the key where she had left it that morning. She opened the shop door and, switching on the light, picked up the folded piece of paper that she had dropped through the letter-box. On the shop counter there was a reel of sticky paper used for sealing the parcels; she tore off a few strips and with them pressed the notice on to the window.

She should now go to Dennis's and tell Hughie that Mr. Cullen hadn't been at his shop to-day. Hadn't she come here to give herself some excuse for going to see Hughie? All day long she had felt she must go and see him to-night. But she wanted an excuse; it wasn't enough to say she had come to see how he was. He had money now, and then Dennis and Florence might think. Well, you never knew what people thought.

Relations were the worst. She stood looking about her for a moment sniffing at the dry, musty air. She was uncertain what to do. She had the excuse but she was afraid to use it, afraid, not really of what Florence and Dennis might think but of the silence with which Hughie would greet her, the awful silence that had come between them after she had, finished talking last night. And his opinion of her would likely be no better to-nigitt than it had been last night; with time to think it might even have got worse.

She went into the back shop and switched on the light, then putting out the shop light she closed the door to the back room and pulled the blind down over the glass half of it. And as if she had been used to doing it every day she put a match to the oil stove, lit the gas and put the kettle on; then sat down near the stove and waited for the kettle to boil. She didn't really want any tea but she wanted

something warm, and she wanted to do something, occupy herself in some way. After she had made the tea she remembered the whisky that Hughie kept in the cupboard underneath the desk, and as she took out the

bottle she thought, Hughie won't mind. Then she poured a good measure into the cup of tea. She didn't like whisky, or brandy, or gin. She knew she had no real taste for liquor of any kind, but she needed

something; as her hands needed to be busy to check the unrest in her mind so her body needed warmth. The fact that Hughie had offered her no warmth last night was affecting her strangely. She had never

imagined she would lay such stock by his good opinion.

After she had drunk the laced tea she pulled the chair nearer the desk, and more because her hands were restless than out of curiosity she opened the drawer. It was filled with neatly stacked sheets of paper, and she sat looking down at them for some time. If she read them she would be prying, she thought. Perhaps Hughie wouldn't like her to read what he had written. Well Hughie wasn't here, was he? She moved her head as if asking the question of the desk, and she wanted to pry, to pry into his affairs, into his mind. She lifted a few sheets from one pile and put them on the desk; then closing the drawer, leant over them and began to read. There was no title to the first page, it just began

"What is more important than education to-day? What will get you in, what will give you preference is ... an accent, just an accent. Accent syll has the power to give one person an advantage over another, and strangely enough it has nothing to do with intelligence or learning but everything to do with background. So the solution for success would seem to be get yourself born with a background; then automatically you'll have an accent...."

Underneath this piece of writing were the words "Strip and extend.

Could be made amusing. "

Yes, it could at that, she thought. Fancy Hughie being funny.

On the next page, headed "Return to the soil after imprisonment" were the words:

"I walk on you, " my soles tight pressed; I lie on you, and my body wallows in your lushness; I weep my tears of love and see them soak into your groins; my sweat lies on you in glossy globules. In ecstasy I rise and take up the Made and in your rich black blood my soul is reflected. I am one with eternal life. "

After reading this three times, Rosie looked at the wall opposite. Her eyes were narrowed and her mouth hung slack. She couldn't associate the writing with Hughie, not any part of the Hughie she knew. When she had poured out her troubles last night she had been seeing the man who sat in the corner of the kitchen, but the man she had been talking to and who had fallen silent was the man who wrote stuff like this. She didn't know anything about this man.

She brought her eyes down to the papers again and began to read the next page. It had no heading.

"From the bed I rise and fly, my body draped in skin alone. The air, the width of the universe, the length of eternity, is my raiment and enfolds me but does not hide me, and I care not. I pass over nations all peopled with faces of my neighbours, and they look at me and I laugh and cry down to them: " Why be afraid of your body? Look at me, look at me. " And they look and I laugh. And on I float; and glide, and soar, and whirl in wind pockets, and I grip a tall spire and dance round it and my feet bounce off the air as off a trampoline, and I shout at the life that I know is within me: " You're there! You're there! This is you . jumping, jumping. " And my shouting cleaves the clouds as it always does. And then I fall and fall and land in a field full of men, with one woman in their midst, and she is standing up to her waist in filth, and I awake in the blackness and wonder if I'll ever drop into a field of flowers...."

"Oh! Hughie ... Hughie." The name came out of her mouth like an expression of pain, and again she said, "Oh! Hughie, Hughie." As fantastic as this piece of writing was she could understand it. oh yes, she could understand it. Dreaming of a field full of men with a woman in their midst. her mother. Dreaming that he was afraid of his body except in the night. And last night she had told him what had happened to her and her body. No wonder he was silent. Gently she

pushed the papers aside, and leaning her head on the desk she began to cry.

It wasn't long after this that she returned home, and as she mounted the steps the front door opened to let out Councillor Bishop. Her

mother stood behind him, the door in her hand, her face bright, her manner at its best.

"Oh, there you are, me dear," she greeted her.

"You've met me daughter, Councillor?" She inclined her head towards the plump, bespectacled man.

"Indeed, yes, I've had that honour. But many years ago. How are you?"

He held out his hand.

Y

"Very well, thank you."

He was holding her hand, pumping it up and down as he went on, "Your mother tells me that you've come home to stay. Now this is good

news."

He spoke as if he knew all about her, as if her going or staying was of some importance to him.

"Now you must come round one evening and meet Mrs. Bishop. I know she would love to meet you." Still holding her hand in a grasp which did not allow her to extricate her fingers without tugging them from him, he turned to Hannah and ended, "When you've moved we'll do an exchange of evenings, eh?"

"That'll be grand, that'll be grand indeed."

"It's settled then." Mr. Bishop patted the hand within his own before finally releasing it, and as Rosie turned away, her face unsmiling, he said to Hannah, "We'll be meeting again on Saturday then, Mrs.

Massey.

I'll have all the papers ready. There's nothing to be gained by

hanging about in matters like this. It could be snapped up. "

"I'll see that it's snapped up, Mr. Bishop, but by the right one."

Hannah's laugh followed Rosie into the living-room. She took off her coat and hat and, leaving them on the chair, went to the fire and stood waiting.

A few minutes later Hannah entered the room. She did not speak

immediately, but engaged in her usual technique, that of preceding anything of importance she had to say with a silence, a telling

silence. But on this occasion Rosie did not allow her mother to play her little game; instead, turning to her, she asked, "You're not really going to take the place, are you, Ma?"

"Not really going to take it!" Hannah's voice was high but quiet; it held a surprised note as if it was unbelievable to her that anyone should imagine that she wasn't going to take number eight Brampton Hill.

"Of course I'm going to take it, child.... We're going to take it, an it'll all be settled on Saturday."

"But me da ... and the lads?"

"Your da has always left things of this nature to me. As for the lads, if they don't like it there's the wide world before them and the door is open."

Rosie gazed at her mother. You really had to admire her effrontery and the game of pretence that she played. There was the wide world for the lads and die door was open! Without the lads she could never hope to make Brampton Hill, and yet she could talk like this with apparent sincerity.

"But if you. don sell this ... ?"

"This house will be sold, never fear. Mr. Bishop put it on his books three weeks ago. He's had several enquiries. He's not in the smallest doubt that it'll go like wild fire once the fine weather comes. He's so sure of it, me dear, that he says he'll take it off me hands himself if it isn't sold."