The Black Diamond

by Francis Brett Young

Mrs Moseley shook her head. She nearly told him all her reasons against his plan, but when she came to speak of them her lips trembled. She knew that she couldn’t keep up much longer. On the fifteenth day she left Hackett’s Cottages. Alice, who paid her the agreed ten shillings from a leather purse that she kept wrapped up in a handkerchief under her pillow, thought it rather shabby of her not to offer to stay longer. ‘You’d think it ‘d be the least she could do after all your kindness,’ she said to her husband. John Fellows, not to be buttered with flattery, merely grunted.

It took Mrs Moseley more than an hour to walk the mile home. The doctor passing in his trap, saw her resting on a doorstep in the Stourton Road. He pretended not to recognise her, but scribbled a note on his list that she was to be visited in the afternoon. Toward evening he stumped up the crooked stairs and stood at the bottom of her bed looking at her with a curious smile on his lips. She knew it was no good making excuses.

‘Let’s have a look at it,’ he said. And then: ‘Well, my dear, this means six weeks in bed. You know that, don’t you? Ten shillings’ worth, eh?’

Mrs Moseley, conscious of the fact that it was worth a good deal more than ten shillings, said nothing. If he only realised what a blessed relief it was to her to be off her feet again!

When Alice ‘came downstairs’ again, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Abner had never known her so studiously charming. From the first it was as if she smiled: ‘For goodness’ sake let us forget what has happened and make a new start!’ and he couldn’t very well refuse to meet her. At the same time he found it difficult to conceal his suspicions that she was getting at him in some covert, female way. The situation would have been easier to handle if Alice hadn’t been a trifle pale and interesting. She didn’t pick up very quickly, and now, of course, in addition to the ordinary housework she had to look after the baby, who was already suffering from its mother’s dietetic indiscretions. Like many thin young women Alice could never conquer her inclination for sweets and for vinegar, and as a consequence the child was noisy and irritable. Her housework went to the wall, and in despair she turned to Abner to help her out. Nothing could have been sweeter than her temper, and though he didn’t believe in it he couldn’t help being sorry for her, and did what she asked him. As a matter of fact, he was already a little interested in the baby. The smallness of its limbs and the timid uncertainty of its movements fascinated him. He regarded it with a certain benignant curiosity, much as he might have looked at a nestling taken from a hedge in April.

Of course Alice was feeding her child at the breast. If Abner came into the kitchen in the middle of this performance she would turn round quickly and take the baby upstairs or out into the washhouse, blushing. Abner wondered why she did this. Other women weren’t so sensitive. Sometimes he would pass a couple of them standing at their garden gates gossiping and feeding their babies at the same time. He had never taken any notice of them. Nobody else took any notice of them. There was something in Alice’s blushes that embarrassed him unreasonably. Afterward he asked himself why this should be; but when next he saw Alice hiding her white breast he blushed himself.

The new relation was very curious. If it hadn’t been for Abner’s profound distrust of her they might even have become intimate. It was no good for Alice to pretend that she wasn’t lonely. In spite of all her pride in being a married woman and the mother of a family’s beginning, she couldn’t conceal the fact that since the baby’s birth her husband took very little notice of her. It was as if he had said: ‘Now that I’ve done my duty by the nation and given you something to play with you can just attend to my comforts without bothering me.’ He had lately transferred his custom from the Greyhound to the Lyttleton Arms. A shorter walk at closing time. So far he had never maltreated Alice, but she knew very well that she couldn’t now play him the tricks that had pleased him in their courting days.

So, from being with her husband like a little girl in school, with Abner she behaved like a schoolgirl released, chattering, eager and friendly. It puzzled him, for he had never had a sister and didn’t understand the creature in the least. Her flatteries and sudden kindnesses surprised him every bit as much as her spurts of temper. In each case she seemed equally childish, particularly on days when she had been too busy to do her hair and wore it in a honey-coloured pigtail at the back. Then, there was another Alice who could assert with something very near to dignity the fact that she was mistress of the house; and another, blushing Alice, before whom he too had blushed.

On the whole, however, her most obvious feature was her kindness. In the evening, when Abner came home dirty from the pit, he would find the soap-suds waiting for him and tea laid ready on the kitchen table. Alice, as likely as not, would be bathing the baby, who already showed a native sturdiness in spite of his mother’s indiscretions. While Abner ate his tea she would talk to the baby in a low, cooing voice, which she was evidently convinced would fetch him. From time to time in the middle of these whispers, she would look up sideways to where Abner sat munching bread and butter with the sunlight in his hair. Abner, who knew that he was good-looking, and was now a little conscious of his manly superiority, took no notice of her.

And yet, in the end, he couldn’t help being dragged into the atmosphere of intimacy which her small attentions created. Grudgingly he was forced to admit that she had changed for the better. He was now old enough to be flattered too. They became almost good friends, and only Abner’s native cautiousness prevented a complete reconciliation. Alice knew this. She knew the shy spirit with which she had to deal, but was happy to feel that she had accomplished so much already. Somewhere in the back of her mind she suspected that a time might come in which she would rely on Abner’s strength to protect her and her baby. Some day she might need his help. It was of John Fellows, her husband, that she was afraid.