Pure as the Lily by Catherine Cookson

street shouting “Help! Help!”
    By this time the two men were wedged in the opening left by the flap and already blood was pouring from Ben’s face. Then, like froth pouring out of a bottle, they spurted into the middle of the shop, and crashed against an ornamental biscuit stand, wherein the tins were set at angles, fronted by a long glass door, the stand rocked backwards and forwards twice, then fell inwards towards the window with a resounding crash.
    The women, who had been trapped in the corner, now slipped through the counter lid and caught at Mary as she came dashing from the storeroom yelling, “Oh, Da! Da!”
    ‘you can’t do nowt, lass, you can’t do nowt. Let them have it out. “ The woman held on to her, and it was at this point that Ben managed to throw Alee from him. But as he did so he slipped on the spilled fruit on the floor and went sprawling badcwards. In a flash Alee reached to the left of him and
    picked up a glass jar of sweets standing on a shelf at the back of the shop window facing Cornice Street. For a moment, just for a moment, it was poised in his hand, the next it crashed down on to Ben’s face, and the jar split in two as if it had been cut by a knife, the two pieces falling one to each side of his head while the jube-jubes spilled over him and instantly became bathed in his blood.
    Ben didn’t move. Nobody moved. Not Alee, now leaning back against the counter; nor the woman holding Mary; nor Mary, straining forward; nor all the children in the shop doorway; not until the men rushed in and exclaimed one after the other, “My God! God Almighty! Christ alive!
    what’s happened? “ did the tension break. Then Alee, pulling himself slowly away from the counter, went from the shop. He did not look towards Mary, he looked at no one. His clothes were torn, his face was splattered with blood; but it wasn’t his own blood. Blindly he went through the crowd at the door and the larger crowd on the pavement and the road. The whole street was out, and they made way for him. And when he saw the policeman come hurrying towards him, with a woman at his side, he half stopped. But when they just hesitated as they looked at him, then went on, he, too, went on.
    When he entered the house again his mother said, “Oh my God! Oh my God! what have you done?” And Alice cried, “Did you do it? Speak, man! Did you do it?” He looked at her long and hard as he said, “Aye, I did it, I did what you said. Aye, I did it. You satisfied now?”
    Then he went and sat down by the fire and held out his hands to the blaze, and when his mother took a towel and began to wipe his face he did not push her away.
    Mary cradled Ben’s head until they brought a doctor, and when he came and the shop was cleared, except for two men, a woman and the policeman, she still knelt on the floor by his side until they brought the ambulance. Then she rode with him to Harton Hospital in Shields.
    “Are you his daughter?” the nurse asked.
    No. No. “
    “His wife?”
    She shook her head.
    “Who are his next of kin?”
    She didn’t know, except that he had a cousin who lived in Wallsend, but she didn’t know the address, and anyway she was crippled.
    Half an hour later when the nurse came to her and said, “He’s ready for the theatre,” she asked in a whisper, “Is it bad?” and the nurse shook her head and looked down as she answered, “They’ll try to save his eye.”
    Oh God! his brown eyes, his beautiful brown eyes. Her da had done this to Ben. She couldn’t believe it. She had known he would be mad, but not this kind of mad. She thought he would have gone mad with his tongue, going for her, then not speaking to her for a while, but afterwards he would come round.
    Her da was a gentle man, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. And it was all through her. She wished she was dead.
    Oh!
    oh how she wished she was dead!
    Half an hour later still, they took her into a side ward and gave her a cup of tea, and the nurse