Maggie Rowan Read online

  She swung round from the sink as two of Alec Taggart’s children came running into the scullery.

  ‘Haven’t I told you to keep out of here!’ her voice rasped at them. And they stared up at her as if confronted by an ogre, but one to whom they were used. Then they ran out again, leaving the door wide, and Kitty Taggart’s voice came, filling the scullery like a buffeting wind.

  ‘I promised myself that suite for years. “Nellie’s got a suite,” I’d say to our Sep here, “an’ a front room set all nice an’ proper. And I’m goner have one out of the Store as soon as the lads start workin’.” Oh, if only I’d got it then, I might have had some pleasure out of it. But no; I had to wait until these big tykes were courtin’…six feet an’ fourteen stone each of them, with a lump of a lass on their knees.’

  The laughter mounted again and Kitty’s voice choked with her own mirth as she went on, ‘Remember how you’d toss up for who’d have it on a Sunday afternoon? Play cards they would for that sofa. And mind the night when the springs fell through the middle when you, Bert, and Cissie were on it, and you stuffed them back and let you there, Pat, take Gladys in? Oh my! Oh, the laughs we had over that couch! It was in smithereens long afore I had it paid for. And it was the only suite I ever had, or am likely to now. But what odds! It was the best marriage maker that ever was. Aw, Nellie, we’ve never had much money but we’ve had some laughs, haven’t we?’

  ‘We have that, Kitty.’ It was her mother’s voice, almost soft.

  ‘Thirty years we’ve been neighbours. I remember the day you moved in. It was Christmas time, nineteen hundred and six. It’s been a good test, Nellie, for we’ve never had a cross word.’

  ‘No; you left that to your men.’ Pat Taggart’s voice came again. ‘If it isn’t the pit it’s religion; and if it isn’t that it’s the pigs.’

  As if she were telling herself she must bear the burden of their voices Maggie walked slowly this time towards the door and closed it. Pat Taggart was right there; it was either pit, religion or pigs that held first place in the conversation of the house. Discussions on pit and pigs were allowed in this house, but her mother would not condone any talk on religion; it was too risky, the Taggarts being Catholics and they Methodists. It was only by keeping a strict taboo on the subject during all these years that the families continued to remain on good terms. And this was helped, no doubt, Maggie surmised, because the Taggarts were wooden Catholics; at least, so she had thought until David, the quiet, stolid individual, had taken a stand and insisted that he and Ann must be married in the Catholic church. What a schemozzle that had caused! Smiling sardonically within herself, she had waited for the split; but Ann had submitted to the Taggart pressure and persuaded everybody that she didn’t mind in the least being married in the Catholic church…Spineless creature!

  Maggie had been frankly amazed at her mother’s acceptance of this; more so because her heart was set on their Tom becoming a preacher. There were a number of things about her mother that from time to time amazed her; not least was her mother’s attitude towards her, an attitude of persistent kindness, so persistent that at times it was irritating. She didn’t want kindness, she wanted a life such as other women had. Oh why, in the name of God, had she stayed at home?

  Quickly she turned from the sink and dried her hands; then opening the door she went out into the passage and up the stairs that wound in a half spiral over the scullery to the floor above. The voices rose with her, milling around her…her father chaffing Christopher Taggart about the bicycle shop he couldn’t rent.

  ‘What’s a hundred pounds, Chris?’ he was saying. ‘Why don’t you ask him to let you have it for a fiver? Let him keep his goodwill and stock. Make some bikes up out of your old scrap and tagger.’

  ‘What about havin’ a whip round? I’ve got three bob, Chris; you can have that.’ It was Pat’s voice.

  But no comment came to her ears from Christopher Taggart. It was as if he had no wit, coarse or subtle, to counter gibes. But she knew this to be wrong; of all the Taggarts, David included, she deemed Christopher the only one capable of any sense or desire above the common range that motivated the family. Yet she had no authority for this opinion, it was merely surmise, as she rarely spoke to Christopher, or he to her.

  Three bob! Her lip curled into a sneer at Pat’s offer. But it was no jest; that would be about all any one of them would be able to raise after having paid his way. What would their faces be like if she were to walk into the living room now and say to Christopher, ‘There’s a cheque for your hundred pounds!’ She could do it too, and still have twice as much left. They had speculated, she knew, on how much she had put by, but she judged their surmise never to have amounted to over fifty pounds. She’d had that much before she got her first rise, and she’d had two rises since! But none of them knew, not even her mother. What they didn’t know did them no harm. She still paid her mother seventeen shillings a week, as she had been doing since she was twenty. Even when her father was off work she had offered her no more, knowing that she would do this only once and she would be expected to keep it up.

  Across the little landing, the door of the room that after today would be hers alone was open, revealing a jumble of clothing on the bed…Ann’s clothing! The last remnants of her presence in the house. She entered the room and looked down on them. When they were removed she’d rearrange this room; she’d get a key for the door and tell her mother she’d see to the cleaning herself. This would likely cause one of those lightning rows with her father. Well, she would survive that, as she had done all the others. But she was determined from now on to have some place that would be hers alone, where, without fear of intrusion, she could relax.

  Between the tips of her finger and thumb she picked up a home-made brassiere from the bed. It was constructed of odd pieces of silk fastened together with a neat herringbone stitch, a replica of the one she remembered Ann first making when she was fifteen. She could see her now pushing her breasts into it and smiling a sort of secret, delighted smile at the achievement.

  Slowly she put the brassiere back on the bed and walked to the window. She looked out, through the houses opposite, through the next street, and the next, and her gaze seemed to fall into the house where, later tonight, her sister would be with David Taggart. She could see them locked so closely together as to be one whole; she could see him carrying her upstairs; he would undress her—he was the kind of man who would want to do that, quiet, with deep and strange fires needing to be fed. Oh yes, she knew; she knew what men wanted. But my God, how did she know, she who had never been with a man? How did she come by this knowledge inside of her, a knowledge she knew instinctively to be true? Why did she go over and over things, dragging them up from the depths of her mind to act them to the last peak of what should have culminated in ecstasy but which always crumbled into torment?

  She turned from the window and stood leaning for support on the dressing table. God, why must she do it? Why must she think these things? They would drive her mad; later tonight they would be worse; but not as bad as in three months’ time. Yes, then would be the real hell, in three months’ time when Ann would come and stand in the kitchen, blushing and smiling that childish smile of hers, and saying with maddening shyness, ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

  She lifted her head and thrust her face close to the mirror, so close that her green eyes took on a largeness that was merely a distortion. Why, her mind demanded of her reflection, had she been damned like this, with skin the colour of mud and a face so long and narrow as to appear to be devoid of bone structure, her lips a thin mark across her face and her nose an equally thin mark down it, and her body like her face, thin and fleshless? Yet what of her hair, that beautiful, long, thick, brown mane? What of it? Instead of lending a little relief to her ugliness it only emphasised it, for no matter how she wore it, it appeared like a busby on top of a pole.

  Hopelessly she turned to the window again and looked up at the sky, now a mass of red and purple strea
ks from the setting sun. She stared at the fast changing colour until her eyes became blinded with light and she had to press the eyeballs tightly before she could see again. The sun was now a huge orange ball, falling gently behind Brampton Hill. It wasn’t often she saw the sun setting over Brampton Hill; and now its colours were touching dark masses here and there and picking them out as groups of chimneys and turrets. She could see most of the tops of the big houses standing out from amongst their trees. They looked to be quite close, as if they were just beyond the allotments instead of a mile away.

  Her feelings began to move to another desire, a desire born when, as a child, she first saw the lights shining like stars in the sky from the big houses at night. The longing to live on Brampton Hill had been similar to the fairy-palace desire of the normal child; but whereas the child’s fairy palace fades into the picture of a little home, her fairy palace had remained in all its magnificence, to be thrown into relief when at fourteen she went to work at Mrs Thornton’s laundry, for it was this laundry that catered for most of those who lived on the Hill: Caffley, the agent for most of the local pits—his house was on the far side of the Hill, with a commanding view of the fells; Saunders, the manager of the Phoenix pit, and Tilsley, who managed the Venus—their houses were nearer the top of the Hill but well shrouded in woodland so that their respective places of employment, which dominated opposite ends of the town, were not visible to them; then there were the Pater-Browns—they had a chain of fruit stores in Newcastle—and the Crosbies—three generations of them lived on the Hill; the old man was said to have started in the puddling mills of Jarrow, but now they had their own building yard, small but large enough to merit their elevated residences.

  It was said that the Hill was going down; its downfall being attributed to the bungalows which were beginning to encroach on its foot. Many of the larger houses, it was true, were empty, but enough were still occupied to preserve some exclusiveness and to uphold Maggie’s dreams.

  When she was promoted to packer and sorter she felt in closer touch with the Hill, and it became a mania with her that every article that passed through her hands for it must be perfect. To this end, back would go one third of the ironing to the ironing room; and it was this fetish, she knew, that first caused her to be hated by the other workers. It was also this that brought her to the notice of Mrs Thornton, who managed her own laundry.

  Mrs Thornton was a businesswoman, and she saw in Maggie a perfect assistant manageress. She saw that she was without a friend among the other workers, that she was hated by them; and she considered this a good thing, for no soap or powder would be passed to a crony. She knew, too, that Maggie was feared, young as she was. This also she considered good, for there’d be little slacking under her. And, as she was without apparent charm, there was little likelihood of her getting married; and once trained, Mrs Thornton reasoned, she would be able to place most of the responsibility on her shoulders. But even in those early stages of planning Maggie’s career, Mrs Thornton determined that Maggie must not be given power; she had the idea that once Maggie felt power she would be like the beggar on horseback…she’d ride to hell.

  Maggie sensed all this, almost clear enough to put it into words. And it did not make her love Mrs Thornton, for after fifteen years she was doing the work of manageress and as yet had received neither the title nor the money for it; and Mrs Thornton laboured under the illusion that she was unaware of this imposition. But it wouldn’t go on forever.

  No. Maggie shook her head slowly as she continued to gaze at the Hill. It wouldn’t go on forever. Then her thought and line of vision were suddenly broken by a distorted figure crossing the road; it was Christopher Taggart, a bucket in each hand, on his way to the pigs. He seemed almost on a level with her eyes, for although the Rowans’ house was the last on the street that ran steeply uphill, the waste ground where the houses ended rose sharply, and for some distance the allotments were on a slope. This slope cut off the view of the main part of the town, which lay in the valley beyond before rising again to form Brampton Hill.

  She watched Christopher lumbering along; he’d had to answer the call of the pigs, who knew nothing of wedding feasts. The weight of the buckets seemed to bend the edges of the scoop, wherein his head usually rested; the wind was lifting his hair, and the sunlight was sending shafts of light through it, turning its fairness to flame. She did not think, poor Christopher; that adjective was Ann’s. For all his massive upper body, he was weakly and unable to stand even pithead work, and so was the general object of pity. Yet he did not rouse pity in her.

  For years he had earned his board by looking after the pigs; until recently, when he had started to gather old iron. This had brought scorn on him, as already two taggerine men had gone out of business in the town. There was nothing in scrap iron any more. But apparently he had his own ideas on the matter for he went on silently gathering scrap; and out of it he had even constructed a bicycle, not quite to orthodox pattern, yet one that moved; and the young Taggart twins made the street like bedlam with their capers on it.

  It seemed that from building that bicycle Christopher had become possessed of one idea, to have a little repair shop of his own; and when only four streets away Harry Seymour put up his shop and goodwill for sale, he had become so animated with the desire to have it that he was the butt for the prevailing family joke.

  She could remember only yesterday Sep Taggart shouting across the fence to her father, ‘Our Chris wants a hundred pounds, George, to buy Harry Seymour’s shop.’

  And her father had asked with mock seriousness, ‘Is that all, man?’

  ‘Aye; he’ll give you a third interest in the shop if you’ll lend him it.’

  ‘Will he, man? Just a mo’ till I go in an’ get it. You’re sure a hundred’s all he wants?’

  She watched Christopher now climbing the stile, a surviving relic of the fields that were fast disappearing, and as he stepped down on to the allotment path one of the buckets tipped over, and the swill fell about his feet. She watched him kick his boots hurriedly against the post. She had long guessed that he did not like looking after the pigs, and the resentment seemed to be evident in the simple action of kicking their food from his clothes. Why did resentment stand out more sharply when portrayed by oddities? she asked herself.

  She was well aware that she was classed as an oddity, and that her evident resentment against life, too, was put down to her being a man-hater; yet the very people who put forward this view were also those who would be the first to accuse her of being man mad should she allow a flicker of natural interest in men to show. She had once heard her father say bitterly to her mother, ‘I’ve got that to be thankful for, anyway, there’ll be no trouble with her going man-hunting. Though it would be all the same if she did try it on.’

  She wondered whether it was from that moment that she grew to hate him, for hate him she did, and it was only the firmness of her mother that maintained peace between them.

  The feeling she had for her father seemed to have overflowed on to her sister. Yet Ann would have been friendly. But Maggie didn’t want her friendliness. Somehow, even since Ann was a baby, she had resented any approach from her. Although in those early days the need for a child was dimly stirring within her, she could not tolerate even the touch of Ann’s hand; and should she snuggle up to her in bed the contact was strangely agonising. Years ago she had endeavoured to curb her jealousy of the girl, who, being ten years younger than herself, always appeared as a child; but she had found it useless. It had come as a shock when Ann first walked out with David Taggart—then she was still, to her, the spoilt baby of her father and the rest of the house. And now she was married…she was a wife…that little dollified, empty-headed piece was a wife! And she would have children. Oh yes, she would have children; she was indecent in her open desire to have a large family. Her numerous dolls would now be represented in the yearly baby, and this house would become their parade ground, and the noise of the christenings would be lik
e the noise that was going on downstairs now…laughter, yells, silly jokes.

  She couldn’t bear it; she just couldn’t stand that. She must get away…take rooms somewhere. But that would mean paying twenty-five shillings a week for board and lodgings. Her saving soul balked at such a possibility. And anyway, she reasoned, wherever she went she would still know when the babies came.

  An old thought rose to torment her again. Why had she not had the courage to take the plunge that night years ago in Newcastle when she had met that man. He hadn’t seemed to mind how she looked; he had sat talking to her in that café for hours…intelligent talk. Then quite suddenly he had asked her to go home with him. And she had longed with a longing that frightened her to accompany him. She knew that he sensed her need, and in a way was being kind to her. She also knew that his kindness would happen only once, for he was a man of many women. She had been on the point of silently accepting by raising her eyes to his face when, like a picture thrown up on a screen, she had a vision, above all things, of the little chapel where Sunday after Sunday she sat with her family and listened to the reasonable talking of their minister, Mr Fraser. She could have cried aloud at the absurdity of it, for she cared not two hoots for Mr Fraser, or for his reasonableness, or for the Methodist doctrine, or, truth to tell, for even God Himself; they were all just a façade. Yet it was this façade that kept her head down, and she realised later that the veneer of respectability that covered her was of such fibre that it was strong enough to keep hemmed in the passions that flowed beneath it. Yet in the refusal of that one offer had gone forever the chance that she might bear a child.