The Stars Look Down (7 page)

Joe surveyed the company, exclaimed joyously:

“They’ve taken me on. I start to-morrow. Twenty-five bob a week.”

Jenny had obviously forgotten him; but Ada looked pleased in her indolent way.

“Didn’t I tell you, now? You’ll pay me fifteen a week, that’ll leave you ten clear, in the meantime that’s to say. You’ll soon have a rise. Puddlers earn good money.” She yawned delicately behind her hand, then sketchily cleared a space upon the littered table. “Sit in and have a pick. Clarry, fetch a cup and saucer from the scull’ry and run round to Mrs. Gresley’s, there’s a dear, for three penn’orth corned ham, see you watch her weight too. Might as well have something tasty for a start. Alf, this is Mr. Joe Gowlan, our new gentleman.”

Alf stopped his slow mastication of a final tea-soaked crust to give Joe a laconic yet impressive nod. Clarry slammed in with a newly washed cup and saucer, inky tea was poured, the corned ham appeared with half a loaf and Alf solemnly pushed across the mustard.

Joe sat next to Jenny on the horse-hair sofa. It intoxicated him to be beside her, to think how marvellously he had managed it. She was wonderful, never before had desire stricken him so deeply, so suddenly. He set himself to please, to captivate them—not Jenny, of course, oh, dear no, Joe knew a thing or two better than that! He smiled, his open good-hearted smile; he talked, made easy converse, invented little anecdotes connected with his past; he flattered Ada, joked with the children; he even told a story, a splendidly proper funny story he had once heard at a minstrel entertainment given by the Band of Hope—not that he had really belonged to the Band of Hope—he had joined the night before the concert, dissevered himself abruptly from the pious movement on the following morning. The story went well: for all except Sally who received it scornfully and Jenny whose haughtiness remained unmoved. Ada shook with laughter, her hands on her fat sides, shedding hairpins all over the place:

“An’ Bones found the blue-bottle in his sarsparilla… well, I say, Mr. Gowlan…”

“Ah, call me Joe, Mrs. Sunley. Treat me like one of the family, mam.”

He was getting them, he’d get them all soon enough, the thrill of it went to his head like wine. This was the way, he could do it, he could take hold of life, squeeze the fat out of it. He’d get on, have what he wanted, anything, everything, just wait and see.

Later, Alf invited Joe to see him feed his pigeons. They went out to the yard, where the pearly doves preened themselves, ducked their heads in and out of Alf’s home-made dovecote, delicately pecked the grain. Removed from the presence of his wife, where he sat mute and mild as milk, Alf revealed himself a little hero of a man with views beyond his pigeons upon beer, patriotism and Spearmint’s prospects in the Derby. He was affable to Joe, proffered a friendly fag. But Joe chafed, burned to be back with Jenny. When the cigarette was smoked, he excused himself, drifted back into the house.

Jenny was alone in the back room. She still sat upon the sofa, deep in the same magazine.

“Excuse me,” Joe murmured. “I was wondering if you would show me my room.”

She did not even lower the magazine which she held with her little finger elegantly crooked.

“One of the kids will show you.”

He did not move.

“Don’t you go out for a stroll at night… on your half-day… like this?”

No answer.

“You serve in a shop, don’t you?” he tried once more patiently. He had a vague remembrance of Slattery’s—a big plate-glassed drapery stores in Grainger Street.

She condescended to look at him.

“What if I do?” she said flatly. “It’s none of your business. And when it comes to that I don’t
serve
. That’s a low common word and I hate it. I’m
at
Slattery’s. I’m in the millinery and extremely refined work it is too. I hate anything that’s common and low. I hate men who work dirty more than anything.” And the magazine went up again with a jerk. Joe rubbed his jaw reflectively, taking her all in, neat ankles, slender hips, trim little bosom. So you don’t like men who work dirty, he thought with a secret grin; well, by gum, you’re going to like a dirty worker in me.

For Martha the disgrace was terrible; never in all her life had she dreamed of such a thing, no, never. It was horrible. As she went about her work in the kitchen, testing the potatoes with a fork, lifting the pot lid to see that the stew was right, she tried not to think about it. But it was no use, she had to think. In vain she fought it, battled it away, the thought that she, Martha Redpath that was, should have come to this. They had always been decent folk her folks, the Redpaths, decent chapel folk, decent Methodist folk, decent collier folk, she could go back a full four generations with pride and find never a blemish on the stock. They had all worked underground decently and conducted themselves decently above. But now? Now she was not a Redpath, she was a Fenwick, the wife of Robert Fenwick. And Robert Fenwick was in gaol.

A spasm of bitterness went over her face. In gaol. The scene burned her, as it had done a hundred times, the whole burning scene: Robert standing in the dock with Leeming beside him, Leeming of all men; James Ramage on the bench, coarse and red-faced and bullying, not mincing his words, saying exactly what he thought. She had gone to the court. She
would
go, it was her place to go. She had been there, she had seen and heard everything. Three weeks without the option. She could have screamed when Ramage sentenced him. She could have died; but her pride kept her up, helped her to put on a stony face. Her pride had helped her through those frightful days, helped her even this afternoon when, returning with her messages from the town, the wife of Slogger Leeming had waylaid her at Alma corner and remarked with loud-voiced sympathy that their men would be out on Saturday.
Their
men and
out
!

With a look at the clock—the first thing Sammy had got out of pawn for her—she pulled the tin bath before the fire and began to fill it with hot water from the wash-house. She used an iron pot as dipper and the journeys to and fro with the heavy weight taxed her severely. Lately she had not been well, indeed, she knew she was not well and just now she felt weak and shaky. She had a pain too. For a minute she had to stop to ease the catch in her side. Worry, she knew, had done it, she was a strong woman; she felt she would be better if only the child within her showed signs of life. But there
was no movement, nothing but a dragging heaviness, a weight.

The clock struck five, and shortly after the tramp of feet echoed along the Terrace, the slow tramp of tired men. Nine hours from bank to bank and the Terraces to climb at the end of it. But it was good honest work, bred in their bones, and in her bones too. Her sons were young and strong. It was their work. She desired no other.

The door opened upon her thought and the three came in, Hughie first, then David, and finally Sammy with a sawn balk of timber tucked under his arm, for her kindling. Dear Sammy. Always thoughtful of her. A rush of warmth came round the brooding coldness of her heart, she wanted suddenly to have Sammy in her arms and to weep.

They were searching her face; the house had been oppressive these last days; and Martha had been oppressive too, hard on them and difficult. She knew that and she knew that they were searching her face. Though she had been to blame it hurt her.

“How, mother,” Sammy smiled, his teeth showing white against the black coal dust that sweat had caked on him.

She loved the way he called her mother, not that “mam” in common usage here; but she merely nodded towards the bath that was ready and turned back to set the table.

With their mother in the room the three lads took off their boots, jackets, their pit drawers and singlets, all sodden with water, sweat and pit dirt. Together, naked to the buff, they stood scouring themselves in the tiny steaming bath. There was never much room and it was always friendly. But there was not much joking to-night. Sam in a tentative way nudged Davey and grinned:

“Ower the bed a bit, ye elephant.” And again remarked: “Whey, mon, have ye swallowed the soap?” But there was nothing genuine in the way of fun. The heaviness in the house, in Martha’s face, precluded it. They dressed with no horse-play, sat in to their dinner almost in silence.

It was a beautiful dinner, huge helpings of savoury stew with onions and floury potatoes. Martha’s dinners were always beautiful, she knew the value of a good dinner to a man. Now, thank God, that the wicked strike was stopped she could let them have their food. She sat watching them eat, replenishing their plates. Though she did not feel like eating herself, she drank some tea. Yet even the tea didn’t help her much. A stray pain started in her back, tugged at
her breasts, and slipped out of her again before she recognised the nature of the pain.

Her sons had finished dinner. David was the first to rise, going to the corner where his books were kept, seating himself on a low stool by the cheek of the fire with a pencil in his hand and jotter upon his knee. Latin, Martha thought glumly, he’s doing Latin now, and the thought, striking across her bitter mood, irked her strangely. It was part of Robert’s doing, this education, this wanting the boy to go to college, to sit for the scholarship next year, to get above himself. Robert had started him with Mr. Carmichael at the old Bethel Street night classes. And she, coming of a long line of pitmen, a proudly class-conscious woman, despised book learning in her own kind, and felt that no good would come of it.

Hughie got up next, went into the wash-house, returned with a hammer and last, his old football boots and twelve new leather studs. At the back of the kitchen, away from everyone, he squatted down, bent his dark head, still shiny from the bath, and began, in his own way, both taciturn and absorbed, to hammer in the studs. Last Saturday he had kept back sixpence of his pay from her, never saying a word, simply keeping it back. She might have guessed why. Football! Not just the love of the sport, though he loved it with all his heart. No, no. Hughie’s interest, she knew, lay deeper. Hughie wanted to be a star, a footballer in the big league, an athlete who drew six pounds a week for his supreme cleverness at the game. That was at once the secret, the ambition of Hughie’s soul. That kept him from cigarettes, from touching even one glass of beer which he might have had on Sundays; that kept him from talking to the girls—Hughie never so much as looked at a girl, she knew, though plenty of them looked at Hughie; that set him running miles at night, training he called it; tired or not he would go out, she might rest assured, the minute he had finished his boots.

Martha’s frown deepened. She approved with all her heart Hughie’s spartan life, nothing could be better. But to what cause? To leave the pit! He, too, striving with all his soul to leave the pit. She had no faith in his glittering illusion and no fear that he might achieve it. Yet it worried her, this queer intensity of Hughie’s, oh yes, it harassed her.

Instinctively her eyes turned to Sammy, who still sat at the table, restlessly making patterns on the oilcloth with the back
of his fork. He was conscious of her gaze for, after a moment, he laid down the fork and sheepishly got up. He hung about with his hands in his pockets, then went to the tiny square of mirror above the sink. He took the comb that lay always on the back of the enamel soap rack, wetted it, and carefully parted his hair. Then he took a clean collar, she had starched and ironed it only that afternoon, which hung on the rail by the fire. He put on the collar, arranged his tie freshly, smartened himself up. Then, whistling self-consciously, he whipped up his cap and moved jauntily to the door.

Martha’s hand, lying upon her knee, clenched so tightly the knuckles showed like bone.

“Sammy!”

Sam, half out the door, turned as if he had been shot.

“Where are ye going, Sammy?”

“I’m goin’ out, mother.”

She would not let his smile soften her.

“I know ye’re goin’ out. But where are ye goin’ out to?”

“I’m goin’ down the street.”

“Are ye goin’ down Quay Street?”

He looked at her, his plain honest face flushed and dogged now.

“Yes, I am goin’ down Quay Street mother, if ye want to know.”

Her instinct was true, then: he was going to see Annie Macer. She hated the Macers, distrusted them, the improvident father, that wild Plug Macer, the son. They were in the same category as the Leemings—not quite respectable. They were not even colliers, they were “fisherfoak,” part of that separate community which lived an uncertain life—“waste and wantry” Martha called it, faring on the fat of the land one month, boat and nets mortgaged the next. She had nothing against Annie’s character, some held she was a decent lass. But she was not the lass for her Sammy. She came from the wrong stock, she hawked fish in the open street, she had even gone to Yarmouth, one bad year, to retrieve the Macers’ fortunes, as a herring gutter. Sammy, her own dear son, whom she hoped one day to see the finest hewer in the Neptune, married to a herring gutter. Never.
Never!
She drew a long, deep breath.

“I don’t want ye to go out to-night, Sammy.”

“But you know, mother, I promised. Pug Macer and me was goin’ out. And Annie’s comin’ too.”

“Never mind that, Sammy.” Her voice turned harsh, strident. “I don’t want ye to go.”

He faced her; and in his loving, dog-like eyes she saw an unexpected firmness.

“Annie’s expecting me, mother. I’m sorry, but I’m going.”

He went out and very quietly closed the door.

Martha sat perfectly rigid; for the first time in his life Sammy had disobeyed her. She felt as if he had struck her on the face. Conscious of the covert glances of David and Hughie she tried to take command of herself. She rose, cleared the table, washed the dishes with hands that trembled.

David said:

“Shall I dry for you, mother?”

She shook her head, dried the dishes herself, sat down with some mending. With some difficulty she threaded her needle. She took up an old pit singlet of Sammy’s, so patched and darned scarcely any of the original flannel remained. The sight of the old pit singlet tore at her heart. She had been too harsh with Sammy, she felt suddenly that she had not taken him the right way, that she, not Sam, had been to blame. The thought pierced her. Sam would do anything for her, anything, if only she treated him properly.