South Riding (38 page)

No, she could not do it. But what shall I do? What shall I do? she asked of the dull grey sky, the trampled field.

It was Thursday afternoon and the camp was nearly full, yet Nancy felt her loneliness intolerable. Fred was away as usual, pedalling through the mild July rain on fruitless errands. Hikers in mackintoshes strolled along the Maythorpe Road; bathers climbed down the muddy path to the beach. But Nancy had not a soul in whom she could confide. The aching humiliation and despair of her secret ate her heart.

It was to escape from herself that she walked across the camp to the Hollies’ coach. Peggy slept in her hooded pram outside the house The campers gathered in their tents and huts, singing or playing cards. The hatless ex-officer strolled up from the tap, a bucket of water in each hand. He greeted Nancy with his friendly grin.

“Weather to make you grow.”

She stared at him, the damp air uncurling her careful waves. He exasperated her because he was a gentleman yet lived like a tramp.

“Perhaps it’ll stop the drought,” she suggested politely, biding her contempt.

“Not enough for that.”

“My husband says that if the tap dries up we shall have to close the camp.”

“There are other places.”

She could have hit this scarred amiable face. Men who had no responsibilities, men who had no children to provide for, they could be casual and philosophical. She hated them. She hated all care-free and unburdened people.

She picked her way across the hen-scratched turf, holding her mackintosh above her head like a hood, her lips compressed in a thin line of disdainful indignation. She climbed the three steps to the Hollies’ coach and knocked commandingly.

Daisy opened the door—a stolid twelve-year-old with round red cheeks and greedy small grey eyes. Of all the Hollies, Nancy disliked her most, but dislike gave her self-confidence. The Hollies were so certainly her inferiors that their poverty and squalor and fecklessness soothed Nancy’s pride. Here at least she could patronise and snub; here she could feel sure of her superiority.

“Is Lydia here?”

“No. In Kiplington, rehearsing.”

“Rehearsing?”

“Carnival ballet.”

“Carnival!”

To Nancy it seemed as though the whole world were bent on pleasure except herself. A bitter pride stiffened her.

She looked round the neglected room, the tumbled bunk, the clutter of cooking materials, the baby staring wide-eyed at the rusty stove.

“Where’s your father?” she asked,

“Out.”

“Oh. Got a job yet?”

“I don’t know. I expect he’s down at the Nag’s Head helping Mr. Sawdon build a garage.”

“Oh, I see.”

Holly drew unemployment benefit. Fred Mitchell was a black-coated worker on his own and drew nothing. He pedalled through the rain after non-existent premiums, while Barney Holly both worked at the Nag’s Head and drew his dole. Nancy had the vaguest notions about the economics of unemployment insurance. She was only sure that the lower classes were impossible.

“Who’s in charge here, then?”

“I am.”

Daisy moved a little so that her body screened the table with its tell-tale mounds of pink shredded cocoa-nut and bags of sugar.

“I see. Then I’ll be obliged if you’ll keep Kitty and Allie from teasing my hens.”

“Who’s that, Daisy?”

A child’s voice called from the inner room.

“Only Mrs. Mitchell, Gert.”

“‘Only’ indeed! I’ll give her only.”

“Is that Gertie in there? I thought she was in the ballet too.”

“She’d a bit of a headache to-day and didn’t want to go.”

“Oh, didn’t she? I’m not surprised. You children run wild half the night playing about with the camp boys, disturbing decent people, and then you expect to feel all right next morning. That baby needs changing.”

Nancy was beginning to feel better, feeding on scorn; yet beneath her patronage lay the hurtful knowledge that the Hollies were dirty, careless, frivolous, yet it was she, not they, who paid the penalty of pleasure. That great lump of a Lydia, rolling about, screaming with laughter, exposing her thick brown thighs under her ragged tunic to all those camping boys, while she, Nancy, a faithful wife, lay sleepless with fear— it wasn’t fair. Well, perhaps Lydia might do it once too often. Aha, my lady! We’ll see who’s caught out next. Like father, like daughter.

Viciously, standing on the half-rotten steps of the dark evil-smelling coach, Nancy wished Lydia ill.

“Hallo, Mrs. Mitchell! Tea ready, Daise?”

Bert Holly, grinning through the rain, swung off his bicycle.

“I came to tell your sister that if she can’t keep those two young madams from poking at my chickens I’ll deal with them myself.”

“Go ahead, Ma.”

He called her “Ma.” She felt the insult to her wasted youth, her faded prettiness. Well—she was a Ma, wasn’t she?

“Go on, Daise. Get busy. I’m in a hurry.”

Bert squeezed in past Nancy and poured water from the bucket into a cracked enamel basin. He flung off his jacket, preparing for his evening toilet. Nancy knew that she should go, but an instinct of self-preservation held her in the doorway.

The boy sluiced water from cupped hands over his damp red face, but Daisy did not move. She stood between the oil stove and the table.

“Get a move on. I gotta date,” her brother urged, groping for the towel.

The child turned slowly. She was twelve years old, and had been kept from school by Lydia to look after the baby and get the tea while she and Lennie went to a rehearsal. She had been given a shilling to buy bread when the baker’s cart came round, and, instead, she had fallen victim to a bright temptation.

Moving as in a dream, she crossed to the oven and pulled out a baking dish filled with brown, sickly-smelling stuff.

“What the hell’s that?” asked Bert.

The child stood dumbly, the hot dish held in a soiled oven-rag.

“It looks to me,” sniffed Nancy, “like cocoa-nut ice— burned.”

“Blast you, bloody bitch!” screamed Daisy, hurling her tin down on the table where it slid across the sheets of spread newspaper and fell clattering to the floor. In a burst of tearful rage she made for the door, head down, face distorted. It was only by swinging violently half off the step that Nancy avoided being thrown also to the ground. She was left to face Bert across the scattered ruins of cocoa-nut ice.

“Gosh! The little besom! Hi, Kitty, Al! Here’s summat for you!’

Bert went down on his knees, collecting the charred coagulating lumps. The little girls approached nervously, their pinafores torn, their sandshoes stiff with mud. Nancy felt their fear of her. They edged round the table. The boy was unperturbed.

“Come on. Only top’s burned. Give us a knife. Have a bit, Mrs. Mitchell? Where’s Daisy gone? Go and fetch her, Al. Tell her it’s not half bad.”

His good humour shamed Nancy. Because of it, she started to scold again.

“Lydia has no business to go off like this. If your father had any sense . . .”

But the scorn ran off the imperturbable Bert. He had begun to root about for the tea, bread, jam, as Lydia came up along the cinder path, wheeling Lennie in a push chair.

“Hallo, every one. Kettle boiling? Just off, Bert? Good Lord! Where’s Daisy? Why isn’t tea ready?”

Nancy stood and watched her, as she flung herself upon the business of spreading margarine and cutting bread. Lydia had her mother’s strong impatient movement, her brother’s hot temper and quick smile; but she frowned with anxiety when Bert told her of Daisy’s escapade. That frown pleased Nancy. The girl had begun to learn the lesson of the poor— to dread any unexpected action, to know that any deviation from routine meant loss.

“Where’s Dad?”

“Nag’s Head—or Brimsley’s.”

“They say,” observed Nancy conversationally, “that Nat Brimsley is courting the Pudsey girl at Maythorpe.”

“Nat Brimsley? Courting?” Bert gave a great gulp of laughter. Lydia looked up from carefully measuring tea into the pot.

“Why not?” mocked Lydia. “You’re a bit of a lad yourself, aren’t you? What price Vi Alcock?”

Beneath her momentary anxieties she was happy, elated by music and exercise. It did not occur to her to be intimidated by Nancy Mitchell, who stood like a glowering witch upon their doorstep.

“Vi? What about her?”

“She was at rehearsal doing Jeanette’s part. Jean’s poorly. Cissie Tadman brought her a message.”

“What’s that to do with me?”

“
I
don’t know. Do I, Mrs. Mitchell? Have a cup of tea, won’t you?”

“No, thanks. I must be going.”

But she did not go, for Gertie appeared then at the door between the two compartments.

“Come on an’ have tea, Gert. How’s the head?”

In her flannelette petticoat, bare-footed, the child drooped miserably.

“It’s bad. I don’t want any tea. I thought you was never coming home, Lyd.”

“Well, here I am. Come on. A cup’ll do you good.”

“If you ask me,” said Nancy, “I should say that child had a temperature.”

“It’s only a bit of cold,” Lydia began, but Gertie persisted: “I feel right poorly.”

Lydia pushed her own cup and plate aside and drew the child towards her.

“Come here, pet. Come here to Lyd.”

Her conscience smote her. She should not have gone to Kiplington. She should not have left the children.

“She does seem hot,” she said tentatively, glancing up at the only adult person. That appeal touched Nancy. It was the recognition of authority that she needed. She said: “I’ve got a thermometer. I’ll get it.”

She hurried across to Bella Vista, suddenly compassionate. Those lost untidy children. That dreadful room.

Baby Peggy lay under the tarpaulin hood, ‘awake but happy, playing with a rubber ring from which bells hung. It was right that she should glow with health while the Hollies suffered. Justice soothed Nancy. She chirruped at the pram, clicking her fingers, then went indoors for the thermometer.

As a girl she had attended first-aid classes organised by the Red Cross and she now kept a medicine chest with bandages and iodine. She enjoyed binding cut fingers and treating insect bites. Her skill gave her a sort of professional superiority over the campers.

She took the thermometer and hurried back to the Hollies. Gertie lay limply on Lydia’s knee. Bert was just taking his departure. Alice was returning with the reluctant Daisy.

“Wait, please,” Nancy said to Bert. “If this child’s, really sick, you may have to take a message.”

“I’m not sick, only poorly,” whimpered Gertie.

“I’ve got a date,” Bert protested, but he waited. They all hung round the invalid, shuffling, staring. Nancy kept the thermometer in a little longer than was necessary, just to show her power. But when she withdrew it, genuine anxiety gripped her, like a hand on her spine.

“Has she got a temperature?” asked Lydia.

“A bit.”

“It’s that cold.”

“Did you say some one at that dancing class had measles?”

“Jeanette.”

Nancy unbuttoned the child’s petticoat and pulled down the crumpled flannel. Her chest was mottled red with rash.

“It’s measles all right. Put her to bed. It’s too late to keep the others away. You’d better call at Dr. Campbell’s, Bert. Tell him your sister’s got a rash and a temperature of a hundred and three point two.”

She spoke with bright efficiency, but the words “too late” fell like doom upon her heart. Gertie had been near Peggy. Her child’s glowing face, those curls, her smile, her lovely rounded neck, swam before her vision. Already she tasted the horror of suspense.

“Isn’t that high?” breathed Lydia.

“Not for a child. Every child has to get measles some day. Of course,
you would
go to that dancing class.”

It was Lydia to whom she spoke, but the reassurance was for her own sick heart.

She hurried back to her own home. In a frenzy of panic, she flung off the dress that she had worn in the Hollies’ coach and in spite of the damp hung it outside on the line to air. It had stopped raining.

She washed her hands with carbolic soap.

But it was too late. She knew that it was too late. She was certain that the Holly children had given Peggy measles.

She went to the pram and lifted her baby and carried her indoors. She sat down by the window and began to examine with fearful attention that small beloved body—every crease in the dimpled flesh, the rings round the back of the fat little neck, the faint down on the spine. The child was perfect.

“Ga, ga, ga, ga!” chuckled Peggy. Her mother’s frantic clutches were moves in a game. She laughed and gurgled, blowing ecstatic bubbles.

Nancy’s lips went down to the soft rosy skin. She smelled it, she kissed it, burying her face in warm fragrant flesh, adoring the child with passion quickened by fear.

It’s only measles, she told herself. Measles is nothing. But her reasonable words brought her no comfort. She snatched the child to her breast and paced the room, her tears falling on to the damp fair curls, the wild-rose face. She did not even know that she was crying.