Henry Green - Back

“Here,” she said coming back to Charley. “No names, thanks. No, I consider, being as I am, the dead spit of another, that I’ve a responsibility, I’m not like the common run. But I don’t give names away,” she said, again with what seemed to be pride. “Only my father’s,” she admitted, wryly. “But then what has he done for me to thank him?” she asked. “No, I’m in special case,” she said.

He looked at her. He wondered if, later on, he would be sick all over the carpet.

“I had such a time with the man I mentioned just now that I had to make a rule,” she went on. “To protect myself. I never admitted it again. Or hardly ever. Till you came along. It was your fainting did it.”

“Did what?” he demanded through his nausea.

“Why tricked me into admitting, of course,” she said. “What else?”

“I don’t know what to think,” he brought out, nauseated. Oh how she could, he cried in his mind, his Rose that he’d loved?

“Come as a bit of a shock to you, hasn’t it,” she said. “Take no notice. The first two years are the worst.” She actually laughed.

“Rose, listen here,” he began, with a stronger voice than he had used. But she broke in.

“Look,” she said sharp. “You aren’t sitting pretty here except on one condition. You’ll drop all this Rose stuff, or, if you can’t take it, stay silent. Otherwise out you go, this instant.”

He stayed silent.

“I’m a respectable girl,” she said.

He said nothing.

“Even if I am living alone because my mum’s been evacuated. You ask anyone here. They’ll tell you about us.”

He remembered he had been informed that whores had old women who took the money and who carried the police, got help if need be. She was in that kitchen this minute, most likely.

“Yes it’s a bit awkward in my position,” she began again. “I mean everyone has their own life, that only stands to reason, and here’s me has two, my own and someone else’s.”

He felt she might be trying to tell him she was sorry. He took heart again.

“Yes,” she went on, “I’ve a responsibility. You know why I did what I could for you the last time?” She paused. All he could remember was, she had chucked him out.

“Because this has hit you hard,” she explained. “You never put that faint on, I could tell. So I didn’t send you packing like I should. I’ve a responsibility.”

“A responsibility?” he asked.

“I’ve just said,” she told him. “Although it’s none of my fault, I’ve got to be fair. If a man really mistakes me for another I have to let him down in a decent fashion. I can’t laugh right in his face, not straight off, any old how.”

“I see,” he said.

“You don’t, from the looks of you,” she replied. “Oh all right, take your time. You’ll get used to it. Don’t mind me. Be easy now.”

“Has Mr Grant sent many to you?”

“Here,” she said harsh, “what are you insinuating? I told you before I won’t have his name mentioned, ever again.” He had no recollection of this. He assumed that he must have forgotten, as he had with Mr Grant’s request not to disclose how he got her address.

“I rang him up,” she said. “I told him. ‘This is the first time you’ve done this,’ I said, ‘and let it be the last. Haven’t you been enough trouble all my life?’ I said. ‘And now if you’re to start sending people round, what will the others think? Why I’d be hounded out of these rooms.’”

“What if Ridley came?” he suddenly asked, with the air of a man who has produced the unanswerable, who is bringing the whole house of cards down.

“Her little boy?” she enquired, absolutely unmoved. “You know I’ve often and often wondered. Why, it would be cruel, wouldn’t it?”

“You’ve said it.”

“I’m not too sure I like your attitude,” she complained. “Of course that would be cruel, but not my fault? I can’t help looking as I am, can I? Which is at my father’s door.”

He did not wait to consider this. He must have thought he had her pinned.

“But if Mr Grant sent him?” he asked. His face flushed, and it was plain that he was trying to hold her eyes with his own. She became agitated.

“Why, he’d never,” she cried. “Why, it wouldn’t be right. He’d never dare.” She was truly indignant. “When the little chap thinks his mother’s away with the angels? I dream of it sometimes. Running across him in the street, I mean. Perhaps his grandma takes him up round the shops with her. I often wonder, wouldn’t that be awful if we met. But then it couldn’t be my fault, after all.”

“Whose then?”

“Why my dad’s of course.”

He now realized that she must be out of her mind, which would account for the change in her voice, and manner. He became terribly sad. Oh, this was not the old Rose, at all.

“That’s what makes me do it,” she explained.

“Do what?” he murmured.

“Aren’t some men dense?” she said. “You don’t suppose I’m talking to you, like I do, because I’ve nothing better, surely? I’m a working woman. I wouldn’t want to offend, of course. But as I told you before, I consider I have a duty by you and the others. Only when you said that my dad sent you, then I had to turn round at once. You see that surely?”

He felt he had best humour her.

“Yes,” he said.

“And you seemed to take it so hard I was sorry for you, and here we are,” she said.

He had a wave of self pity.

“It’s affected my work,” he muttered.

“You don’t want it to do that,” she said. “You see, I’ve thought more about this than you can ever. If you like to put it that way, I’ve been brought up with the problem. It’s chance, that’s all, nothing more than bad luck. I’ve known since I was sixteen.”

That she’d leave the husband she had not yet seen, the unborn child, he cried out in his mind. He was sickened by it.

“What?” he said.

“Are you going queer a second time,” she wanted to know. “I mean about my half sister, naturally. They all say we might have been twins. What d’you think?”

“There’s no telling you apart,” he said, back to his idea of humouring her.

“Yet it’s funny I never felt anything when she was ill, like twins are supposed to feel, you understand. Then of course we were never real ones. Still, it makes you wonder, when I tell you we came within three weeks of one another. The old devil,” she said, with a hint of admiration in her voice.

“Did he send Middlewitch?” he asked, jealous again as soon as Mr Grant was mentioned.

“Of course not. I said, didn’t I?”

“How did you come across him, then?”

“I’ll not have these questions. What’s come over you? I’ve a life of my own, haven’t I? It’s not my fault, is it? And if I’m being nice to you it’s only that I’ve the responsibility. Even if he did send you along so things wasn’t natural, like crossing one another in the street.”

He began to hate. He saw her, yet again, as a tart, and could not bear the idea of these men having her, night after night having the old Rose.

“Oh no?” he brought out, bitter.

“What do you mean, thank you? I don’t quite fathom how I’m expected to take that, do you? Besides, I’ll tell you something. Just because you’re crazy, and a bit knocked off balance when you’re with me, you’re not entitled to pass remarks.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Wanting to know where I’d met Arthur Middlewitch. The sauce.”

The one thing he could not have, was for her to send him away. If she believed she had a responsibility, in the state she was in, then how much the greater was his own.

“Forget it,” he said. And, with a great effort, he returned to his normal manner of speaking, “Bit awkward for the rest of us, you see. The dead come to life,” he said.