The Stars Look Down

by A. J. Cronin

  “It’s been fine seeing you again,” David said at last as Joe rose to go.

  “No more nor seeing you, ole man,” Joe said. “Believe me it’s the whole cheese. I’ll be here a week or two, I expect, we got to see more of each other. Walk down the road with me now. Ah, come on. It’s early yet. By the bye,” Joe paused, twiddling his watch-chain, a candid amusement in his eye. “I almost forgot, Davey, I cleaned myself out over the old dad this afternoon, gave him a packet, a regular packet, everything I’d got, felt sort of generous like seeing him again I suppose. You couldn’t lend us a couple of quid or so—just till I hear from the bank? Just an ole couple of pounds.”

  “A couple of pounds… Joe?” David stared at Joe, taken aback.

  “Oh, never mind, then.” Joe’s smile departed, he looked hurt, offended; “palship” and decency outraged suffused his shiny face. “Never mind if you don’t want to… it’s nothing to me… I’ll get it easy somewhere else.”

  “Well, Joe…” Joe’s wounded expression cut David, he felt mean, horrible. He had about ten pounds tucked away in the chest of drawers in the bedroom, money saved for his examination expenses, and it was money that had taken some saving. He said suddenly: “Of course I’ll lend you it, Joe. Hold on…” He dashed upstairs and took three pounds and came back and offered them to Joe.

  “Right, Davey.” Joe’s belief in humanity was mercifully restored. He beamed. “I knew you’d oblige an ole pal. Just till the end of the week, you understand.”

  As they went up the street together Joe cocked his hat a trifle. His good night to David rang like a benediction.

  David turned down Cowpen Street. He had meant to go up to see his father to-night, but it was getting towards ten o’clock now. Joe had kept him longer than he expected, and Martha had a way of frowning upon him when he slipped in late as if the very lateness of his visit were a slight on her. He walked along Freehold Street, meaning to cut through Bethel Street, when suddenly he saw his brother Hughie coming through the darkness, running swiftly down the crown of the road in his shorts and singlet. David called:

  “Hughie! Hughie!” He had to call quickly, Hughie was going so fast.

  Hughie stopped and crossed over. Although he had run three miles his breath came easily, he was in perfect condition. When he saw that it was David he gave a whoop and promptly fell upon his neck.

  “Davey, you son of a gun!”

  David disentangled himself.

  “For heaven’s sake, Hughie.”

  But Hughie for once was irrepressible.

  “It’s happened, Davey. It’s happened at last. Did you know? I had the letter this afternoon. I got it when I came out the pit. They’ve asked me, Davey. Oh, help, isn’t it great!”

  “Asked you what, Hughie?” asked David, bewildered. He had never seen Hughie like this, never, why… if he didn’t know Hughie, he’d have sworn Hughie was drunk.

  The silent Hughie was drunk, intoxicated with delight.

  “Asked me to play for Tynecastle! Could you believe it, man! They were watching the match last Saturday and I never knew a thing about it… and I scored three goals… I did the hat trick, Davey… and now they’ve asked me to play a trial with the reserves at St. James’s Park on Saturday week. Oh, heavens, isn’t it great. If I do all right I’m signed, Davey… signed for the United, Davey, the United!” Hughie’s voice cracked amongst delirious heights.

  David understood: it was here at last, Hughie’s hoped for, longed for, impossible dream. Not for nothing had Hughie martyred himself, bound himself to monkish ways, steeled himself against those glamorous glances, that so often sought out his in Lamb Street on Saturday nights. Suddenly David felt glad, a rush of genuine happiness came over him, he held out his hand in congratulation.

  “I’m delighted, Hughie.” How comically inadequate words were to express the real joy he felt.

  Hughie went on.

  “They’ve had their eye on me for months. Did I tell you that before? I can’t think what I’m saying. But you may be sure of one thing. I’ll play the game of my life on Saturday week. Oh, Davey, man, isn’t it wonderful!” That last ecstasy seemed to bring Hughie to himself. He coloured and stole a look at David. He said: “I’m fair sloppy to-night. It’s excitement.” He paused. “You’ll come to the match though, Davey?”

  “I’ll be there, Hughie. I’ll come and shout my head off.”

  Hughie smiled: his old diffident smile.

  “Sammy’s coming too. He says if I don’t score six he’ll wring my neck!” He balanced on his heels for a minute in his familiar style, then he said: “I’d better not catch cold. I’m not taking any chances now, lad. Good night, Davey.”

  “Good night, Hughie.”

  Hughie went off, running, disappearing into the darkness of the night.

  David returned home, with a sense of warmth about his heart. He let himself into the house. Sally was alone, sitting crouched up in a chair by the fire with her legs tucked in and her lips drawn down. She looked very small and silent. After Hughie’s elation it struck David that she was sad.

  “Where’s Jenny?” he asked.

  “Gone to bed!”

  “Oh!” He paused, disappointed. Right away he had wanted to let Jenny know about Hughie. Then, smiling again, he began to tell Sally.

  Crouched there, she studied him, watching him steadily with her face masked by the shadow of her hand.

  “Isn’t that grand?” he concluded. “You know, not so much what he’s got… but because he was so set on getting it.”

  She sighed. She was silent. Then she said:

  “Yes, it’s pretty nice getting what you want.”

  He looked at her.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You don’t look like it was nothing. You look upset.”

  “Well,” she said slowly, “I’ve been rather stupid. Just before you came in I had a row with Jenny.”

  He looked away quickly.

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be sorry. It’s not the first and I’m afraid it’s been coming for a long, long time. I shouldn’t have told you. I should have been noble and just smiled myself away tomorrow all polite and self-sacrificing.”

  “Are you going to-morrow?”

  “Yes, I’m going. It’s time I was getting back to Alfred. He doesn’t get his place in the house and he smells of pigeons but I’m rather struck on old Alfred for all that.”

  He said:

  “I wish I understood what the trouble was.”

  She said:

  “I’m glad you don’t.”

  He stared at her doubtfully.

  “I don’t like you going this way. Please don’t go.”

  “I must go,” she said. “I didn’t bring a change of lingerie.” She gave a short laugh and then burst straight into tears.

  He simply didn’t know what to make of her.

  She stopped crying at once. She said:

  “Don’t pay any attention. I’ve been slightly unstuck ever since I came to bits on the prima donna act. I don’t want any sympathy. It’s better to be a has been than a never was. I’m quite cheerful and I think I’ll go to bed.”

  “But I am sorry, Sally.”

  “Shut up,” she said. “It’s high time you stopped being sorry for other people and started being sorry for yourself.”

  “What on earth have I got to be sorry about?”

  “Nothing.” She got up. “It’s too late to be soulful. I’ll tell you in the morning.” Abruptly, she said good night and went to bed.

  Next morning he did not see her. She had risen early and left by the seven o’clock train.

  All that day David worried about Sally: when he returned from school he spoke to Jenny.

  Jenny gave her little complacent laugh.

  “She’s jealous, my dear, absolutely jealous.”

  He drew back disgusted.

  “Oh no,” he said, “I’m convinced it isn�
��t that.”

  She nodded indulgently.

  “She always had her eye on you, even in the Scottswood Road days. She hated to see you spoony on me. And she hates it even worse now!” She paused, smiling up at him. “You still are spoony on me, aren’t you, David?”

  He looked at her queerly, with a queer hardness in his eyes. He said:

  “Yes, I do love you, Jenny. I know you’re chock full of faults—just as I am myself. Sometimes you say and do things that I loathe. Sometimes I simply can’t stand you. But I can’t help myself. I love you.”

  She did not attempt to understand him but took the general drift of his remarks as complimentary.

  “Funny bones,” she said archly. And went back to her novel.

  He was not accustomed to analyse his feeling for Jenny. He simply accepted it. But two days later, on the following Friday, an incident occurred which disturbed him strangely.

  As a rule he did not leave the school until four o’clock. But on this particular day Strother came along at three o’clock to “take his class.” It was Strother’s habit to take a class once a week, on this day and at this hour, to determine the progress of the class and to make forcible and pointed comment in the presence of the master of that class. Lately, however, Strother had been kinder to David since he had been working so strenuously for the B.A.; he said curtly, yet pleasantly enough, that David might go.

  David went. He went first of all to Hans Messuer’s for a hair cut. While Hans, a fat meek smiling man with a moustache turned up like the Kaiser’s, was cutting his hair David talked to Swee who had just come out the Neptune and was shaving himself in the back shop. He had a cheerful and unedifying conversation with Swee. Swee was always cheerful and could be very unedifying. He could shave and talk and be cheerful and unedifying all at the same time without cutting himself. The talk with Swee did David good but it took only half an hour. He reached home at half-past three instead of quarter-past four. Then as he came up the lane behind the Dunes he met Joe Gowlan coming out of his house.

  David stopped. He stopped absolutely dead. He had not seen Joe since he loaned him the money; it gave him the most singular sensation to see Joe walking out the house as though actually it were Joe’s house. He felt the sensation like an acute embarrassment especially as Joe seemed acutely embarrassed too.

  “I thought I’d left my stick the other night,” Joe explained, looking everywhere but at David.

  “You didn’t have a stick, Joe.”

  Joe laughed, glancing up and down the lane. Perhaps he thought the stick might be there.

  “I did have a stick… a cane… I always carry it, but I’m blowed if I haven’t lost it somewhere.”

  Just that; then Joe nodding, smiling, hurrying; hurrying to get away.

  David went up the path and into his house thoughtfully.

  “Jenny,” he said, “what did Joe want here?”

  “Joe!” She darted a look at him; got very red in the face.

  “I’ve just met him… coming out of this house.”

  She stood in the middle of the floor in that lost, taken aback way, then her temper flared.

  “I can’t help it if you did meet him. I’m not his keeper. He only looked in for a minute. What are you staring at me like that for?”

  “Nothing,” he said, turning away. Why had Jenny said nothing about the stick?

  “Nothing what?” she insisted violently.

  He looked out of the window. Why had Joe called at an hour when he was likely to be at the school? Why on earth? Suddenly an explanation struck him; the unusual time of Joe’s call, Joe’s nervousness, his hurry to get away, everything. Joe had borrowed three pounds from him, and Joe was still unable to pay it back!

  His face lightened, he swung round to Jenny.

  “Joe did call for his stick… didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” she cried, quite hysterically, and came right into his arms. “Of course he did. What in the world did you think he came for?”

  He soothed her, patting her lovely soft hair.

  “I’m sorry, Jenny, darling. It did give me the oddest feeling, though, to see him walking out of my house as if he owned it.”

  “Oh, David,” she wept, “how can you say such things?”

  What had he said? He smiled, his lips touched her white slender neck. She pleaded:

  “You’re not angry with me, David?”

  Why under heaven should he be angry with her?

  “Heavens, no, my dear.”

  Reassured, she lifted her limpid swimming eyes. She kissed him. She was sweet to him all that evening, most terribly sweet. She got up actually next morning, which was Saturday, to give him his morning tea. When she saw him off on his bicycle that same afternoon to spend the week-end working with Carmichael she clung to him and would hardly let him go.

  But she did let him go after one last big hug, as she called it. Then she went into the house, humming lightly, pleased that David loved her, pleased with herself, pleased with the nice long free week-end before her.

  Of course she wouldn’t let Joe come to supper to-night, she wouldn’t dream of such a thing, the cheek, indeed! of Joe for even suggesting it. To talk about old times he had said, well, could you believe it. She hadn’t even bothered to tell David about Joe’s impertinence, it was not the kind of thing a lady cared to mention.

  That afternoon she took a pleasant stroll down the town. Outside Murchison’s she paused, debating, as it were, and deciding well, yes, it was a useful thing to have in the house. She went in and elegantly ordered a bottle of port, invalid port, to be sent down, this afternoon, for sure now, Mr. Murchison. David didn’t like it, she knew, but David had lately been most unreasonable and he was away in any case and would never know. What was the old saying again, what the eye didn’t see the heart didn’t grieve for. Good, wasn’t it? Smiling a little Jenny went home, changed her dress, scented herself behind her ears, like it said in Home Chat, and made herself nice, Jenny did, even if it was only to be nice for herself.

  At seven o’clock Joe came to the door. Jenny answered his ring.

  “Well, I declare,” she exclaimed, shocked. “After all I said.”

  “Ah, come on now, Jenny,” Joe said ingratiatingly, “don’t be hard on a fella.”

  “The very idea,” said Jenny. “I’ve a good mind not to let you in.”

  But she did let him in. And she did not let him out till it was very late. She was flushed and disarranged and rather sheepish. She giggled. The port, the invalid port was finished.

  TWENTY-TWO

  On the next day, Sunday the 7th of December, Jack Reedy, eldest of the Reedy brothers, and his marrow, Cha Leeming, worked their shift in the Scupper Flats, an extra shift because they were doubling to complete the P. W. contract. Robert was in the same shift though much further up the Flats at the head of the slant. His heading was bad. The heading of Reedy and Leeming was good, about one mile and a half from the pit-bottom. At five o’clock the shift stopped work and came out of the pit. Reedy and Cha Leeming, before they came out, left a fine jud of unworked coal on the face of their heading. About five or six tubs of coal would be in this jud when it was brought down, good coal and easy to get when they came in next morning.

  Well satisfied, Jack Reedy and Cha stopped at the Salutation for a drink on the way home. Jack had a bit of money. For all it was Sunday night they had several drinks and then several more. Jack got merry and Cha was half-seas over. Arm in arm together they rolled up the Terraces, singing. They went to bed. Next morning both slept in. But neither appreciated the point of his sleeping in till later.

  At half-past three of the morning of Monday Dinning, the deputy in charge of the district, entered the Paradise section and made his examination of the workings. He did this before admitting the morning shift. Stick in hand, head bent, Dinning plodded diligently through the Mixen and Scupper Flats. Everything seemed satisfactory so Dinning returned to his kist in the Scupper ropeway and wrote out his statutory report
.

  The shift then came in, one hundred and five persons, made up of eighty-seven men and eighteen boys. Two of the shift, Bob Ogle and Tally Brown, made up to Dinning in the ropeway.

  “Jack and Cha slep’ in,” Bob Ogle said.

  “To hell!” Dinning said.

  “Can Tally and me hev that heading?” Bob said. “It’s a bitch of a one we hev.”

  “To hell,” Dinning said. “Take it, then!”

  Ogle and Brown went up the ropeway with a bunch of men, amongst whom were Robert, Hughie, Slogger Leeming, Harry Brace, Swee Messer, Tom Reedy, Ned Softly and Jesus Wept. Tom Reedy’s young brother Pat, a boy of fifteen, whose first week it was inbye proper, followed on behind.

  Robert was in good spirits. He felt well and hopeful. He had slept soundly, his cough had not been so troublesome; in the last few months, with a strong sense of relief, he had come to the conclusion that his fears of flooding had been unfounded. As he walked up through the blackness of the slant, which was low and narrow, four feet high, six hundred feet below the surface and two miles from the main shaft, he found himself beside little Pat Reedy, youngest of the Reedy tribe.

  “Eh, Pat,” he joked, encouraging him. “It’s a fine place ye’ve come for your holidays.” He clapped Pat on the back and went down through the dip known as the Swelly and up to his far heading with Slogger. The heading was drier than it had been for weeks.

  Ogle and Brown were already in their heading further back. They found the jud left by Jack and Cha. They started work, drilled two yard shot holes into the face of the jud and another of the same depth to the right of the projection. At quarter to five Dinning, the deputy, came along. He charged and fired the shots. Eight tubs of coal came down.

  Dinning saw that the shots had fired well and the line of the coal face straightened.