by A. J. Cronin
No more Latin,
No more French,
No more sitting
On the hard old bench,
and from that to a lanky youth, diffident of his breaking voice, yet remarking casually upon the advisability of his assuming long trousers – these changes slipped over her with the slow precision of the inevitable.
She saw that all this must happen, and, because it happened gradually and in a direction which was good, she was not disturbed. Her attachment to him grew in a mingling of love and devotion. He had become tall, reserved now in his manner, even more tidy in his habits, and with an occasional tendency towards studying himself profoundly in a looking-glass. She became aware of a quality in him somewhat different from the ordinary – not merely his unquestionable distinction and charm, not merely his lack of boisterous clumsiness, but something indefinable which stamped him as her son amongst the millions of other sons belonging to a million other mothers. She began to see in him a growing resemblance to his father – the moulding of his lips, his smile, the strong white teeth, shining and perfect – to discover little mannerisms which made her start by a sudden plucking at the chords of memory. She thought him, privately, a handsome young fellow, lived with him in her mind, drew an intense satisfaction equally from his enthusiasms and his successes.
She supposed that certain changes must be manifest in herself, but she did not often consider this. She traversed that phase which runs flatly and uneventfully in every life without the consciousness of alteration in herself. Her figure had become a little more solid, her waist less flexible, her smile shadowed by a greater reserve. But she rarely considered these changes in herself. Nor did she consider extensively the possibilities of romantic adventure. Joe had, in that direction, given her at the outset a rude shock, Miss Hocking’s absurd passion disgusted her, and above all she had her son – so, though she knew it not, the circumstances of her life induced a curious repression, diverted her love entirely towards Peter. Her clients, whatever their attitude, were to her mere floury figures, emerging and disappearing with equal suddenness, entirely without significance in her life. Lennox was fond of her; so much she knew. But he had his business, to him all-engrossing, almost an obsession. Once, however, in the office, he had sheepishly advanced an arm around her waist. Quite calmly she had instructed him to remove it. And he had at once complied, confused, apologetic, infinitely more disturbed than she. On the whole, she deliberately discouraged in herself all tendency towards introspective reverie, which inclined to make her sad, to induce, she felt, a morbid self-pity. And it was seldom she had leisure to lay her hands upon her lap and relinquish herself to those moments of abstraction.
She had her work. She became accustomed to a hasty breakfast and the morning rush for her train; she waited on railway platforms in wind and rain and sunshine; she went round the district on her weekly pilgrimage, and stood for hours without impatience in damp shops and underground bakehouses. She cultivated optimism and, in the way of business, the art of cheerful salutation. When the rush of orders, evoked by sympathy, had subsided, she settled down to the routine of the work. Her income became smaller but more regular, and in this she was at least content. Often she would pause and consider the absurdity that she, of all people, should be doing this work, spending her life in selling an undignified commodity. Undignified or no, this margarine had come to stay, and Lennox was pressing it – yes, even to the detriment of his butter business. It was almost ludicrous, yet she went on selling it. She was not unhappy, and, indeed, actually she had no choice. In her present mode of living her income enabled her to exist comfortably, to dress neatly, even smartly – at her son’s request – on her visits to the school, to enjoy the moderate refinements of life, and, above all, to pay for her son’s education. Naturally she had no balance in the bank. ‘Her capital consisted of her fortitude and her love for Peter.
But she was aware that she had reason, as Edward put it, to be grateful for God’s mercies; but at times it struck her as inconceivable that her relations should evince such little interest in her position. It made her perhaps a trifle bitter. Edward was undoubtedly the most punctilious; he wrote to her at intervals, saw her occasionally, had Peter over for the holidays, spoke in lavish terms of the boy’s scholarship, and was, according to his limited means, spasmodically generous. He made no allusion whatever to Joe, but she had the uncomfortable conviction that he surmised the reason of the other’s persistent silence, and forbore – from modesty, no doubt – to mention it. Yes, insensibly her attitude towards Edward had altered: in her own phrase, she did not think quite so much of Edward’ as before. As for Richard, her own brother, he maintained his usual reticence. He presumed, she imagined, that she was ‘doing well’, and deduced therefrom a further tribute to the Murray brain and character. At Christmas she received once a penwiper sewed by Vera and again a pink satin tea-cosy worked by Eva, sent with the love of the entire family, as tokens of their esteem for her.
Yet somehow these pleasant attentions made her draw more within herself. She began to lose a little her social instincts. She abandoned nothing of her generosity: on the occasion of Netta’s marriage with Dave Bowie – a momentous matter, indicative of the triumph of true love and the passage of the years – she bestowed on her former maid a handsome gift of linen out of all proportion to her income. Yet insensibly her interests narrowed. She took, for example, small cognisance of the business of the nation. The re-conquest of the Sudan, the formation of Australia’s commonwealth, left her unmoved. She never knew that Marconi used the wireless telegraph, nor that Langley caused his tiny air machine to fly. The name of Kruger was not to her a fearful and obscene obloquy. She suffered the death of Queen Victoria without a pang.
Still, for all her lack of interest in the world’s affairs, she was happy; she had her own affairs, her purpose, and she was content.
Chapter Ten
On the 3rd September, 1904, she entered the office in an excellent humour, and went straight to her desk to make up her book. Nothing unusual had occurred to influence her mood except, perhaps, the scent of autumn in the air. She had always loved this season, and today at Darroch the crisp wind sweeping up from the loch shore had brought fume of fallen leaves – a delicious fragrance of the earth which made her pause suddenly and draw a long, deep breath.
Calling out an off-handed remark to Andrews, she took up the invoice book and began to duplicate her orders. How many times had she done this? She did not consider, nor, as she had once done, did she now pause to tap her teeth and ponder anxiously some point, in fear of making a mistake. No, she had an air of confident proficiency as her copying-ink pencil raced freely over the paper.
‘What’s the worry tonight?’ she threw out to Andrews, without lifting her head.
He had made no reply to her previous greeting. And again he made no reply.
‘Is it the indigestion?’ she persisted amicably, still writing at her dashing pace. Lately this devotee of his wife’s cooking had begun to suffer stern internal pangs, and, by a constant tribute of pills, to make belated reparation to his liver.
But again he was silent, sitting moodily upon his stool, caressing his drooping moustache with a languid touch, casting on her a lack-lustre, squinting eye. She laughed, and turned the page crisply.
‘Every picture tells a story!’ she quoted. Could this be she who had once trembled in this very office, and said: ‘I’ll do my best to remember what you tell me, Mr Andrews?’
‘You’re laughing,’ he responded slowly. ‘Well, laugh away. Ye may as well get all the jokiness out of your system when ye’re about it.’
His inveterate pessimism moved her to another smile.
‘Where’s Dougal?’ she remarked.
Dougal, in the years, had belied his dour and unpropitious promise. He was now ‘a pleasant chap’ and a great friend of Lucy’s.
Andrews moved his bald head slowly towards the inner room. ‘With the boss.’ He paused gloomily. ‘I’ve been in my
self – and when he comes out you’ll go in yourself.’
This time she did look up, and, holding her pencil against her cheek, she inspected him more carefully. Yes, his dejection seemed pitched in a lower key than ordinary.
‘What’s wrong?’ she demanded.
‘You’ll find out, sure enough,’ he answered slowly; ‘ and you’ll not be laughing then, I’ll warrant.’
‘Tell me,’ she persisted, curiously. He did, indeed, look extremely upset. ‘Tell me what’s wrong.’
‘Everything!’ he declared, with unusual vehemence.
Just then the inner door opened, and Dougal came out into the office, followed immediately by Lennox himself.
‘You’re back, are you?’ Lennox exclaimed, on seeing Lucy. ‘Come in here a minute, will you?’
She got off her stool slowly; the sight of Dougal’s face and this summons, following upon Andrew’s prediction, gave her a peculiar disquietude; but she knew she was all right; she had made no errors, her work was up to standard; there was nothing to be afraid of.
‘Sit down, Mrs Moore,’ he invited her, and again, equally in this invitation and in the use of her name – a title which, in fact, he never gave her – she perceived the unusual drift of the event.
‘I’ve just been seeing the others,’ he declared, fingering his pencils almost nervously.
‘Yes?’ she advanced expectantly.
She discerned now in his manner a restlessness, a suppressed elation, seething beneath an unusual compunction. There was a silence.
‘It’s a hard thing for me to have to do,’ he said suddenly, playing now with a ruler, ‘but it’s got to be done, for all that.
He threw down the ruler decisively. ‘I’ll have to give you your notice.’
She went quite pale, with the total unexpectedness of the remark. For a moment she stared at him in silence; then she gasped: ‘But my work’s all right, perfectly all right! You know that as well as I do!’
‘I know, I know,’ he declared with open regret. ‘ I’m downright sorry.’
‘Then what –’ she faltered, and broke down.
‘I’ve sold out – yes, sold out, lock, stock, and barrel, to Van Hagelmann’s!’
He lay back in his chair. Despite his compunction, the elation was getting the upper hand; his high voice became frankly triumphant.
‘You know I’ve been a thorn in their flesh – for all the size of their concern – ay, I’ve pricked them long and weary. They tried to down me, but they couldn’t. I’ve sold Dutch margarine in spite of them – I sold it under their very noses – and now they’re sick of it. They want no competition; they’re wanting to get the monopoly, indeed. I knew it; oh, yes, I knew it. I saw it coming a long way ahead. That’s why I pressed on with the margarine and sacrificed the other. That’s where the foresight came in. And now it’s done, and the bargain sealed. I’m out and they’re in!’
At his words a high colour had flooded her face. So that was what he had been working for?
‘But – they’ll keep us on here?’ she exclaimed anxiously.
He shook his head slowly. ‘That’s the pity,’ he returned, with a sudden change of manner. ‘They’ve got their own place, their own staff, their own travellers. I think they’ll take on Dougal, mind you. He’s a young lad they might use. But Andrews and yourself – well –’ He paused significantly, and added: ‘ I’m downright sorry about it.’
Though he tried to draw his features into a frown of commiseration, he was not acutely sorry. He was delighted to have pulled off the deal, exuberant at his good fortune in disposing of his small business to a large, progressive firm, which had purchased it more on a principle of policy than to obtain the monopoly.
She saw this clearly, and a sudden sense of injustice oppressed her fiercely.
‘And I’m to be turned off after all those years! That’s what I get for all my hard work!’
‘You were paid for it,’ he murmured mildly.
‘It’s not fair! It’s unjust!’ she burst out unreasonably. ‘You might have let us know this was coming!’
‘I didn’t know myself for certain.’ He hesitated, added more mildly, ‘No use to lose tempers over it.’
Perhaps the sudden memory of that distant warm afternoon when he had weakly slipped his arm around her waist restrained him from a more definite rebuke. Perhaps he realised even now something of his lingering regard for her.
‘I’ve been meaning to retire for a long time,’ he went on. ‘You’ll get something else to do. A tidy little woman like you.’
A quick reply formed upon her lips, but she tightened them upon it. She rose up abruptly, facing him with sparkling, resentful eyes.
‘When do I finish?’ she shot out, from the door.
‘In a month,’ he declared, pacifically almost.
She went into the outer office. A rankling indignation burned within her. She saw herself humiliated on that first day when she had entered this wretched office; yes, humiliated, she had been; and now, again, she had been bitterly humiliated by this sudden enforcement of departure. And in between, how she had worked, slaving in all weathers, to secure for this wretched Lennox a fat retiring competency!
‘I told ye, didn’t I? Andrews remarked. ‘I knew you would get the sack.’
‘Leave me alone!’ she snapped.
Dougal was silent. He was not sacked, and he had, in consequence, the painful air of one who has betrayed his associates.
With compressed lips, she picked up her book, finished it, and at five o’clock left the office.
She came out of the narrow archway, and walked half-way down the wet street before she noticed that it was raining. Her hair was already misted with raindrops before she raised her umbrella automatically. The yellow blurs of shop windows wavered past her; a newsboy at the street corner was calling hoarsely the winner of the last race; dark forms marched with her towards the station.
She got into the train. In the corner a man leaned over to his companion and spoke of the trade depression over his lowered newspaper.
‘They’re sacking them off like flies in the shipyards, he concluded importantly.
She looked over at the man calmly. That, she considered, was exactly her position. She had been sacked. Those years of steady, uneventful life had terminated with a casual, almost grotesque, suddenness. A comical phrase, ‘ to be sacked’, yet to her it was a catastrophe unexpected, even uncontemplated. No, in her confidence she had never, never foreseen this. With a returning gush of resentment, her lips drew together again as she sat realising more fully the signficance of her dismissal.
At Ardfillan it was still raining, in heavy slanting sheets, and when she let herself into the flat the hem of her wet skirt clung limply to her ankles.
‘Brrrh!’ cried Miss Hocking, coming into the hall with a rush. ‘You’re as wet as a herring, my child!’
‘Yes, I’m wet,’ she forced herself to reply. ‘ I’d no coat with me.’
‘Come along quickly, then, and change,’ gushed the other. She wore the inevitable green shot-silk, and high lights sparkled in her eyes.
Lucy shook the raindrops from her head.
‘I’m not coming,’ she said definitely. ‘I’m tired.’ They had been invited out to supper; but now she had no desire to accept that invitation.
‘But you must – oh, of course, you must!’ protested. Pinkie effusively. ‘It’ll cheer you up. We’ll have music. A little singing before supper. Very restful for you. Come, come.’
‘I told you I’m not!’ returned Lucy brusquely. ‘I don’t feel like it.’
‘You must be made to feel like it, my dear. I’ll help you dress.’
‘Let me be!’ returned Lucy, and, pushing away the other’s encircling arm, she blurted out: ‘I’ve lost my job!’
‘Your job!’ came the incredulous, rather fastidious echo.
‘Yes, my job – my work – my position. I’m sacked, if you know what that means.’
‘Dear me!’
said Miss Hocking pleasantly, and then, with a blandly reassuring smile, she added: ‘You’ll find something else. In the morning. Surely! Do come! Yes, come, come.’
Lucy made no answer, but brushed roughly past into her own bedroom, where she began to take off her wet clothes. It was an added aggravation to come home to this inane reception.
‘What a fool the woman is!’ she thought, in the bitterness of her mood. ‘And what a fool I’ve been to put up with her!’
She dried her legs with the energy of her vexation, put on new stockings and her house shoes; then chose her grey velvet dress from the wardrobe. A fingered tattoo upon the door made her pause. Then Pinkie’s voice came through, lilting the words archly: ‘Are you coming now, my dear? I’m all ready.’
With an effort Lucy controlled her reply.
‘You go along yourself,’ she called out. ‘I can’t possibly come.’
‘You must! You must!’ cried Pinkie excitedly, and she rattled the door-handle like a thwarted child, but Lucy, wise in her experience of the other’s persistence, had locked the door. The silence which followed was heavy with pique; then the slam of the outer door relaxed Lucy’s constrained attitude, and freed the hidden tension of the air. She finished her dressing; then she went into the kitchen and made herself some tea and hot buttered toast.
Sitting down to the meal meditatively, she placed Peter’s last letter in front of her, and read it again slowly. The neatly written lines comforted her, yet they crystallised the position more definitely than many hours of meditation. He was in his second last term at school, and when he returned at the end of the year she would be confronted by the immediate necessity of dealing with his future. The vision of the last prize-giving again rose up before her. Brother William – more pendulous than ever, tottering a little, but still, in his own phrase, ‘going strong’ – with hand, not now upon the head, but upon the shoulder, of the prize-winner – saying to her: ‘There’s a career in front of this boy.’ If it had been difficult before, how much more difficult was her position now! Yet, though the future was not definite, her ambition for him lay clearly defined in her mind.
