Our Time Is Gone (9 page)

Meanwhile the woman upstairs was changing her dress, and every now and again she stole a glance into the mirror. What a sight she looked. What a sight! Mother in hospital! She hadn't got over the shock. It was more than a shock, to one whose world had never taken in the full significance of hospitals and doctors and dying and pain. Those were tiresome things. She finished dressing and went downstairs. She was ready to go. The man got up, crossed over to her.

‘Kiss, Maury,' he said. ‘Nice kiss for Dick, Maury! Sorry I was so bloody irritable.' He kissed her full on the lips. ‘Don't forget. Before two. I'm worried.'

‘So am I,' she replied coldly, making for the door.

He caught her arm. ‘I may have to leave Gelton soon, Maury,' he said.

‘You mean——' She pulled free her arm and grasped the door-handle.

He pushed his face down, smiled, caressed her cheek with his lips. ‘I mean
we
, Maury. I'm all confused! I wish you hadn't to go.'

She looked him full in the face. ‘Do you still love me, Dick?' she asked.

‘Love you! Christ, of course I love you, my little Maury,' and he caught her by the shoulders and embraced her, holding her tight as though he would never let her go. ‘You know, Maury, it's a pity about the kid.'

‘Do you
really
love me, Dick?' she asked, raising her face to his.

‘Yes, ducks, but didn't you hear what I said? The kid. You know, Maury …'

‘I wish you would call him by his name, for once anyhow,' she said. She began stroking his hair with her hand, smiling up at him.

‘Yes. I know! What is his name? Dermod. Yes. Well Dermod's a nuisance. That's all, Maury! You should never have brought him. Maureen, you were a fool. That husband of yours has regular work, a good job, only himself to keep.
You
were the fool when he stopped sending you the few bob for the kid. You never wrote, did you? Silly little bitch!' He pushed her away.

‘Dick! Oh, Dick! You don't mean——' She burst into tears. ‘You don't mean, Dick! you
do
love me, don't you, darling? I'll do anything for you. Really. Honestly. Only love me, Dick. Love me like I love you.' She threw her arms around him. She kissed him passionately, clung to him. ‘Don't you understand, Dick?'

‘Yes. Yes.'Course I understand! Don't be such a bloody fuss, Maureen! Lately you've done nothing else but fuss. Fuss, fuss, fuss! It'll spoil your looks, old girl, and what will I do then? What will Dicky do then? I like you to look nice, Maury. Pretty, you know. You're getting thin too,' and he brought the flat of his hand down against her hip. ‘I like my girl to be fat. See, Maury,' and he traced her body's shape with both hands, running his hands down from shoulder to knee. Finally he clasped her about the waist, raised her from the ground, laughed.

‘The kid weighs more than you! Maury, you were a mug. A real mug. This chap you were married to would have gone on shelling out for the rest of his natural. The bloody good old cow! You could tell that by his writing. Oh well—you'd better get off, I suppose, you'd
better
get off, but you know, Maury, I wish you'd think of me a bit more. Look at you now. Rushing off like this. To see your mother. How do I know you aren't going to clear? Oh'—he paused, then rushed from her to the table—‘sod these people! Always interfering.'

He stood with his back to her. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something. Now she was standing beside him, her hands on his shoulders. She began to sob.

‘Oh hell! Chuck it,' he growled, turning round. ‘Go off then and see your mother.'

‘Dick,' she said, ‘oh, Dick!' and rested her head on his shoulder. ‘Oh, Dick——'

Dick, however, had had enough. Firmly he removed her hands, led her to the door, and opening it wide to the street said in a slow, drawling voice: ‘I saw the letter! Better cut right away for the General. But be here before that Sloane woman gets here. I can't stand the bitch! I believe it's she who split.' And then he found himself talking into empty air, for Maureen had gone.

The man stood leaning out, looking after her. Recognizing somebody passing he waved a hand, grinned. Then he withdrew, slammed the door. Returned to the table and growled. Yes. The position was—the position. ‘Well, that's the bloody position!' he shouted, and pushing away his plate, got up and went upstairs. Yes, that was the position. And now
she'd
gone! It
would
bloody well happen like that. It was just his bad luck that some people had a habit of being in hospitals at the wrong moment, and that some people couldn't keep their mouths shut. In the bedroom he sat down on the bed to think.

He was a short, stockily built man, with a head of thick black curly hair. He had an olive-coloured skin, was clean shaven; and above a rather finely shaped nose, a pair of eyes formed the only debit part of his make-up. They were too small, and too close set. They seemed out of place in such a face. He wore a suit of the loudest brown, as well as boots of the same colour. He was a very hairy man, one would suppose he had ripened to manhood under a Southern rather than a Northern sun, though he was in fact a native of Gelton. Maureen was certain his father must have been an Italian, or at least his grandfather. He certainly looked like one himself, though the name he bore was far from Latin. Mr. Richard Slye was just turned forty. He had had an exciting and varied career. To cite it in full would fill a volume. At the moment he was carrying on various schemes in order to live. All schemes, all methods and manners of livelihood were to Mr. Slye neither good or bad. Simply necessities. To him the immoral was moral. Everything was worth doing. Everything. And as a gentleman who had carried out everything except murder, a few sidelines like touting for abortionists, agent for muscular developers, and fine-art post cards, and the classics of Paul de Kock and Company, as well as an interest in horses and dogs, were hardly worth the mentioning. Mr. Slye liked women—he loved them passionately, devotedly; not one or two, but all women. They were
all
beautiful. They were vital necessities. Maureen he loved, though at the moment he wasn't certain for how long. Neither was she.

People who lived in Adolphus Terrace looked upon Mr. Slye as a man of means. All men of means according to them were gentlemen who didn't work. Tramps were of course excluded, for no tramp could ever dress, or hope to dress in such a picturesque, spectacular way. Everybody addressed him as Slye Esquire. He himself rather liked it. It amused him too, as it would any man whose father had been a labourer in a jute factory, and to which Slye junior had proceeded at the early age of fourteen, and who, by the time he was eighteen, had risen to the height of foreman.

He rose in two hemispheres simultaneously, in his employer's and in the girls who worked there. It was here in fact that he had learned that women were
all
beautiful and
all
necessary. Girls became women. Women came and went from the factory, but Richard Slye remained. They all loved him. There was something fascinating about him. He knew it. They knew it. Maureen knew it a week after she had gone to work there. But success in her case had not been so easy. Mr. Slye had to break down many barriers beside an inherent shyness.

Maureen Fury was a pious girl of seventeen. A year later she was like all the others. Beautiful. Necessary. He remembered her longest, loved her longest. He wanted to own Maureen. But like the others she had left the factory. Got married to a middle-aged man, and one not half so attractive as Mr. Slye. He had lost sight of her for years. But miracles still happened even in Gelton jute factories. And now here she was actually living with him, and to him she was more lovely and fragrant than all the others he had learned to know.

He liked her pretty face, and she was a bit more intelligent than the rest. He liked her mass of golden red hair, her big honest eyes, her little mouth, and the shape of her body. Yes, it had been a miracle. She had actually come to him when he asked her. He had only one regret. That she had known another man. At first she had seemed afraid, remorseful, but he had soon reassured her.

‘Maury, my darling. Listen! In this world the best way to live and to get on is to look at everything and call it good. Yes. Even if it's bad, call it good! Look at me! I've always followed that method and I've never gone wrong, and another thing, Maury, imagination. Now if you've got imagination, well, you can get anywhere.'

But all this went down the drain of Maureen's mind, a sort of drain into which unpleasant and unnecessary things could be dropped at will. She wasn't impressed by that side of Mr. Slye at all. A man and not a thinking machine was what Maureen liked. ‘I like you as you are, darling,' she had said. ‘Just as you are.'

‘But you said you left your husband because he was dull and had no imagination,' he questioned her, liking to tease.

‘Love me,' was all she said.

By those two words had Mr. Slye plumbed the depths of Maureen Kilkey. He knew her, understood her. He could rule her. Own her. And she
was
pretty.

No. 7 Adolphus Terrace consisted of cellar, kitchen, and two rooms above. In the cellar part of the house they practically lived. From this depth Mr. Slye carried on his business. Maureen looked after the house, helped him with his business, became what he called ‘a devoted wife.' The neighbourhood was no better than that from which she had shifted. She would look at the row of iron bars across the cellar window, itself covered with a film of dust.

Maureen's curiosity in Mr. Slye's business dated from the day when with housewifely thoroughness she had proceeded to clean that window. This angered Mr. Slye. Leave the window. As it was. Leave the dust. He liked the window that way. He hated people looking in. Dust couldn't be seen through. And gradually Mrs. Kilkey had learned of all ‘the wonderful things I have done,' from arranging for the necessary convenience for girls, to supplying factory workers with works of art, and even selling tips to people who backed horses, the majority of whom considered: ‘Slye
is such
a lucky man.' Nothing was too large or too small for Mr. Slye. In the off seasons, or when there was a falling off in the clientele for the abortionist, Mr. Slye wrote poems about Grief. These he printed and decorated himself. It was an entirely new field of activity and the only one in which ‘Good little Maureen' had not shown the interest he expected from her.

Door-to-door canvassing she didn't take to. She did, however, read the papers for Richard, and made the necessary notes. He was glad of her help. A man killed at the dock this morning. Well, a set of memorial cards, name and age and appropriate verses to suit the occasion brought in an amount of money that couldn't just be laughed at. It was wonderful.

It was one of Mr. Slye's great ambitions to supply tombstones of magnificence to bereaved families, and from the moment it occurred to him that there was real money in it, he dreamed daily of just one ‘good corner' in abortion, or even the horses, and then he could strike out in the grand manner. Such was the gentleman with whom Maureen Kilkey was now living.

‘Blast those interfering swine!' he thought, then he got off the bed and went and looked out of the window. He was certain it was that Sloane woman who had opened her mouth too wide. Mrs. Clara Sloane was a woman who did not stand anywhere in the world where ‘
all
are beautiful and necessary.' She stood quite outside it. She was sixty. She undertook for a consideration to work out a methodical plan, a sort of register of events, accidents at the docks, girls in trouble at factories, in large houses, shopgirls, etc. Well, it had simply come to this. She had split. Wasn't satisfied with her commission. Damn fool he'd been ever to listen to her. It still worried Mr. Slye as to how she had come to know the secrets of his business. He even thought Maureen had had something to do with it.

Mr. Slye, even with those he loved, held the rigid balance of hate. On more than one occasion, Maureen had seen how it worked. He had often struck her. When a letter had come from her husband informing her that the child was ill, she had gone to see them.

The husband had tried hard to get her to stay. He had only asked her to come and see the child because he asked for her all the time. But a year's living with Mr. Slye had convinced her more and more that this man she had been fool enough to marry (she always hated her mother when she thought about it), was nothing more than a dolt. In the end she had rid Mr. Kilkey not only of her own person, but the child's also. She returned to Adolphus Terrace.

Mr. Slye was furious. He shouted, he swore, she thought he would strike her. She made to go, child and all. But he had calmed down. He loved her. She
was
pretty, and such a figure. The mere thought of another man having Maureen—no—it simply couldn't happen. Life resumed its course, Dermod, the child, being the tributary. Then once he was assured he had
got
her, he changed his tactics. He began to growl. He quarrelled daily, hourly cursed her for bringing the child. He wanted his own child. This he was soon to have, and then, and it seemed another miracle to Mr. Richard Slye, he saw that there might be money in it. Yes. ‘Look at everything and call it good.' That motto never failed. It was too good.

He loved Maureen, but he couldn't afford to keep the child as well. He worked on her weakness. After all if she really loved him, etc. etc., and this had the precise effect, because there was some inherent quality, or evil, or strength, or weakness in this man, something that attracted powerfully, and Maureen was always afraid, afraid she would lose him. Throw her out. Go away. ‘No,' he had said, ‘I can't afford it. What about this feller you left? He seems a mug. Couldn't you get something out of him; a few bob a week?' Maureen said Yes, and ‘the fool in Price Street,' received first one letter, then another, written from fictitious addresses, asking for money. She was hard up, she was this and that and the other——Mr. Slye wrote these letters with consummate art, and Maureen posted them.