Chapter 11

By the time Mus’ Beatup had groped his stumbling way from Hailsham to Sunday Street, the anxieties of Worge about Ivy were at an end. A letter had come during the morning and was flapped in his face. He was not sober enough to read it, nor yet too drunk to have it read to him.

    “8 Bozzum Square,

    “Hastings.

    “Dear Mother,—I hope this finds you well as it leaves me at present. I got fed up as the boys say and came here. Do you remember Ellen Apps and her folk lived at the Fowl Mile up the Hollowbones. She is here working on the trams, I heard from Jen, so thought I go and ask her. She says I will get a job in a day or 2 with my strong physic, so do not worry about me, I am with Ellen and hope to start work next week. Having no more to say, I will now draw to a close. Fondest love from

    “Your loving daughter, Ivy.”  

[190]

“I toald you as she’d never gone wud Seagrim!” cried Mrs. Beatup.

“Umph,” grunted her husband—“but she’s gone on the trams, which is next bad to it. Now if she’d gone maaking munititions....”

“Trams is better than munititions.”

“No it aun’t. Fine ladies and duchesses maake munititions, but I never saw a duchess driving a tram.”

“Ivy ull never drive a tram—she’d be killed, surelye.”

“Best thing she cud do for herself now she’s disgraced us all—a darter of mine on the trams, a good yeoman’s darter on the trams ... ’tis shameful.”

“But ’tis honest, Maaster—better nor if she’d run away wud a man.”

“Maybe—but ’tis shameful honest. I’m shut of her!”

“Oh, Ned!—our girl!”

“Your girl!”

“You cruel, unnatural faather!”

“Adone do, and taake off my boots.”

The matter ended temporarily in sniffs and grunts, but when Mus’ Beatup woke out of the sleep which followed the removal of his boots, he reviewed it more auspiciously. After all, working on the trams was better than working in the fields—suppose Ivy had gone and offered her robust services to some neighbouring farmer, to some twopenny smallholder perhaps, then the yeoman name of Beatup would have indeed been trampled into the earth. Now trams were town work, trams were war work, trams were engineering. In time “my darter on the trams” began to sound nearly as well as “my son at the front.”

So a letter was written in which Ivy’s choice was deplored, though not condemned. She was invited to come home, or if obstinate on that point, to turn her [191] attention to the more aristocratic “munititions,” but if it must be trams, then trams it should be unreproached.

Ivy wrote back in a few days, saying that she had “joined up” and enclosing a photograph of herself in uniform. She would soon be earning thirty shillings a week, and had taken a room of her own in Bozzum Square. Her family had now quite forgiven her, especially as they found the neighbourhood inclined to applaud rather than to despise Beatup’s daughter on the trams. Her mother would have liked her home, but Ivy was quite firm about sticking to her job. “I’m best away from the Street as things are, and I’ll send you five shillings a week home, and you can get a girl with that and what you save from my keep.” But it would have taken two girls to make a real substitute for Ivy.

Mrs. Beatup, besides the gap in her motherly feelings, missed her terribly about the house. Her sturdy willingness to scrub or clean, her cheery indifference to the little indelicacies of emptying slops or gutting chickens, her unfailing good-humour and bubbling vitality, the rough, tender comfort she gave in hours of sorrow, all made Ivy of a special, irreplaceable value in her mother’s working-day. Nell refused to give up her “teachering,” and spoke obstinately of indentures, and other irrelevant puzzles. Anyhow her squeamishness—she even washed the dishes with a wrinkled nose—and the delicacy of her small soft hands would make her pretty useless in hen-house or kitchen. Mrs. Beatup began to talk of Ivy as much as she thought of her, and soon her family came to find her more of a nuisance now she was away than she had been at home in her most disruptive moments.

However, her forgiveness was complete, and the reconciliation was celebrated by a solemn ride in “Ivy’s tram” by all the Beatups. It was during the summer holidays, [192] so Nell was able to go—Mrs. Beatup wore her Dionysian bonnet, and her husband his best Sunday blacks, Harry and Zacky were scrubbed and collared into oafishness, the house was shut up and left in charge of Elphick and Juglery, as it had never been since Tom’s wedding.

“Ivy’s tram” was on the line from the Albert Memorial to Ore, and ground its way through dreadful suburbs up Mount Pleasant, past the decayed “residences” of Hastings’ prime, slabbed with stucco and bulging with bow-windows, now all grimed and peeled and darkened, chopped into lodgings and sliced into flats, not the ghost of prosperity but its rotting corpse.

The tram ground and screamed and swished on the rails, and Ivy, rosy-faced under her tramwayman’s cap—with its peak over the curl that hid her ear—came forcing her way up the inside for fares, taking from each Beatup its separate penny. She looked exuberantly well, and quite happy again; she also smelled strongly of tram-oil, and Nell’s little nose wrinkled even more than when she had smelt of soapsuds and milk. She had a cheery word for each one of her family, who in their turn sat abashed, holding their tickets stiffly between finger and thumb, their eyes slewed on Ivy as she took other passengers’ fares, answered their questions, trundled them out, bundled them in, pulled the bell, ran up to the roof, changed the sign, and flung a little good-humoured chaff at Bill the motorman when they reached the terminus.

She had no time off till late that evening, so when the family had ridden in state to Ore, they rode back again to the Memorial. The parting was a little spoiled by the crowd which was waiting to board the tram and reduced Mrs. Beatup’s farewell embrace into something grabbing and unseemly.

[193]

“Good-by, mother dear, and doan’t you vrother. I’m valiant here.... Full inside, ma’am, and no standing allowed on the platform.... Now, Nell, take care of mother and hold her arm—she’s gitting scattery—and adone, do, mother, for there’s too many fares on the top, and I’m hemmed if I haven’t bitten a grape out of your bonnet.”