The Green Years

by A. J. Cronin

  Whenever she was in danger of “ getting above herself,” Papa brought her back to earth, with these words of warning: “Think of the fares!”

  He felt that if she was not restrained there would be, in her present mood, no end to the expense, the deadly excesses, into which she might entrap him. The thought of eating in restaurants, of being forced, through some misadventure, to spend the night at a hotel, became his nightmare. He planned with redoubled care. Enough food would be taken in a cardboard hatbox to sustain them on the journey, they would sit up, third class, through the night, all the way to London. Already, Papa carried in his vest pocket a little notebook marked Expenses of Visit to Adam. He had, I think, the illusory hope that Adam would reimburse him. On the first line was written: “To two railway tickets … £-7-9-6”; and to this amount Papa returned, time and again, with the gloomy air of a man who had made a ruinous outlay. Later, I learned from Murdoch that Papa, by obsequious representations, had managed to secure “ privilege tickets,” which were issued to certain officials entirely free of charge.

  On the eve of their departure Mama came to my room, sat down on the bed and watched me in silence.

  “You’re quite busy these days, dear boy.” Her faint smile deepened as she added: “And no doubt you will be, while we’re in London.”

  Did Mama know? Had Grandpa whispered a word to her? I hung my head as she continued:

  “Your boots aren’t in too good a state. They’ll not stand soling. If they give out before … well, before we come back, there’s that nice strong brown pair of Kate’s in the cupboard under the stairs.”

  “Yes, Mamma.” I masked my discomposure at the mention of those long narrow boots, once used by Kate for hockey, in colour a jaundiced yellow, lacing halfway up the leg, and so manifestly feminine the very thought of them gave me gooseflesh.

  “They’ve kept their shape well,” Mama murmured, persuasively. “I had a look at them the other day.”

  “I think I’ll manage, Mama,” I said.

  There was a pause.

  “You usually manage, don’t you, Robie?” Mama smiled gently. She rose, rubbed her hand over my head. Her eyes lingered a little upon me as she went out. She whispered:

  “Good luck to you … my own boy.”

  Chapter Nine

  Immediately Papa and Mama departed, Grandpa moved my table and all my books into the parlour, which was never used, maintained solely as a patent of gentility. How well I remember that sacred room! It had a round marble fireplace with a gilt mirror overmantel and an aspidistra in the black-leaded grate. Against one wall was a chiffonier covered by lace doilies upon which lay a Japanese fan, three cowrie shells, and a glass paperweight inscribed “a Present from Ardfillan.” On the round table in the centre was a red drugget cover with a gilt-clasped copy of Pilgrim’s Progress laid out at a tasteful angle beside a vase of esparto grass. Near by was the upright piano with a revolving stool. A green plush-framed photograph of Mama and Papa in their wedding attire stood on top. There was one picture, an oil painting entitled “ The Monarch of the Glen.”

  The wide bay formed by the window made a splendid study for me. Here I sat, alone, and with Reid, who could now come and go with freedom. The house was very silent, intensified by the exaggerated care of Grandpa’s movements. Mama had arranged that Mrs. Bosomley should come in occasionally to help us; but Grandpa, to my surprise, proved himself a resourceful housekeeper—during those periods in his life when he had been obliged to fend for himself he had picked up the knack of certain dishes, especially soups. No apparent eccentricities, not a single misdemeanour. He seemed to enjoy the freedom of the vacant house, where he was able to potter about without fear of nagging and restraint. As might be surmised, severe restrictions had been placed upon us. Most of the china and cutlery had been locked away, also the good cooking utensils, since Mama was afraid Grandpa would “ singe” the pots. She had written out precise instructions for our meals, based upon a small supply of groceries delivered to us every Monday from the stores. A bare pittance had been left behind in ready cash. Nevertheless, Grandpa managed to circumvent these difficulties. He developed a habit of dropping in at the Nursery and, although Murdoch’s attitude towards Grandpa could scarcely be described as amiable, we often had a fine cauliflower which did not figure on Mama’s menu, or a great pot of floury potatoes which Grandpa boiled perfectly and which I particularly loved. Once or twice, as twilight fell, he departed with a dreamy air in the direction of Snoddie’s Farm, and on the next day we would have for dinner a boiled chicken which could only have come from God.

  Although he tried to hide it, Grandpa displayed a profound respect for my studies. He had a high regard for “ book learning” and indeed for books—which was strange, for he himself possessed no more than three volumes. I must not fail, in passing, to mention these faithful friends. The first was the Poems of Robert Burns, most of which he knew by heart; the second, a tattered book over which Grandpa chuckled repeatedly, The Adventures of Hajji Baba; the third, in a broken red binding, with a frontispiece of a grimy tramp writing, “ Dear Sirs, ten years ago I used your soap, since then I have used no other,” was Pears’ Shilling Encyclopedia—I can still see Grandpa in our early days reaching out with an air of erudition for that wonderful compendium—“We’ll see what Pears has to say about it.”

  Now, inevitably, the stage of his omniscience was over, but he still maintained a lofty air of piloting me through the shoals, and was delighted when I asked him to “hear” my equations or Latin verses. At the end of our first week he made me give up my early morning delivery work, which, by cutting into the best hours, when my head was clear, was proving a serious handicap. We were already deeply committed, nothing would redeem us but success; I went into the parlour and took my place at my books in the grey light of dawn, offering myself to the anguish of unremitting study. Reid had completely exempted me from the class, and all day long I laboured alone in white and burning solitude, in that front room, bent over my small table with passionate application. Time was growing short. My rivals were working, incessantly, far harder than I. There was only one prize. How could I hope to gain it if for an instant, even, I lifted my eyes from the page?

  Every evening at six o’clock Reid arrived: with a short greeting and a long look to see how I was standing it, he took a chair beside me. He tutored me until ten, when Grandpa brought in cups of cocoa, which sometimes grew cold, unnoticed, amongst the papers, at our elbows. My stability was renewed by Jason’s considered sanity, by his solid figure smelling of tobacco, chalk, and perspiration, by his familiar mannerism of touching back his light blond hair that always looked newly washed, and by the human warmth of his rather “ bad” breath which, mingled with the odour of his person, seemed like the exudation of an inexhaustible vitality.

  When, at last, Reid has gone—having urged me to go to bed, yet knowing that I will not do so—I draw up more closely to my table fighting my lassitude, my terrible desire for sleep. Perhaps, for a moment, I go to the bathroom to dash my head in water which, since the tank lies immediately beneath the roof, is, in summer, merely tepid. I return, flagging, yet compelled by an inner force to go on, to exact from myself the last ounce of effort. Always, I murmur a prayer before resuming, offering up all my work. To keep awake I jab my leg with a pen-nib, or knock my dull forehead with my knuckles, as if entreating it to understand. The minutes fall away, silently, into the silent night; and still my immovable figure, with coat discarded and sleeves rolled up for coolness, bare elbows on the table, hands clasping the reeling head, remains beneath the gaslight.

  Two o’clock strikes. I rise and stagger to my room. Usually I sleep as though stunned the moment I fall upon my bed. But sometimes there are nightmares of my unpreparedness for the examination, of questions I cannot answer. And there are other nights when, worst of all, though dead with weariness, my brain refuses to rest, but continues to function with a hard unnatural lucidity, solving difficult quadratics, intricate probl
ems in advanced trigonometry which normally require pages of calculations—all nothing, mere child’s play to this poor brain of mine, whirling and rocketing over the fields of learning while my body lies helpless, as in a catalepsy, waiting for the first streaks of light beneath the blind that will usher me again to the tyranny of my ambition.

  My sole respite came in the afternoon when towards five o’clock Grandpa forced me out for my short relaxation. On these evenings when Gavin returned home from Larchfield I employed this hour to meet him at Dalreoch stop, which was more convenient than the main Levenford station; and there, as he left the train and crossed the “ goods” yard, I stood waiting at the big white gate, ready to fall into step beside him and compare despondent notes on the progress we had made.

  Upon other days I went down to the Academy yard, where there was a high wall with a convenient buttress, to play a game of hand ball with Mr. Reid. Jason was good at fives and had performed, as he put it, in the Public Schools Championship at Queens Club. Our game was scarcely orthodox, for the court was not right, but it gave us lots of running about and I always felt the better for it.

  Then, on my lucky afternoons, I saw Alison. Usually I met her at the end of Drumbuck Road as she returned slowly from her singing lesson, hatless, and carrying a rolled patent-leather music case under her arm. In the warm weather she wore a light dress which made her shape bud in the quiet breeze. We did not look at each other and we talked only of the most ordinary things. She would tell me what was happening at school, what Mr. Reid—for whom she had a great admiration—had said that day. Yet from time to time, despite her calmness, her eyes seemed to grow larger and softer, and her lips glowed with colour. When our ways diverged at the corner of Sinclair Drive I raced home, pausing only to pick up a stone and throw it hard. With my blood warm in my cheeks, I flung myself down at my books. Everything was going well with me. And Grandpa, who now brought to my table a cup of tea, was the best, the finest old man ever born.

  No, no, I am quite wrong. It was he, the monster, who a week later plunged me to the abyss.

  Chapter Ten

  It was a hot, still afternoon, with a threat of thunder in the air. Only four days remained before the examination and I was overwrought, my nerves painfully on edge. I had gone to dip my head in water; then, as I stood drying my face, I heard the echo of Grandpa’s laugh. I came out from the bathroom to the landing and called to him; but I received no answer. Was this an hallucination? Good heavens, surely my exertions had not brought me to the point of “hearing things.” I went slowly upstairs to the open door of Mama’s room from which the sound, muffled though it was, had seemed to come. I entered the room, which was quite empty, and immediately heard Mrs. Bosomley’s voice followed again by Grandpa’s laugh.

  I started, then realized that, on this still afternoon, sounds were travelling through the dividing wall; they came from the house next door. Of course! … I recollected seeing Grandpa trim his beard immediately after lunch.

  I was on the point of turning away, when another sound brought me up short. In bewildered yet scared suspense, I gazed at the blank wall patterned with climbing roses, aware that the room through the wall was Mrs. Bosomley’s bedroom. Grandpa and Mrs. Bosomley were both there, together.

  Against my will, rooted by the consternation rising within me, I listened. Oh, God, surely not … I tried to free myself from the thought. But there was no mistake, none whatever.

  Convulsively, I tore myself away, ran out of the room, straight out of the house. I was shaking all over as I hurried blindly up the road. What was the use of struggling, of fighting, the use of anything? One might make mistakes in spite of a pure and beautiful love. But then one surrendered to evil only at the last ditch, the last gasp, and with an anguished cry. To trim one’s beard, before the mirror, and depart whistling, with a look of pleased anticipation—oh, God, that betrayal, by a man whom I had loved and trusted—it ground me to the dust.

  Bent only on escaping the images tormenting me, I did not look where I was going. But I had taken, instinctively, the hill road, and as I passed the Nursery a shout recalled me from the tumult of my thoughts. Murdoch was pruning the hedge which flanked the entrance to the garden. I stopped, hesitated, then went over.

  “What’s the matter?” He had stopped pruning and was eyeing me as he wiped his brow with the back of his big brown hand. “Have you joined the harriers?”

  I did not answer this horrible facetiousness—in fact I was quite unable to speak.

  “Something gone wrong with the work?”

  I shook my head abjectly, my breast still too full for words. Murdoch gazed at me speculatively, his curiosity aroused.

  “I know what,” he said at last. “The old boy has gone on the booze again.” He read my face. “No? Well then, it’s another of his tricks?”

  “Tricks!” Enraged by the lightness of the word, I was shaken by a fresh spasm. “You wouldn’t say ‘tricks’ if you knew. Oh, Murdoch!” I almost burst into tears. “ If people can’t at least try to live decently … and at his age …”

  “Ah!” exclaimed Murdoch, enlightened, placidly pleased with his own powers of deduction. He belched, took a piece of liquorice root from his pocket, bit off a piece, and began to chew it with every appearance of enjoyment.

  I turned my pale face sideways, staring fixedly at a cart which was moving along the road. For some peculiar reason this solitary cart, crawling across the summer landscape, made me feel that life was endless in its monotony, that all that I now experienced was the repetition of something which had happened to me hundreds of years ago.

  “You know, young fellow,” Murdoch said after a pause, “ it’s about time you grew up. You’re clever, and I was always a dunce at everything but gardening—still, at your age, I wasn’t so simple. Grandpa has always been that way. A regular lady-killer all his life. Even when his wife, who I must say was very fond of him, was alive.”

  Silence of despair from me.

  “It’s just him,” Murdoch went on. “And now, even though he’s a good age, he can’t help, himself. I don’t think it’s anything to lose your shirt about.”

  “It’s awful,” I said faintly.

  “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it.” Murdoch, who seemed trying not to laugh at me, clapped me upon the shoulder companionably. “The world isn’t coming to an end. You’ll get over all this when you’re a bit older. Come along and I’ll show you my new carnation. It’s budding a treat.”

  He put the shears under his arm and opened the gate. After a moment of hesitation. I went in and accompanied him, drearily, to the new greenhouse. Here he showed me half a dozen pots of milky-green shoots which were beginning to throw out buds, and explained, with pride, the method he had employed to produce the hybrid. There was something obscurely comforting in the steady movements of his large capable hands arranging the earthy pots, reaching for his clasp knife and deftly snicking off an errant shoot, binding the stems tenderly with raffia.

  “If it’s a success I shall call it the Murdoch Leckie! Isn’t that something? More worth thinking about than …” He conveyed his meaning with another kindly slap upon the back.

  I was calmer when I left Murdoch, but my outraged state—as ludicrous as the breaking voice that was another symptom of my age—would not let me return immediately to my books. As was to be expected, I dragged myself back, along the High Street to the church.

  Here it was cool and quiet. Attending to the flowers on the side altar, the dim shape of Mother Elizabeth Josephina sent little chinking noises down the silent aisle. As she passed into the sacristy she gave me a smile of recognition and approval. I went on my knees in the still twilight, under the high window which had always solaced me, before that figure also carrying a burden, the face drawn by a spasm of pain.

  Now, in this ecclesiastical atmosphere impregnated with incense and candle wax, I began to burn with a deep and just resentment against Grandpa, violator of the only virtue which really mattered.
I thought of Alison, in her white dress, Alison, whom my love, this first love of puberty, had elevated to sublime and angelic heights. My face burned with shame. How would she regard a boy whose grandfather behaved like mine? Anger entered my heart, and recollecting how Christ had cast the wicked men from the temple, I rose determined to have it out with Grandpa, to finish with him once and for all.

  When I reached home it was he who met me in the lobby, greeting me with every appearance of welcome. From behind him there came an excellent aroma of cooking.

  “I’m glad you decided to take a walk. You’ll work the better for it.”

  I gave him a cold and scornful glance, the kind of glance with which the archangel transfixed the writhing Lucifer. “What did you do this afternoon?”

  He smiled with perfect nonchalance, answered airily: “Just my usual. A game of marleys at the cemetery.”