Crescendo Page 11

  At the sound of her step Mrs. Eastwood came out from her lair in the kitchen, and stood watching as Dorothea fumbled with the latch of the door. Her shrewd little eyes took in every detail of Dorothea’s appearance.

  “Going out with Mr. Cressey, love?” said Mrs. Eastwood.

  “Yes,” said Dorothea. She resented the landlady’s question, but answered with proud frankness.

  “Well, good luck,” said Mrs. Eastwood sardonically. “I hope it comes right for you tonight, love, I’m sure.”

  Dorothea, vexed, but at the same time secretly unable to be displeased by the discovery that somebody beside herself believed Richard about to make a proposal, gave a final tug at the door. It flew open; sunlight poured in; Dorothea in her fine firm stride swung down the steps and along Naseby Terrace, smiling happily.

  2

  She turned the corner by the White Hart and saw Richard hurrying towards her from the other end of the street.

  A very slight chill seemed to mist her joy at this sight, for hitherto he had always chivalrously preceded her at their rendezvous. But there were a thousand reasons why so important a person as Richard should be late, she reminded herself; she must grow accustomed to accept the delays and disappointments incident to his profession with loving calm, for his sake.

  They met exactly at the foot of the White Hart steps.

  “Well, here we are!” said Richard. “On the stroke of the clock.”

  He gesticulated in a friendly fashion, his right hand indicating the steps, the left hovering towards Dorothea as though to encourage her to enter the hotel.

  Radiant with joyous anticipation, Dorothea took his left hand in hers and swung it slightly. Richard started back and withdrew his hand.

  Instantly Dorothea’s happiness fell in ruins. Everything was over. She knew Richard so well, she understood his every movement; she knew that in that instinctive start away, that slight unintended frown, he had rejected her. How could she ever have imagined it would be otherwise? Pain filled her from head to foot; under the sudden shock of the blow she could hardly stand upright.

  “Well, shall we go in?” said Richard, again waving her on.

  Dorothea bowed her head and climbed the steps. They seemed interminable; she could hardly put one foot in front of the other.

  In the dining-room, Richard behaved with his usual courtesy, but tonight for the first time in their acquaintance it seemed to Dorothea artificial, insincere. He looked pale and ill, too, Dorothea noticed. In a word, he was unhappy. He did not wish to be with her. Without once looking at her, he poured out a stream of bright chatter, to which Dorothea at. intervals forced herself to utter dull and monosyllabic replies. Before this miserable evening, Dorothea had sometimes feared lest she should make some social error, the White Hart being a more expensive and stylish restaurant than she was accustomed to frequent, and she had promised herself to remain alert and watch Richard’s behaviour; now she could not constrain herself to take any interest in manners and customs, but drearily chose what Richard chose and picked up eating tools at random. So inattentive was she that she forgot to drink her coffee, and Richard was obliged gently to remind her.

  “We should be leaving soon if we are to catch the opening moments of the film,” he said, with as much urgency as he allowed himself in speaking to a guest.

  “Richard,” said the wretched Dorothea, “would you mind very much if I didn’t go to the cinema tonight? I have such a bad headache.”

  “A headache!” exclaimed Richard, distressed.

  He began at once to suggest remedies: aspirins, more coffee, tea, a taxi home, a day’s absence from the bookseller’s. His solicitude was genuine, and this showed up all the more clearly the factitious character of his previous gaiety. Moreover, as Dorothea perceived only too clearly, he was sorry about her headache but not sorry about her defection from the cinema.

  “We should leave now if you’re to be in time,” she said, gathering her bag.

  “Oh, I shan’t go without you,” said Richard.

  This too had a ring of truth, and for a moment Dorothea allowed herself to hope that his behaviour arose because he was experiencing in reality the physical malaise she had invented.

  “If he names another night for the cinema,” she thought as they descended the hotel steps together, “then perhaps we shall come together again.”

  But he did not. He did not even make a vague suggestion that they should go to the film on some other, unspecified, evening. He was very urgent that she should take a taxi home, a suggestion she as firmly declined, but his words of farewell, his look as he uttered them, struck Dorothea as final. He did not appear happy in their parting, Dorothea thought, but he had made up his mind that they should part.

  3

  She hurried home. She tried to hold her head high and swing along as usual, but it was beyond her powers to maintain this nonchalant appearance consistently; from time to time her shoulders drooped, her head sank, her gait stumbled. Then she proudly lengthened her step and jerked herself upright again. But whenever this happened she felt that everyone was looking at her, everyone was deriding her, everyone was saying: That girl’s unhappy. That girl’s been jilted. It was not bearable. She must go away. She must hide herself. Why not withdraw to Kathy’s shelter? Why not take the opportunity of diminishing one’s expenses? For why not be prosaic, why not be practical? Her attempt to live a nobler, finer, more responsive life had been most cruelly rebuffed. Give it up. Forget it. Retreat. Withdraw.

  V

  Ethel Eastwood, Landlady

  1

  Every One’s Entitled to what they can get, was Ethel Eastwood’s motto. Always had been. It was the only sensible way of looking at things, after all. Nobody was going to give you anything on a plate, you had to look out for yourself or you’d have a thin time of it and serve you right. Anyone who thought different was soft, and Ethel didn’t mind telling them so. Soft. That’s all there was to it. She’d seen that very early on in life. Charlie Martin was soft. He’d never have got any-where, never, even if he hadn’t lost half his arm in world war one. Of course they’d had a nice bit of fun together, she wouldn’t say no to that; walking along in the dark with Charlie’s arm round her waist, stopping to kiss in every archway, it had been pleasant enough, she could still remember the feel of it. But all that, as she often said to Mrs. Clapham next door, all that sex stuff, to call it by its proper name, it doesn’t last. It soon dies off. And while it lasts, what is it? For a man, perhaps—they make such fools of themselves over it, it must take them bad. But for a woman, it’s something and nothing. Anyway, if you ask me, it’s more a question of how than who. And as I say, it doesn’t last. Nothing really matters except a roof over your head and something to eat. You’d have thought Charlie Martin would have understood that, but no! The way he carried on! The way he created, when he came back from the war and found Ethel had married Mr. Fred Eastwood while he was in hospital!

  “That pompous old bastard!” Charlie shouted.

  He shouted quite loud; you could hear him all down the terrace. Not that Ethel minded, really; she wasn’t afraid of Charlie; let him shout his head off. The neighbours would be sure to tell Mr. Eastwood, of course; but what of that? She could handle Fred. In those days she had everything a man wanted; fair and bosomy, with fine firm thighs—an old man like Fred would put up with a lot to get her. She’d seen at once, when he came collecting his rents that night and she’d fetched the card and the money to the door, her mother being poorly, that he was taken with her, so the next rent-day she went to the door without the money and had to turn and pretend to look for it in the dresser, and of course it was natural to ask him in while he waited, and that was how it all began. To do Fred justice, he was a kind, decent old chap enough; before he ever so much as asked her to marry him, he said, looking at her meaningly like:

  “I hear Charlie Martin’s in hospital, like to lose his arm.”

  “There’s nothing between me and Charlie Martin,” sa
id Ethel firmly. “He might have stolen a kiss or two now and again, like some others I could mention, but that’s all.”

  That disposed of Charlie Martin all right, put him in the place where he belonged. Also, Ethel saw with sardonic amusement, the mention of kisses had stirred old Fred up. His eyes quite shone and he came out promptly with a proposal of marriage, and Ethel accepted him on the spot, before he could change his mind. Seeing that her mother was ill and her father had deserted them long ago, and the war was coming to an end and there would be no more high wages for munition workers, she was only too glad of the chance. Playing around with Charlie was fun, but this was serious business, this was real life.

  She married old Fred and he made a will in her favour and explained all his property to her: houses it was chiefly, scattered about in Ashworth and all around, places he’d picked up here and there as chance offered, for he had a keen eye for a bargain, had Fred. Ethel soon took it all in and was able to help him with his accounts, and they enjoyed making up the books and balancing the cash and that together. She was sharp in all that kind of thing.

  “You’ve the makings of a good business woman, Ethel,” Fred often said admiringly.

  Then Charlie came home and went straight to her mother’s house, looking for Ethel, and her mother, lying bedridden downstairs by the kitchen hearth, sent him straight down to Naseby Terrace.

  “You’d have done better to keep him away from me, mother,” said Ethel later.

  Her mother said nothing but gave her a grim smile with a tinge of triumph in it; there was no love lost between Ethel and her mother.

  So Charlie came to Naseby Terrace and shouted at her. He was a smallish fellow, slight and dark, and with half his right arm off didn’t look much of a man. He quivered in his rage, too, which seemed childish to Ethel. But how his eyes flashed! And the abuse he poured out on Fred and herself! Really it was surprising where he found all those words—in the army, Ethel shouldn’t wonder. Ethel was not at all upset by his ravings, however; indeed in a way she rather enjoyed them. It wasn’t unpleasant to know he had wanted her so much, and on the other hand, it was most satisfying to know that she had married Fred, and had all his property safely behind her. Charlie would leave soon and she and Fred would be comfortable together. And so it proved. After a last wild tirade against Ethel’s treachery and cold-heartedness, Charlie had suddenly burst out sobbing; the tears lay quite thick on his cheeks as he turned and staggered from the house.

  “I’ve had Charlie Martin here this afternoon,” said Ethel to her husband when he came in for his tea. (It was better to tell him, as an insurance against the neighbours’ talk, thought Ethel sensibly; she was always sensible.) “He seemed in quite a taking because I’d married you.”

  “I’m sorry about his arm,” said Fred, frowning a little. After a moment he said: “Shall I give him a job rent-collecting, eh?”

  “Better not,” said Ethel sensibly.

  “Just as you like, love,” said Fred.

  Ethel never saw Charlie again. She heard about him from time to time, naturally, him being a local boy as you might say. He lived rather a wild life for a few months, getting drunk and being unemployed and that, and then suddenly he married some girl or other and got a caretaker job over Bradford way. Ethel, as she always said, did not mind Charlie getting married; it was the sensible thing for him to do, after all, and at that time she was expecting a child and hadn’t much time for thoughts of Charlie. Her child was stillborn, and in any case its poor little body was so malformed and puny that perhaps living would have been a crueller fate for it. And after all, what did she and Fred want with a child, said Ethel sensibly. They were perfectly comfortable and well satisfied as they were. (Fred, however, seemed disappointed.) But what was so maddening to Ethel was the feckless, the improvident, the extravagant, the disgracefully prodigal way in which Charlie and his wife set to work to have children. Four! Four, no less! With Charlie always in and out of jobs, his gratuity long since spent, his wife scrubbing floors to keep them, often nothing else coming in but his pension, and still they went on having children! It was really disgusting. Some people have no sense of decency, said Ethel.

  Meanwhile her own life went comfortably on. Her mother at long last died, which was a satisfaction to Ethel, and almost immediately afterwards she received a formal notification, as next of kin, of the death of her father in some far-off south-country poor-law hospital—they weren’t called poor-law hospitals now, but that’s what they were, of course; might as well face facts, thought Ethel sensibly. She went off down south with Fred’s full approval and gave her father a decent burial. It was very satisfactory to have both her tiresome parents so well settled.

  Then presently Fred fell ill—after all, he was now well on in the seventies. It was a stroke. But contrary to the general expectation he lived a long time bedridden. Ethel nursed him well and faithfully, as she often told herself and others. She kept him clean and comfortable, served him good meals and administered with reasonable regularity most of the medicines prescribed for him. Of course she was obliged to leave him alone a good deal—there was the shopping to do, and anyway you couldn’t be expected to sit hours on end in a cold bedroom, talking to somebody who could only make noises at you in return. At one time the old man, during one of his better periods, took to wandering about the house while she was out; but fortunately there was a lock on the bedroom door, so she was able to lock him in.

  At last he died. It was certainly a relief, and of course all the property being her own now was a satisfaction. There were two houses in Naseby Terrace, five up and down the main Ashworth to Hudley Road, six scattered about the lower parts of Ashworth near the railway station, a lock-up shop near Holmelea way, and High Royd, a sort of old farmstead without any land attached, up on Blackstalls Brow. Ethel, a buxom widow who looked very well in her black, settled down to a comfortable life alone. She was a good cook and always made nice meals for herself, she kept her house spotless; she went to chapel often enough to be respectable, and occasionally came out with a rather handsome donation to some charity to keep up her standing, but she did not engage herself deeply in any cause, social, religious, political or charitable, because in her experience they cost more than they were worth. Nor did she bother herself overmuch with friends. She had plenty of acquaintances, and they were all she needed, really; friends were apt to be a trouble and an expense.

  It was during this most prosperous period of Ethel’s life that Charlie Martin died, and his widow, encumbered with debt and with four children to feed, none of them as yet earning, turned up one afternoon in Naseby Terrace and begged Ethel’s help. This wife of Charlie’s had been a pretty girl once, thought Ethel shrewdly, gazing in silence at the haggard, weeping, shabby woman. She had had to bring the two youngest children with her, having nobody to leave them with at home—if they had a home. They were ill-brought-up children, with grubby hands and running noses, whom their mother continually had to reprove and slap for climbing or kicking Ethel’s well polished and thickly upholstered chairs.

  “They don’t take after Charlie in looks, do they?” said Ethel in her firm, sensible tones.

  The children fixed dark inimical eyes on her, and Charlie’s widow sobbed. It seemed that the dying Charlie had been terribly distressed to leave his wife and children in their unprovided state.

  “Who will look after you? How will you manage?” he moaned. “I’ve been a bad husband to you, Gladys.” His wife denying this strenuously, he muttered, turning his head away: “Well—I did my best.” There was a long pause, then he said suddenly: “You’d best go to Ethel. Yes, tell Ethel,” he repeated: “She won’t see you starve.”

  “He was right, of course,” said Ethel, preening herself. “You can count on me, Mrs. Martin. Charlie and I were old flames, Mrs. Martin—it was long before he met you, of course. Don’t give all that another thought, of course,” said Ethel, giving Charlie’s widow a full account of how Charlie and she were engaged and then sh
e met Mr. Eastwood and married him. “How Charlie did carry on, to be sure, when he came back and found me married! But that’s all water under the bridge now, Mrs. Martin. Don’t give it another thought.”

  “It’s Charlie’s children I’m thinking of, Mrs. Eastwood,” said Charlie’s widow, not without dignity.

  “Well, you’ve so many, haven’t you?” said Ethel. “But let me see now. What can I do to help you, eh?”

  She probed every detail of the unhappy widow’s situation.

  “You must excuse me asking all these questions, Mrs. Martin, but I’m a business woman, you see, and I like to know how I stand.”

  Eventually, declining the i.o.u. which she herself was the first to mention, she lent the Martins five pounds, extracting the money from her handbag before their eyes and counting it over several times.

  “Now if you need any more, be sure to come and tell me, Mrs. Martin,” she said cheerfully as she showed them all out of the front door.

  She spoke in her usual loud tones—why not?—and one or two passers-by, who could not but overhear, turned an enquiring glance in her direction, while Mrs. Martin hung her head and seemed overpowered with shame.

  This incident had occurred near Christmas—there was a mess of dirty melted snow on the ground—and when the following Christmas brought much the same weather, Ethel bethought herself of the Martin children (if indeed she had ever forgotten them) and wondered whether their shoes were good enough to keep out the snow-broth. She sent Gladys Martin five pound notes in a registered envelope. These were acknowledged in a grateful scrawl. She sent the same next Christmas, and again the next, but now the acknowledgment came in a much firmer handwriting and was signed by Charles M. Martin, who stated that, as his mother’s eldest son, he hoped to repay Mrs. Eastwood’s kind loans shortly. Ethel was vexed; she had enjoyed being generous to Charlie’s widow and telling anyone who would listen about her generosity.

  “Repay, indeed! I’d like to see them repay a farthing. I shall believe it when I see it. There’s not much chance of Charlie Martin’s widow ever being able to repay anything, I can tell you,” said Ethel.