Hannah massey (20 page)

For some minutes after the front door closed they sat without speaking, until the silence made itself felt and Rosie said, "Do you think you'll be able to go oh Monday, Hughie?"

"Oh, aye. Yes, I'll be quite fit by then. I should be all right by Saturday. The doctor said two or three days."

"Did he ... the doctor ask how it happened?"

"Yes, an' I told him some hairns threw a snowball with a brick in it."

He laughed weakly.

"Oh, Hughie."

"Well I couldn't say I was walloped with a dish -of peaches, could I?

"

He was aiming now to make her laugh, but didn't succeed.

She said quietly, "I'm going to miss you when you're gone. I... I seem to have got to know you more these last few days than during all the years we lived together.... Funny, isn't it?"

"Aye, it's funny, but it wasn't my fault that we didn't know each other better." He lay back against the head of the couch and stared towards the low ceiling as he said, "I once bought you a birthday present. You were sixteen. It was a bunch of anemones. They were all colours and very bonny, and I had them in me hand when she came into the kitchen.

She didn't ask who they were for, she knew, an' she took a big gully and sliced the heads off them as clean as a whistle, there in me

hands."

"Oh, Hughie." She lowered her head.

"Oh, I suppose she was right. I suppose in her way she was right. To her mind I had raped her eldest daughter and she was making sure it wasn't going to happen with her youngest."

"Oh, don't say that." She screwed up her face at him.

"It sounds awful... you would never have ..."

"How do you know, Rosie, what I would have done?" They were looking fixedly at each other, and it was some seconds before he went on, "She had made me almost petrified of girls;

but not you, you were easy to talk to; you were the only girl I could talk to, although you always appeared like a child to me, and even from a baby you were extraordinarily beautiful. and good. the goodness

shone out of you. I saw you the day you were born, and it was evident then. I had just turned thirteen the day you were born. "

She looked for a moment longer at the warm, tender expression on his face. He was looking at her as she had seen people look at the statue of the Virgin Mary in church, almost in rapt contemplation; it was unbearable. She sprang up from the chair and walked towards the

gas-fire in the far wall, where his voice came to her, contrite,

saying, "I'm sorry, Rosie, if I've upset you."

"Hughie" --she paused and cleared her throat"--I'm ... I'm not a child any longer, or even a girl. I'm a woman. And ... and I'm not good."

She had her head back on her shoulders as she spoke, staring at the picture above the gas-fire. It was the only picture in the room and it showed a scene of sea and sky with no dividing line between them.

"It all depends on what you mean, Rosie." His voice was low and his words slurred as if he were thinking hard, but about something else.

"Nothing you could do in the world would ever make me think of you as bad."

"No?" She was still looking upwards.

"No, Rosie."

Her eyes were moving over the picture as if she was searching for the horizon line as she said, "When I left home, Hughie, I thought I knew all about men, good men and bad men. I was Rosie Massey, brought up among a horde of men and with a mother to whom the word delicacy was unknown. I grew up with the feeling that every conception of hers had been a public affair."

"Don't, Rosie."

"Am I shocking you, Hughie?"

"No." He paused.

"You couldn't shock me, but still I don't like to hear you, above all people, talking like that."

"Not if I think like that? Have always thought like that?"

"You don't think like that, you're upset inside."

There followed a stillness, and it was broken by him saying

tentatively, "You said the other night that if you could tell anybody what was troubling you it would be me."

She turned from the fire and looked towards him; then coming slowly across the room again she sat down by the couch facing him, and

crossing her feet she joined her hands around her knees and began to rock herself. Leaning forward he put his hand across hers and stilled the motion.

"Try me," he said.

She looked into his face, close to hers, now. Hughie was nice, kind.

That's what you needed in a man, kindness. But that's what had trapped her, hadn't it. kindness? When she shuddered he straightened himself and lifted his hand quickly from hers and as quickly she grasped at it, saying, "If I tell you, and ... and you think I'm dreadful, don't show it, will you, Hughie? Don't stow it, I couldn't bear it."

He looked at her solemnly, "I tell you nothing you could da could alter my opinion of you, so go ahead."

"Hold my hand," she said; and when he gripped her hand and rested it on his knees she began.

It was quarter to eight when with her eyes cast down she had started talking. It was half-past eight when she finished and she hadn't

raised her head once. When she ended and slowly and stiffly

straightened her neck it was she who spoke again. Her green eyes

looking almost black in her white face, she stared at him as she said,

"You're shocked, aren't you? Shocked to the core?"

"No." His voice sounded husky as if he hadn't used it for a long time, then clearing his throat he repeated, "No, only... well" --he wetted his lips"--hurt to the heart for you. Oh Rosie!" He looked down at their joined hands.

"You won't tell Dennis or anyone?"

"No." They remained quiet for some moments. Then letting go her hand, he said, "Whatever happens you'll have to keep this from ... from your mother. Don't ever feel there'll be a time when you could confide in her."

"I know that," she said. She moved from the couch and began to walk about the room, round and round. Then stopping quite suddenly, she asked, "Would you like some coffee?"

"Yes ... yes, I think I would." He did not look at her as he spoke, and when she reached the kitchen she stood near the table with her.

two hands cupping her face. It had been a mistake--she shouldn't have told him; she shouldn't have told anyone. It came to her now that

Hughie was the last person she should have told. She liked Hughie and she knew he liked her. She wanted him to think well of her. She had imagined that in telling him what had happened to her he would have seen that she wasn't to blame, well not altogether, and the burden of guilt would have been lightened. But somehow he hadn't. He said he wasn't shocked, but he was shocked as much, or even more, than any of the lads would have been if she had told them.

She became overwhelmed by a feeling of emptiness, as if she had lost something she valued. But she had never valued Hughie, not until this moment. How much she valued his good opinion came to her now almost in the form of a revelation. And she whimpered to herself: No, no, not that. Why couldn't I have known before I told him?

When her mother opened the back door to let her out the air cut their breath from them and Hannah exclaimed, "My God! Every place is like glass; all that slush frozen hard. Now mind how you go, lass; it's far too early to make a start to my mind."

"I can go later to-morrow but the buses mightn't be running to time and I don't want to be late the first morning."

"No, that's understandable the first mornin', but keep that coat buttoned up." She put her hand towards the top button of Rosie's coat and went on, "And mind, go and get a good dinner into you, no sandwiches and tea mind, and I'll have something' hot and tasty ready for you the minute you enter the door. About six, you say?"

"Yes, if I can get a bus. But you never can tell."

"Good-bye now, lass; mind how you go."

"Good-bye, Ma." As Rosie stepped carefully on to the icy path Hannah, turning into the room, exclaimed, "Are you off an' all now. Jimmy?

Well you can go some of the way with Rosie, here. See her to the bus or she'll be flat on her back afore she gets to the end of the street.

"

"Aye, Ma, aye. So long."

"So long, boy."

When they had let themselves out of the garden gate Jimmy took Rosie's arm up the lane, saying, "It'll be all right when we get on the road, the lorries will've been out with the gravel. You won't want me to come with you to the bus, Rosie, will you?"

"No, of course not."

"I would but I'm a bit late, an' if you're not on the job afore the whistle they cut your time, crafty bastards."

"It's all right," she said.

"I'm going up Tangier Road, anyway; it'll bring me to the bus depot and I'll have more chance of getting a seat from there."

"Aye, aye, you will."

Just before they neared Tangier Road Jimmy asked in an assumed off-hand way, "You and Arthur went to the pictures last night?"

"Yes." , "Nokiddin'?"

"Of course we went; where else do you think we would go?"

"Well" --he laughed"--I know where Arthur would go if he got the chance, an' I thought he might have given you the slip or something'. I can't see him sitting in the pictures all night when he could be with her."

"Well he did ... he was."

Rosie didn't ask herself why it was necessary to lie to Jimmy.

Instinctively she knew she didn't trust Jimmy; of all her brothers she trusted him the least, he was too close to her mother.

"Well, I'm turning off here," she said.

"Goodbye."

"Good-bye, Rosie, an' mind how you go. An' see you work for your pay."

He laughed as he turned from her.

It was not yet fully light, and as she hurried as fast as she could down Tangier Road, the scurrying figures of the men making their way to the factories, and to buses to take them into Newcastle, and as far away as the docks on the Tyne, all looked like black huddled

phantoms.

Collars up, cap peaks down, their breath fanning out from scarves, they went their particular ways. Some had travelled the same road at the same time each day since they were lads, and would go on until they retired or died, or, fearful thought, were stood off. But Rosie,

although she had not been a part of this scene at this time before, was unconscious of any strangeness, for it was almost the same scene as was enacted at the other end of the day, and she had been familiar enough with that.

She did not go straight to the bus terminus, but she cut down a side street, and this brought her to the bottom of the hill where Hughie's shop was. When she reached the shop she passed by with just a glance towards the window and knocked on the door next to it, thinking as she did so that if this was a door to a shop it gave no indication of it because there was no window in the wall to the side of it, just a board hanging there with the faded letters on it, reading, JAMES CULL

EN--Furniture Repairer.

After knocking three times on the door and receiving no answer, she looked at the key and the paper she had taken out of her bag. Hughie had asked her last ni :ht if she would take the key of the shop and the written notice to Mr. Cullen. He, Hughie said, was always in his shop around seven. Rain, hail or snow, he'd be there, whether he had work to do or not, and he would see to any customers who called for their shoes.

Now, after knocking yet once again, she was left wondering what to do.

Hughie had added that if for some reason Mr. Cullen shouldn't be

there, she should put the key at the back of

Y

the hopper head on the top of the drain pipe. She would have to give herself a boost up from the step, he had said. And she could push the notice through the letter-box. But that he knew she wouldn't have to do, for there had never been a morning in years that old Jim hadn't been in his shop before him.

Hughie had not asked her to do this service for him until Florence and Dennis had returned, and it had created the impression that everything was normal. But she knew that it wasn't.

But this was the one morning when Mr. Cullen wasn't here before

Hughie, so she pushed the piece of paper which said, "Closed for a few days. Please apply next door," through the letter-box, and standing on the step and putting one foot on the coping of the wall, she gripped the drain pipe and hoisted herself up. She just managed to place the key on the ledge of the hopper where it joined the wall. This done, she made her way carefully down the hill again and to the bus

station.

Although her new job, which she found very pleasant and knew she was going to like, kept her on her toes as it were, on this first day there still remained a section of her mind that was not touched by it.

All day long, from the moment she had got up, she had not been able to get the thought of Hughie out of her mind. She wished now, oh she

wished from the bottom of her heart that she hadn't talked last

night.

She had felt sure that telling him would ease her, and that he would comfort her. That's what she had thought, he would comfort her,

saying, "It wasn't your fault, Rosie, you're not that kind of girl.

You would never have got into that scrape on your own. " She had thought he would tell her the things she tried to tell herself, and coming from him she could believe them, then she would again be able to like herself... just a little. But Hughie's reaction had taken the form of silence. Except for an odd word now and again, he had said nothing until Dennis and Florence had returned. It was as if he had again been hit on the head, and this time the blow had knocked him stupid. Just before she left the office Mr. Bunting again expressed his pleasure at her work.

"I see you're going to do fine," he said.

"And as Joe down below said, it's a change to have something good to look at, for there's no getting away from the fact that although Miss Pointer was good at her job she had the kind of face that put you off, if you know what I mean. Joe always said it was like a battered pluck.

He meant no offence, but that's how she appeared to him." He had hunched his rounded shoulders at her as he ended, "An" to me an' all.