The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,76

for talkin’. All you needs to do is show us you have got money enough about you for a night’s lodgin’, an’ we will let you alone.”

Sullivan said nothing to this for some moments, hoping that the woman would come to his aid and say they were together and had money in common. But she remained silent.

“I have no money,” he said at last. “Owin’ to a combination of circumstances which I have not the leisure to go into at the present moment.”

“Sleepin’ in the open, no abode an’ no money. You are a vagrant, an’ you will ’ave to come along with us to the parish workhouse.”

“Show me your badge of office,” Sullivan said, and received a violent push in the chest that sent him back several steps.

“Any more o’ that an’ you will get a batterin’. An’ don’t try makin’ a run for it, you will not get far.” He turned to the woman, shining the lamp in her face. “ ’Ow about you?” he said. “Betsy, ain’t it? ’Ow much did he give you?”

“He give me a shillin’.”

“Ho, yes. Very likely. Well, you gives us the shillin’ an’ you keeps the rest, an’ everythin’ is fair an’ aboveboard.”

With the sad, belated wisdom that follows upon passion spent, Sullivan saw his bread and cheese and his bed for the night transferred to the pocket of one of the men. Betsy left the scene at a good speed and without a backward glance, and he was taken by the arms and led away.

20

As the time approached for the handball match with the neighboring colliery village of Northfield, Michael Bordon spent his Sunday mornings and evenings practicing, alone or with anyone who cared to play, at the handball court, which lay alongside the alehouse. He was now, by the consent of a large majority, Thorpe’s appointed champion, and he took the responsibility very seriously. Sunday afternoons he spent walking out with Elsie Foster. They had now reached the stage of walking hand in hand.

His mother had been the first to notice the change in him. He would previously, after the practice session, put on his pit clothes and go to play chuck farthing or sit in talk with the other men. Now he would spend a long time over combing his hair, and ask her more often to trim it for him. He would get out his best suit, the breeches with embroidered kneebands, the coat close-fitting, cut in at the waist.

Nan was carried back to the days of her courtship. She had been lucky in Bordon, she knew that; he was sometimes violent with others but never other than gentle with her. There was something unfulfilled in him, something rebellious and unresigned, that made him often somber, and this was more evident now that he grew older. He knew that Michael was walking out with Elsie Foster and that the family would lose income when the boy married; this would not be yet, but probably as soon as Michael went from putter to hewer. Bordon had married then himself.

Both of them approved of the girl and the family. Elsie worked on the tips, just as Nan had done. Bordon had taken her from that work, as it was likely Michael would do with Elsie.

Her husband’s best clothes were still there, in the trunk, though it was seldom that he wore them now. She went and got out the cravat, remembering how smart he had looked when he first came calling, so tall and straight, turning his cap in his hands. Her brother Billy had run off to sea before that …

She decided to give the cravat to Michael as a special thing to wear for this first walking-out. It was very fine, muslin edged with lace. He was dismayed by it. Fancy cravats of this kind were no longer worn by anyone he knew. But he said nothing. He looked at his mother’s face, which was lit up, the lines of work and weariness all smoothed away by the memories this totally unwearable cravat had brought her. He put on the cravat, tied it properly in a bow and set forth. When he was out of the sight of the house he took it off and put it in his pocket.

Elsie too wore her best clothes for these outings; they were always much the same, but he was always smitten anew by the look of her, the white hose and short dimity petticoats, the printed cotton gown, the stomacher