by A. J. Cronin
‘Dowdy,’ she thought, holding it from her critically. Still, she was resourceful. She had a lace collar – real Cluny it was, a gift of Frank’s, long treasured – and this, after some searching, she retrieved from the bottom of her solitary drawer. Washed, ironed, and neatly stitched over the lapels of the costume, it made a pleasant change, freshening up the sober habit with a touch suitable to the occasion and the season.
When, on the Saturday afternoon, she stood dressed before the mirror, she noted the set of the collar approvingly, felt instinctively that it suited her. Yes; done up like this, the old grey was not too bad, after all.
Peter, who had viewed her preparations with an eye wherein irony was swamped by a greater curiosity, had arranged to attend a football match. Catching a glimpse of some unspoken question in that eye, she said good-bye to him rather consciously, promising to be back in ample time to cook his evening meal.
The halfpenny tram was again the vehicle of her election; this time a yellow one, and swift – which made her fear she would be early at George Square: the meeting-place she had arranged. She had resolved on this occasion, in contrast to the first historic day in the Saddleriggs, that he it was who should be early, she who should be late.
It was a pleasant day, the sun warm, the sky a dreamy blue, the streets quiet and freshly watered against the dust. And her humour was pleasant, too. Her lips bore that pleased, faintly reminiscent smile which indicated always a relaxation of her mood; a rising to the surface, as it were of all the mildness which was in her.
And she was not too early. Lennox was already there, looking, indeed, as she had hoped, from the impatience of his expression, as if he had been for some time awaiting her.
He saw her when she was still a long way off, and, raising his hat jerkily, he started to smile – that rather conscious smile which, in his effort to maintain it, grew fixed and somewhat strained by the time she came up to him.
‘Are you early – or am I late?’ she demanded briskly, and there was nothing strained about the look she flashed on him.
‘I’m early, I expect – yes, yes, I’m early,’ he said sheepishly; and the Tron Clock chiming the quarter gave him back immediately the He.
She laughed; feeling it rather pleasant to have reversed their customary relationship so neatly.
‘Well,’ she declared, at length, ‘how does it feel to be a man of leisure?’
He caressed his beard cannily. ‘Not so very good, you know,’ he said. ‘And not so very grand, either.’
A short silence fell between them, and for a moment they stood awkwardly upon the pavement; then, throwing out his chest, he exclaimed: ‘You’ll have a cup of tea with me? You said in your letter –’
‘I’d like that,’ she declared warmly. ‘I’m dying for tea.’
‘That’s right – that’s right.’
Her assurance seemed to give him a sense of inward satisfaction; he squeezed her arm in quite his old manner, and together they went towards the nearest branch of Chisholm’s in Alston Street. It surprised her somewhat, this plain evidence of the recrudescence of his regard, but she made no sign, and as they entered the tea-room she paused, looked at him pleasantly, and demanded:
‘Where shall we sit?’
Though the place was fairly full, he did not hesitate. It was an age when Miss Chisholm, in the heyday of her fame, drew to her teashops a polite and discriminating patronage – ‘tea at Miss Chisholm’s,’ was, indeed, the refined accepted usage of the day. But Lennox had no qualms; observing a vacant table by the window, he indicated it positively with a cock of his beard.
They went over and sat down; but no sooner were they seated than a waitress appeared – hurrying.
‘This table is engaged,’ she declared.
Lennox looked up. ‘It doesn’t say so,’ he returned, quite undisturbed. ‘And there’s no other vacant.’
‘I tell you it’s engaged,’ returned the waitress emphatically; she looked harassed and bad-tempered from the heat.
But Lennox’s hand had strayed suggestively to his pocket, and now strayed more suggestively towards her.
‘Well, sir,’ said the waitress in a different key, ‘I’ll see – yes, I’ll see what can be done.’ She wavered, smiled, and went away.
Lennox’s eye drooped towards Lucy with a naive satisfaction.
‘That’s the value of money, you see. I used to think that money was just for keeping – but there’s pleasure to be had in the using of it too.’
Lucy made no reply; but she agreed with his remark: it was pleasant to have the tiny wheels of life oiled like this. Tea was brought, and poured in silence.
‘You’re not annoyed,’ he ventured at length, ‘at my having written to you?’
‘Certainly not,’ she answered with an open smile. She paused: ‘I’ve got over it now I’m settled. But perhaps I was a little unreasonable when you sacked me.’
She used the phrase deliberately, with a sort of provocative raillery. But he drew back from it.
‘No,’ he said seriously, ‘I’m not wanting to talk about giving you the sack. It’s just the other way round. You see – you see, it’s been an awful wrench, this giving up of my business. I wouldn’t have believed it, but to me it’s Just been like a man losing his wife. Yes, I felt fair lost at first.’ He paused, felt absently for a pencil which was not there, then suddenly went on. ‘But gradually I’ve come round a bit. I’ve begun to see that there’s more things in life than driving a bargain.’
Amidst the noise and chatter of the room, she regarded him in silence, toying absently with her teaspoon, feeling actually that here, beneath this crust of self-assertion, was a strange pathos: a lonely, unattractive little man, who had built up his life on one loyalty – and what a loyalty! so different from that which she pursued – and now discovered it crumbling beneath his feet. Misguided – ah, yes, misguided! Hers, of course, could not so crumble.
‘So there was something I wanted to say to you,’ he persisted, with a curious note in his voice. ‘Something important.’
‘Yes?’ she answered in a detached manner.
She waited. His face, for all its native shrewdness, wore a most unguarded look.
‘You are not very comfortable where you are?’ he said at length, observing her closely.
‘Quite comfortable,’ she answered tranquilly.
‘But you can’t work like you’re doing,’ he asserted. ‘It’s only a stop-gap. It’s not the thing for you, at all.’
‘You can make yourself do anything, if you try. Besides, I’m doing it for my boy.’
‘Give it up,’ he said slowly, importantly.
‘I’ll give it up when Peter’s through! That’ll be soon enough. She smiled confidently. ‘Unless you’ve something better to suggest?’
‘Give it up,’ he repeated, more slowly, more importantly.
She stopped playing with the teaspoon, raised her head, and looked at him with a sudden intentness. She was startled, not so much by his words as by his face, self-important yet sheepish, holding something which astounded her. She drew in her breath sharply.
‘I’m not a young man,’ he said. ‘But then, again, I’m not an old man. Yes, I’m healthy. Spry as a sparrow. And I’ve got the siller. I’m wanting someone to help me to enjoy it. Besides, I’m lonely – dashed lonely now I’ve parted with my business.’
He paused, seeing that she read his mind.
She gasped, her attention riveted. It was incredible, but it was so. Lennox, who had for years been – well, ‘Lennox’ – in the background of her life! Here in this crowded teashop – the last place suited to a romantic declaration – he was proposing to her. She had a sudden ridiculous impulse towards laughter, an impulse restrained only by the sight of his important yet curiously pathetic face.
‘I believe I’ve been fond of you all along,’ she heard him say, as though it cost him an effort to utter it. The straining of a sentiment, repressed through the years, vibrated, not without absurdi
ty, through those words; yet there was something tragic in the cry – something repressed until it was too late.
‘But it’s impossible,’ she declared slowly; ‘you know that’ – advancing the obvious pretext, the incompatibility of their creeds.
‘I’m a broad-minded man,’ he answered largely. ‘That’s not the slightest objection to me at this time of day.’
She looked at him seriously, thinking of those days when he had sat at her table at Ardfillan, affected strangely by his declaration. But she had travelled a long way since those days when she smiled at him from the garden of her house. Slowly she shook her head.
‘It’s no use. I’ve got my boy, you see,’ she said, looking downwards. ‘No, it wouldn’t be any use.’
He started, stopped smiling. ‘What!’ he exclaimed incredulously. ‘You won’t – you wouldn’t –’
‘It’s just that I couldn’t,’ she answered.
‘You’re not serious?’ he stammered, all his little crust of self-importance caving in. ‘ I’m a tidy man – you don’t know what I’m worth. I could buy you all manner of things.’
For a single second she hesitated. She knew that he was rich; that he was a decent man; that he represented comfort and security. Had he spoken that last day in the office, when she lay plunged in the well of her desolation, no doubt she would have accepted him. But now he was too late. Now – ah, now she was in different case: her son set upon the pathway of success, her loyalty pledged unalterably, her face set to the wind, not begging, but demanding, not lying down weakly to let the turmoil of life sweep over her, but fighting – fighting for her ultimate triumph.
‘Think about it, then,’ he said suddenly, almost entreatingly.
‘It wouldn’t be any use,’ she repeated compassionately, and as she spoke the sudden tension between them fell away limply.
Once more she heard the voices and the laughter, the chink of china and the tinkle of teacups. He did not persist; he was so staggered. But, essaying to cover his discomfiture with that familiar conscious little laugh, he said: ‘I think you’re making a big mistake. But there was no harm in asking, anyway.’
‘No,’ she answered seriously, drawing on her gloves. ‘ I’m sorry – that’s all.’
‘If you would let me say one last thing,’ he declared more sharply, his sallow face still coloured: ‘I wouldn’t sacrifice myself too much, if I were you, for that boy of yours, you know.’
She smiled at him gently; construing his remark in terms of a justifiable pique, she chose altogether to ignore it. She was herself, and Peter was Peter; these unique and unassailable facts removed her case far above the lot of universal experience.
‘And if you don’t keep up with your friends – or keep your interests wide,’ he went on wryly, ‘you get set too much on the one thing. I’ve found that to my cost.’
‘But you and I will always be good friends,’ she asserted confidently.
He looked at her curiously, without replying; then he pushed back his chair and awkwardly arose. They went out of the tea-room in silence.
Outside, as they neared the Square, he broke a long pause.
‘I’ll get away for my train,’ he said at length. ‘I’ve nothing else to do.’
The thought of his departure touched her with a strange compunction; now, perversely, she did not wish him to go. But how, and on what pretext, could she detain him?
‘I’ll be seeing you again soon?’ she said, pausing, facing him at the entrance to Queen Street Station.
‘That’s right – that’s right,’ he answered; but she did not in the least understand the oddly penetrating look which accompanied his words.
Instinctively she stretched out her hand. His was warm, and the veins stood out soft and compressible upon the back.
‘Good-bye, then.’
‘Good-bye.’
‘She stood watching his retreating figure just as, years past, she had watched it vanish down the roadway from her gate; and now there was again that indescribable nostalgia. She conquered instantly a foolish impulse to run after him; then she turned and walked slowly away.
Rather sadly, she reflected: ‘I’ll see him again soon – very soon. He’s not a bad sort. He’s too good a friend to lose right off.’ Yes, she did want to see him again, and at that thought she remembered suddenly that final remark which he had made. Suddenly, too, she seemed to perceive its meaning, and to feel within it a hidden reproof. She frowned, but the thought persisted: it lingered and rankled in her mind the whole way home this thought that she had lost the gift of friendship. And that look which he had given her! Did he think actually that because she had refused him she would cease to think of him, cease to regard him as a friend? Those others, too. Was it her fault that Joe had vanished completely from her life, that Richard had used her so shamefully, that Edward manifested merely the most spasmodic interest in her affairs? She drew in her breath sharply. A thousand times no! Then, suddenly, she thought of Miss Hocking, with whom she had spent actually five years of her life. Six months had elapsed since the wretched woman had been removed to the asylum, and she had not once visited or enquired for her. Here, indeed, she felt herself at fault. She let herself into the flat with an uneasy sense of self-reproach. She was not selfish – she repudiated the thought – but, somehow, that frown between her brows deepened and remained.
When Peter came in his meal was ready, but she was still abstracted, disinclined to tolerate the somewhat boisterous inclination of his humour.
‘Did old Lennox make love to you?’ he enquired largely, striking the truth through the very wildness of his surmise.
‘Be quiet!’ she snapped. ‘And don’t let me hear you talk about a decent man like that!’
He raised his eyebrows; but he was quiet. He had the faculty of realising when she was in earnest.
All that night she was restless; she did not sleep well. Something, she knew not what, was plucking at her. And her restlessness continued. She determined – and it seemed almost like a salve to her conscience – to visit Miss Hocking at Blandford. It was little enough to do; yet, somehow, she felt that she must justify herself in some fashion against the rankling of that reproach.
Consequently, upon the following Saturday – which she had ascertained to be a visiting day – she went out to the asylum.
Again the day was fine – another lovely day of that most lovely, lingering summer – and as she walked up the main avenue, through the pleasant grounds, she was conscious of a feeling of surprise. Nothing unusual was here – it was like the park of some well-ordered estate. Three tennis-courts lay on her right, and to the left an orchard hung with ripening fruit. She passed two gardeners, brushing in a slow, methodic manner the early fallen leaves. In the distance she observed a little knot of people walking sedately in all apparent normality. Farther up the drive, where it suddenly diverged, she came upon another gardener sweeping steadily with his broom and, uncertain of the path which she must take, she paused.
‘Can you direct me to the West House?’ she enquired agreeably.
He raised his head and stared at her. But he did not answer. Instead, he closed his eyes, and thrust out his tongue with a frightful childish grimace of distaste; then, quite quietly, he opened his eyes, restored his lolling tongue, and, bending his head, began once more that steady, unconcerned sweeping of the leaves. She flushed, and turned away quickly. She was wrong: strange currents ran beneath the seeming quiet of this tranquil spot.
She found the West House without difficulty: here also it was quiet – cool and charming as any country house: nor was there any difficulty raised when she asked if she might see Miss Hocking. She followed the nurse – a stout, elderly woman with a key chained to her girdle and a bonnet primly perched upon her head. Along corridors she followed her, and through many devious doors, not one of which but must be first unlocked before they could pass through. The key became, indeed, a talisman, the very emblem of the place, and, as it turned noisily in the ultimate doo
r, the nurse paused, exclaiming succinctly: ‘This is the room.’
Lucy went in. It was a curious room, and immediately she entered a curious thrill of fear went through her. It was so strange. The walls and floor were grey – a dullish putty grey – and soft, they were, like putty, cushioned to the touch. No ordinary window admitted the pleasant sun, but instead a small square aperture, a grille set high upon the wall, permitting grudgingly the entry of a few stray shafts of light. Nor was there any furniture. No, nothing was in that room but the figure of a woman crouching in the corner. Cowering there, she gave no attention to the opening of the door, but rested silent, absorbed, immersed in a ceaseless task. She was tearing paper, and at this task her fingers worked interminably. A newspaper lay in her lap, and this she tore into tiny shreds – fragments so indescribably minute that each was smaller than a small pin’s head. Around her lay the product of her labour, a fine dust of white, heaped up in places like a bank of snow, and every now and then the woman ran her fingers through this dust with a slow caressing touch. Suddenly she looked up. It was Miss Hocking! A spasm passed over Lucy’s face; she started forward.
‘Pinkie! Don’t you know me?’ she cried.
But Pinkie made no answer; nor did the faintest shadow of recognition lie in her dull and wide blue eyes, eyes no longer dreamy but flat, somehow hopeless, and opaque.
‘Pinkie! Surely you remember me?’ She was touched, frightened, immeasurably distressed.
‘It’s no good your talking to her,’ said the nurse plainly. ‘When she’s like this you won’t get a word out of her for weeks at a time.’
‘But surely –’ gasped Lucy.
‘And don’t go too near her, please,’ exclaimed the other, quite pleasantly. ‘She’s liable to turn on you.’
Lucy stood quite still, watching this woman who had been her friend and who now crouched in the corner of the dreadful room like some strange, bewildered animal. She had by contrast a quick vision of that first luncheon at Allen’s, of Pinkie in all her kindness and childish vivacity. And now this – this creature! And those fingers, too, at their endless tearing, tearing, with a crazy, concentrated venom destroying the evidence of those printed sheets. A labour of futility!
