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

"Thought I'd bring the sticks wiv me, missis," said the man genially. "Nothink like makin' sure in these days." He stopped suddenly. Without a word, Mrs. Bindle had turned and disappeared into the house.

"May as well pay a deposit," he remarked, thrusting a dirty hand into his trouser pocket. He glanced over his shoulder and winked jocosely at the woman with the foulard blouse.

The next thing he knew was that Drama with a capital "D" had taken a hand in the game. The crowd drew its breath with almost a sob of surprised expectancy.

Into Charley's vacant eyes there came a look of interest, and into the big man's mouth, just as he turned his head, there came a something that was wet and tasted odiously of carbolic.

He staggered back, his eyes bulging, as Mrs. Bindle, armed with a large mop, which she had taken the precaution to wet, stood regarding him like an avenging fury. Her eyes blazed, and her nostrils were distended like those of a frightened thoroughbred.

Before the big man had time to splutter his protests, she had swung round the mop and brought the handle down with a crack upon his bare, bald head. Then, once more swinging round to the business end of the mop, she drew back a step and charged.

The mop got the big man just beneath the chin. For a moment he stood on one leg, his arms extended, like the figure of Mercury on the Piccadilly Circus fountain.

Mrs. Bindle gave another thrust to the mop, and down he went with a thud, his head coming with a sharp crack against the tiles of the path.

The crowd murmured its delight. Charley danced from one foot to the other, the expression on his face proving conclusively that the vacuous look with which he had arrived was merely a mask assumed for defensive purposes.

"Get up!"

Into these two words Mrs. Bindle precipitated an amount of feeling that thrilled the crowd. The big man, however, lay prone, his eyes fixed in fear upon the end of the mop.

"Get up!" repeated Mrs. Bindle. "I'll teach you to come disturbing a respectable home. Look at my garden."

As he still made no attempt to move, she turned suddenly and doubled along the passage, reappearing a moment later with a pail of water with which she had been washing out the scullery. Without a moment's hesitation she emptied the contents over the recumbent figure of the big man. The house-cloth fell across his eyes, like a bandage, and the hearthstone took him full on the nose.

"Oo-er!"

That one act of Mrs. Bindle's had saved from entire annihilation the faith of a child. For the first time in his existence, Charley realised that there was a God of retribution.

Murmurs of approval came from the crowd.

"Give it to 'im, missis, 'e done it," shouted one. "It warn't the kid's fault, blinkin' 'Un."

"Dirty profiteer," cried the thin woman. "Look at 'is stummick," she added as if in support of her words.

"Get up!" Again Mrs. Bindle's hard, uninflected words sounded like the accents of destiny.

She accompanied her exhortation by a jab from the mop-end of her weapon directed at the centre of that portion of the big man's anatomy which had been advanced as proof of his profiteering propensities.

He raised himself a few inches; but Mrs. Bindle, with all the inconsistency of a woman, dashed the mop once more in his face, and down went his head again with a crack.

"Charley!" he roared; but there was nothing of the Paladin about Charley. Between him and his father at that moment were eleven years of heavy-handed tyranny, and Charley remained on the safety-side of the railings.

"Get up! You great, hulkin' brute," cried Mrs. Bindle, reversing the mop and getting in a stroke at his solar-plexus which would have made her fame in pig-sticking.

"Grrrrumph!" The fat man's exclamation was involuntary.

"Get up, I tell you," she reiterated. "You fat, ugly son of Satan, you Beelzebub, you leper, you Judas, you – " she paused a moment in her search for the undesirables from Holy Writ. Then, with inspiration, she added – "Barabbas."

The man made another effort to rise; but Mrs. Bindle brought the end of the mop down upon his head with a crack that sounded like a pistol-shot.

The expression on Charley's face changed. The lower jaw lifted. The loose, vacuous mouth spread. Charley was grinning.

For a moment the man lay still. Mrs. Bindle was standing over him with the mop, a tense and righteously indignant St. George over a particularly evil dragon.

Suddenly he gave tongue.

"'Elp!" he yelled. "I'm bein' murdered. 'Elp! Charley, where are you?" But Charley's grin had expanded and he was actually rubbing his hands with enjoyment.

Mrs. Bindle brought the mop down on the man's mouth. "Stop it, you blaspheming son o' Belial," she cried.

The big man roared the louder; but he made no effort to rise.

"'Ere comes a flatty," cried a voice.

"Slop's a-comin'," echoed another, and a minute later, a clean-shaven embodiment of youthful dignity and self-possession, in a helmet and blue uniform, approached and began to make his way through the crowd towards the Bindles' gate.

From the position in which he lay the big man, unable to see that assistance was at hand, continued to roar for help.

At the approach of this symbol of the law, Mrs. Bindle stepped back and brought her mop to the stand-at-ease position.

The policeman looked from one to the other, and then proceeded to ferret somewhere in the tails of his tunic, whence he produced a notebook. This was obviously a case requiring literary expression.

The big man, seeing Mrs. Bindle fall back, turned his head and caught a glimpse of the policeman. Very cautiously he raised himself to a sitting posture.

"She's been murderin' me," he said, with one eye fixed warily upon the mop. "'Ere, Charley!" he cried, looking over his left shoulder.

Charley reluctantly approached, regretful that law and order had triumphed over red revolution.

"Ain't she been tryin' to kill me?" demanded the big man of his offspring.

"Biffed 'im on the 'ead wiv the 'andle," corroborated the boy in a toneless voice.

"Poured water over me and 'it me in the stummick too, didn't she, Charley?" Once more the big man turned to his son for corroboration.

"Got 'im a rare 'un too!" agreed Charley, with a feeling in his voice that caused his father to look at him sharply. "Sloshed 'im on the jaw too," he added, as if finding pleasure in dwelling upon the sufferings of his parent.

"Do you wish to charge her?" asked the policeman in an official voice.

"'Charge me!'" broke in Mrs. Bindle. "'Charge me!' I should like to see 'im do it. See what 'e's done to my geraniums, bringing his filthy sticks into my front garden. 'Charge me!'" she repeated. "Just let him try it!" and she brought the mop to a position from which it could be launched at the big man's head.

Instinctively he sank down again on to the path, and the policeman interposed his body between the weapon and the vanquished.

"There's plenty of witnesses here to prove what he done," cried Mrs. Bindle shrilly.

Once more the big man raised himself to a sitting posture; but Mrs. Bindle had no intention of allowing him to control the situation. To her a policeman meant justice, and to this self-possessed lad in the uniform of unlimited authority she opened her heart and, at the same time, the vials of her wrath.

"'Ere was I ironin' in my kitchen when this rabble," she indicated the crowd with the handle of the mop, "descended upon me like the plague of locusts." To Mrs. Bindle, scriptural allusion was a necessity.

"They said they wanted to take my 'ouse. Said I'd told them it was to let, the perjured scum of Judas. Then he came along" – she pointed to her victim who was gingerly feeling the bump that Mrs. Bindle's mop had raised – "and threw all that dirty lumber into my garden, and – and – " Here her voice broke, for to Mrs. Bindle those geranium slips were very dear.

"You'd better get up."

At the policeman's words the big man rose heavily to his feet. For a moment he stood still, as if to make quite sure that no bones were broken. Then his hand went to his neck-cloth and he produced a piece of hearthstone which had, apparently, become detached from the parent slab.

"Threw bricks at me," he complained, holding out the piece of hearthstone to the policeman.

"Ananias!" came Mrs. Bindle's uncompromising retort.

"Do you want to charge her?" asked the policeman brusquely.

"Serves 'im jolly well right," cried the woman with the tweed cap and hat-pin, pushing her way in front of a big man who obstructed her view.

"Oughter be run-in 'isself," agreed a pallid woman with a shawl over her head.

"Look wot 'e done to 'er garding," mumbled the rag-and-bone man, pointing at the flower-bed with the air of one who has just made an important discovery.

"It's the likes of 'im wot makes strikes," commented the woman in the dolman. "Blinkin' profiteer."

"She's got pluck, any'ow," said a telephone mechanic, who had joined the crowd just before Charley's father had bent before the wind of Mrs. Bindle's displeasure. "Knocked 'im out in the first round. Regular George Carpenter," he added.

"You get them things out of my garden. If you don't I'll give you in charge."

The big man blinked, a puzzled expression creeping into his eyes. He looked at the policeman uncomprehendingly. This was an aspect of the case that had not, hitherto, struck him.

"Are they your things?" asked the policeman, intent upon disentangling the situation before proceeding to use the pencil, the point of which he was meditatively sucking.

Charley's father nodded. He was still thinking over Mrs. Bindle's remark. It seemed to open up disconcerting possibilities.

"Now then, what are you going to do?" demanded the policeman sternly. "Do you wish to make a charge?"

"I will," said Mrs. Bindle, "unless 'e takes 'is furniture away and pays for the damage to my flowers. I'll charge 'im, the great, 'ulking brute, attacking a defenceless woman because he knows 'er 'usband's out."

"That's right, missis, you 'ave 'im quodded," called out the rag-and-bone man. "'E didn't ought to 'ave done that to your garding."

"Tryin' to swank us 'e'd taken the 'ouse," cried the woman with the tweed cap and hat-pin. "I see through 'im from the first, I did. There ain't many men wot can throw dust in my eyes," she added, looking eagerly round for a dissenting look.

"'Ullo, 'ullo!" cried a voice from the outskirts of the crowd. "Somebody givin' somethink away, or is it a fire? 'Ere, let me pass, I'm the cove wot pays the rent," and Bindle pushed his genial way through the crowd.

They made way without protest. The advent of the newcomer suggested further dramatic developments, possibly even a fight.

"'Ullo, Tichborne!" cried Bindle, catching sight of the big man. "Been scrappin'?"

The three protagonists in the drama turned, as if with relief, to face this new phase of the situation.

"'Oo's 'e?" enquired Bindle of the policeman, indicating the big man with a jerk of his thumb.

"He's been tryin' to murder me, and if you were a man, Joe Bindle, you'd kill 'im."

Bindle subjected the big man to an elaborate scrutiny. "Looks to me," he remarked drily, "as if someone's got in before me. Wot's 'appened?" He looked interrogatingly up at the policeman.

"'Oly 'Orace," he cried suddenly, as he caught sight of the miscellaneous collection of furniture that lay about the geranium bed. "What's that little pawnshop a-doin' on our front garden?"

With the aid of the rag-and-bone man and the woman with the tweed cap and hat-pin, the whole situation was explained and expounded to both Bindle and the policeman.

When he had heard everything, Bindle turned to the big man, who stood sulkily awaiting events.

"Now, look 'ere, cully," he said. "You didn't oughter start doin' them sort o' things with a figure like yours. When Mrs. B. gets 'old of a broom, or a mop, the safest thing to do is to draw in your solar-plexus an' run. It 'urts less. Now, speakin' as a Christian to a bloomin' 'eathen wot's done 'imself pretty well, judgin' from the size of 'is pinafore, you'd better send for the coachman, 'arness up that there dray o' yours, carry orf them bits o' sticks an' let bygones be bygones. Ain't that good advice?" He turned to the policeman for corroboration.

There was a flicker of a smile at the corners of the policeman's mouth, which seemed not so very many years before to have been lisping baby language. He looked at the big man. It was not for him to advise.

"'Ere, Charley, blaaarst you," cried the big man, pushing his way to the gate. He had decided that the dice had gone against him. "Get them things on to the blinkin' barrer, you stutterin' young pup. Wot the purple – "

"Here, that's enough of that," said a quiet, determined voice, and the soft lines of the policeman's face hardened.

"Wot she want to say it was to let for?" he grumbled as he loped towards the hand-cart.

"'Ere 'ave I come wiv all these things to take the blinkin' 'ouse, then there's all this ruddy fuss. Are you goin' to get over into that blinkin' garden and fetch out them stutterin' things, or must I chuck you over?"

The last remark was addressed to Charley, who, with a wary eye on his parent, had been watching events, hoping against hope that the policeman would manifest signs of aggression, and carry on the good work that Mrs. Bindle had begun.

Charley glanced interrogatingly at the policeman. Seeing in his eye no encouragement to mutiny, he sidled towards the gate, a watchful eye still on his father. A moment later he was engaged in handing the furniture over the railings.

After the man had deposited the colander, a tin-bath, and two saucepans in the barrow, he seemed suddenly smitten with an idea.

He tugged a soiled newspaper from his trouser pocket. Glancing at it, he walked over to where the policeman was engaged in moving on the crowd.

"Read that," he said, thrusting the paper under the officer's nose and pointing to a passage with a dirty forefinger. "Don't that say the blinkin' 'ouse is to let? You oughter run 'er in for false – " He paused. "For false – " he repeated.

With a motion of his hand, the policeman brushed aside the newspaper.

"Move along there, please. Don't block up the footpath," he said.

At length the barrow was laden.

The policeman stood by with the air of a man whose duty it is to see the thing through.

The crowd still loitered. They had even yet hopes of a breach of the peace.

The big man was reluctant to go without a final effort to rehabilitate himself. Once more he drew the paper from his pocket and approached the policeman.

"Wot she put that in for?" he demanded, indicating the advertisement.

Ignoring the remark, the policeman drew his notebook once more from his pocket.

"I shall want your name and address," he said with an official air.

"Wotjer want it for?"

"Now, then, come along," said the policeman, and the big man gave his name and address.

"Wot she do it for?" he repeated, "an' wot's going to 'appen to 'er for 'ittin' me in the stummick?"

"You'd better get along," said the policeman.

With a grumble in his throat, the big man placed himself between the shafts of the barrow and, having blasted Charley into action, moved off.

"Made a rare mess of the garding, ain't 'e?" remarked the rag-and-bone man to the woman with the tweed cap and the hat-pin.

"Blinkin' profiteer!" was her comment.

II

"It's all your fault. Look wot they done." Mrs. Bindle surveyed the desolation which, that morning, had been a garden.

The bed was trodden down, the geraniums broken, and the lobelia border showed big gaps in its blue and greenness.

"It's always the same with anything I 'ave," she continued. "You always spoil it."

"But it wasn't me," protested Bindle. "It was that big cove with the pinafore."

"Who put that advertisement in?" demanded Mrs. Bindle darkly. "That's what I should like to know."

"Somebody wot 'ad put the wrong number," suggested Bindle.

"I'd wrong number them if I caught them."

Suddenly she turned and made a bolt inside the house.

Bindle regarded the open door in surprise. A moment later his quick ears caught the sound of Mrs. Bindle's hysterical sobbing.

"Now ain't that jest like a woman?" was his comment. "She put 'im to sleep in the first round, an' still she ain't 'appy. Funny things, women," he added.

That evening as Mrs. Bindle closed the front door behind her on her way to the Wednesday temperance service, she turned her face to the garden; it had been in her mind all day.

She blinked incredulously. The lobelia seemed bluer than ever, and within the circular border was a veritable riot of flowering geraniums.

"It's that Bindle again," she muttered with indrawn lips as she turned towards the gate. "Pity he hasn't got something better to do with his money." Nevertheless she placed upon the supper-table an apple-tart that had been made for to-morrow's dinner, to which she added a cup of coffee, of which Bindle was particularly fond.

CHAPTER VII

MRS. BINDLE DEMANDS A HOLIDAY

I

"I see they're starting summer-camps." Mrs. Bindle looked up from reading the previous evening's paper. She was invariably twelve hours late with the world's news.

Bindle continued his breakfast. He was too absorbed in Mrs. Bindle's method of serving dried haddock with bubble-and-squeak to evince much interest in alien things.

"That's right," she continued after a pause, "don't you answer. Your ears are in your stomach. Pleasant companion you are. I might as well be on a desert island for all the company you are."

"If you wasn't such a damn good cook, Mrs. B., I might find time to say pretty things to you." It was only in relation to her own cooking that Bindle's conversational lapses passed without rebuke.

"There are to be camps for men, camps for women, and family camps," continued Mrs. Bindle without raising her eyes from the paper before her.

"Personally myself I says put me among the gals." The remark reached Mrs. Bindle through a mouthful of haddock and bubble-and-squeak, plus a fish-bone.

"You don't deserve to have a decent home, the way you talk."

There were times when no answer, however gentle, was capable of turning aside Mrs. Bindle's wrath. On Sunday mornings in particular she found the burden of Bindle's transgressions weigh heavily upon her.

Bindle sucked contentedly at a hollow tooth. He was feeling generously inclined towards all humanity. Haddock, bubble-and-squeak, and his own philosophy enabled him to withstand the impact of Mrs. Bindle's most vigorous offensive.

"It's years since I had a holiday," she continued complainingly.

"It is, Mrs. B.," agreed Bindle, drawing his pipe from his coat pocket and proceeding to charge it from a small oblong tin box. "We ain't exactly wot you'd call an 'oneymoon couple, you an' me."

"The war's over."

"It is," he agreed.

"Then why can't we have a holiday?" she demanded, looking up aggressively from her paper.

"Now I asks you, Mrs. B.," he said, as he returned the tin box to his pocket, "can you see you an' me in a bell-tent, or paddlin', or playin' ring-a-ring-a-roses?" and he proceeded to light his pipe with the blissful air of a man who knows that it is Sunday, and that The Yellow Ostrich will open its hospitable doors a few hours hence.

"It says they're very comfortable," Mrs. Bindle continued, her eyes still glued to the paper.

"Wot is?"

"The tents."

"You ought to ask Ging wot a bell-tent's like, 'e'd sort o' surprise you. It's worse'n a wife, 'otter than religion, colder than a blue-ribboner. When it's 'ot it bakes you, when it's cold it lets you freeze, and when it's blowin' 'ell an' tinkers, it 'oofs it, an' leaves you with nothink on, a-blushin' like a curate 'avin' 'is first dip with the young women in the choir. That's wot a bell-tent is, Mrs. B. In the army they calls 'em 'ell-tents."

"Oh! don't talk to me," she snapped as she rose and proceeded to clear away the breakfast-things, during which she expressed the state of her feelings by the vigour with which she banged every utensil she handled. As she did so Bindle proceeded to explain and expound the salient characteristics of the army bell-tent.

"When you wants it to stand up," he continued, "it comes down, you bein' underneath. When you wants it to come down, nothing on earth'll move it, till you goes inside to 'ave a look round an' see wot's the trouble, then down it comes on top o' you. It's a game, that's wot it is," he added with conviction, "a game wot nobody ain't goin' to win but the tent."

"Go on talking, you're not hurting me," said Mrs. Bindle, with indrawn lower lip, as she brought down the teapot upon the dresser with a super bang.

"I've 'eard Ging talk o' twins, war, women, an' the beer-shortage; but to 'ear 'im at 'is best, you got to get 'im to talk about bell-tents."

"Everybody else has a holiday except me." Mrs. Bindle was not to be diverted from her subject. "Here am I, slavin' my fingers to the bone, inchin' and pinchin' to keep you in comfort, an' I can't 'ave a holiday. It's a shame, that's what it is, and it's all your fault." She paused in the act of wiping out the inside of the frying-pan, and stood before Bindle like an accusing fury. Anger always sullied the purity of her diction.

"Well, why don't you 'ave an 'oliday if you set yer 'eart on it? I ain't got nothink to say agin it." He continued to puff contentedly at his pipe, wondering what had become of the paper-boy. Bindle had become too inured to the lurid qualities of domesticity to allow them to perturb him.

"'Ow can I go alone?"

"You'd be safe enough."

"You beast!" Bindle was startled by the vindictiveness with which the words were uttered.

For a few minutes there was silence, punctuated by Mrs. Bindle's vigorous clearing away. Presently she passed over to the sink and turned on the tap.

"Nice thing for a married woman to go away alone," she hurled at Bindle over her shoulder, amidst the rushing of water.

"Well, take 'Earty," he suggested, with the air of a man anxious to find a way out of a difficulty.

"You're a dirty-minded beast," was the retort.

"An' this Sunday, too. Oh, naughty!"

"You never take me anywhere." Mrs. Bindle was not to be denied.

"I took you to church once," he said reminiscently.

"Why don't you take me out now?" she demanded, ignoring his remark.

"Well," he remarked, as he dug into the bowl of his pipe with a match-stick, "when you caught a bus, you don't go on a-runnin' after it, do you?"

"Why don't you get a week off and take me away?"

"Well, I'll think about it." Bindle rose and, picking up his hat, left the room, with the object of seeking the missing paper-boy.

The loneliness of her life was one of Mrs. Bindle's stock grievances. If she had been reminded of the Chinese proverb that to have friends you must deserve friends, she would have waxed scornful. Friends, she seemed to think, were a matter of luck, like a goose in a raffle, or a rich uncle.

"It's little enough pleasure I get," she would cry, in moments of passionate protest.

To this, Bindle would sometimes reply that "it's wantin' a thing wot makes you get it." Sometimes he would go on to elaborate the theory into the impossibility of "'avin' a thing for supper an' savin' it for breakfast."

By this, he meant to convey to Mrs. Bindle that she was too set on post-mortem joys to get the full flavour of those of this world.

Mrs. Bindle possessed the soul of a potential martyr. If she found she were enjoying herself, she would become convinced that, somewhere associated with it, must be Sin with a capital "S", unless of course the enjoyment were directly connected with the chapel.

She was fully convinced that it was wrong to be happy. Laughter inspired her with distrust, as laughter rose from carnal thoughts carnally expressed. She fought with a relentless courage the old Adam within herself, inspired always by the thought that her reward would come in another and a better world.

Her theology was that you must give up in this world all that your "carnal nature" cries out for, and your reward in the next world will be a sort of perpetual jamboree, where you will see the damned being boiled in oil, or nipped with red-hot pincers by little devils with curly tails. In this she had little to learn either from a Dante, or the Spanish Inquisition.