The Green Years

by A. J. Cronin

  “It’s not gold, is it, Grandpa?”

  “No,” he said. “ If it’s connected with Adam you may be sure it’s brass.”

  A short pause, while I re-read the inscription. “ Grandpa, has it anything to do with your policy?”

  He turned dark red, his expression wounded, outraged, suffused with anger. In a loud voice he answered:

  “Never mention that swindle to me again or I’ll wring your neck.”

  There was a silence. Grandpa rose and began to pace up and down, much upset. Majestic with indignation he declared:

  “The worst crime in the calendar … the unforgivable iniquity … IS MEANNESS!”

  With an expression at first bitter, then ironic, then soothed, he repeated this maxim several times. At last, as though regretting his outburst, he turned and studied my cowed form. “ Do you want to go skating?”

  My heart sank deeper. “ I have no skates, Grandpa.”

  “Tut! Tut! Don’t be so easy beat. We’ll see what we can do.”

  Choosing a moment when the coast was clear, he went down to the cellar, behind the scullery, and brought up a wooden box filled with old nails, bolts, doorknobs and rusty skates which—since nothing, I repeat, nothing, was ever thrown out at Lomond View—had accumulated during many years. Seated in his chair, pipe in mouth, while I sat on the floor in my stocking feet, he fiddled about with a key, trying to adjust the smallest pair of Acme skates to fit my boots. My disappointment was great when I saw he could not succeed. But, when everything seemed lost, he found at the bottom of the box a pair of wooden skates which had been Kate’s when she was a child. What joy! Screwed into my boot-heels they fitted exactly. We had no straps, it is true, but Grandpa had plenty of strong string which would serve equally. He unscrewed the skates, I put on my boots, and we set out, with animation, for the pond.

  What a pleasant and exciting scene: a sheet of ice perhaps half a mile long and a quarter broad, covered with darting, swooping and wobbling figures, moving gaily, tracing intricate patterns, colliding, falling, rising again, all under a clear blue sky to which ascended the high incessant ring of the ice and the shouts of the skaters.

  Grandpa fastened on my skates and began to teach me, patiently, with many scientific explanations, how to keep my balance. He lumbered along beside me, guiding and supporting me until I was able to strike out for myself. Then he retired, joined Mr. Boag and Peter Dickie on the bank, lit his pipe and watched me.

  Enchanted by this new form of motion, I floundered over the ice. In a quiet corner of the pond some good skaters had put down an orange, which made a brilliant speck of colour on the grey surface, and were doing figures round it. Miss Julia Blair was amongst them and, to my surprise, Alison Keith and her mother, both of whom skated very neatly indeed. Presently Alison came over and, crossing her arms, took both my hands. By imitation, picking up the rhythm of her strokes as she steered me round the pond, I began to make real progress. At my gratitude she smiled, shook her head slightly, and darted back to her mother and the orange. During our circuit she had not said a word.

  Later Grandpa summoned me to the bank, with his enigmatic smile.

  “Enjoying yourself?”

  “Oh, Grandpa, wonderful, simply wonderful.”

  Later that evening: an opinion drowsily revised … I don’t think I want those scurrying waiters after all. What fun it was with these old skates and Grandpa’s pieces of string! It was just a pity I did not see Gavin on the pond. Yes, Grandma, I will be a good boy to-morrow. I’m sorry I was ungrateful, I promise faithfully to count my blessings in the future. But now … now, I am asleep.

  Chapter Eight

  Spring came quickly that year and the three chestnut trees in front of the house nodded their white plumes before a boy dazzled by freedom, intoxicated with strange and undreamed-of joys.

  On the fifteenth of April Grandma left, according to her custom, to spend a few months with her Ayrshire relatives—as I have indicated, she divided the year pretty equally: autumn and winter in Levenford, spring and summer, “the growing months,” at Kilmarnock.

  We had progressed, she and I, in our grave private devotions. No one, I must here insist, could have been more restrained than Grandma in her handling of my delicate situation. A fervent member of the small but intense sect into which her husband had led her, her convictions were absolute, yet not once did she attempt to impose these upon me. Her attitude never transgressed the correct limits of patient hopefulness. Her strongest action came after dinner on Sundays, when she drew me to her room, and kept me at her knee reading aloud selections from the Scriptures. Approving my account of the war between Saul and David, she rocked gently in her chair by the window, on which the flies buzzed drowsily, viewing the regular Sunday promenade to the Drumbuck cemetery on the road outside and sucking, not the flat soft oddfellow recklessly preferred by Grandpa, but a hard round imperial which rattled lastingly against her teeth. (It seemed to me that the opposite characteristics of their favourite sweets exactly symbolized the difference between my two great-grandparents.) From time to time she interrupted my reading to give me little homilies on good living and the dangers of constipation, and to exhort me, above all, to stand firm against Satan.

  Satan, the Evil One, Lucifer, or, as she also named him, the Beast, was for Grandma a Personal Enemy, perpetually gnashing his teeth at the elbows of the Just; and indeed, as her stern theology imperceptibly reinforced my earlier instruction, the Devil began to assume for me a terrifying reality.

  On those winter evenings when Grandma was out upon some Gospel activity it was my duty to take up to our bed a stone hot-water jar, which she named her “jorrie,” and if she had not returned by eight o’clock, to undress and retire in solitude. There was never much light upon the upper landing and frequently Grandpa was out also, though not of course at church. As I lay in the dark whispering bedroom, menaced on all sides by the shadowy walls and creaking wainscoting, I knew, with every shrinking nerve, that I was not alone. The Evil One was there, hiding in Grandma’s “ press,” ready to pounce upon me the instant I relaxed.

  Long moments of stiff and scarcely breathing anguish passed until at last I could bear it no longer. With that thin courage which streaked my natural timidity I jumped up and faced the awful cupboard. There, with shaking knees, a white small figure barely illuminated by the feeble glimmer which ascended from the street lamp outside, I raised my trembling voice in exorcism.

  “Come out, Satan. I have the number of the Beast.”

  Then, blessing myself three times for good measure, I threw open the door. For a second my heart stood still.… But no, there was nothing there, nothing but the dim outlines of Grandma’s dresses. With a sob of relief I would turn and fling myself beneath the sheets.

  Grandma never knew of these nocturnal conflicts, yet I think she was satisfied with her tactful shaping of my tender and unconscious spirit. As she departed for Kilmarnock, in a new bonnet, she pressed a sixpence into my hand and, having exacted from me a promise to take my physic, after many admonitions and exhortations towards “perseverance” she murmured: “When I come back, my lamb, we’ll see what’s to be done for you.”

  My heart had come to brim, like a fountain, for my grandma. Yet, strangely, her absence gave me a queer feeling of relief which was intensified when Mama transferred me to a makeshift cot behind a curtain in the kitchen alcove. Oh, the sweet privacy of this little screened recess: almost a room of my own!

  Grandpa seemed liberated too. His first act was to take the big bottle of medicine Grandma had left me and decant it, with an impenetrable smile, out of his window. Almost at once the ferns in the plot beneath yellowed and died, causing Murdoch to gloom and mutter, quite mistakenly, against Grandpa’s intimate habits.

  But never mind, never mind; the household at Lomond View was finding a momentary tranquillity in the miracle of the grey earth’s rebirth. Soothed by the peace on the upper landing, Grandpa went placidly every day to the green to beat Saddler
Boag at the marleys. Papa put a smart white cover on his uniform cap and actually took me on a Sunday afternoon to the Waterworks, to admire, over the red spiked railings, the big reservoir and the trim official dwelling which he hoped to inhabit when Mr. Cleghorn, the Superintendent, retired. Mama, less worried, ceased those interminable little calculations dealing, in pence and farthings, with her problem of making ends meet. In the morning, while he whittled his downy chin, Murdoch could be heard intoning sonorously: “ I love a lassie, a bonnie Highland lassie.” Only Kate seemed disturbed, angered even by the swiftly flowing sap, the swooping of the robins bearing straws to the eaves, the distant enchanting whinny of a stallion at Snoddie’s Farm.

  Before I reveal my own happiness I must probe, with careful tenderness, into this enigma which is Kate.

  With the window open and the fragrance of the lilac bush in the back garden drifting in to us, we are seated at the dessert of our midday dinner in perfect amity. Mama, who hates to see anything left, picks up with the serving spoon the last three stewed prunes remaining forlornly in the dish. “ Who will have these?” she inquires. “Very good for the blood in the springtime.” She makes a tentative offer to the brooding Kate, then, receiving no response, drops them into Murdoch’s plate. Immediately, Kate jumps to her feet, the bumps on her brow, like patches of headache, turning fiery red. She cries hysterically: “ I am nothing in this house. And I am earning too … bringing in good money … teaching these smelly little beasts of infants all day long. I will never, never speak to any of you again.” She rushes from the room, followed in consternation by Mama, who returns, a minute later, repulsed, shaking her head, and sighing: “ Kate is a strange girl.”

  Murdoch wishes magnanimously to surrender the prunes; but Mama prepares her universal panacea, a cup of tea, which she bids me take up to Kate in her room. I am chosen because I, surely, cannot have offended her. I find Kate in tears upon her bed, her mood soft and self-commiserating.

  “They all hate me, every one of them.” She sits up unexpectedly on the bed and turns towards me a tear-ravaged face. “Tell me, dear, do you think I’m terribly plain?”

  “No, Kate, no … far from it.” I am startled into the lie.

  “Your mother was much prettier than me. Simply lovely.” She shakes her head dolefully. “And I have such a horrible name. Think of it … Kate. Who would take Kate on a Moonlight Cruise … or out to the Minstrels at the Point? If you ever do find me in the company of a strange young man, call me Irene. Promise now.”

  I promise, dutiful but amazed. Kate, in other ways, is so eminently sensible, a conscientious teacher with a creditable record at the Normal Training College, a good hockey player, a beautiful knitter, a member of the Women’s Institute. She exhibits to perfection that wonderful Scots quality—“ dourness.” In her struggle to keep “ nits” from the heads of her poor pupils she, who is violently clean, often picks up vermin on her own person and must stand and shake her clothing in the bath whenever she comes in, pale with disgust, yet grimly uncomplaining. Outsiders remark approvingly of Kate: “ Such a worthy girl.” It is to Kate that I owe my sound teeth, for she took me, without a word, to Mr. Strang the Levenford dentist, when they started to decay the month before. She it is who gives me, from her small library, solid books like Ivanhoe and Hereward the Wake. Yet I know there exists in the same case, for I have perused them breathlessly, volumes wherein the dark handsome hero kneels, in the last chapter, murmuring brokenly before the sweet, womanly figure in white satin he has hitherto ignored.…

  “Oh, well, Robie,” Kate concludes our present interview with a sigh, “I suppose we may as well rot here as anywhere.”

  When I descend I tell Mama that she is much better. But she is not. She confines her family conversation for a fortnight to scribbled messages on torn-off scraps of paper. She quarrels tempestuously with her best friend, Bessie Ewing, so that Bessie, faithful bespectacled Bessie, comes in late in the evening for long perturbed confidences with Mama in the privacy of the scullery. Bessie, who has supported Kate’s temperament since they were schoolgirls together, is the intelligent daughter of a refined Knoxhill family. She works in the local telephone exchange all week and every Saturday night dons the blue-and-scarlet uniform of the Salvation Army. Short and anaemic, but with nice fluffy hair, she has an angelic disposition and a way of looking at Murdoch when they meet in the kitchen.

  Now I hear her say, earnestly, to Mama: “Really, Mrs. Leckie, I’m worried. It’s lack of interest. Now if only we could get her to take up, say, the mandolin … or even the banjo …”

  Little talebearer that I am, I run to Grandpa with the news: “Grandpa! Grandpa! I think Kate is going to learn the banjo.”

  He gazes at me, a faint ironic twist to his golden moustache. “ I fear that instrument will do her little good, my boy.”

  I gaze at him blankly; perhaps he means that Kate must learn the piano in the parlour: McKillop Brothers Upright Iron-framed Grand. But no matter, I toss my head, and dart away, merely for the sake of running. I run errands for everyone: for Mrs. Bosomley, who on my return rewards me with her ripe smile and Bovril-spread toast, a sandwich which makes water run from the very substance of my teeth. Forgetful of my precarious position, a little outcast, barely acknowledged, poised on the edge of the unknown, I am happy … happy that I love, and am loved by, Gavin.

  We had begun, Gavin and I, to comb the uplands together: brave expeditions which made my previous voyagings with Grandpa seem babyish indeed. Gavin sought, ceaselessly, and passionately, the sole specimen lacking to his collection, this egg of the golden plover, rarest of all the Winton birds. Yet, as we traversed the lower woods, bent on this quest, he had the patience to instruct me: finding for me in unseen and impossible places all the commoner nests, parting the branches of a hawthorn bush and calmly murmuring: “Missel thrush with five,” while with bright eyes I peered at the neat cup of straw and mud, wherein lay, warmly fragile, the speckled blue eggs. He initiated me in the delicate art of “ blowing.” He swore me to the oath of the woodsman: never to take more than one egg from a nest, his small face turning white with anger as he spoke of boys who “harried” the nest of all its eggs, causing the mother bird to “desert.”

  Then we climbed Drumbuck Hill. It was a new country we gained, with a breeze that came cool and sweet as spring water on my cheek. Distantly, beneath us, lay a free and sweeping panorama of the world laced with white roads and split by the estuary of the Clyde, a wide bar of shimmering silver, with tiny ships upon it. The town of Levenford was lost in a merciful haze, out of which reached the rounded hump back of the Castle Rock. The toy houses of Drumbuck village crouched far, far down, at our feet. Swathes of green rolled away to the west, and as my gaze followed this meadowland I started, almost in fear, to see a great high shape towering sharp and blue above the flying white clouds.

  “Look, Gavin, look!” I cried shrilly, keeping close to him and pointing to the mountain.

  He nodded solemnly. “ It’s the Ben!”

  I could have gazed for ever, but again he drew me on, past a whitewashed farmhouse in the fold of the moor with its byre and steadings grouped in a square around it. There was a smell of cows and straw in the yard; a bush of broom, already flaming yellow, shaded the back porch. The curlews were wheeling overhead and the bees droned amongst the blazing gorse as we crossed the farm lands where the cows lay in the shade, all facing in the same direction, barely troubling to chew their cud, only their ears twitching the flies away as they stared at us sideways with their big liquid eyes.

  At the end of the fields we began toiling upwards towards the higher peaks.

  The moorland Gavin took me to was almost in the sky, a singing wilderness, swampy in parts and split by limestone peaks. As we advanced, bent forward, our eyes seeking amongst the purple orchis and the spongy bog myrtle of the heath, we seemed to be dodging the woolly clouds which scudded across the blue just above our heads. Now and then Gavin would stop to point out silently some
rarity: the sundew plant which stickily entangled and consumed insects, the pure white bee-orchid, scented beyond belief. Once an adder streaked crossa our path and before I could cry out, Gavin crashed his boot heel upon its skull. We ate our picnic lunch on a flat rock, Windy Crag, attained by the dizziest of climbs.

  For a month Gavin sought the egg with all his skill and resolution—but fruitlessly. One afternoon as we came back, discouraged, from the farthest horizon we had yet attained, I lagged behind at a rushy swamp. Strangely, my interest had turned to these upland marshes and the teeming life which abounded in their waters. I bent down to cup some tadpoles in my hands. Then, as in a dream, my eyes fell upon a careless litter of coarse straw, dropped upon some adjacent moss. Three eggs lay on the straw, large eggs, golden green with purplish splashes.

  The cry which broke from me arrested Gavin’s small dark figure against the skyline. He was tired. But my wildly waving arms brought him plodding back. Speechless now, I pointed to the moss. I could not see his face, but I sensed by his sudden immobility that we had found the nest at last.

  “That’s it.” He waded in over his boot-tops and brought back one of the eggs. We sat down on the edge of the marsh while, gently, with the utmost care, having first floated it to see if it were addled, he blew the egg, and placed it in my hand. “ There. It’s a beauty, isn’t it?”

  “A perfect beauty.” I gloated. “I’m so glad we got it at last.” When I had admired my fill I held it out. “ Here you are, Gavin.”

  “No.” He gazed straight ahead at the remaining eggs which I knew he would rather die than touch. “It’s yours, not mine.”

  “Don’t, Gavin! It’s yours.”

  “No, it’s yours.” He persisted stoically: “You found it and finding’s keeping.”

  “I wouldn’t have found it except for you,” I pleaded. “It’s yours, absolutely yours.”