AN ALIEN[1]
Reading edition
AN ALIEN[1]
"No, I ain't got it, ma'am; he says I'm a foreigner. I filled up the papers same as you told me, and then the gentleman called and asked for the birth-certificate, same as you said he would. 'I ain't got it,' I says. 'I suppose when I was born children were too common and folks too busy to go twenty miles down the hillside to crow over a baby at Carlisle Town Hall. There were fifteen of us all told, and my father only a farm labourer; if he went abroad the work stayed at 'ome, and 'e'd no time for gallivanting with seventeen mouths to fill. But I've got my baptism here all right; my mother was a pious body, and as soon as she could stand up she went to be churched and take the new stranger to be washed free of original sin in font-water; 'ere's the date written on it, 1837—year Queen Victoria began her most happy reign—you'll believe that, I suppose, in a parson's 'andwriting? Stands to reason I was born afore I was christened; they couldn't put the cross on my forehead, now could they, till my face was out in the world? Silly talk, I calls it, so now don't say no more, but pay me that five shillings and give me the book with the tickets—same as other ladies!'
"'You've lost your domicile,' he says.
"'Don't know what that is,' I says.
"'Married a foreigner,' he says.
"'Well, and if I did, that ain't no business of yours, my lad; you weren't born nor thought of and he died afore you come near this wicked world. He's been dead wellnigh on fifty year, so 'e didn't cross your path to worry you. Couldn't talk English? I says as 'e talked a deal better than you. I understood what 'e says, and I can't make 'ead nor tail of your silly talk, my lad, so there. Coverture? No—I ain't 'eard of that—no, nor naturalization either; you go down and fetch up Mrs. Nash—she's a rare scholard, she is—such a one for her books and poetry. Perhaps she'll make sense of your long words, for I can't. I lived afore the school-boards, and all the schooling I got I found out for myself sitting up in bed at night a-teaching myself to read and write. Not as I think much of all the larning myself; the girls can't keep a 'ome together as we used, and though the boys sit at the school desks a-cyphering till they are grown young men, they seem allus out of work at the end of it,' I says.
"'Yes, yes, you needn't olloa, my lad; I'm not deaf, though I am old and grey-headed. So I can't have the pension because fifty years ago I fell in love and married a steady young man, who worked hard, and knew how to treat his wife (which 'alf you Englishmen don't), though 'e was a Frenchman? I tell you marriage don't matter; 'usbands are come-by-chance sort of people—you go a walk in the moonlight, and you kisses each other, and then, afore you're clear in your mind, you're standing at the altar, and the "better for worse" curse a-thundering over you. Ah! well, poor Alphonse didn't live long enough to get worse, and his death made me a widow indeed, and though I was only twenty-two, and plenty of men came after me, I never took none of 'em. I didn't want no nasty bigamous troubles on the Resurrection morning. Why should five years out of my seventy-two change me into a Frenchy? What counts is my father and mother, and my childhood by Helvellyn,' I says. 'I'm British-born, of British parents, on British soil. I've never stirred from my land, and I can't speak a word of nowt but English, so stop your silly talk, my lad. And then,' I says, 'if my husband made me a Frenchy, ain't I English again by my sons? (it says in the Book a woman shall be saved by child-bearing)—two of 'em in the Navy and one of 'em killed and buried at Tel-el-Kebir, and a dozen grandsons or more a-serving of Her Majesty in furrin parts—yes, I allus say "Her Majesty"; I've been used to the Queen all my life, and Kings don't seem right in England somehow.
"What stumps me is that you gone and paid a pension to that woman opposite; now, she's an alien and a foreigner if you like—can't speak a word of English as a body can understand, and she hates England—allus a-boasting about Germany and the Emperor and their army, and how they'll come and smash us to pieces—she married an Englishman, so that makes her English—'eavens, what rubbish! Why, 'e died a few years after the wedding, and she's only been here a couple of years at the most; I remember them coming quite well. So she's English, with her German tongue and her German ways, just because she belonged for a couple of years to an English corpse in the cemetery; and I, with my English birth and life and sons, am French because of my poor Alphonse rotted to dust fifty years ago. Well, England's a nice land for women, a cruel step-dame to her daughters; seems as if English girls 'ad better get theirselves born in another planet, where people can behave decent-like to them, and not make it a crime and a sin at seventy for marrying nice young men who court them at eighteen. I pray as God will send a plague of boys in the land and never a girl amongst them, so that the English people shall die out by their own wickedness, or have to mate only with furriners."