He made a mutter of sympathy.
“Don’t,” she cried. “I loathe and detest you too.”
“Stanley doesn’t need to know anything about us,” he reasoned. “Not one single thing.”
“I should hope not.” She turned on him with savage irony. “You don’t propose to tell him, do you?”
“Oh no,” he answered in a queer voice. He got up and went to the sideboard where he mixed a stiff whisky and soda. “Not if you stand in with me. Laura. Here, you better try this. You look absolutely done.”
She accepted the tumbler mechanically, still staring at him.
“How do you mean, stand in with you?”
“Well, we got to be friends, Laura.” He took a sip at his own drink, meditating sombrely. “Friends all round, that’s my motto, I’ve always been a friendly sort of chap. You see it would be pretty awkward if there was a burst up. It wouldn’t do Stanley any good, or any of us for that matter. Stanley needs me in the business now, I’ve all sorts of ideas for expanding, amalgamating. Why, only the other day I was talking to Jim Mawson of Tynecastle. You know Mawson — one of the best business men in Tynecastle. Well, if Mawson and Stanley and myself got together, you’ve no idea how we could reorganise the foundry. We’d make a perfect gold mine out the place.”
“I see,” she whispered, “I see what you want. You’re sick of me in any case. And now you want to use me, use all that’s happened between us—”
“For God’s sake, Laura, have a heart. This is absolutely on the level! We’ll have a company, there’s pots of money in it for all of us.”
“Money! You think of nothing but money. You’re contemptible.”
“I’m only human, Laura. We’re all only human. That’s why I fell in love with you.”
“Don’t!” she said fiercely.
A silence came; she drank her whisky. It restored her. Joe at least was practical in what he did. She took a look at him, hating him. For all these weeks she had hated him, visualizing his loudness, his vulgarity, his insatiable egoism, his physical grossness. And yet he wasn’t really gross, she had to admit it despite herself. He was handsome, extraordinarily handsome. His figure was beautifully muscled, he had the most winning brown eyes. And she had taught him so much, how to dress, to groom himself: in a sense she had created him.
“Are you still angry with me, Laura?” he asked humbly.
“I’m not even thinking about you.” A pause. Rudely, she held out her empty glass. “Here, get me another of these. I think I deserve it.”
He hurried to obey. He sighed.
“I’ve thought about you a lot in these last weeks. I’ve missed you.”
She gave a short laugh, swallowing her drink as though it was bitter.
“You’re lying. You’ve got off with someone else while I was away. While I’ve been nursing a man who loathes me, a man who’s been blown up and dried up, you’ve been sleeping with some other woman. Come on, now, own up, speak the truth.”
“I am speaking the truth,” he lied earnestly.
“I don’t believe you,” she said; but for all that her heart gave a sudden throb. She added: “In any case it doesn’t matter. I’m myself again, thank God. I don’t care if you have a hundred women. I’m going to devote myself to Stanley now.”
“I know, Laura,” he said. “Just let’s be friends.” He reached over to take her empty glass but instead he took her hand.
“How dare you, how dare you.” She snatched her hand away. Her eyes filled with tears, she began all at once to cry.
“Just friends, Laura,” he pleaded. “Just the best of pals.”
“How can you make me so unhappy. Haven’t I been through enough? I’m going… going.” She rose quite blindly and at the same moment his arms were round her, gently restraining, holding her with confident strength.
“You can’t go like this, Laura.”
“Leave me, leave me, for God’s sake leave me.” She tried to break away from him, weeping hysterically.
“Please, Laura, please.”
As she struggled she felt herself trembling. She felt the trembling of her body against his.
“Oh, how can you, Joe,” she cried. “How could you be so beastly to me.”
“Laura!” He kissed her.
“No, Joe, no,” she whispered weakly. But his lips again prevented her from speaking. Everything dissolved and fell away from her except the sense of his nearness. Reaction flooded her too. All those awful weeks at Sawbridge, her loneliness, Stanley’s peevishness — the deadly monotone of the machine man, whose sex lay buried in that shell-hole, somewhere in France. She closed her eyes. A shiver went over her. Joe didn’t really love her, he was merely using her, would throw her over. But it was no use for her to try. She felt him carrying her to the bedroom.
When she got back to Hilltop it was nearly ten o’clock and Mrs. John Rutley sat waiting in the lounge.
“Oh, my dear,” said Mrs. John, rising and taking both Laura’s hands in warm sympathy. “They told me you’d gone out to get some air but I simply had to wait. I’m so sorry about Stanley, my dear. I had to run down. You look so upset. And no wonder, as I was saying to John, you were always such a little pair of love-birds. But don’t you worry, my dear, you’ll soon get him right.”
Laura stared at the older woman. Her face broke into a distorted smile.
NINETEEN
Towards the middle of November 1917 Martha heard about Annie Macer. It was Hannah Brace who told Martha that sharp winter morning and Hannah Brace was distressed that such a misfortune should have come on a decent girl like Annie. She stood on the pavement of the Terrace, her blowsy hair gathered under a man’s peaked cap, her nose blue with cold, her figure sagging, the door-mat she had come out to shake dangling from her hand.
“You could have knocked me down with a feather,” she said, “when I saw Annie was that way!”
The dismay in Hannah’s good-natured face was not reflected in Martha’s. Her expression revealed nothing as, without waiting for the gossip which Hannah so obviously desired, she went into her own house and closed the door. But for all that a great rush of triumphant vindication overwhelmed her. She sat down at the table and rested her chin on her big knuckled fist and thought about what Hannah had just told her. A stem smile came upon her lips. She had always said, hadn’t she, that Annie was no good, and now it was proved that Annie was no good. She was right, she, Martha Fenwick was right.
Sammy was responsible, of course. Sammy had been out a great deal during his last leave; he had even, to her serious displeasure, stayed away from home an entire week-end. And this was the result. Yes, Sammy was responsible; but that was nothing. By Martha’s reasoning the man was never to blame. Martha was glad, yes, she admitted it to herself savagely, glad that things had turned out this way. Sammy would not respect Annie now. Never! Martha knew there was nothing a man hated worse than to get a girl in trouble. Besides Sammy was away, far out of the way in France. And when he came home she, Martha, would manage Sammy. She would manage Sammy away from Annie Macer. She knew how she’d do it, she knew exactly.
The first step, naturally, was to see that Hannah Brace was right. At eleven o’clock that same forenoon Martha put on her coat and walked slowly down Cowpen Street listening for the sound of Annie’s bell. At present the Macers were having a struggle; Pug had drifted into the army and old Macer, landlocked by mines and handicapped by increasing rheumatism, had to make the best of it by hand-lining off-shore for whiting. Annie helped him with the hand-lining, digging the lugs when the tide was out, putting her shoulder to the boat in the early morning, baiting the snecked steel hooks, setting with her father out beyond the harbour while the dawn broke gently over the grey water. Then, in the forenoon, when the town had wakened, Annie hawked the catch with a creel on her back and a little brass bell in her hand through the streets of Sleescale.