As soon as the door closed Joyce abandoned her frozen posture and came to sit by the bed. “And now, what was all that about?”
Jack was still sitting up. He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. It’s got me beat, I tell you, Joycie. My brain’s going round and round like a bloody old gramophone record. Only I’m blowed if I know what it’s playing. Kate and Mick! Our Kate! I can’t — why, she was a bloody angel!”
“She was an old trot, by the sound of it.”
“Joycie!” He leaned back. “Oh, I don’t know! It don’t sound like the same woman.”
“Well, it was. The facts speak, don’t they?”
“Oh!” Lying back, he pressed his face wearily against the pillow. “I wish I could make head or tail of it. I could bloody cry! You wouldn’t talk like that if you knew.”
“Knew what? I fancy it’s my right to know, after these last few weeks.”
“Oh!” He shut his eyes. “Don’t start on that now! I wish I could tell you. I don’t know where to begin. I tell you, Joycie, I’m in the dark myself. Old Nance was going to tell me. I thought I knew them. Kate, Rosie, I thought they were like my own family. It’s as if all my life has only been a bloody dream. You open your eyes, and everything’s different, and you don’t know where you are.”
“Well, you’d better find out. Or I might not be there when you do wake up. Just for a start, what’s all this about Kate and Barmy?”
“Ah, nothing much.”
She looked at him sternly. “All right, have it your own way. If you won’t trust me you can start looking for someone that suits you better.”
He sat up in alarm. “Here, hold on, girl! Well, they — you know! — they had a sort of carry-on.”
“Those two? Ugh!”
Jack’s heart sank. He dared not argue.
“And Mick as well,” she went on, “according to him. You can see where the daughter got it from. Nice lot you’ve been brought up with, I must say.”
“Oh,” he protested miserably, “you don’t understand.”
“Don’t I? Then here’s your chance to educate me.”
He pondered, wondering how to defend what he had cherished without antagonising Joyce. “It was a good home. I don’t care what you say.” He laid his bandaged hand on her arm. “Tell you the truth, I don’t understand, either. What’s good and what’s bad? I mean, you can’t say.”
“I can.”
“Well,” he said in an obstinate undertone, “you know more than I do.”
Her look was scornful. “Then you’d better learn if you want to cut any ice with me.”
“How d’you mean?”
“Work it out for yourself, genius.”
She left him to his thoughts. Her unrelenting attitude had increased his mental confusion, but to his surprise he discovered that he was more comforted than dismayed by her demand for unconditional surrender. The sight of her sitting by his side, upright and vigilant as a schoolmistress, confirmed the flash of recognition he had felt earlier in the day, when she had staggered him with her blind outburst of violence. For the first time he saw in her a superior strength,which offered shelter to him from a bewildering world. He saw anew the stupid, chattering, heavy-fleshed girl who had hung obediently on his arm. For the first time he felt in her presence those impulses of mystification, fear and respect that what he called ‘real’ women had sometimes aroused in him; she was not to be patronised; she was no animated household furnishing to be bought with a marriage licence; but an independent, self-willed being, full of the passion and promise he had vainly sought in others, to be courted with care and anxiety lest he might lose her. Today he had seen the womanly flame in her. He said, “It is all right, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Us two.”
She pouted, and let a few seconds elapse before she said, “I’ll get you your hot milk. It’s time you got some sleep. You’ve talked too much already. I shouldn’t have left you.” She spoke gently, but the hand that she laid on his forehead was cool, with no hint of fondness in its touch. “Your skin’s as hot as fire. It’s what they call the reaction. Ah!” The door had opened, and Mrs. Wakerell appeared with a tray. “I wondered where you’d got to with that milk.”
Mrs. Wakerell bustled into the room with the air of one about to take command. “And how’s the hero?” she trilled.
“Hero?” It was Joyce who answered. “Don’t give him ideas. Just because he burned his hands on the bonfire.”
“There’s a way to talk! You should have heard everyone while we were waiting for you to come back! They were all saying what a fine boy our Jackie was.”
Jack said, “I seem to remember it was ol’ Bernie done the most, and got the worst of it, too.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Wakerell, smiling broadly upon him and speaking in a horribly honeyed coo, “But you’re the one we’re interested in.” She inclined her head archly towards her daughter. “Aren’t we, Joycie?”
“Speak for yourself.”
“Well, hark at her!” Mrs. Wakerell gave Joyce a hurt incredulous look. “Haven’t you two made it up yet?”
“Never you mind. You’ll find out in God’s good time.”
“You’re a saucy one these days, and no mistake.” Mrs. Wakerell spun her great bulk round to face Jack and threw up her hands in a gossip’s gesture of relish. “What do you think about poor Barmy Naughton? Terrible! They say he must have suffered agonies.” Her voice rose greedily. “Mr. Cogger saw him when the firemen lifted him out. He says it was the most horrible sight he’s ever seen. Says he’ll never forget it to his dying day. The body was all shrunk, like a dwarf. And in that short while! Isn’t it a marvel? And he says you couldn’t tell clothes from skin, just all black and rough, like blistered paint.”
“Shut up, mother!”
“And no face you could see, and no hair on the head. Just a shrivelled little black lump. And the smell! Well, I was fifty yards off, and I felt sick!”
“Mother, I told you to shut up. Haven’t you got any sense? Can’t you see he’s all on edge still, and feverish? Do you want to give him nightmares? Out you go, now, and let him sleep.”
“Well!” Mrs. Wakerell let herself be ushered to the door, looking annoyed and bewildered at her inability to disobey her daughter. “I’m sure I don’t need advice from you before I say a few kind words to an invalid. You’re getting above yourself.” She made a last stand in the doorway. “Miss High-and-Mighty, you are! You weren’t so high-and-mighty an hour or two ago.” She craned her head to call to Jack, past Joyce. “You should have seen her, Jackie! Charlie Green come running past us, he was shouting, ‘Get the p’lice, Jackie Agass ’as burned ’isself to death!’ My Joycie here, she lets out a scream like a pig with its throat cut. White as a sheet she goes. She runs off, her dad behind her, she’s crying, ‘Oh, Jackie, Jackie, where are you?’ People get in the way, she says, ‘Where’s my Jackie? Where is he?’ Tears streaming down her face. And then she sees you, sitting on the ground there — don’t you shut the door on me, my girl, till I’ve had my say — and she catches hold of her father’s arm, fit to fall down in a faint she is, and she says out loud, ‘Oh, thank the blessed Lord Almighty!’ He wipes her eyes and she gets her breath back, then she says, ‘Why doesn’t someone give him a cup of water?’ And someone passes her one, and she walks up to you and gives it to you as if she’d never shed a tear in her life.”
With a last push Joyce managed to shut the door on her mother. She stood with her head bowed, her face scarlet. She said, “Your milk’s getting cold.” She crushed the sedative tablets in a spoon and emptied the powder into the milk. “Here —” Her attitude was shamed and surly “— Drink this up and go to sleep.”
Jack was smiling up at her.
“What you grinning at?”
“You.”
“Drink your milk.”
“How can I?” He held up his hands. “Can’t hold the glass.”
She put the glass to his lips. “There, drink! And don’t dribble.” Her voice was brusque. “What a big baby you are! Biggest baby I’ve ever seen!”
He sipped, fixing a steadfast grin upon her and watching the embarrassment gather in her hot face. He took his time. She snapped, “Hurry up!” He went on grinning at her and sipping slowly. At last she turned her head, to look directly and furiously at him. She said, in a strained, high voice, “Well?”
“Well?”
She held his gaze for several seconds. Her face remained pinched, angry and flushed. “Well, so you’ve discovered I’m not made of stone. Have a good laugh at that if you like!”
“Who’s laughing? Give us a kiss.”
“Oh, go away.” She went to put his empty glass on the mantelpiece. “Go to sleep now. I can’t stay up all night.”
“Come on, give us a kiss and I’ll go to sleep.”
She crossed the room again and seated herself in the wickerwork armchair by the window. “Big baby! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“Ah, come on, girl!”
She did not answer. She stretched her legs, lay back and shut her eyes. Jack listened to her breathing, long and fierce, and remained silent so that she might have time to relax emotionally. The sedative was working, and he felt sleep gathering in him. “Why don’t you go to bed?” he asked.
She opened her eyes and turned her head. Her colour was normal again; her lips were still compressed; but her face moved in a slight smile, faintly friendly, faintly triumphant. “When you’re asleep,” she replied. “Leave me alone, now. I’m thinking.”
Jack closed his eyes contentedly and fell asleep. He slept till eleven o’clock the next morning and woke up feeling radiant. It was only the throbbing of his bandaged hands that reminded him of the events of the night before. He was buoyant with relief and well-being. A vague puzzlement awoke in him when he recalled, after a few minutes, Mick’s parting words; but, although he asked himself many questions, he was unable to feel deeply concerned. Nor was he able to muster up an appropriately heavy grief at Barmy’s death; despite all the efforts of his conscience, Barmy kept vanishing from his thoughts. He heard noises at the street door from time to time, the trampling of footsteps in the hall and the murmur of voices in the parlour below.
Joyce came in. Usually on Sunday mornings she shuffled about in her dressing gown, unwashed and unkempt. This morning she wore a smart beige frock, her hair was neat and gleaming, and she did not wear her glasses. “You awake?” she asked, in a vigorous, unemotional voice. “Did you sleep all right? How are your hands? Half the street’s been calling to ask about you. Sit up and I’ll bring your breakfast.”
She returned in a few minutes with a tray. “Here you are, two eggs and two rashers. That’s my ration you’re getting, so look grateful.” Jack waited, like a baby, to be fed. “None of that nonsense,” she commanded, “you’re not as helpless as all that. Your fingers aren’t bandaged. You can use a knife and fork. Get weaving!” While Jack ate, she pulled the curtains apart, opened the windows wide and tidied the room. “There! The worst thing out is a stuffy room in the morning. More tea?”
She brought a bowl and a jug of hot water. “You don’t want to wash in the scullery this morning. Can you get up all right?” He climbed stiffly out of bed. “You can shave yourself. Then I’ll wash your face. Save you getting your bandage wet. Just suit you, won’t it, mummy’s pet, having your face washed for you?” She washed him and rubbed the towel mercilessly over his face. Through the folds of the towel he spoke for the first time since he had greeted her on her entry. “Here, I haven’t had that kiss yet.”
“Wipe your ears out.”
“Don’t gi’ me that nursemaid lark.” He put his bandaged paws round her waist and hugged her to him. “Come on.”
She returned his embrace, but she only offered a cool cheek to his mouth, like a mother humouring a child.
“Satisfied?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Well, you’ll have to be for now. Here’s the comb. Your hair’s sticking up like the Mad Professor’s.”
He pulled at his hair with the comb. “All merry and bright again, eh?”
“I haven’t been in mourning that I know of.”
“Nah, I mean — us like this again. It’s all right, ain’ it?”
Her voice remained firm, but there was a hint of teasing in it. “You don’t see me swooning for joy.”
“Don’t give a bloke much encouragement, do you?”
“I’ve given you my eggs and bacon, and that’s more than you deserve.”
“Joycie, can I put the banns up next week?”
“It’s a free country, isn’t it?” Her eyebrows were raised in disdain, but under the lashes amusement glimmered in her eyes.
“Ah, don’t muck about.”
“Then don’t ask silly questions, with only four weeks to go.”
“All right, girl. Nod’s as good as a wink, eh? Look, Joycie, now that you are listening, for a change, I’ll say it again — it never meant nothing, between me and Rose. I mean, I can’t explain exactly what it was, but it was all over and done with before you found out. It is finished, honest it is.”
“It had better be.”
“I never give her that money. I’d forgot all about the cheque. She took advantage.”
“Well, no-one else ever will. I promise you that. Not while I’m breathing.”
“I’ll never see her again, I swear.”
“Say you don’t know.”
“What you mean?”
“You might see her sooner than you think.”
“Who says?”
“I do. She happens to be in the parlour now, having a cup of tea. Mick’s brought her.”
Jack put the brush and comb down. “Oh, Gawd! Here, I can’t see her. I don’t want to. Tell her to buzz off.”
“I’ve told her you’re coming downstairs. So get your clothes on.”
“But I don’t —”
“Yes, you do. There’s a bit more explaining to be done round here before I’m satisfied.”
“Will you come down with us?”
“Too true I will.” She sat on the edge of the bed and watched placidly while he dressed. “Ready? By the right, quick march!” She followed him downstairs.
Jack led the way into the parlour, said, “Good morning,” to Mick, turned an unhappy grin on Rose and greeted her with a vague ah-ha-ing sound in the roof of his mouth.
Rose sat in the armchair by the fireplace, holding her handbag on her lap, leaning forward slightly, her expression composed and disdainful as if, whatever might follow, she had no intention of becoming interested. When she looked at Joyce it was with a faint, patronising smile. Joyce in return, studied Rose in a calm, unafraid manner, her face as blank of either friendship or hostility as if she were gazing through a shop window. Rose leaned back, put her handbag down on the floor and allowed herself to sink into a languid pose, with her head resting to one side and one hand dangling over the armrest of the chair. Joyce sat down beside Jack, watching him sidelong like an animal’s keeper. Jack uttered a preparatory grunt, but Mick spoke first.
“How are you feeling this morning?”
“All right.” A hollowness in Jack’s voice showed that his thoughts and his speech were following separate tracks.
“You’re looking better. I rang the hospital. Bernie’s had a quiet night.” He smiled grimly. “That’s more than I’ve had. Do you feel well enough to stand a bit of straight talking?”
Joyce said, “He does.”
“Good! It’s my belief that the time has come for it. This young lady thinks so too.”
Rose directed a frown of contradiction at him. “Or perhaps I should admit,” he added, “that we had a difference of opinion on the subject. Quite a long one. It lasted from eleven o’clock last night till two o’clock this morning. However, I made it clear that I was going to hold this little conference whether or no, and my daughter decided that she might as well come along — to hold, as you might say, a watching brief on her own behalf. You’ll see why in a little while. First of all, let’s get one thing out of the way.” He handed Jack a slip of paper.
Jack looked at it, saw that it was a cheque for a hundred pounds and said to Rose, “I don’t want your bloody money.”
Rose glanced idly at him and turned her head towards her father again.
Mick said, “It’s not her bloody money. It’s mine. Look at the signature.”
Joyce interjected, “I’ll have that.” She took the cheque from Jack, folded it and held it in her lap, between her fingertips. “Thank you, Mick.” She did not favour Jack with even a glance of explanation, and Jack made no motion of protest.
“You might like to know,” Mick said, “that it wasn’t for her own benefit that she helped herself to your money.”
“Does it matter?” Rose murmured.
“Although whether you’ll think any better of her when you know where it did go, I can’t say.” Mick rose, walked to the window, looked out at the street for a few moments and turned suddenly to face them. “Jack, I’ll be frank with you. I don’t care a hang what sort of shenanigans you get mixed up in. I don’t give a damn what you know or what you don’t know. But there’s one thing I do care about — and that’s Kate. That woman loved you as a son. I want you to know her as I know her, and to remember her as I do. I’ll not have you talking about her the way you did last night. That’s why I’ve come here this morning.” He walked towards Jack and looked down at him like a prosecutor. “Jack, I wonder how much you know about people? How you judge them? Or whether you’re able to judge them at all? I wonder if you’ve learned that the only way to judge people is by balancing what they give against what they take? Kate gave a thousand times more than she took. You’ve good cause to know that, of all people, and to be grateful for it.” He had returned to the window, and looked out as he talked. “I’ll tell you about Kate. And I won’t leave anything out. You’d have less chance of understanding if I did. I wasn’t the first man she went with besides her husband. Not by a long chalk. She married him in nineteen-twelve. They weren’t a good match. He was a quiet, stay-at-home chap, didn’t notice she was there most of the time. She — well, you can imagine what she was like at twenty. And there she was, stuck in his kitchen, day and night. No more sing-songs up The Lamb, no more dancing, no more evenings up in the gallery at Collins’, no more swings and roundabouts on Hampstead Heath — he didn’t care tuppence for ’em, and he didn’t see why she should. She had his mother glaring at her all the time like an old witch. Scrubbing and slaving, and three kids in a row. That was her life with him.
“Mind you, she looked after him all right. She was faithful. She was fond of him. She kept his house spotless. She was as meek and mild as he could wish. She got downhearted sometimes, she’d long for a bit of life, but she wouldn’t let herself brood over it, not while there was housework to keep her occupied. In nineteen-fifteen he joined up, and the loneliness, even with the kids, just about finished her. She stuck it for a year; then she went off the deep end. He was in France, she was on war work, so his mother couldn’t keep an eye on her. I came into her life, as they say, in ’seventeen — on a ten-day leave — but I wasn’t the only one, and she made no bones about it. We never took each other seriously. It was just what she called a lark. And that’s how it was with her — till he came home in nineteen-eighteen, with his legs paralysed.
“She could have tried to shove him off into a hospital, or a home, or one of those places. She wouldn’t. She knew he only had a few years, and she said he had a right to spend them in his own home. After he came back she didn’t look at another man. She nursed him like a baby. She pushed him about in his wheelchair. She was sweet and loving to him. She spent half her time slaving for him and the kids, and the other half out charring to bring in a bit of extra money. Day and night she was at it. She was wearing herself out. She said to me once, ‘I deserve it, Mick, God forgive me! It’s the least I can do.’ For a year she was like that. She was cleaning for me at The Lamb. She wouldn’t let me come near her. She went like stone if I tried to touch her. It says something if I tell you that even I gave up trying. Then, one evening, she’d been dusting my parlour, I was doing my accounts at the desk, taking no notice of her, and she said, ‘Goodnight, Mick.’ “Goodnight,” says I, not even turning round. I went on writing. Something seemed wrong, I couldn’t tell what it was. Then I realised, I hadn’t heard her go. I turned round. There she was sitting on the edge of the sofa, looking at me, a little bit scared, a little bit defiant. I stood up. She said, ‘That’s the way it is, Mick,’ and she came across the room to me.
“A year later Tony was born, the boy, the one that died the year Kate first saw you. Nobody knew what was going on, except her husband, and he — it was a funny thing with him — he turned a blind eye to it. He used to talk to her as kindly as ever. When she put her coat on of an evening and said she was going to slip out for a bit, he’d just give her a sad sort of smile and go back to his reading.
“Me? I’ve had a few in my time, but there’s not one of them I’ve ever lost my head over — except for her. I went mad over that woman. I worshipped her. I wanted to rave when she was out of my sight. I begged her to leave him. I offered her money, everything she could wish for. She used to shut her mouth, and shake her head, and not say a word. And she went on looking after him. Well, that was the way we carried on. I couldn’t look at another woman. She had no eyes for any other man. We’d both found the one we wanted. And still she wouldn’t leave him.
“Then he began to change. I think it was the pain. He was suffering agonies. He knew he hadn’t long, and his mind began to go. You know, they get full of despair, jealousy, self-pity. They think they’re being ill-treated if they’re not coddled day and night. They imagine everyone’s trying to hurry them into their graves. You try to pity them, but it gets harder and harder to keep your patience. She stood for it. She never answered back. He used to get in a frenzy, drive himself mad trying to provoke her. She’d just stand there like a statue. He used to order her about — get this, get that, no, not this, take this back, take that back, hurry up, shut up, clear out. He’d sit brooding in his chair for hours, glaring at her, thinking up every dirty, humiliating demand he could try her with. She used to obey him without a word. He’d wet himself, like a baby, in his chair, just to see her kneeling and cleaning up. The worse his health got, the worse he tormented her. He’d jeer at her, call her all the filthiest names he could think of. He’d hit her when she came near enough, catch hold of her and pinch her and twist her arms. If I tried to say anything when I saw the bruises she’d put her hand over my mouth. I wanted to murder him. She begged me to pity him. She said, ‘Think what he’s suffering,’ and there were tears in her eyes. And they talk about the holy saints!
“He was always threatening to show her up in front of the neighbours, but he never did. I suppose he was ashamed to admit he wasn’t a man any more. He used to swear he’d divorce her. I wish to God he had! He needed her too much to let her go — or perhaps he wanted to go on punishing her. She said he loved her right up to the end. She said that was why he tortured her. Maybe — I don’t know! Anyway, even when Rose was born in nineteen twenty-two, he didn’t do anything about it. He died a little over a year later.”
Jack fidgeted, and was glad that he did not have to meet Mick’s eyes. “What about the children? Didn’t they catch on?”
The languid insolence had gone out of Rose’s attitude while her father was talking. She looked sombre and subdued. She said quietly, “Nancy knew.”
“Nancy was the only one that ever knew,” Mick said. “He used to leave Kate alone when the boys were there. I don’t know why. She said he was afraid of losing their sympathy by letting them see him ill-treat her. Anyway, they were very young and they were out in the street most of the time. Nancy wasn’t. She lived in the kitchen with her mother. Poor kiddie, she was fat as a little pig even at that time. She was very shy and sensitive, and she was afraid to play in the street. She got over it later, but at that age she lived in Kate’s arms. She must have been terrified by what she heard, but she couldn’t have understood very much of it. It wasn’t till later on — oh, three or four years after, when she was about fourteen — that Kate told her everything. They were very close together, those two. More like sisters than mother and daughter. It was a great comfort to Kate, having someone she could talk to like that, and have a bit of a cry with on the quiet, sometimes.”
“And Rose,” Jack said. He looked at her. “I suppose you knew, too, later on.” Rose shook her head.
“Rose never knew a thing,” Mick said. “I wanted her to. I used to tell Kate, ‘She’s my only daughter, and I want her to know it.’ ‘No,’ Kate used to say, ‘I’ve brought them up as his children, and I’ve taught them to respect his memory. I’m not going to undo that.’ Do you know when Rose found out? The night her mother died. She collapsed in the street when she heard the news, and I took her back to The Lamb, and that night I told her.” He smiled briefly at his daughter. “Not that it did me much good. I wanted her to come and live with me, but she wouldn’t hear of it. ‘I shall live my own life,’ she said. So I’ve had to content myself with renting a flat for her and giving her an allowance, and having a friendly evening with her now and again. Well, that’s something, I suppose. At least she knows who I am.”
Joyce was the only one who was not visibly under the spell of Mick’s story. She asked, in an unrelenting voice, “Why didn’t you and Kate get married?”
“I’m a married man, Joyce, and a Catholic. My wife left me many years ago — not without reason, to do her justice. And for a lifetime since, she’s had the pleasure of combining religion and revenge. I asked her a hundred times but she wouldn’t divorce me. I went to lawyers galore, but they couldn’t help. I offered her well nigh every penny I had. She wouldn’t listen.
“And without we were married, Kate wouldn’t come to live with me. She wouldn’t hear of taking money from me, except for the kids when she wanted to buy them some clothes or take them away on a holiday. She wouldn’t even give up scrubbing floors for a living till the boys were old enough to leave school and start bringing home wages. Later on she let me treat her a bit more generously: I gave her a present now and again. I helped her out when she was short. In nineteen thirty-nine we went away for a holiday together, for the first time. But she wouldn’t take a regular allowance from me. She wouldn’t let me buy her a nice little house. She wouldn’t move in with me. It was the kids she was thinking of. ‘Say the word, Mick,’ she said, “and I’ll walk naked in the Lord Mayor’s Show. But I’m not going to let my children see their mother living in sin. And I’m not going to give the neighbours a chance to sneer at them because of me. I’d rather leave my children a good name than anything else in the world.’ So for twenty years we went on seeing each other on the quiet, like a couple of criminals. That woman was made to share a home with a chap like me. She’d have been set free to live. She’d have had all the good times she was born for. But she turned her back on it, because she wanted to bring her children up respectable. Funny, isn’t it? You wouldn’t think a woman like that would have feared convention. But there you are!”
Jack was silent. A host of fragmentary and hitherto unexplained memories were coming together in his mind like jigsaw pieces: Mick coming to the Orphanage with Kate: Mick arranging for Jack’s adoption: Mick securing Jack an apprenticeship: the photograph of the child Tony on Mick’s mantelpiece: Kate on holiday in nineteen thirty-nine and Mick “out of town on business”: Kate penniless but always finding money for the children’s pleasures and necessities, for Chris’s illness and for Chris’s grave: Kate’s mysterious appearance, late on one remembered Spring night, in the street near the side door of The Lamb: Gran Hogarth’s outbursts and Nancy’s silences. All these and a hundred other clues to the past had been there in his memory, but his memory had preferred to ignore them, and to content itself with the shimmering illusions he had demanded from it as a refuge from the harsh present. He looked at Rose with a shamed smile. “And I thought you was his fancy bit!”
“No.” There was no indulgence in her voice. “And I’m nobody else’s fancy bit, either.”
Joyce uttered a low, “Ha!” Rose gave her a negligent glance. Joyce glared back.
“Well, I don’t know,” Jack said, with a stupid laugh. “I can believe anything now. After today I reckon black’s white, an’ the Orient’s a cert for Wembley.”
They waited for Rose to speak, but she remained silent, looking at her father.
“She thinks you can’t be trusted,” Mick said. “I say you can. Am I right? Will you promise that nothing that’s said in here this morning will go any further?”
Jack stared. “Suits me.” Mick looked interrogatively at Joyce. She nodded scornfully.
“My daughter,” Mick said, “is a revolutionary.” He rolled the V with savage exaggeration. “A what?” Jack exclaimed.
“A revolutionary. A Red. An enemy of the state. Or should I say —” his smile to Rose was embittered “— a saviour of the people?”
Rose smiled faintly. Joyce laughed and said, “I’m not surprised.”
“Well, I’ll be —!” Jack’s voice cracked into a bleat of incredulity. “What for?”
Rose sat smiling and tapping the points of her shoes together. “Don’t start her off on that,” Mick said. “She’s told me often enough, and if she tells me a hundred times more I’ll still think she’s crazy.”
“Anyway!” Jack was grimacing with the effort to understand. “What’s all the hush-hush about? Old Prawn’s a Bolshie, and a few others round here, and they don’t hide it.”
“That’s different,” Rose said. “My work is confidential. I can’t talk about it.”
“You’d better,” Mick said, “or he’ll think you’re after burning down Buckingham Palace.”
Rose frowned down at her shoes and went on tapping them together. “Very well!” She looked up. “Many of our people work for the Government. Scientists. Senior Civil Servants. If they’re found out they lose their jobs. They have to remain undercover members. They can’t belong to Party branches, where we know that police agents are active. We can’t even bring them together in groups of their own. It would only need one spy or informer among them and they’d all be identified. So I keep in touch with each of them, separately. I meet them, discuss their problems with them, put them in touch with others where it’s essential, help them to plan their work, and above all — since they’re mostly well off — I collect all the money I can from them for the Party funds. Some of them make very big sacrifices. That’s all there is to it. There’s nothing illegal about it. I don’t ask them to tell me anything they shouldn’t. But if I became known for what I am, the police would only have to shadow me and I’d lead them to every one of our people in turn.”
“Well, strike a light!” Jack muttered. “So that’s why you’re always going about with chaps. And asking them for money.”
“I’m glad the penny’s dropped.”
“You mean —?” Jack was still struggling to understand. “You ain’t —?”
“I don’t live like a nun, if that’s what you mean —”
Joyce whispered very audibly to Jack, “I don’t doubt that.”
“— and I’ve no intention of sobbing out the sad story of my life to you. But if you’re wondering whether I’m a gold-digging glamour girl, the answer is no.”
Jack became belligerent. “Then what about my money?”
“Oh, that?” She seemed quite unconcerned. “You’ve had it back. Aren’t you satisfied?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, you’ll have to be, won’t you?”
Mick seated himself on the arm of a chair and lit a cigarette. The flare of the match reflected in his eyes, giving them a momentary flare of fierce intentness. “Can’t you guess? My noble daughter did a noble deed. Or so her comrades would say. A fine example of revolutionary firmness and initiative. Have I got the lingo right? She was told to raise four hundred pounds in a hurry. For the Good Cause. She went round to all her — what is it you call them, contacts? — and she beat the daylight out of them. How much did you tell me you’d got from them? A hundred and ninety pounds? Nice work! She tipped her own bank balance into the kitty, and sold a wristwatch I’d given her for a birthday present. No false sentiment about my daughter, you see. And she was still a hundred pounds short. Then — hard luck on you — she came across your blank cheque in her handbag. Ah, an inspiration! What more could a resourceful revolutionary want? No flinching! No silly softness! No cowardice. No bourgeois scruples! What is it they’re always telling you? Be hard! Be decisive! Be audacious! So she fills it in and cashes it.”
Rose stood up and smoothed her costume down. “I can’t stay here all day. Well?” She addressed Jack. “What are you looking at me like that for?” Her voice was cool and amused. “I did nothing I hadn’t a right to. You gave me it. I used it. What’s wrong with that? Did you want a voice in the way I spent it? Was I supposed to sleep with you a certain number of times in return? You didn’t say so. I can’t remember any agreement being made.” She turned to her father. “Are you ready?”
“You’re a hard one,” Jack said. “Haven’t you got any shame?”
“On the contrary.” She spoke without defiance. Her expression was candid and pitying. “I feel very proud of my contribution. I have no doubt that I’m in the right. I know that whatever I do is for the good of all of you. It doesn’t disturb me in the least if I’m misunderstood sometimes. Why should it? Parents are misunderstood by their children.”
“It’s no use,” Mick said. “Right and wrong don’t mean the same to her as they do to us. Anyway, Jack, I’m trusting you to keep your mouth shut. It’s best that nothing should get out. The more people know about Rose, the more they’ll ask about me. And the more they know about me, the more they’ll know about Kate. God knows, I don’t think she had anything to hide, but she thought different, and we’ve got to respect her wishes. It’s her memory we’ve got to protect. All right?”
“All right, Mick.”
Joyce opened the door. “Well, if you must go.”
Rose flashed a gay and guileless smile at Jack. “Yes, we must run. No ill feelings, Jack?”
Jack flushed, checked an impulse to glance at Joyce and mumbled, “No ill feelings.”
There was an interchange of farewells. Joyce looked calmly past Rose and said, “Bye-bye, Mick.”
Jack sat in a daze while Joyce ushered the visitors out. He felt no hostility for Rose. Her words and behaviour had drained him of all emotion and removed her far beyond his understanding. Even when she had been sitting face-to-face with him, she had not aroused any intensity of feeling in him. It was the first time that this had been the case. Where was the girl, ardent, impulsive, yet as fresh as petals, whose spirit was as elusive as a butterfly’s dance? The cast of the face was the same, the profile was the same, the eyes were as brilliant. Whoever had known the girl would recognize the woman. But the brightness in the eyes was of a changed quality. It was not a radiance that softened but an intensity that made the surrounding features seem firmer and more determined. The tenderness and promise of unmoulded youth were lost. He was sad, for he also remembered himself as he had been, his body slimmer and without the lumpy muscles with which years of work and war had thickened it, his forehead unlined, his hair thicker, more lustrous and more rebellious, the skin of his face less florid and youthfully soft, without its present enamelled hardness. He even recalled, in painful glimpses, how he had looked at her, his face uplifted and shining with a daft and pathetic innocence. And Chris had been alive, and Alf had been handsome, and Kate had been alive. The mysterious agony of change, of irredeemable time, weighed upon him.
Rose was still beautiful in his eyes, but now she had no more impact upon him than a lovely image on a cinema screen. She was no longer clad in illusion. The magic of remembered youth had been stripped from her. She was no longer the faery being, always just beyond his reach, whom he had gazed after as the embodiment of all the poetry that real life lacked. She had gone out of his world, taking his own youth with her, and he did not gaze after her.
Joyce came back into the room. “Let’s have some fresh air in the room.”
Her violent and determined movements as she dragged the window open brought a flash of memory to him, poignant but ridiculous, of Rose making the same gesture against him in her bedroom, and he smiled vaguely.
“Her sort of people,” Joyce said, “they make me sick to the stomach.”
He looked at her in wonderment, but he did not protest.