Nocturne. Frank Swinnerton
Not at all. But wouldn’t you like a change from stew and bread pudding yourself? Sometimes, I mean. You seem to like it all right.” At that ill-considered suggestion, made with unintentional savageness, Jenny so worked upon herself that her own colour rose high. Her temper became suddenly unmanageable. “You talk about me being out!” she breathlessly exclaimed. “When do I go out? When! Tell me!”
“O-o-h! I like that! What about going to the pictures with Alf Rylett?” Emmy’s hands were, jerking upon the table in her anger. “You’re always out with him!”
“Me? Well I never! I’m not. When—”
They were interrupted unexpectedly by a feeble and jubilant voice.
“More bready butter pudding!” said Pa Blanchard, tipping his plate to show that he had finished.
“Yes, Pa!” For the moment Emmy was distracted from her feud. In a mechanical way, as mothers sometimes, deep in conversation, attend to their children’s needs, she put another wedge of pudding upon the plate. “Well, I say you are,” she resumed in the same strained voice. “And tell me when I go out! I go out shopping. That’s all. But for that, I’m in the house day and night. You don’t care tuppence about Alf—you wouldn’t, not if he was walking the soles off his boots to come to you. You never think about him. He’s like dirt, to you. Yet you go out with him time after time. …” Her lips as she broke off were pursed into a trembling unhappy pout, sure forerunner of tears. Her voice was weak with feeling. The memory of lonely evenings surged into her mind, evenings when Jenny was out with Alf, while she, the drudge, stayed at home with Pa, until she was desperate with the sense of unutterable wrong. “Time after time, you go.”
“Sorry, I’m sure!” flung back Jenny, fairly in the fray, too quick not to read the plain message of Emmy’s tone and expression, too cruel to relinquish the sudden advantage. “I never guessed you wanted him. I wouldn’t have done it for worlds. You never said, you know!” Satirically, she concluded, with a studiously careful accent, which she used when she wanted to indicate scorn or innuendo, “I’m sorry. I ought to have asked if I might!” Then, with a dash into grimmer satire: “Why doesn’t he ask you to go with him? Funny his asking me, isn’t it?”
Emmy grew violently crimson. Her voice had a roughness in it. She was mortally wounded.
“Anybody’d know you were a lady!” she said warmly.
“They’re welcome!” retorted Jenny. Her eyes flashed, glittering in the paltry gaslight. “He’s never … Emmy, I didn’t know you were such a silly little fool. Fancy going on like that … about a man like him. At your age!”
Vehement glances flashed between them. All Emmy’s jealousy was in her face, clear as day. Jenny drew a sharp breath. Then, obstinately, she closed her lips, looking for a moment like the girl in the sliding window, inscrutable. Emmy, also recovering herself, spoke again, trying to steady her voice.
“It’s not what you think. But I can’t bear to see you … playing about with him. It’s not fair. He thinks you mean it. You don’t!”
“Course I don’t. I don’t mean anything. A fellow like that!” Jenny laughed a little, woundingly.
“What’s the matter with him?” Savagely, Emmy betrayed herself again. She was trembling from head to foot, her mind blundering hither and thither for help against a quicker-witted foe. “It’s only you he’s not good enough for,” she said passionately. “What’s the matter with him?”
Jenny considered, her pale face now deadly white, all the heat gone from her cheeks, though the hard glitter remained in her eyes, cruelly indicating the hunger within her bosom.
“Oh, he’s all right in his way,” she drawlingly admitted. “He’s clean. That’s in his favour. But he’s quiet … he’s got no devil in him. Sort of man who tells you what he likes for breakfast. I only go with him … well, you know why, as well as I do. He’s all right enough, as far as he goes. But he’s never on for a bit of fun. That’s it: he’s got no devil in him. I don’t like that kind. Prefer the other sort.”
During this speech Emmy had kept back bitter interruptions by an unparalleled effort. It had seemed as though her fury had flickered, blazing and dying away as thought and feeling struggled together for mastery. At the end of it, however, and at Jenny’s declared preference for men of devil, Emmy’s face hardened.
“You be careful, my girl,” she prophesied with a warning glance of anger. “If that’s the kind you’re after. Take care you’re not left!”
“Oh, I can take care,” Jenny said, with cold nonchalance. “Trust me!”
vii
Later, when they were both in the chilly scullery, washing up the supper dishes, they were again constrained. Somehow when they were alone together they could not quarrel: it needed the presence of Pa Blanchard to stimulate them to retort. In his rambling silences they found the spur for their unkind eloquence, and too often Pa was used as a stalking-horse for their angers. He could hardly hear, and could not follow the talk; but by directing a remark to him, so that it cannoned off at the other, each obtained satisfaction for the rivalry that endured from day to day between them. Their hungry hearts, all the latent bitternesses in their natures, yearning for expression, found it in his presence. But alone, whatever their angers, they were generally silent. It may have been that their love was strong, or that their courage failed, or that the energy required for conflict was not aroused. That they deeply loved one another was sure; there was rivalry, jealousy, irritation between them, but it did not affect their love. The jealousy was a part of their general discontent—a jealousy that would grow more intense as each remained frustrate and unhappy. Neither understood the forces at work within herself; each saw these perversely illustrated in the other’s faults. In each case the cause of unhappiness was unsatisfied love, unsatisfied craving for love. It was more acute in Emmy’s case, because she was older and because the love she needed was under her eyes being wasted upon Jenny—if it were love, and not that mixture of admiration and desire with self-esteem that goes to make the common formula to which the name of love is generally attached. Jenny could not be jealous of Emmy as Emmy was jealous of Jenny. She had no cause; Emmy was not her rival. Jenny’s rival was life itself, as will be shown hereafter: she had her own pain.
It was thus only natural that the two girls, having pushed Pa’s chair to the side of the kitchen fire, and having loaded and set light to Pa’s pipe, should work together in silence for a few minutes, clearing the table and washing the supper dishes. They were distant, both aggrieved; Emmy with labouring breath and a sense of bitter animosity, Jenny with the curled lip of one triumphant who does not need her triumph and would abandon it at the first move of forgiveness. They could not speak. The work was done, and Emmy was rinsing the washing basin, before Jenny could bring herself to say awkwardly what she had in her mind.
“Em,” she began. “I didn’t know you … you know.” A silence. Emmy continued to swirl the water round with the small washing-mop, her face averted. Jenny’s lip stiffened. She made another attempt, to be the last, restraining her irritation with a great effort. “If you like I won’t … I won’t go out with him any more.”
“Oh, you needn’t worry,” Emmy doggedly said, with her teeth almost clenched. “I’m not worrying about it.” She tried then to keep silent; but the words were forced from her wounded heart. With uncontrollable sarcasm she said: “It’s very good of you, I’m sure!”
“Em!” It was coaxing. Jenny went nearer. Still there was no reply. “Em … don’t be a silly cat. If he’d only ask you to go once or twice. He’d always want to. You needn’t worry about me being … See, I like somebody else—another fellow. He’s on a ship. Nowhere near here. I only go with Alf because … well, after all, he’s a man; and they’re scarce. Suppose I leave off going with him. …”
Both knew she had nothing but kind intention, as in fact the betrayal of her own secret proved; but as Jenny could