Common People, page 18
“Are you upset?” she asked me once, looking at me almost curiously, amazed at my silence. The question brought me to my senses; I was alert at once. It was a form of attack. I bridled at the vindictiveness underneath it. I knew exactly what I was expected to say, but in some perverse way I became more aloof, as if indifferent to the whole affair. I forced my expression to convey this deliberate nonchalance.
“Are you?” she repeated softly. She sat watching me, round-backed, unable to restrain her bitterness.
“Yes, a bit,” I said sullenly.
“A bit!”
She said no more. She sat tight-lipped, encased in her hatred for me.
But I refused to be bullied. I would suffer in my own way or not at all. My face felt thin and bleak and hard, like an axe-head. I struggled to keep it expressionless. Then all at once I seemed to see myself. Even at this stage I was clinging to my precious dignity. And I thought in disgust that if I were drowning I would probably insist on doing it in my own individual way. What could be more ridiculous than my attitude? Was it because of a fear of showing emotion? Yet I persisted, almost fanatically making my eyes as hard as flints, taking care not to betray the least flicker of emotion. Then a ghastly idea floated into my head. What if I suddenly burst out laughing in the midst of it all?
Gradually the words and labels which were neatly fastened on things began to blur and soften, slipping out of my mind smoothly, like salt pouring away, until I was left with Life, Evil, Birth, Death, Pain, Fear, Pity, Grief, Joy. These were the last to disappear. In the end I was left with myself. I felt hollow and empty, like a piece of old wood, sitting motionless. At my side Mrs. Hammond stirred her feet, but I did not look at her. I stared into the fire. All my nerves and life had gone into my ears, which were straining for the slightest sound.
I thought: ‘Up there she is folding up her legs and screaming, naked and alone.’ But the whole house was silent.
My mother-in-law seemed to be bending lower and lower over her knitting, her hands clenched on the grey wool. I hated the way she sat there, as if all the woe of the world bowed her down. She crouched forward, huddled over her woe and loathing for me. It was because of me that her daughter was suffering. How could she help hating me? I did not blame her, but I refused to sit like that. My pride would not let me.
Then a poem started uncoiling in my head, and I snatched up paper and pencil to scribble it down. That must have disgusted her, I told myself afterwards, though she had not spoken, and I seemed to sense a feeling of relief in her. For the tension in the room was slowly sending us mad. And in some strange way a bond was being created between us, despite everything, because we were sharing this experience.
When someone knocked on the front door we both jumped to our feet. It was the neighbour, Mrs. Franklin. She wanted to know if there was anything she could do.
“No, thank you,” said my mother-in-law, stiffly polite. She had no wish to be seen by strangers at such a time, I thought, though she was forced into politeness. She was really very reserved.
“Are you sure, quite sure?” the young woman persisted. “Wouldn’t you like a cup of tea?”
Mrs. Hammond shook her head. “We’ll be glad when it’s all over,” she said, and could not help adding, “Or I shall.”
Mrs. Franklin remarked on the pallor of my face. It was always like that, but I said nothing.
“I should go out for a while, if I were you,” she said. “There’s nothing you can do here. Why not go up in the garden? I’ll tell you when anything happens.”
iii
I walked outside and climbed up to the high garden in bright sun, thankful to escape from the stifling room. It had been a sharp morning frost, but now the sky was as blue as an iris. There was an amazing clarity everywhere around me. I seemed to be noticing every blade of grass, every leaf, every pebble. The colours were pure and brilliant. Everything was sharp and microscopic, like a jewelled pre-Raphaelite painting, except that it stirred and breathed and chattered, the path crunching under my feet.
At the top of the garden the apple trees were like baskets brimming with light. Birds frisked in their branches. I wandered across to the ramshackle wooden shed and took out a spade. I thought I would turn over some weedy ground. It would pass the time. Grasping the chill steel of the handle I struck down blindly into the earth. Facing me, lower on the hill, was the vertical back wall of the house. It was brilliant with sunlight. Jessie lay somewhere behind there. It was like a fantastic dream, watching things happening as they always did. I could hear the milkman dragging his green trolley up the slope, rattling and banging along with a gang of children behind him.
A sudden impulse made me drop the spade and start hurrying down. I pushed open the door and went inside. Mrs. Hammond had not stirred from her chair. She glanced up and smiled forlornly as I entered the room. She was past hatred now, as I was. I believe we felt a little compassion for each other.
Within five minutes I heard the new-born child utter a single cry. It was a beautiful sound. It pierced through my heart and shattered it, then cemented it anew, all in a flash, washing it in fresh blood, whole and clean. That was how it felt. It took less than a second. The heart stopped dead, then began to beat cleanly again, singing its song of triumph.
Then the nurse came tramping down, flushed and triumphant. She even laughed gaily at us as she shouted in her news.
“A boy,” she shouted. “Perfect, no trouble. No need for Doctor.”
She started clearing away, bustling up with jugs and pans of hot water. She seemed to enjoy making as much noise as possible. Each time she descended she brought an enamel pail which was full to the brim with blood and slimy slops and water. I carried it outside and poured the contents down the lavatory. Back she came after a few minutes with another full pail. I took out three or four bucketfuls of this diluted offal, walking in and out, until I thought that there could not have been much more if they had disembowelled her. But I was not really startled, not seriously. I was too dazed and entranced at the thought of my son. My head was filled with its magnetic little cry.
The nurse came in importantly with the placenta. It was wrapped in brown paper, and she told me to put it at the back of the fire like a log. Jessie described it to me afterwards as looking like a piece of raw meat, dripping with blood. The nurse held it up casually for her to see, her arm shiny to the elbow.
There was much coming and going. The tidying-up went on for an interminable length of time. We were not allowed up until she had made Jessie ‘pretty’. It went on and on until we were sick of it, and my mother-in-law flickered her eyes at me, shrugging her shoulders sardonically.
At last I was allowed to see her. After such a time I was overwhelmed by the importance of the event. Feeling ridiculous I pushed open the door, went across the bedroom and sat down by the bed, before I managed to raise my head. Jessie was sitting up, her hair neatly combed and a blue woollen jacket around her shoulders. I was shocked because she looked so white, as though drained of all her blood.
“Very pretty,” I said gently, and laughed.
The nurse held up the new child, a tiny red, crumpled creature, gasping for breath in her hands. She swaddled it and placed it in the cot, then went away.
We were waiting to be left alone. Jessie managed to smile feebly, but it was not a success. We sat there, very wan, like different persons. Yet not as strangers, for we remembered our old relationship. When she spoke it was plain how frail it had made her. I could see that she was badly shaken. And it was clear that something fundamental had changed between us.
We did not take much notice of the child at first. It seemed hardly alive, when I peered in at it; just a motionless bundle, tiny, and dreadfully helpless. The cot swallowed it up.
We sat quietly in the afternoon silence of the house, saying very little. I noticed that Jessie’s eyes were still full of fear. And for the rest of the day she remained afraid, living almost wholly in her memory of it, like a nightmare she was unable to shake off. I felt as though I had hardly any emotion left, as though it had been crushed out of my body violently, like breath, by a pair of huge hands.
“Use this lovely pain!” the nurse had told her. “Don’t waste it! Press!”
Once she got Jessie out of bed and walked her round the room supporting her, to speed up the process. Jessie had nothing but praise for the powerful nurse, but the pain still haunted her.
“It was awful,” she said repeatedly, in a low voice. “You haven’t any idea.” She gave me a strange, fearful look, as if I intended to hurt her.
That same evening I sat at the table, copying out the poem I had scribbled during the morning. Then I went upstairs and gave it to her. She felt too weak to sit up, but she took the paper from me, holding it silently between her hands.
I stood by the bed, feeling foolish, waiting for her to finish reading. It was a poem about birth, about the mystery and wonder and terror of it, and at the same time it was a love poem. I wanted to thank her in such a way that it would somehow lessen this gulf which had opened between us. That was why I had given it to her now. But it would serve me right if she laughed, I thought. I had chosen a bad moment; perhaps the worst possible one.
For answer she raised her delicate face to me. It was all lit mysteriously by a warm luminous joy within her. It glowed there among the sheets like a candle nestling in snow.
iv
At first she was disappointed with her baby because it seemed so impersonal; just a helpless, crying thing waiting to be fed. She had to keep reminding herself that it was hers.
Then one evening I came in to find her happy. Her baby was beginning to know her. It smiled. Frowned. Another flickering smile, comical, came and went. “He’s smiling at me!”
“Might be a bit of wind,” I said.
“I don’t think so. Look—again!”
And after a few weeks she said:
“I catch myself looking at this child with the silly drooling look I’ve seen on other mothers’ faces. Would you believe it—I never thought I should end up like that!”
Quickly the spring drew near again. I almost feared it, the life bursting out in the warm weather, the hedges strewn with blossom. The thought of it made my job tighten round me like a vice. I became conscious of my nature squirming in a steel grip.
We would have angry little discussions. They rose up sudden as squalls. It was always the same argument, the one subject.
“Can’t you settle down, now you’ve got me?” Jessie asked. “Doesn’t that make a difference?”
“Jobs are jobs,” I said.
“Other men aren’t restless, are they?”
“How do I know?” I laughed.
“Of course not. They’re not.”
“They are, but they’re broken in, resigned to things,” I said.
“What you mean is they’ve got a sense of responsibility. Why can’t you be like them?”
“You know why,” I said.
“Do what you want, then,” she cried. “Oh, I hate these moods of yours. You make me feel guilty, as if I’ve trapped you. What do you want to do, really?”
“I don’t know. Paint, I suppose. Write poetry.”
“But there’s no money in that!”
“Exactly.”
“Yet you wanted to marry, and you must have known what it would be,” she said bitterly. “How did you expect us to live?”
There was no answer to that.
One Sunday morning in late February the weather seemed full of approaching spring. I looked out through the window at the shimmering blue sky, vibrating like a great icy bubble. Later, when the sun shone full into our room, bringing the paintings alive on the walls, I could not stay indoors. I went out for a short walk.
My body felt horribly puny and ill-treated, winter-bitten, until it slowly adjusted itself to this sparkling new world. The weak sun warmed my face, touching me softly, face and neck and hands, with ineffable sweetness. As I walked on, the insanity of my office work, waiting for me on Monday, became something I had proved monstrous and impossible in my very blood. And I had solved nothing by my marriage. I was as restless as ever. My inner and outer life were just as incompatible as before.
Back in the house, I thought again of the old vagrant I had tried to sketch in the Deptford café, and spoke to Jessie about him.
“I wonder where he is now,” I said.
She looked at me warningly, knowing that when I spoke of tramps I was kicking against the pricks. She was about to bath the baby. As she darted about the room, spreading newspaper on the table, then getting a towel, she said over her shoulder:
“You and your tramps. Just because he needed a wash you thought he looked romantic. Get me the soap, will you, and that bit of flannel in the tin basin.”
“He didn’t need a wash,” I said. “That’s where you’re wrong. He was one of the original Norse gods, in human form. Probably he’d been mending his iron cooking pot, the one he uses for a hat when it rains.” I had been reading Carlyle. “If you came across Vulcan, would you expect him to have a clean face?” I added, not realising I was in the wrong mythology.
Jessie snorted in disgust as she poured the water and tested its heat with her elbow. “I expect he worked on a coal lorry, or at the gasworks.”
“I tell you he was a tramp. If he turns up around here I’ll bring him home for a meal, to prove it.”
“You do,” she said, “and you’ll do the cooking between you, for I shan’t do it.”
But she was not listening. I was looking at my son, so tender in the bud, with such a delicate flushing of pink all over, softly mantling his skin. I loved to see him naked. He sat in the water, only half liking it, upright in the enamel bowl. What a compact, tiny head he had, perfectly formed, and as I watched it trembled, wobbling, like a nut on its stalk, the eyes wonderingly bright, roaming the room. He was half afraid, yet he liked it. When the water ran over his shoulders, sluicing down his front, he opened his mouth, and both his arms quivered slightly.
“You little mite!” cried his mother, beaming with pride as she always did, forgetting about me. I took up my drawing-book and tried to sketch him. I had tried before, and failed each time, not realising what a terribly difficult thing I was attempting. This time I attacked my paper boldly, darting down quick, nervous strokes without bothering about accuracy, and had more success. I managed to dash off three sketches before he was dressed. They pleased me. Then I laughed. The child was more alive than any drawing.
When I carried him out to the pram a happiness rose up involuntarily, swaying inside my chest. Carrying the child was like holding a future, hugging it to me. And a great richness ran into my body, down my arms.
Jessie was clearing away when I returned. From the seriousness of her face I guessed that she was about to make a speech.
“You read things into people that aren’t there,” she said suddenly. “I don’t see anything remarkable about tramps. They’re failures that’s all. D’you mean to say you’d like to be dirty like that, and never wash?”
“Who said I wanted to be one?” I said. “You always make it a personal matter.” And knowing it would irritate her, I added, “There’s a vagabond, an Arab, in every man somewhere. Now and then he gets the itch to wander, this Arab, and pops to the surface. Women are different.”
“Well, don’t let me stop you. You’re free to go any time as far as I’m concerned. Please yourself. Wander as far as you like, but don’t expect to find me waiting for you when you get back.”
“Why can’t we both wander?” It became a ritual; I knew the answer before I even asked the question, but I still waited hopefully.
“What about the baby? And jobs, and money? You’re ridiculous, you’re not practical.”
“Then let’s be ridiculous for a change.”
“Air this napkin and stop chattering.”
But I kept returning in my mind to the huge man in the café whose moustache was like my grandfather’s, and whose features resembled Maxim Gorki’s. He chimed in me symbolically whenever the sense of confinement grew too strong. I still had the sketch on the old envelope somewhere.
Looking out once more at the pure glittering weather I thought of how the sky waited, day after day, always blue as a flower behind its veil of clouds. It was like the other world which I felt was blooming softly all around me, a magnificent new existence. But I could not break through to it. It beckoned me like a springtime.
“Why can’t you be content, like other men?” asked Jessie.
I made no reply. How could I tell her that I wanted more life, when I had so much already? How could I explain what I only half understood myself?
v
In this same February, while the baby was four months old, my grandfather met with a street accident in the centre of Birmingham and was taken to hospital. He was knocked down and crushed by the rear wheel of a bus. Usually he would not venture out of Woodfield now, but on this Saturday night he had done. He was crossing the Bull Ring, an open cobbled space set on a steep slope. His deafness was always a danger to him in traffic; and this long cleared space was a sort of marshalling point for the ponderous red double-deck buses. They halted and manœuvred here, in front of the blackened church, crushing the fruit stones and apple cores which littered the cobbles on market days, before sliding away down the sloping streets. And on Saturday all the vegetable and fruit carts would be drawn up in the gutter along one side, outside Woolworths, hemming in the traffic. A slowly reversing bus had knocked him down.
I was not told how serious his accident was. If my mother knew she kept it from me. Even after I had been with her to the hospital I did not know.
When we arrived at his bed he was dozing. His expression was exactly as I had seen it hundreds of times, when he used to fall asleep in his chair at home. We sat by the bed for ten minutes. My mother was fidgeting anxiously. She asked me, whispering in my ear, if I thought she should touch his shoulder, because our time was nearly gone. Then I saw his eyes flicker open. He was watching us. It was a strange moment. He looked without speaking, like an animal. I nudged my mother but she had noticed. She forced her face into a smile.
