Cotter's England (6 page)

Nellie said good-naturedly, "You're all alike, you amateurs. Everything is grist to your mill. You don't see the warm natural human material. You see a subject."

"Isn't it a subject for you? A news story?"

"That's different. They have great faith in the press; a lever to move things for them."

"But today one of the men said to me, Write about this, what you see, write a book about us. I told him I wanted to. He said good."

Nellie, not heeding, broke into a blackbird whistle, a headless and tailless motif and went striding along. After a while, she slowed down and said protectively, "I understand the urge. But you'll need more experience. That's not enough, the seamy side. You can't butcher them to make a holiday in print. Writing's not just a case of self-expression or conscience clearing. The muckrakers did their work. Now we want something constructive. You see, sweetheart, just to photograph a refuse yard with its rats, that wouldn't help the workers one tiny little bit. It would only be glorifying your own emotions."

"What would you write about, I mean given your experience? Of course, I can never rival your experience."

"No, I've been up to my ears in it all my life. I always knew reality."

"Well, what would you begin with, say?"

"You just write what you see, Caroline sweetheart. Stick to reality; and when you've got the hang of it, you'll be all right. I knew I had something to say when I started out, pet; but when I saw the paper-spoilers, I said, I'll never do that, so perhaps something great is lost; but that's my feeling."

"I have to see it myself, I know."

"Aye, but you don't want to dress it up in romantic illusion or disillusion. You want to give stark staring reality, straight in the face. And no destruction, nothing depressing. The lives of the workers are depressing enough. You want to cover it with a rosy veil, a mystery."

"No destruction. Yes, I said to myself I never heard talk about retreat and failure from Nellie Cook. And I wanted to come and learn from you."

Nellie was charmed, "Did ye, pet? That was wise and good of you, sweetheart. The workers, pet, were walk-ons in all this glorious history. Their play has got to begin."

"That's well put."

Nellie declared with false melancholy, "No, pet, I haven't fulfilled my promise to myself. Let's go in and get a beer at the Queen's Head. Caroline, I'm dry! And I've got to take a pee."

She rapped Caroline on the shoulder, pushed her into the next pub, and ordered for herself, first a sherry, then a whiskey, then a gin.

"You'll be ill."

"No, I'm just beginning to come round. The social quack Robert Peebles, me editor, blue-penciled half me article. What are ye doing, I asked him, tailoring reality closer to your theories? The air here is thick with theories; you want to get out into the fresh air of dockside: it's a long time since you were there. Ah, pet—give me a minute."

For a while Nellie worked on some notes she had to take in in the morning. She then slapped her book together, gave a huge laughing sigh and ordered for herself a whiskey and a gin.

"And now let's have a good talk. Are you hungry? Or can you hold out for a bit so I can get to know you."

Caroline looked round the room, said it was nice and friendly. "My parents would think it sinful to be here. But here they're just nice ordinary people, kind."

Nellie stretched her legs out and said a perfect friendship was a fine thing. Had Caroline ever had a friend?

"I had plenty of friends, at school and in the church, everywhere. Dozens I suppose if you count them all."

Nellie said earnestly that was not what she meant, "You can't have dozens of friends. You can only have one, one true friend. Have you never had a true friend?"

"Oh, yes, when I was about eighteen I had one. We used to take long walks together. We were both interested in serious questions. She was lovely: so true."

"And she was your true friend, pet?"

"We got on because we weren't too close and weren't alike. That's best. Our lives ran parallel and never met: no friction. And she's loyal and so am I."

"Ah, no, your lives didn't run parallel; they met."

"No, my life never met anyone's till I met Barry, my husband. He was more like a best friend. I was very happy. I knew the risk I was taking coming home."

She paused and Nellie waited. Caroline continued, "We live through everything. Sometimes I think life is a strange disease that attacks different people in different ways; and at different ages it attacks you differently."

"Aye, but with a true friend you can fight off that disease; you can hold on to the true solution, the cure."

"What's the cure?" Caroline laughed sadly.

"There are two, sweetheart: love, and death."

"Oh, both those are diseases, too."

"Ah, you're depressed, love. You see, you never understood what friendship is. The friendship at school and at church, that's good; but it's the loaf of bread; it's not the wine."

"My parents loved me. They couldn't understand why I left home.- I heard Mother saying one day, with such an undertone of joy, that their dear daughter had never been able to bear leaving her own home, where she was so loved. I had already secretly begun to save up to come away."

Nellie said, smoking and drinking, "Yes, family love is painted as a smooth green shallow valley of comfort and it's full of abysses; you've got to watch your step not to slip in. But pity is the answer, Caroline. We're responsible for them, their failures and pitiful disappointments. They were young things when they had us, ready for life and we were the first burden on their thin young shoulders. I don't understand those who don't feel this terrible tender guilt towards their parents. It's a crushing burden, darling: it is. It breaks many people; but we have known life and love and it was denied to them."

"I am sure my parents love each other. I even wondered how they could see me there without a life of my own."

Nellie said excitedly, "But isn't that the proof? That they never knew the complete perfection and joy which our generation knows ought to be marriage? Of course, chick, it's rare even with us, a rare, rare flower, shy and difficult. Ah, darling, when I think of my poor grandmother, uncomplaining, a splendid human being who showed us the stuff of life, taught us what a woman could be, held our hands spiritually and physically through our hungry thirsty youth! When we wanted knowledge and were looking for it in all directions, cheeping pitifully like young birds, she fed us from the spring of life, she taught us, a noble human soul, enduring, closest to us all, a noble wife and mother—to think she never knew the meaning of sexual pleasure! Such people, generous and fine, miss the grandest thing of all, for they sacrifice out of ignorance of self, out of goodness. Sacrifice must be done, darling! But pain goes with it. Discovery is the keyword: the world is there to be found. Self-denial is not the modern answer. To know all and to understand all, the good and the evil alike, that is the modern answer. And to pity all. We do not know what lies under the actions of the just or the unjust. Not scorn but pity. All suffer, but the criminal suffers more; all his life is suffering. And one must know joy too, otherwise the crown of perfection is missing. I often wonder at my strange fate to be born into the first generation that understood humanity's birthright, the perfect consummation. If a woman has that with a man, darling, then you can't ask more from life."

"But the classics are full of it. I was interested in love always."

Nellie scowled, "I left the university, pet, because of teachers abruptly enlightening the young, ignorant, questioning minds; that is the reason for many distorted lives. A teacher there— what she said combined with what we knew—and the classics! The Rape of Lucrece, and Venus and Adonis—it was a crime— the corruption of youth."

Caroline looked at her thoughtfully, did not know what to say. Nellie went on in a sweet thin craven tone, asking if Caroline thought they could be friends.

"You're missing something if you haven't a friend."

"But we are friends, aren't we? I know it's early."

"It's early for an ordinary companionship, aye; but where there's a genuine basis, it ought to begin at once. It only needs the act of willing and knowing. Would you say we couldn't be friends now?"

Caroline looked at her, still puzzled.

Nellie went on in a dreamy coaxing tone, "It's no good playing the ascetic, no; the thick armor of self-sufficiency which you have, pet, covers a wound, a scar is there. Self-knowledge must be struggled for. Confess what you know, confess what you don't know. You need a friend for that, to tell your inmost secrets to."

"I'll tell you the truth," said Caroline and paused.

"Ah, now, that's better: let's be frank."

"I've written to Barry, but had no reply. He never caused me any pain. I feel quite sensible now. It was harmony with him, as you say. If he is free, I would go there now."

She looked at Nellie as if she had told her whole story.

Nellie said, "Then there's no hope for us as friends?"

"Why not?"

Caroline looked at her eccentric face and topknot and the glasses standing before her sympathetically. She added, with warmth, "You know, I think it is you who don't know about friendship. For a woman the best friend is a man. There's no deeper feeling."

Nellie cried in a rage, "That's a damn hypocritical superior attitude. I won't take it from you or anyone else. So women are second-class citizens. Like families in slums who need housing. Subjects for pity!"

Caroline sat up in angry astonishment.

Nellie cried, "So that's it. Women are inferior, incapable of friendship. Of all the goddamn backward bourgeois attitudes. A woman's not the equal of a man. I resent it. You can't put that over on me. So we're second-class citizens to you."

Caroline said indignantly, "Well, if it seems that way to you."

"You see what a bourgeois you are? The superiority feeling in everything! You're incapable of a decent human relation with another woman."

Caroline did not reply.

Nellie began to lament, "You see how contorted your attitudes are? You're formed by the middle-class marriage hunt; man first, last and always. Aren't you ashamed, a little ashamed? Ashamed to put your sisters on such a level?"

"I can't see what you mean. If Barry answers, he will be all to me."

"That's a terrible confession."

Caroline said, "A confession?"

"A confession; a terrible confession."

"Of what?"

"Of weakness, inferiority, of needing the superior conquering sex."

Caroline began to laugh weakly, "You make everything so unusual. I want to get married again; that's all. I'm glad to have some women friends."

She felt she had hurt Nellie and added, "We were brought up so differently."

"Yes, we were. I was not brought up with pretty pictures painted on me eyelids."

"If you're my friend, shouldn't you try to understand me?"

Nellie said bitterly, "I understand you very well. You're smugly satisfied to be enclosed in the shell and never get out. You don't want experience. You don't want discovery. Experience is a difficult woman to woo: you must leave your mother and your father and your milksop ideas of romance. No good will ever come of your writing unless you open your eyes. You'll get no respect from me. You must rely not on yourself but on others; on me. I can show you the way; and if I don't, if you alienate me, your last chance has gone. You'll be the blind led by the blind. You'll be writing the mutterings and screams in a nightmare, no reality. There are enough paper spoilers. I could show you the way. There is a way. With just a little, you could be close to the warm skin of humanity. But you can't take it. Your soul and heart are second rate. You're weak. You want to follow the way of the mothers, the grandmothers, the pathetic imprisoned Eves."

Nellie ordered another drink and they sat in silence till she had finished it, tossing it in with curt desperate gestures. Then Caroline said, "Shouldn't we go? Didn't you say you had to go and see someone tonight?"

"Yes, I have to go and see someone you'd never go and see. It's an unfortunate woman, miserable and despised. She lives in a prostitute's hotel in a bad street in Southwark on the marshy side. And I don't blame you. I don't know any bourgeois woman who'd go and see her. And yet she is my friend and no man ever was her friend. To be her friend I did what you would never do. I told her I was a streetwalker, too. I told her I had a different district. She thinks I walk the streets round here!"

She ended in a tone of bitter heart-rending misery.

"Let's go then," said Caroline Wooller, getting up.

"I must go home first; I must take her some eggs and a jacket."

They headed home. When they were some way along the street, Caroline noticed that Nellie was crying. When they reached the door, Caroline offered Nellie the house key, thinking that she had offended her too deeply; but Nellie begged suddenly, in her pretty quick tones,

"You'll stay tonight? Let me make it up with you, Caroline. Did I offend you? Did I go too deep? I'm a bloody fool, darling, I'm so sincere. I cut across nerves. Will you forgive me, pet, and give me another chance?"

"I'm so unused to talk, you see; I'm afraid I'm ridiculously touchy. You're right, that it's not human."

"Eh, darling, you're all right; you're a fine woman. You remind me of my grandmother, the woman I honor most. Let's have a cup of tea and a bite. I've got to unpack me legs and get going, but I must eat something. The poor woman won't have anything. She's waiting on me."

While they were eating Nellie said vaguely, over her cup and cigarette,

"Yes, my grandmother, as I was saying, Caroline, was my guiding star. I resolved that that great life should not sink unrecorded into the dust of millions. That's my high resolve: to make a beautiful drama of it. It's me great play. She will not have lived in vain."

Caroline asked about the plot; but Nellie did not tell.

"There are things, pet, which cannot be reduced to words, though that spites our poor scribbler's vanity."