England, My England Part 43

'You look well, don't you!' said interfering Jinny.

Harry went and hung his hat up, without replying.

'Come upstairs and take your hat off,' said Mrs. Goodall to f.a.n.n.y, almost kindly. It would have annoyed her very much if f.a.n.n.y had dropped her son at this moment.

'What's 'er say, then?' asked the father secretly of Harry, jerking his head in the direction of the stairs whence f.a.n.n.y had disappeared.

'Nowt yet,' said Harry.

'Serve you right if she chucks you now,' said Jinny. 'I'll bet it's right about Annie Nixon an' you.'

'Tha bets so much,' said Harry.

'Yi--but you can't deny it,' said Jinny.

'I can if I've a mind.'

His father looked at him inquiringly.

'It's no more mine than it is Bill Bower's, or Ted Slaney's, or six or seven on 'em,' said Harry to his father.

And the father nodded silently.

'That'll not get you out of it, in court,' said Jinny.

Upstairs f.a.n.n.y evaded all the thrusts made by his mother, and did not declare her hand. She tidied her hair, washed her hands, and put the tiniest bit of powder on her face, for coolness, there in front of Mrs.

Goodall's indignant gaze. It was like a declaration of independence. But the old woman said nothing.

They came down to Sunday tea, with sardines and tinned salmon and tinned peaches, besides tarts and cakes. The chatter was general. It concerned the Nixon family and the scandal.

'Oh, she's a foul-mouthed woman,' said Jinny of Mrs. Nixon. 'She may well talk about G.o.d's holy house, _she_ had. It's first time she's set foot in it, ever since she dropped off from being converted. She's a devil and she always was one. Can't you remember how she treated Bob's children, mother, when we lived down in the Buildings? I can remember when I was a little girl she used to bathe them in the yard, in the cold, so that they shouldn't splash the house. She'd half kill them if they made a mark on the floor, and the language she'd use! And one Sat.u.r.day I can remember Garry, that was Bob's own girl, she ran off when her stepmother was going to bathe her--ran off without a rag of clothes on--can you remember, mother? And she hid in Smedley's closes--it was the time of mowing-gra.s.s--and n.o.body could find her. She hid out there all night, didn't she, mother? n.o.body could find her. My word, there was a talk.

They found her on Sunday morning--'

'Fred Coutts threatened to break every bone in the woman's body, if she touched the children again,' put in the father.

'Anyhow, they frightened her,' said Jinny. 'But she was nearly as bad with her own two. And anybody can see that she's driven old Bob till he's gone soft.'

'Ah, soft as mush,' said Jack Goodall. ''E'd never addle a week's wage, nor yet a day's if th' chaps didn't make it up to him.'

'My word, if he didn't bring her a week's wage, she'd pull his head off,'

said Jinny.

'But a clean woman, and respectable, except for her foul mouth,' said Mrs. Goodall. 'Keeps to herself like a bull-dog. Never lets anybody come near the house, and neighbours with n.o.body.'

'Wanted it thrashed out of her,' said Mr. Goodall, a silent, evasive sort of man.

'Where Bob gets the money for his drink from is a mystery,' said Jinny.

'Chaps treats him,' said Harry.

'Well, he's got the pair of frightenedest rabbit-eyes you'd wish to see,'

said Jinny.

'Ay, with a drunken man's murder in them, _I_ think,' said Mrs. Goodall.

So the talk went on after tea, till it was practically time to start off to chapel again.

'You'll have to be getting ready, f.a.n.n.y,' said Mrs. Goodall.

'I'm not going tonight,' said f.a.n.n.y abruptly. And there was a sudden halt in the family. 'I'll stop with _you_ tonight, Mother,' she added.

'Best you had, my gel,' said Mrs. Goodall, flattered and a.s.sured.