CATHERINE
HERSELF
_By_ JAMES HILTON
T. FISHER UNWIN LTD
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE
_First published in 1920_
(_All rights reserved_)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. PRELUDE 11
II. JEUNESSE 26
III. THE FIRST TRANT EPISODE 41
IV. NOCTURNE 51
V. DISILLUSIONMENTS 64
VI. CRESCENDO 77
VII. TRAGEDY 91
VIII. POST-MORTEM 101
IX. NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH 113
X. ACCELERANDO 125
XI. THE SECOND TRANT EPISODE 141
XII. DISCONTENT 159
XIII. LONELINESS 174
XIV. HOPE ENTERS 179
XV. SUCCESS 192
XVI. ALLEGRO CON FUOCO 202
XVII. THE CRISIS 236
XVIII. DÉBÂCLE 244
XIX. AFTERWARDS 253
XX. STILL FALLING 270
XXI. FALLEN 276
XXII. MR. HOBBS 284
XXIII. ONCE AGAIN 295
XXIV. THE LAST PHASE 302
CATHERINE HERSELF
CHAPTER I
PRELUDE
§ 1
CATHERINE thought: Day is white, Night is black, but sometimes it is
half-white and half-black.... There were five knobs on the brass rail
of the bed: one of them would come off.... The baker came to the door
every night and said: “And how is Cathie?” ...
It was cold, and blue flames flickered on top of the coals in the
fire-grate. They said: “Lappappappap....” The Man tore off his collar
from the stud--“plock”--then he screwed off his boots--“Hr-rooch--flop
... Hr-rooch--flop.” ... The mother said: “Cathie’s asleep: don’t make
such a noise.” ...
Then her mother carried her past the brown banisters up to bed....
It was nearly black. The pumping-engine at the water-works went:
“Chug-chug ... chug-chug ... chug-chug-chug....”
There were five knobs on the brass rail of the bed....
§ 2
The Man was Father.
Every morning mother called upstairs: “John: come on! Past eight”...
and father said: “Just about to.” The sun fell in a slant over the
table and climbed up the wall. Father ate porridge and milk: he went
“Ooflip-oorooflip.”
The sunlight slid off the table on to the floor. There was nothing to
do except listen to the clock. It went “tick-tock—tick-tock”--then it
went “ticky-ticky.” ... The milkman said: “Mornin’, m’m. Lavly mornin’.
Thenk you, m’m. Mornin’, m’m.” ...
The sunlight ran away....
The face of the man next door had a big bulge. Mother said it was
called a goitre. You had them in Derbyshire. The man’s name was
Jopson. All the street-children used to follow him singing “Old father
Jopson”--like this:
[Illustration]
There were other fathers besides old father Jopson. There was one whom
Catherine had never seen. He was called “Ch-artinevin,” but he was not
like old father Jopson....
Every night her mother sang:
Now the day is over,
Nighties drawing nigh.
and made her talk to our father, Ch-artinevin. Only Ch-artinevin never
said anything in reply.
There were two places where little girls went to. One was heaven, the
other was hell. Hell was hot, heaven was cold. Heaven was full of white
tiles and marble-slabs, like a fish-shop. But hell would be far too
hot for you even if you were feeling cold. It would be a pity to go to
hell, especially in the warm weather. Sometimes her father said: “O
Hell!” ...
§ 3
Father was an elementary school teacher at the Downlands Road Council
School. In winter and on wet nights in summer he sat indoors and put
great sprawling ticks and crosses on exercise-books. Sometimes he
frowned while he was working: Catherine used to watch him.
He was a little man and he wore cycling stockings under his trousers.
Every fine night he put on an old Norfolk tweed jacket and went out
into the garden with the two ends of the waistband dangling behind
him. He would bend down and make minute examinations of plants. He
would twine sweet-pea tendrils round their sticks. Sometimes he would
pounce upon a weed and remove it with cruel precision.... On Saturday
afternoons he took a bucket and went into the roads to collect
horse-manure. To Catherine Saturday afternoon was always signalized by
the hard scraping of the kitchen shovel on the gritty surface of the
roadway.
Mother was big and billowy. She kept her hair in papers during the
mornings and wore stays whose ribbed outline showed through the back of
her blouse. She talked more than father. At the Duke Street Methodist
Chapel she appeared in the front row of the choir, whilst father took
round the collection-plate. She was vaguely religious and vaguely
patriotic and vaguely sentimental. When she said “John!” very slowly,
father knew he had better be careful.
Catherine sat in the front pew on a Sunday morning, and wondered what
it was all about. Why had mother got her hat on? ... Why did everybody
come here once a week? What was the man in the round box talking
about? Her mother had said, “About God, Cathie.” But he didn’t say
God; he said Gahd. Sometimes Ch-artinevin was mentioned and Catherine
caught the words with enthusiasm. It was plain that Ch-artinevin was a
well-known personage.
The little boy next to her had curly hair. He was eating peppermints.
During the prayer he kept taking them out of his mouth to see if they
got smaller. Once he gave her one. It was very nice, but she cracked it
during the benediction, and it was a loud crack.
Father stood at the door shaking hands with people. He said: “Good
evening, Mrs. Lawson”--“Good evening, Ethel”--“Good evening, Miss
Picksley, shall we be seeing you at the Band of Hope on Tuesday?”
And to Catherine he said:
“Go and wait in the back pew; there’s a Kermunion.”
A Kermunion, at any rate, was interesting....
§ 4
Father, being an elementary schoolteacher, did not send Catherine to
an elementary school. She went to Albany House (principal, Miss Leary,
L.R.C.P.). Miss Leary wore her hair in a knob and said to Catherine:
“Darling, if you do that again I shall have to smack you hard.”
Catherine learnt: Solomon was the wisest man that ever lived; Gibraltar
belongs to England; the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;
Henry the First never smiled again; three barleycorns one inch; the
messenger rushed up to Wolfe saying, “They run, they run!”--“Who run,
who run?” cried Wolfe....
On wet winter days the fireguard was hung with steaming clothes.
The row of benches was a mere misty vista of wet noses and
pocket-handkerchiefs. Everywhere was the stench of damp mackintoshes.
Catherine sat by the window and looked through the streaming panes.
She could see Polly, who brought them cups of cocoa in the middle of
the morning, washing up the breakfast things in the kitchen. Every
now and then the water gurgled out of the slopstone into the sink and
made Jack, the black retriever dog, cautiously open one eye in his
kennel. Catherine liked Jack. He was very staid and solemn, his sole
dissipation being the crunching of snails. Miss Leary said: “Catherine,
I do declare you are looking out of that window again! How often have I
told you ...” etc., etc.
Every Friday afternoon as a special treat they had reading out of
a reading-book. It was not like “Pat sat on the mat: is that Pat’s
mat?” and the sentences about the cat and rat; it was a real book of
adventures, the adventures of a boy and his uncle at the seaside. The
avuncular relationship seemed to consist entirely in a readiness to
return prompt and plausible answers to all sorts of questions. Uncle
Tom and his nephew carried between them a complete outfit of odds and
ends, marbles, pieces of string, oranges, scissors, card-board, cubes
and prisms, even jars and glass-funnels, and it was their custom to
perform experiments with these upon all suitable occasions, wherever
they might chance to be. The observations of passers-by, including
park-keepers and bath-chairmen, were not recorded. Local byelaws seemed
never to impede them from digging up roots and defacing flower-beds.
§ 5
Day followed on day and Catherine grew. As she walked by the sides of
brick walls her eye ran along the lines of mortar tapering into the
distance. Even she noticed how she kept rising brick by brick until the
mortar-line that her eye followed was somewhere between four and five
feet high. She left off her very childish habits, such as walking on
the cracks of the pavements.... She ceased to ask absurd unanswerable
questions about trams and buses; she stopped lamenting if she failed to
secure a window-seat in the train. But she was still a child. She still
sang out after old father Jopson.
She discovered that the second line of the hymn was not “Nighties
drawing nigh,” as she had naturally supposed, but “Night is drawing
nigh.” The discovery was a disappointment.
She began to read. She read _Alice in Wonderland_ and _The
Walrus and the Carpenter_. She even began to write. At Albany House
she wrote in large copybook style: “Honesty is the best policy.” Once
also she wrote on the back of a birthday card: “Dear Auntie Ethel, Many
Happy Returns of the Day, from Your Affectionate Niece, Catherine.”
... And on the wooden fence at the end of the road she wrote in chalk:
“Freddy McKellar is a Soppy Fool.”
She began to do naughty things. She played in the game of “last
across”; she hung on to the backs of passing motor-lorries. She danced
in the streets to the tune of itinerant barrel-organs. Something may
here be said of her appearance. She had hair of a rich and fiery red,
and eyes of a fierce compound of brown and green. In the summer-time
her face was freckles all over. She was not good-looking, and few
people would have called her even pretty. But she was known everywhere
in the vicinity of Kitchener Road as “Cathie Weston, that red-haired
girl.”
§ 6
In the Co-operative Stores the shopman kept her waiting out of her
turn. He had seen her sticking “transfers” on his shop-window and he
did not like her. The Bockley and Upton Rising Friendly Co-operative
and Industrial Society was an imposing institution with patent
bacon-slicers and profuse calendar-distributing habits. Behind the
polished mahogany counter the shopman fluttered about, all sleek and
dapper, and in front stood Catherine, tired and impatient. There was
a large co-operative almanac on the wall, and this she used to peruse
diligently, supplementing therefrom the meagre knowledge of English
history given her at Albany House. The almanac introduced a sort of
miscellaneous historical calendar--for example: September 22nd. Battle
of Zutphen, 1586. September 23rd. Massacres in Paris, 1789. Then in
great staring red letters: September 24th. Opening of the Head Office
of the Bockley and Upton Rising Friendly Co-operative and Industrial
Society by Lord Fitzroy, 1903. With absolutely no sense of historical
perspective at all, Catherine was quite prepared to believe that the
last of these was the most prominent because it was also the most
important.
When Kitchener Road was first built, in the full-flood of the Soudanese
war-fever, it was for a time drowsily suburban. Then a too enterprising
religious organization built a tin-mission at one end of it. The
mission had a corrugated iron roof. Until then Kitchener Road had not
quite decided whether it would tend in the social sense to rise or to
fall. The corrugated iron roof forced a decision. Kitchener Road fell,
and fell rapidly. From drowsiness it degenerated into frowsiness.
A sleek off-licence appeared, with yellow-glazed tiles and an
ungrammatical notice board: “No beer to be drank on the premises nor
on the public highway.” Passing the tarred fence at the upper end the
pedestrian ran the whole gamut of flippancy and indecency. And on the
gate of the corner house could be seen--a final tribute to disappointed
hopes--that sultry hall-mark of respectability: “No Hawkers, No
Circulars, No Canvassers.” When the headmaster of the Downsland Road
Council School heard that an intending pupil lived in Kitchener
Road, he generally said: “I am very sorry, but we have no more room.
If I were you I should try at Cubitt Lane.” ... The headmaster of
the Downsland Road Council School did not like the headmaster of
the Cubitt Lane Council School.... And on all the tram-standards in
Bockley a handbill declared that “On July 11th, at the Upton Rising
Petty Sessions, Gabriel Handcote, 21, and Richard Moulton, 19, both of
Kitchener Road, Bockley, were fined 40s. and costs for travelling on a
tramway-car with intent to avoid payment of fare.”
§ 7
Bockley was a sprawling urban district on the edge of the metropolitan
area. Itself and Upton Rising had spread till they touched like
adjacent blobs of ink on blotting-paper. But Upton Rising was
aristocratic, plutocratic.... Its inhabitants had first-class
season-tickets, wore spats, and read _The Times_ on the 9.27 “Up.”
They became district councillors, bazaar-openers, hospital-subscribers
and such like. They wrote letters to the _Bockley and Upton Rising
Advertiser_ complaining of municipal apathy in the matter of
water-carts. They said “Bockley must have a park to keep it out of
mischief,” and lo! Bockley had one, with “keep-off-the-grass” notices
and geometrical flower-beds, and a code of byelaws half a yard long,
and a constant clientele of old-age pensioners and children flying
paper windmills....
And in the meantime Bockley became conscious of its destiny. It bore
all the unmistakable signs of a township that expects to be great some
day--insurance agencies out of all proportion to the population, a
Carnegie library, and a melancholy statue outside the Town Hall....
The origin of Bockley is simple and unconfusing.
Somewhere early on in the latter half of the nineteenth century the
Great Eastern Railway Company, seeking parliamentary sanction to extend
its suburban lines to Bockley, was compelled by law to carry workmen
to and from Bockley and the City for twopence.... It was that twopence
which made Bockley....
§ 8
In the front room of No. 24, Kitchener Road there was a Collard and
Collard piano. It had jaundiced keys and a bosom of yellow silk
interlaced with fretwork. Most of the lower notes said “Hanng-g-g,” and
the five bottom ones all said the same “hang-g-g.” ... The piano-tuner
came. He was of the “ping-ping-wrench” and the “see-what-can-be-done”
variety. He said:
“It’s bin a good interment in its time.... Pity the dampness got in it.”
Catherine watched him as he tightened the wires and prodded the notes.
At the end he played Thalberg’s “Home, Sweet Home,” with variations.
That night Mrs. Weston said: “Now that the pianer’s bin tuned you might
start havin’ lessons.... I’ll see Mr. Monkhouse about it to-morrer.”
And Catherine bought a shilling instruction book and learned: E G B D
F--Every Good Boy Deserves Favour....
Mr. Monkhouse was a versatile man. In the _Bockley Advertiser_ he
announced: “Mr. Reginald Monkhouse has still a few dates vacant during
April and May for engagements as entertainer, expert conjurer, pianist,
accompanist or children’s lecturer Write Box 77.” At Masonic dinners
Mr. Monkhouse sang “Where did you get that hat?” and other relics of
the Victorian music-hall stage. Every evening from 8 till 11 he played
the piano and conducted the orchestra at the Victoria Hall, Bockley,
vamping with his left hand and beating time with the first finger of
his right. And on Saturdays and at odd times whenever possible he
gave pianoforte tuition at the rate of sixpence a lesson.... He was
always shabbily-dressed, always good-humoured, patient and not too
conscientious. The little front parlour where he lodged in Cubitt Lane
was full of playbills and concert programmes and signed menu-cards....
He gave Catherine a piece called “White Wings,” and initiated her into
a few elementary five-finger exercises. She was not particularly apt in
picking them up, but at the end of forty-five minutes he said:
“Good-night, my dear. You’ll be a female Paderewski before long....”
Those were the days when a pianist had achieved the signal distinction
of becoming known to the man-in-the-street. Paderewski was as well
known as Krüger.
§ 9
Freddie McKellar and Catherine Weston were seated side by side in the
back bench of the Duke Street Schoolroom. The occasion was a Band of
Hope entertainment. Mr. Weston was on the platform, surrounded by weird
articles of glass and metal.
“I want you all to notice carefully,” he said. “Here I have a jar
of clean pure water. The little fellow who is gambolling about so
playfully inside it is a stickleback. He is having a fine time because
the water is so pure and fresh.... Now watch ... here I have a flask of
whisky.... I pour it into the water ... so.... I want you to watch very
carefully....”
Freddie McKellar, aged fifteen, bent his head slightly to the left in
order to see round the corner of Mrs. Mole’s hat. In doing so he felt
the soft spray-like touch of Catherine’s hair against his ear.... It
was not unpleasant.
Catherine was dreamily conscious that something tense was going to
happen.
“It doesn’t always work,” she whispered, vaguely, “some sticklebacks
like it.” ... She bent her head slightly to the right to circumvent the
obstruction of Mr. Mole’s shiny hairless head. To Freddie McKellar it
seemed that this time, instead of his ear touching her hair, her hair
had performed the more positive act of brushing against his ear. The
difference, though subtle, was not to be ignored.
“Now,” cried Mr. Weston, brandishing aloft his jar with the stickleback
inside it either dead or drunk or in some way incapacitated for further
movement, “if the effect of this foul spirit upon this tiny animal is
...”
“There’s refreshments afterwards, ain’t there?” said Freddie, _sotto
voce_.
“Yes,” she whispered, hoarsely. The tragedy of the dying stickleback,
“butchered to make a Roman holiday,” had made her unwontedly solemn.
... “Now,” proceeded Mr. Weston, “if somebody will kindly lower the
lights, I will show you on the screen some of the effects of strong
drink.... First of all, perhaps you would care to have a look at a drop
of whisky as it is seen through the lens of a microscope....”
The lights went out in successive “pops.”
Freddie McKellar’s left hand slowly closed over Catherine’s right one.
“Ugh,” said Catherine, presumably at the horrible picture on the
screen. Then the thought came to her (she had had no experience of such
matters)--“He must be flirting with me.”
Simultaneously there came to Freddie McKellar (who, for his age, had
had considerable experience of such matters) the thought: “She must be
flirting with me.”
And at the same time Gladys Stockwell nudged Bessie Millar and
whispered: “Just look at Cathie Weston and Freddie McKellar ... at
their age, too....” (Gladys was twenty-three and unbeautiful.)
In the refreshment room afterwards Catherine and Freddie sat together
on a bench munching ham-sandwiches. You were only expected to take one
ham-sandwich, but Catherine had already taken three and Freddie five.
The caretaker was stoking up the fire at the other side of the room.
“Ain’t you two goin’ ter join in the Musical Chairs?” he remarked,
contemplatively, “they’ve started ’em in the other room.”
Freddie took another ham-sandwich.
“I don’t feel extra like Musical Chairs,” he replied.
The caretaker grinned and shuffled out with the empty coke-scuttle. It
was precisely at that moment that Catherine began to dislike the scent
of Freddie’s lavishly spread hair-oil....
Catherine thought: “I don’t think I like him at all. I wonder if he
knows it was me who chalked up on the fence, ‘Freddie McKellar is a
soppy fool.’ ... ’Cos he is one, really....”
And then suddenly Freddie had an unfortunate inspiration.
He put his arm round her neck and touched her cheek. In an instant she
was up and flaring and standing before him.
“What on earth did you do that for?” she cried, passionately; “I don’t
want your smelly fingers on me!” (“Smelly fingers” was an attribute she
bestowed on everybody she disliked.)
He was astonished at her vehemence, but tried to carry it off
laughingly.
“Come back,” he called, advancing to her, “and don’t be silly ... silly
... don’t be ... silly....” He was rather nervous. His nervousness made
him desperate.
There occurred a somewhat unseemly fracas. He stood before the door and
slowly got her trapped into a corner. She aimed a tea-cup at him but
missed. Maddened by this he rushed full tilt at her. She struggled,
snatched, tore, kicked, pinched. She was stronger than he, but he got
hold of her hair, and so held her at his mercy. He just managed to
kiss her. She spat in his face. Then he let her go. She marched out
of the room, seizing another tea-cup as she went. When she was at the
door she took a careful aim and flung it at him with all her might. It
struck his head. There was that tense pause just after children are
hurt, and just before they begin to cry. Then he broke into a wail....
Most dramatically the piano in the next room stopped, and there was the
scuffle of finding chairs.... She paused at the door and tossed her
last words at him in uttermost scorn.
“Oh, you great big softie ...” she said, and passed out into the cool
night air.
She never enquired whether he were seriously hurt (he might have been);
she never stopped to think of the broken crockery on the floor or her
own red hair streaming in disarray; at that moment she would not have
cared if she had killed him.
And she never spoke to him again....
Afterwards she was doubly angry with him because he had made her lose
her temper....
§ 10
Mrs. Weston said: “Jus’ look at your hair! You’ve bin larking abeaout,
I darebebound.”
Catherine did not contradict her. “Larking about” was a punishable
misdemeanour.
“Everybody was larking about,” she put in, irrelevantly.
“You’re a disgrace,” continued Mrs. Weston, equally irrelevantly. Then
as an afterthought: “Larking about with the boys, I daresay....”
Catherine did not reply.
“Well, you’re going to have a sound thrashing, that’s all, so you may
as well know.... I’m about sick of your hooligan ways....”
Catherine went white. She was not afraid of a sound thrashing (they
were not very fearsome things when you got used to them); it was the
atmosphere of strained expectancy that was almost intolerable. She went
whiter when her mother said:
“Have your supper first.... There’s some cold rice pudding....”
She ate in silence. Her mother was rushing in and out of the scullery
preparing her father’s supper. In the middle of all this her father
entered. He was tired and hoarse after the evening’s effort. He
noticed the strained atmosphere. He said to Catherine:
“What’s the matter, Cathie?”
Mrs. Weston began to talk very fast and very harshly. Her voice was
like the sudden rending of a strip of calico.
“She’s bin behaving herself badly again, that’s what’s amiss with
her.... Larking about all this evening, she was. A regular disgrace. I
tell you, I’m not going to put up with it. She’s going to get a sound
thrashing to teach her to remember....”
Simultaneously Mrs. Weston planked down a plate of greens and
vegetables in front of her husband. He attacked them nervously.
“It’s not good enough,” he said, after a pause, with the air of being
vaguely reproachful against nobody in particular, “I tell you it’s not
good enough.... I don’t know why these things should happen. It’s not
as if she was a little girl....”
That was all he said.
The sound thrashing began soon afterwards. It was an extremely
unscientific battery of slaps, in which Catherine dodged as best she
could amongst the crowded furniture of the kitchen. Once she lurched
against the table and knocked over the vinegar-bottle.
“I wish you wouldn’t ...” began Mr. Weston, and then stopped and
continued eating.
After some moments of this gymnastic display both parties were hot and
flushed with exertion, and the finale began when Mrs. Weston opened the
door of the lobby and manœuvred Catherine out of the kitchen.
“Off you go,” she said. “Straight to bed ... str-h-aight to b-bed....”
The chase proceeded upstairs. Mrs. Weston’s stertorous breathing
and heavy footfalls were the most conspicuous sounds.... A few
seconds afterwards a loud banging of an upstairs door announced that
hostilities were over.
In her tiny back bedroom Catherine sat down on a chair for breath. She
was not physically hurt; in her “larking about” with boys and girls of
her own age she had often paused for breath like this, and at such
times there had been joy in her heart even when there had been pain in
her body. But now she was conscious only of profound indignity. Her
father’s vague protest echoed in her memory: “It’s not as if she were a
little girl....”
She undressed and got into bed. It was quite dark, and she felt
acutely miserable. Far away the pumping engine at the water-works
whispered, as it always did at night-time, “Chug-chug ... chug-chug ...
chug-chug-chug....” Ten, twelve years had passed since she had counted
the five knobs on the brass rail of the bed. She was growing up, out of
a child into a girl. She was not growing up without faults: she knew
that. The worst trait in her was temper ... she would have to conquer
that. She must learn self-control....
From below came the old familiar sound of her father taking off his
boots and dumping them under the sofa. “H-rooch-flop ... h’rooch-flop.”
... That sound was bound up with all her memories of childhood.
Ten minutes later there came a cautious tap at her door, and her father
entered in an intermediate stage of attire. He lit a candle clumsily
and shone it down upon her. She did not move. He prodded her with his
thumb in a vague, experimental way. She made no reply, though her eyes
were wide open and staring into his.
“I say, Cathie,” he began, vaguely and nervously, “you’ve bin
misbehaving, I’m told.... It’s too bad, you know.... Come now ... be a
good girl and go to sleep.”
Pause.
Then: “Kiss me.”
It was the first time for many years that he had asked for such a
thing. With no apparent reason at all the tears welled up into her
eyes, tears that she had hidden since her tenth birthday.
She was just about to raise her head to meet his when a drop of liquid
candle grease fell on her bare arm. The sharp, unexpected pain made her
a prey to a sudden gust of tempestuous emotion....
“Oh, go away,” she muttered angrily, “don’t come bothering me ... I’m
tired....” She crouched down beneath the bedclothes with her face
turned away from him.
Mr. Weston retired a little sheepishly.
“Oh, well,” he said, “if you’re going to be sulky ... I suppose....”
When he had gone she cried as she had never cried before, and all
because she had spurned his proffered reconciliation. From the other
side of the thin partition that separated the two rooms, she could hear
the sharp “plock” as her father wrenched his collar off the stud, and
the steady nasal monotone of her mother’s voice. She could not discern
any words, but from the vicious way in which her father kept stumbling
up against things she guessed that they were quarrelling....