by A. J. Cronin
“Will you have the goodness to listen to this one, Robert?” He clears his throat and quotes:
“There was a young lady of Twickenham
Whose boots were too tight to walk quick in ’em.
When she came to a stile
There she rested awhile …”
Triumphantly he brings out his masterstroke.
“And then took ’em off and was sick in ’em.”
His envelopes fall into the red pillar-box like snowflakes into a fire. Enraged at his lack of success, he declared “Limericks” to be an utter swindle and turns, with enthusiasm, to “ Bullets”—a cabinetmaker in a neighbouring town has won a thousand pounds at “Bullets.” …
Now, as we walked through the dusk, his voice held out persuasively the incentive of reward:
“I’ll repay you out of my winnings. The post office closes at half-past six, and to-morrow is the last day.”
“I won’t give you a brass farthing,” I answered shortly. “And what’s more, you’re going straight up to your room. For once I’m going out to-night, and if you upset my arrangements with any of your nonsense, I’ll break your neck.”
Silence; subdued silence. The worst feature of Grandpa’s New Era is the new susceptibility of its initiator to a reprimand. I turned into Lomond View, annoyed with myself, but luckily I had not spoken sharply enough to upset him. I watched him slowly climb the stairs—he was now short of breath, very tremulous on any kind of ascent—and waited until reassured by the click of his door before I entered the kitchen.
Papa, seated at the table, spreading his bread thinly and methodically with margarine, gave me a nod of greeting. But it was Grandma, sustained, mellowed, and reinvigorated by her twelve months of responsibility, who, while I “ took the rough off” at the scullery sink, silently yet competently brought my “kept” dinner from the oven.
Mama is gone, she who was the soul of this house—a sudden syncope on that winter night; a year ago, when Papa made the scene over Adam’s letter about the money. No one suspected that she was ill, unless it was she, herself; yet looking back, in self-reproach, one remembered that gesture which became more frequent, that flight of her hand to her left breast when she was agitated, as though she were trying by the pressure of her fingers to control some pain, to support a flagging heart.
She was pressing her side like that when I found her, alone, livid and gasping for breath, in the parlour.
“Mama, you’re ill. Let me get the doctor.”
“No,” she gasped. “ It’ll only upset Papa worse.”
“But I must. You’re really ill …”
There was barely time for me to run for Dr. Galbraith. When I returned with him she had already lapsed into coma.
“Worn out.” Galbraith made the brief comment as the feeble thread of the artery was lost beneath his touch.
“Will you be coming to-morrow, doctor?” Papa, bewildered, yet outraged by the unusual expense, put the question feebly.
“No.” Dr. Galbraith turned brutally. “She’ll not be here to-morrow. And you’re lucky I don’t let you in for a post-mortem.”
I shivered at the thought of the desecration of that defenceless body upon a mortuary slab. But Papa, even after she was gone, weeks after the funeral, while recalling with pride the number of wreaths sent in, still seemed unconvinced that she had dared to leave him.
“She always said I would outlive her,” he often remarked, with an air of grievance.
To my surprise, he had not sold Mama’s things, and it became a regular feature of Sunday afternoon for him to go to the bedroom, take her few dresses from the wardrobe, brush them carefully, and put them back. He was beginning to miss her.
I, too, had failed to realize how much I owed her as she scurried in timid servitude, trying always to do her best, to hold the family together, to propitiate Papa and temper his awful parsimony, to keep her head up before the town, to please everyone—this weak and colourless bondwoman, this heroic soul. Mama was not perfect, her money worries often made her sharp and cross. In my Academy days she sometimes held back the few shillings for my fee-lines until the Rector came into the class, fixed me with his eyes, and announced to my unbearable shame: “ One boy in this form has not paid his dues.” Again, when the agent called on her for Grandpa’s insurance or when she singed, and so spoiled, the porridge, fits of anguished martyrdom would seize her; and with her head on one side, a wisp of hair almost falling into the pail of soapy water, she would scrub the house from roof to cellar, her lips compressed in terrible resignation. Nevertheless she was the nearest to a saint I have ever known. Only because I had sadness enough did I compel myself, with a love acknowledged too late, to think of her as she shook her fur, before her holiday, and smiled, in the sunshine.…
“It is really unbelievable.” Papa now took a careful mouthful of his bread and margarine, touching me with his transparent, almost friendly smile—since I had begun to bring good wages into the house he had shown open signs of regard for me and often gave me his confidence at the evening meal. “The price of butter. Eleven-pence halfpenny the pound. I don’t know what the world is coming to. Fortunately this new substitute is just as palatable, and even more nutritious.”
Grandma was crocheting industriously behind her cup of tea, a model of contained stability. Still an active woman, she was managing the household ably, with the aid of a day girl recommended to her by a welfare organization in the town. She had the force to oppose the more grotesque of Papa’s economies and had insisted upon the necessity of this daily help.
“I haven’t heard a word from Adam,” Papa went on palely. “ It simply can’t go on. I’ve asked Kate and Murdoch to come in about it next Sunday. I’d like you to be there also, Robert.”
I gave a mutter of acquiescence and went on eating, indicating with my fork to Grandma, who at once complied, that I wished more cabbage. Although the food was poor I had enough; I even had this ready service from the old woman. There now existed, in fact, between Grandma and myself, a steady, uncommunicative alliance. Here, surely, was proof of my advancement. It afforded me as much dark satisfaction as did my calloused hands and broken fingernails, my inveterate fatigue, the cough which had begun to trouble me and which I aggravated, deliberately, by smoking.
When I had finished I went upstairs. Sophie Galt, the daily girl, having taken Grandpa his supper tray, was turning down my bed before going home for the night. Undersized and pasty-faced, with short legs concealed by a sateen dress Grandma had made her, she was about seventeen years old, one of a large family living in the Vennel. She had a slight squint, so that she seemed to be watching one all the time out of the corner of her eye. Her under-privileged manner always made me uncomfortable, a feeling intensified since that afternoon when I had surprised her posturing with terrible coquetry before the mirror in one of Mama’s hats, taken from the wardrobe.
“Are you going to the Burgh Hall, to-night, Sophie?”
“Oh, no. Where would the likes of me get a ticket?” She straightened my pillow with a great display of thoroughness. “Father got one though at the Club. I expect you’ll see him there.”
After a pause, she glanced round the room, then over the top of my head.
“Do you think that’s everything?”
“I’m sure it is, Sophie.”
She lingered, gave the counterpane a final pat, coughed, sighed, at last went out.
My preparations for the concert were not elaborate. During the past two years my acute consciousness of my own person had changed to a state of studied indifference. As I pulled off my shirt there was a general effect of length, of white skin with the ribs showing through, brown blistered forearms, the ever pale face with its plume of gleaming hair. I decided perversely that I would not wear a collar; many of the workmen affected the type of scarf which I now knotted round my neck; I, myself, was a worker, a Fabian in fact, and, by heavens, I would not be ashamed of it!
When I was ready I went into Grandpa’
s room. He was reclining in his chair, a large new leather-bound gilt-edged book in one hand, a piece of bread and cheese from his tray in the other.
“Truly remarkable, Robert.” He took a bite without raising his eyes from the page. “There are thirty-two feet of bowels inside the human form.”
This expensive-looking book, the sight of which raised gooseflesh upon my spine, was one of a large stack of identical volumes, which stood against the wall, and which had arrived, express, one month before, addressed to “Alexander Gow, Esquire, Accredited Agent and Canvasser for Fireside Medical Encyclopedia Ltd.” Accompanying the package was a bundle of hand-outs: “ You owe it to your loved ones … more than one thousand diagrams and drawings … remedies for forty-four poisons, ladies’ ailments, blackheads … simple everyday language … sensational, daring, see for yourself. … don’t send us a penny, our accredited agent will call every week …”
While Grandpa pursues a house-to-house visitation in the remote parts of the town and continues, with interest, to increase his own store of medical knowledge, I recognize forebodingly that his peculiar talents are adapted to gathering in cash receipts, rather than to accounting for them. Unluckily, although his copying days for Mr. McKellar are positively over, the old man still writes a copper-plate hand, sometimes a little shaky, but deceptively fine. At this moment my eyes fall upon a letter amongst the litter of papers on his table: “My dear good sir: In answer to your esteemed request for references I hasten to advance the name of my son-in-law, who holds the responsible position of Health Administrator to the Royal and Ancient Borough of Levenford.” And upon another which begins simply, yet more ominously: “Madam.”
Grandpa’s hair is now almost white—that absence of colour sentimentally referred to as “silvery”—and his once indomitable figure has shrunk considerably so that his coat and trousers sag in places which were once protuberant. His blue eye is a little brighter than it should be, he changes colour very readily, while his nose, strange symbol of his virility, is paler, less turgescent—alas, quite flaccid. I know that Grandpa has passed a sad milestone in his gay career which may be found under a section, always interesting—and profusely illustrated—in the Medical Encyclopedia. Mrs. Bosomley has become merely a nodding acquaintance; and his taste in feminine society has declined to those groups of schoolgirls, and attractive little “ junior students,” whom he stops in the Cemetery Road and sends into fits of giggles with his gallant conversation. Yet Grandpa blandly refuses to acknowledge his own decay. On the contrary, he is more open in his profession of potency, holding himself as might a stallion, a prolific sire, and frequently, with a glance of proud complacency, thumping his poor old chest with his fist. “An oak, Robert. A guid Scots oak. If I stood for the Borough Council…” Thank goodness his smile admits that he is being humorous. “ Why, in a year’s time they might even want me for Provost.”
“Grandpa …”
“Yes, my boy.”
I wait until he looks up inquiringly from the page, regretting my display of temper earlier in the evening, resolved not to bully him but to play upon his new, his absurd susceptibility to flattery, and cajole a promise from him.
“I am going out to the concert. You are too fine a man, too much the soul of honour, to take advantage of that fact. You give me your word you won’t move from here till I come back.”
He beams at me, well pleased, over his spectacles, still marking his place with his finger. “Of course, my boy, of course. Nobless oblige.”
That must satisfy me. I nod, close his door firmly and leave him to “ Disorders of the Large Intestine.”
Chapter Two
The concert was not one of the ordinary performances given every Thursday during the winter by the Levenford Orchestral Society, but a gala affair arranged under “distinguished patronage” in aid of the new Cottage Hospital.
When I reached the Burgh Hall, which stood next to the Academy in the High Street, scores of people were pressing into the entrance. I joined the crowd and, inside the gaslit auditorium, already warm and humming with voices, I chose a seat deliberately, with proud exclusiveness, in a back row underneath the balcony. No matter that Reid had reserved a front seat for me, beside his own; my place was here. In any case I wished to be alone, so that none might witness the emotions which this evening must bring to me.
With the detachment of one who has failed to be a great man and now prefers, at least for the time being, to be nothing, I watched the hall fill until extra chairs had to be placed amongst the palms that lined the cream-painted, stencilled walls. In the large and quite brilliant assembly I could see Kate and Jamie, settled sedately halfway up the hall; Mr. McKellar, with a legal air of waiting to be convinced; Bertie Jamieson with sleek hair, a high collar, and two smart young ladies.
In the second row, behind Sir. Thomas and Lady Marshall, and an array of town councillors, I made out Reid with his party—Alison’s mother, her music teacher Miss Cramb, and a stranger with a narrow head and a pointed iron grey beard who must be Dr. Thomas, the noted producer of “The Messiah” and conductor of the Winton Orpheus Choir.
From time to time Jason turned round as though searching for someone—across the sea of heads I clearly observed his face. Now and then he tugged impatiently at the short blond moustache he had recently grown, and which improved his appearance considerably. A thrill passed through me at his expression—I lowered my head quickly, grateful for his friendship, but determined not to be seen, to remain an outcast, entrenched and proud.
Nevertheless, I received a nod of recognition. It was Sophie’s father, squeezing in on his free “Club” ticket, looking out of place, as if this was not at all what he had expected. Galt was a pale, lacklustre man with a damp cowlick plastered on his brow and a small ingratiating eye. He was in Jamie’s squad with me and, while not a good workman, he had edged himself on to the committee of the local union. In the boiler shed, I was always running into him; and because of his daughter’s presence in Lomond View he seemed to find a peculiar interest in me, as though, tacitly, some kind of bond existed between us.
Fortunately there were no seats vacant in my vicinity. I turned away and almost immediately the sudden dimming of the auditorium lights made me quite safe. Amidst some scattered applause, the curtain went up; my eyes were drawn to the stage.
The opening items of the programme increased my sense of tension, they so far surpassed the ordinary level of provincial entertainment. The orchestra began with some lively selections from “Pinafore.” Then came the duet from “Tosca,” sung by two well-known members of the Carl Rosa Company, at present appearing in Winton. A Brahms concerto, played beautifully by the organist of the City Cathedral, next filled the hall with noble and inspiring music. Lifted up, burning with eagerness, I trembled for Alison in her ordeal, which, every moment now, was growing nearer. I began to fear that too much would be demanded of her—she was so young to make her first appearance upon a public platform and in such expert company! This audience was discriminating, its interest had been whetted by months of “talk.” Now, waiting, as I was waiting, for the event of the evening, it had reached a dangerous pitch of expectancy.
At last, after perhaps an hour, a rustle passed through the hall. I felt my heart beating louder than ever, beating with fear. Except for the grand piano and the accompanist seated unobtrusively before it, the stage was empty.
Then, quietly, from the wings, Alison came on, so young and unprotected that a hush fell involuntarily. She advanced to the front of the stage, immediately behind the japanned footlights, as though wishing, from the beginning, to place herself in communication with her listeners. She had grown since those days when we knocked our knees together over the geometry book; and her long soft dress of pale blue muslin, moulding her fine strong figure, made her seem tall. She wore a ribbon of that same misty blue in her brown hair, now “ put up” for the first time. As she stood there, exposed to all these eyes, I felt a deep and secret pride; yet, at the same time
, I caught my breath in jealousy.
She faced the assembly, her expression serious, her hands encased in white gloves, holding a sheet of music before her in the ridiculous fashion of the period. Although she shimmered, in a haze, before my straining vision, I saw that she was composed. She waited until the audience was settled, ready to give her its attention, then she glanced at her accompanist and the first restrained chord of the piano broke the stillness. She raised her head and began to sing.
It was Schubert’s “Sylvia,” which often had enchanted me as I stood hidden by the darkness under the linden tree outside her window in Sinclair Drive. And now, in this hushed hall, though I must share it with so many others, the joy of listening to the song made me stop trembling. I closed my eyes, surrendering to the delight of the pure, sweet notes, assured that this voice could hold captive, not one unseen listener, but all who were privileged to hear.
A burst of hand-clapping followed the ending of the song, Alison gave no sign; she stood, as though waiting to offer up again, without pride, that gift which had been bestowed upon her. When the hall was quiet she sang, first, Schumann’s “Wanderlied,” followed by “Hark, Hark the Lark”; then, before the stillness could be destroyed, she began the “Mattinata” of Tosti.
This song, which Melba made so popular, full of exacting runs and high notes, soaring upwards at one dizzy moment, and the next cascading downwards, presents great difficulty; its accomplishment, with ease and perfect trueness, brought the audience, already conquered, to Alison’s feet. Even the least musical could realize the quality of this youthful voice. The applause refused to die; instead it grew in volume. I could see the other artists crowding in the wings, clapping and smiling. Alison was forced to return again and again.
