Mrs. Bindle: Some Incidents from the Domestic Life of the Bindles

Mrs. Bindle shook her head, then opening her eyes, fixed them upon the strange viscid mass that Bindle extended to her.

"What is that smell?" she murmured wearily.

"Smell," said Bindle, sniffing the air like a cat when fish is boiling. "I don't smell nothink, Lizzie."

"You've burned something," she moaned feebly.

"'Ere, eat this," he said with forced cheerfulness, "then you'll feel better."

Once more Mrs. Bindle opened her eyes, gazed at the mass, then shaking her head, turned her face to the wall.

For five minutes, Bindle strove to persuade her. Finally, recognising defeat, he placed the plate on a chair by the bedside and, seating himself on a little green-painted box, worn at the edges so that the original white wood showed through, he proceeded to look the helplessness he felt.

"Feelin' better, Lizzie?" he enquired at length, holding his breath eagerly as he waited for the reply.

Mrs. Bindle shook her head drearily, and his heart sank.

Suddenly, he remembered Mrs. Hearty's earnest exhortation to keep the steam-kettle in operation. Once more he descended to the kitchen and, whilst the kettle was boiling, he occupied himself with scraping the heat-flaked milk from the top of the stove.

Throughout that night he laboured at the steam-kettle, or sat gazing helplessly at Mrs. Bindle, despair clutching at his heart, impotence dogging his footsteps. From time to time he would offer her the now cold slab of arrowroot, or else enquire if she were feeling better; but Mrs. Bindle refused the one and denied the other.

With the dawn came inspiration.

"Would you like a kipper for breakfast, Lizzie?" he enquired, hope shining in his eyes.

This time Mrs. Bindle not only shook her head, but manifested by her expression such a repugnance that he felt repulsed. The very thought of kippers made his own mouth water and, recalling that Mrs. Bindle was particularly partial to them, he realised that her condition must be extremely grave.

Soon after nine, Mrs. Hearty arrived and insisted on preparing breakfast for Bindle. Having despatched him to his work she proceeded to tidy-up.

After the doctor had called, Mrs. Bindle once more sought news as to her condition. This time Mrs. Hearty, obviously keen on reassuring the invalid, succeeded also in confirming her morbid convictions.

At the sight of the plate containing Bindle's conception of arrowroot for an invalid, Mrs. Hearty had at first manifested curiosity, then, on discovering the constituent parts of the unsavoury-looking mess, she had collapsed upon the green-painted box, wheezing and heaving until her gasps for breath caused Mrs. Bindle to open her eyes.

For nearly a week, Bindle and Mrs. Hearty devoted themselves to the sick woman. Every morning Bindle was late for work, and when he could get home he spent more than half of his dinner-hour by Mrs. Bindle's bedside, asking the inevitable question as to whether she were feeling better.

In the evening, he got home as fast as bus, train or tram could take him, and not once did he go to bed.

During the whole period, Mrs. Bindle was as docile and amenable to reason as a poor relation. Never had she been so subdued. From Mrs. Hearty she took the food that was prepared for her, and acquiesced in the remedies administered. Amidst a perfect tornado of wheezes and gaspings, Mrs. Hearty had confided to Bindle that he had better refrain from invalid cookery.

Nothing that either the doctor or Mrs. Hearty could say would convince Mrs. Bindle that she was long for this world. The very cheerfulness of those around her seemed proof positive that they were striving to inspire her with a hope they were far from feeling.

In her contemplation of Eternity, Mrs. Bindle forgot her kitchen, and the probable desolation Bindle was wreaking. Smells of burning, no matter how pungent, left her unmoved, and Bindle, finding that for the first time in his life immunity surrounded him, proceeded from one gastronomic triumph to another. He burned sausages in the frying-pan, boiled dried haddock in a porcelain-lined milk-saucepan and, not daring to confuse the flavour of sausages and fish, had hit upon the novel plan of cooking a brace of bloaters upon the top of the stove itself.

Culinary enthusiasm seized him, and he invented several little dishes of his own. Some were undoubted successes, notably one made up of tomatoes, fried onions and little strips of bacon; but he met his Waterloo in a dish composed of fried onions and eggs. The eggs were much quicker off the mark than the onions, and won in a canter. He quickly realised that swift decision was essential. It was a case either of raw onions and cooked eggs, or cooked onions and cindered eggs.

Never had such scents risen from Mrs. Bindle's stove to the receptive nostrils of the gods; yet through it all Mrs. Bindle made neither protest nor enquiry.

Even Mrs. Hearty was appalled by the state in which she found the kitchen each morning.

"My word, Joe!" she would wheeze. "You don't 'alf make a mess," and she would gaze from the stove to the table, and from the table to the sink, all of which bore manifest evidence of Bindle's culinary activities.

Mrs. Bindle, however, seemed oblivious of the cares of this world in her anxiety not to make the journey to the next. As her breath became more constricted, so her alarm increased.

In her eyes there was a mute appeal that Bindle, for one, found it impossible to ignore. Instinctively he sensed what was troubling her, and he lost no opportunity of striving to reassure her by saying that she would be out and about again before she could say "Jack Robinson."

Still there lurked in her eyes a Great Fear. She had never before had bronchitis, and the difficulty she experienced in breathing seemed to her morbidly suggestive of approaching death. Although she had never seen anyone die, she had in her own mind associated death with a terrible struggle for breath.

Once when Bindle suggested that she might like to see Mr. MacFie, the minister of the Alton Road Chapel, Mrs. Bindle turned upon him such an agonised look that he instinctively shrank back.

"Might-a-been Ole Nick 'isself," he later confided to Mrs. Hearty, "and me a-thinkin' to please 'er."

"She's afraid o' dying, Joe," wheezed Mrs. Hearty "Alf was just the same when 'e 'ad the flu."

Bindle spent money with the recklessness of a desperate man. He bought strange and inappropriate foods in the hope that they would tempt Mrs. Bindle's appetite. No matter where his work led him, he was always on the look out for some dainty, which he would purchase and carry home in triumph to Mrs. Hearty.

"You ain't 'alf a joke, Joe," she wheezed one evening, sinking down upon a chair and proceeding to heave and billow with suppressed laughter.

Bindle looked lugubriously at the yellow pie-dish into which he had just emptied about a quart of whelks, purchased in the Mile End Road.

"Ain't they good for bronchitis?" he enquired with a crestfallen look.

"Last night it was pig's feet," gasped Mrs. Hearty, "and the night before saveloys," and she proceeded to beat her chest with a grubby fist.

After that, Bindle had fallen back upon less debatable things. He had purchased illustrated papers, flowers, a quarter of a pound of chocolate creams, which had become a little wilted, owing to the crowded state of the tramcar in which he had returned home that night.

During those anxious days, he collected a strange assortment of articles, perishable and otherwise. The thing he could not do was to go home without some token of his solicitude.

One evening he acquired a vividly coloured oleograph in a gilt frame, which depicted a yawning grave, whilst in the distance an angel was to be seen carrying a very material-looking spirit to heaven.

Mrs. Bindle's reception of the gift was a wild look of terror, followed by a fit of coughing that frightened Bindle almost as much as it did her.

"Funny," he remarked later as he carried the picture out of the room. "I thought she'd 'ave liked an angel."

It was Bindle who eventually solved the problem of how to convey comfort to Mrs. Bindle's distraught spirit.

One evening he accompanied the doctor to her room. After the customary questions and answers between doctor and patient, Bindle suddenly burst out.

"I got a bet on with the doctor, Lizzie."

From an anxious contemplation of the doctor's face, where she had been striving to read the worst, Mrs. Bindle turned her eyes to Bindle's cheery countenance.

"'E's bet me a quid you'll be cookin' my dinner this day week," he announced.

The effect of the announcement on Mrs. Bindle was startling. A new light sprang into her eyes, her cheeks became faintly pink as she turned to the doctor a look of interrogation.

"It's true, Mrs. Bindle, and your husband's going to lose, that is if you're careful and don't take a chill."

Within ten minutes Mrs. Bindle had fallen into a deep sleep, having first ordered Bindle to put another blanket on the bed – she was going to take no risks.

"The first time I ever knowed Mrs. B. 'ear me talk about bettin' without callin' me a 'eathen," remarked Bindle, as he saw the doctor out. "Wonders'll never cease," he murmured, as he returned to the kitchen. "One o' these days she'll be askin' me to put a shillin' on both ways. Funny things, women!"

II

Bindle's plot with the doctor did more to expedite Mrs. Bindle's recovery than all the care that had been lavished upon her. From the hour she awakened from a long and refreshing sleep, she began to manifest interest in her surroundings. Her appetite improved and her sense of smell became more acute, so that Bindle had to select for his dishes materials giving out a less pungent odour.

He took the additional precaution of doing his cooking with the window and scullery-door open to their fullest extent.

Mrs. Bindle, on her part, took pleasure in planning the meals she imagined Mrs. Coppen was cooking. She had not been told that the charwoman was in prison for assaulting a policeman with a gin bottle.

"You'll 'ave to look out now, Joe," admonished Mrs. Hearty on one occasion as she entered the kitchen and gazed down at the table upon which Bindle was gathering together materials for what he described as a "top 'ole stoo." "If Lizzie was to catch you making all this mess she – " Mrs. Hearty finished in a series of wheezes.

One evening, when Bindle's menu consisted of corned-beef, piccalilli and beer, to be followed by pancakes of his own making, the blow fell.

The corned beef, piccalilli and beer were excellent and he had enjoyed them; but the pancakes were to be his chef d'[oe]uvre. His main object in selecting pancakes was, as he explained to Mrs. Hearty, "that they don't stink while cookin'."

From his sister-in-law he had obtained a general idea of how to proceed. She had even gone so far as to assist in mixing the batter.

The fat was bubbling merrily in the frying-pan as he poured in sufficient liquid for at least three pancakes.

"You ain't got much to learn about cookin', old cock," he muttered, as he watched the fat bubble darkly round the cream-coloured batter.

After a lapse of some five minutes he decided that the underside was sufficiently done. Then came the problem of how to turn the pancake. He had heard that expert cooks could toss them in such a way that they fell into the pan again on the reverse side; but he was too wise to take such a risk, particularly as the upper portion of the pancake was still in a liquid state.

He determined upon more cautious means of achieving his object. With the aid of a tablespoon and a fish-slice, he managed to get the pancake reversed. It is true that it had a crumpled appearance, and a considerable portion of the loose batter had fallen on to the stove; still he regarded it as an achievement.

Just as he was contemplating the turning of the pancake on to a plate, a knock came at the front-door. On answering it, Bindle found a butcher's boy, who insisted that earlier in the day he had left a pound of beef-steak at No. 7, instead of at No. 17. The lad was confident, and refused to accept Bindle's assurance that he had neither seen nor heard of the missing meat.

The argument waxed fierce and eventually developed into personalities, mainly from the butcher-boy.

Suddenly Bindle remembered his pancake. Banging the door in the lad's face, he dashed along the passage and opened the kitchen door. For a second he stood appalled, the pancake seemed to have eaten up every scrap of oxygen the room contained, and in its place had sent forth a suffocating smell of burning.

Realising that in swift action alone lay his salvation, Bindle dashed across the room, opened the door leading to the scullery and then the scullery door itself. He threw up the window and, with water streaming from his eyes, approached the stove. A blackened ruin was all that remained of his pancake.

Picking up the frying-pan he carried it over to the sink, where he stood regarding the charred mass. Suddenly he recollected that he had left open the kitchen-door leading into the passage. Dropping the frying-pan, he made a dash to close it; but he was too late. There, with her shoulders encased in a red flannel petticoat, stood Mrs. Bindle.

"My Gawd!" he muttered tragically.

For nearly a minute she stood as if turned to stone. Then without a word she closed the door behind her, walked to the centre of the room, and stood absorbing the scene of ruin and desolation about her, Bindle backing into the furthest corner.

She regarded the stove, generously flaked with the overflow of Bindle's culinary enthusiasm, glanced up at the discoloured dish-covers over the mantelpiece, the brightness of which had always been her special pride.

On to the dresser her eye wandered, and was met by a riot of dirty dishes and plates, salmon tins, empty beer bottles, crusts of bread, reinforced by an old boot.

The kitchen-table held her attention for fully half a minute. The torn newspaper covering it was stained to every shade of black and brown and grey, the whole being composed by a large yellow splotch, where a cup of very liquid mustard had come to grief.

Upon this informal tablecloth was strewn a medley of unwashed plates, knives and forks, bread-crumbs, potato-peelings and fish-bones.

Having gazed her fill, and still ominously silent, she proceeded to make a thorough tour of inspection, Bindle watching her with distended eyes, fear clutching at his heart.

At the sink she stood for some seconds steadfastly regarding Bindle's pancake. Her lips had now entirely disappeared.

The crisis came when she opened the dresser drawer and found the pie-dish and plate he had broken, but had forgotten to take away. Screwing up the packet again, she turned swiftly and hurled it at him with all her strength.

Wholly unprepared, Bindle made a vain effort to dodge; but the package got him on the side of the head, and a red line above his ear showed that Mrs. Bindle had drawn first blood.

"You fiend!" she cried. "Oh, you – !" and dropping into the chair by the table she collapsed.

Soon the kitchen was ringing with the sounds of her hysterical laughter. Bindle watched her like one hypnotised.

As if to save his reason, a knock came at the outer door. He side-stepped swiftly and made a dash for the door giving access to the hall. A moment later he was gazing with relief at Mrs. Hearty's pale blue tam o' shanter.

"'Ow is she, Joe?" she wheezed.

Then as he stepped aside to allow Mrs. Hearty to precede him into the kitchen, Bindle found voice. "I think she's better," he mumbled.

CHAPTER XII

MRS. BINDLE BREAKS AN ARMISTICE

I

"Pleasant company, you are," snapped Mrs. Bindle, as she made an onslaught upon the kitchen fire, jabbing it viciously with a short steel poker.

Bindle looked up from the newspaper he was reading. It was the third attack upon the kitchen fire within the space of five minutes, and he recognised the portents – a storm was brewing.

"I might as well be on a desert island for all the company you are," she continued. "Here am I alone all day long with no one to speak to, and when you come home you just sit reading the horse-racing news in the paper."

"Wot jer like to talk about?" he enquired, allowing the paper to drop to the floor opposite him.

She sniffed angrily and threw the poker into the ash-pan.

"I wasn't readin' about racin'," he continued pacifically. "I was jest readin' about a cove wot went orf with another cove's missis, 'is best overcoat and two chickens."

"Stop it!" She stood over him, her lips compressed, her eyes hard and steely, as if meditating violence, then, turning suddenly, she walked swiftly across to the dresser and pulled out the left-hand drawer. Taking from it her bonnet, she put it on her head and proceeded to tie the strings beneath her chin.

From behind the kitchen door she unhooked a brown mackintosh, into which she struggled.

"Goin' out?" he enquired.

"Yes," she replied, as she tore open the door, "and perhaps I'll never come back again," and with a bang that shook the house she was gone.

She took a tram to Hammersmith on her way to see her niece, Millie Dixon. She was angry; the day had been one of continual annoyances and vexations. Entering the car she buried her elbows deep into the redundant figure of a woman who was also endeavouring to enter.

Once inside, the woman began to inform the car what she thought of "scraggy 'Uns with faces like a drop of vinegar on the edge of a knife."

"That's the way you gets cancer," she continued, as she stroked the left side of her ample bust. "People with elbows like that should 'ave 'em padded," and Mrs. Bindle was conscious that the car was with her antagonist.

Mrs. Bindle next proceeded to quarrel with the conductor about the fare, which had gone up a halfpenny, and she ended by threatening to report him for not setting her down between the scheduled stopping-places.

"She's lost a Bradbury and found the water-rate," remarked the conductor, as he turned once more to the occupants of the car after watching Mrs. Bindle alight.

The fat woman responded to the pleasantry by expressing her views on "them wot don't know 'ow to be'ave theirselves like ladies."

With Mrs. Bindle, the lure of Joseph the Second was strong within her. When her loneliness became too great for endurance, or the domestic atmosphere manifested signs of a greater voltage than the normal, her thoughts instinctively flew to the blue-eyed nephew, who slobbered and cooed at her and raised his chubby fists in meaningless gestures. Then the hunger within her would be appeased, until some chance mention of Bindle's name would awaken her self-pity.

She found Millie alone with Joseph the Second asleep in his cot beside her. As she feasted her gaze upon the eye-shut babe, Mrs. Bindle was conscious of a feeling of disappointment. She wanted to babble baby-talk, and gaze into those filmy blue eyes.

In spite of her aunt's protests, Millie made a cup of tea, explaining as she did so that Charley was staying late at the office.

"It's a good cake, Millie," said Mrs. Bindle a few minutes later, as she delicately cut another small square from the slice of home-made cake upon the plate before her. In her eyes there was a look which was a tribute from one good cook to another. "Who gave you the recipe?"

"It was all through Uncle Joe," said Millie. "He was always saying what a wonderful cook you are, Aunt Lizzie, and that if you didn't feed pussy he wouldn't purr," she laughed. "You know what funny things he says," she added parenthetically – "so I took lessons. You see," she added quaintly, "I wanted Charley to be very happy."

"Pretty lot of purring there is in our house," was Mrs. Bindle's grim comment, as she raised her cup-and-saucer from the table upon the finger-tips of her left hand and, with little finger awkwardly crooked, lifted the cup with her disengaged hand and proceeded to sip the tea with Victorian refinement.

"How is Uncle Joe?" asked Millie. "I wish he had come."

"Oh! don't talk to me about your uncle," cried Mrs. Bindle peevishly. "He's sitting at home smoking a filthy pipe and reading the horse-racing news. I might be dirt under his feet for all the notice he takes of me."

The grievances of the day had been cumulative with Mrs. Bindle, and the burden was too heavy to be borne in silence. Beginning with a bad tomato among the pound she had bought that morning at Mr. Hearty's Fulham shop, her troubles had piled up one upon another to the point when she found Joseph the Second asleep.

She had burned one of her best hem-stitched handkerchiefs whilst ironing it, the milk had "turned" on account of the thunder in the air and, to crown the morning's tragedies, she had burned a saucepan owing to the dustman coming at an inconvenient moment.

"He's never been a proper husband to me," she sniffed ominously.

"Dear Aunt Lizzie," said Millie gently, as she leaned forward and placed her hand upon Mrs. Bindle's arm.

"He humiliates me before other people and – and sometimes I wish I was dead, Millie, God forgive me." Her voice broke as she stifled a sob.

Millie's large, grave eyes were full of sympathy, mixed with a little wonder. She could not understand how anyone could find "Uncle Joe" other than adorable.

"Ever since I married him he's been the same," continued Mrs. Bindle, the flood-gates of self-pity opening wide under the influence of Millie's gentleness and sympathy. "He tries to make me look small before other people and – and I've always been a good wife to him."

Again she sniffed, and Millie squeezed her arm affectionately.

"He's just the same with Mr. – with your father," Mrs. Bindle corrected herself. "Why he stands it I don't know. If I was a man I'd hit him, that I would, and hard too," she added as if to allow of no doubt in her niece's mind as to the nature of the punishment she would administer. "I'd show him; but Mr. Hearty's so good and patient and gentle." Mrs. Bindle produced a handkerchief, and proceeded to dab the corners of her eyes, although there was no indication of tears.

"But, Aunt Lizzie," protested Millie gently, "I'm sure he doesn't mean to make you – to humiliate you." She felt that loyalty to her beloved Uncle Joe demanded that she should defend him. "You see, he – he loves a joke, and he's very good to – to, oh, everybody! Charley just loves Uncle Joe," she added, as if that settled the matter as far as she were concerned.

"Look how he goes on about the chapel," continued Mrs. Bindle, fearful lest her niece's sympathy should be snatched from her. "I wonder God doesn't strike him dead. I'm sure I – "

"Strike him dead!" cried Millie in horror. "Oh, Aunt Lizzie! you don't mean that, you couldn't." She paused, seeming to bring the whole twelve months of her matronhood to the examination of the problem. "I know he's very naughty sometimes," she added sagely, "but he loves you, Aunt Lizzie. He thinks that – "

"Love!" cried Mrs. Bindle with all the scorn of a woman who has no intention of being comforted. "He loves nothing but his food and his low companions. He shames me before the neighbours, talking that familiar with common men. When I'm out with him he shouts out to bus-conductors, or whistles at policemen, or winks at – at hussies in the street." She paused in the catalogue of Bindle's crimes, whilst Millie turned her head to hide the smile she could not quite repress.

She herself had been with Bindle when he had called out to his bus-conductor friends, and whistled under his breath when passing a policeman, "If You Want to Know the Time Ask a Policeman"; but he had never winked at girls when he had been with her; of that she was sure.

"You see, Aunt Lizzie, he knows so many people, and they all like him and – "

"Only common people, like chauffeurs and workmen," was the retort. "When I'm out with him I sometimes want to sink through the ground with shame. He lets them call him 'Joe,' and of course they don't respect me." Again she sniffed ominously.

"I'll speak to him," said Millie with a wise little air that she had assumed since her marriage.

"Speak to him!" cried Mrs. Bindle scornfully. "Might as well speak to a brick wall. I've spoken to him until I'm tired, and what does he do? Laughs at me and says I'm as – " she paused, as if finding difficulty in bringing herself to give Bindle's actual expression – "says I'm as holy as ointment, if you know what that means."