LIFE OF MA PARKER.
When the literary gentleman, whose flat old Ma Parker cleaned every
Tuesday, opened the door to her that morning, he asked after her
grandson.
Ma Parker stood on the doormat inside the dark little hall, and
she
stretched out her hand to help her gentleman shut the door before
she
replied. "We buried 'im yesterday, sir," she said quietly.
"Oh, dear me! I'm sorry to hear that," said the literary
gentleman in a
shocked tone. He was in the middle of his breakfast. He wore a very
shabby dressing-gown and carried a crumpled newspaper in one hand.
But he
felt awkward. He could hardly go back to the warm sitting-room without
saying something--something more. Then because these people set
such store
by funerals he said kindly, "I hope the funeral went off all
right."
"Beg parding, sir?" said old Ma Parker huskily.
Poor old bird! She did look dashed. "I hope the funeral was
a--a--
success," said he. Ma Parker gave no answer. She bent her head
and
hobbled off to the kitchen, clasping the old fish bag that held
her
cleaning things and an apron and a pair of felt shoes. The literary
gentleman raised his eyebrows and went back to his breakfast.
"Overcome, I suppose," he said aloud, helping himself
to the marmalade.
Ma Parker drew the two jetty spears out of her toque and hung it
behind the
door. She unhooked her worn jacket and hung that up too. Then she
tied
her apron and sat down to take off her boots. To take off her boots
or to
put them on was an agony to her, but it had been an agony for years.
In
fact, she was so accustomed to the pain that her face was drawn
and screwed
up ready for the twinge before she'd so much as untied the laces.
That
over, she sat back with a sigh and softly rubbed her knees...
"Gran! Gran!" Her little grandson stood on her lap in
his button boots.
He'd just come in from playing in the street.
"Look what a state you've made your gran's skirt into--you
wicked boy!"
But he put his arms round her neck and rubbed his cheek against
hers.
"Gran, gi' us a penny!" he coaxed.
"Be off with you; Gran ain't got no pennies."
"Yes, you 'ave."
"No, I ain't."
"Yes, you 'ave. Gi' us one!"
Already she was feeling for the old, squashed, black leather purse.
"Well, what'll you give your gran?"
He gave a shy little laugh and pressed closer. She felt his eyelid
quivering against her cheek. "I ain't got nothing," he
murmured...
The old woman sprang up, seized the iron kettle off the gas stove
and took
it over to the sink. The noise of the water drumming in the kettle
deadened her pain, it seemed. She filled the pail, too, and the
washing-up
bowl.
It would take a whole book to describe the state of that kitchen.
During
the week the literary gentleman "did" for himself. That
is to say, he
emptied the tea leaves now and again into a jam jar set aside for
that
purpose, and if he ran out of clean forks he wiped over one or two
on the
roller towel. Otherwise, as he explained to his friends, his "system"
was
quite simple, and he couldn't understand why people made all this
fuss
about housekeeping.
"You simply dirty everything you've got, get a hag in once
a week to clean
up, and the thing's done."
The result looked like a gigantic dustbin. Even the floor was littered
with toast crusts, envelopes, cigarette ends. But Ma Parker bore
him no
grudge. She pitied the poor young gentleman for having no one to
look
after him. Out of the smudgy little window you could see an immense
expanse of sad-looking sky, and whenever there were clouds they
looked very
worn, old clouds, frayed at the edges, with holes in them, or dark
stains
like tea.
While the water was heating, Ma Parker began sweeping the floor.
"Yes,"
she thought, as the broom knocked, "what with one thing and
another I've
had my share. I've had a hard life."
Even the neighbours said that of her. Many a time, hobbling home
with her
fish bag she heard them, waiting at the corner, or leaning over
the area
railings, say among themselves, "She's had a hard life, has
Ma Parker."
And it was so true she wasn't in the least proud of it. It was just
as if
you were to say she lived in the basement-back at Number 27. A hard
life!...
At sixteen she'd left Stratford and come up to London as kitching-maid.
Yes, she was born in Stratford-on-Avon. Shakespeare, sir? No, people
were
always arsking her about him. But she'd never heard his name until
she saw
it on the theatres.
Nothing remained of Stratford except that "sitting in the
fire-place of a
evening you could see the stars through the chimley," and "Mother
always
'ad 'er side of bacon, 'anging from the ceiling." And there
was something-
-a bush, there was--at the front door, that smelt ever so nice.
But the
bush was very vague. She'd only remembered it once or twice in the
hospital, when she'd been taken bad.
That was a dreadful place--her first place. She was never allowed
out.
She never went upstairs except for prayers morning and evening.
It was a
fair cellar. And the cook was a cruel woman. She used to snatch
away her
letters from home before she'd read them, and throw them in the
range
because they made her dreamy...And the beedles! Would you believe
it?--
until she came to London she'd never seen a black beedle. Here Ma
always
gave a little laugh, as though--not to have seen a black beedle!
Well! It
was as if to say you'd never seen your own feet.
When that family was sold up she went as "help" to a
doctor's house, and
after two years there, on the run from morning till night, she married
her
husband. He was a baker.
"A baker, Mrs. Parker!" the literary gentleman would
say. For occasionally
he laid aside his tomes and lent an ear, at least, to this product
called
Life. "It must be rather nice to be married to a baker!"
Mrs. Parker didn't look so sure.
"Such a clean trade," said the gentleman.
Mrs. Parker didn't look convinced.
"And didn't you like handing the new loaves to the customers?"
"Well, sir," said Mrs. Parker, "I wasn't in the
shop above a great deal.
We had thirteen little ones and buried seven of them. If it wasn't
the
'ospital it was the infirmary, you might say!"
"You might, indeed, Mrs. Parker!" said the gentleman,
shuddering, and
taking up his pen again.
Yes, seven had gone, and while the six were still small her husband
was
taken ill with consumption. It was flour on the lungs, the doctor
told her
at the time...Her husband sat up in bed with his shirt pulled over
his
head, and the doctor's finger drew a circle on his back.
"Now, if we were to cut him open here, Mrs. Parker,"
said the doctor,
"you'd find his lungs chock-a-block with white powder. Breathe,
my good
fellow!" And Mrs. Parker never knew for certain whether she
saw or whether
she fancied she saw a great fan of white dust come out of her poor
dead
husband's lips...
But the struggle she'd had to bring up those six little children
and keep
herself to herself. Terrible it had been! Then, just when they were
old
enough to go to school her husband's sister came to stop with them
to help
things along, and she hadn't been there more than two months when
she fell
down a flight of steps and hurt her spine. And for five years Ma
Parker
had another baby--and such a one for crying!--to look after. Then
young
Maudie went wrong and took her sister Alice with her; the two boys
emigrimated, and young Jim went to India with the army, and Ethel,
the
youngest, married a good-for-nothing little waiter who died of ulcers
the
year little Lennie was born. And now little Lennie--my grandson...
The piles of dirty cups, dirty dishes, were washed and dried. The
ink-
black knives were cleaned with a piece of potato and finished off
with a
piece of cork. The table was scrubbed, and the dresser and the sink
that
had sardine tails swimming in it...
He'd never been a strong child--never from the first. He'd been
one of
those fair babies that everybody took for a girl. Silvery fair curls
he
had, blue eyes, and a little freckle like a diamond on one side
of his
nose. The trouble she and Ethel had had to rear that child! The
things
out of the newspapers they tried him with! Every Sunday morning
Ethel
would read aloud while Ma Parker did her washing.
"Dear Sir,--Just a line to let you know my little Myrtil was
laid out for
dead...After four bottils...gained 8 lbs. in 9 weeks, and is still
putting
it on."
And then the egg-cup of ink would come off the dresser and the
letter would
be written, and Ma would buy a postal order on her way to work next
morning. But it was no use. Nothing made little Lennie put it on.
Taking
him to the cemetery, even, never gave him a colour; a nice shake-up
in the
bus never improved his appetite.
But he was gran's boy from the first...
"Whose boy are you?" said old Ma Parker, straightening
up from the stove
and going over to the smudgy window. And a little voice, so warm,
so
close, it half stifled her--it seemed to be in her breast under
her heart--
laughed out, and said, "I'm gran's boy!"
At that moment there was a sound of steps, and the literary gentleman
appeared, dressed for walking.
"Oh, Mrs. Parker, I'm going out."
"Very good, sir."
"And you'll find your half-crown in the tray of the inkstand."
"Thank you, sir."
"Oh, by the way, Mrs. Parker," said the literary gentleman
quickly, "you
didn't throw away any cocoa last time you were here--did you?"
"No, sir."
"Very strange. I could have sworn I left a teaspoonful of cocoa
in the
tin." He broke off. He said softly and firmly, "You'll
always tell me
when you throw things away--won't you, Mrs. Parker?" And he
walked off
very well pleased with himself, convinced, in fact, he'd shown Mrs.
Parker
that under his apparent carelessness he was as vigilant as a woman.
The door banged. She took her brushes and cloths into the bedroom.
But
when she began to make the bed, smoothing, tucking, patting, the
thought of
little Lennie was unbearable. Why did he have to suffer so? That's
what
she couldn't understand. Why should a little angel child have to
arsk for
his breath and fight for it? There was no sense in making a child
suffer
like that.
...From Lennie's little box of a chest there came a sound as though
something was boiling. There was a great lump of something bubbling
in his
chest that he couldn't get rid of. When he coughed the sweat sprang
out on
his head; his eyes bulged, his hands waved, and the great lump bubbled
as a
potato knocks in a saucepan. But what was more awful than all was
when he
didn't cough he sat against the pillow and never spoke or answered,
or even
made as if he heard. Only he looked offended.
"It's not your poor old gran's doing it, my lovey," said
old Ma Parker,
patting back the damp hair from his little scarlet ears. But Lennie
moved
his head and edged away. Dreadfully offended with her he looked--and
solemn. He bent his head and looked at her sideways as though he
couldn't
have believed it of his gran.
But at the last...Ma Parker threw the counterpane over the bed.
No, she
simply couldn't think about it. It was too much--she'd had too much
in her
life to bear. She'd borne it up till now, she'd kept herself to
herself,
and never once had she been seen to cry. Never by a living soul.
Not even
her own children had seen Ma break down. She'd kept a proud face
always.
But now! Lennie gone--what had she? She had nothing. He was all
she'd
got from life, and now he was took too. Why must it all have happened
to
me? she wondered. "What have I done?" said old Ma Parker.
"What have I
done?"
As she said those words she suddenly let fall her brush. She found
herself
in the kitchen. Her misery was so terrible that she pinned on her
hat, put
on her jacket and walked out of the flat like a person in a dream.
She did
not know what she was doing. She was like a person so dazed by the
horror
of what has happened that he walks away--anywhere, as though by
walking
away he could escape...
It was cold in the street. There was a wind like ice. People went
flitting by, very fast; the men walked like scissors; the women
trod like
cats. And nobody knew--nobody cared. Even if she broke down, if
at last,
after all these years, she were to cry, she'd find herself in the
lock-up
as like as not.
But at the thought of crying it was as though little Lennie leapt
in his
gran's arms. Ah, that's what she wants to do, my dove. Gran wants
to cry.
If she could only cry now, cry for a long time, over everything,
beginning
with her first place and the cruel cook, going on to the doctor's,
and then
the seven little ones, death of her husband, the children's leaving
her,
and all the years of misery that led up to Lennie. But to have a
proper
cry over all these things would take a long time. All the same,
the time
for it had come. She must do it. She couldn't put it off any longer;
she
couldn't wait any more...Where could she go?
"She's had a hard life, has Ma Parker." Yes, a hard life,
indeed! Her
chin began to tremble; there was no time to lose. But where? Where?
She couldn't go home; Ethel was there. It would frighten Ethel
out of her
life. She couldn't sit on a bench anywhere; people would come arsking
her
questions. She couldn't possibly go back to the gentleman's flat;
she had
no right to cry in strangers' houses. If she sat on some steps a
policeman
would speak to her.
Oh, wasn't there anywhere where she could hide and keep herself
to herself
and stay as long as she liked, not disturbing anybody, and nobody
worrying
her? Wasn't there anywhere in the world where she could have her
cry out--
at last?
Ma Parker stood, looking up and down. The icy wind blew out her
apron into
a balloon. And now it began to rain. There was nowhere. |
