Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence, page 732
SOMEONE passes the long narrow window, only the head being seen, then quite close to the large window on the left. There is a noise as the outer door opens and is shut, then the kitchen door opens, and a GIRL enters. She is tall and thin, and wears a long grey coat and a large blue hat, quite plain. After glancing at the table, she crosses the room, drops her two exercise-books on the wooden chair by the bookcase, saying:
NELLIE LAMBERT: Oh! I am weary.
MOTHER: You are late.
NELLIE: I know I am. It’s Agatha Karton — she is a great gaby. There’s always something wrong with her register, and old Tommy gets in such a fever, the great kid.
She takes off her hat, and going to the door on right, stands in the doorway, hanging it up with her coat on the pegs in the passage, just by the doorway.
And I’m sure the youngsters have been regular little demons; I could have killed them.
MOTHER: I’ve no doubt they felt the same towards you, poor little wretches.
NELLIE (with a short laugh): I’ll bet they did, for I spanked one or two of ‘em well.
MOTHER: Trust you, trust you! You’ll be getting the mothers if you’re not careful.
NELLIE (contemptuously): I had one old cat this afternoon. But I told her straight. I said: “If your Johnny, or Sammy, or whatever he is, is a nuisance, he’ll be smacked, and there’s an end of it.” She was mad, but I told her straight; I didn’t care. She can go to Tommy if she likes: I know he’ll fuss her round, but I’ll tell him too. Pah! he fusses the creatures up! — I would!
She comes towards the table, pushing up her hair with her fingers. It is heavy and brown, and has been flattened by her hat. She glances at herself in the little square mirror which hangs from a nail under the right end of the mantelpiece, a mere unconscious glance which betrays no feeling, and is just enough to make her negligently touch her hair again. She turns a trifle fretfully to the table.
NELLIE: Is there only potted meat? You know I can’t bear it.
MOTHER (conciliatorily): Why, I thought you’d like it, a raw day like this — and with toast.
NELLIE: You know I don’t. Why didn’t you get some fruit? — a little tin of apricots —
MOTHER: I thought you’d be sick of apricots — I know Ernest is.
NELLIE: Well, I’m not — you know I’m not. Pappy potted meat!
She sits down on the sofa wearily. Her MOTHER pours out two cups of tea, and replaces the pot on the hob.
MOTHER: Won’t you have some, then?
NELLIE (petulantly): No, I don’t want it.
The MOTHER stands irresolute a moment, then she goes out. NELLIE reaches over to the bookshelves and takes a copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel, which she opens on the table, and reads, sipping her tea but not eating. In a moment or two she glances up, as the MOTHER passes the window and enters the scullery. There is the sound of the opening of a tin.
NELLIE: Have you fetched some? — Oh, you are a sweetling!
The MOTHER enters, with a little glass dish of small tinned apricots. They begin tea.
MOTHER: Polly Goddard says her young man got hurt in the pit this morning.
NELLIE: Oh — is it much? (She looks up from her book.)
MOTHER: One of his feet crushed. Poor Polly’s very sad. What made her tell me was Ben Goddard going by. I didn’t know he was at work again, but he was just coming home, and I asked her about him, and then she went on to tell me of her young man. They’re all coming home from Selson, so I expect your Father won’t be long.
NELLIE: Goodness! — I hope he’ll let us get our tea first.
MOTHER: Well, you were late. If he once gets seated in the Miner’s Arms there’s no telling when he comes.
NELLIE: I don’t care when he does, so long as he doesn’t come yet.
MOTHER: Oh, it’s all very well!
They both begin to read as they eat. After a moment another girl runs past the window and enters. She is a plump, fair girl, pink and white. She has just run across from the next house.
GERTIE COOMBER: Hello, my duck, and how are you?
NELLIE (looking up): Oh, alright, my bird.
GERTIE: Friday to-night. No Eddie for you! Oh, poor Nellie! Aren’t I glad, though! (She snaps her fingers quaintly.)
The MOTHER laughs.
NELLIE: Mean cat!
GERTIE (giggling): No, I’m not a mean cat. But I like Friday night; we can go jinking off up town and wink at the boys. I like market night. (She puts her head on one side in a peculiar, quaint, simple fashion.)
The MOTHER laughs.
NELLIE: You wink! If she so much as sees a fellow who’d speak to her, she gets behind me and stands on one foot and then another.
GERTIE: I don’t! No, I don’t, Nellie Lambert. I go like this: “Oh, good evening, how are you? I’m sure I’m very pleased — ” (She says this in a very quaint “prunes-and-prisms” manner, with her chin in the air and her hand extended. At the end she giggles.)
The MOTHER, with her cup in her hand, leans back and laughs. NELLIE, amused in spite of herself, smiles shortly.
NELLIE: You are a daft object! What about last week, when David Thompson —
GERTIE puts her hand up and flips the air with affected contempt.
GERTIE: David Thompson! A bacon sawyer! Ph!
NELLIE: What a name! Not likely. Mrs Grocock! (She giggles.) Oh dear no, nothing short of Mrs Carooso.
She holds back the skirts of her long pinafore with one hand and affects the Gibson bend.
MOTHER (laughing heartily): Caruso! Caruso! A great fat fellow — !
GERTIE: Besides, a collier! I’m not going to wash stinking pit-things.
NELLIE: You don’t know what you’ll do yet, my girl. I never knew such cheek! I should think you want somebody grand, you do.
GERTIE: I do that. Somebody who’ll say, “Yes, dear. Oh yes, dear! Certainly, certainly!”
She simpers across the room, then giggles.
NELLIE: You soft cat, you! But look here, Gert, you’ll get paid out, treating Bernard Hufton as you do.
GERTIE (suddenly irritated): Oh, I can’t abide him. I always feel as if I could smack his face. He thinks himself slikey. He always makes my —
A head passes the narrow side window.
Oh, glory! there’s Mr Lambert. I’m off!
She draws back against the bookcase. A man passes the large window. The door opens and he enters. He is a man of middling stature, a miner, black from the pit. His shoulders are pushed up because he is cold. He has a bushy iron-grey beard. He takes from his pocket a tin bottle and a knotted “snap” bag — his food bag of dirty calico — and puts them with a bang on the table. Then he drags his heavily-shod feet to the door on right; he limps slightly, one leg being shorter than the other. He hangs up his coat and cap in the passage and comes back into the living-room. No one speaks. He wears a grey-and-black neckerchief and, being coatless, his black arms are bare to the elbows, where end the loose dirty sleeves of his flannel singlet. The MOTHER rises and goes to the scullery, carrying the heavy saucepan. The man gets hold of the table and pulls it nearer the fire, away from his daughter.
NELLIE: Why can’t you leave the table where it was! We don’t want it stuck on top of the fire.
FATHER: Ah dun, if you dunna.
He drags up his arm-chair and sits down at the table full in front of the fire.
‘An yer got a drink for me?
The MOTHER comes and pours out a cup of tea, then goes back to the scullery.
It’s a nice thing as a man as comes home from th’ pit parched up canna ha’e a drink got ‘im. (He speaks disagreeably.)
MOTHER: Oh, you needn’t begin! I know you’ve been stopping, drinking.
FATHER: Dun yer? — Well, yer know too much, then. You wiser than them as knows, you are!
There is a general silence, as if the three listeners were shrugging their shoulders in contempt and anger. The FATHER pours out his tea into his saucer, blows it and sucks it up. NELLIE looks up from her book and glowers at him with ferocity. GERTIE puts her hand before her mouth and giggles behind his back at the noise. He does not drink much, but sets the cup back in the saucer and lays his grimed arms wearily along the table. The MOTHER enters with a plate of cabbage.
MOTHER: Here, that’s a clean cloth.
She does not speak unkindly.
FATHER (brutally): You should put a dotty (dirty) ‘un on, then. The MOTHER takes a newspaper and spreads it over the cloth before him. She kneels at the oven, takes out a stew-jar, and puts meat and gravy on the plate with the cabbage, and sets it before him. He does not begin at once to eat. The MOTHER puts back her chair against the wall and sits down.
MOTHER: Are your trousers wet?
FATHER (as he eats): A bit.
MOTHER: Then why don’t you take them off?
FATHER (in a tone of brutal authority): Fetch my breeches an’ wa’s’coat down, Nellie.
NELLIE (continuing to read, her hands pushed in among her hair): You can ask me properly.
The FATHER pushes his beard forward and glares at her with futile ferocity. She reads on. GERTIE COOMBER, at the back, shifts from one foot to the other, then coughs behind her hand as if she had a little cold. The MOTHER rises and goes out by door on right.
FATHER: You lazy, idle bitch, you let your mother go!
NELLIE (shrugging her shoulders): You can shut up. (She speaks with cold contempt.)
GERTIE sighs audibly. The tension of the scene will not let her run home. NELLIE looks up, flushed, carefully avoiding her father.
NELLIE: Aren’t you going to sit down, Gert?
GERTIE: No, I’m off.
NELLIE: Wait a bit and I’ll come across with you. I don’t want to stop here.
The FATHER stirs in his chair with rage at the implication. The MOTHER comes downstairs and enters with a pair of black trousers, from which the braces are trailing, and a black waistcoat lined with cream and red lining. She drops them against her husband’s chair.
MOTHER (kindly, trying to restore the atmosphere): Aren’t you going to sit down, Gertie? Go on the stool.
GERTIE takes a small stool on the right side of fireplace, and sits toying with the bright brass tap of the boiler. The MOTHER goes out again on right, and enters immediately with five bread tins and a piece of lard paper. She stands on the hearthrug greasing the tins. The FATHER kicks off his great boots and stands warming his trousers before the fire, turning them and warming them thoroughly.
GERTIE: Are they cold, Mr Lambert?
FATHER: They are that! Look you, they steaming like a sweating hoss.
MOTHER: Get away, man! The driest thing in the house would smoke if you held it in front of the fire like that.
FATHER (shortly): Ah, I know I’m a liar. I knowed it to begin wi’.
NELLIE (much irritated): Isn’t he a nasty-tempered kid!
GERTIE: But those front bedrooms are clammy.
FATHER (gratified): They h’are, Gertie, they h’are.
GERTIE (turning to avoid NELLIE’S contempt and pottering the fire): I know the things I bring down from ours, they fair damp in a day.
FATHER: They h’are, Gertie, I know it. And I wonder how ‘er’d like to clap ‘er arse into wet breeches.
He goes scrambling off to door on right, trailing his breeches.
NELLIE (fiercely): Father!
GERTIE puts her face into her hands and laughs with a half-audible laugh that shakes her body.
I can’t think what you’ve got to laugh at, Gertie Coomber.
The MOTHER, glancing at her irate daughter, laughs also. She moves aside the small wooden rocking-chair, and, drawing forth a great panchion of dough from the corner under the book-shelves, begins to fill the bread tins. She sets them on the hearth — which has no fender, the day being Friday, when the steel fender is put away, after having been carefully cleaned to be saved for Saturday afternoon. The FATHER enters, the braces of his trousers dangling, and drops the heavy moleskin pit breeches in corner on right.
NELLIE: I wonder why you can’t put them in the scullery; the smell of them’s hateful.
FATHER: You mun put up wi’ it, then. If you were i’ th’ pit you’d niver put your nose up at them again.
He sits down and recommences eating. The sound further irritates his daughter, who again pushes her fingers into her hair, covering her ears with her palms. Her father notices, and his manners become coarser. NELLIE rises, leaving her book open on the table.
NELLIE: Come on, Gert! (She speaks with contemptuous impatience.)
The FATHER watches them go out. He lays his arms along the newspaper, wearily.
FATHER: I’m too tired ter h’eat.
MOTHER (sniffing, and hardening a little): I wonder why you always have to go and set her off in a tantrum as soon as you come in.
FATHER: A cheeky bitch; ‘er wants a good slap at th’ side o’ th’ mouth!
MOTHER (incensed): If you’ve no more sense than that, I don’t wonder —
FATHER: You don’t wonder — you don’t wonder! No, I know you don’t wonder. It’s you as eggs ‘em on against me, both on ‘em.
MOTHER (scornfully): You set them against yourself. You do your best for it, every time they come in.
FATHER: Do I, do I! I set ‘em against me, do I? I’m going to stand ‘em orderin’ me about, an’ turnin’ their noses up, am I?
MOTHER: You shouldn’t make them turn their noses up, then. If you do your best for it, what do you expect?
FATHER: A jumped-up monkey! An’ it’s you as ‘as made ‘em like it, the pair on ‘em. There’s neither of ‘em but what treats me like a dog. I’m not daft! I’m not blind! I can see it.
MOTHER: If you’re so clever at seeing it, I should have thought you’d have sense enough not to begin it and carry it on as you do.
FATHER: Me begin it! When do I begin it? You niver hear me say a word to ‘em, till they’ve snapped at me as if I was a — as if I was a — No, it’s you as puts ‘em on in. It’s you, you blasted —
He bangs the table with his fist. The MOTHER puts the bread in the oven, from which she takes a rice pudding; then she sits down to read. He glares across the table, then goes on eating. After a little while he pushes the plate from him. The MOTHER affects not to notice for a moment.
‘An yer got any puddin’?
MOTHER: Have you finished?
She rises, takes a plate and, crouching on the hearth, gives him his pudding. She glances at the clock, and clears the tea-things from her daughter’s place. She puts another piece of toast down, there remaining only two pieces on the plate.
FATHER (looking at the rice pudding): Is this what you’n had?
MOTHER: No; we had nothing.
FATHER: No, I’ll bet you non ‘ad this baby pap.
MOTHER: No, I had nothing for a change, and Nellie took her dinner.
FATHER (eating unwillingly): Is there no other puddin’ as you could ‘a made?
MOTHER: Goodness, man, are you so mightily particular about your belly? This is the first rice pudding you’ve had for goodness knows how long, and — No, I couldn’t make any other. In the first place, it’s Friday, and in the second, I’d nothing to make it with.
FATHER: You wouldna ha’e, not for me. But if you ‘a wanted —
MOTHER (interrupting): You needn’t say any more. The fact of the matter is, somebody’s put you out at the pit, and you come home to vent your spleen on us.
FATHER (shouting): You’re a liar, you’re a liar! A man comes home after a hard day’s work to folks as ‘as never a word to say to ‘im, ‘as shuts up the minute ‘e enters the house, as ‘ates the sight of ‘im as soon as ‘e comes in th’ room — !
MOTHER (with fierceness): We’ve had quite enough, we’ve had quite enough! Our Ernest’ll be in in a minute and we’re not going to have this row going on; he’s coming home all the way from Derby, trailing from college to a house like this, tired out with study and all this journey: we’re not going to have it, I tell you.
Her husband stares at her dumbly, betwixt anger and shame and sorrow, of which an undignified rage is predominant. The MOTHER carries out some pots to the scullery, re-enters, takes the slice of toast and butters it.
