Authors: Yelena Kopylova
”ome corner of his mind there was pride in him that this flesh of his was making a stand against
immorality. His own retaliation had been against the immorality of a nation, the immorality of
killing, but his son’s was a more common kind. He was making his stand against the immorality
of sinning if you like, the sinning of one person against another, and when he dubbed it sin his
son wouldn’t be thinking of the social code but of the pain such immorality, such sin inflicts on
another human being.
He had the urge to turn on him now and say, ”I’m going to tell her. Right now I’m going to tell
her”: but what would that mean ? He would have to tell her not only that she wasn’t his wife but
that he was soon to be the father of her sister’s child. . . . God! No! No! The boy was right, he
couldn’t do it, for there was no way he could soften the blow; and she didn’t deserve to be felled,
as the truth would surely fell her.
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”Look, dear.” Dick put his arm around Molly’s shoulder. ”It would have happened some time,
she had a bad heart. And you haven’t a thing to blame yourself for. Good lord ! after the way
you’ve looked after her, and what you’ve put up with from her?”
Molly lifted her head from her hands and as she stared over the table towards the door that led
into the hall she said, ”You remember what we were talking about last night?”
”Yes, yes, I remember, we were talking about wishing people dead. We could have talked about
it last week, last year, and it wouldn’t have affected you, but we just had to talk about it last
night; and now you’re going to enjoy having a guilt complex about it.”
”Enjoy!” She snapped round in her chair, and he stared down into her face as he said, nodding
his head, ”Yes, that’s what I said, enjoy.”
Molly made no reply as she looked back at him. Within the last twenty-four hours he seemed to
have changed, he was a different person. Only once today had she seen any nervous movement in
his shoulder. With an authority that she would have attributed only to his father he had handled
the funeral arrangements, he had directed the men when they moved her mother to the mortuary,
and now he was speaking to her as he had never spoken before,, with a note of maturity in his
voice.
As she stared at him a strange thought entered her head: she knew that he would never again
laugh at his own shortness of stature, and that more likely he’d hit out if anybody mentioned it,
even in a jocular way. He was right too about the guilt feelings, not that she was enjoying them,
but that she was allowing herself to be plagued with them. It was stupid of her because she had
nothing to blame herself for where her mother was concerned;
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she had been a hand-maiden to her since she could toddle. But one thing she was sure of in her
mind, she wasn’t going to say she should have loved her mother, for not even a saint could have
stood the daily railings of a person like her mother. Even so, she wished . . • yes, she wished that they hadn’t talked as they did ’ast night, because after he had gone she had stood over there by
the kitchen door and, looking across the hall, she had pictured the querulous creature lying under
the table and when the voice had come to her again, crying, ”Do you hear me, Molly?” she had
thought how wonderful life would be without her. And now here she was without her, and
wonder was far away, and she was sick with the feeling of guilt and remorse.
”Come on. Come! Aunt Hilda’s holding dinner for us.” He smiled at her now. ”You know what
she’s like if she’s got to wait for a meal. She likes her food, and she’s beginning to show it for
she’s getting fatter. She’s always nibbling. They say it’s . . .”
He stopped himself from going further and adding, ”A sign <->f frustration, or to fill some
need.” Recalling the open row that ne a had with his father last night, and his discovery of his
Aunt Florrie’s condition, it was more than ever clear to him now that there was an emptiness that
needed filling in the woman who had been a mother to him for so long and that she could only
attempt to assuage it by eating.
”Come on.” He had her by the hand and just as he went to open the door he turned and, taking
her into his arms, he looked into her face as he said, ”Everything’s going to be plain sailing for
us two from now on; whatever happens to anybody else things are going to be right for you and
me, understand ?”
She looked into the so familiar face. It seemed to have added a number of years on to itself
overnight, and she nodded her head but made no comment, but when he kissed her with a short
hard kiss on the lips she thought wryly, Funny, how compensations are handed out. His Aunt
Hilda would say, ”God works in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.” And she knew it was
a wonder. Oh yes, it was nothing short of a wonder that Dick loved her. She had only to look in
the glass to realize how great was the wonder. And the wonder was intensified by the knowledge
that Dick considered the luck to be all on his side.
On the step he paused as he said, ”We’ll cut across the field. Your field, do you realize that? It’s your field now.”
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--
IT
She glanced at him sideways as she said, ”I hope it’ll soon br ours.”
”Aw, Molly!” He shook his head. ”I wasn’t thinking along those lines.”
”I know you weren’t but -” She leant her head towards him and smiled a small knowing smile as
she said, ”I bet it hasn’t escaped your Aunt Hilda’s notice.”
”No, you’re right, I bet it hasn’t. But it’s your land and you do what you like with it.”
”We’ll see.”
They rounded the back of the outbuildings and came through the passage into the yard; then both
stopped and glanced at each other as the sound of raised angry voices came from the kitchen. *””
After a moment of listening Dick said, ”That isn’t Dad; come on. . . . Look.” He stopped and
pointed to where the two dogs were tied by a length of string to the drainpipe, and he said under
his breath, ”Mr Donnelly.”
When they opened the kitchen door both Hilda and the old man looked sharply towards them ;
then almost instantly Mr Donnelly turned his verbal attack on Dick. Pointing at him but looking
at Hilda, he cried, ”You could take them off the road, give shelter to any scum, but when it
comes to your own . . .”
”Shut up!”
”Don’t tell me to shut up, girl.”
As the old man staggered towards the table and leant on it for support Dick realized that although
his speech wasn’t yet slurred nevertheless he had had a lot to drink. He was again yelling at his
daughter, ”Don’t tell me to shut up. You know what you are, you’re an ungrateful sod. You
always have been and -” He half turned and, addressing himself to Dick and Molly, he cried, ”All
I was askin’ was shelter, a room for few nights, an’ what did she say, no, not in her house. I could
’ave the rat hole up above the garage, but only for few nights mind. ...”
”They’re . . . they’re very nice rooms, Mr Donnelly,” Dick now put in quietly. ”We ... we lived in
them; they were cornfortable ”
”Don’t you tell me how long ya lived in ’em. I ... I know how long ya lived in ’em, lad. An’ she
had them all done up fancy for ya. But what’re they now, eh ? Woodwork shop ; least they were
two years gone back when I climbed those stairs.”
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”There’s only one room a workshop, Mr Donnelly.”
”Well, t’other room ain’t gettin’ me, boy. If it’s so good you . . . you go up there an’ I’ll take
your bunk. . . . Aye; aye. Now that’s fair, isn’t it?”
Before Dick could make any reply Hilda shouted, ”There’s going to be no exchange of any kind.
You’re just doing this on purpose to ... to upset me. You’ve got plenty of cronies down at your
own end who’d give you shelter. . . . And what about out Florrie?”
”Our Florrie ?” He turned to her again. ”Our Florrie’d put me up like a shot if she could, but
she’s only got one bedroom^ you’ve got four of ’em up ’bove.” He thumbed towards the ceiling.
”And anyroad she’s hardly room for herself, and when het belly gets emptied next month or so
she’ll want all the room she can find. She put me up on the couch last night an’ me dogs an’ all,
an’ it was your man who said, ’If ya want a bed come round, Fred.’ Didn’t he?” he now appealed
to Dick. ”You were there, weren’t ya, on Florrie’s drive when he said it ?”
”What did you say? Where?” Hilda was walking slowly from the fireplace to the end of the table,
but she didn’t look at the olc} man, she looked towards Dick as she said to him, ”What’s this ?
Were you at our Florrie’s last night ?”
He swallowed deeply. ”Just for a minute,” he said.
”Just for a minute ?” she repeated. ”You went to the post to get your father if I remember, didn’t
you ? If he was at the post how did he come to be at our Florrie’s ?”
”He ... he had just called to see if she was all right.”
As she nodded at him the colour of her face changed, even het neck looked red; then turning her
gaze on her father she demanded, ”What do you mean about ... ?” She hesitated and the old man
cried at her, ”Go on, say it. Soil your mouth, lass, soil your mouth. I said when her belly empties
an’ the bairn comes.”
As Dick watched her hand clutch at the end of the table there arose in him a momentary hatred
against the old man, but more so against his father. But the latter feeling wasn’t momentary, it
was already there.
”You didn’t know ? Well, you wouldn’t, would ya” - the old fellow was still yeiling - ”you never
look the side she’s on. She’s scum to you, but you’re not fit to wipe her boots. Do you hear me?
You’re not fit to wipe her boots. An’ she’s done something
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that you couldn’t manage, for all her age; aye, she has»^
”Get out! Get out this minute!” Her fingers began to claw along the edge of the table as if in
search of something to’ grip, and then she was screaming at him, ”Get out ! Do you hear me ?”
and it stressed the height of her feelings when she cried at him, ”God! I don’t know, I don’t know
how I ever came to be connected with you. Out!” Her arm was outstretched, her finger pointing
towards the door. But the old man didn’t move ; he had been leaning over the table supporting
himself on his hands, but now slowly he straightened himself and seemed to take on inches and,
strangely, both his voice and his mien appeared sober and there was a depth of deep fury in his
tone as he said, ”Well now, lass, I’m gona relieve your mind by tellin’ you somethin’, aye, by
tellin’ you somethin’. An’ it’s this, you’re not connected with me, do you hear ? Eh, do you
hear ? What’ll you say if I tell you you no more belong to me than those two there do.” He flung
his arm to the side. ”You’ll be relieved to know, lass, that you’re a bastard. You were born a little bastard an’ you’ve grown into a big bastard. Aye, by gum! if there was ever a true word spoken
I’ve just said it.”
He paused and now he smiled, a rather terrible smile, as he said, ”You’re losing your colour, lass.
I’d sit down if I was you ’cos there’s more to come.”
Hilda didn’t sit down but she backed from the table as if from a reptile and when her heel
touched the fender she stopped. Her lips apart, her eyes wide, she stared at him like an entranced
hare as he now, in the same terrible tone, went on talking. He talked and he talked, giving her
every sordid detail of his love life; and then there was almost the sound of tears in his voice when he said, ”I took you on as a sort of lost love, I devoted me life to you. Aye, I did, I devoted me
life to you. Nothin’ was too good for you, the others could go to hell but you must have, and you
know, there’s a thing called irony, and by ! I’ve often thought an’ all that God must have handed
that out as a punishment to me ’cos the irony of it was you never took to me. Not from the time
you could toddle you never took to me ; you took to Annie. Oh aye, you took to Annie, but not to
me. You got under me skin but I put up with it ’cos I saw your mother in everything you did. But
now” - his voice rose sharply - ”I know that if I’d married her she would have likely been as big a
bitch as you, ’cos you’ve
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got it from some place. On the other hand though you could have got it from him who did the
trick on her. But only God knows who that was, likely one of many. Aye, lass, grope for support,
I think you’d better sit down.”
”Leave her alone, Mr Donnelly.” Dick moved towards Hilda. ”And I think you’d better go.”
”Bugger me eyes ! don’t you start, young ’un, else I’ll soon deal with you. I’ll go when I’m
ready, you hear me! I’ll go when I’m
ready.”
”Sit down. Come, sit down, Aunt Hilda.”
Hilda didn’t sit down, what she did was to push Dick’s hand aside; then gulping in her throat, she
stretched her neck upwards two or three times before she spoke, and as she spoke she bent her
body forward in the direction of the old man and what she said was, ”Do you know something ?
Do you know something,
Mr Fred Donnelly
? That’s the best news I’ve heard for years, it’s the best news I’ve heard in me life.” Her voice was rising almost to a scream now. ”You think
you’ve done me down, don’t you, by spewing this at me ? Well, you couldn’t have done me a
better service. Now I feel clean. Do you hear me ? I feel clean because I know I’m not connected
with you. Now again I say
get out. Get out of my house and I never want to set eyes on you again
ever. Ever.”