Nancy
The home-made paper chains lay in a jumbled heap on one side of the table, the three bought ones lying neatly concertinaed by themselves together with the honeycomb ball. These would do for another year, Mary Ellen decided, if she could hide them somewhere. She had never before been so late in taking down the decorations; it was 5th January, and she was just escaping bad luck by taking them down today, the morrow would be too late. But it had been nice to leave them up till the last minute, for they carried on the feeling of this wonderful Christmas and New Year. By!—she stopped in her work to look out of the kitchen window to the roofs beyond, where the last of the snow was sliding in a grey mass into the gutter—she had never known such a time. The stuff they’d had to eat! And Shane being sober, even on New Year’s Eve; and no rows in the house. There was Dominic’s surliness, of course, but she was used to that and had not allowed it to spoil things. And anyway, he was out most of the time . . . all night, once.
This business of John’s troubled her at times; but what could she do, for he said nothing. He was going about looking like a cat with nine tails. She hoped to God something would happen to make it last. But how could it—him and Miss Llewellyn! Where would it end? . . . Well, she wouldn’t worry—everything else was going fine; the coal house was full of coal and the bairns were rightly set up with clothes, the last, thanks to them next door—the thought of thanks took shape before she could stop it—well, anyway, they had been good, no matter what they were. She’d wished time and again she could go and thank them, but she was unable to bring herself to do so. The fear of them still held her, and she couldn’t face them, so she had sent her thanks by the bairns and John. The fear had strengthened in an odd way too during these past weeks, for Mick’s ear had stopped running for the first time in two years, and Shane . . . Why was it, after all these years, Shane had eased off the drink and his twitching had lessened? Did he find himself lying on a platform above the bed with Peter Bracken’s hands moving over him? My God! She shuddered. It was the first time she had admitted to herself the influence of Peter Bracken on her the night the child was born. She put her hand inside her blouse and felt for her rosary, which she had taken to wearing round her neck of late.
Staring out of the window, she said her beads: Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus . . . She had gone through two decades, when she saw the backyard door open and Hannah Kelly enter the yard.
Hastily, she fastened her blouse.
What did Hannah want so early in the morning? . . . There was something curious about her walk: she couldn’t have had a drop already, surely. She watched Hannah fumble with the latch of the kitchen door, and when she came in and closed the door, and stood with her back to it, Mary Ellen exclaimed, ‘Why, lass, you’re bad! Come and sit down.’
Hannah shook her head and murmured, ‘Oh, Mary Ellen!’
‘What is it? Is it Joe?’
Hannah again shook her head. She tried to speak but the words refused to come, her mouth opening and shutting like that of a fish.
Hannah’s eyes drooped and her head fell on her chest.
‘Tell me, lass. What is it?’
‘Dear God, dear God,’ Hannah said, and her voice sounded small and lost, and she looked like a bewildered child in spite of her long, bony frame. ‘I may be wrong. Will you come over with me, Mary Ellen, and see? I came the back way, for Bella Bradley’s on the lookout.’
‘Is Nancy ill?’ Mary Ellen asked, taking her shawl from the back of the door.
Hannah made no reply but went out, and Mary Ellen followed closely after her . . .
Nancy was in bed, lying well down under the clothes, and Mary Ellen, as she entered the bedroom, could see only her eyes. They held an odd look, a mixture of wariness and cunning, an expression not usual to their dullness.
‘Hallo, Nancy,’ said Mary Ellen.
But Nancy did not reply with her usual normal address; she just stared from one to the other.
Hannah, stripping the clothes from her, said, ‘Lift up your nightie!’
With her eyes still darting from one to the other of the two women, Nancy complied. The nightdress was short and tight, and she had to drag it over her hips.
Mary Ellen gazed at Nancy’s stomach. She knew now what Hannah suspected, and she exclaimed to herself. ‘Oh, Jesus, don’t let it be.’ Nevertheless, to her eyes there was nothing really to justify Hannah’s suspicions, and she looked across the bed to Hannah: ‘Lass, what makes you think . . . ?’ she said.
‘She’s past her time, and I’ve seen nothing; and I think that’s what Mrs Fitzsimmons twigged. And her being sick and not working.’ She spoke as if Nancy wasn’t there. ‘Stand up!’ she said harshly to her daughter.
Nancy lumbered out of the bed, still with her nightdress held above her stomach. And now Mary Ellen thought she could detect a small rise. But still she would not believe this thing possible; nobody in their right senses would dream of taking a lass like this.
‘Look, lass’—she turned to Hannah—‘it may only be wind. Or perhaps a growth,’ she said hopefully.
Hannah, her eyes dead in her large, round face, turned away and walked into the kitchen.
‘Put your clothes on, hinny,’ Mary Ellen said to Nancy; and the girl immediately pulled her nightdress over her head and began to dress.
In the kitchen, Hannah was sitting dejectedly at the table, and Mary Ellen said, ‘Get her to the doctor’s, lass. Take her now. It may not be what you think, and it’ll set your mind at rest . . . Anyway, it can’t be that.’
Hannah, in dismay, turned and stared into the distances beyond the kitchen walls: ‘It’s that all right. I’ll take her, but I know.’
‘Have you asked her anything?’
‘Yes, I asked her if a man had touched her, and she wouldn’t answer. And that’s a funny thing in itself, for she always says right away, “No, Ma, when men speak to me I run away.” And then again, twice last week she disappeared. I had Annie out looking for her for three hours on New Year’s night, and she found her round by St Bede’s Church. She had come across the salt grass, but she wouldn’t say where she’d been . . . Oh, Christ . . . Christ Jesus!’ Hannah burst out. ‘What’s going to happen? Joe will kill her. And if he finds out who it is there’ll be murder done. Oh, Mary Ellen, what am I going to do?’
‘Here, steady yourself, lass. Come on, get up and put your coat on and take her now.’ She pulled Hannah to her feet. ‘You’ll catch him if you go now.’
While Hannah was putting on her coat, Mary Ellen went into the bedroom where Nancy was still laboriously dressing: ‘Hurry up, hinny, your ma’s waiting.’
Mary Ellen found she couldn’t look at the girl . . . If she were going to have a bairn and had kept quiet about the man, then there was some part in her that was sensible, Mary Ellen reasoned. Unless, of course, she was too afraid to say anything. But now that she came to look at her, the lass looked less afraid than she had ever done.
She bustled Nancy into the kitchen: ‘There you are then, lass’—she was addressing herself to Hannah—‘get yourself off . . . And remember, whichever way it goes, don’t worry. You can’t help it; the blame can’t be laid at your door, you’ve done your best.’
She watched them walking down the street, wide apart, like strangers, Nancy humped and shuffling, Hannah as stiff as a ramrod; and a sadness settled on Mary Ellen, the beginning of a long, long sadness.
John hurried out of the docks . . . Friday night and the first week of the new year over, and six boats discharging at the same time. He had just come from the weigh beam after paying off half the men. It was a strange sensation standing at the weigh beam with his pockets full of money and handing each man his due, and feeling that, although he was young enough to be a son to three parts of the men, they liked him and trusted him to give them a square deal. As he left the last arch and passed the bottom of Simonside Bank he glanced through the darkness to the curving incline, and the thought that within the next hour he would be hurrying up there brought a leaping and tingling to his blood. The nights of the past week had been like glimpses of paradise—was there anyone in the world as beautiful and as sweet as her? Where was there a woman of her standing who would take him as he was? He had no notions about himself. Eight years in the docks had not filed him down, but roughened him. The only saving grace, he told himself, was that he was aware of it and would do his best to remedy it. He would have to if he were ever to feel worthy of her, even to the smallest degree. Moreover, another thing he would have to do was to find a better job. It was impossible for him to remain in the docks . . . even as a gaffer, for it would take more than a gaffer’s wages to support her in the way to which she was used. Almost every night of the past week, after he had left her, his main thought had been that he must better himself; and he had worked it out that there was no chance for him in the North, nor yet in England . . . America . . . the Mecca of the Tyneside Irish loomed before him like a lodestar. If she would have him he would go there. Perhaps she would go with him right away . . . No; not for a moment would he consider that. When he had made enough money he would send for her. Not for one day of her life would she live differently because of him . . . And then there was his mother and Katie. If he went to America he’d be able to send them money too. For look at the wages you earned out there! And it wasn’t all moonshine. The Hogans from High Jarrow were doing fine, he’d heard; the father and four lads all in regular work, and sending for the rest of them this year. And there was that young Stanley Tapp, who went out and had his lass follow him. So why shouldn’t he, with his strength and fitness, make a go of it! There was no job he couldn’t tackle. Yes, that’s what he’d do. But he’d have to wait a while before he put it to her; he couldn’t ask her anything yet; it was too soon. Had he been loving her for only a week? It seemed now as though it had been going on for years. And each time they met the knowledge grew stronger that she loved him with an intensity that almost matched his own. This coloured his life, and lifted him to the heights whereon he saw himself wrestling a mighty living out of the world and giving her, not only the things that she was used to, but such things to which even she had not aspired.
He was whistling as he walked up the backyard, but stopped before he entered the house; his mother wouldn’t have whistling in the house, it was unlucky. She was standing by the table, and before her, on the mat, stood his father and Dominic with their bait tins still in their hands. Shane’s lower lip was thrust out, and he was saying, ‘The swine should be crucified!’
‘What’s up?’ asked John, loosening his muffler.
‘It’s Nancy,’ said Mary Ellen, looking down at her feet.
‘Nancy? What’s wrong with her?’ John took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves before reaching for the kettle from the hob.
‘She’s going to have a bairn.’
John’s hands stayed in mid-air. ‘She’s going to what!’ His brows met over the exclamation.
‘It’s true. Hannah’s had her to the doctor. She’s nearly out of her mind.’
Turning slowly, John looked from his father to Dominic, and back to his mother again. Nancy Kelly going to have a bairn! It was utterly incredible. He thought of her face as it really was without the veil of his pity covering it . . . the loose, repulsive mouth, the beady eyes, and the pushed-in nose. How could any man touch her, unless he too ‘wasn’t all there’.
Mary Ellen was saying, ‘And the funny thing is, she’s gone . . . odder’—she couldn’t say ‘brazen’ to the men—‘I can’t keep her out of the house.’
Although Mary Ellen was filled with pity for Hannah and the girl, she had found the day trying beyond description, for when Nancy wasn’t standing leaning against the stanchion of her own front door, staring across the street towards the house, she was knocking at either the back or the front door. Mary Ellen felt she could not say anything to Hannah as yet, for Hannah was distraught, not only with her daughter going to have a child, but at the change in her. It was as if now, with life moving within her, some part of Nancy had become activated into normality . . . a crude and shocking normality to the women, for she seemed proud of her achievement and was determined to show it to her world. Subconsciously through the years, she must have taken in, with perhaps a feeling of envy, the arrogance of the pregnant women standing at their doors, their arms folded across the bulks of moving life. And she may have laughed unknowingly at their jokes as they patted the tiny flutterings of their aprons, saying with raw wit the old, threadworn joke, ‘Lie down, yer father’s not workin’!’
Whatever had happened, she was now . . . brazened, and Mary Ellen’s pity was turning to irritation.
Dominic sat down by the fire—he hadn’t spoken—and Shane and John still stood regarding Mary Ellen.
‘This’ll send the little bantam clean off his head.’ It was Shane who spoke, and he was referring to Joe.
As Mary Ellen was about to make some reply, the back door opened and Nancy sidled in.
‘Look, Nancy!’ Mary Ellen exclaimed sharply; ‘get yourself away home.’
But Nancy, who never to Mary Ellen’s knowledge had disobeyed a command in her life, simply ignored her. Instead, she came well into the kitchen and stood looking from one to the other of the men. They all stared at her, Dominic out of the corner of his eye. And when Nancy met his gaze, she flung herself round from him, showing him her back, like a child in the huff, and amidst silence, she walked towards John, and smiled her grotesque smile as she placed her hand on his sleeve.
‘John.’
Tears almost came into John’s eyes as he looked at her: God, but it was awful! Yet above his pity there arose a feeling of revulsion against her. Some subtle change in her was making itself felt—she was no longer the child.
She said again, ‘John;’ and he was about to say something to her when his head was jerked up by the sound of choking.
It was Dominic; he had risen from his chair, his body quivering with waves of shut-in laughter. Mary Ellen and Shane were staring at him. He lumbered past them and threw himself on to the couch, where he sat leaning back, facing them, his face working with glee.
Staring wide-eyed and questioningly at her son’s contorted face, Mary Ellen was wondering what in the name of God had come over him.
Suddenly Dominic could control himself no longer, and his laughter filled the house. Bellow rolled on top of bellow. But as he rocked himself back and forth his eyes never left John’s, and the implication was lost on none of them. He waved a helpless hand, encompassing Nancy and John. And John’s voice rose above Dominic’s laughter, almost deafening them, as he cried, ‘You bloody swine!’
With one movement he flung Nancy aside and sprang for Dominic. At the same moment, Shane and Mary Ellen threw themselves on him. Dominic got up, his laughter gone now: ‘Let him fight, the dirty bastard! Come on!’ He tore off his coat and made for the back door.
John’s rage sent Shane and Mary Ellen spinning away from him, and he was after Dominic; but as he crossed the step, Dominic’s fist shot out and caught him full in the face: yet so little did it affect John in his rage, it could have been Katie’s hand.
After the light of the kitchen, the backyard appeared black, and for a time they struck at each other blindly. But soon their fists met the other’s body with quickening and sickening thuds.
‘For God’s sake, stop them!’ Mary Ellen cried to Shane. She tried to push past him into the yard, but he barred her way, saying, ‘Let them have it out.’
‘No! No! He’ll kill him. John’ll kill him! For God’s sake stop them!’
A small crowd was now gathering at the yard door, and the windows on the far side of the back lane were being thrown up—the cry had gone round, ‘The O’Briens are at it.’
The one showing the least concern was Nancy; she stood against the kitchen table her arms folded on her stomach and a silly smile flicking her face.
The sight of her thus was too much for Mary Ellen. She darted back into the kitchen, and taking Nancy by the shoulders, pushed her through the front room and out into the street shouting, ‘Go on! Go on, you young trollop, you! And don’t darken these doors again!’
Back in the kitchen she tried once more to push past Shane; for blood was flowing freely now. It was running from John’s mouth and from Dominic’s eyebrow, and their shirts were wet with it.
Peggy Flaherty’s voice came from the upstairs window, crying, ‘Stop it! Stop it, you lads! Stop it, the pair of you. John, where’s your sense gone? Do you want to break your mother’s heart? Behave like a gentleman, can’t you! Oh, if only Mr Flaherty was alive!’
Mary Ellen, through Shane’s arm, could see the dark bulk of Peggy hanging half out of the window.
Peggy cried down to her: ‘Mary Ellen, are you there? Will I throw some slops over them?’
Mary Ellen made no answer, for she was now staring at the lass from next door. Christine had come into the suffused light, paused for a moment near the battling figures, then walked right between them.
John’s fist was travelling towards Dominic’s body, and Mary Ellen closed her eyes tightly, for the girl’s face, as she confronted John, was in line with it.
Only the sound of gasping breaths came to Mary Ellen. She opened her eyes slowly, and they were apart, with the girl standing untouched between them.
Christine lifted her hands and pushed John towards the kitchen door, where Mary Ellen pulled him over the threshold.
Then Christine turned to Dominic. He was leaning against the washhouse wall now, wiping his face with his shirt sleeve. He paused and looked at her, and said pointedly, ‘This is one time I’m fighting in the right.’
‘Fighting was never in the right.’
‘No? Huh!’—he spat out some blood, then went on wiping his face—‘not even when your wonderful John gives Nancy Kelly a bairn?’
There was a rustle among the crowd about the yard door. The whispers linked, forming a wave; then broke again, as one person after another darted away into the blackness . . . John O’Brien had given Nancy Kelly a bairn!
When John at last arrived at their meeting place, Mary wasn’t there, and his feelings became a mixture of sick disappointment and relief . . . relief because of the uncertainty of her reaction when she saw his face. She would, he knew, be full of sympathy, but would she think that he was indeed one of the ‘Fighting O’Briens’, fighting for fighting’s sake?—he’d be unable to explain why he had fought. So he walked towards her house, keeping on the far side of the road, and when he came opposite the gate he stood well back in the shadow of a hedge, and waited, wondering what construction she had put on his non-appearance.
The house was lit up, and occasionally a shadow darkened the blinds, but the shadow could have belonged to anyone.
How long he stood there he did not know, but a clock somewhere in the distance, struck the hour, and he guessed it was nine o’clock. And as he was making up his mind to move away, the front door opened, and she was there, silhouetted against the light. But not alone; a man was with her, and from his thinness, John knew him to be Culbert.
John’s nerves tensed as he watched them standing talking, and his teeth grated when he saw Culbert’s hand take hers. But she remained still and Culbert moved away, and the door was closed.
After standing for a while longer, John walked slowly away. He was cold, and his eye was paining, and the whole of his face was stiff and sore. Now the import of Dominic’s wild laughter rose to the fore of his mind again; and with it came a paralysing sense of fear. Fear was the least of John’s emotions—he could not remember ever having known real fear; he had been scared, but being scared had no connection with this weakening feeling of fear. What if it got around, what Dominic had suggested? God! he couldn’t stand it. Anyway, people wouldn’t believe it. Him take Nancy Kelly! . . . But wouldn’t they? The lot around the fifteen streets would accuse Jesus Christ himself of it, if they were in the mood to do so. At times, it would appear they were utterly devoid of reason or sense, the rumours they believed and passed on.
As he neared the corner of Fadden Street, the huddled darker blur standing out against the wall told him the men were there. It was usual for them to gather at the corner and crack, and it was their voices which generally proclaimed them. But tonight they were quiet. And as he passed them he knew a mounting of his fear, which almost reached the point of terror when he realised the rumour was already let loose.
A figure stepped from the group and walked for a few steps by his side, then stopped. John stopped too, and the two men peered at each other.
‘I want a word with you,’ said Joe Kelly.
John did not answer him, for the fear was drying his mouth. He waited, and Joe seemed to be waiting too.
Then Joe brought out thickly, ‘What have you got to say?’
‘What about?’ John parried.
‘Come off it, you know bloody fine!’
John made a desperate effort to bring reason and calmness to the fore: ‘Look, Joe,’ he appealed to the little man, whose face, even through the darkness, conveyed its trouble to him, ‘do you, for a moment, think I would do such a thing? For God’s sake, man, have some sense! Nancy’s always made a set for me because I’ve been kind to her . . . What do you think I am? I mean no offence, Joe, but I’m not that hard up for a woman.’
‘Then why did you take her up the country?’
‘Take her up the country? Me?’
‘Aye, you! And give her money . . . You might be big, John O’Brien, but I’m going to kick the guts out of you!’
Before Joe could spring to carry out his intention, John’s hands gripped his shoulders and pinned him against the wall, while he kept his body bent out of reach of Joe’s legs.
‘Listen here, Joe Kelly: if there’s any guts to be kicked out, I can do a bit of it myself. But before we start that, let’s get this straight. The whole thing’s a pack of damned lies from beginning to end. You bring me the one that saw me up the country with Nancy; and let’s get Nancy herself and ask her.’
‘That’s the ticket,’ said a voice from the group of men; ‘give him a fair crack o’ the whip. I told you you were up the pole to believe it. Now, if it had been the other big sod . . .’
Another voice was added to that of the first: ‘Aye, Joe . . . Ask your lass, and get Bella Flabbygob to face him and tell him herself.’
Joe’s writhing body was stilled. ‘All right then,’ he growled. ‘If you’ve got the face, come and clear yourself.’
John, walking swiftly and tensely by Joe’s side, said, ‘I don’t need to have any face, I’ve done nothing that I’m ashamed of.’
Thrusting open his back door, Joe cried to the startled Hannah, ‘Get her up!’
After one bewildered glance towards John, Hannah went into the bedroom, and in a few minutes returned, pushing Nancy, half awake, before her.
Nancy had a coat about her shoulders, and her long, thick legs stuck out, like mottled props, below her short nightgown. Her feet were bare and not very clean, and the whole picture of her was revolting to John . . . That anyone should imagine he could touch a thing like this! The thought made him angry, and momentarily banished his fear. He confronted Nancy.
‘Look, Nancy. Have I ever taken you up the country?’
Still only half awake, she blinked at him.
‘Have I?’ he persisted.
‘No, John.’
John cast a quick glance at Joe.
‘Now,’ he went on, ‘have I ever given you money?’
She blinked again. She was a child once more; her newfound self was lost in bewilderment and sleep. ‘Yes,’ she answered simply.
Joe scraped his feet on the floor as John said, ‘Listen carefully now. When did I give you the money?’
She thought a while, then said, ‘Up Simonside.’
They all stood silent. Simonside was the country. It was the place for lovers and courting. Hannah drew in her breath, and Joe bit out, ‘Want to know any more?’
‘Yes. How much did I give you?’ John bent towards Nancy.
‘Threepence.’
‘And what did I give it to you for?’
‘For being a good girl.’
Joe snorted and John turned on him. ‘I know the night I gave it to her. I met her crying under the arches. Annie had left her in the market and she hadn’t her tram fare. She was afraid to stand outside the bar, and I put her on the tram, and’—the face of Bella Bradley peering at him came back to John—‘Bella Bradley was on that tram. It was her who put this into your head.’
‘I’ve no use for that ’un,’ Joe said, indicating Bella with a lift of his eyes towards the ceiling, ‘but she said she saw you coming down the Simonside bank with her.’
‘How the hell could she,’ burst out John, ‘if she was in the tram and it black dark!’
Joe had no answer to this. He turned from John to Nancy, his look indicating his detestation. Then he flung a question at her that made Hannah cry out and John wince.
Nancy stared back at her father, unmoved by the question itself. She was wide awake now, and she wriggled and flung her head to the side with a new defiance. As Joe, all restraint gone, went to hit her, she screamed and jumped aside like a grotesque animal.
Hannah caught her husband’s arm, crying, ‘Leave her be, man!’
Then Joe, Hannah and John were struck speechless, for Nancy, standing in the corner, her coat lying at her feet, her long neck thrust forward, was yelling at Joe: ‘Leave me alone . . . see, you! You hit me if you dare, see! I’m gonna have a bairn, I am, an’ be married . . . Yes, I am. I’m gonna be married when the bairn’s born I am.’ She tugged her tight nightgown back and forward around her hips, then turned her face towards John: ‘Aren’t I, John?’
John stood gazing at her; he was dumb and sick. Had she remained the half imbecile child he could have dealt with her, but this new Nancy, full of craft and cunning, filled him with horror. When she came boldly towards him, her hand outstretched, he yelled at her, ‘Take your hands off me!’ and like someone possessed, he rushed from the house and started to run, with Joe’s voice bellowing after him, ‘You won’t get off with it like that!’