Pure as the Lily (34 page)

Mary herself, like the room, had changed. She was now fifty-five. She, could have passed for forty-five and no one would have doubted her age. The only lines on her face were under her eyes, and these were a mere tracery. Her hair, which had begun to go grey about five years ago, she now camouflaged with a light brown tint. Anyone who hadn’t seen her for twenty years would have found that the greatest change lay in her dress.

The expensive outfit she had bought for Annie’s wedding in 1952 seemed to have given her a taste for dress. Before, she had never bothered much about dress, she’d never had time. But within one year the house had seemed to become empty, at least of half its occupants.

Early in 1952 Cousin Annie had died, and Jimmy shortly afterwards. And later in the year, young Annie, at nineteen, had been married. From then on there had been only Ben and her da to look after, and neither of them was much

trouble. She remembered she had gone daft for a time buying everything she set her eyes on. She supposed, in looking back, it was the release from the irritation of Cousin Annie and the lifting of the weight from her shoulders of the responsibility of Jimmy She had been thinking a lot about Jimmy this last week. It was the clearing out of the store cupboard and coming across his books again and all his scribblings. She had made an assault on the store cupboard because she didn’t want to have to tackle all the clearing up at the last minute. She wasn’t going to take a lot of rubbish with her wherever she went.

t! It was odd but the nearer the time came for her to leave this place the more reluctant she became to move; and yet for years she had looked upon it almost as a prison, wondering when she’d be free, when she’d be able to be her own mistress and go where she willed; but now, with demolition almost on them, she was acting like a sentimental girl hugging souvenirs to her.

She had just put her feet up on the couch when Ben came in. She watched him striding down the room towards her, and, as always when she looked at him from a distance, she was struck anew by his likeness to Lally. Naturally he would take after his mother, but her looks, represented in him, were quite uncanny. He was her all over again, except that he didn’t appear flamboyant; he was too lean for that.

Inside too, he was like her, for his heart was kind. But there was ii; also a good bit of Jimmy in him. He had Jimmy’s mannerisms, his humour. Yet in one way he wasn’t at all like his father, for he had no use for poetry. Nor did he dream; he was practical, was Ben, and he had known what he wanted to do since he was twelve years old.

“I want to build cars, Mam,” he had said. He had always called her main, never aunt. Well, he hadn’t built cars but he had serviced and sold them;

and in his own business an’ all, she had seen to that.

Young Ben was more like her son than Annie was her

daughter. Annie was her own Ben’s child, and therefore she should have loved her dearly; but Annie hadn’t taken after Ben, strangely she had taken after her grandmother, not too much, but just enough to make her mean, and contrary, and selfish where her own needs were concerned.

But young Ben she had loved with a passion that a mother has for an only son. Perhaps it was because in his early years he had needed her so much. How often had she travelled with him down to the Shields Institution until he was five? She had lost count of the times she had walked up Talbot Road to those iron gates, the workhouse gates, as they were known. And her journeys had been in vain because he was now stone deaf in one ear.

Because she loved him so much she knew that she must try to throw him off, and the best way, she had considered, of doing this was to get herself married, but when it came to the push she couldn’t go through with it. Three times she had made a fool of herself, and the men. And he was as bad as she in letting people down. Look at the girls he’d had, they were round him like flies. They lasted a month or two.

One had even lasted a year, but when he began to hear wedding bells he turned tail and bolted. She knew that people round about blamed her because he wasn’t married. A big hulking fellow like him, and twenty-seven years old, carting her around, they said. Wasn’t natural, they said. He should be married with a family, they said. Oh, she knew what they said.

She said to him now, “What you dithering for? Get yourself away, I’ve told you.” He looked down at her.

“I don’t like leaving you on your own, you look lost.”

She drew in a deep breath, then pointed to a side table.

“I’ve got a good book, a box of chocolates ... drink through there if I want it’ she stabbed her finger towards the dining—room wall ‘the telly, and if you don’t mind I’d like an hour to me self You’re an ungrateful old. “ He put his hands on each side of the couch above her shoulders and bent his face down

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to hers. Then wagging his head, he said, “I don’t know whether to say bitch or witch.”

“I’ll thank you to say neither.”

He pushed his lips out and kissed her lightly, then grinned at her as he straightened himself, saying, You’re an old faggot. “

She grinned back at him but with her mouth compressed, then said, “I’ll faggot you one of these days.” He was walking towards the door when he turned round.

“Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you. You know what young Taylor said the day when you came in to fill up?”

“No, what did young Taylor say the day?”

“He said you looked a smasher and you smelt nice. What have you got to say to that from a seventeen-year-old?”

“I would say he needed his ears boxed.”

He went out laughing, and she lay back her head in the crook of the couch and repeated, “She looks a smasher and smells nice.” Frank used to say that to her.

“By! lass, you look a smasher. What’s that you’ve got on? You smell nice.” Sometimes when she wasn’t wearing scent he would say, ‘you smell nice. “ She regretted at times that she hadn’t married Frank. It wasn’t that she was in love with him, she’d never be in love with anybody again, at least she doubted it very much, and time was flying, but Frank had been nice and patient until that particular Wednesday in March two years ago.

She’d had to meet him that night to give him her answer. And it was going to be yes. Then, when she was almost ready she had gone into the bedroom to get a handkerchief. The top drawer of the dressing-table was inclined to stick and consequently she always tugged at it. This night she had tugged a little too hard and the whole drawer had come out, and besides the contents spilling all over the floor the drawer itself had fallen on her foot, and she had hopped around the room in agony for a moment. It was as she gathered the odds and ends from the floor that she picked up two envelopes which were as signposts to different periods of her life. One

held the faded Valentine card: “From a silent admirer.” She had opened it and gazed at the rose. It evoked no sentimental memory in her and she wondered, as she had done before, why she kept the thing. The other envelope held the last two poems Jimmy had written. She had taken these for herself, all the rest of his later writings were in Ben’s possession, as was proper. And as she looked at them, and read them again, she realized for the first time that Jimmy’s hadn’t been the wasted life that she had imagined. He’d had a year of wonderful happiness. Very likely some would say it was wrong what he did in leaving his wife and going off with Lally, but she would never say that. And some would say you always had to pay for doing things like that; yes, they would, and they did say that around these parts.

Well, if they were right he had paid. God! how he had paid. He had tried to pull himself together time and time again only to slip back. He’d had no stave to hold on to; she herself had just been a substitute mother and a nurse.

She, too, had paid for his one year of happiness, and became weary of the struggle trying to prevent him from drinking himself to death. In the end she failed. But did he himself really fail, because towards the end he had seemed to find something. He said to her, T)o you think I’ll see Lally again, Mary, I mean when I die? “ She had not been able to answer him. How could she? She didn’t know. But after he had gone she found two poems, among others, in his drawer, and they were significant of the change in him. One was entitled “ I believe’ and went:

Where do I go from here?

Don’t tell me Nothingness, Into which no thought of mine Will flow: Dead, dead, deaded flesh Meshed into mushed wood And soil, And the power to resist harming human or animal, And the power to forgive ourselves our misdeeds, And the power to resist anything That our deep heart tells us is wrong, And the power to direct our mind To the realization that we are part of a great mystery That will one day be made clear to us, And hope that this will help us to come Near to you and say, In all humility, Thy will be done.

What struck her about this latter was, he had not translated “As we forgive them that trespass against us’.... No thought of God could erase from his mind the open-eyed deed of evil perpetrated by his mother. Perhaps he had not lived long enough to reach the point when the past becomes hazy, and peace in eternity becomes a bargaining point.

Anyway, that night, after she had replaced the drawer, she’d had to bathe her foot because it was paining, and as she did so she began to cry. She didn’t really know why, only that the pain in her foot didn’t warrant her tears.

At nine o’clock, when Frank came on the phone and she said that she was very sorry but she wasn’t coming and that it was no use, his hurt pride had sizzled over the wires.

Frank had been a widower for four years; he was a healthy sixty, he was about to retire, and the plan was that when they married they’d set off on a world tour.

The thought of the world tour had excited her, as had his quite grand home in the best part of Westoe in Shields, yet the following morning she did not tell herself that she was a fool. And later, when she broke the news to Ben and he said, “Aw, thank the Lord. Oh I am relieved, he was much too old And the power to resist harming human or animal, And the power to forgive ourselves our misdeeds, And the power to resist anything That our deep heart tells us is wrong, And the power to direct our mind To the realization that we are part of a great mystery That will one day be made clear to us, And hope that this will help us to come Near to you and say, In all humility, Thy will be done.

What struck her about this latter was, he had not translated “As we forgive them that trespass against us’.... No thought of God could erase from his mind the open-eyed deed of evil perpetrated by his mother. Perhaps he had not lived long enough to reach the point when the past becomes hazy, and peace in eternity becomes a bargaining point.

Anyway, that night, after she had replaced the drawer, i of | she’d had to bathe her foot because it was paining, and as she did so she began to cry. She didn’t really know why, only that the pain in her foot didn’t warrant her tears.

At nine o’clock, when Frank came on the phone and she said that she was very sorry but she wasn’t coming and that it was no use, his hurt pride had sizzled over the wires.

Frank had been a widower for four years; he was a healthy sixty, he was about to retire, and the plan was that when they married they’d set off on a world tour.

The thought of the world tour had excited her, as had his quite grand home in the best part of Westoe in Shields, yet the following morning she did not tell herself that she was a fool. And later, when she broke the news to Ben and he said, “Aw, thank the Lord. Oh I am relieved, he was much too old for you. And for the life of me I couldn’t understand what you saw in him

... he was almost pot-bellied,” she had laughed and said, “You’re right.” Also, she knew that she would never have forgiven herself if her da had died while she was away jaunting.

At odd times since, however, she had wondered if she had done the right thing, for in spite of Ben and her da, she was lonely. But once her da went, and God forbid that he should go soon, she didn’t want that, but let her face it, once he went and Ben married and Ben must marry the way would be clear, she would know what she was going to do with herself. For years and years she had longed to be free and to travel. Women travelled on their own, all the time, and she would travel.

Got ticket, will travel.

She laughed to herself now and reached out and picked up the book and the chocolates. She would indulge, stuff herself. What did it matter, another inch? She was past caring.

She had just settled back when she heard the staircase door open and she thought, I bet that’s him come back. Would you believe it? She looked towards the room door as it opened; then she swung her legs on to the floor and got up, crying, “Pat! Oh, how lovely to see you, dear. I thought you’d be going home. Come in, come in, you look frozen.”

“They’ve gone to Scarborough. You don’t mind Gran?”

Don’t be ridiculous! “ She slapped her granddaughter’s hands.

“Have you ever bothered to wonder before if I minded? What’s the matter with you?” Then she exclaimed, “Oh, you’re like ice. Come to the fire.

You’ve just missed Ben. “

“He’s gone out!... On his own? He’ll get lost.”

‘you cheeky monkey. “ She pushed her down on to the couch—” Sit there.

Get yourself warm. Take your shoes off. I’ll make you a drink. “

“Thanks Gran.... Where’s great-gran dad?”

“He’s in bed, he’s had a cold all the week. I had the doctor to him, he’s got to go careful.”

“Oh! I’ll go in and see him.”

“No, no, he’ll be asleep now. Just leave him, you’ll see him in the morning. What would you like?

Coffee, cocoa, tea?”

“Tea please.”

“Same here.”

Pat leaned back into the curve of the couch, her shoulders relaxed.

The tension went out of her stomach muscles, and her feet fell sideways away from each other, and she sighed. This was it. This was what she needed, just to stay here for ever and ever. This was real, understandably real.