‘Yeah, I know, you’d fold up if you hadn’t got her to cling on to. You hangs around all the bloody time.’ Contempt had returned to her voice, edged this time with bitterness, but she showed none of either when she went on to add: ‘You’re a good boy.’
‘I wouldn’t say — I don’t know. Betty, you mustn’t mind me saying this, but isn’t it rather risky to go round breaking into places with these pals of yours? Aren’t you afraid of getting caught?’
‘Aw, short life and a merry one’s what I say. It’s worth it for a bit of excitement. Don’t get much chance of a thrill these days, eh?’
‘Well, it’s up to you, but you don’t want to get — you know — sent down, do you? The twins wouldn’t have…’
‘Don’t preach, now. I gets brassed off with bloody preaching.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like that.’
‘Okay.’ She smiled.
In the succeeding silence a door boomed shut below. The slapping gait of my daughter Eira became audible, overlaid and in part obscured by the characteristic bellowing squeal of her younger brother. Both sounds began to ascend the stairs.
‘Jean back, eh?’ Betty got to her feet. ‘I better be going.’
‘Oh, don’t go, stay and have a cup of tea with us.’
‘I better not.’
Eira ran into the room, stopping short when she saw Betty and then moving towards the fire by a circuitous route, hugging the wall and the couch. ‘Put my coat off,’ she said to me distantly.
‘Hallo,’ Betty said with an elaborate rising inflection. ‘Hallo. And whose little girl are you? Let auntie take your coat off, then. Come on, flower. That’s right. Had a lovely run, have you? Did you see any bunnies? How you’ve grown. And you’re bold as ever, I declare. Yes, you are. You’re bold, very very bold. Yes, you are. You’re very very brazen by there.’
Jean came in with the baby. ‘Well, hallo, Betty,’ she said, grinning. ‘Nice to see you. Christ, shut up, can’t you?’ This last was addressed to the baby, who seemed almost, but not quite, worn out with mortal pain.
‘Sorry I couldn’t come along that Tuesday like we said, Mrs Lewis, but the twins was poorly and I couldn’t fix it to let you know.’
‘That’s all right, Betty. I’ll put the kettle on.’
‘Let me take the baby for you.’
‘Oh, thanks a lot. John, you might have kept the fire up.’
‘Sorry, dear.’ I picked up the coal scuttle, which was one of the obliquely truncated-cone type. It proved to weigh less than it should, less than a coal scuttle with any coal in it could. I could hardly remember ever having made up the fire without encountering, at the very outset, a light coal scuttle.
During a long, foul-mouthed ardour in the coal cupboard under the stairs, I thought first how funny it was that a fallen woman — really fallen now, right smack over full length — should talk to a child in just the same style as the perpendicularly upright went in for. But then presumably there were parts of the fallen that were bound to remain unfallen, quite important parts too. This brought up the whole mystery of prostituted existence: not what happened to your womanhood or your springs of emotion or your chances of getting clued up on the splendours and miseries of the flesh — screw all that — but what it was like to be a prostitute during the times when you weren’t actually behaving like one, when you were in mufti: on a bus, cooking the baked beans, doing the ironing, going shopping, chatting to a neighbour, buying the Christmas presents. It must be like going round ordinarily and all the time you were a spy or a parson or a leading authority on Rilke, things which you surely often forgot about being. Anyway, to judge by the representative upstairs, being a prostitute was something you could be done a power of good by, and without having to be horrible first, either. As regards not having to get horrible later on, that too could no doubt be arranged, especially if you could keep out of the way of the various sets of men in white coats who, according to report, tended to close in on you after a few years in the game. That was a nasty prospect all right, and resembled many a kindred nastiness thought up by the Godhead in seeming a disproportionate penalty for rather obscure offences. Still, that minor cavil about the grand design had been answered long ago, hadn’t it? Yes, more answers than one had been offered.
A little coal, too little to be worth expelling, had entered my shoe. I bore the scuttle upstairs to find Jean and Eira in the kitchen and Betty still holding the baby. Her demeanour had quietened and she was more like the Betty I had first met when she said: ‘You won’t tell Jean all what I been saying, will you?’
‘Of course I won’t.’
‘And you won’t tell that old Webster I been up?’
‘Christ, no. What do you think I am?’
‘She’s a cow.’
‘Oh, she’s a cow all right.’
Betty nodded slowly, frowning, half-heartedly jogging the baby on her knee. Then she said: ‘She’s a real cow.’
This refinement upon the original concept made me laugh. Betty joined in. We laughed together for some time, so that Eira came in from the kitchen to see what the joke was.
‘I don’t mind telling you I was very depressed about that girl at one time,’ Mair Webster said. ‘Quite frankly I thought we might be going to lose her. It upset me a good deal, one way and another. Once her husband was out of the way for a couple of months, as soon as his back was turned she just took the line of least resistance. Her old cronies at the café, you see, she took up with them again, and got things fixed up with another of them there with minding each other’s children while the other one was off after the men, turn and turn about and sharing the same flat, or couple of rooms rather, the most sordid den you could possibly imagine, I’m not exaggerating, I promise you. Well, I soon got Betty and the twins out of that hell hole and fixed them up in a decent place, good enough for the time being, anyway, until Arnulfsen got back from Norway. They’ve quite a nice little flat now — well, you’ll be able to judge, John. It’s nothing very grand, of course, but it’s a darned sight better than what people like that are used to. Oh, thank you, Jean dear.’
‘Everything looks pretty bright then, doesn’t it?’ my wife asked, pouring coffee. ‘Troubles seem to be over.’ Her manner showed a relief that I guessed to be partly personal. The strain of not telling Mair about Betty’s earlier visit hadn’t been lightly borne.
‘I don’t think I should say that exactly,’ Mair said. ‘Arnulfsen’s forgiven her all right, and she’s trying to make a go of it, quite seriously, I can tell. But they keep being bothered by the crowd she used to be in with before, girls who used to be in the same gang looking her up, and once they even had a lascar trying to force his way in; wanted to renew old acquaintance and got her address from the café, I suppose. There’ve been one or two things like that. And then some of the neighbours have got to hear about Betty’s past and they keep teasing her about it, call out in the street after her. Chapel spirit gone sour, you see. It makes Arnulfsen pretty wild.’
While Jean expressed her indignation, I was wondering fairly hard how I was going to ‘be able to judge’ the Arnulfsens’ flat. Was I in some way committed to a tea party there, or what? An answer couldn’t be long delayed, for Mair was draining her cup and rising. ‘Come along,’ she said to me. ‘We’ve not got too much time.’
‘Time for what, Mair? I’m sorry…’
She threw me a momentary leonine glare before dipping to pick up her handbag. When she spoke, it was with an incredulity to which those accustomed to plan for others must often be subject. Since what she had lined up for me was necessitated both by logic and by natural law, how could I conceivably not know what it was? ‘But surely you’re coming along to Betty’s with me? I’m only popping in to see how she is. Then I can drop you at the library by two-fifteen. Cheerio, Jean dear. Thank you for a lovely lunch. We must fix up a coffee date for next week. I’ll give John a ring, if I can manage to pick a time when he’s at the seat of custom.’