Bell Timson Read online

  Alice burst out laughing.

  “Oh, come on, Bell! It’s not like you to jump your stiles before you come to them. You’re healthy, aren’t you?”

  I hastened to assure her that, apart from the trouble I had in getting over Jo’s birth, I had never had a day’s illness in my life. No, I didn’t get tired. I didn’t suffer from any of the ailments which are supposed to afflict women of the working classes (I was startled for a moment to find myself included in this category) after childbirth.

  “I should think all you need is toning up: I don’t mean drugs or tonics, but getting your muscles in working trim,” concluded Alice when I had satisfied her on the other matters.

  “I shouldn’t think there’s much wrong with my muscles, considering the amount of housework I do!” I told her.

  It wasn’t the same thing, she answered.

  “Each job of work you do in the house means a change of posture. You make a bed, then you brush a carpet; after that, perhaps, you are stretching up, dusting a picture rail. Massage means spending hours in more or less the same position; repeating the same routine of actions — probably under conditions you wouldn’t choose for yourself. At the Institute we have proper, high, narrow couches for the patients, hard and flat, that make the work easy. One of my private patients has a bed that is only about eighteen inches off the ground. Think what that means, when you are doubled up over it for nearly an hour! Another insists on a feather mattress. Try doing deep massage on a feather mattress, and you’ll find out what it’s like. I can hardly crawl to the bus when I’ve finished with that one.”

  Well, she showed me some exercises for the body and the hands, which I promised to do every day for a fortnight before I went to her for my first lesson (“And the first thing you do is to buy a pair of rubber gloves; no more housework in bare hands for you”), and I felt as if I was walking on air when I hurried off to Stanley’s, where the girls were waiting for me.

  I suppose the light must have been shining right out of me, for I saw several people look, and, just as I had been conscious of myself in the Copper Kettle, so I now realized that, although I was thirty-four, my waist was as trim as a girl’s and my ankles as neat, I knew one man in particular was interested; in fact I heard him stop, and then follow me a little way; but I suppose he was discouraged by my purposeful style of walking. I felt like turning round and saying to him:

  “So far as you or any more like you are concerned, I might as well be pigeon-toed, with a squint!” That’s how I felt then about men, and how I’ve felt more or less ever since; for from the moment I made up my mind to get rid of Harry I decided I belonged to the girls and no one else. No sort of ill feeling or sex enmity; I just realized that men were an expensive luxury that a woman in my position could not afford to indulge. If they don’t take it out of you in money, they do it in other ways; and whatever I had left belonged to Kathleen and Jo. I was quite clear in my mind about that. So I was glad when the footsteps stopped, and I hurried on, hoping the girls had been good — Jo in particular, who was inclined to fret if I was away too long.

  Nora let me in, and when we were in the sitting room I saw them playing on the “lawn” at the back of the house. I was relieved to see that Kathleen wasn’t teasing Jo and that they both seemed quite contented.

  “Jo’s wet herself twice,” Nora was complaining. “I do think she’s old enough to ask, at six.”

  It was not worth while explaining to her that Jo was very shy about “asking” and that she never wet herself at home; but I thanked Nora for washing the drawers, which were drying on the clothes-horse in front of the fire, and felt annoyed because they happened to be a patched pair, which I’d had to pop on the child because the others were not aired.

  Nora was looking at me with a kind of sly curiosity; I think, in spite of her disapproval, she felt it was exciting to have a divorced woman in her house, although she would have bundled me quickly out of the way if any of her friends had come in.

  “So that’s the end of it.” She could not help saying something, although she had said many a time she did not care about discussing such nasty subjects. I agreed, that was the end. A queer look came over her face — she was one of those dark, little-faced women who can crowd more expression into a few inches than most people get by using all they’ve got. She never needed to say much, for her face said it for her, and I must say I would have been sorry to set tongue to one half the things that Nora put across just by screwing up her lips and chasing her eyes into the corners. I have heard her called “a very tactful woman.” My God! If Nora’s is tact, give me a bull in a china shop. The worst was, you could never pin anything on a woman who didn’t put it into words.

  “I’ll remember you to Stan,” she said.

  I laughed outright.

  “That’s all right, Nora. I wasn’t thinking of waiting until he came in. Why should I?”

  That shook her a bit. She pulled some more faces. The old silent pictures were then going; Nora could have made her fortune if Stan had sent her to America. She mumbled:

  “He’s very worried just now, with the business. I’m sure I don’t know where we’ll be if things don’t look up.”

  Knowing that Stan had just bought her a new bedroom suite and renewed his contract, first class instead of third, I had the answer for that.

  “Listen, Nora. You needn’t be afraid I’ll ever ask Stan — or, if it comes to that, Alfred or Ozzy — for a penny. On the contrary, perhaps it won’t be long before I’m in a position to help you; and I hope,” I added, feeling that this was not very kind, “that if you ever want it you won’t let the past make any difference. I have my faults, but I’m not mean and I don’t bear malice. It would make me happy if I could do anything for you in any way.” And I meant it; because talking to Alice had made me think of Mother, and of Laura, praying to God to make her love Stanley if she couldn’t like him. Blood is thicker than water, and I knew Mother, if she had been alive, would have expected us to help one another — a point of view that hadn’t occurred to the boys.

  Before Nora had time to answer, or even arrange a face or two, the girls, who had seen me through the window, came charging in as if they hadn’t seen me for weeks. So I put Jo into her drawers and made them thank their aunt Nora for having them, and we set out for home.

  When I said we were walking Kathleen started to scream and stamp her feet; they had probably been running about until they were tired. But Stan’s house was just beyond the penny stage; it would have been sixpence for the three of us, and I had to count the coppers. When I had dragged and scolded Kathleen along to the bus stop, there were nearly a dozen people waiting, and the first three busses that came along were full. I knew I could not scramble on with the children. It was getting dusk, and the trees had lost their green gay look and were shabby and dusty like the people in the streets; the wind was blowing the bus tickets about and plastered a dirty newspaper that had been used to wrap butcher’s meat against Jo’s bare legs; she started to whine and whimper that she was cold. “Let’s walk, Mummy, let’s walk.”

  So I made them walk, and as we were trundling on together I found myself looking at the girls for the first time as if they were not my children: seeing them as other people would see them — perhaps as Mother would have seen her granddaughters; and I got a shock.

  When you hold a book too close to your eyes the print blurs. I believe it is like that over your own flesh and blood. Kathleen and Jo were close to me, mine, out of my own body; I was used to seeing them, smelling them, feeling them; their little limbs were as familiar to me as my own. Since Harry went away they had slept with me in the big bed, and in the night they would crush in so close that it was like having them part of me again. I’d wake up with Kathleen’s hair across my face, and a damp patch in my shoulder where Jo had nuzzled in like a little animal. On cold nights we would lie what Kathleen called “spoonways” — all turned one way, Jo curled up between my shoulders and my knees and Kathleen behind me with
her arm flung across me, and all our feet cuddling together for warmth. I knew it was not supposed to be healthy, but it was comforting; it was bliss just to be like that with the children; it was innocence and peace come back again after ten years of vexation and torment. It was just simple, animal maternity, like a bitch, happy and content with her litter — not bothering about the past or the future, not conscious of anything but warmth and softness and slow breathing and the little snuffling noises of pleasure.

  Of the two, Kathleen was like her father. She had Harry’s lightness and lankiness of build, and the same effect of the head being too small for the body. She had also, I now noticed, the same sly look in her eyes: never looking one quite straight in the face, lolling her head on one side and rolling her eyes into the comers. Her mouth, too, was Harry’s: thin in the upper lip, the lower one full and inclined to be sullen. She was much too thin for her age, and although I gave her all the nourishing food I could buy her skin was the grayish white of mother-of-pearl. She had beautiful narrow hands and feet; these were certainly from Harry’s side of the family, for my people were inclined to be big-handed and bigfooted, with fingers stubbed and padded at the tips — not tapering, as Kathleen’s were.

  Jo was extraordinarily like Laura at the same age, although she would never grow up to Laura’s beauty, for she was a brown little thing, sprinkled with moles all over her chubby face and body. Luckily the ones on her face were in the right places; there was one just below the outer corner of her right eye and another on her chin, and there were two tiny ones behind her left ear. We always called them her beauty spots, though the one on her chin had started to give trouble before she was out of her teens, and eventually we had to try electrolysis, which left a little scar but did away with the tuft of hairs with which she was threatened. She was highly strung but as lively as a cricket, and I could understand Harry making a favorite of her, although I was sorry about it on Kathleen’s account; I think it made her bitter.

  Going along, with them on each side of me, I realized for the first time how badly they walked: scraping their feet and stubbing their toes like gutter children, lolling about, and Kathleen as humpbacked as a camel, which scared me until I got her against the doorpost and found her spine was as straight as my own. They had just got into bad habits because for the last eight or nine months I had had too much on my mind to keep a proper eye on them, and schools, as far as I can make out, never see anything.

  “Use your handkerchief, Kathleen!” I told her sharply.

  “I haven’t got one!” I noticed with a shock that what she said was practically “Oi ’evn’t got one!”

  “Has Daddy come home yet?” Jo was asking. As, in spite of what I had said to George, I wasn’t prepared for the question, I pretended not to hear. Jo gave my hand a tug, and, happening to look at Kathleen, I saw her giving me one of her sly glances, and that she grinned and twisted her head away. I knew in a flash that Kathleen had heard something — some smutty school gossip; for of course plenty of people knew that Harry had left me, and none, in our neighborhood, would be particular what they said in front of children.

  “What’s the matter, Kathleen?” I asked her, and she wriggled her shoulders in a silly way and giggled, “Nothing.” I’d have liked to slap her. Jo kept on teasing me about Harry, and at last I said I would tell them when we got home. For one thing, it would give me a little more time to think, and, for another, I knew that Jo, who was fond of her daddy, was likely to make a scene in the street if I said he was not coming back to us. I wasn’t prepared to hear Kathleen say,

  “Daddy’s a —!”

  I should not like to put down what Kathleen called her father, and I realized in a minute what bad company the child had been keeping; for, although Harry was foul-mouthed on occasions, he generally took care what he said before the girls and, I would swear, would sooner have cut his tongue out than used the word Kathleen brought out as pat as if she was saying “rabbit.” It took the breath out of me.

  I did not scold her then, although I said she was never to let me hear her use that word again; at which she giggled and flounced and seemed to think she had been clever, but as I took no notice she soon subsided and sulked for the rest of the way home.

  After tea I knew I was for it, and thought the sooner it was over the better, so that if there were any scenes they could be over by bedtime; and I made them sit down and said something like this to them. (Remember, I didn’t want them to know anything about Harry’s cruelty to me, or the way he neglected us and got us a bad name by his behavior. I did not know how much Kathleen had noticed, but I wanted to put all that out of her mind and show her that those things had nothing to do with Harry and me parting.)

  So I began by saying that when two people were fond of each other it was a good thing for them to get married and live together and have children like Kathleen and Jo. Here I tried to put in something about love making babies, and that they were here because Harry and I had loved each other so much. It was the sort of thing Mother might have said, but it stuck in my throat. I’m not a hypocrite, and if love had anything to do with those two poor children of mine, call me a Cherokee! My love for Harry — that sort of love — was finished before the end of the honeymoon, and each of my pregnancies was the result of rape. It’s not pretty, but that’s the truth of it. So I cut out the part about love.

  “Are you listening, Kathleen?” She was kicking the leg of the chair. “But sometimes people change their minds or find out they have made a mistake, and they like somebody better than the one they are living with.” I picked Kathleen up, gave her a shake, and sat her on my knee. Jo had crept up and was pressing against me; I knew she was going to cry in a minute, though I don’t think she understood what I was talking about.

  “Daddy found someone he liked better, didn’t he?” said Kathleen, with a sort of sly satisfaction that shocked me.

  “How do you know?”

  She wriggled and sniggered again, and this time I did give her a smack — a good sharp one.

  “Don’t behave like that! It’s downright common. For goodness’ sake, child, you might be a guttersnipe!” And then, of course, I had to tell her that if she didn’t stop whimpering I’d send her to bed without finishing the story. “And who told you about Daddy?”

  She was scared enough to stop being silly, and mumbled something about “a girl in her form.” I didn’t ask the name.

  “I’m surprised the teacher lets little girls talk about things they know nothing about, Kathleen.”

  “But that’s what you’re telling us, isn’t it? Daddy has gone away with Mrs. Hornby, hasn’t he?” she stopped whining to ask.

  -I hadn’t time to be surprised, or upset by the nasty, squalid turn the story had taken, for Jo opened her mouth and let out a roar that nearly deafened us, and Kathleen — I couldn’t help being sorry for the child, for it showed I was right in what I had suspected about her feelings over Harry favoring Jo — shouted at her:

  “You see, Daddy likes Mrs. Hornby better than he likes you — so sucks to you!”

  Well, after that there was nothing to do but try and calm Jo down. Goodness, the noise that child made when she cried! The neighbors used to bang on the walls or shout things, and one day a stranger walked in from the street and said we ought to be reported to the R.S.P.C.C. It was sheer nerves, and she was frightened of the noise she made herself, which of course made it worse for her. Even Kathleen, who was often the cause of it, would jump up and down with her fingers in her ears, shouting, “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t!” as if she could not bear it.

  But tonight Kathleen began to cry too; not, I think, that she minded Harry going, but that she was frightened of the change that had come into our lives and did not know how to express her feelings. Between the pair of them I was nearly distracted, trying to think what Mother would do in my place. Jo looked as if she might roar herself into a fit at any minute, and Kathleen was wailing in a quiet sort of heartbroken fashion that was harder to
bear than Jo’s screams.

  I got them into bed at last, and I tried to make up some sort of story about the good times we were going to have, and how we would have a little house with a garden, and keep chickens and grow our own flowers; but I was too tired to make a very good job of it. When they were asleep I stumbled downstairs and knelt down in front of the rocking chair. It was so long since I had said my prayers that I hardly remembered how they went, but I said something, and asked God to bless me, the girls, George, and Alice. I thought of dear old George, and “the trouble’s over”! For me it was just beginning.

  Chapter IV

  I’VE ALWAYS BEEN an energetic woman, and the healthy upbringing we had as children was my salvation after I got married, but the last four or five years had taken it out of me, and I had a lot of leeway to make up. Alice impressed it on me that half a masseur’s stock in trade was not only Lu he healthy but to look healthy. “It’s half suggestion with most of these people,” she told me. “Especially the neurasthenics. If you can carry the feeling of energy with you when you go to treat a patient, you’re sure to be doing good. You’re always a live spark, Bell, but just now your liveliness is coming off your nerves. We’ve got to get rid of those nerves and replace them with real staying power.”

  It would have been easy enough if I had sent the children back to school; but after what Kathleen told me I was determined they should not go there again. Until I had found a new place for them I was going to try and keep up their reading, writing, and sums myself, and meanwhile pay attention to their behavior and manners, so that they should not make a bad impression on their new teachers. I was beginning to feel as if I was back at school myself, for Alice insisted on my reading some of her textbooks. I’ve never cared for reading, unless it was a good, racy novel with what Harry called “a bit of ginger” in it, and book work always defeated me; but I dug out some of my old anatomy notebooks and tried to make out the diagrams and remember some of my theory — which was never up to much. All the practical side interested me, but I never had the patience for the book work, which seemed to me a waste of time. I suppose I’d never have passed my examinations at one of the big hospitals, but they were easygoing at the cottage, and as I was a handy girl in other ways they let me through.