Part 8

Alice was left alone in the crowd outside clutching the baby nervously in her arms. She could not have borne to see Abner fight. All she could do was to wait patiently outside and listen in agony for any sounds within. She could hear very little but the buzz of conversation. Even when she crept round to the side of the tent and put her ear to the canvas the sounds that came to her were indistinct, unreal, and blurred by the nearer rumour of the multitude, the hiss of naphtha flares, the creaking of swing-boats, cracks of rifles, and above all the raucous blaring of the steam organs and the shriek of their whistles. If only she could have heard something she would have been happier. She could not bear to think of Abner’s white flesh being bruised, and yet, curiously enough, she was thrilled and proud of him. Her distaste for violence couldn’t get the better of her exultation in her man’s virility. She stood at the side of the tent tensely listening. A rocket screamed into the sky; there was a moment of relative silence from the crowd in which she thought she heard a sound of dull thuds mingled with another pattering noise. The rocket burst into a shower of gold amid a salvo of ‘Oh’s!’ The crowd, noisily streaming towards the ramparts, from which they could see the fireworks against a blacker sky, jostled her, passing between the boxing-booth and the next tent. Six rounds! It could not last much longer. Why had he left her so roughly? Why hadn’t he taken her with him? Of course you couldn’t take a baby into a boxing-booth—not even a black-country baby—but there was no reason why he should have pushed her aside like that. She wouldn’t forgive him that roughness in a hurry! But she knew that she would: she would forgive Abner anything as long as he did not disregard her. The crowd still streamed past her. Showers of starred rockets and tadpoles of fire were bursting above her in the velvet sky. A whole battery of maroons shook the ruins. He would be sorry to have missed the fireworks! If he were badly knocked about she still had some of Mrs Moseley’s ointment left—a fine thing for bruises or broken skin. That was the night, she remembered, when he had come home drunk: the night when, for a moment they had gazed into each other’s eyes. She knew how dangerous the emotion of pity was. A set-piece suddenly sputtered out of the darkness. Letters of fire began to form themselves. What would they say? GOD SAVE . . . ‘The king,’ of course. Little John began to cry, saying that he wanted to go to bed. ‘Yes, my precious!’ she crooned, ‘mammy’ll take you home.’ Six rounds. . . . She suddenly remembered how a young pitman at Mawne had once been killed in a boxing-booth by a knock-out blow on the chin. A knock-out blow . . . she remembered old Mr Higgins talking of it. But Abner was strong. Nothing of that kind could possibly happen to him. Even so, she couldn’t get the sinister picture of Budge Garside with his heavy jowl out of her head. He was such a deadly-looking customer! Suppose . . .

A sound of cheering came from inside the tent. She ran round to the front, wishing to goodness that John would hold his noise. The curtains opened. The negro came out with another signboard: ‘Just Commencing.’ People surged out of the tent laughing and talking together. A bold girl burst out laughing in the nigger’s face. Alice took hold of the sleeve of one of the men who came out alone and looked as if he were sober. ‘Tell us what’s happened?’ she gasped; but he only stared at her and shook his head and went on straight forward as if he had mistaken her motive for accosting him. The tent emptied. After a moment she saw Abner shaking hands with the giant in the door. He didn’t seem to notice her, and when he came down the wooden steps and she called his name he did not look pleased to see her. His lip was cut and his forehead still damp from a vigorous sponging. She took his arm; she wanted to show him how glad she was. He was too dazed to resent this familiarity, simply saying: ‘Come on out of this!’ In the gate of the courtyard he stopped. ‘Wait a jiff,’ he said, ‘You’d better take the two quid.’ He gave her the coins and then, suddenly realising the tiredness of her face in the lamplight, asked her to give him the kid. ‘I reckon this is a man’s job,’ he said with a deep laugh.

This time they caught their tram without difficulty. They spoke very little, and in whispers, for John had fallen asleep in his mother’s arms, and even if he had wanted to talk, Abner would have known better than to risk waking him. As a matter of fact he had taken a good deal of punishment from Garside’s left. On points he would have been thoroughly outmatched and nothing but his stubborn will had kept him on his feet until the end of the sixth round. The mild elation that had sustained him when he left the booth had now faded, and in its place he began to feel the effects of the terrific hammering that he had undergone. His lip was beginning to swell and his body felt cold in spite of the sultry weather. He dozed in the corner of the tram-car, and when they came to the terminus and Alice roused him by a touch on his sleeve, he felt it an unreasonable effort to pull himself together and carry the child up Mawne bank. The creature was still asleep and hung a dead weight on his shoulder. Rather than wake him when they reached Hackett’s Cottages Alice carried him upstairs and laid him still asleep in his cot.

When she came downstairs again she found Abner in the washhouse bathing his face in cold water. ‘Don’t do that, Abner,’ she said, ‘let me see to it proper.’ She took Mrs Moseley’s ointment and some strips of linen from the cupboard, but he wouldn’t let her touch him, saying that he was tired as a dog and would rather turn in. She gazed at him sorrowfully, knowing that she could not drive him and fearing to persuade. He rallied her weakly: ‘If you stand lookin’ at me like that yo’ll be late for the funeral,’ he said, and then, softening, ‘You look dead tired yourself. Put the light out and leave the door open.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve never done that. I shall wait up for him.’

‘Well, you women takes the biscuit!’ said Abner.

He left her there, and rolling up in his blankets soon fell asleep. It was not often that he dreamed, but on that night his dreams would not let him be. From the very moment that he first slept he seemed to be fighting, fighting with Budge Garside on a platform of creaking boards with a rope barrier round it, lit by hissing naphtha flares. Every moment he grew more exhausted; but he had to go on fighting in spite of the violent jabs of Garside’s fist over his heart. The crowd in the booth, whose faces could not be seen for tobacco smoke, were laughing at him, and this filled him with an angry determination to go through with it. The round seemed endless. He waited for the umpire’s bell to save him, but the umpire had vanished. And now he was fighting all three: Garside with his broad, shaggy chest, the small-headed negro, and the little Jew who skipped about like a flea. He hadn’t bargained to take on all three at once, but there was nobody to whom he could appeal, and so he had to go on boxing as well as he could in this hurricane of six fists. He thought of Alice and the baby whom he had left outside. If he were knocked out, as he surely must be in a moment, she would have to look to herself. That couldn’t be helped. Suddenly he heard her calling from outside the tent: ‘Abner . . . Abner!’ He tried to call back to her, just to show her that he was still keeping up, but no voice would come through his cut lips. Garside landed a terrific blow on the point of his chin. He woke. . . . He supposed he was awake. But the voice that he had heard in his dream still followed him. She was calling ‘Abner . . Abner!’ He tumbled out of bed, pulled on his trousers, and ran downstairs. The mild light of the kitchen dazzled him.

In the corner, beyond a pile of overturned furniture, he saw Alice cowering, and above her John Fellows. In the struggle which he had not heard his father had ripped her bodice and torn away the gilt brooch that Abner had given her. Now he had her at his mercy, holding her by the hair, shaking her from time to time like a terrier with a rat and making her scream with pain. Abner had never seen such terror in a human creature’s eyes. When she saw him she cried for his help. ‘Abner . . . Abner . . . make him give over. Tell him I done nothing!’

‘Abner,’ said John Fellows savagely. ‘Abner . . . there’s a bleedin’ side too much Abner in this ’ouse! You’ll get out of it quick, the pair of you.’

‘Loose her!’ Abner shouted.

‘Loose her?’ John Fellows laughed. ‘I reckon I’ve let her go too much as it is. Give me the slip, the two of you. Took her off into the woods, tickin’ and tannin’, you dirty devil! Give her joolry! Give your own mother joolry! An’ what happened when I was on my back in the hospital?’

‘Leave go of her!’ said Abner, coming nearer.

‘In the very bed you was born in,’ cried John Fellows. ‘Yo’re a fine bloody fossack! Out you go, the both of you! Joolry! Give me the slip, would you? No — fear! Gerrup, I say!’

He pulled Alice up from her knees. Her sobs rose to a scream. ‘John, you’m killing me!’

Abner took him by the arm.

‘Lay hands on your own father, would you? Take that, you . . . !’ He hit Abner full on his bruised mouth with all his strength. Alice, released, ran to the other side of the room and stood panting, her hands clutching at her torn bodice. The baby started crying upstairs.

Abner put his hand to his mouth. His lip was bleeding again. He pulled himself together. ‘You’re boozed,’ he said. ‘Get on upstairs!’ He tried to lead his father to the door, but John Fellows was not to be put off. ‘Boozed!’ he said, ‘and what would drive a man to booze worse nor a bad wife? No, yo’ don’t get out of it like that. What’ve you done to ’er?’

‘I never touched her,’ said Abner.

‘Never touch ’er, an’ give her joolry!’ Fellows scoffed. ‘Maybe I’m boozed, but I’m not too boozed to put you to rights.’ He launched a savage blow at Abner’s face, and encouraged by the fact that Abner did not return it, followed it up with another. Alice, crying ‘Oh!’ ran to the door. ‘Stay where yo’ are!’ Abner shouted. John Fellows closed with him, lashing out viciously. He had been something of a boxer in his day, and his attack was so violent that Abner found it difficult to defend himself. Fellows fought like a tiger cat, with boots and finger-nails and teeth. His bloodshot eyes were fixed on Abner’s throat. It was as if all the suppressed malice of seven years had been suddenly released. Then, suddenly, he dropped Abner and flew at the frightened Alice. Abner stopped him with a blow under the right ear. He crumpled up and fell on the floor like a sack.

‘Abner . . . you’ve done him in!’ Alice cried.

He fell to his knees and listened for his father’s heart. The impulse still fluttered there. ‘No . . . he’s only stunned. I reckon he’ll wake up sober,’ he said. Alice stood trembling and sobbing in short gasps: a strange, mechanical noise. Abner remained bent over his father’s body in silence.

‘Johnnie’s crying . . . bless his little ’eart!’ she said. He took no notice of her. ‘Put the rug over ’im. Leave him here till ’e comes to.’

‘Abner, ’e spoke something awful! ’E said you’n me had been going together while he was away. ’E took up this brooch. . . . A thing like that!’

‘I don’t want to ’ear what he said.’

‘’E said our John wasn’t his child . . . said I’d always been rotten bad. . .’

John Fellows gave a groan.

‘Hark, ’e’s coming round,’ said Abner.

‘An’ I never done nothing! . . . nothing!’

‘You’d better look to the babby.’

‘Poor lamb! Nothing, I never done, Abner . . .’

‘I know you done nothing. You don’t take no notice what a man says when ’e’s boozed. You look to the kid, while I get my clothes on.’

‘Yo’ bain’t goin’ to dress?’ She picked up the alarm clock that Fellows had knocked down from the mantelpiece. It was still going, with a harsh metallic click. ‘It’s not two o’clock yet.’

But he had gone. Left alone she glanced fearfully at the form of her husband. For a moment he lay quite still. Then he shuddered, rolled over and began to snore. The baby was still wailing upstairs. If only John Fellows had been dead! But that would have been murder. What was Abner doing? She could not live without Abner. She went upstairs to his room and tapped at the door. Candlelight glinted through cracks in the boards. He answered angrily, she thought, but she came in.

‘What are you doing now?’ she whispered.

‘Putting two-three things together.’

‘What’s up now?’

‘I’m off out of this.’

‘Going?’ she cried. ‘Abner . . . you can’t go and leave me like this. Not with him!’

He laughed. ‘I can’t take you along with me. Not likely!’ He went on pulling out clothes from his wooden box. She broke down altogether.

‘Abner . . . Abner, don’t go and leave me. I can’t . . . I can’t . . .’ He put on his scarf. ‘Abner, only stay along with us for a bit. . .’

‘I’ve stayed too long as it is.’

She tried to put her arms round his neck, but he pushed her away. ‘It’s lucky I’ve got a bit of money put by for a start,’ he said, fumbling in the mattress for his stocking. ‘I’ll give you what I can spare.’

Then suddenly he swore violently. He had found the stocking, but it was empty. He turned furiously on Alice: ‘You devil, you took it!’

She fell at his feet, imploring him to believe that she knew nothing about it. ‘I’ve never told you a lie, Abner,’ she said.

His rage made him unreasonable. ‘You’re like the rest on ’em! Twenty pounds! What have you done with it?’

‘I swear I never seen a penny of it, Abner. It must be there. Look again.’

He had ripped the bed to pieces, but there was no money. Suddenly light dawned on them both. They had found the explanation of John Fellows’ continued affluence. Thinking of this, they could not doubt where the money had gone.

‘That’s the worst turn he ever done me,’ he said, pulling on his cap.

Even now she could not believe that he was going. ‘Not till the morning,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave me with him like that in the dark.’

In the kitchen Abner again examined his father, who now appeared to be sleeping peacefully. ‘He won’t remember a word of it when he wakes,’ he said.

Again she implored him not to leave her, but now she could see that entreaties were useless and that his mind was made up. It was the most awful parting in her life: as final and annihilating as death. For more than three years she had lived for him and very little else. He opened the door. It was a bland summer night, the sky full of soft stars and the country of a breathing sweetness.

‘So long, then, Alice,’ he said.

She could not speak. She put up her arms and kissed him for the first time in her life. He did not then push her away; but she felt that he was only compelling himself to tolerate her embrace. ‘I never touched that money,’ she said hastily.

‘I know you never did,’ he replied. ‘So long . . .’

His shadow disappeared into the darkness. She shut the door of the kitchen. John Fellows lay on the floor snoring, and upstairs the baby still cried.

The Eighth Chapter

THERE was no moon, but the sky, even at this early hour of the morning, was full of a curious shimmer of light reflected mirage-like from the upper air clothing Europe to eastward of the English lands. At that season of the year sunlight was never distant. Now, every moment the stars shone fainter, and the slate roofs of the houses seemed to gather light. Abner stood looking up and down the Stourton Road. He did not know which way to turn; he was dazed by the suddenness with which the freedom so long and so patiently awaited had come to him. In the bewilderment of the moment he could scarcely even realise that it was sweet. He had planned it differently and anticipated the day so often that its violent arrival took him off his feet. He had expected to leave Mawne deliberately in his own time and carrying his savings in his pocket. Events had cast him out violently and penniless . . . not quite penniless, for he still had a little change left from the money he had taken to the Wakes. He remembered with regret that he had been fool enough to give Alice the two sovereigns he had won in the boxing-booth. They would have come in handy; but reflection told him that Alice would need them a great deal more than he.

A man began to cough in the front bedroom of the house before which he was standing. People upstairs were beginning to wake. A cock crowed dismally. He had better make up his mind, for day was beginning. Eastward the Stourton Road led to Coventry, westward to Wales. Whichever way he went his lack of money would compel him to walk. He wasn’t afraid of walking or, for that matter, of sleeping rough; and yet he felt that he was at sea and incapable in his present condition of making up his mind. His head and body ached with Garside’s blows, for the bruised muscles were beginning to stiffen. He was sleepy, as well as tired, and couldn’t remember one thing that seemed to be calling for recognition in the back of his mind. He went on walking aimlessly towards Halesby; the motion set his mind working once more and he remembered the thing that had baffled and escaped him. Tiger. . . . He couldn’t very well leave the dog on Mrs Moseley’s hands. At the same time he didn’t want to frighten the old woman by disturbing her before daylight. To do so would entail explanations, possibly arguments on the subject of his filial duties. It would mean another good-bye, and he wanted to get away quietly without anything of that kind. Still, he meant to have Tiger as much for his own comfort as for Mrs Moseley’s. He determined to see what could be done.

The old woman’s house was the last on the right of a steep, cobble-paved street climbing at right angles to the Stourton Road. He turned up it, his hob-nails raising stinging echoes on the stones. He felt as if he must surely wake every one that slept there. Mrs Moseley’s house was as quiet as the rest. He surveyed it strategically. At the back of it lay a little yard that in happier days had been used as a fowl-run. To advertise the presence of these treasures within, her husband had prevailed upon the landlord to top the wall with fragments of broken bottles. This barrier now confronted Abner. Luckily he was tall enough to reach the top of the wall with his hands, and he soon discovered that time and weather had taken the nature out of Mr Moseley’s mortar so that it crumbled easily and allowed him to remove the glass from a foot of the coping. In two minutes he had done this, straddled the wall, and dropped down softly on the other side. Tiger, bad watchdog that he was, still slept. Abner came softly to the door of the washhouse and tried it. There was no fear that Mrs Moseley would leave a door unlocked at night even behind a glass-topped wall. The only other aperture in the scullery was a window that was too small for him to get through and set very high in the wall. With his pocket-knife thrust through a broken pane he lifted the hasp and opened it. Tiger gave a sharp bark.

‘Ss . . .’ Abner whispered. ‘Tiger. . . . Good dog. . . Come on then.’

Tiger, with a snuffle of recognition, came out of his hole and yawned. The next moment he was jumping up towards the window, anxious to get at his master and whining like a baby because the window was too high for him. Time after time he leapt and failed to reach the sill. The wall was too smooth, and the space of the washhouse too cramped to give him a run for his jump. He grew excited and inclined to be noisy, and at last Abner, seeing no other way out of the difficulty, put his arm as far as he could through the window, and when the dog jumped caught blindly at the loose skin of his back and hauled him through. Tiger trembled with gratitude and the anticipation of new joys. He licked Abner’s face as he lifted him up and put him on the top of the coping. He jumped over into the road and Abner followed him. A policeman, attracted by the strange phenomenon of Tiger’s egress, watched him as he dropped over. He was a young man, a football player, who knew Abner, and when he saw Tiger’s master emerge he grinned.

‘Got him out without waking the old woman,’ said Abner.

‘Rabbits?’ said the other, with a wink. Abner laughed. Both of them knew that the game-laws do not run in colliery districts. ‘Looks as if ’e knows all about it,’ said the constable at parting. Tiger was already nearly out of sight, sniffing the grass as he went. Since Abner went back to work at the pit he had been deprived of hunting at this ideal hour.

It was extraordinary how Tiger’s company restored Abner’s confidence. He felt no longer alone and worried by indecision. Tiger had gone so far that it was useless to call him back. He had chosen his own direction, and Abner was content to follow him. What he wanted most of all, he decided, was a sleep.

Beyond the level of Mrs Moseley’s cottage the houses thinned away and the ground fell steeply to the fields above the Stour, the scene of Abner’s walks with Susan more than a year before. Dawn came, heralded by no fierce splendours, white light stealing from the east over a cloudless sky. The birds were already awake, but the hush of August held them, so that the warblers were silent. Larks there were, lost in the sunlit levels above the whiteness; thrushes made subdued domestic noises in the hedgerows; linnets already flocking for the early harvest of seed, rustled the hawthorn thickets, chaffinches sang boldly in a more vulgar strain. A soft air bloomed the drowsy hedges. Elder blossoms and slender umbels of parsley flower gleamed like dull ivory. Light, and more light came welling over the world. When Abner had reached the plank bridge over the Stour where Susan first had kissed him, the edge of the woodland rose up black beyond the stream, the water gleamed beneath the alders, and the hills, that had lain folded in night, lifted their heads. Now the birds were silent. Only the larks still sang. Walking behind the ecstatic Tiger through a green lane in Uffdown Wood, Abner saw the peak of Pen Beacon before him smitten with fire. The sun was up. Gigantic shadows dappled and barred the grass. Tiger, dancing from side to side, pursued a phantom hound. They left the woods and dropped over a stile into a winding road. As yet the sun had no real heat: colour it warmed, but the air was cool, cool and clean as the surface of this rocky road so often scoured by torrents. The heavy odours of the woods belonged to night, but the smell of the road was one of morning. Gradually the banks released the peculiar perfume of a hill-country in sunshine, a lovely, healthy savour of thyme and bracken and dry heather. A breeze swept the harebells. Still they climbed the path towards the top of Uffdown where the sun came first. Even at this hour pods were snapping amid the almond scent of late gorse blossom. In the shadow of a hedge where prickles were few Abner threw himself down propping his head on a tussock of thin grass. He closed his eyes, and was soon asleep, and Tiger, having smelt and scared innumerable rabbits, came at last to lie beside him, propping his slender lower jaw upon the smooth of Abner’s thigh.