New Year’s Eve
It was a good thing New Year’s Eve fell on a Saturday, John thought, for it meant one day less holiday. They would start work on Tuesday, the ones, anyway, who were sober enough. He wanted work, and more work. If he had his own way he’d carry on, night and day, for three parts of the week; he’d make them throw the stuff out of those holds as it had never been thrown out before. He wanted money. God, how he wanted money.
He sat before the fire, dressed in his working clothes, tense with thinking. Shane sat opposite him, sober and sullen; he’d been drunk only once during the holidays. This was a record. Was he turning over a new leaf? John wondered, or was it because he was forced to realise that the more he drank the more he twitched? But twitching or not, tonight he’d likely have a skinful. What would she say to this house and the lot of them? Would she take them as she took him? That was too much to ask. Whereas last Saturday night he thought he’d never known a moment in his life without her, now, across the vast space of time since he last saw her, he could not even recall her face clearly. Again and again he tried to visualise her; but always her face ran into a blur. Even when he attempted to recapture the wonder and the ecstatic feeling of achievement as, with her on his arm, he walked past the fifteen streets, huddled and sleeping under the star-carpeted sky, the feeling would slither away. It was strange, too, but he could not actually remember how he left her. What did they say to each other? Nothing much. They were quiet on the journey back; all the laughter and fun had been left in Shields market. As they walked up Simonside Bank, he had asked if she were tired, and she had replied that she’d never felt less tired. Yet she sounded sort of sleepy when she said it . . . But there must have been more than that said. One thing he knew he hadn’t said: ‘Can I see you again?’
Why hadn’t he, when it was foremost in his mind during those last few minutes with her? But foremost, too, had been the thought of money. He couldn’t really ask her out unless he intended taking her somewhere. Well, he could have taken her out tonight.
All this morning he was hoping he would run into her as he came home from work. And when he didn’t, he told himself it was the best thing that could have happened; there were many things he could do with those extra few shillings—his mother would know what to do with them. So perhaps it was all for the best—he moved impatiently in his chair. Perhaps . . . there was no perhaps about it. What was he aiming at, anyway? Was his brain softening, just because of that one night? If he were to see her again, what would it lead to? So intense was the urgency of the question that he almost spoke aloud. You are going stark, staring mad! Look around, and ask yourself what you and she can ever be to each other . . . even if she does like you . . . He was on his feet, staring down into the fire; she likes me all right, I know it. She more than likes me . . . she feels the same as I do.
Mary Ellen could remain silent no longer; John’s drawn, twisted face was wringing her heart. Shane was dozing now, and she whispered, ‘What’s up, lad?’
‘Nothing. I’m going to have a wash.’
He went quickly into the scullery, and as he washed himself Mary Ellen gazed sadly at his back. She knew this would happen—she knew there’d be no happiness in it for him. She wanted to go to him and in some way comfort him; but her mind was lifted from him to Molly.
Molly’s screeching voice came from the back lane, and Mary Ellen knew she was fighting again, for she was hurling rhymes at someone’s head:
Annie Kelly’s got a big fat belly,
And her belly wobbles like jelly.
My God! that lass nearly fourteen and yelling things out like that. Mary Ellen pushed past John and opened the back door.
‘You, Molly! come in here!’
Molly was having her last word: ‘You wouldn’t do much for God if the divil was dead, Annie Kelly. You’re mean, so you are. Poor Nancy!’
‘Come in here!’ Mary Ellen hauled Molly over the step. ‘You can thank your lucky stars your da’s dozing,’ she whispered fiercely, ‘or I’d bray you!’
‘Well, I was only sticking up for Nancy,’ Molly snivelled. ‘She’s been sent back from her place, Mrs Fitzsimmons won’t have her. And Annie wouldn’t let her play with us; she punched her.’
‘Sent back from her place,’ Mary Ellen repeated to John. ‘That means the do’s off.’
‘Damn good thing, too,’ John answered shortly. ‘They’ll be yelling out for the money before the new year’s in a week.’
‘It’ll likely be spent now, lad, in any case.’
The door opened again, and Katie rushed in breathless.
Mary Ellen hushed her: ‘Be quiet, hinny! And close that door, the cold’s enough to cut you in two.’
‘Ma, can I go with Christine? And Molly too? There’s a big stretch frozen hard, past Cleveland Place, and everybody’s going there to slide . . . proper sliding. Christine’s got proper sliding skates with knives on the bottom. And there’s a man there with a fire selling roast taties . . . Oh, Ma, can we go?’
‘Go on, Ma, let’s.’ Molly joined her plea to Katie’s.
‘What about it cracking?’ Mary Ellen asked John. ‘Will it be deep?’
‘It won’t crack in this frost.’
He was drying himself, and asked Katie, ‘How does Christine know there’s skating? Has she been?’ He hadn’t seen Christine since Christmas Day, and then only to wish her a happy Christmas and to thank her rather sheepishly for the tie. He knew now why he hadn’t kissed Christine, and the knowledge made him strangely embarrassed in her presence.
‘Yes,’ answered Katie. ‘She was there yesterday, her and David. She says they’re going to have a big fire on the bank the night to light the ice up.’
‘How far past Cleveland Place is it?’
‘It’s in Roper’s Field.’
‘You’d better give it a miss,’ said Mary Ellen; ‘you’ll slide the boots off your feet.’
‘Not any sooner than with sliding in the streets,’ said John.
‘But it’s them falling through I’m afraid of.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said; ‘I’ll take a walk up and have a look.’
He went into the bedroom and started to change hastily. Roper’s Field . . . off the Simonside Road. There was just a chance she might be there.
In the kitchen of Cumberland Villa, the two maids were standing near the partly open door, straining their ears.
‘Hear anything?’ asked the cook.
‘Not a word,’ replied Phyllis. ‘And the way the missis looked I thought she was going to explode. I bet you anything you like though she’d heard about that fellow.’
‘I wouldn’t believe a word of it,’ said Cook. ‘And I’d be careful what I was saying if I was you. Miss Mary walking out with one of the O’Briens! Huh! I’ll believe that when I see it.’
‘I tell you our Doris saw them in the market, and our Doris knows them both as well as I know you. She was standing behind them, and she said they were laughing and talking together like . . . well, like a couple who was walking out . . . Sh! Listen.’
Phyllis’s elbow stopped the cook’s retort. ‘There!’ she hissed. ‘Get an earful of that. Have you ever heard the missis go off like that before? What did I tell you?’
In the drawing-room, James Llewellyn was appealing to his wife: ‘Look, Beatrice, leave this to me.’ He spoke gently and soothingly; the jocular brusqueness, which was his usual defence against her, was gone from his tone.
‘Too much has been left to you, and look at the result!’ She turned from him, and again addressed her daughter, with quiet tenseness now. ‘No wonder you wouldn’t tell me who you were with on Christmas Eve! It is to your credit that you were ashamed.’
Mary stood with her elbow resting on the mantelpiece; her face was half turned from her mother, and she stared unseeing into the fire, her attitude belying the anger that was filling her body.
‘You must have lost every spark of decency. You never, at any time, had a proper sense of what is correct. But this! Have you any idea how I felt when Florence Dudley told me they saw you in the Empire with a . . . docker?’ Beatrice Llewellyn spat out the last word, her thin nose and delicately chiselled mouth almost meeting over it. Her large pale blue eyes showed depths of purple, and her expression was weighed with actual hate as she looked at this girl whom she had come to think of as being by her but not of her. This last disgusting episode proved only too conclusively from which side she had inherited her qualities. ‘Will Dudley says he comes from the fifteen streets and the family are notorious,’ she ended.
Mary faced her mother, and her tone was infuriatingly quiet when she said, ‘Of course they are. Anyone within a three-miles radius of the fifteen streets knows that. If you didn’t shut out every unpleasantness from your life you would have heard it before . . . One of the main things for which they are notorious is hunger. Dwell upon that the next time you’re preparing for the Dudleys coming to dinner.’
Beatrice Llewellyn stood aghast—never before had Mary dared to address her so. ‘They are poor because they drink and gamble. And you! You are a slut! You were out with that man until three o’clock in the morning. Do you think it won’t be all round Jarrow and Shields by now?’
‘I hope so.’
Mary’s stillness seemed to lift the tension to breaking point. Her father cried, ‘Here, lass! Here, that’s enough!’ and Beatrice Llewellyn perpetrated what was to her mind unforgivable . . . she screamed. ‘You low creature!’ The words seemed to emerge from the top of her head. ‘You’re utterly debased. I shall have Father O’Malley to you. Yes. Yes. I shall . . . Leave me alone!’—she tore her arm from her husband’s soothing hand, and flung like a small tornado out of the room.
During their twenty-six years of married life, James Llewellyn had never seen his wife lose control; this was the first show of sincere passion he had witnessed, and it left him, not only shaken, but worried. Usually she tried gentle tears and studied silences, alternated with the persistent reiteration of her point. But for Beatrice to lose her dignity meant this affair had indeed struck home.
‘You’ve done it this time.’ He came to the fireplace and knocked out his pipe against the bars. ‘You know, lass, it was a bit of a shock.’
‘To you too?’ Mary asked sharply.
‘Aye . . . yes. It’s no good saying one thing and thinking another. But when Will Dudley got on about seeing you with one of the Big O’Briens I could have punched him in the face. Although he put it very nicely, I could tell it had afforded them a good topic of conversation all the week, and that was why Florence Dudley was so anxious for us to drop in this morning. When your mother came downstairs with her I thought she’d collapse . . . How long has it been going on, lass?’
‘It hasn’t been going on, as you call it; that was the only time.’
‘Oh . . . Well’—there was a measure of relief in her father’s voice—‘and are you . . . Well, is it finished?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know! What do you mean, lass?’
‘I mean that if it rests with me it won’t be finished.’ Mary turned towards him, nervously rubbing the palms of her hands together. ‘I haven’t seen him since, because he never asked me.’
James Llewellyn stared at his daughter. His lass, who was the best-looking lass for miles, and who could have her pick, was in love. Even had she not practically put it unashamedly into words, he could see it in her eyes. She was in love with this dock worker, John O’Brien; and not in the light-hearted way that lassies fell in love, but in an earnest, stubborn, painful way, a way that would leave a mark on her, however things went. Well, he wasn’t going to stand by and see her make a hash of her life, and say nothing. This was one time her mother was right. ‘Now see here’—he planted his feet firmly apart and pointed his finger at her—‘you know which side I’ve always been on, don’t you? You know that life would have been much easier for me if I’d taken your mother’s part all along.’
As his fingers wagged at her, Mary thought: he’s nearly as big as John, and he has the same clumsy movements, a sort of endearing gaucheness. All the money in the world won’t polish him. Anyway, he was once a dock worker himself, so why can’t he understand about this?
‘But I want you to understand, lass,’ James Llewellyn went on, ‘that I’m with your mother in this.’
‘You’d rather see me married to Gilbert then?’
‘I don’t want you to marry anyone you don’t fancy . . . But yes’—he thrust out his head—‘yes, I’d rather see you married to Gilbert than carrying on with this business. At least you wouldn’t starve . . . Oh, Mary’—his large leathery face crumpled—‘stop while there’s time. You don’t know what you’re running yourself into. Lass, I hate to say it, but I’ve seen those O’Briens rolling from one side of the arches to the other. I even remember the mother, years ago, a little body, standing outside the bars with the bairns clinging round her, trying to get a few shillings out of her man before he blued the lot. I tell you, lass, they’re noted.’
‘He doesn’t drink.’
‘That’s what he says.’
‘He doesn’t, Father.’ There was a fierce ring in her voice. ‘And he’s not just a docker either; he’s been made a gaffer.’
‘What! Did he tell you that? How old is he?’
‘Twenty-two.’ Her head was thrust up in defiance, daring him to say, ‘So he’s younger than you.’
But what he said was, ‘He’s a damned liar! There’s no fellow could be made a gaffer at twenty-two. Thirty-two would be more like it. He’s stuffing you, lass. Can’t you see?’ He was angry for her.
‘No, he’s not. Anyway, it should be easy for you to find out.’
‘Yes. Quite easy. But even so, if he is a gaffer, what’s that?’
Mary did not reply but stood looking at him, her eyes wide and sad, for she too, was asking herself the same question . . . He was worth something better than that.
To James Llewellyn, she looked at this moment pathetic, and he could never remember his joyous, laughter-loving daughter looking this way. Taking her by the hand, he said, ‘Hinny’—using the endearing word that was banned in the house because of its commonness—‘I only want your happiness. What do you think I’ve worked for all these years? To leave you comfortable. Look, my dear, tell me you’ll drop this.’
The tears gathering in her eyes obscured her vision. Why, oh why, did they think money could buy off or replace a feeling that was made of intangible stuff? Money and love were on two different planes . . . Yet were they so divided? Love needed money for its existence. Without it, more often than not it died, as the body, wherein it was housed, fought and struggled for life. Yet if the chance were given her, would she risk the survival of this love that seemed to be eating her away? Oh yes, yes. The tears spilled on to her face. ‘I can’t. If he asks me out again, I’ll go.’
She watched her father leave the room and close the door after him with painful slowness . . .
Mary was sitting in her own room, crouched over the fire, when the dinner bell rang. She made no move to carry out its summons. Nor, as the time went on, did anyone come to enquire why. Never before had she felt so unhappy, and she couldn’t see the unhappiness lifting; it stretched on and on into the future, for the only person capable of dispelling it was as class-conscious as her mother. She felt now that Christmas Eve had been merely a lapse of John’s, and that during the quiet walk back from Jarrow he was already regretting it; he had left her with scarcely a word. Every dinner-time and teatime of this past week she had fought with herself not to stroll casually down through the arches, presumably on her way to Shields, in the hope of encountering him. But some hard core of pride said no . . . she wouldn’t scheme to trap him into asking her out; if he wanted to see her he would find a way; and there was always the post.
What a New Year’s Eve! She got up and wandered about the room. If only she could see him for a moment, run into him accidentally, as she had done last Saturday night . . . But wouldn’t it have been better had they not met at all—not last Saturday, but in the first instance. He attracted her that first night he sat in this room, and she had been unable to get him out of her mind since.
The memory of that meeting brought back the niggling envy of Christine . . . Was that girl something to him? Was she the reason why he hadn’t asked her to repeat the evening? She didn’t know . . .
She went upstairs and put on her outdoor things, for she felt that were she to stay indoors any longer she would scream, as her mother had done this morning. Remembering her mother’s voice and look, she realised that whether she pursued this business to its height or it merely fizzled out, the last supports of the barrier that had been erecting itself for years between them were hammered home today, and their combined lifetimes would not be long enough to break it down.
Standing on the bank at the edge of the field, John looked down in amazement on the scene. He had witnessed nothing like it before. The field, which dipped into a shallow valley, had every appearance of a lake, and there was scarcely a yard of its surface which had not its moving figure. Very few had skates; the main sport seemed to be concentrated on the long single and double slides. On the double slides young men and girls crossed hands, skimming away with enviable balance towards the centre of the ice. Children had their slides nearer the edge, and were watched by spectators, who outnumbered the skaters. Some of the young lads were already getting the bonfire going. The air was filled with laughter and shouting, the smell of burning wood, and the thick, comforting smell of roasting potatoes. The faces of the crowd seemed alight with a newborn joy.
The feeling of mass gaiety puzzled John. It was this whiteness; it had gone to their heads and caused a madness. The drabness of life was lost under the spell of its gleaming sparkle, and the people seemed to be deluded into thinking this clean, white world would remain—their house roofs were white, their window sills, their doorsteps. The docks and the ships, too, lay buried under the clean illusion—even on the top of the highest mast there was a virgin white cap of snow, fast and secure and promising to remain for ever. There would be no tomorrow, or the next day, when the gutters would be choked with brown slush, the roads become rivers, and the houses grey again, and they themselves grey and blue, feet wet, bodies shivering. It was cold now; but this was a dry cold, which quickened the blood, freed the perception and brought all the instincts to the surface, giving to each person an awareness of his existence, which demanded of the body that it be used, now, at this very time.
As he stood there John began to feel something of this mass joy. The whole scene, which seemed to have been dropped from another world, where only light laughter existed, bewildered him, and part of him realised that it was out of place in the realistic grimness of this area.
He watched Christine gliding gracefully in small circles near where Katie, Molly and David were sliding with other children. She looked little more than a child herself, a dark, elfin, slip of a child.
Christine caught sight of him, and waved and beckoned him on to the ice; but he shook his head and waved his hand in refusal. And after a while, she glided to where he stood on the bank.
‘Isn’t it wonderful! Come on . . . I’ll pull you.’
‘Not on your life,’ he laughed.
He was relieved that there was no stiffness in her manner, for it must have been evident to her that he had avoided seeing her during this past week. She looked very fetching, standing below him with a red tam-o’-shanter on the back of her head, and for a fleeting second he felt a regret that it was not she who was filling his mind and body at this moment, for then things would have been plain sailing.
‘A big thing like you afraid of the ice!’ she called up to him, teasingly.
‘You’d be more afraid if you got me on there and I fell on you.’
‘I’ll risk it. Come on. Come on, John’—the pleading was in her eyes and voice.
He shook his head: ‘I’ve a number of other ways of making a fool of myself besides that.’
Christine saw that it was no use trying to coax him; nevertheless, she stood for a time gazing up at him. Then, without further words, she turned and skimmed away again.
John continued to watch her and the children, but between times his eyes would search the field. Although the light was fading he could still see the further bank, and he thought it would have to be very dark to prevent him from picking her out from the crowd. He noticed Katie leave the long line of sliders and walk quickly towards him.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Are you tired, or after a hot tatie?’
‘Our Dominic’s along there, John. He’s watching Christine.’
John remained silent, and did not turn to the spot Katie indicated but looked to where Christine was still whirling unconcerned. ‘Is he all right?’ he asked; which meant, was he sober.
‘Yes, he looks it . . . and . . . and he’s got a collar and tie on too.’ Katie’s eyes fell to John’s collar and tie, then to his new coat; and she added, with awe in her voice, ‘He’s got a new coat an’ all, John.’ Her eyes were round in amazement—the advent of any new clothes in the house was something to dwell upon, for in most cases their approach was awaited for weeks. As late as last night Dominic had no new clothes, yet here he was, all dressed up.
John’s mouth moved into a twisted grin. Dominic wasn’t to be outdone then. The buying of new clothes would be all to the good if it kept him off the drink; but John knew only too well that someone would have to whistle for the money for the coat. He glanced casually now in Dominic’s direction. Yes, there he was, practically head and shoulders above the crowd, and even from this distance and the little John could see of him, the difference in his appearance was noticeable.
Momentarily John’s attitude towards his brother softened, and he wondered if Dominic’s feeling for Christine was anything like his own for Mary. But his wondering was definitely only momentary . . . He would have gone about it in a different way if it was . . . and he still paid visits to ‘Lady Pansy’. Moreover, his love for Christine, if it could be called such, had instilled her with nothing but fear.
He bent down to Katie: ‘Don’t forget what I told you about keeping with Christine.’
‘No, John, I won’t.’
‘No matter what he says on the way home, don’t you leave her, mind.’
‘No, John.’
‘Go on then, on your slide; I’ll be here for some time yet.’
Groups of lads and lassies on the banks had started singing. ‘Keep your feet still, Geordie, hinny’ vied with ‘Cushy Butterfield’, and ‘Bleydon Races’ with ‘Auld Lang Syne’. But now the careless mad pleasure of the scene was dispelled for John, for Dominic was there. His presence acted like a pressure forcing out the ease from his body and the quietness from his mind, and replacing it with antipathy, which was the only true bond between them.
As the daylight of the last day of the year faded, the twilight seemed to urge on the gaiety. The bonfire was well alight now, sending up showers of sparks through the grey dusk into the far-reaching blue beyond. John found that after looking towards the fire for a time the skaters on the ice appeared like dark, scribbled lines on a white canvas. He closed his eyes and pressed his eyeballs with his fingers. And when he opened them, there she was, standing not a yard from him.
When he was a child, his mother, if she had a piece of toffee for him, would say, ‘Shut your eyes and open your mouth and see what God will send you.’ He had shut his eyes, and look what God had sent him.
He took a slow step towards her—Dominic and all he stood for was gone, and the magic and madness of the scene was upon him fully now. No subterfuge need be used on a night like this; truth was easy, and desirable.
‘I wondered if you would be here.’
At his words, her face, which had been set and strained, fell into a smile; not her usual, light-flashing smile, but one holding a tinge of sadness.
John did not detect the sadness . . . sadness and this girl were as apart as the earth and the sky. To his mind, she spelt radiance, to his body, magnetism; she was ecstasy and joy. But he had only plain words with which to speak: ‘Have you ever seen anything to equal this around these parts?’ He did not take his eyes from her face, but indicated the ice with a movement of his head.
‘Never. It’s like something you’d see in Switzerland.’
Her eyes, playing over his face, made him drunk with feeling; all the barriers between them were being swept away on a swift moving tide. The need was upon him to touch her, if only her hand.
‘Have you been sliding?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t any skates.’
‘What about using our feet? It seems popular.’
‘Here?’ She pointed to the entwined throng below them.
‘No. Let’s go round to the other side; there are fewer people there, and if we fall there’ll be less to laugh at us.’
Mary made an almost imperceptible motion with her head. The action was more pointed than words in its acquiescence.
They turned together. Then stopped. It was the red tam-o’-shanter that brought itself to John’s notice. Without it, Christine, at that moment, would have been merely another face—even Katie was just part of the crowd.
Christine and Katie stood hand in hand below them, silent and staring.
‘Why! Hallo, Katie.’
‘Hallo, Miss Llewellyn.’ Katie’s fat, rosy cheeks were very like the proverbial apples as she smiled.
‘Are you having a lovely time?’
‘Yes, Miss Llewellyn.’
‘And did you have a nice Christmas?’
‘Oh yes, Miss Llewellyn. Oh, lovely! And thank you, Miss Llewellyn, for the presents and all the lovely fruit.’
Mary’s eyes were forced from Katie’s to the girl in the red hat. The girl was staring at her; her eyes, dark and enormous, seemed to glow with a purple gleam. Even in the dusk, their light was penetrating, and Mary felt it stripping her. It was an odd sensation. It was almost as if the girl was looking into the very depths of her heart and finding there things of which even she herself was not aware.
When John said, ‘This is Christine,’ the girl, with a lightning movement, whirled Katie round and away, and in a moment they were lost in the moving figures and the dimness.
The situation had suddenly become awkward. Why had Christine dashed off like that? He knew fine well why! His neck became hot. Then a surge of relief swept over him . . . thank God he had never made up to her! He was free in that sense, anyway . . . free for Mary. Oh, the daring, the audacity, the madness of it!
He turned towards her again, and this time the sadness in her face was clear to him. She too then had seen how Christine felt. He must make it clear to her that there was nothing in it.
‘What about the slide?’ he said.
Without answering, she turned from him, and they threaded their way among the crowd.
‘Christine’s a nice girl,’ he began lamely.
‘Yes, she looks it.’
They were forced to step apart to make way for a group of running children, and when they came together again, he continued, ‘I don’t think she’ll ever grow up though. She’s . . . well, she’s just like Katie.’
She looked at him and smiled, a small, understanding smile. He smiled back at her, and they walked on in silence.
The far bank was almost deserted, the crowds having been drawn to the light of the bonfire and the man with the brazier and the roasting potatoes. The ice, too, was not so smooth here, for tufts of grass broke the surface.
‘Shall we chance it?’ He held out his hand, and she took it and stepped from the bank on to the ice. ‘Single or double?’
‘Single I think, for a start . . . You go first, I haven’t been on the ice for two years.’
‘Two years! It must be at least eight since I was on a slide . . . Well, here goes.’ He ran and started to slide; wobbled, steadied himself, and wobbled again; then, with a suddenness that found every bone in his body, he sat down on the ice with a heavy plop.
With a sureness that spoke of past schooling, she reached him as he was getting to his feet. He was laughing, and said, ‘Good job you weren’t behind me.’ And when he felt her hands gently dusting his shoulders he prolonged his own banging of his clothes to shake off the loose snow.
‘Shall we try again?’ he asked.
‘If you like,’ she said; but there was little enthusiasm in her voice.
‘Do you want to slide?’ He was facing her now, their breaths were mingling and their eyes holding. The words were a question that did not mean what it asked, and she answered with a candour that seemed to be of the very essence of the day.
‘No.’
He reached out and took her hand, and they walked carefully towards the bank again.
‘Would you . . . would you like to go for a walk? Or what about Shields?’
‘Not Shields. Let’s go for a walk.’
They walked down the narrow lane and on to the main road without speaking. Being a country road it was unlit, and in spite of the snow covering it, it appeared black after the glare of the fire-lit field. The darkness gave him courage, and he unclasped her hand and drew her arm through his, entwining his fingers through hers and holding them close to his coat. They walked on in step, and as he felt her hip moving against his he became conscious of the stillness between them, a stillness that seemed to be waiting only for the right moment to burst into sound . . . sound that would bewitch and delight him, because it would be her voice telling him what he wanted, above all things, to know. But as they walked on, it seemed to him as if the silence would never be broken.
When, of one mind, they turned down a side lane and stopped and faced each other, he told himself that never before had any man felt for a woman as he felt for her. But now the moment had come he seemed paralysed, and even the potency of his feeling could not lift him over the barrier to her. It was she who opened the way, with such words that flung barriers, prejudices and classes into oblivion: ‘Oh, John, if you don’t tell me I won’t be able to bear it.’
There was a second of wonder-filled time before his arms went about her, not gently, as he had imagined them so often doing, but savagely, crushing her into him until he could feel her racing heart pounding against him. He did not kiss her immediately. His lips travelled the whole surface of her face before they reached hers, but when they did, their bodies merged and rose, above the snow and ice, above their separate lives, away from this earth to some ethereal place where time is not. When, swaying together, their lips parted, it seemed to them both as if they had actually fallen into another era of time, so much did they know of each other.
‘Mary.’
She did not answer but leaned upon him, moving her face against his.
‘I love you.’
Her arms tightened about him.
‘I’m mad . . . I shouldn’t say that.’
‘Oh beloved.’
Beloved . . . a woman had called him beloved . . . him! This beautiful woman, this girl, this . . .
‘How is it you can care for a fellow like me? Mary! Oh, Mary!’
Her reply was smothered against him. And when he would have again begun deprecating himself her fingers covered his mouth. ‘You’re the finest person I know—there is no-one to come up to you.’
She cut short his protest: ‘John, let nothing ever separate us, will you?’ Her voice was earnest. ‘Nothing, nor no-one. Promise. Never.’
The urgency in her voice stilled him—it was almost as if she was pleading with him. That she should be asking to let nothing separate them seemed fantastic.
Taking her hand gently from his lips he said, ‘It’s me should be putting that to you. What do you think will be said when this gets about? Will you be able to stand it?’
Her answer was the covering of his mouth by hers with such passion that all the longing, all the loneliness of his life, all that was drab and tawdry, vanished. Her love for him raised him to a new level of self-esteem.
‘Oh, Mary, my love . . . my dear . . . do you know what you mean to me? Do you know what you stand for?’ He was gentle now, holding her face between his large hands, peering at her, seeing each feature in his mind’s eye: ‘You’re beautiful.’
‘I couldn’t be too beautiful for you.’
Her words were like notes of tender music, borne on the white wings of the snow. He shook his head slowly at the wonder of them. ‘I don’t know how you can love me . . . you who have everything. I’m ignorant, and I’m ashamed of it. Mary’—his voice was shy—‘will you teach me?’
‘Oh, my dear, you don’t need . . .’
He stopped her, ‘Yes, I do need. And you know I do. I never want you to be ashamed of me.’
‘John . . . John, don’t.’
His humility brought the tears to her eyes, as he went on, ‘And there’s my folk. It isn’t that I’m ashamed, only . . . well, I suppose you’ve heard of our family. There hasn’t been much chance for any of us; my mother slaved all her days, and . . . and my father and brother . . .’
‘Sh!’ She leaned gently against him, stroking his cheek as a mother would soothe a child.
She murmured something, and he whispered in awe, ‘What?’
And she repeated, ‘It’s a case of Ruth and Naomi.’
But still he did not understand, yet although the words held no meaning for him, her tone conveyed a deep humility, and he was filled with wonder.