Читать книгу Time and the Hour - Howard Spring - Страница 15

The houses in Megson Street were all joined together. Only a low iron railing separated the front doors of Aunt Jessie’s house and Mrs. Wayland’s. Aunt Jessie fumbled with her key long enough to give Mrs. Wayland time to come to the door and to hear her say: “Mr. Hudson, I presume?”

“Ay. That’s me, and this is Chris,” Dick said; and then they were inside; there was no more to be heard; and Aunt Jessie opened her own door.

“Well, it fair beats the band,” she said in the passage; and then, sniffing, “He’s up.”

The aroma of Woodcock’s Wonder Weed proclaimed that Uncle Horace was indeed up. He was in the sitting-room, with a fire blazing, his small pink face with its white moustache looking infantile and cherubic.

“I got better,” he explained with simplicity.

“You’re an old fox if ever there was one,” said Aunt Jessie with affectionate asperity. “Couldn’t trust me—that’s the long and the short of it. Gnawing at you—that’s what it’s been—gnawing at you—the idea that I was having a night out. Well, we’ve been along to see Dick Hudson.”

“Who’s he?”

“You heard Anthony say he’d met him in Manningham Lane.”

“Ay, but that don’t tell me who he is.”

Uncle Horace, who had never set foot in a theatre or music-hall, pretended, and indeed felt, a profound disinterest in Jessie’s life before their marriage. A lot of poppycock and flapdoodle—people dressing up and making out that they were this and that when they were plain Toms, Dicks and Harrys like other folk. He was privately convinced that Jessie blessed the day when he rescued her from a life which he was sure only harsh necessity would make anyone accept. And a rum do that was, he sometimes thought with a chuckle, to find a wife when he’d gone to bury his brother. He supposed it was because the job had put him in a jovial mood. Who wouldn’t be glad to bury a chap like Bert? He’d bailed him out of gaol more than once, and paid his debts in one thing, and advanced him money to set up in another, for almost as long as he could remember. And the devil of it was that Bert was younger than he was, so that it looked as though this would go on all his life. He couldn’t afford Bert and a wife, and he was beginning to feel it was time he had a wife—someone who would sympathise with his delicate constitution as his landlady never did. And then for once Bert goes and does him a good turn—gets knocked down by a cab-horse on a foggy night in Leeds, and that’s the end of him. Horace went over to Leeds for the funeral with a buoyant heart, and on the evening before it he was prowling about under the lights in the market, enjoying himself immensely. It was near Christmas, and the place was full of poultry and sides of beef and dazzling flower-stalls and hearty men shouting about good things to eat. He had come to buy a wreath for Bert, and the prices were a bit steep. It set him back half a guinea. That made him feel glum, and he must have looked glum when he entered a little alcove in the market where you could get a bite and a sup. There was only one other person in the place when Horace sat down and propped the wreath against his chair—a woman who looked what he would have called “booxum-laike.” She considered him for a time with a sympathetic eye, and then said: “Was you bereaved, luv?”

“Nay, lass,” he said, “not bereaved—relieved.”

The only joke he had ever made in his life seemed to him so good that he began to shake with laughter, and that made him cough, and she said: “You want to watch that cough, lad. Have one of these.”

She gave him a peppermint, and said: “You ought to be wearing a muffler on a night like this. And mittens wouldn’t hurt you, either.”

Such words fell as manna on the parched desert of Horace’s spirit. This was a woman if you like! He said: “Well, it’s something to have got a laugh out of Bert in the end.”

Their tea and muffins arrived, and the alcove was warm and cosy, and he began to tell her about Bert and the funeral on the morrow. He hadn’t enjoyed a talk so much for a long time.

When the tea and muffins were gone she said: “On a night like this you want summat solid in you. No wonder you get coughs.”

So they ordered more tea and steak and chipped potatees, with plum duff to follow.

“Now,” she said, “that’ll set you up for t’funeral. But mind you make a good breakfast, too.”

“It’d set me up more if you’d come with me to t’cemetery,” he said.

“All right, luv. Ah’ve nowt better to do.”

That was how it began.