A Man of his Time

He pushed her away, to finish his drink. Dignity was the dearest thing in the world, and he was shaken that she had come into the pub and dared to make a fuss. Florence realized who she was, and stood away with shame and sorrow at what she had become part of, and at what she felt to be her fault. Burton had courted her for weeks before she gave in, though she too had wanted him. And now this. She should have known it would happen.

The few drinkers looked on, as Mary Ann went for him. Nobody had tackled Burton in that way before, and it was extraordinary to witness. ‘You’ve got eight kids to keep,’ she said, ‘and you’re doing it on me with her.’

Words were wrenched out of him. ‘We were talking.’

‘I don’t believe it. You think I’m a fool? I know what’s going on.’ She seemed about to strike him. ‘Come back to your work. No wonder you give me hardly enough to keep the house going, carrying on with a trollop like that.’ She took a piece of paper from her pocket, held it before his face so as to give him time to recognize their marriage lines, and threw it in two pieces on the bar. ‘That’s what I think of you!’

He flushed with shame and rage. ‘Go home.’

‘Only if you come with me.’

As a master blacksmith and man of the house, philanderer and favoured customer at the pub, something had to be done to counter this violation of his dignity, and in such a way that it would never happen again. Such an affront had never been dreamed of, and caused a ripple at the temples fit to burst his head. He gripped her arm and walked her to the door. ‘Get off home,’ and pushed her into the street.

In the silence he dared whoever looked on to deny that what he had done was anything but just. None could. They would have done the same. Or the worst of them would. He wasn’t finished with Florence. ‘Don’t worry about that little set-to. We’ll meet in the woods tomorrow evening.’

She handed him the two halves of the marriage certificate. ‘You’d better have this, and see if you can put it together again.’

‘That’s cold.’ But he took it.

‘I shan’t see you anymore.’

‘Don’t say that. Wait for me. I’ll be back.’ A few strides took him outside.

‘His poor bloody wife’s going to cop it now,’ one of the carters laughed.

‘Well, she could have hammered him in the house instead of showing him up in public.’

The closer to home the less was he able to think, and the faster he walked. No need to think at all, everything spoiled between him and Florence. Rage carried him through Woodhouse, under the railway bridge and up the lane, not caring to avoid puddles from yesterday’s downpour. He passed his neighbour Harold Ollington, who wondered at not receiving the usual nod. Even God, had Burton recognized Him, would have got no greeting, pushed out of mind by the force of such catastrophic events. It wasn’t so much that she had shown him up in a pub as that she’d had the gall to do something like that in the first place. As his wife she had lost all respect, flaunted intolerance of him as his own master when away from the house as well as in it. His boot hit the gate.

Mary Ann pegged out a line of clothes fresh from the copper. Work for the household must go on, but tears went down with drops from the sheets. What she had done to Burton served him right, though she’d be damned for her Irish temper. Emily had seen him in the field talking to that wicked woman, then he had stayed so late in the wood, and today she hadn’t found him at work when he should have been, and had caught him in the public house talking to the barmaid in such a way it was plain what had been going on.

She felt only anger and wild resentment that he had betrayed her who had brought up their eight children on short money over so many years; nor did she suppose it was the first time he had done such a thing, which caused more tears to flow as she thrust wooden pegs onto cotton or cloth.

She heard nothing, then Burton pulled her around to face him. Dead grey eyes fixed her, then black and orange sparks exploded at a blow impossible to avoid. ‘Don’t ever interfere with anything I do, ever again. Never. Do you understand? Keep out of my business.’ Ignoring her scream, he fixed her in readiness for another across the mouth.

A third blow was held back. One was enough, and he had given two. Never lose control. He immediately knew he had done wrong, shouldn’t have given even the first, because she was his wife and not a child or animal to be kept in order. George would never have done the same to Sarah. She caught him out once, though hadn’t dared tackle him in public. George had done nothing more than laugh in her face, because fair was fair, he told Ernest, who was now sorry he hadn’t recalled the incident on his way up the lane. He pushed Mary Ann aside, and slammed the door into the house.

Annie Ollington looked over the fence at the commotion, and hurried around by the front gate. She sat Mary Ann on a log. ‘Oh, what a terrible thing! Look what a mess he’s made of your mouth. But you’ll be all right in a bit, duck.’ She wiped her cheeks with a handkerchief, shook it square, and saw smears of red. ‘Does he do this often?’

‘He’s never hit me before. I wish I could die.’

‘Don’t talk like that. But if he does it again you ought to set your lads onto him. I never thought Burton would do a thing like this. And he thinks himself such a gentleman! If anybody treated me like this I’d take the carving knife to their guts.’ She put an arm around her. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it, though I know a lot of it goes on.’

Burton came with a bowl of water and a cloth. ‘What do you want?’

‘Can’t you see? I’m trying to help. What did you hit her like that for?’

‘It’s none of your business. Clear off, and don’t come here again.’ A hand jerked, as if to throw the water should she move any closer. ‘She’ll be all right.’

‘Not with a beast like you she won’t.’

‘Have less of your lip.’

In answering back she was more brave than she knew.

‘You’d better go,’ Mary Ann said.

She saw the glint in Burton’s eyes, and went quickly down the path. He dabbed at Mary Ann’s face. ‘I was only talking to the barmaid, passing the time. I’d had a heavy morning at work, and thought I’d go to the Crown for a drink. There was no need to show me up in front of everybody.’

If that’s all he had been doing why was he so enraged? He couldn’t get out of it like that. ‘Whatever you were up to God will pay you out for hitting me.’

‘God? And where does He live? What job does He do? Does He get good money while He’s at it? Hold still, and let me see to you.’

‘There is a God, though, and He’ll have it in for you.’

‘Not if I know it.’

‘You shouldn’t have hit me.’

He helped her to stand. ‘I wish I could undo it. Come into the house.’

Nowhere else to go, she had made no better home for him and all of them, and because he was her husband she let him guide her to a chair by the fire. The world had turned in a way she’d never imagined. To say she had loved him was unnecessary. He was the main factor of her life and she would never complain, had made her bed and must lie on it. She got up, hoping her face would pain less if she busied herself.

A huge horned gramophone stood on the round mahogany table in the parlour, as if to bellow condemnation at what he had done. He pushed it aside on sitting down. The room was Mary Ann’s creation, and she cleaned it every week, though rarely had company to show it off. She sometimes enjoyed its comforting solitude, and did her sewing there.

On a smaller table lay a neatly boxed set of dominoes, while a series of whatnot shelves fixed to a corner of the room held pottery pieces from seaside or Matock. The bookcase was filled with prizes brought from Sunday School, which he had sent the children to hoping they would get knowledge into their heads that had never entered his. They might also be taught to behave, so that Burton wouldn’t have to do it – as he once heard sharp-tongued Ivy remark to her sisters, not knowing he was near.

Mary Ann cared for the books, liked the idea of several a year coming into the house, and noted with pleasure how the shelves slowly filled. Only Oliver took interest in them, but she supposed that was encouragement enough. She had been with Burton on Alfreton Road and saw the glass-fronted case in Jacky Pownall’s junk yard, standing in the drizzle by a stack of bedsteads, the perfect piece of furniture for storing books, instead of them staying heaped on the table, so she robbed him of a week’s drink to pay for it, and got him to push it the mile or so home on a rented handcart.

It stood for a week in the warm kitchen to dry, and he took several evenings with rag, scraper and turpentine to remove the sickly green paint, then cleaned and polished to reveal the splendour of original wood.

The picture on the wall over the fireplace, a wedding present from George, was of a youth handing a bunch of flowers to a young girl, the couplet underneath an avowal of love that Burton knew well but didn’t care to repeat at the moment. He sat with a hand over his eyes, as if they were paining him, or would be if he thought more about what he had done, aware that what was done could never be undone.

In a cupboard facing the fireplace was his bottle of whisky, rarely broached, but he went to it and poured a small glass, noticing that the level had gone down from when he had last taken a nip, wondering whether any of the children had been helping themselves.

Things couldn’t be worse. He was losing Florence, and had been angry enough to hit Mary Ann, having always said he would never knock any woman about. But none had ever given him cause to, and when your blood boiled there was little to stop you doing it – though there ought to have been. It was no use saying he wouldn’t do it again. It was already done. The only way to make amends, if they could ever be made, was to let time go by, but that wasn’t good enough. Thoughts went in a circle, till the only way to get out of their grip – nothing at the moment could make up for what he had done – was to be certain that Florence no longer wanted him.

He poured a larger dram. If Florence wanted to go on with him nothing should stand in her way, and since he wanted to go on with her he couldn’t imagine she wouldn’t want to.

He put the glass of whisky before Mary Ann. ‘Try some of this. It might help a bit.’

‘Nothing will.’ But she sipped, not averse to the taste. ‘What would you do to me if you caught me doing the same thing?’

‘Kill the man, and you as well – except I wasn’t doing anything I shouldn’t.’

She thought it better to stay quiet. He stood at the door. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To see how those two idlers are getting on at the forge.’ She had never questioned him before. As for telling a lie, what could you do when you didn’t want to tell the truth? You never lied because you wanted to, he would always rather not, but only when people drove you to it, and to save them from worry. She should have had more sense than to ask, and if she doesn’t believe me that’s her lookout. Never tell anybody what they don’t need to know.