by A. J. Cronin
She emerged from the last interview and pulled out her watch from her patent-leather waistband. ‘Gracious,’ she thought, ‘it’s three o’clock!’ So tremendous had been her immersion that the relatively unimportant question of food had entirely escaped her. Now, however, thrilled by her victory, she felt hungry, voracious almost. Looking around, she discovered and entered a small eating-house opposite the yard gates. It was a modest place, and empty at this hour; though, from the wet rings and crumbs upon the tables, it had not recently been so; and here she sat down, ordered a ham sandwich and a glass of milk. How good they tasted! Relaxed, she spun out the last drain of milk deliciously.
Into the stillness of the room came the quick clamour of those beating hammers – rat-a-tat-tat and chink-chink-chink they went, mingling interminably. Some flies snoozed upon the greyish ceiling, comatose, untroubled by the noise. Nor did it trouble Lucy. She accepted it, dwelt upon it almost lingeringly as the stirring symbol of her new life.
Later her mood was different – calm, almost frigid – as she bore down upon the Saddleriggs and mounted briskly the stairs of the office.
A silence fell as, with an almost spectacular precision, she entered. She did not speak – no, she had been humiliated that morning. Tacitly, filled, now, with the recognition of her worth, she demanded an apology.
‘Well,’ said Lennox at last, looking at her queerly, ‘how did it go?’
In silence she handed him her book, and with an equal silence he took it. It was a dramatic moment, with Andrews and Frame an audience entranced, as Lennox swiftly ran his eye over her commissions. At length he put the book down.
‘Not bad,’ he murmured, and his voice had changed. Then he rubbed his hands together, cocked his beard at her, and showed his yellowish teeth in a sly smile. ‘Not so bad for a start.’
For a start, indeed! She knew that she had done well, and she knew that he knew it too.
He picked up the book again. ‘Is it the first quality they want at the stores?’ he demanded.
‘It is the first quality, at eighteen shillings the tub,’ she returned, with a perfectly professional air.
He smiled again, admitting her more intimately to his regard. Of course, he had always known! A most tidy little woman: and his judgement always was marvellous. Of course! Of course!
‘Yes. You’ve done fair,’ he murmured, and, turning, he went into the inner room, whistling softly.
She looked at the others, and with a definite gesture of invitation Dougal smiled at her.
‘You can make out your invoices here,’ he declared, indicating his own desk.
He accepted her definitely as a member of the firm.
Chapter Five
She reached home after six, viewing her own front door with an unconscious air of achievement. She was, in a sense, profoundly relieved by her success, realising suddenly the limitations of the field open to her, stricken by a fear as to what she would have done had not this opportunity of employment so fortunately appeared. And as she passed through the doorway she observed a letter lying upon the hall floor awaiting her. From Peter, she thought instinctively, and instinctively a smile trembled upon her lips as she bent to pick it up.
It was from Peter, but it was not a letter. It was a plain postcard – wilted, creased, dog-eared at its corners, wearing every evidence of hasty writing and surreptitious posting – a postcard which said, with incredible brevity: ‘Take me away at once.’ No signature, no superscription, merely a blot, a smear that might have been a tear, and these five atrocious words: ‘Take me away at once!’
Stupefied, she repeated them aloud. She stood stockstill, petrified; then, walking into her sitting-room, she sank into a chair. What did it mean? A dozen different explanations raced through her mind. With a vague alarm she saw her son in some dire and desperate predicament. Was he merely unhappy in the novelty of his surroundings, or was he being ill-used, bullied? Were they beating him? Actually this limp card, clasped now in her limp hand, had descended upon her with the unexpectedness and devastating violence of a bombshell.
And yet – that reassuring kindliness in Brother William’s venerable voice; those dark, commiserating eyes of Brother Aloysius; the modest dignity of that green and gold prospectus – she could not in reason doubt such evidences of integrity.
For all that, she passed a night of misery, chafed by the very uncertainty of her fears. She was exasperated by the unexpectedness of this development, coming at a moment when she imagined she had triumphantly arranged the future, even to the payment of that first quarter’s fees; and it was a matter which demanded her attention. Her instinct, indeed, was to rush to Laughtown upon the following day; yet this she would not permit herself to do. The impossibility of leaving her work at this juncture, and the manifest weakness of such a step – these factors made her temporise; and it was not easy for her to temporise. Yet, after a night of broken and restless sleep, she rose early, and wrote a short letter to her son, indicating that she would return to see him upon the following Saturday, which was her half-holiday.
For the remainder of the week she fought her uneasiness, setting her will firmly against that insidious inclination to rush off to see him; but on Saturday, the moment she could leave the office, she hurried to the Central Station, and caught the 1.15 for Laughtown.
What a journey it was – the same dull country and the same duller town! It seemed to her the apotheosis of imbecility that she should be taking it. The expense, too, though she curtailed this by refraining from taking a cab, was a considerable item to set against her weekly earnings. She realised that in this direction she must now be careful. And what would they say to her? What would Brother William say to her as, presenting herself within the compass of one short week, she demanded again to see her son.
But she did not encounter Brother William, and here, perhaps, he achieved the crowning glory of his wisdom. Though she was shown by the same servant to the same room, Brother William did not appear, nor did she receive those hospitable libations of wine and cake. Instead, after a few moments, Peter arrived with a countenance pale and miserable as a sickly moon, and the instant he saw her he burst into tears. Atrocious tears they were, mingled with a recurrent whine, whereby he implored her to remove him from the school.
She looked at him with bright eyes, strangely unable to indulge his grief.
‘What’s the matter?’ she demanded quickly.
‘I’m homesick, I’m homesick,’ he repeated over and over again.
This had, indeed, become the catchword of his position, for upon the day following her departure his confident elation had collapsed and left him stricken, devastated by his abandoned state. Since then he had wept consistently.
By a pressure of her hand she made him look at her.
‘Do they treat you properly?’ she enquired sharply.
‘Yes. Oh, yes,’ he sobbed. ‘They treat me all right. They’re kind, very kind. Brother Aloysius kisses me every night. Oh yes, all right, all right.’
Again he had that almost hysterical repetition of his words.
A great struggle went on within her. She saw clearly the triviality of his emotion, divined the petty cause which had drawn her back so ridiculously. It was too bad; really, it was too bad of him. Yet she was profoundly touched by his dependence on her.
Suddenly she desired passionately to abandon her pretence of severity, to feel the warm intimacy of his wet, tear-stained face on hers, to strain his sobbing figure against her bosom; but she would not. Instead, she conquered herself, and rose.
‘Come along,’ she said pleasantly, stretching out her gloved hand.
Instantly he took it, yet if he had harboured any sudden illusion of immediate departure this was quickly dispelled as she added kindly: ‘ We’ll go out and take a walk.’
He accompanied her meekly along the corridor, where, though a murmur of voices exuded from the various classrooms, they encountered no one. She wished to ask if he might have leave to go, but as no o
ne appeared she opened the front door herself, and they went out and along the drive at a fairly rapid pace. Insensibly, at the swift movement of his limbs his grief abated.
She wished to give his woe time to expend itself, and, when they had fully traversed a back road which wound along the outskirts of the town, she looked at him covertly. Yes, he had stopped weeping.
‘A big boy like you!’ she said at length, now looking straight in front of her. ‘ I’m surprised at you!’ Deliberately she reopened the subject.
‘I was lonely, mother,’ he explained. ‘I began to cry, and I didn’t know why, and I couldn’t stop. Then the boys told me I was homesick. You’ll take me away, sure, won’t you?’
Apparently he saw not the slightest difficulty to prevent her removing him and plunging back into the impasse from which she had so recently withdrawn.
‘Do you like the other boys?’ she demanded abruptly.
‘Yes – they’re all right,’ he admitted. ‘One of them has fits. He falls down and froths. Then the Spaniards have a funny smell, and some have got yellow boots with pointed toes. They play handball.’
‘Do you play too?’
‘I’ve played at marbles. I didn’t want to, but Brother John Jacob asked me to.’
‘Brother John Jacob!’ she echoed; Joe’s friend – and the phrase rose before her mind: ‘The Brothers mingle with the boys and engage freely in their sports and recreations.’ They had tried even to coax him from his grief by that childish game.
She glanced at him sharply.
‘But the other boys?’ she persisted. ‘Have you made no nice friends?’
‘Yes.’ He considered gloomily. ‘There’s a big boy called Ramford. He’s fine. He can mimic. He can do anything. He wants me to be his pet.’
‘His pet?’ she exclaimed. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s nothing, really,’ he explained. ‘ You just say you’re his pet, and that’s all. All the big boys have pets. It’s a custom. If you’re a boy’s pet he might give you some of his cake for tea.’
‘Does Brother William know about that?’
‘Of course – he knows everything.’
She gazed at him in silence.
‘Think of it, too,’ he protested further; ‘we’ve got to go to church every morning. Isn’t it sickening? And the lessons we get! They teach you here, all right.’
Her brow cleared slowly. She comprehended something of the novelty of her son’s situation.
‘Well!’ she exclaimed, drawing a long breath. ‘We’ll have a real good talk about it all.’
‘That’s right, mother,’ he agreed mournfully; ‘then you must take me away.’
She looked round determinedly. She wanted now to sit down and thrash out the matter thoroughly. Upon her left she discerned the pleasant enclosure of the town cemetery, conveniently dotted with seats, and, diverting her course, she led him through the wrought-iron gateway. The ironic humour of the situation was apparent to neither, as, enwrapped by their own thoughts, they sat down beside a yew-tree that shaded a large tombstone.
‘It’s like this, Peter,’ she began; ‘you see –’
But it was difficult to make him see; her position was to him altogether remote; and already he had accepted her as his deliverer. How could he realise that in the space of one more week the symptoms of his nostalgia would vanish? Yes, it was difficult, difficult to impose her will upon this sensitive and diffident creature who was hers. But she forced herself to do it; she talked to him seductively, then firmly. His tears flowed again and his sobs rent the grisly air in that so suitable graveyard. The tombstones breathed a sympathetic melancholy; the yew swung overhead softly, with a dark approval. Her own eye was humid, yet, in spite of that weakness, an undercurrent of impatience flowed through her. It was too ridiculous, such a fuss he was making; a terrific disturbance out of nothing, ignoring her immense devotion to him – and he had lost his handkerchief!
‘It’s no use, dear,’ she said, with finality, as she offered her own handkerchief. ‘You must make up your mind to it.’
He dried his eyes, and stared for a long time in front of him.
‘Well – if you say it, I suppose I must.’
‘That’s right,’ she declared triumphantly. ‘ You’re a brave boy.’
He composed himself further; he seemed to be thinking of something.
‘Some of the boys have tuck-boxes – bottles of sauce and things,’ he remarked at length; ‘ and I haven’t.’
‘Would you like one?’ she queried quickly, seizing the change of topic willingly.
With an under-lip still drooping, he nodded his head once.
‘Come along, then!’ she exclaimed with gaiety. ‘We’ll go down to the shops.’
He rose and followed her out of the cemetery. Another victory lay to her credit, and not, mark you, at the cost of spoiling him!
They reached the town, and a watery cheerfulness infused him as she purchased for him a jar of pickles, a bottle of tomato ketchup – the boys spread this on their bread at teatime, he informed her – some potted shrimp paste, a tin of biscuits, and a pound of aniseed balls. He became cheerful.
They walked hand in hand by the river, and afterwards had tea in a small tea-shop where she let him sate himself with pastries. At intervals of his gluttony he would stop and stare at her uncertainly.
‘Now, Peter!’ she would break in warningly. ‘Remember!’
As she delivered him at the gates of the college, which from motives of delicacy she did not again enter, she repeated that injunction firmly.
‘You’re to work hard and get on,’ she adjured him finally, ‘then you’ll be a famous man with lots of money.’
He nodded his head submissively, and, standing at the gate – a small, indescribably pathetic figure – he waved his hand to her dutifully as she withdrew.
It was over. She went to the station with a baffling feeling of weakness, but she had won; yes, she had won.
Chapter Six
For three months she had been working, and the result was a comfortable feeling that she had established herself. Upon some weeks, to be sure, her commission was lamentably small, but on others she would earn as much as three pounds; in addition, by economy and ingenuity, she contrived to save always a certain small sum from the expenses allowed her by the firm. Admitting always a certain amount of good fortune, there were moments when she felt her success to be amazing; and Peter was now progressing well at school, that initial misery long forgotten, his official weekly letters monuments of composition in elaborate violet-inked penmanship. He had advanced to the middle of his class – this, indeed, she had expected – but there was talk actually of his admission to the band. How her heart leapt to these ingenuous bulletins.
In her physical being she felt strong, pervaded by a sense of energy and health, intensified by the quick-changing movements of her days. She had little leisure for brooding, but, even so, she admitted to herself that the pain of her husband’s death was slowly easing, although at times a wretched feeling of her solitary position in the house would invade her, and she would be swept by the sudden desire for his companionship. At the tragic moment of his death she had felt that her life was finished, terminated by this loss; and now he had already begun to assume the condition of a memory, idealised – his faults forgotten, his virtues magnified – and dimly seen through this very afterglow which now surrounded him. With inflexible resolution she refused to permit herself to brood upon the manner of his death. That at first had driven her frantic, the dim consciousness of how the awful thing had worked to its tragic end. But she would not think of it. Nor would she think of Anna. Anna she obliterated from her mind, finally, irrevocably. Yet sometimes she would sit quite still, trying to remember intimately Frank’s face – shutting her eyes and striving to see it as though it were now before her – yet, with a melancholy realisation, she discovered that this was now beyond her power. She saw his face, but not as a real and actual face; it was far away, lumino
us, intangible. Only one detail stood out with vivid intensity: his hands, limp and waxen, as they had been folded across his breast within the coffin. She saw these hands many times, until they became to her almost symbolic of his memory.
Altogether, she was not unhappy, and her confidence was amazing. Miss Hocking, moreover, in her own peculiar fashion, had become increasingly attentive, and often Lucy would go up the hill and sit with her in the evenings, listen to her playing, even play a little herself upon the richly sounding German piano, whose deep tone so out-matched the tinkle of her own cottage instrument.
One thought only sobered the warmth of her satisfaction. She had not yet received the promised visit from Joe, and this fact caused her a certain indefinable suspense. The account for the funeral had been posted – quite, naturally, she realised – to her, and it was for the large sum of forty pounds; further, she had the florist’s bill, which was not large, but which Joe had insisted that he himself would pay. From a sense of order, apart from honesty – she had always paid ‘ ready money’ – the presence of these accounts hanging over her head irked Lucy. And there was, moreover, with the new term approaching rapidly, the matter of Peter’s fees. Everything was all right, of course! Although she felt him dilatory, she had no lack of trust in Joe. Had she doubted him, her confidence must assuredly have been restored by the arrival of a present – curious, perhaps, but none the less a rich and generous gift.
One evening, at the mysterious hour of dusk, three wooden boxes of varying shapes had arrived upon a lorry. To the carrier she immediately disclaimed all knowledge of his freight, but with a jerk of his head he had indicated that they came from Levenford; he had brought them over at the request of Joe Moore – Big Joe of the Shamrock Tavern and the Green Football Club. Why, everybody knew Big Joe – he himself often carried from the station to the Tavern crates which Mr Moore ordered from the wholesale markets in Glasgow.
