The Stars Look Down

by A. J. Cronin

  The party broke up, Jenny retired to “tidy up,” Joe paid the bill with a flourish of five-pound notes.

  Outside, while they waited on Jenny, Joe suddenly stopped masticating his toothpick:

  “She’s a nice lass that, Davey.”

  “She is, indeed. I admire your taste.”

  “My taste!” Joe laughed quite heartily. “You’ve got it all wrong, lad. We’re just friends. There’s not a thing between Jenny and me.”

  “Really?” David sounded interested all at once.

  “Ay, really!” Joe laughed again at the very idea. “I’d no idea you were getting hold of the wrong end of the stick.”

  Jenny joined them and they walked three abreast to the corner of Collingwood Street, where David branched off along Westgate Road.

  “Don’t forget now,” Joe said. “Tuesday night for sure.” The final handshake was cordial; Jenny’s fingers conveyed just the politest sensation of a squeeze.

  David walked home on air to his scrubby room; propped up Mignet’s Histoire de la Révolution Française, and lit his pipe.

  Simply grand, he thought, meeting Joe so unexpectedly; odd, too, that they should not have met before. But Tynecastle was a big place with, as Joe had said, only one Joe Gowlan in it.

  David seemed to be thinking quite a lot about Joe. But the face which danced through the pages of Mignet was not Joe’s face. It was the smiling face of Jenny.

  FOURTEEN

  David called at 117A Scottswood Road on the following Tuesday. It was unfortunate, considering how much he had looked forward to the evening, that Joe should be detained at Millington’s working overtime. But there it was and couldn’t be helped: poor Joe had to work his overtime. David, nevertheless, enjoyed himself hugely. Though his opportunities had been so few, his nature was really sociable, he came prepared to enjoy himself and he did. The Sunleys, pre-informed by Jenny, were inclined at first to treat him with suspicion. They expected superiority. But soon the atmosphere thawed, supper appeared on the table, and hilarity filled the air. Mrs. Sunley, shedding her lethargy for once, had made a rarebit—and, as Sally remarked, Ma’s rarebits were a treat. Alf, with the help of two tea-spoons and the pepper pot, had demonstrated his own especial method of dovecote construction. A fortune it would have made him, if he’d only patented it. Jenny, looking delicious in a fresh print frock, had poured the tea herself—Ma being too flushed and flustered from her exertions in the kitchen.

  David couldn’t keep his eyes off Jenny. Against the slipshod background of her home she bloomed for him. During his years in Tynecastle he had hardly spoken to a woman; at Sleescale, of course, he had been far from the stage of “walking out”—as it was traditionally known in the Terraces. Jenny was the first… absolutely the first to lay the spell of sex upon him.

  A warm air wafted in through the half-open window of the back room; and though it bore the exhalation of ten thousand chimney pots it held for David the scent of spring. He watched, waited for Jenny’s smile: the soft crinkling of her lip was the most delicious thing he had ever seen. It was like the unfolding of a flower. When she passed him his cup and their fingers touched a divine softness flowed into him.

  Jenny, conscious of the effect she was producing, was flattered. And when Jenny felt flattered she was at her very best. Yet actually she was not greatly attracted to David, when their fingers met she knew no answering thrill. Jenny was in love with Joe.

  Jenny had begun by despising Joe, his bad manners, his roughness, the fact, as she expressed it, that “he worked dirty.” Strange as it may seem, these were the very qualities which had subdued her. Jenny was made to be bullied, deep down in her being lay an unconscious recognition of the brutality which had mastered her. Meanwhile, however, Jenny was very pleased with this new conquest: it would “learn” Joe, when he heard of it, not to treat her so casually.

  Supper over, Alf suggested music. They went into the parlour. Outside was the subdued evening hum of the street, inside it was pleasantly cool and airy. While Sally played her accompaniments, Jenny sang Juanita and Sweet Marie, come to me. Though her voice was thin and rather forced Jenny was very effective by the piano. When she finished Sweet Marie she offered to sing Passing By, but Alf, loudly supported by Clarry and Phyllis, had begun to clamour for Sally.

  “Sally’s the top of the bill,” he remarked confidentially to David. “If we can get her started you’ll see some fun. She’s a great little comedienne. Her and me go to the Empire regularly every week.”

  “Come on, Sally,” Clarry begged. “Do Jack Pleasants.”

  Phyllis urged:

  “Yes, Sally, please. And Florrie Forde.”

  But Sally, perched apathetically on the piano stool, refused. Picking out melancholy bass notes with one finger:

  “I’m not in the mood. He,” jerking her head towards David, “he wants to hear Jenny, not me.”

  Aside, Jenny gave a superior little laugh:

  “She only wants to be coaxed.”

  Sally flared instantly:

  “All right, then, Miss Sweet Marie Sunley, I’ll do it without the coaxing.” She straightened herself upon the stool.

  At fifteen, Sally was still small and tubby, but she had something, a queer something that gripped and fascinated. Now her short figure became electric. She frowned, then into her plain little face there flowed an irresistible mockery. She struck a frightful discord.

  “By special request,” she mimicked, “the other Miss Sunley will sing Molly o’ Morgan.” And she let herself go.

  It was good, terribly good. The song was nothing, just a popular number of the day, but Sally made it something. She did not sing the song; she parodied it: she burlesqued it; she went falsetto; she suddenly went soulful: she wept almost, for the tragedy of Molly’s forsaken lovers.

  “Molly o’ Morgan with her barrel organ,

  The Irish Ey-talian girl.”

  Forgetting what Jenny would have called her manners, she concluded with a disgraceful impersonation of the monkey which might reasonably have been expected to accompany Miss o’ Morgan’s organ.

  Everyone but Jenny was convulsed. But Sally, without giving them time to recover, dashed into I was standing at the corner of the street. She ceased to be the monkey. She became Jack Pleasants; she became a dull bumpkin, sluggish as a turnip, supporting the wall of the village pub. You saw the straw in her hair as she sang:

  “A fellow dressed in uniform came up to me and cried,

  How did you get into the army? I replied:

  I… was standing at… the corner… of the street.”

  Vociferously Alf clapped his appreciation. Sally smiled at him wickedly from the corner of her eye; she winked, restoring her sex, and sang Yip I addy I ay. She developed a bosom, a rich deep voice and wonderful hips. It was Florrie Forde. Florrie, to the life.

  “Sing of joy, sing of bliss, it was never like this

  Yip I addy I ay.”

  She ended suddenly. She slid from the stool, swung round, and faced them, smiling.

  “Rotten,” she exclaimed, screwing up her nose. “Not worth a slab of toffee. Let me get out before the ripe tomatoes come.” And she skipped out of the room.

  Later, Jenny apologised to David for Sally’s oddity.

  “You must excuse her, she’s often terribly queer. And temper. My! I’m afraid,” lowering her voice. “It’s very stupid, but I’m afraid she’s rather inclined to be jealous of me.”

  “Surely not,” David smiled. “She’s just a kid.”

  “She’s getting on for sixteen,” Jenny contradicted primly. “And she really does hate to see anyone paying me attention. I can tell you it makes things pretty difficult for me. As if I could help it.”

  Assuredly Jenny could not help it: Heavens! that was like blaming a rose for its perfume, a lily for its purity.

  David went home that night more convinced than ever that she was adorable.

  He began to call regularly, to drop in of an evening. Occasionally he
encountered Joe; more often he did not. Joe, with an air of tremendous preoccupation, was working overtime feverishly and seldom in evidence at No. 117A. Then David asked Jenny to go out with him: they began to take excursions together, curious excursions for Jenny, walks on the Aston Hills, a ramble to Liddle, a picnic, actually to Esmond Dene. Secretly, Jenny was contemptuous of all this junketing. She was accustomed to Joe’s lordly escort, to the Percy Grill, the Bioscope, Carrick’s—“going places” meant, for Jenny, crowds, entertainment, a few glasses of port, money spent upon her. David had no money to spend upon her. She did not for a moment doubt that he would have taken her to all her favourite resorts had his purse permitted. David was a nice young man, she liked him, though occasionally she thought him very odd. On the afternoon they went to Esmond Dene he quite bewildered her.

  She was not very keen to visit Esmond, she thought it a common place, a place where it costs nothing to get in, and the very lowest people sprawled upon the grass and ate out of paper bags. Some of the commonest girls from the shop went there with their fellows on Sundays. But David appeared so much to wish her to go that she agreed.

  He began by taking her the long way round so that he might show her the swallows’ nests. Quite eagerly he asked:

  “Have you ever seen the nests, Jenny?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’ve only been here once, and I was a kid then, about five.”

  He seemed astounded.

  “But it’s the loveliest spot, Jenny! I take a walk here every week. It’s got moods, this place, just like the human soul, sometimes dark and melancholy, sometimes sunny, full of sunshine. Look! Just look at these nests, under the eaves of the lodge.”

  She looked very carefully; but she could see only some daubs of mud plastered against the wall. Baffled, feeling rather angrily that she was missing something, she accompanied him past the banqueting hall, down the rhododendron walk to the waterfall. They stood together on the little arched stone bridge.

  “See these chestnuts, Jenny,” he exclaimed happily. “Don’t they open out the sky? And the moss there on these stones. And the mill there, look, isn’t it wonderful? It’s exactly like one of the early Corots!”

  She saw an old ruin of a house, with a red tiled roof and a wooden mill-wheel, covered with ivy and all sorts of queer colours. But it was a queer kind of tumbled-down place, and in any case it was no good now, it wasn’t working. She felt angrier than ever. They had tramped quite a long way, her feet were swollen, hurting her in her new tight shoes which she had thought such a bargain, four and eleven reduced from nine shillings, at the sales. She had seen nothing but grass, trees, flowers and sky, heard nothing but the sound of water and birds, eaten nothing but some damp egg sandwiches and two Canary bananas—they were not even the big waxy Jamaica kind which she preferred. She was confused, puzzled, all “upside down”; cross with David, herself, Joe, life, her shoes—was she really getting a corn?—cross with everything. She wanted a cup of tea, a glass of port, something! Standing there, on that lovely arched stone bridge, she compressed her rather pale lips, then opened them to say something extremely disagreeable. But at that moment she caught sight of David’s face.

  His face was so happy, so rapt, suffused with such ardour, intensity and love that it took her all of a heap. She giggled suddenly. She giggled and giggled; it was so funny she could not stop. She had a perfect paroxysm of almost hysterical enjoyment.

  David laughed too, out of sheer sympathy.

  “What’s the matter, Jenny?” he kept asking. “Do tell me what’s the joke!”

  “I don’t know,” she gasped, going into a fresh spasm of mirth. “That’s just it. I don’t know… I don’t know what I’m laughing at.”

  At last she dried her streaming eyes on her small lace-edged hanky—an extra nice hanky, a lady had left in the toilet at Slattery’s.

  “Oh dear,” she sighed. “That was a scream, wasn’t it?” This was a favourite phrase of Jenny’s: all events of unusual significance, when they lay beyond Jenny’s comprehension, were classed sympathetically as screams.

  She felt quite restored, however, rather fond of him now; she allowed him to take her arm and be very close to her as they climbed the steep hill of the Dene towards the tram. But she cut the afternoon shorter than it might have been, pleaded tiredness, refused to let him see her to her home.

  She went along Scottswood Road in a restless, excitable mood, nursing the idea which had come to her as she sat beside David in the tram. The street teemed with life. It was Saturday, about six o’clock; people were starting to stroll about, to enjoy themselves; it was a time that Jenny loved, the time when she most commonly set out with Joe.

  She let herself into the house quietly and, by a stroke of luck which made her heart leap, she met Joe in the passage coming out.

  “Hello, Joe,” she said brightly, forgetting that for a week she had cut him dead.

  “Hello!” he said, not looking at her.

  “I’ve had such a scream of an afternoon, Joe,” she went on gaily, coquettishly. “You’d have died, honestly you’d have died. I’ve seen every kind of swallow but a real one.”

  He darted a quick suspicious glance at her as she stood in the dim passage blocking his way. She saw the look and came a little closer, making herself seductive, asking him with her face, her eyes, her body.

  “Couldn’t you and I go out to-night, Joe?” she murmured seductively. “Honest, I’ve had a sickening afternoon. I’ve missed you a lot lately. I want to go out with you. I want to. Here I am ready, all dressed up…”

  “Ah, what—”

  She pressed against him, began to smooth his coat lapel, to slip her white finger into his buttonhole, with a childish yet suggestive appeal.

  “I’m just dying to have a fling. Let’s go to the Percy Grill, Joe, and have a rare old time. You know, Joe… you know what…”

  He shook his head rudely.

  “No,” he said in a surly voice. “I’m busy, I’m worried, I’ve got things on my mind.” He brushed past her, banged through the door and was gone.

  She lay back against the wall of the passage, her mouth a little open, her eyes upon the street door. She had asked him, lowered herself to ask him. She had held herself wide open, wide open, longing for him, and he had chucked a surly refusal in her face. Humiliation rushed over her; never, in all her life, had she been so wounded, so humiliated. Pale with temper, she bit her lips fiercely. She lay there for a moment mad, simply, with fury. Then she gathered herself, flung her head in the air, went into the back room as if nothing had happened.

  Tossing her hat and gloves upon the sofa, she began to make herself a cup of tea. Ada, reclining in the rocker, lowered her magazine and watched her with displeasure.

  “Where you been?” Ada asked laconically, very coldly.

  “Out.”

  “H’umph… out with that young Fenwick fella, eh?”

  “Certainly,” Jenny agreed with a calm tranquillity. “Out with David Fenwick. And a most lovely afternoon I’ve had. Simply perfect. Such wonderful flowers and birds we’ve seen. He’s a nice fellow, oh, he really is nice.”

  Ada’s indolent bosom heaved ominously.

  “So he’s nice, is he?”

  “Yes, indeed.” Jenny paused in her unruffled measuring of the tea to nod graciously. “He’s the nicest and best fellow I’ve ever met. I’m quite carried away by him.” And very airily she began to hum.

  Ada could stand it no longer.

  “Don’t hum at me,” she quivered with indignation. “I won’t have it. And let me tell you this, madam, I think you’re behaving shocking. You’re not treating Joe right. For four years now he’s run after you, taken you out and all, as good as your intended. And the minute this other young man comes along you turn Joe down and go cohorting all over the place with him…. It’s not fair on Joe.”

  Jenny paused and sipped her tea with ladylike restraint.

  “I think nothing of Joe Gowlan, ma. I co
uld have Joe just by the raising of my little finger. But I haven’t raised it. Not just yet.”

  “So that’s it, my lady! Joe isn’t good enough for you now… not grand enough now this school teacher has come on the carpet. You’re a fine customer, right enough. I should think so. Let me tell you, my lady, that I didn’t go about it that way with your dad. I treated him proper and human. And if you don’t treat Joe the same you’ll lose him as sure as your name’s Jenny Sunley.”

  “A lot I care, ma.” Jenny smiled pityingly. “Even if I never did set eyes on Joe Gowlan again.”

  Mrs. Sunley exploded.

  “You might not then. Joe’s upset. Joe’s terrible upset. He’s just been in here talking to me now. There was tears in his eyes, poor fella, when he was speaking to me about you. He don’t know what to do. And he’s got trouble on him, too, trouble at the foundry. You’re treating him shameful, but mark my words, no man’ll put up with that kind of thing for long. So just look out. You’re a bad heartless girl. I’ve had a good mind to tell your dad.” Ada delivered the final threat and sealed off the conversation by raising her magazine with a jerk. She had said her say, done her duty, and Jenny could like it or lump it!

  Jenny’s smile was still superior as she finished her tea. Still condescending and even more superior as she picked up her hat and gloves, swept from the room and mounted the stairs.

  In her own bedroom, however, something went wrong with Jenny’s smile. She stood alone, in the middle of the cold worn linoleum like a wretched, forsaken, spoiled child. She let her hat and gloves slip from her. Then with a great gulp she flung herself upon the bed. She lay flat upon the bed as though embracing it. Her skirt, caught above one knee, exposed a tender patch of white skin above her black stocking. Her abandon was unutterable. She sobbed and sobbed as if her heart would break.

  Joe, strutting down Bigg Market to see Dick Jobey, with whom he had private and important business, was telling himself gleefully: