by A. J. Cronin
‘Did you forget my d’oyleys?’ she enquired, as they went up the path together, and the form of her question was significant.
He looked at her sideways less confidently, and rubbed his cheek slowly with his hand.
‘That’s too bad of you, Frank,’ she reproached him. It was so like him to forget. And he had said specifically he would be passing Gow’s’ today. Gow’s – acknowledged in the Moore family as the paragon of emporia in Glasgow: if it came from Gow’s it was good. Everything in the villa, from the cottage piano to the cullender, had been provided at one time or another in return for ready money by the almost omnipotent Mr Gow.
‘A tin of sardines,’ he answered slowly. ‘I could bring you that next Friday – to make up for it.’ Her lips twitched; yet, really, she had wanted those d’oyleys; and he had forgotten all week. But that was like him: he would forget anything – her birthday, Peter’s, even his own – yes, more than once he had confessed to an ignorance of that momentous date.
‘Quite meatless,’ he assured her gravely. ‘Supplied to all the confraternities. My dear brother Edward recommends them. Not a sin in a tin.’
She shook her head, laughed in spite of herself.
‘Is that how you are tonight?’ said she.
They went into the small dining-room, which lay between the parlour and the kitchen in the straight sequence of rooms on the ground floor of the house – no complexity about the architecture of the ‘ villa’! – and here, when Peter had tugged the bell-handle at his mother’s request, the three sat in to tea.
‘And what’s been doing today?’ said Moore, after Netta had made her bustling entry, like a breeze, and taken her independent departure. ‘How many murders since this morning?’
‘Things just as usual,’ she returned calmly, passing him the toast. ‘Except that your son appears to be hoarding marbles now.’
Moore’s eyes dwelt for a moment on the grinning boy.
‘Solid Shylock, that one is,’ he murmured towards his egg.
‘And I met Miss Hocking in town this morning,’ went on Lucy.
He eyed her over the rim of his cup – he had habitually a stooping position at table – and said with an agreeably derisive air:
‘Pinkie, darling! And what had she got to say for herself?’
Conscious of his mood, she shook her head agreeably, noncommittally, without deigning to reply.
‘Funny thing,’ he persisted, ‘I can’t get the length of her foot nohow. Too la-de-dah, is Pinkie.’ In an affected voice he intoned: ‘Hoity-toity. Heaven’s almoighty. I belave she’s crazy.’ He drank the last of his tea, added with significant emphasis: ‘ the less we mix with them here the sooner. It’s the place I like –’
‘Now you’re ridiculous, Frank – as usual,’ she rejoined tranquilly.
At this moment the knocker rapped smartly upon the front door, causing Peter to exclaim:
‘Post!’ and at a nod from his mother, to slide from his chair and run into the hall. He came back with a letter, exclaiming with a responsible air of triumph: ‘It’s for you, mother!’
Lucy took the letter, examined the square envelope, the writing of the address, the postmark blurred over the red stamp, with scrutinising brows and distant, slightly tilted head. Then she slit open the envelope carefully with her knife.
‘I thought so,’ she remarked placidly.
A faintly petulant air spread over Moore’s face; he took a quill toothpick from his vest pocket and, reclining in his chair, watched her slowly read the letter.
‘From Edward, I suppose,’ he said satirically, before she had finished, thinking of their most regular correspondent. ‘What is his reverence after now? Is it the state of our souls or the state of his liver?’
But she did not answer; indeed, with silent, moving lips and intent eyes, she did not hear him: always when Lucy read her absorption was complete.
‘Well,’ he persisted, ‘has Miss O’Regan got the mumps, or what is it?’
At this association of ideas – he knew Uncle Edward’s house-keeper, and he knew also from sad experience about mumps Peter let out a short giggle. But the letter was not from Edward.
‘It’s from Anna,’ said Lucy at last, laying down the note and looking up with a pleased expression. ‘She’s coming. Joe’ll drive her over from Levenford next Thursday.’
‘Anna!’ exclaimed Moore, in a moody, completely altered voice; he threw down the letter, which he had briefly scanned. ‘Anna coming! What – why on earth did you ask her?’
She frowned at his manner – and before the boy, too.
‘You forget that she’s your cousin,’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s simply common decency – hospitality – to have her over for a week.’
‘Hospitality! A lot of fuss about nothing, you mean.’
‘My dear Frank,’ she argued, with unanswerable logic, ‘ was it a lot of fuss when Anna and her father gave you hospitality when you had to go to Belfast? And for more than three months, too.’
‘It was for business I was over – that’s why I had to stay with them,’ he answered restlessly. ‘ I tell you I don’t want to be bothered with Anna.’
‘Well, I’ll be bothered with her,’ she replied, maintaining her calm even in the face of his supreme unreason. ‘Remember that I’ve never even seen Anna. I want to know her.’
‘Know her be hanged,’ he cried resentfully. ‘I don’t want her in my house, or, for that matter, I don’t want any of the rest of the gang’ – thus he characterised his relations.
She frowned. Yes, this was a side of him – this desire, so antagonistic to her own friendly instinct, to avoid people, to keep separate, detached even from his own relations – which always irked her. With an involuntary spurt of her lively temper, she said indignantly:
‘Good gracious! What harm will it do us to have Anna over? You’re always running down your friends – your own brothers even. You sneer at Edward because he’s a priest, and Joe doesn’t please you because he’s a publican. And now Anna!’
‘The priest and the publican,’ he echoed moodily. ‘A pretty pair. What did they ever do for me, or for anybody else? And I tell you again I don’t want Anna here.’
‘Why don’t you want her to come?’
‘I just don’t want her here.’
‘Are you perfect yourself, that you can afford to take up that attitude?’
‘You should know. You married me, didn’t you?’ he countered sulkily.
She bit her lower lip, which quivered indignantly, conscious of this cloud pressed down into the small sunlit room – simply because a postman had knocked at their door with a letter from his cousin. And really, what had she done? To invite this cousin, Anna Galton, to spend a few days with them. Was that an unpardonable crime? Anna, ‘born and brought up’ in Levenford, had left ten years ago for Ireland with her father, who, a partner of Lennox & Galton – Frank’s own firm – had then settled in Belfast to take charge of the exportation end of the business. Now old Galton was dead, and Anna, returning to arrange with Lennox upon the matter of the settlement of the estate, had not unnaturally taken thought to visit her relatives. Surely it was reasonable after those years, that long, protracted absence! Already she had been with Joe a fortnight at Levenford; she would probably go on to Edward at Port Doran; what, then, was more inevitable than that she should come here to Ardfillan? It was an act of social decency. It was more than that: for, when Frank had been obliged to go to Belfast five years ago, to take charge of the agency on account of old Galton’s illness – it was the first attack of that angina which finally carried him away – he had been admirably looked after by his cousin for over three months. A great relief it had been to her, this sense of Frank’s security, when, knowing him, knowing how easily he could be imposed on, she had dreaded damp beds, bad food, indifferent hotels – those evils which might arise from his, separation from her. And yet, here was Frank, protesting against this hospitality which she proffered in return. The very thought rous
ed her indignation; but with an effort she compressed her lips, stifled the angry words that lay ready upon her tongue.
For a moment there was silence; then Moore got up slowly, with a slightly shamed air; he pulled the inevitable green cardboard packet from his pocket, lighted a cigarette. His boots on the dyed sheepskin, his shoulder against the marble mantelpiece, he inhaled a puff, watching her self-consciously out of the corner of his eye.
‘Bit of a rush we had today,’ he said at length, rather sheepishly.
It was actually an apology. She smiled openly, renewing at once the normal current of feeling between them, and, tacitly avoiding the subject of contention, she declared:
‘I’ll have something to say to Mr Lennox about that one of these days. Soon, too!’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked, surprised.
‘You’ll see!’ And she gave that competent little nod. ‘I’m going to ask him to supper next week.’
Without replying, he stared at her as she rose and began to clear the table, then insensibly his gaze drifted through the window. The tide was out, and on the hard dry sand some children were playing. Rounders! Peter had slipped out to join them, and in the cool of the evening lent to the proceedings a swift foot and a thin but penetrating voice. Moore watched idly: what was he doing with a son? Used to play rounders himself when he was a kid; and now—! Funny how things came along – just happened! And Anna coming – it was an unpleasant thought. He didn’t want her in his home. Lovely evening it was, though. Might go out and cut the grass. Then he thought he wouldn’t. Tomorrow, perhaps. Tomorrow – it was a great word with Moore. Idly, he sat down on the horsehair sofa by the window; out came the green packet; he lighted another cigarete, let the smoke down his nostrils. Watching the glowing tip of his cigarette, he remarked:
‘Lennox is going ahead with that idea.’
She paused in her clearing of the table, contemplating the information, which already she had studied intimately. The fact was that his firm – it was the same firm of eight years ago, with Lennox now the sole proprietor – in business as importers of Irish produce, had decided to extend their interest to the importation from Holland of the new synthetic commodity: margarine. Odious word! More odious substance! Yet Lucy did not demean the issue by dwelling upon the vileness of this new butter substitute. Enough that with the march of progress Lennox proposed extending his small business. She favoured the extension because she had her ambition for Frank in this direction. It was time that he too advanced, and she would be at the bottom of that advancement.
His present position she did not often define – perhaps because she did not care to define it; sufficient to say that Frank was ‘with’ Lennox & Galton: a pleasant implication of trust and indispensability, and with quite a comfortable wage. Yet for all her loyal euphemism, coldly described his post was merely that of a petty commercial traveller. It was not right. It was not just! She desired for him something better, something altogether more important than that. Ardently she desired him to ‘get on’, and already in her eager mind she had formulated her project. She had spoken to Frank of this project, yet she knew he was evading the issue under the pretence of considering it. ‘Of course I’ll see about it. Give us time,’ she heard him reply; or, with an assumption of great candour: ‘I’ll speak to L. tomorrow.’ But he had not seen about it; nor, she was sure, had he even mentioned it to Lennox; despite his frequent assertion that he ‘ had the measure of the old man’s foot’. That was like Frank: how often had she chafed at his vacillation. But now, with a contemplative eye upon him, she said:
‘Perhaps that’s going to be the making of us, Frank. Not that I think much of the stuff’ – she concealed her eagerness with a shade of satire – ‘ nothing like butter. I wouldn’t have it in my house.’
‘It’s a clever idea though – and cheap.’ He could adduce no more articulate arguments for its success. ‘And Lennox is pretty wide. I believe I could sell it for him.’ He yawned. ‘I’d like to die rich – if they don’t hang me first. Might combine the two. Millionaire’s last speech from the dock. “Dearly beloved brethren, I am an innocent man. Never done nothing but tear my scapulars.”’
He relapsed into silence, staring out of the window towards the beach where Netta, who had gone to call Peter at the hour of his bedtime, was now in the last act of that nightly pantomime, chasing the boy wildly to the gate.
At the scutter of footsteps upon the pebbled path, Lucy went out of the room, carrying the loaded tray. Moore sat still; said good night to his son, who came in, presenting a face still effervescent beneath its perspiration; then he waited. It came to him easily, this waiting, and somehow epitomised his character. He appeared always to be awaiting something – a little nervously, a little moodily, as though in effect he had the premonition of some disaster which would one day come upon him. It was this tendency in him which caused Lucy sometimes to shake her head questioningly, failing, in her own boundless energy, to comprehend fully his outlook. Often she wished him brisker, less indifferent to the minor details of existence. There was, indeed, as little doubt of Moore’s indolence as of his moodiness, his scepticism, his weakness – altogether he was a queer fish; yet for all that he was not without his accomplishments. He could, for example, pare the skin from an apple intact, in one long pellicle of wafer thinness; he could make a willow whistle to perfection; he could discover mussels on the Ardmore shore and roast them there to tempt an anchorite. In his management of a toothpick – the quill had a meditative protrusion from his lips – he was unrivalled. He had, too, at times a curious humour. When people commented, as they often did, on his really exquisite teeth, he would say seriously: ‘That’s because I cleaned them on turnips when I was young.’ Or, again, who but Moore, accompanied by his wife in her best Sunday clothes, would have stopped a stone’s throw from his own house and gravely demanded of old Bowie to be directed to that house?
‘Excuse me, Mr Bowie,’ he had said politely, seriously, ‘ can you tell me where Mr Moore lives?’ When the stupefied old man, he was seventy and of an apoplectic tendency, had raised a palsied pointing finger, Moore had acknowledged his information with the same punctilious gravity.
‘Thank you, Mr Bowie. Will you accept this?’ And, pulling a match-box from his pocket, he had rewarded the stricken ancient with a single match. Then, his head in the air, he had strolled away whistling ‘ Boyne Water’. Lucy had been furious. Yet that, somehow, was Moore.
But he was seldom so gay; at other times he had frightful fits of melancholy, when he would crouch over the fire sitting absolutely motionless, his lower lip protruding, in a brooding misery, his dark eyes staring fixedly into the leaping flames.
He had, moreover, little gift for friendship, and that only in the oddest quarters: the rabbit-catcher of the Gielston Woods a road-mender who cracked his heap of stones along towards the Point; that same old Bowie, whom he named the Ancient Mariner and to whom he often threatened to teach the art of knitting. He knew nothing about knitting – but that again was Moore. F. J. Moore, idler, dreamer, maker of willow whistles, upon whom there seemed always that indefinable melancholy presage of disaster, that presage which often made him moodily to say: ‘ It’s a bad end I’ll come to. If they don’t make a lord of me, they’ll hang me. Sure.’
But now, as he sat at ease, Lucy had returned. Briskly she took up her ribbon embroidery – a black satin cushion-cover with floral and bow design – and seated herself companionably beside him on the sofa.
‘Well,’ she demanded pleasantly, ‘what’s in the paper? You might at least let your poor wife know what the news is tonight.’
Half-heartedly he picked up his evening paper, skimming through the news: the sheets made a continual rustle as he turned from one page to another, then back again, looking for something of less than superficial interest. Occasionally he read out an item, adding his comments, which were invariably wisely sceptical. ‘Believe it if you like,’ his attitude said, or, ‘ You know what they say in the
papers’; but he heard willingly – indeed, he openly invited – her opinion. Moreover, at her request he read aloud a short article pertaining to the current fashions in feminine attire: interested in dress was Lucy – perhaps, as he averred at times, unduly so: and she listened attentively, desisted even from her sewing, nodding her head once or twice in appreciative agreement.
At length the paper was exhausted: he let it drop in a crumpled heap.
‘Take up a book,’ she suggested, after a few moments, biting off an end of silk and threading her needle.
But he hadn’t much taste for books: liked a weekly paper occasionally. Photo-bits he used to read; not that he cared much for it; you could get a stray joke for a customer, there, odd times! But Lucy had put her foot down firmly after that day Peter had run to her with a number, enquiring about ‘the ladies with stuffed legs’. So he put his hands behind his head and leaned back on the smooth horsehair.
‘It’s easier doing nothing,’ he replied. ‘ I’ll take it quiet for a bit.’ He sat watching her whilst gradually the dusk crept into the room, and in his face, with the growing darkness, there kindled slowly a warm consciousness of her nearness to him. At last she gave a little exclamation.
‘I can’t see,’ she cried, smiling at him – and her smile was fascinating in that shadowy room. ‘I’ll have to light the lamp.’
‘What,’ he said meaningly, ‘would we be wanting with the lamp?’
‘To sew by, of course.’
‘Ah! you’ve done enough sewing for tonight.’
His hand, stretched out to detain her, slipped round her shoulders, drawing her close. The cushion-cover, so richly wrought, fell unheeded from her lap; passive and contented she lay against him. Yes, she was contented. She did not deny her happiness; nor did she lack a modest confidence towards the future. And she was, ah! yes, she was so fond of Frank. For a few moments they lay thus whilst the last faint streak of twilight slipped softly from the room. Then gradually she felt his hand slip under the bodice of her dress, move gently, caressingly. It was a sign – a little sign they had. Her bosom rose and fell warmly against his side, and, unseen, she smiled again: she had known this mood of his! But it was so like Frank to turn to her here, unexpectedly, in this spontaneous fashion. And she murmured, provocatively, her breath upon his face:
