by A. J. Cronin
It was a horrible blunder. Grandpa repudiated my assistance irritably.
“What do you think I am? A fossil … a mummy?” Doing his best to disguise his dragging foot, he drew himself up, and tried to inflate his chest in the old manner. “In five years’ time perhaps I’ll ask you to order my Bath chair. I’m not done yet by any means.”
Even the remotest allusion to his waning powers was a dreadful mistake. He hated to think that he was failing, and shut his eyes firmly to the fact that he could not go on for ever. Actually, he was succeeding in carrying himself erect: in spite of my anxiety I was compelled to own it. Turned out better than usual, he was, even admitting his erratic feet, and that slight agitation of his head, a presentable figure. Indeed, his white hair, bushy beneath his hat, made him rather striking—eyes were turned towards him, he felt himself a centre of attraction, preened himself, as we strolled along.
“You observe, Robert,” he murmured to me, with restored complacency, “ these two ladies on the left. Very elegant. Beautiful sunshine too. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”
As we approached the lodge entrance gates, where temporary wooden turnstiles had been installed, Grandpa produced, with a flourish, two free passes, which he had obtained in advance from Murdoch. He was incorrigible.
It was pleasant within the enclosure, one of the finest and largest gardens in the county, now made festive by half a dozen red-striped marquees for the exhibits, by several tents given over to displays of seeds and garden implements, and an open-air tea-court where, deployed round the fountain, the town band was playing a soft waltz. The trim lawns and shady trees, the bright movement of the ladies’ dresses, the scarlet and gold of the bandsmen’s uniform, the tinkle of the music and the fountain, the sound of well-bred conversation, all this caused Grandpa to blossom out more. He let his feet sink into the velvet turf. His nostrils expanded.
“I aye had a taste for the genteel, Robert. It’s my proper element.”
He bowed to several persons who did not seem to recognize him, then, in no way discomposed, he began to hum, limping along in a survey of the scene.
“Handsome, very handsome.” The excitement was going to his head a little. He remained polite and restrained. Yet he had begun to accept everything as being in his honour. “Look! Is that not Mrs. Bosomley over there?”
“No, it isn’t.” He was always mistaking people, the “ long sight” of which he had been so proud was gone for ever.
“Well, never mind. A fine woman, too. We’ll speak to her later.
Take me to Murdoch’s carnations now. I always liked carnations. And I want to see if he’s won the prize.”
I moved him on with relief. I had made out Alison and her mother in the distance and it was my earnest desire to avoid them. We entered the marquees, which were filled with flowers, hothouse fruits and choice vegetables. It must not be forgotten that the Scots are famous gardeners. In one tent was an array of roses of marvellous scent and colour; in another masses of sweet peas exhaling a fragrance delicate as their own petals. We admired baskets of downy peaches; splendid asparagus tied with blue ribbon; bunches of luscious muscat grapes; a giant pumpkin bursting with its own juice. Grandpa viewed them all with mounting pleasure, barely tempered by his air of a connoisseur, his face redder than ever from the sultry heat beneath the blistering canvas. Seeing him so happy, I felt ashamed of my misgivings and glad that he had not been deprived of this hour.
We reached the display of carnations. Here, amongst the considerable gathering which had assembled to regard, with curiosity and respect, a large bunch of blossoms on the front of the stand, we found Kate and Jamie with little Luke. A moment later Murdoch came over from the booth reserved for exhibitors, accompanied by Miss Ewing. The old man was deeply gratified by this family encounter. He shook hands all round, even with Kate’s child, whom he addressed affectionately as “ Robie.” Then, glancing at the surrounding spectators as though favouring them with his confidence, he whispered to Murdoch loudly, so that all could hear:
“What’s the verdict, my boy? Have we won the medal?”
Murdoch gave a self-conscious nod towards the stand. “ See for yourself.”
Hung on the central bunch of carnations—lovely unusual blossoms of a delicate shade of yellow with tinges of mauve upon the petal edges—was a gilt-edged card with ink barely dry: Bowers Silver Medal for Best Floral Exhibit. Mr. Murdoch Leckie of Dalrymple and Leckie, Nurserymen, Drumbuck.
“It’s just as good as the Alexandra,” Miss Ewing explained quickly. “We’re very pleased.”
Although he had done well, Murdoch had not quite achieved his ambition. It made no difference to Grandpa, however. To him a medal was a medal. His face was crimson.
“Murdoch, I’m proud of you. You do me honour. If you will permit me the privilege of being the first to wear your bonny flower …”
He stretched out his hand, took a carnation from the bunch, snapped the stem and slipped it in his buttonhole.
It was a typical gesture and although Murdoch did not look especially well-pleased the buttonhole undoubtedly made Grandpa complete. His smile went round us all before it wavered.
“Take me to where they’ll give out the prizes. I’m not tired, mind you. But I’ll sit down there, and wait till they give us the medal.”
When he was settled in a garden chair on the lawn in the shade of a tall acacia tree, pleasantly near the band, and beside Kate and Jamie, I felt a temporary lifting of my responsibility and took the opportunity to slip away. He would not miss me for the next half hour—already he had taken Kate’s son upon his knee and was asking, with a dim indulgent smile:
“Robie, do you mind that day we went skating on the pond?”
As I crossed the lawn I could hear the little boy’s shrill answer:
“Never mind the skating, Grandpa. Tell me about the Zulus.”
I wandered through several marquees, aimlessly, yet with the corner of my eye sensitively alert for them. Reid was leaving for the South the following week, while Alison and Mrs. Keith would join him a few days later—the wedding would be held quietly in London at the end of the month. Strangely, my distress was increased by the fact that, since I had last seen her, Alison had sung beautifully at the St. Andrew’s Hall. Wounded and already alone, I shrank from meeting my friends, yet I felt it necessary to say good-bye to them.
“Please don’t look so tragic, Robie. You ought to be proud of Murdoch’s success.”
Mrs. Keith, standing with Reid near the band, wearing a wide hat of soft straw with a white trimming, was glancing at me sideways, giving me her faint smile, less critical than it had been of late.
“Do I look tragic?” I started, and stammered. “ Murdoch didn’t win the gold medal.”
“How could he,” Jason said, “when I’ve been secretly growing vegetable marrows in my window boxes for months?”
“My dear boy.” Mrs. Keith’s dark eyes were gay. “You’re perfectly all right. Still, it would be nice if you cheered up just for a bit.”
Under my breath I made a stiff attempt to defend myself.
“Naturally one can’t expect to be grinning all over one’s face when certain people one is fond of happen to be going away.”
Reid shook his head. “Life’s a desperate business, Robert; suppose you come and have strawberries and cream with us. We’re meeting Alison in the tea-garden in half an hour.”
“Yes, do come,” said Mrs. Keith. “ We’ll be there at four.”
“Very well.”
When they strolled off I turned and went into another marquee where, for a long time, I stared fixedly at a prime bunch of parsnips. I hated parsnips, and I wasn’t really thinking of them. The mild satire which had pervaded the genuine friendship in Jason’s tone made me suddenly see myself as I must appear to others. Oh, God! What a fool I was! I knew nothing about life, I didn’t understand the first thing about it. I existed in a world of dreams, the pale victim of my own fancies. Pray Heave
n for just one thing—that I would not break down and make an idiot of myself before them.
At five minutes to four I set out for the tea-garden.
And then, as I came through the crowd, I became aware of Kate, waving to me from the place where Grandpa had been sitting. Something imperative in her signals broke into my utter desolation, caused me to start and hurry forward.
“Grandpa’s taken ill.” She spoke breathlessly. “ I sent Jamie for the doctor but he’s taken worse now. Run down to the lodge and telephone for a cab.”
Surrounded by a few good Samaritans, the old man lay on the grass which, an hour ago, he had proudly trodden. He was curled on his side, one arm twisted in, as though contorted. His eyes were fixed and open, one side of his mouth breathed noisily, the other half was still. His white hair was dishevelled. He had the wild, sad look of the dethroned Lear after that night of storm. Though I did not know much about it, I saw that it was a stroke. As I started running for the lodge they were preparing to make the awards. The band, having completed its programme, struck up, with a finality that sounded dreadful in my ears: “ God Save the King.”
Chapter Nine
Sunday; and nearly midnight. This time there is no mistake; the old man is dying. The consciousness of this pervades his room where I sit watching him, pervades the sleeping house, even the night beyond. All day there has been an air of expectancy, of correct behaviour—Murdoch and Jamie talking with Papa in subdued voices downstairs; Kate hushing the eager cries of her little boy as he plays ball in the back garden; Grandma on tiptoe baking a big batch of scones. This is called “waiting for the end,” and the family retires with a sense of respectful disappointment that the old man should be “lingering,” despite the three shattering electric strokes he has sustained in quick succession, and Dr. Galbraith’s prediction that he cannot last. There are no protests when I claim the privilege of sitting up with him: the rights of my affection are recognized, and they are convenient when one has no desire to miss a good night’s sleep.
The stillness is frightening; although I have drawn up the blind and opened the window the invasion of the warm and starless night brings no relief. Grandpa lies on his back, no longer snoring, barely breathing through a mouth drawn open by the recession of all his features. Before retiring Grandma has sponged the sharpened, half-conscious face, brushed the white hair, reviving a shadowy impression of that last magnificent appearance at the Flower Show. Age has reduced this body to ruins but has somehow failed to degrade it.
As I gaze at him, melancholy, yet relieved that he is solving a bad problem in the easiest way, I fall into an involuntary meditation: this, surely, is the moment to assay the value of a life, this awful moment of departure which we all must take. What follies, what sins he has committed! No one knows better than I the weaknesses and obstinacies of the old man’s character; for already, with a tinge of horror, I recognize, in that sad and foolish boy, myself, these same traits which have descended to me from him. Yet I defend them, these troubled depths of personality: for already, like Grandpa, I have my doubts of the accepted code. These faint ennobling virtues: never to be mean, to be kind, to inspire affection—perhaps they outweigh a hundred besetting sins.
I must have dozed by the bedside. I am aroused by the old man trying to speak. I bend close and manage to catch the word: “Spirit.”
It is no deathbed repentance, no reference to the Holy Ghost. He means that drink to which he has long been addicted, of which he now sorely feels the need. It is not good for him, but neither were his other predilections, and since the doctor had not troubled to impose a ban, I feel my way down to the parlour cupboard, where I find the bottle already purchased, not without disapproval, for those visitors that the bereavement will bring to the house and who, like Mr. McKellar, “partake.” I pour a little into a cup, neat—he could never bear water with it—thinking it the final irony that the old man should sip the goblet of his own funeral feast.
He is grateful for the whisky, which he swallows with great difficulty. He mutters: “Meat and drink.”
These are his last words. I find in that accidental phrase a strange meaning, a terse evaluation of his philosophy of life.
The clock strikes three, shaking me from my drooping fatigue. I see that the old man is now sinking fast, his instant of greatness is at hand. Suddenly the door opens and Grandma, carrying a candle, wearing her mutch and long white “ gownie,” comes into the room, drawn by instinct, the peasant’s instinct which senses unerringly, and with awe, the approach of death. She does not, on this occasion, read aloud a chapter from her “ Book.” She glances from the dying man to me, silently accepts my chair, while I move over to the window.
The imminence of dawn can be felt: unseen stirrings, the incautious movement of a bird, vague looming of the three chestnut trees. Grandma’s behaviour is superb. She is afraid of the dark presence now standing in the room with us, this reminder of her own mortality. But she is purged of hatred. The bitterness, the animosity which once dominated that little world wherein we three people lived, now seems childish and remote. During these last months, as he sank, so she has risen; not in pity, but rather in mournful realization of her own worth, she has grown quite fond of her old enemy.
Yes, at last. Something has slipped away. The death of a man in the full height of his vigour is a dreadful business, a wrenching, unwilling orgasm. But this old man is tired. A skiff slips away from the shore easily, without splashing. Grandma looks at me, gives a faint nod of affirmation, and rises.
I watch while she binds up the sagging chin, places pennies—another peasant trick—on the closed eyes. I gaze, with great sadness, at the face fixed in this final rigidity. He has reached a place, whether of light or darkness I do not know, where no more follies can be committed; he has escaped from all his persecutors and pursuers—most of all, from himself.
At Grandma’s whispered instruction I turn to pull down the blind. The dawn is coming: the chestnuts taking shape, the fields less huddled, a stain of saffron in the east. I blow out the candle. Suddenly from the farm on the hill, as if in mockery of the extinguished flame, there uprises the loud derisive challenge of a cock.
Chapter Ten
On Tuesday we all sat down in the parlour to a ham-and-egg tea after the funeral, which though not lavish was, at Papa’s command, done handsomely, by the second-best undertaker in the town. Papa, rubbing his hands and full of courtesies, had brought back Mr. McKellar from the cemetery. Grandma sat on the lawyer’s right and Kate on his left; Murdoch and Jamie were at the bottom end on either side of me; Adam occupied the head of the table, next to Papa.
“Everything passed off very nicely, I think.” Papa, eager for approval, interrogated Mr. McKellar with his eyes. “Oh, take two eggs, man. Yes, I didn’t want to make a splurge. On the other hand I always like to do the right thing. And besides, in a sense, if you understand me, it was due to him.”
Some reply was expected from the lawyer. As he accepted his cup of tea from Kate he said dryly:
“I think the funeral was appropriate to the circumstances.”
Papa looked slightly irked: it was one of his annoyances never to have been able to make McKellar like him. He looked grateful as Adam remarked:
“No one could have wished for better.”
McKellar shrugged his solid shoulders. “ When you get to that stage you don’t wish for anything at all.”
Papa and Adam exchanged a glance of understanding, of alliance against this surly intruder. Although he had arrived only that morning Adam had already assuaged Papa, reassured him on the question of the house, which, after all, was probably going to be sold to the kindergarten school, had calmly offered and, when Papa vacillated, as calmly torn up a cheque, had, in fact, won him so completely, that in the cab home they had fallen to discussing, in low tones, possible “ openings” for Papa’s new capital, the insurance money which had come to him at last.
“Try some of my scones, Mr. McKellar,” Grandma said
.
“I will, indeed.” The lawyer was making a good tea and, though taciturn to Papa and Adam, he talked amiably, in his heavy style, to Kate and the old lady. He was an ardent advocate of Home Rule for Scotland and here he met Grandma on common ground. He seemed to crouch over his plate, and his eye went darting about the table, in a disconcerting manner.
I must confess that I avoided this steely glance. At the graveside, raw gash in the greensward, where the dignity of “a cord” was conferred on me, I had in a weak and ridiculous manner made a ghastly fool of myself. As we lowered the coffin my body began to shake, I burst into blubbering tears … at my age! The recollection of it made me hang my head in shame.
“Have you the exact amount of the policy?” Adam inquired casually.
“Yes, I have.” McKellar spoke with formality. There was no love between these two: the city insurance man, dabbler in odd affairs, and the small town solicitor-actuary. An interesting character, this McKellar, who had always given me a nod across the street over a period of years—slow, stolid, firm as a rock, he would die sooner than change one halfpenny in his balance sheet. To say that he was honest is a preposterous understatement. He was a watchdog of probity; for all affairs beyond the solid three per cents. he had a shake of his head and this peculiar phrase: “A bad business. Aye, aye, a bad business.” Clearly he distrusted Adam as an opportunist, a young man who left his office at rather short notice and who had always shoved himself up at the expense of others.
“What might the accrued sum be?” Adam was still pressing ahead.
“Seven hundred and eighty-nine pounds, seven shillings and threepence … precisely.”
Adam inclined his head while Papa paled at the magnitude, the luscious magnitude of the sum. I could not help thinking of Grandpa, who hated this policy so much that he had forbidden me ever to mention it in his presence. Thank heaven he was spared Papa’s joyful whisper:
