ABNER was genuinely relieved when Alice told him the good report that the
sister had given her on his father’s condition, for it promised him a
speedy release from the discomfort of the situation. Alice, who had
accustomed herself to examine every shade of expression that he showed,
knew that he was rejoicing at the prospect of leaving her. The thought
piqued her, for she had forced herself always to behave toward him
exactly as if there had never been a moment of embarrassment between
them. Her pride would not let the matter rest.
‘You’m glad he’s coming back,’ she said. ‘I know you be.’
‘I’m glad his leg’s joined, if that’s what you mean,’ he replied.
‘That’s only human-like. Besides, it’s best for everybody.’
‘And what about me?’ she asked, passionately.
He would not answer, and she flowed on with a stream of reproaches,
telling him that she knew he hated her and couldn’t bear the sight of
her, in the hope that he would be driven to say that he did nothing of
the sort. Abner remained passive. He knew very well that if he were to
lose his temper with her the situation might easily become just as
dangerous as if he were tender. The main thing to be avoided with her
was emotion of any kind. Life had been made difficult enough for him
already simply because he knew that their relation was capable of
passionate developments. He knew what passion was, and in spite of
himself he could not always banish the thought of Alice from his mind.
Admitting this, he had mapped out a course of conduct for himself, and he
meant to stick to it until the happy day of his relief.
It was not a fortnight but a month before John Fellows left the hospital.
He came back, as the sister had anticipated, with a Thomas’s splint on
his thigh and instructions to attend the infirmary as an out-patient in
another month’s time. The splint was an embarrassment that he resented,
for it compelled him to sit in an uncomfortable position with the right
leg extended, but it did not prevent him walking or drinking, and as soon
as he had mastered the first of these processes he lost no time in making
up for his long abstinence from the second. The rules of the friendly
society to which he belonged forbade its members to visit public-houses
as long as they were receiving sick pay, so that the invalid was forced
to enter the Lyttleton Arms by a back door which he reached by crossing
the garden of a friend, and having once solved this problem Fellows
managed to put in the day without any difficulty.
Every Friday morning he hobbled down on his crutches to the doctor’s
surgery and obtained a certificate by means of which he drew his weekly
pay. It was only twelve shillings a week, and he never parted with a
penny of it to Alice, so that the household now depended entirely on
Abner’s earnings. It puzzled both of them to imagine how he managed to
live in a state of fuddled alcoholism on this small sum. They supposed
that his old friend the landlord, trusting him, put it on the slate in
the hope of being paid when Fellows went back to work. He had always
been free with his money, and no doubt his boon companions of the past
were ready to treat him as often as they could afford it.
At the end of February he went in to North Bromwich in accordance with
the hospital orders and returned without his splint. The doctors had
told him that it would now be wise to use the leg as much as possible and
suggested that the colliery authorities, who were partly responsible for
the accident, should now give him a light job at the pit-head. John
Fellows, however, didn’t see the point of this. He had paid into the
Loyal United Free Gardeners for more than thirty years and now that he
had the chance he meant to get some of his money back by staying on the
box as long as they would let him. He could get quite enough exercise
for his leg in his clandestine approaches to the Lyttleton Arms. What
was more, he would not do a stroke of work until his claim against the
colliery was settled. He had consulted a solicitor, and a claim under
the Workmen’s Compensation Act was pending.
Abner meanwhile waited impatiently for his release. The presence of his
father in the house had eased the awkwardness of his relation with Alice
by abolishing the sense of lonely isolation that surrounded it. Alice
herself was almost complacent. She did not mind how long John Fellows
abstained from work as long as Abner was left to her. At the end of May
the doctor refused to continue the farce of signing the miner’s
certificates. John Fellows grumbled, but had to admit that he had done
fairly well out of the club. He pushed on his claim for compensation,
which was settled for fifty pounds. Alice was overjoyed at this
windfall, for the strain of her straitened housekeeping had forced her to
run up a few small debts with tradesmen. She took the opportunity of
asking her husband for money when Abner was in the room.
‘Money . . .?’ said John Fellows. ‘Money . . .? What do yo’ want with
money? What’s money to do with me when I’ve a son at work earning a
man’s wages? If yo’ want money better ask our Abner. Didn’t I keep him
all through his schooling in food and clothes? working day and night? I
reckon it’s his turn now.’
‘I bain’t goin’ to keep you in pub-crawling any longer,’ said Abner.
‘You’d best give her some, while you’ve got it. I’m going off to work in
Wales.’
‘Work in Wales!’ cried John Fellows. ‘I’ll teach you to talk to your
father like that,’ he cried, coming over to him with his head low between
his shoulders like an angry bull. When he reached his son he stopped,
for Abner had thrown back his elbow. Alice ran to separate them. There
was no need for her to have done so, for Fellows knew better than to
appeal to force.
‘You’re a fine pair, the two on you!’ he said. ‘And don’t you go
thinking I can’t see.’
He went out of the room with the limp that he now cultivated, and it was
well that he did so, for by this time Abner was white with rage. He
would have followed his father if Alice had not withheld him.
‘Abner, don’t!’ she cried. ‘What did he mean?’
‘You know what he meant as well as I do,’ said Abner with a laugh.
‘Still, that don’t matter. I’m off to-morrow.’
But he did not go. Thinking the matter over he could not bring himself
to abandon Alice and her child to the desolation that he knew must follow
his departure. It even seemed to him that his going might suggest to his
father that he had hit the right nail on the head. The fact that, this
time, Alice knew better than beg him to stay, also influenced him. By
this token she accepted his independence and appealed only to his
generosity. She never had a penny of her husband’s fifty pounds. Some
of it, no doubt, he owed to the landlord of the Lyttleton Arms: but in
any case it became clear that as long as it lasted he could not be
expected to return to work. In the meantime he took great pains to avoid
crossing Abner, feeling less obligation towards the housekeeping expenses
from the fact that his nourishment in these days was mainly liquid and
taken elsewhere.
It was difficult to say how long the money would last him. For the
present he was managing extraordinarily well and there seemed no reason
why he should ever take up work again, although there was now no physical
reason why he should not begin. The summer passed without any change in
their arrangements. Abner still disliked his work. The prolonged strain
of working in cramped positions was beginning to tell on his eyes; but in
the lower levels of the pit he suffered little from the extremity of heat
which made work above ground almost impossible in the July of that year,
and made his father thirstier than ever. Under the new conditions he
found it impossible to save money for the needs of the day when he should
be free. All his earnings but a few shillings went to Alice every
Saturday night, and it was with difficulty that he refrained from
breaking into the small store that he had kept intact in his stocking.
On August bank-holiday the men at the pit stopped work. This was the day
of Dulston Wake, the principal festival of the black-country year. Each
of the small towns that lie like knots on the network of tramways that
has its centre in North Bromwich has its own minor fair of swing-boats,
roundabouts, and cocoa-nut shies, but none of these have half the
significance of Dulston Wake, which is prominent not only by its
magnitude but also by the weight of tradition that belongs to it and by
the magnificence of its setting. In all his life Abner had never missed
it, nor, for that matter, had his father; and when the day drew near it
was taken as a matter of course that the whole family should put on its
Sunday clothes and go to the Wake together. They left soon after midday,
John Fellows already mildly intoxicated, Abner in his blue suit with a
white silk neckerchief, and Alice, carrying the baby breeched for the
occasion, in her best black costume.
They had to walk more than a mile from Hackett’s Cottages to the terminus
of the electric tramway system that had not yet come to Mawne. John
Fellows, who had forgotten his limp, led the way at a great pace down
Mawne bank, so fast indeed that Alice grew tired by the weight of the
child. The day was one of sweltering heat, of the kind in which the
people of the black-country prefer to take their pleasures. John Fellows
carried a bottle of draught beer in each pocket of his coat and a red
pocket-handkerchief escaped from under the brim of his bowler hat. He
turned to swear at Alice for delaying the progress of the party, and
then, mumbling something under his breath, put on a spurt of ridiculous
energy and left them behind.
Abner relieved the panting Alice of her burden, and carried the child on
his shoulder. Soon they had crossed the Stour at the bridge by the
gun-barrel works and had gained the relative coolness of shade under the
chestnuts of Mr Willis’s hanging gardens. They arrived at the tramway
terminus ten minutes later than John Fellows to find that he had not
profited by his exertions since the trams were overcrowded and a
breakdown had disorganised the service. He had taken the opportunity of
sitting down on the cinder path and emptying one of his beer bottles, and
as fast as he drank beer sweat oozed from every pore of his body. When
the tram appeared in the distance he pulled himself up with a grunt and
prepared to fight for a seat in it. It was quite impossible for Alice to
compete in this kind of scrimmage. John Fellows pushed his way in first
and sat fanning himself with his hat while Abner, Alice and the baby were
left behind. They did not see him again during the day.
They waited for twenty minutes in the sun before they found a place in
one of those reckless tramway-cars that go roaring like spent shells
through all the wastes of the black country. They could not speak for
the jolt and jangle of its progress, for the clanging of its bell and the
alarming sputter of electric sparks when it swayed on its springs and
threatened to jump the rails. In all their four miles of journey they
could see no green. They passed through endless streets of grimy brick,
baked culverts from which a blast of acrid and lifeless air rushed
through the front of the car like a sirocco. Even though the fires of
the furnaces and factories had been banked down for the holidays they
could still smell the heat which had scorched and blackened this volcanic
country on every side.
At last they were jolted through the narrow streets of Dulston, happily
without catastrophe, and ejected at the foot of the hill on which its
medieval castle stands. Here the crowd was at its thickest. Noisy
hawkers sold ticklers and leaden water-squirts and programmes of the
fête. Tram after tram disgorged its sweaty contents to mix with the
cooler occupants of brakes and char-a-bancs. Through the dense foliage
of the castle woods that hung limp in the heat like painted leafage in a
theatre, the discordant music of competing roundabouts floated down, and
beneath it one could hear the low, exciting rumour of the fair, toward
which the steady stream of new arrivals was setting. It was a stiff pull
up the slope of the castle hill and every one who climbed it seemed
bitten with an infectious speed. At the top of it the crowd thickened
beneath the constriction of a narrow Norman arch and then burst and
scattered into the huge central courtyard where gray ruins looked down
upon this modern substitute for the tourneys of the middle ages.
Abner and Alice were caught up in the excitements of the fair. He soon
added to his burdens by knocking down three cocoa-nuts. At a
shooting-gallery to the admiration of Alice he smashed thin globes of
glass spinning above a jet of water. For his prize he chose a brooch of
imitation gold: a heart pierced by an arrow and surmounted by the word
‘Alice.’ She laughed and pinned it in the neck of her black bodice. She
marvelled at the sureness of his hand and eye. There was no one in all
that crowd whom she would have chosen for her escort rather than him.
She rejoiced, for the first time in many months, to find him a happy and
natural companion, only wishing that she could forget the fact that John
Fellows also was there, drinking, no doubt, in one of the canvas marquees
that the firm of Astill had erected in each corner of the courtyard.
Once, and only once, she spoke her thoughts. ‘I wonder where he is,
Abner. . . .’ she said. He only laughed at her.
‘I’ll find him if you like.’
‘Oh, don’t be soft, Abner,’ she said. ‘I was only wondering. . .’
They spent their coppers at a dozen booths, seeing the fattest lady and
the smallest horse in the world, the riders of bucking bronchos with
woolly trousers and slouch hats, who were even better shots than Abner;
and the lady of mystery, who divined the name and age of Alice and the
dates on Abner’s football medals and told them that their married
happiness was threatened by a dark woman. To this seeress Alice
protested blushing Abner was not her husband. ‘Well, my love,’ said that
lady, pointing to the baby, ‘that bain’t nothing to boast about.’ The
crowd in the tent laughed, and Alice was annoyed with Abner for laughing
with them. ‘You ought to have told ’er,’ she said crossly as they
emerged. ‘It’s enough to take my character for life!’
By this time the cause of the mystery lady’s speculations was getting
tired and peevish. Abner took him for a ride on one of the galloping
roundabout horses, but the motion only made him sick, and so they left
the courtyard and sat resting in the tepid air under the shadow of the
castle beeches, undisturbed by any but casual lovers who had sought the
same kind of privacy.
‘I think it’s awful the way they be’ave!’ said Alice, hugging the baby to
her breast as though she thought he might be corrupted by the sight of so
much unbridled passion. It came natural to her to adopt this pose of
modesty in Abner’s company. She expected him to agree with her; but he
only laughed, and this set her thinking of the dark episode of Susan Wade
and wishing she knew what actually had happened. ‘You didn’t ought to
laugh,’ she said, ‘it bain’t decent.’
But Abner was too contented to pursue the argument.
The child slept for an hour, and Abner sat smoking beside them. He went
back to the fair-ground and brought her a cup of tea. Thus refreshed
they returned to the castle courtyard. The sun was setting; the
uppermost storeys of the ruins were tinged with warm and mellow light,
but the crowded space beneath them had grown cooler. Hissing flares of
naphtha were lighted. Swing-boats soared out of the pit of the ruins
into the glowing sky. The crowd, released from the burden of heat under
which it had laboured, began to pluck up spirits. There was a good deal
of friendly horse-play, from which Alice shrank into the protection of
Abner’s bulk. Little John did not seem much the better for his sleep.
He was tired and irritable, and frightened by the squirts of water and
the feathered teasers. It seemed as if they would have to take him home.
‘But I did want him to see the fireworks!’ Alice said regretfully.
Already two monstrous fire-balloons had ascended and drifted away till
they showed no bigger than the moon.
‘Come on then,’ said Abner. ‘I’ve had enough of it if yo’ have. Let’s
get back before the trams is crowded.’
He took the baby from her arms and she, almost unwillingly, followed him.
At the end of the courtyard, near the Norman archway by which they had
entered, stood a boxing-booth, inside which the show was just on the
point of beginning. The proprietor, a heavy-jowled ruffian in a sweater,
whose board proclaimed him to be an ex-welter-weight champion of
Bermondsey, had collected a crowd round his platform by inveighing, in
the intervals between ringing his bell, against the sporting reputation
of the black-country. At the back of the platform two of his staff, a
nigger and a Hebrew, were sparring gently like kittens at play. It
seemed that the reason for his resentment was his failure to get the
Dulston audience to do anything but watch him and his pets. What he
wanted, he said, was sport . . . just to see what the local talent was
made of.
‘Sport?’ he said, ‘you don’t know the meaning of the word in this
gord-forsaken ’ole. When I puts up this tent in Durham or Middlesborough
or Wales, they flock into it, flock in . . . ready to take a turn with
the boys and give a little exhibition. Frightened to use your fists,
that’s what you are here. What the hell’s England coming to? That’s
what I want to know. It’s enough to make me sick, you people! It’s
enough to make me want to take down the saloon and burn the whole
bleedin’ bag of tricks, damme if it isn’t, an’ the boys waiting here for
a bit of sport.’ The nigger had stopped sparring and was grinning
insolently at the crowd, among the younger women of which his strangeness
exercised an attraction. Nobody, however, seemed inclined to enter the
booth.
‘Come along, Abner,’ Alice whispered, tugging at his arm.
The proprietor rang his bell again. ‘Now, for the last time,’ he said.
‘Just commencing! If you haven’t the spunk to put on the gloves
yourselves, come and see a pretty exhibition of scientific boxing. And I
give you my word this is the last time I ever bring my entertainment into
the bleedin’ black-country!’
‘Good job, gaffer,’ said somebody.
The laughter of the crowd made the big man lose his temper. ‘Good job,
is it?’ he cried. ‘I’d ask the gentleman that made that remark to come
up here and say it to my face. Ever hear the name of Budge Garside?
That’s mine! ’Ere, I’ll give five pounds’—he pulled out a leather bag of
money and jingled it—‘I’ll give two pounds to any of you chaps that’ll
stand up to me for six rounds. That’s what I think of the bloody lot of
you. Men! There’s not one of you black-country chaps worth the name.
All you’re fit for, as far as I can see, is to carry the babby about and
’old the missis’s ’and. Yes, sir, it’s you I’m talkin’ to!’
Everybody looked at Abner. Alice again tried to pull him away. ‘That’s
right, my dear,’ said Garside, encouraged, ‘take ’im ’ome before ’e gets
’is pretty face spoiled!’
Abner shook himself free from her hand and shoved the baby into her arms.
‘Come on, gaffer,’ he said, ‘I’m game.’ He moved forward through the
crowd. Alice, clinging to him desperately, tried to hold him back, but
the people made way for him, and even helped him forward, swarming up on
to the platform after him. Garside, pleased with the result of his
stratagem, shook hands with him. ‘That’s the spirit I like,’ he said
thickly. ‘Come on in and strip. Let’s have a drink to start with.’
They disappeared together into the tent. Sixpences rattled into the
wooden bowl that the negro held to receive them. Men and women poured
into the booth anxious to see what kind of battering the representative
of the district would get. The little Jew pushed back the crowd and held
up a piece of boarding with the words ‘House Full’ painted on it, while
the negro fastened the strings of the tent door.
Alice was left alone in the crowd outside clutching the baby nervously in
her arms. She could not have borne to see Abner fight. All she could do
was to wait patiently outside and listen in agony for any sounds within.
She could hear very little but the buzz of conversation. Even when she
crept round to the side of the tent and put her ear to the canvas the
sounds that came to her were indistinct, unreal, and blurred by the
nearer rumour of the multitude, the hiss of naphtha flares, the creaking
of swing-boats, cracks of rifles, and above all the raucous blaring of
the steam organs and the shriek of their whistles. If only she could
have heard something she would have been happier. She could not bear to
think of Abner’s white flesh being bruised, and yet, curiously enough,
she was thrilled and proud of him. Her distaste for violence couldn’t
get the better of her exultation in her man’s virility. She stood at the
side of the tent tensely listening. A rocket screamed into the sky;
there was a moment of relative silence from the crowd in which she
thought she heard a sound of dull thuds mingled with another pattering
noise. The rocket burst into a shower of gold amid a salvo of ‘Oh’s!’
The crowd, noisily streaming towards the ramparts, from which they could
see the fireworks against a blacker sky, jostled her, passing between the
boxing-booth and the next tent. Six rounds! It could not last much
longer. Why had he left her so roughly? Why hadn’t he taken her with
him? Of course you couldn’t take a baby into a boxing-booth—not even a
black-country baby—but there was no reason why he should have pushed her
aside like that. She wouldn’t forgive him that roughness in a hurry!
But she knew that she would: she would forgive Abner anything as long as
he did not disregard her. The crowd still streamed past her. Showers of
starred rockets and tadpoles of fire were bursting above her in the
velvet sky. A whole battery of maroons shook the ruins. He would be
sorry to have missed the fireworks! If he were badly knocked about she
still had some of Mrs Moseley’s ointment left—a fine thing for bruises or
broken skin. That was the night, she remembered, when he had come home
drunk: the night when, for a moment they had gazed into each other’s
eyes. She knew how dangerous the emotion of pity was. A set-piece
suddenly sputtered out of the darkness. Letters of fire began to form
themselves. What would they say? GOD SAVE . . . ‘The king,’ of course.
Little John began to cry, saying that he wanted to go to bed. ‘Yes, my
precious!’ she crooned, ‘mammy’ll take you home.’ Six rounds. . . . She
suddenly remembered how a young pitman at Mawne had once been killed in a
boxing-booth by a knock-out blow on the chin. A knock-out blow . . . she
remembered old Mr Higgins talking of it. But Abner was strong. Nothing
of that kind could possibly happen to him. Even so, she couldn’t get the
sinister picture of Budge Garside with his heavy jowl out of her head.
He was such a deadly-looking customer! Suppose . . .
A sound of cheering came from inside the tent. She ran round to the
front, wishing to goodness that John would hold his noise. The curtains
opened. The negro came out with another signboard: ‘Just Commencing.’
People surged out of the tent laughing and talking together. A bold girl
burst out laughing in the nigger’s face. Alice took hold of the sleeve
of one of the men who came out alone and looked as if he were sober.
‘Tell us what’s happened?’ she gasped; but he only stared at her and
shook his head and went on straight forward as if he had mistaken her
motive for accosting him. The tent emptied. After a moment she saw
Abner shaking hands with the giant in the door. He didn’t seem to notice
her, and when he came down the wooden steps and she called his name he
did not look pleased to see her. His lip was cut and his forehead still
damp from a vigorous sponging. She took his arm; she wanted to show him
how glad she was. He was too dazed to resent this familiarity, simply
saying: ‘Come on out of this!’ In the gate of the courtyard he stopped.
‘Wait a jiff,’ he said, ‘You’d better take the two quid.’ He gave her
the coins and then, suddenly realising the tiredness of her face in the
lamplight, asked her to give him the kid. ‘I reckon this is a man’s
job,’ he said with a deep laugh.
This time they caught their tram without difficulty. They spoke very
little, and in whispers, for John had fallen asleep in his mother’s arms,
and even if he had wanted to talk, Abner would have known better than to
risk waking him. As a matter of fact he had taken a good deal of
punishment from Garside’s left. On points he would have been thoroughly
outmatched and nothing but his stubborn will had kept him on his feet
until the end of the sixth round. The mild elation that had sustained
him when he left the booth had now faded, and in its place he began to
feel the effects of the terrific hammering that he had undergone. His
lip was beginning to swell and his body felt cold in spite of the sultry
weather. He dozed in the corner of the tram-car, and when they came to
the terminus and Alice roused him by a touch on his sleeve, he felt it an
unreasonable effort to pull himself together and carry the child up Mawne
bank. The creature was still asleep and hung a dead weight on his
shoulder. Rather than wake him when they reached Hackett’s Cottages
Alice carried him upstairs and laid him still asleep in his cot.
When she came downstairs again she found Abner in the washhouse bathing
his face in cold water. ‘Don’t do that, Abner,’ she said, ‘let me see to
it proper.’ She took Mrs Moseley’s ointment and some strips of linen
from the cupboard, but he wouldn’t let her touch him, saying that he was
tired as a dog and would rather turn in. She gazed at him sorrowfully,
knowing that she could not drive him and fearing to persuade. He rallied
her weakly: ‘If you stand lookin’ at me like that yo’ll be late for the
funeral,’ he said, and then, softening, ‘You look dead tired yourself.
Put the light out and leave the door open.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve never done that. I shall wait up for him.’
‘Well, you women takes the biscuit!’ said Abner.
He left her there, and rolling up in his blankets soon fell asleep. It
was not often that he dreamed, but on that night his dreams would not let
him be. From the very moment that he first slept he seemed to be
fighting, fighting with Budge Garside on a platform of creaking boards
with a rope barrier round it, lit by hissing naphtha flares. Every
moment he grew more exhausted; but he had to go on fighting in spite of
the violent jabs of Garside’s fist over his heart. The crowd in the
booth, whose faces could not be seen for tobacco smoke, were laughing at
him, and this filled him with an angry determination to go through with
it. The round seemed endless. He waited for the umpire’s bell to save
him, but the umpire had vanished. And now he was fighting all three:
Garside with his broad, shaggy chest, the small-headed negro, and the
little Jew who skipped about like a flea. He hadn’t bargained to take on
all three at once, but there was nobody to whom he could appeal, and so
he had to go on boxing as well as he could in this hurricane of six
fists. He thought of Alice and the baby whom he had left outside. If he
were knocked out, as he surely must be in a moment, she would have to
look to herself. That couldn’t be helped. Suddenly he heard her calling
from outside the tent: ‘Abner . . . Abner!’ He tried to call back to
her, just to show her that he was still keeping up, but no voice would
come through his cut lips. Garside landed a terrific blow on the point
of his chin. He woke. . . . He supposed he was awake. But the voice
that he had heard in his dream still followed him. She was calling
‘Abner . . Abner!’ He tumbled out of bed, pulled on his trousers, and
ran downstairs. The mild light of the kitchen dazzled him.
In the corner, beyond a pile of overturned furniture, he saw Alice
cowering, and above her John Fellows. In the struggle which he had not
heard his father had ripped her bodice and torn away the gilt brooch that
Abner had given her. Now he had her at his mercy, holding her by the
hair, shaking her from time to time like a terrier with a rat and making
her scream with pain. Abner had never seen such terror in a human
creature’s eyes. When she saw him she cried for his help. ‘Abner . . .
Abner . . . make him give over. Tell him I done nothing!’
‘Abner,’ said John Fellows savagely. ‘Abner . . . there’s a bleedin’
side too much Abner in this ’ouse! You’ll get out of it quick, the pair
of you.’
‘Loose her!’ Abner shouted.
‘Loose her?’ John Fellows laughed. ‘I reckon I’ve let her go too much
as it is. Give me the slip, the two of you. Took her off into the
woods, tickin’ and tannin’, you dirty devil! Give her joolry! Give your
own mother joolry! An’ what happened when I was on my back in the
hospital?’
‘Leave go of her!’ said Abner, coming nearer.
‘In the very bed you was born in,’ cried John Fellows. ‘Yo’re a fine
bloody fossack! Out you go, the both of you! Joolry! Give me the slip,
would you? No — fear! Gerrup, I say!’
He pulled Alice up from her knees. Her sobs rose to a scream. ‘John,
you’m killing me!’
Abner took him by the arm.
‘Lay hands on your own father, would you? Take that, you . . . !’ He
hit Abner full on his bruised mouth with all his strength. Alice,
released, ran to the other side of the room and stood panting, her hands
clutching at her torn bodice. The baby started crying upstairs.
Abner put his hand to his mouth. His lip was bleeding again. He pulled
himself together. ‘You’re boozed,’ he said. ‘Get on upstairs!’ He
tried to lead his father to the door, but John Fellows was not to be put
off. ‘Boozed!’ he said, ‘and what would drive a man to booze worse nor a
bad wife? No, yo’ don’t get out of it like that. What’ve you done to
’er?’
‘I never touched her,’ said Abner.
‘Never touch ’er, an’ give her joolry!’ Fellows scoffed. ‘Maybe I’m
boozed, but I’m not too boozed to put you to rights.’ He launched a
savage blow at Abner’s face, and encouraged by the fact that Abner did
not return it, followed it up with another. Alice, crying ‘Oh!’ ran to
the door. ‘Stay where yo’ are!’ Abner shouted. John Fellows closed with
him, lashing out viciously. He had been something of a boxer in his day,
and his attack was so violent that Abner found it difficult to defend
himself. Fellows fought like a tiger cat, with boots and finger-nails
and teeth. His bloodshot eyes were fixed on Abner’s throat. It was as
if all the suppressed malice of seven years had been suddenly released.
Then, suddenly, he dropped Abner and flew at the frightened Alice. Abner
stopped him with a blow under the right ear. He crumpled up and fell on
the floor like a sack.
‘Abner . . . you’ve done him in!’ Alice cried.
He fell to his knees and listened for his father’s heart. The impulse
still fluttered there. ‘No . . . he’s only stunned. I reckon he’ll wake
up sober,’ he said. Alice stood trembling and sobbing in short gasps: a
strange, mechanical noise. Abner remained bent over his father’s body in
silence.
‘Johnnie’s crying . . . bless his little ’eart!’ she said. He took no
notice of her. ‘Put the rug over ’im. Leave him here till ’e comes to.’
‘Abner, ’e spoke something awful! ’E said you’n me had been going
together while he was away. ’E took up this brooch. . . . A thing like
that!’
‘I don’t want to ’ear what he said.’
‘’E said our John wasn’t his child . . . said I’d always been rotten bad. . .’
John Fellows gave a groan.
‘Hark, ’e’s coming round,’ said Abner.
‘An’ I never done nothing! . . . nothing!’
‘You’d better look to the babby.’
‘Poor lamb! Nothing, I never done, Abner . . .’
‘I know you done nothing. You don’t take no notice what a man says when
’e’s boozed. You look to the kid, while I get my clothes on.’
‘Yo’ bain’t goin’ to dress?’ She picked up the alarm clock that Fellows
had knocked down from the mantelpiece. It was still going, with a harsh
metallic click. ‘It’s not two o’clock yet.’
But he had gone. Left alone she glanced fearfully at the form of her
husband. For a moment he lay quite still. Then he shuddered, rolled
over and began to snore. The baby was still wailing upstairs. If only
John Fellows had been dead! But that would have been murder. What was
Abner doing? She could not live without Abner. She went upstairs to his
room and tapped at the door. Candlelight glinted through cracks in the
boards. He answered angrily, she thought, but she came in.
‘What are you doing now?’ she whispered.
‘Putting two-three things together.’
‘What’s up now?’
‘I’m off out of this.’
‘Going?’ she cried. ‘Abner . . . you can’t go and leave me like this.
Not with him!’
He laughed. ‘I can’t take you along with me. Not likely!’ He went on
pulling out clothes from his wooden box. She broke down altogether.
‘Abner . . . Abner, don’t go and leave me. I can’t . . . I can’t . . .’
He put on his scarf. ‘Abner, only stay along with us for a bit. . .’
‘I’ve stayed too long as it is.’
She tried to put her arms round his neck, but he pushed her away. ‘It’s
lucky I’ve got a bit of money put by for a start,’ he said, fumbling in
the mattress for his stocking. ‘I’ll give you what I can spare.’
Then suddenly he swore violently. He had found the stocking, but it was
empty. He turned furiously on Alice: ‘You devil, you took it!’
She fell at his feet, imploring him to believe that she knew nothing
about it. ‘I’ve never told you a lie, Abner,’ she said.
His rage made him unreasonable. ‘You’re like the rest on ’em! Twenty
pounds! What have you done with it?’
‘I swear I never seen a penny of it, Abner. It must be there. Look
again.’
He had ripped the bed to pieces, but there was no money. Suddenly light
dawned on them both. They had found the explanation of John Fellows’
continued affluence. Thinking of this, they could not doubt where the
money had gone.
‘That’s the worst turn he ever done me,’ he said, pulling on his cap.
Even now she could not believe that he was going. ‘Not till the
morning,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave me with him like that in the dark.’
In the kitchen Abner again examined his father, who now appeared to be
sleeping peacefully. ‘He won’t remember a word of it when he wakes,’ he
said.
Again she implored him not to leave her, but now she could see that
entreaties were useless and that his mind was made up. It was the most
awful parting in her life: as final and annihilating as death. For more
than three years she had lived for him and very little else. He opened
the door. It was a bland summer night, the sky full of soft stars and
the country of a breathing sweetness.
‘So long, then, Alice,’ he said.
She could not speak. She put up her arms and kissed him for the first
time in her life. He did not then push her away; but she felt that he
was only compelling himself to tolerate her embrace. ‘I never touched
that money,’ she said hastily.
‘I know you never did,’ he replied. ‘So long . . .’
His shadow disappeared into the darkness. She shut the door of the
kitchen. John Fellows lay on the floor snoring, and upstairs the baby
still cried.