by A. J. Cronin
V
The train arrived at two o’clock that sultry June afternoon. Carrying his handbag, Francis walked rapidly from the station, his heart beating faster as he approached the familiar quarter of the city.
A queer air of quiet hung outside the tavern. Thinking to take Aunt Polly by surprise, he ran lightly up the side stairs and entered the house. Here, too, it was quiet and oddly dim after the glare of the dusty pavements; no one in the lobby or the kitchen, no sound but the thunderous ticking of a clock. He went into the parlour.
Ned was seated at the table, both elbows on the red drugget cover, gazing endlessly at the opposite blank wall. Not the attitude alone, but the alteration in the man himself, drew from Francis a stifled exclamation. Ned had lost three stones in weight, his clothes hung upon him, the rotund beaming face had turned dreary and cadaverous.
‘Ned!’ Francis held out his hand.
There was a pause, then Ned sluggishly slewed round, perception, slowly dawning through his settled wretchedness.
‘It’s you, Francis.’ His smile was bewitching, evasive. ‘I’d no idea you were expected.’
‘I’m not really, Ned.’ Through his anxiety Francis assayed a laugh. ‘But the minute we broke up I simply couldn’t wait. Where’s Aunt Polly?’
‘She’s away … Yes … Polly’s away for a couple of days to Whitley Bay.’
‘When’ll she be back?’
‘Like enough … tomorrow.’
‘And where’s Nora?’
‘Nora!’ Ned’s tone was flat. ‘She’s away with Aunt Polly.’
‘I see.’ Francis was conscious of a throb of relief. ‘That’s why she didn’t answer my wire. But Ned … you … you’re well yourself, I hope?’
‘I’m all right, Francis. A trifle under the weather maybe … but the like of me’ll come to no harm.’ His chest took a sudden grotesque heave. Francis was horrified to see tears run down the egg-shaped face. ‘Away now and get yourself a bite. There’ll be plenty in the cupboard. Thad’ll get you anything you want. He’s below in the bar. A great help he’s been to us, has Thad.’ Ned’s gaze wavered, then wandered back to the opposite wall.
In a daze, Francis turned, put his bag in his own small room. As he came along the passage the door of Nora’s room was open: the neat white privacy caused him to withdraw his eyes in sudden confusion. He hastened downstairs.
The saloon was empty, even Scanty vanished, his vacant corner arresting, unbelievable, like a gap blown through the solid structure of the wall. But behind the bar, in his shirt sleeves, smugly drying glasses, was Thaddeus Gilfoyle.
Thad stopped his silent whistle as Francis entered. Slightly taken aback, an instant elapsed before he offered a welcome with his limp and dampish hand.
‘Well, well!’ he exclaimed. ‘Here’s a sight for sore eyes.’
Gilfoyle’s air of proprietorship was hateful. But Francis, now thoroughly alarmed, succeeded in affecting indifference. He said lightly: ‘ I’m surprised to see you here, Thad? What’s happened to the gasworks?’
‘I’ve given up the office,’ Thad answered composedly.
‘What for?’
‘To be here. Permanent.’ He picked up a glass and eyed it professionally, breathed on it softly, and began to polish. ‘When they asked me to come forward … I couldn’t do more!’
Francis felt his nerves tighten beyond endurance. ‘In the name of heaven, what’s all this about, Gilfoyle?’
‘Mister Gilfoyle, if you don’t mind, Francis!’ Thad rolled his tongue smugly around the reproach. ‘It heartbreaks Ned not to see me get my place. He’s not the same man, Francis. I doubt he’ll ever be himself again.’
‘What’s happened to him? You talk as if he were out of his mind!’
‘He was, Francis, he was …’ Gilfoyle groaned, ‘ but he’s come to senses, now poor man.’ His eye watchful, he stopped Francis’ angry interruption with a whine. ‘ Now don’t take on that way with me. I’m the one that’s doin’ right. Ask Father Fitzgerald if you disbelieve me. I know you’ve never liked me much. I’ve seen ye on vacations making sport of me as you growed up. I’ve the best intentions towards you, Francis. We ought to pull together … now, especially.’
‘Why now especially?’ Francis gritted his teeth.
‘Oh, yes, yes … you wouldn’t know … to be sure.’ Thad darted a fearful smirk. ‘ The banns was only put up for the first time last Sunday. You see, Francis, me and Nora’s going to be wed!’
Aunt Polly and Nora returned late the following evening. Francis, sick with apprehension, with his failure to penetrate Gilfoyle’s fish-like secrecy, had awaited their arrival in an agony of impatience. He tried immediately to corner Polly.
But Polly, after her first start, her wail of recognition – ‘Francis, I told you not to come,’ – had fled upstairs with Nora, her ears closed to his importunities, reiterating the formula, ‘ Nora’s not well … she’s sick I tell you … get out of my road … I’ve got to tend to her.’
Rebuffed, he climbed sombrely to his room, chilled by the mounting premonitions of this unknown dread. Nora, having scarcely given him a look, had gone immediately to bed. And for an hour he heard Polly, scurrying with trays and hot-water bottles, entreating Nora in a low voice, persecuting her with agitated attentions. Nora, thin as a wand, and pale, somehow had the air of sick-rooms. Polly, worn and harassed, even more negligent in her dress, had acquired a new gesture – a quick pressing of her hand against her brow. Late into the night, from her adjoining room, he heard the mutter of her prayers. Torn by the enigma, Francis bit his lip, turning restlessly between his sheets.
Next morning dawned clear. He rose and, according to his habit, went out to early mass. When he returned he found Nora seated outside on the back-yard steps warming herself in a patch of sunshine while at her feet some chickens cheeped and scuttled. She made no move to let him pass, but when he had stood a moment, she raised her head contemplatively.
‘It’s the holy man … been out already, saving his soul!’
He reddened at her tone, so unexpected, so quietly bitter.
‘Did the Very Reverend Fitzgerald officiate?’
‘No. It was the curate.’
‘The dumb ox in the stall! Ah, well, at least he’s harmless.’
Her head drooped, she stared at the chickens, propping her thin chin upon a thinner wrist. Though she had always been slight he was startled to discover this almost childish fragility which matched so ill the sullen maturity in her eyes, and the new grey dress, womanly and costly, which stiffly adorned her. His heart melted, his breast was filled with a white fire, an unsupportable pain. Her hurt plucked at the chords of his soul. He hesitated, his gaze averted. His voice was low.
‘Have you had breakfast?’
She nodded. ‘ Polly shoved it down my throat. God! If she’d only leave me be!’
‘What are you doing today?’
‘Nothing.’
He paused again, then blurted out, all his feelings for her flooding through the anxiety in his eyes. ‘Why don’t we go for a walk, Nora? Like we used to. It’s so glorious a day!’
She did not move. Yet a faint tinge of animation seemed to penetrate her hollow, shadowed cheek.
‘I can’t be bothered,’ she said heavily. ‘I’m tired!’
‘Oh, come on, Nora … please.’
A dull pause. ‘All right.’
His heart gave another great painful thud. He hurried into the kitchen and cut, with nervous haste, some sandwiches and cake, wrapped them clumsily into a packet. There was no sign of Polly and now, indeed, he was eager to avoid her. In ten minutes Nora and he sat in the red tram, clanging across the city. Within the hour, they tramped side by side, unspeaking, towards the Gosforth Hills.
He wondered at the impulse which had sent him to this familiar stretch. Today the burgeoning countryside was lovely; but its very loveliness was tremulous, unbearable. As they came upon Lang’s orchard, now foamy with blossom, he paused, tried to brea
k the steely silence which lay between them.
‘Look, Nora! Let’s take a stroll round. And have a word with Lang.’
She threw one glance at the orchard, the trees standing spaced and stiff, like chessmen, around the apple shed. She said rudely, bitterly: ‘I don’t want to. I hate that place!’
He did not answer. Dimly he knew her bitterness was not towards him.
By one o’clock they reached the summit of Gosforth Beacon. He could see that she was tired and, without consulting her, stopped under a tall beech, for lunch. The day was unusually warm and clear. In the flat distance beneath them, sparkling with golden light, lay the city, domed and spired, and from afar, ineffably beautiful.
She scarcely touched the sandwiches he produced and, remembering Polly’s demonstrative tyranny, he did not press her. The shade was soothing. Overhead the new green flickering leaves sent quiet patterns chasing across the moss, carpeted with dry beechnuts, on which they sat. There was a smell of flowing sap; the throaty call of a thrush came from a high twig overhead.
After a few moments she leaned back against the bole of the tree, tilted her head, and closed her eyes.
Her relaxation seemed somehow the greatest tribute she could pay him. He considered her with a deeper surge of tenderness, stirred to undreamed-of compassion by the arch of her neck, so thin and unprotected. The welling tenderness within him strangely protective. When her head slipped a little from the tree he scarcely dared touch her. Yet, fancying her asleep, he moved his arm instinctively to support her. The next instant she wrenched herself free, struck him repeatedly on the face and chest with her clenched knuckles, hysterically breathless.
‘Leave me alone! You brute! You beast!’
‘Nora, Nora! What’s the matter?’
Panting, she drew back, her face quivering, distorted. ‘Don’t try to get round me that way. You’re all the same. Every one of you!’
‘Nora!’ He pleaded with her desperately. ‘ For pity’s sake … let’s get this straight.’
‘Get what straight?’
‘Everything … why you’re going on like this … why you’re marrying Gilfoyle.’
‘Why shouldn’t I marry him?’ She threw the question at him, with a bitter defensiveness.
His lips were dry, he could speak. ‘But Nora, he’s such a poor creature … He’s not your sort.’
‘He’s as good as anybody. Haven’t I said you’re all the same? At least I’ll keep him in his place.’
Confounded, he stared at her with a pale and stricken face. And there was that in his unbelieving eyes which cut her so cruelly, she more cruelly cut back.
‘Perhaps you think I should be marrying you … the bright-eyed altar boy … the half-baked carpet priest!’ Her lip twitched with the bitterness of her sneer. ‘Let me tell you this. I think you’re a joke … a sanctimonious scream. Go on, turn up your blessed eyes. You don’t know how funny you are … you holy pater noster. Why if you were the last man in the world I wouldn’t …’ She choked and shuddered violently, tried, painfully, uselessly, to check her tears with the back of her hand and then, sobbing, flung her head upon his breast. ‘Oh, Francis, Francis, dear, I’m sorry! You know I’ve always loved you. Kill me if you want to … I don’t care.’
While he quieted her, clumsily, stroking her brow, he felt himself trembling as much as she. The racking violence of her sobs diminished gradually. She was like a wounded bird in his arms. She lay, spent and passive, her face hidden against his coat. Then slowly she straightened herself. With averted eyes, she took her handkerchief, rubbed her ravaged, tear-stained face, straightened her hat, then said, in an exhausted neutral tone: ‘We’d better get home.’
‘Look at me, Nora?’
But she would not, only remarking in that same odd monotone: ‘Say what you want to say.’
‘I will then, Nora.’ His youthful vehemence overcame him. ‘ I’m not going to stand this! I can see there’s something behind it. But I’ll get to the bottom of it. You’re not going to marry that fool Gilfoyle. I love you, Nora. I’ll stand by you.’
There was a pitiful stillness.
‘Dear Francis,’ she said, with an oddly hollow smile. ‘You make me feel as though I’d lived a million years.’ And rising, she bent and kissed him, as she had kissed him once before, upon the cheek. As they went down the hill the thrush had ceased its singing in the high tree.
That evening, with fixed intention, Francis set out for the dockside tenement inhabited by the Magoons. He found the banished Scanty alone, since Maggie was still out charring, squatting by a spark of fire in the single ‘back to back’apartment, glumly working a wool-rug shuttle by the light of a tallow dip. As he recognized his visitor there was no mistaking the pleasure in the exile’s bleary eye, a gleam that heightened when Francis uncovered the gill bottle of spirits he had privily removed from the bar. Quickly Scanty produced a chipped delft cup, solemnly toasted his benefactor.
‘Ah, that’s the stuff!’ he muttered, across the back of his ragged sleeve. ‘Devil the sup have I had since that skinflint Gilfoyle took over the bar.’
Francis drew up the backless wooden chair. He spoke with dark intensity, the shadows heavy beneath his eyes.
‘Scanty! What’s happened at the Union – to Nora, Polly, Ned? I’ve been back three days and I’m still no wiser. You’ve got to tell me!’
A look of alarm invaded Scanty’s expression. He glanced from Francis to the bottle – from the bottle to Francis.
‘Ah! How would I know?’
‘You do know! I can see it in your face.’
‘Didn’t Ned say nothing?’
‘Ned! He’s like a deaf-mute these days!’
‘Poor ould Ned.’ Scanty groaned, blessed himself, and poured out more whisky. ‘ God save us! Who would ever have dreamed it. Sure there’s bad in the best of us.’ With a sudden hoarse emphasis: ‘I couldn’t tell ye, Francis, it’s a shame to remember, it don’t do no good.’
‘It will do good, Scanty,’ Francis urged. ‘If I know, I can do something.’
‘Ye mean, Gilfoyle …’ With head cocked, Scanty considered, then he nodded slowly. He took another tot to stiffen himself, his battered face oddly sober, his tone subdued. ‘ I’ll tell you then, Francis, if you swear to keep it dark. The truth of it is … God pity us … that Nora’s had a baby.’
Silence: long enough for Scanty to take another drink. Francis said: ‘When?’
‘Six weeks ago. She went down to Whitley Bay. The woman there has the child … a daughter … Nora can’t bear the sight of it.’
Cold, rigid, Francis struggled with the tumult in his breast. He made himself ask: ‘Then Gilfoyle is the father?’
‘That gutless fish!’ Hatred overcame Scanty’s caution. ‘No, no, he’s the one that came forward, as he’s pleased to call it, to give the little one a name, and get his foot in the Union to the bargain, the bla’g’ard! Father Fitzgerald’s behind him, Francis. It’s all settin’ pretty as a pictur’, the way they’ve pulled it. Marriage lines in the drawer, not a soul the wiser, and the daughter brought here later on, as it were, at the end of a long vaycation. God strike me down dead, if it don’t turn the stomach of a pig!’
A band, an insupportable constriction, girded Francis’ heart. He fought to keep his voice from breaking.
‘I never knew Nora was in love with anyone? Scanty … Do you know who it was … I mean … the father of her child?’
‘Before God I don’t!’ The blood rushed to Scanty’s forehead as he thumped the floor boards in vociferous denial. ‘ I don’t know nothing about that at all. How should a poor creature like me! And Ned don’t either, that’s gospel truth! Ned always treated me right, a fine generous upstanding man, except for occasions, like when Polly was away, and the drink took hold of him. No, no, Francis, take it from me, there’s not a hope of findin’ the man!’
Again a silence, frozen, prolonged. A film clouded Francis’ eyes. He felt deathly sick. At last, with a great effort h
e got up.
‘Thank you, Scanty, for telling me.’
He quitted the room, went giddily down the bare flights of tenement stairs. His brow, the palms of his hands, were bedewed with icy sweat. A vision haunted, tormented him: the trim neatness of Nora’s bedroom, white and undisturbed. He had no hatred, only a searing pity, a dreadful convulsion of his soul. Outside in the squalid courtyard he leaned, suddenly overcome, against the single lamp-post and retched his heart out, into the gutter.
Now he felt cold, but firmer in his intention. He set out resolutely in the direction of St Dominic’s.
The housekeeper at St Dominic’s admitted him with that noiseless discretion which typified the Presbytery. In a minute, she glided back to the half-lit hall, where she had left him, and for the first time faintly smiled at him. ‘You’re fortunate, Francis. His Reverence is free to see you.’
Snuff-box in hand, Father Gerald Fitzgerald rose as Francis entered, his manner a mixture of cordiality and inquiry, his fine handsome presence matching the French furniture, the antique prie-dieu, the choice copies of Italian primitives upon the walls, the vase of lilies on the escritoire, scenting the tasteful room.
‘Well young man, I thought you were up North? Sit down! How are all my good friends in Holywell?’ As he paused to take snuff, his eye touched upon the College tie, which Francis wore, with affectionate approval. ‘I was there myself, you know, before I went to the Holy City … a grand gentlemanly place. Dear old MacNabb. And Father Tarrant. A classmate of mine at the English College in Rome. There’s a fine, a coming man! Well now, Francis.’ He paused, his needled glance sheathed by a courtier’s suavity. ‘What can we do for you?’
Painfully distressed, breathing quickly, Francis kept his eyes down. ‘I came to see you about Nora.’
The stammered remark rent the room’s serenity, its note of mannered ease.
‘And what about Nora, pray?’
‘Her marriage with Gilfoyle … She doesn’t want to go through with it … she’s miserable … it seems so stupid and unjust … such a needless and horrible affair.’
