Three Loves

by A. J. Cronin

  When the man had gone, she gazed with startled eyes at the rough cases which defiled the orderly symmetry of her tiny hall. Then, using the poker, which bent under her vigorous but unskilful blows, she at length succeeded in opening them. Straw and papers littered the spotless linoleum; then she saw what the boxes contained. The first held a Belfast ham, large and brown as the haunch of a horse; the second contained one dozen dark bottles labelled Royal Ruby Port Wine; the third was filled to bursting with bananas – not merely a bunch, but a tree; a miniature colony of Canary bananas, yellow and aromatic with their escaping ripeness. What on earth could she do with all these bananas? Some had looked quite rotten at their ends.

  The sight of this strange assortment of food and drink plucked her bewildered eyes, made her gasp stupidly; then the good intention, the liberality which must lie behind the gift slowly dawned upon her.

  Certainly the bananas became a difficulty. Immediately she sent off some of the sound fruit to Peter, but as the days went on her efforts to cope with the rapid progress of the rotting fruit became frantic. It was like a desperate race: the quicker she ate, the quicker the fruit decayed; the more she ate, the more bananas sprouted from that central unconquerable stem. Lucy’s economical heart was chilled, but the struggle was hopeless. Eventually she was affected by a most inconvenient disorder, and the climax was achieved when Miss Hocking mildly but firmly declined a third bunch of the inexhaustible fruit.

  The ham, too, became a source of positive exasperation. She began by having it frequently: for breakfast; often for tea: but soon the repetition of the dish blunted her fondness for it. She sickened of it, like a sailor fed with briny pork upon a scrofulous ship. The smell of frying ham was never out of the house; it began to hang about the curtains like a pollution; it haunted her; she was obliged to get up in the night to drink water from the saltness that lay continually in her mouth. That ham became a skeleton in the cupboard of her kitchen.

  As for the port, it remained untouched, standing in one long row – useless, intimidating, rather sinister!

  She admitted to herself that the present was not an unqualified success. Nevertheless, there was no doubting of the liberality of Joe’s bounty.

  Thus, she waited hopefully, and towards the end of November she received a postcard – his inevitable medium of communication – saying that he was coming, that he would arrive for tea upon the following day. Gratified, she made her plans. She had an idea of the realism of Joe’s appetite and of what might be his conception of the meal he termed ‘tea’. She had, moreover, a strong incentive towards exerting herself to please him. And so she hurried home early, and hastened pleasurably with her arrangements, covering the table with her best stiffly laundered cloth, setting it elegantly, and cooking an appetising meal, savouring the novelty and zest of her own labours.

  At last, everything was ready. She trimmed the fire in the sitting-room, and sat down to wait. The heart of the fire was clear and white and strong, and the light of the flames shone warmly upon her face. Outside was the darkness and a rising wind amongst the trees.

  Suddenly, into her reverie came a long and confident peal upon the bell. At once she rose, went into the hall, opened the door.

  ‘Well! Well! Well!’ cried Joe from the doorstep. ‘ Here we are as large as life!’

  He had on a thick reefer coat; his hat sat well back upon his head; his whole presence exuded a full and genial affability.

  ‘I wondered if you’d get me card in time. I just took the notion to look over all of a sudden. Came over me, like.’

  He shook hands, engulfing her fingers in his large doughy fist. Then, struggling a little with the effort, he let himself be shelled out of his coat; hung up his hat on the peg, with a clop; rubbed his hands; then advanced towards the open door of the sitting-room.

  ‘Come away in, Lucy!’ he exclaimed, almost hospitably. ‘Come away in!’

  She followed him in.

  ‘Aha!’ he cried out at once. ‘Aha! That’s a fine smell you’ve got here. ’Tis enough to draw water out of a dead man’s teeth on a cold night like this.’ And he sat down before the fire, and grinned at her.

  ‘Well,’ she answered, with a twist of her lips, ‘it’s your tea. I’ve just been cooking.’

  ‘You don’t say!’ he cried, widening his eyes and sniffing appreciatively, with expanded nostrils. ‘ Sure, if I’d known this was waiting on me I’d ha’ been over to see you long ago.’

  Then all at once the creases died out of his face, which instantly became heavy, serious. He shook his cropped head, and said gravely: ‘No, no, my dear. I was only wanting to give you time to settle down a bit, and get over things. True it’s taken me hard enough to get over the loss of me poor dead brother meself.’

  He shook his head, pulled quickly at his broad nostrils, then flicked the back of his hand across the end of his nose. It was a characteristic gesture with which he often terminated a sentence, as though its performance erased an emotion from his mind, released him from that feeling of joy or sorrow into which his own words had momentarily plunged him.

  He smiled again. ‘ You’re getting over it, though, aren’t you, Lucy?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

  ‘That’s right. Ah! But don’t I know it’s hard? Haven’t I been in the same boat meself? Don’t I know what it is to lose the partner? Ah! When my Katie was tooken I was all smashed to pieces. Aha, we’re only human, aren’t we now? Is the tea ready, did you say?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘and I can give you a choice. I didn’t quite know your taste, but I’ve got bacon and egg, or would you care for fried chops? – whichever you like. They’re ready and in the oven.’

  ‘Bacon and eggs, or chops,’ he repeated reflectively, thrusting out his thick jowl and rubbing his palm over it with a crisp bristling sound; he swivelled his round head towards the table. ‘Bacon and eggs, and chops. They sound good, and, bedam! They smell good!’ He smacked his lips like the crack of a whip, and concluded slowly: ‘How about the whole caboozle, then, seeing we can’t make up our minds – you and me?’

  ‘Why, certainly,’ she agreed. In her desire to please him she felt delighted with his generous choice, and went off immediately to serve the meal.

  When she returned, with an ashet of bacon, chops, and eggs, still spluttering, he was standing with his back to the fire, his tails elevated, warming himself intimately.

  ‘Come along, now!’ she said, putting the ashet upon the table. ‘Sit in while it’s hot.’

  ‘Be the Holy, Lucy!’ he replied, coming over at once. ‘ That looks good to me. There’s a shine on that fat would raise a hunger on a corpse, bedam! I’ll sit in right enough. Just let me get at it. I’ll skin the plate.’

  He lowered himself into his chair, helped himself liberally by tilting the ashet towards his plate, buttered some toast, and began to eat. After a few mouthfuls, he moved restlessly, pulled back his sleeves, dug at his armpits, then glanced up.

  ‘Do you know now,’ he exclaimed, ‘ I’m a plain sort of a man – so damned used to eating my grub without a coat that I an’t be easy with one. Would I be annoying you if I sat down comfortable, like I do at me own place?’

  ‘No – oh, no,’ she returned, making an effort to conceal the shade of hesitation in her tone. ‘I don’t mind.’ But the unusual request had almost startled her. He nodded gratefully; rose; got out of his jacket; sat down again in his shirt sleeves; and reapplied himself to the food with undiluted gusto. Lucy, at the other end of the table, watched him silently. It gave her a fantastic feeling to see this fat man in his shirt-sleeves eating at her table, after her weeks of solitude; never had she observed such zest, such abandon, such obvious enjoyment of each mouthful! When he pulled a wedge of meat off a fork, or sucked a slab of egg from the flat of his knife, or chewed with all the muscles of his face working, he did so with such manifest relish that he invested the process of eating with a sublime importance. As he ate, the goodness of the food seemed to perm
eate his system, and glisten out of his face with a rich and mellow glow. Nor did he talk much, but between bites would stand his knife and fork upon the table, looking straight in front of him, masticating the fullest savour from the food.

  At last, however, he was finished. He rattled his knife and fork carelessly on to the plate, swallowed the final drops of his fourth cup of tea, wiped the last of the gravy off the ashet with a soft piece of white bread, thrust this gently into his mouth, sucked his fingers, lay back, sighed, and said simply: ‘ That’s the finest tightener I’ve had in a month of Sundays, Lucy. You could cook me sister Polly into an old cocked hat. We ought to have you over at the Tavern.’

  His mellow eye bathed her with a glow of invitation, but she murmured definitely: ‘We’ve been over all that before, Joe.’

  ‘To be sure, to be sure. It’s the independence you’re after,’ he agreed amiably, picking his teeth with his thumb-nail; he withdrew his thumb, sucked crisply with his tongue, rose up, and went over to the armchair by the fire. ‘You can have a shot at it, to be sure.’

  He wore the broad look of the man of the world, who, indulging her in this whim against his better judgement, would ultimately see his judgement vindicated.

  As he sank back he pulled out his pipe, and changed the subject affably: ‘Well, a smoke and a little drop of the crater would just about put me right for Dublin.’

  Her face fell. Despite her careful preparations, she had forgotten something.

  ‘I don’t believe I’ve a drop of whisky in the house,’ she said confusedly. Then her look cleared. ‘What am I thinking about? I’m forgetting your port.’

  But he stopped her movement towards the cupboard with a look. ‘No,’ he protested, ‘not for me. That’s a lady’s drink, that is.’ He shook his head profoundly. ‘The hard stuff is the only thing that suits me stomach.’

  She paused, feeling from his manner that she was deficient in hospitality. Then at last, somewhat awkwardly, she declared: ‘There’s some brandy in the house that was left – that I got for Frank at one time. Would you like some of that?’

  ‘Indeed, an’ I would,’ he averred, with a wave of his pipe.

  She went to the medicine cupboard in her bedroom, and came back immediately with a long green bottle which had a blue label and was half full of spirit. As he took it from her his upper lip crinkled compassionately.

  ‘Poor fella! So this is his brandy,’ said he sadly. ‘And Three Stars, bedam! It’s the best.’ He paused, flicked his nose. ‘Well, there’s no use to waste it. Frank’ll never drink it now, poor fella. Have you a tumbler? As big as you like.’

  When he was established with his glass of brandy and water, he indicated the chair beside his and said out of that corner of his mouth not occupied by his pipe: ‘Now, my dear, how is the world rollin’ for you?’

  ‘Well, I’ve made a start,’ she answered at once, as she sat down.

  ‘A start, indeed!’ he replied, eyeing her humorously. ‘And how long will the start continue?’

  ‘As long as I want it to, I hope.’

  He broke into a rolling laugh, and slapped his leg. ‘ You’ll give me a stitch, Lucy. The idea of a little thing like you going about at that kind of work! ’ Tis enough to make a cat laugh.

  She did not know how to take his genial ridicule, and, to cover the indignation which she felt must show in her face, she bent forward to her wickerwork basket and picked up the grey scarf she was knitting for Peter. As she threaded the wool between her smooth fingers and began slowly to knit, she said: ‘ It seems rather a joke to you.’

  ‘Ah! You should put the thought of that business outa your head,’ he returned indulgently. ‘Can you not let Big Joe look after you?’

  As he spoke, she was confronted by the vision of the unpaid bills lying in the pigeon-hole of her desk, and she wished ardently that his lavish expressions of generosity would assume a more concrete form.

  ‘Peter’s getting on excellently,’ she ventured, with a suggestive change of subject.

  ‘Good!’ said he. ‘Good for the young fella.’

  She felt that now surely he would broach the topic of the liability he had undertaken, but, after he had poured himself out another glass of brandy, he cocked an eye towards her wool and remarked slyly, quite irrelevantly: ‘ Will you do me a pair of them some day?’

  His archness fell awkwardly across her mood, but she made herself smile over her flashing needles.

  ‘Of course I will. I’ll knit you half a dozen pairs.’

  ‘Will you now? That’s great.’ He was pleased.

  ‘I’m not much of a walker, to be sure, so I don’t wear ’ em out that way, but it’s the sweat off me feet that rots holes in ’em.’

  She coloured at the odious vulgarity of his tone; his manner – so different from the reserve of her husband or from Edward’s actual diffidence – gave her a curious constraint. Yet she tried to excuse his bluntness upon the grounds of downright honesty.

  ‘This is a scarf I’m knitting for Peter,’ she said.

  But the brandy was percolating his system agreeably; he gave no heed to her remark.

  ‘I’m a man that’s got on, you know, Lucy,’ he declared, with a fat laugh. ‘I’m a plain man, but I’ve done pretty well for meself. No, I’ll not deny that I’ve made money, and I’ve got the position. When I walk down the street the folks all say, “There goes Big Joe Moore.” Big Joe, begod! that’s what they call me!’

  He puffed out his chest, and let his paunch fall down between his legs; he had now finished the brandy.

  ‘Do you not find the room too warm?’ she exclaimed uneasily, moving her chair back from the fire.

  ‘But I tell you I’m a lonely man,’ he went on; ‘ yes, it’s the lonely, lonely man I am, and I’m not above telling you it comes hard on a big lump of a man like me.’

  His upper lip worked into a grimace of self-pity. He shook his bullet head on the thick socket of his neck, and scraped his big boots restlessly along the fender in his urge to express himself.

  ‘Sure, you’re a fine little woman, Lucy,’ he went on, giving her a slow covert stare. ‘My poor brother had an eye in his head when he picked you. I wish I’d been as lucky as Frank, but my Katie, rest her soul, fell away to a bag o’ bones before she went to God. Well, Frank’s gone and my Katie’s gone, so here we are! You and me, the two of us.’

  She threw him a strained look. Again the sight of him sitting in his shirt-sleeves in the chair which had been her husband’s, sitting so intimately with her, gave her suddenly a strange bewildered feeling, which passed like a shiver along her spine and plucked at the roots of her hair. A curious oppression from his presence touched her like a wet finger across her brow. Under his eye she dropped two stitches, fumbled clumsily in picking them up. She saw that her reflections were forcing her into a ridiculous position with a man who was by marriage her brother. And he, indeed, must have perceived her confusion, for he went on with a gross complacency, his upper lip spreading out slowly in a smile.

  ‘I’m not an eddicated man, mind you. I’m plain Joe Moore the publican. Maybe I’ve a clumsy tongue in me head, but there’s no humbug about me, and I’m downright fond on ye, Lucy; so help me God I am. I took a notion on ye the first time I seen you and I’m going to keep me eye on you.’

  ‘Well,’ she began hurriedly, ‘I’m grateful to you, I’m sure.’

  ‘Ah! Time enough for that,’ he exclaimed broadly. ‘Don’t you never feel the need of a man about the house now? I could come over here often to see you.’

  The drift on his remarks still eluded her; she felt an acute discomfort under his leer, but its full significance was too incredible to be realised immediately. She maintained a stiff silence, which, in the grip of his mood, he took to be propitious. Although he had intended to be cautious, he was now full of meat and drink, and swayed by obtuse desire. He felt her dependence upon him; the sight of her trim adjacent figure, tinted warmly by the fire-light and by his own desirous eye,
urged him on. She was breathing a little quickly; her breasts rose and fell with a soft insistence. His mouth felt dry as he leaned forward and laid his hand upon her knee.

  ‘We’re only human, aren’t we now, Lucy?’ he said thickly. ‘You and me could be good to each other.’

  The movement of his hand more than his words struck her with a sudden horror. Her skin drew together, and she felt an answering constriction of her throat. The knitting fell to the floor.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she cried. She thrust her hand against his, but as she did so he seized it. Wrenching her wrist free, she stood up, her lips pallid as her face. Her own breathing seemed to smother her.

  ‘What are you running away for?’ he coaxed her, getting to his feet unsteadily.

  ‘Don’t!’ she jerked out fiercely.

  His eyes peered at her from beneath his thick overhanging eyebrows like the eyes of a warm, living animal. She was aware dimly, as he came towards her, that they were alone in the house, and, as in a nightmare, of what he desired of her.

  ‘Don’t get excited,’ said he thickly, trying to make his features smile ingratiatingly; but the smile became fixed – a grimace – as he came towards her.

  ‘I’d look after ye, me dear.’

  She backed until she struck against the table, and her hand, thrust out to save herself, knocked over his empty tumbler. In a cold fury she seized it, confronting him in silence.

  ‘What’s your worry?’ he said again.

  He was close to her now. She perceived a twitching in his cheek, faint beads of perspiration on his brow. Her legs felt weak under her, and the room moved round. She was not afraid, but sick with anger and distrust.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she cried again, from between her teeth.

  He paused. ‘Ah! Be easy,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve always been fond on ye. You and me could hit it off fine and not a soul a bit the wiser –’ and he hesitated.

  She looked at him frigidly; then a sudden overpowering rage swept her. It was not enough for her that he hesitated. With all her force she swung her arm and splintered the tumbler against his grinning teeth. A fierce and joyous thrill ran up her arm at the impact of the blow.