by A. J. Cronin
Lucy was pleased at the compliment. Apart from the material benefit – somehow Peter’s health and the question of his holiday lay always rather harassingly at the back of her mind – she drew no small measure of personal satisfaction from this indirect admission of Edward’s approval. She had no regrets that she had not been invited to accompany them; it was unsuitable in every way: she had no clothes, the ‘two men’ wanted to be together, she would be a perfect nuisance to them; and, though she had seen little of Edward lately, she accepted inevitably the present divergence of their lives. But it was with a pleasurable sense of justification she saw Peter off to join his uncle at St Andrews. The experience of life in a good hotel would improve his manner, remove the last lingering diffidence of his boyhood; she knew too that he was, beyond words, safe in Edward’s unimpeachable company, and this, though she knew it not, drew all sting from the separation. She herself had not had a holiday since the expedition to Miss Tweedy’s, but this, she affirmed, was of little consequence to a woman strong, literally, as any horse. She took the change of air with him in spirit.
A chromatic postcard of a palatial hotel – his bedroom indicated by a star – came to the flat in Flowers Street at the lunch-hour one hot August day. She smiled at the conceit of the symbol, which lay like a climbing spider upon the middle of that imposing facade. It seemed a most attractive hotel. She had no aversion to hotels; suitably clad, and with money in her purse, she felt, indeed, on this languid afternoon, that the porch of a seaside hotel – she discovered the palms and cane chairs in the postcard – would present a cool seductiveness. There she would wear blue shantung, with, she thought, a hat wide and somewhat shady, and, of course, a parasol.
It would be a relief to get out of her shabby costume – with all its acceptable durability, it had barely sufficient mode for the Grand Hotel. Yes, she favoured the blue. Closing her eyes, she saw herself sitting under a palm, with Peter ordering her an ice. It was a pink ice, with the sweet wafers she liked so well; and the waiter who brought it was obsequious to a degree. She had always been rather in awe of waiters – even in those early days of her courtship when Frank, moved for once from his inertia, had taken her about – but now, supported by Peter’s immaculate and devoted presence, she was rather contemptuous of that waiter. She could not see his face, only the bald spot on the top of his bowed head, but she was sure he thought her charming and a lady. She gave him sixpence; then she opened her eyes, which fell upon the remains of a knuckle of veal which had confronted her without comfort upon three successive days. She had not much incentive to cook with Peter away; she preferred instead to make the most of the rest – often it was quite a rush for her to come from her district to prepare her meals in the limited time available – but now she regarded the unappetising dish without rancour. Her eyes looked towards a future not far distant; her vision transmuted the ragged bone to a jellied capon with, perhaps, asparagus. The savour of life was still in her, and (with a warm satisfaction) she felt her period of parsimonious endurance drawing swiftly towards its end.
In a cheerful humour she placed the postcard on the mantelpiece – visible object of inspiration – washed her teacup and saucer, and tidied up the room. It was the same room, holding the same bare oddments in lieu of furniture. But how could it be otherwise? How could she furnish the house when sometimes a single shilling was all that lay between her and absolute necessity? Still, the shilling was there. And for the rest, she’ could wait. She was still cheerful as she took up her bag and went back to her work. Back to the slums she went; back to her peremptory knocking on those inevitable doors; back to the inevitable declaration, ‘ Henderson & Shaw’; on and on, up the dark stairways, handling the dirty money, carrying that same ridiculous bag, stung by the squalid sights, nauseated by the foul smells, the vermin, the filth, keeping her head up to it, clinging to her loyalty.
He returned from that seaside, holiday brown and with an almost nautical jauntiness. ‘Spiffing,’ was the word he used to describe the excellence of his enjoyment; and his views upon Uncle Edward had – like his own constitution – undergone a sea change; Uncle Edward was now classed as ‘Not a bad old bird.’
After he had dazzled her with the splendour of the vacation, she surprised him by asking absently if a bald-headed waiter had served him in the hotel. He looked at her askance, then laughed. ‘Waitresses, mother, all waitresses! Not a waiter in the place.’
‘Well – there will be,’ she returned dreamily, ‘and a strawberry ice cream.’
His laugh became uproarious.
‘You’re a cure, Lucy,’ he gasped: he had lately fallen into the indulgence of denoting her by her Christian name. Though she felt the affection of the term, she did not quite like it.
‘Mother,’ she corrected sharply.
‘But, all the same,’ he persisted with streaming eyes, ‘that about the waiter –’ And he tapped his head significantly.
She paused, a little cross at his unwonted liberty. But it was the liberty of a strong affection; of this she was sure; her resentment melted under his smile.
That autumn he began to walk the wards. He began actually to shave – not spasmodically, but in regular, deadly earnest. Uncle Edward, an esoteric in the business of the toilette – he used even a face cream after his sensitive ablutions – had given him one of his razors, a noble blade which, though not exactly of Toledo, had at least shorn the prelate’s bristles during that memorable sojourn in Spain.
The idea of his shaving affected her curiously. Every morning she heated him specially some water in the kettle before he arose. Her devotion increased. She would look at him occasionally with a sort of brooding happiness: again she had a man within the house.
And autumn was in the air. A holiday was not for her, but this change of season was as freshening as a change of scene – that frosty nip she loved so well, the leaves sailing softly downwards in the park, a zest filling the crispy air. She drew fresh courage from the vigour of it all – courage that vitalised her purpose.
Chapter Twenty-One
‘You know, mother,’ he said, and when he made this casual presumption of her precognition she was aware, from long experience, that she did not know, ‘there’s a dance coming off tomorrow.’
‘Oh!’ she answered, without much interest; then, after a moment, she added: ‘ Do you want the table cleared now?’
‘If you like.’
‘It’s not six yet,’ she remarked, getting up from her chair, ‘ but I’ll light the gas, anyway.’ The premature dusk of the late autumn evening had already shadowed the quiet room to crepuscular twilight.
‘That dance –’ he persisted.
The gas exploded into illumination with a sharp plop; she was usually a careful lighter of the gas, and it was the quick report no doubt which made her slightly start.
‘What dance?’ she asked sharply.
‘I wouldn’t mind going, you know.’
She looked at him in astonishment; for one wild moment she thought he meant one of those dances held in the Grove Assembly Rooms – loud and odious gatherings advertised as ‘Select balls – gloves optional, slippers essential.’ What other dance, indeed, lay within the compass of her house? But, before she could speak, he said:
‘It’s at the Union – the Beta Club. I’m told it’s an excellent buffet.’ This last esoteric word seemed to remove his remark into the realms of the fantastic. Buffet, indeed! And they had just supped so meagrely – he upon a scrambled egg, she on a disconsolate heel of cheese. She had felt unwell during the day – a hard day it had been – Friday, too, the day when her exchequer always worried her – and her throat, never strong since that laryngitis at Ardfillan, ached suspiciously; now, with a stocking around her neck and her feet at last warm in felt slippers, she was prepared for comfort. And he spoke about a dance!
‘Wait till we’re more settled before you talk about dancing,’ she said more brusquely than she meant. ‘ Where on earth would you get the dress suit – and the mo
ney for the ticket? Expensive enough, I’ve no doubt, with their buffet!’ She returned him his word crossly.
‘Don’t get excited now, Madam Lucy,’ said he pacifically. ‘I got the ticket from a man on the committee – free gratis, you know – trust me for that. They’re short of men – see!’
She watched him whilst he inspected his fingernails.
‘But the dress suit?’ she said at length, in a more subdued manner.
‘That could be done, perhaps. Oh, yes, possibly – possibly.’
‘You wouldn’t hire one,’ she exclaimed quickly, struck by a degrading recollection of the various ‘Dress Agencies’ that lay upon the disreputable fringes of her district. ‘ I wouldn’t let you do that.’
‘Great Scot, no,’ he cried in a shocked voice. ‘A man couldn’t do a thing like that.’ Then his manner reverted to its former knowing complacency. ‘I couldn’t wear a rag off a peg like that. No! I know a better way than that.’
‘What, then?’ she demanded tartly; he was provoking her with his tedious procrastination, and on such a preposterous, vexatious subject.
‘Well, I was in at Ward’s the other day,’ he returned quickly. ‘You know we’re the best of friends. The question of dress clothes came up.’
Dress clothes, indeed, she thought. Why not dress suit?
‘I told him I couldn’t possibly afford them for a couple of years yet. He wanted to give me credit but I wasn’t having that.’ He paused significantly while his eye, now ingenuous, invited her approval; but, as she did not speak, he continued: ‘ Well – you know, Ward’s one of the best of fellows. He has an evening dress in the shop belonging to a man that’s gone out on a voyage to China – left to be refaced. I – I tried it on – it fits me like a glove.’ He tapped his teeth dispassionately. ‘Beautiful cut it has, too.’
The dress suit of a man in China! He was now, at least, utterly fantastic.
‘Mr Ward couldn’t lend you it,’ she said slowly.
‘Oh, but he will,’ he returned at once. ‘ He’s promised definitely. I can have it tomorrow morning. Nobody’ll be a bit the wiser.’
‘But – can you dance?’ she persisted, with unconscious misgiving.
‘Oh, I can get round,’ he grinned. He was astounding her. She saw that he had thought it all out; it was, in fact, arranged; she was startled at his resourcefulness. She did not wish him to go; she was, indeed, bitterly opposed to his going; but he was waiting – waiting on her word.
‘If you’ve got the suit and the ticket you may as well go.’ she said at last, in a reluctant voice, which came, it seemed, from a long way off.
‘Good enough, Lucy,’ he returned with a teasing satisfaction. ‘That’s settled. Now we’ll have the table cleared and get on with the work.’
She cleared the table; yet, during the evening, her eye fell upon him with an odd hesitation. The sudden broaching of this topic – it was like a trap sprung without warning in her face; and she was, though she admitted it to be ridiculous, distinctly startled. She knew the adage, ‘All work and no play’; she was aware of Peter’s incorruptible rectitude; it was, she told herself, because of her incipient chill that she felt as she did; yet the idea of a dance – a form of pleasure so different from that holiday with his Uncle Edward – filled her with a vague uneasiness which persisted during the evening and recurred at intervals during the following day.
Next evening, too, she felt her throat more inflamed, though she made no reference of this to Peter. He took his tea quickly and without appearing to notice what he ate; then, with a humorous side-glance towards her, he went into the front room with the cardboard box which he had brought home that afternoon. She put his hot water into the bathroom without comment; it seemed to her, as she listened to his movements, that he was a long time shaving – he was usually so quick. She thought also upon all the accoutrements necessitated by the ‘dress clothes’ – how had he achieved these? It struck her suddenly as utterly incongruous that he should be dressing up in such a fashion in this mean, impoverished house; had he no sense of the fitness of things? Her mood returned more strongly, more indignantly than before.
Yet, when at length she heard his step outside the door, she looked round from the sink expectantly. He entered calmly, walking neatly upon his borrowed patent leather shoes.
‘Well,’ he remarked tranquilly, ‘how does it go?’
Speechless, she could only stand, her hands still dripping with the dish-water, her lips apart, gasping, like a fish. This was not her son! – this debonair and godlike creature whose face shone with a pink translucency above his immaculate high collar and expanse of shirt, whose back revealed a lithe and tender elegance beneath the sensuous lines of the fine black cloth. He surpassed everything! Val Pinkerton, despite the decoration of the slashing red, was a mere simpering nonentity to this. She was moved, so profoundly moved that her eyes brimmed with tears.
‘Oh, Peter!’ she murmured, ‘really – really you look awfully well.’
The sight of her son standing against the cheap background of the kitchen, filling these borrowed dress clothes like a young Apollo, touched her as poignantly as a grief. At that instant she had an emotion towards him which she had never before experienced – a rushing tenderness – admiration mingling with love. Frank had never had a dress suit! Frank! No, not even Frank had ever looked like this. She had never loved Frank as she loved her son at this moment.
‘I can’t get over it,’ she whispered again; it was one of the rare occasions when she involuntarily exposed herself to him. ‘I hardly seem to know you. You’re – you’re –’
‘Clothes make the man, you know,’ he said. At that look in her eyes he had the grace to feel uncomfortable. ‘You must admit they’re pretty tony, though. You’re not going to sit up for me,’ he continued, adjusting his tie before the four square inches of unframed mirror on the wall.
‘Oh, yes, I will,’ she inserted quickly. ‘I couldn’t think not to.’
He shot his cuffs for practice, then said:
‘Almost time to move.’ He looked up suddenly and saw her intent face. ‘Why, I believe you’d like to come too, Lucy,’ he teased her. ‘And you wouldn’t be a wallflower so long as I was there.’
She made no answer, but she winced; then her face hardened. There was a moment’s silence.
‘You’ll not be late,’ she said stiffly.
‘No fear! Business tomorrow as usual! Give me a brush, though, mother, would you?’
She brushed him, then, finally, the richness of the suit shrouded by his coat, the effulgence of the shirt shaded by a claret silk muffler which she discovered in her drawer, he waved her good-bye and ran gaily down the stairs.
She went back to finish the dishes in chilled abstraction; she hardly saw what she was doing; the house seemed suddenly silent and empty, bereft of a presence almost luminous.
It was her night to wash down the stairs, but – although now, as always, she felt this a weakness on her part – her cold had so upset her that she had asked the charwoman to come. Mercifully, too, she reflected with an ironic twist to her lips. She would have looked well, cleaning the stairs, stepping aside from the wash-pail to let her son go sailing past.
Despite the rapture of the recent vision, her spirit commenced unusually and unaccountably to drop; she began even, as a means of distraction, to anticipate the arrival of Mrs Collins, who on most evenings had a philosophic humour epitomised in her phrase: ‘I’ve a joke in me for all that.’
But tonight, when she came, Martha was, in another of her phrases, ‘black miserable’; and, obtaining her utensils without much parley, began her work outside, slopping her cloth about to the mournful strains of her favourite song: it went like this – slightly falsetto, the words slurred together with an almost gloating relish:
‘I wish I was a maid again,
But a maid again I shall never be
Till an apple grows
On an orange tree.
‘I wish my baby i
t was born,
And crowing on some nurse’s knee;
And I was dead,
And in my grave,
With the green grass over me.’
Through the thin door the lugubrious ditty came to Lucy with irritating insistency. Yes, tonight she had little humour for the ballad, but at the end of Martha’s labours, as she handed over the customary sixpence, she demanded:
‘What’s wrong with you tonight, Martha? Is the husband out of work again?’
Martha Collins straightened her hat – constant token of her respectability – and said at once, without an eye-blink:
‘It’s my youngest son, lady. He’s a devil when the bead’s in him. And now I’ve got to marry him or see him damned.’
‘Some trouble is it?’ ventured Lucy.
‘Oh, I know it’s nothin’ unusual; ’tis nothin’ to fuss over at all at all. Yes, ’tis the will of God, I suppose, but when it’s the youngest it comes hard on a woman.’ Her eye fired. ‘’ Tis a trollop that’s trapped him no less and named him for the father of her misbegot.’
‘I see,’ said Lucy slowly. That young fellow – she remembered his ingenuous grin, like Peter’s it was! It gave her, by some queer analogy, a vague feeling of misgiving.
‘And him bringin’ fifteen shillin’ a week regular into the house,’ lamented Mrs Collins. ‘Much good may it do her – the bag and baggage that she be’s.’
Lucy stood at the door while the outraged mother, invoking the curse of Cromwell upon the enchantress who had seduced her Benjamin, went slowly down the stairs.
And it had an obscurely depressing effect upon her, this incident. She went in, hung about the house, put away her son’s discarded clothing, tidied up his shaving things in the bathroom, returned to the back room and sat down. She looked at the clock three times in half an hour; then, restlessly, she got up and put on some soup to simmer on the fire: he might like some when he came in; and a cup of it might do her throat good.
