by A. J. Cronin
Stanley continued to monopolise the conversation. Laura spoke very little and Joe, though his assurance was increasing, made only an occasional and careful observation, agreeing with some remark which Stanley had made. Occasionally, while Stanley discoursed upon bridge or golf, once especially when he was detailing at some length the manner in which he had played a particular hole, Joe’s eyes encountered Laura’s across the table and the deliberate blankness of her gaze gave him a secret chagrin. He wondered what her feelings were for Stanley. She had been married to him for seven years now. She had no children. She was always extremely nice to Stanley, listening to everything he said, or was she listening? Had she no feelings at all under that cold indifference? Was she merely icy? Or what in the name of heaven was it? Stanley, he knew, had been crazy about her at the start, their honeymoon had lasted for six weeks or longer, but now Stanley was not quite so crazy. He was a little less of the dashing Don Juan. Often, in Joe’s phrase, he looked all washed out.
After the sweet, Laura left them, Joe blundering in an access of politeness to the door to open it for her. Then Stanley selected a cigar, lit up, and pushed across the box to Joe magnanimously.
“Help yourself, Gowlan,” he said. “You’ll find these all right.”
Joe took a cigar with a look of humility and gratitude. Secretly he was irked by Millington’s condescending air. Just wait a bit, he thought into himself, and I’ll show him something. But in the meantime he was all deference. He lit his cigar without removing the band.
A longish silence followed while Stanley, with his legs stretched under the table and his stomach at ease, pulled at his cigar and stared at Joe.
“You know, Gowlan,” he announced at length, “I like you.”
Joe smiled modestly and wondered what the hell was coming.
“I’m a liberal man,” Stanley went on expansively—he had drunk half a bottle of Sauterne on top of the cocktails and was inclined to be expansive. “And it doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn to me what a man is so long as he’s decent. He can be a duke’s son or a dustman’s son, I don’t care, it’s all the same to me so long as he’s straight. Do you get me?”
“Why, yes, I get you, Mr. Stanley.”
“Well, look here, Joe,” Millington continued, “I’ll go a bit further since you understand what I’m after. I’ve been watching you pretty closely this last month or two and I’ve been pretty pleased with what I’ve seen.” He broke off, switching the cigar round his mouth, inspecting Joe. Then he said slowly: “Clegg’s finito, that’s point number one. Point number two, I’ve got an idea, Gowlan, that I’m going to try you out as my new works manager.”
Joe nearly swooned.
“Manager!” he whispered feebly.
Millington smiled.
“I’m offering you Clegg’s job now. It’s up to you to see if you can hold it.”
Joe’s emotion was so great the room swam before him. He had scented something in the wind but nothing, oh, nothing like this. He went white as mutton fat and dropped his cigar on to his plate.
“Why, Mr. Stanley,” he gasped. He didn’t have to act this time, he was natural and convincing. “Why, Mr. Stanley…”
“That all right, Joe. Just take it easy. I’m sorry if I caught you unexpected. But there’s a war on, see. That’s when the unexpected happens. You’ll soon pick up the ropes. I’ve an idea you’ll not let me down.”
A wave of exhilaration swept over Joe. Clegg’s job… him!… works manager at Millington’s!
“You see, I trust you, Joe,” Millington explained cordially. “And I’m prepared to back my judgment. That’s why I’m offering you the job.”
At that moment the telephone rang in the lounge and before Joe could speak again Laura entered.
“It’s for you, Stanley,” she declared. “Major Jenkins wants you.”
Stanley excused himself and went out to the telephone.
There was a silence. Joe could feel Laura there, he could feel her standing by the doorway, opposite him, near him, looking at him. A terrific elation throbbed in him, he felt strong, intoxicated, gloriously alive. He lifted his eyes and faced her. But she avoided his gaze and said quite curtly:
“There’s coffee in the lounge before you go!”
He did not answer. He could not speak. As they stood there, in this fashion, the sound of Stanley’s voice at the telephone came into the room.
EIGHT
The time of Jenny’s confinement drew near and Jenny’s behaviour was in every way exemplary. Since that Tuesday afternoon when she had told David, Jenny had been “a changed woman.” She had her little querulous moments of course—who in her condition would not?—and what she called her “fancies,” the sudden desire at awkward moments for strange and exotic forms of nourishment—more simply denoted as “something tasty.” A craving for ginger snaps for instance, since she had “gone off” bread, or a pickled onion, or soft herring roes on toast. Ada, her mother, had always had her fancies and Jenny felt herself fully within her rights in having her fancies too.
She was making a fetching outfit for the little baby girl—she was sure it would be a girl, she did want a little girlie so, to dress up nicely, boys were horrid!—and she sat night after night on the opposite side of the fire from David in the most domestic manner stitching and crocheting and fashioning the garments from the directions given in Mab’s Home Notes and the Chickabiddy’s Journal. Dreamily she planned the future of the little one. She was to be an actress, a great actress, or better still a great singer, a prima donna in Grand Opera. Her mother’s talent would unfold in her and she would have triumph upon triumph at Covent Garden with great men and bouquets scattered at her feet, while Jenny from a box would gaze tenderly and understandingly upon the success which might have been hers too, if only she had been given her chance. There were temptations here though, great temptations, and at that Jenny’s brow would crease. The scene became changed suddenly and she saw a nun, an Anglican nun, pale and spiritual with a hidden sorrow in her heart and the stage and the world cast behind her, passing through the cloister of a great convent and entering the dim chapel. Service began, the organ sounded, and the nun’s voice pealed out in all its lovely purity. Tears came to Jenny’s eyes and her sad romantic fancy took even more tragic flights. There would be no little girl after all, no prima donna, no nun. She herself was going to die, she felt it in her heart, it was absurd to imagine she would ever have the strength to have a baby, and she had always had the premonition of dying young. She remembered that Lily Blades, a girl in the Millinery at Slattery’s who was something wonderful at fortunes, had once seen a terrible illness in her tea-cup. She saw herself dying in David’s arms while with riven and anguished countenance he implored her not to leave him. A great bowl of white roses stood by the bedside and the doctor, though a hard man, stood in the background in an agony of distress.
Real tears flowed down Jenny’s cheeks and David, looking up suddenly, exclaimed:
“Good Lord, Jenny! What on earth’s the matter?”
“It’s nothing, David,” she sighed with a pale, angelic smile. “I’m really quite happy. Quite, quite happy.”
After this she decided she must have a cat because it was domestic and human and cheerful about the house. She asked everyone she knew to get her a kitten; everyone, simply everyone must search high and low to get her a kitten, and when Harry, the butcher’s boy, brought her a little tabby she was delighted. Later when Murchison’s van man brought her another kitten and Mrs. Wept on the following day sent round yet another, she was less ecstatic. It was impossible to return the two kittens in the face of her widespread appeal, and they were not very clean about the house. She had in the end to drown them, it hurt her terribly, the little helpless darlings, yet what could a girl do? However, she took a lot of trouble in thinking out a name for the survivor. She called it Pretty.
Then she began to take up her music again. She sat at the piano through the day practising and trying out her voi
ce and she learned two lullabies. She wanted to be more accomplished. At this stage her attitude expressed a secret remorse: she was not good enough for David, she should have been better in every way, more talented, more intellectual. She wanted to be able to talk to David, to have discussions, real discussions upon the subjects which interested him, all about things that mattered, social and economic and political problems. With this in mind she dipped into his books once or twice to elevate her intellectual plane and bring grist to the mills of philosophical discussion. But the books were not very encouraging and in the end she was obliged to give them up.
Still, if she could not be clever she could be good. Ah, yes, she could be good. She purchased a little volume entitled Sunny Half-hours in the Happy Home and she read it devotedly. She read it like a child learning a lesson, her lips moving slightly over the words, the book resting in her lap on top of the crochet work. After one particularly sunny half-hour she fastened her swimming eyes on David and exclaimed emotionally:
“I’m just a silly little thing, David. But I’m not bad really. It says here we all make mistakes but we can lift ourselves up again. I’m not bad, am I, David, I’m not really bad?”
He assured her patiently that she was not bad.
She looked at him for a moment, then said with a sudden gush:
“Oh, David, you’re the best man that ever was. Really you are, David, the best in all the world.”
Never before had Jenny seemed to him so much a child. She was a child. It was simply ridiculous that she should be having a baby. He was gentle with her. Often at nights when they lay in bed together and she would start, troubled and frightened in her sleep, and cling to him, he could feel her swollen body and the infant moving within her. Tenderness came over him and he soothed her through these midnight whimperings.
He had asked Jenny if she would like Martha, his own mother, to look after the house and nurse her while she was lying-in and Jenny, with her new submissiveness, had agreed. But when Martha came down to make arrangements that one interview proved the reconciliation to be impossible. Martha met David on his way home. Her colour was high. “I can’t do it,” she declared in a contained voice. “It’s no use at all. The less I have to do with her the better. I cannot stand her and she cannot stand me. So that must just be the end of it.” She walked off before he could reply.
So it was arranged for Ada Sunley to come through from Tynecastle. Ada arrived on the 2nd of December, a wet and windy day, stepping heavily out of the train with a small yellow suit-case made secure with cord. David met her at the station, carried the suit-case to Lamb Lane. Ada’s mood was very offhand, she did not seem particularly pleased to come, at least she did not seem pleased with David. She was reserved and rather cold towards him and inclined to be cross at the household’s limitations; she was not an hour in the house before she sent him out to buy a bedpan. Her preparations, her fussings and bustlings were tremendous. Shorn of the comfort of her own slatternly back room, prised from the indolent ease of her favourite rocker, she assumed an unnatural activity, the terrible waddling activity of the fat woman. She was assiduous towards Jenny, assiduous and pitying. “Come away, my poor lamb,” she seemed to say. “At least you have your mother beside you.”
Ada’s tongue was particularly active. She gave Jenny all the news. Sally had finished up unexpectedly on her winter pantomime tour, the show had suddenly come to grief, it wasn’t any good, and Sally was out of work again and looking for an engagement. Sally never seemed to be doing anything else but looking for an engagement, Ada added ruefully. There was some talk of concerts being organised for the wounded soldiers and Sally might be asked to take part in those, but it would be voluntary work without a penny piece of pay. Ada deplored equally Sally’s inability to earn a decent settled wage and the stupid ambition which drove her to continue with the whole hopeless business of the stage. She wished to heaven that Sally had never chucked the Telephone Exchange.
By a gradual process of approach Ada arrived at the topic of Joe. They were in the kitchen together, Jenny and Ada, on the day following Ada’s arrival and Ada was making Jenny a cup of tea. With a very casual air Ada remarked:
“By the bye, you didn’t know that Joe had been to see us?”
Jenny, who was reclining upon the sofa, stiffened suddenly and her pale languorous face sealed up like an oyster. There was a silence, then she said in a frozen voice:
“I don’t know anything about Joe Gowlan and I don’t care either. I despise him.”
Ada carefully adjusted the cosy on the tea-pot.
“He did come though, Jenny, dropped in as nice as you please, and dropped in once or twice since, he has. You needn’t run him down because you missed him, Jenny. That was your mistake, my lady. He’s a nice fellow, if it’s the last word I say. He’s going to get Phyllis and Clarry into the munitions when it goes up at Wirtley. He’s back again at Millington’s and doing wonderful.”
“I tell you I don’t want to hear about Joe Gowlan,” Jenny exclaimed in a tense voice. “If you want to know, I loathe and detest the very sound of his name.”
But Ada, seating herself at the table and placing her plump hands on the cosy as though to warm them, went on, maddeningly:
“You can’t think how wonderful he’s got on. He’s the head of the department, works clean and everything, dresses a perfect treat. Why, Jenny, the last time he come in he told us he was going up to supper at the Millingtons’ house. Up to their house on Hilltop, Jenny, can you beat that? I’m telling you, my lady, you made a big mistake when you let Joe slip through your fingers. He’s the man I’d have liked to see my son-in-law.”
Jenny’s face was very white, she clenched her fists tight, her voice turned shrill.
“I won’t have you speak that way, mother. I won’t have you mention Joe in the same breath as David. Joe’s an absolute rotter and David’s the best man that ever lived.”
She stared at Ada challengingly. But this time Jenny could not dominate her mother. Her condition made her weak physically; and spiritually she was in a state of curious compromise. Ada had an excellent chance to make Jenny “lie down to her for once” and Ada took that chance.
“Huh!” she declared with a toss of her head. “What a way to talk. You would never think you had played about with him to hear you.”
Jenny’s eyes fell. She shivered slightly and was silent.
At that moment the door opened and David entered. He had just returned from the Harbour Board offices where he had been given temporary clerical work. Ada turned towards him with a little condescending smile. But before she could speak Jenny, upon the sofa, gave a dolorous cry and clapped her hand to her side.
“Oh dear,” she whispered. “I’ve got a pain.”
Ada hesitated, contemplating her daughter between resentment and doubt.
“You can’t,” she said at last. “It’s a week before your time.”
“Oh yes, I can,” Jenny answered in a breathless voice. “I know I can, See, here it is again.”
“Well I never,” Ada declared. “I believe it is.” Sympathy rushed over her. “My poor lamb!” She knelt down and put her hand on Jenny’s stomach. “Yes indeed it is, well, well, did you ever?” And then to David as though the whole situation were completely altered, and he, in some mysterious manner, to blame: “Go on. Fetch the doctor. Don’t stand there looking at her.”
With a quick look at Jenny David went for Dr. Scott, whom he found taking his evening surgery. Scott was an elderly red-faced bony man, very offhand and laconic, with a disconcerting habit of hawking and spitting in the middle of a conversation. He was in every way extremely unprofessional. He always wore riding-breeches and a long check jacket with enormous pockets stuffed full of everything: pipe, pills, half a bandage, some blue raisins, two empty thermometer cases, a pocket lance never sterilised, and a gum elastic catheter which whipped across the room whenever he pulled out his musty handkerchief. But in spite of his oddity, untidiness and complete l
ack of asepsis he was an excellent doctor.
Yet he seemed to attach little urgency to Jenny’s first pain. He hawked, spat and nodded:
“I’ll look round in an hour.” Then he called out through the open door into his waiting-room: “Next, please.”
David was upset because Scott did not come at once. He returned home to find that Jenny and Ada had both gone upstairs. He waited restlessly for Scott’s arrival.
Yet when the doctor appeared at seven o’clock, though Jenny’s pains were much worse, he assured David that he could do nothing in the meantime. David understood that a first confinement was always a protracted business and he asked the doctor if Jenny would have to suffer long. Staring into the kitchen fire a minute before spitting into it Scott replied:
“I don’t think she’ll be that long, mind ye. I’ll look back before twelve!”
It was hard to wait until twelve. Jenny’s pains became rapid and severe. She seemed to have no strength and no spirit to endure the pains. She was by turns peevish, anguished, hysterical, exhausted. The bedroom on which she had expended such care and thought, with the befrilled cot in one corner and the new muslin curtains on the windows, and the pretty lace doyleys set upon the dressing-table became littered and disordered. It was bad enough when Ada upset the kettle, but the climax came with a faint mewing which set Jenny screaming and revealed the fact that “Pretty” was below the bed.
Then Jenny gave up. Though Ada told her she must walk about, she lay across her bed sprawling, holding her stomach, weeping on a huddle of twisted bed-clothes. She forgot all about the Chickabiddy’s Journal and Sunny Half-hours in the Happy Home. She got completely out of hand, lying on her back across that disordered bed with her legs apart, her night-dress drawn up, her hair tumbled about her pale thin face, her brow streaming with sweat. From time to time she closed her eyes and screamed. “Oh dear God,” she screamed, “ah, ah, ah, there it is again, oh my God my back, ah, ah, ah, oh mother give me a drink that water there it’s worse quick dear God, mother.” It was not quite so romantic as Jenny had imagined.
