Key to the Door Read Online Free PDF Page A

good enough, a hooked thunderbolt to lift him out of the house but leave her unharmed. The impossible was not on her side and she knew it, sensed rightly that it never would be. So she cried out in rage, which only made things worse, as she had known it would before the row began: “I couldn’t leave the show until it was finished, could I?” implying that he lacked sense to think so.
    â€œYou should a come out earlier, you cheeky young madam.”
    â€œI did,” she conceded, beyond hope. “But I had some supper wi’ Jenny and Beatty.” She fell into a chair, choking on tears of hatred and bitterness. Who knows? Merton’s temper often wavered with his own children, hid contrition and a peculiar gruff kindness that sometimes turned to their advantage at the last moment. But the reins of compassion were rarely in his hands, had to be hoped for by those who had broken his rules. He might have been softened up to this point by Vera, been satisfied merely to wave the stick from the corner where he now stood; but the verifiable boundary of this was passing—too well disguised for her to see it, too faint for her to take advantage of it in such confused distress. She saw what was coming and hurried towards it, her wish to escape thrust out of the way by an uncontrolled defiance that could bring nothing but defeat. “Leave me alone, you rotten bogger. You aren’t going to hit me like you hit your dogs!” She didn’t move. He would hit her the same as he’d hit anything else. The weight of his hammer at the forge was heavy, and burning metal was moulded without trouble; he drank beer by the pint tankard on Friday night, but always woke from his stupor with an urge for more obedience, more work, more beer at the weekend, and to tame the defiance that sprang as much from him as anything else. All his blows seemed made for life and self-preservation, which afterwards he sometimes felt, mistaking his resentment of it for a pang of conscience.
    He struck her fiercely across the shoulders: “Let that teach you, you cheeky young bitch.”
    â€œI wish you was dead,” she moaned. “I wish everybody was dead.” The dogs outside whined at the noise, a pitying tune to her fit of dereliction. Silence between the last frantic rustling of leaves and the first onset of rain went unnoticed, and raindrops swept the yard like a square-mile sweeping brush.
    I’ll run away, was her first thought, as Merton threw down the stick and went up in his stockinged feet to bed. But how can I? I’ve got no money. But I must do summat because I can’t stand this. I’m nearly twenty-three and wain’t put up with the old man’s bullyin’ any more. If I can’t run away I might as well chuck myself in the cut or under a train as go on puttin’ up with a dog’s life like this, because it’ll go on and on, I know for a fact, if I stay here. I’ll never be able to go out to the Empire and come in late after it. I’ve stood on the canal bank before, trying to chuck myself in the deep locks, but I never could do it; and I’ve waited for a train on the embankment to come fast out of Radford Station but I’ve allus been frightened at the noise as it gets closer, and before it comes near me I run away, down the bank and back through the field because I was frightened to death. But then, I don’t see why I should kill myself just for the old man, because I’m sure it wouldn’t bother him a deal if I did. No, why should I? though it would be nice one day if I did get killed by a bus or tram so’s he’d happen be sorry and think of all the times he’s been a rotten bogger to me.
    Looking around the too familiar room—a whitewashed cottage kitchen with a Sandeman sherry mirror by the door, a large homemade rug by the hearth, chairs and table under the window—she saw his case of horseshoes on the wall, brass and