by A. J. Cronin
Again she seated herself; she had no energy for her knitting; the clock indicated that it was past his usual bedtime, yet she felt it strange not to see him there seated opposite her. She wondered if he were enjoying himself. Staring in front of her, her hands idle in her lap, she had upon her face a somewhat cold severity.
Then suddenly she was surprised to hear a light knocking at her door. For a moment she thought it was her son, and at once she started from her chair. But it was not he; it was, strangely, Mrs Finch from next door, standing nervously upon the doorstep.
‘I saw you weren’t in bed by the light,’ Bessie began, with a flickering shadow of her usual smile. ‘I wondered if – if I could come in and sit with you.’
‘Sit with me,’ echoed Lucy. For a reason clearly understood, she admitted no one to her house; and it was, she felt, at this hour an extraordinary request.
‘Yes,’ faltered Bessie. ‘A sort of frightened feeling came over me. It’s – it’s one of Mr. Finch’s late nights. Sometimes he’s not in till twelve.’ Her full face had a pallor in the dim light of the landing.
‘Come in then,’ said Lucy, after a moment’s hesitation. She had now an obligation to Bessie and to Bessie’s mother which her sense of justice forbade her to repudiate. But her tone was cold. They went into the kitchen, where, despite her trepidation, Bessie had a quick curious glance for the furnishings of the room; they sat down opposite each other.
‘It’s downright good of you,’ breathed the visitor, with a short gulp, ‘ to have me.’
‘Not at all.’
‘I don’t know what came over me! You know – all day by yourself – sitting for hours –’ She paused, almost in irritation; but Lucy, though observing the other’s agitation, made no overture of curiosity; there was an awkward silence.
‘Peter’s out at a dance,’ she said at last, making an effort to ease the strained stillness.
‘A dance!’ echoed Mrs Finch; her eye lit up with a pale gleam. ‘I used to love the dancing myself – I was that fond of a cheery tune.’
‘Yes?’ said Lucy politely.
‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ returned Bessie, her eye suddenly moist, the golden down upon her upper lip invested with a tremulous quiver. ‘It was at a ball I – I met Mr Finch. I wore a white dress and a yellow ribbon in my hair, and a lovely yellow sash. He said I was—’ Her soft plump face drew into ludicrous creases, and she burst outright into tears. She laid her head sideways on the table and wept unrestrainedly; between her sobs she gasped out, in broken lamentations. ‘I’m sorry – I’m sorry,’ she wailed, ‘coming in and greeting on you like this. But I can’t help it. I can’t help it, I tell you. It’s John – my own Johnnie, I love him that much –’ She broke off, choked by her sobs, and Lucy had a swift, startled vision of Johnnie, the mild little man next door, fat, bald of head, and middle-aged. Johnnie was no Romeo, but he was none the less the bridegroom, the paragon, the fount and origin of Bessie’s bliss.
‘What’s wrong then?’ she cried.
‘The drink – the drink,’ wailed Bessie. ‘I’ve kept it till myself for months, and now it’s choking me. It’s soak, soak, soak all the time for him, I tell you. I never knew when I took him – I thought he liked a glass and that was all to it. Oh! it’s killing me – me, mind you, yes, me that was brought up respectable. There’s not a night in the week but he comes home drenched with it. And my mother – she warned me too – but oh, I’m fond, fond of him. That’s the pity of it.’
A frightful suspicion ran into Lucy’s mind.
‘Does he – does he beat you?’
‘No, not him,’ the other woman moaned. ‘ I wish he would. I would like it even if he leathered me. Yes, leathered me stark naked,’ she moaned again hysterically. ‘I want him, I tell you – and all he wants is the drink. He falls into the bed and snores like a pig – that’s all I get out of him now – snores!’ she laughed wildly. ‘Then next morning he eats ham and eggs and swears he’ll go off it. Then in he comes at night as bad as ever he was. Blind, rotten drunk!’ And she went on rocking herself hysterically, bumping her head fiercely against the hard table as if rejoicing in the pain of each concussion. Lucy did not know what to do. She was not demonstrative; she could make no facile show of sympathy; but she was concerned. She sat stiffly, gazing compassionately at the bowed figure, waiting in a wise silence for the other’s outburst to cease. At length Bessie raised her head, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand like a tearful child.
‘I’ve made a fool of myself,’ she sniffed. ‘A downright fool. Haven’t I just?’
‘No, no,’ said Lucy soothingly, ‘and I’m – I’m sorry.’
‘It’s done me good, anyway,’ returned the other, ‘and I’m sure I’m much obliged to you.’ She paused, then added with a gentle defiance: ‘You know all about me now. But I don’t care. I’m a healthy girl, and I can’t help myself.’ As she spoke, she inclined her ear to a listening attitude, then said limply, ‘I think I hear him now. I’ll better go and see.’
They went to the door, and there viewed in silence the slow ascending figure of John Finch. He came carefully, with a meticulous step, his wary hand firm upon the balustrade: he was calm – too calm – and his breath inflamed the air. Preceded by the powerful odour of cloves, he advanced, amiable, dignified; his eyes, surveying the world, admitted, nay proclaimed, the brotherhood of man.
‘Ah!’ he said tranquilly, noting them profoundly, but without surprise as he achieved the head of the stairs. ‘Mish Moore and my Bessie. Good!’ His morning taciturnity was gone; he had now the careful, slightly-slurred speech of the habitual toper. He closed one eye and added conversationally: ‘Nish nigh touside.’
‘Come away in, John,’ said Bessie hopelessly.
‘Mush speak Mish Moore,’ said John pleasantly.
‘Oh, come in, John.’
‘Mush speak, Bessie – mush speak.’
She took his arm and tried to lead him into the house; but he straddled his short fat legs and exclaimed with a rush:
‘Mish Moore, I know your bro’-in-law Joe. Big cushtomer mine ’n Levenford Fine big Joe –’
But Lucy, with a last pitying glance towards Bessie’s tortured face, had closed the door; she stood for a moment, rigid, listening; then at last she heard them go in, the drunken speech finally resolve itself to silence.
She went back into the kitchen. What an evening! She was dismayed by its strange irregularity. The departure from her fixed routine, the startling sight of her son emerging in one swift breath as a man of fashion, his absence at the dance, and then – as if these had not already been enough – the sudden unexpected intrusion of these two tragedies – ordinary, undignified, even disgusting, yet out of which two separate fears emerged and crystallised slowly within her mind. And these fears began to torment her. What if his fate should be that of the unfortunate Mrs Collins’s son? Or even that of the wretched Finch? He had said, too, something about a buffet. Her mind’s eye conjured up a circular bar, glittering with lights, where gilded youths in evening dress lolled in debauchery, tempting her son to braid vineleaves on his brow. She had been mad to let him go. Her face hardened incredibly. She scowled at her own weakness in permitting him to go; yet inwardly she trembled – shaken by a painful presentiment of disaster.
Thus she sat waiting. And then, out of the strangeness and incredible torment of the night, a step sounded on the stairs – light, assured, and rapid. She did not move; but her eye lightened. It was her son! And immediately he appeared, pink, cheerful, unconcerned, and slightly damp around the region of his collar.
‘What, still up, old girl?’ he exclaimed as he came into the room. ‘You should have been asleep hours ago!’
Asleep! She almost laughed! Her relief, indeed, at the sight of him moved her suddenly with a swift elation. He was back: normal, unassuming, perfect, his breath untainted by the reek of liquor, his cheek unsoiled by the wretched caresses of a harlot. Never would she suspect him again. Never!
&n
bsp; ‘Did you have a nice time?’ she asked kindly.
‘Oh, fair enough,’ he returned, after appearing to consider the point. ‘ Poor lot of females there’; and he shrugged his shoulders with a disparaging air.
Her heart leaped within her.
‘I’m sure you danced with somebody nice,’ she persisted, torturing herself to make sure.
‘Not a one!’ Then he gave a short laugh. ‘One good lady told me I walked all over her feet.’ Although she did not realise it, the evening had not been for him a brilliant success: he had been told occasionally that to get round the room was not the act of dancing. He yawned prodigiously.
The sight of that yawn, so natural, so spontaneous, so infinitely reassuring, restored her confidence in him completely. She gave him a cup of hot soup and watched him drink it. Then, at half-past one, she went to bed happily, smiling at her own absurdity. She fell asleep instantly.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘It’s a confounded nuisance making us come up like this,’ Peter said, as they left the offices of Fullerton & Co. ‘You would think it was charity they were giving us.’
He had been to receive the quarterly instalment of his bursary, and Lucy, fulfilling the stipulation of the philanthropic but mistrustful benefactress, had been constrained to accompany him.
‘You never know,’ she returned mildly; conceiving the outrageous but not impossible case of a student who might hasten with his bursary to the nearest tavern, she added: ‘Some might abuse it. It’s not everybody can be trusted.’ She did not add, ‘ like yourself’, but that was what she meant. His conduct in regard to the money had all along been irreproachable; not a penny wasted, everything spent in the right direction and upon himself.
‘Crusty old fool she must have been,’ he muttered under his breath, and his tone deposed Kezia Reekie and her trust finally and for ever beyond the pale of decency.
‘What was that?’ said Lucy. Sometimes she thought she was getting a little deaf.
‘I was blessing Kezia,’ he declared ambiguously, ‘relict of the grocer.’
They walked down to the tram in the bright afternoon spring sunshine. She had asked permission to leave her work early, and now it gave her an unusually companionable feeling to be with her son here at this hour. It was seldom they had the opportunity of going out together: the relaxation of ‘a match’ naturally claimed him on Saturday afternoons, and on Sundays she had formed now the habit of going to an early Mass while he went out at eleven – in order to devote the forenoon to cooking him a hot dinner.
Since her absurd fancies on the night of the dance – she still had remorse when she recollected this – she had clung to him perhaps a little more eagerly. Now she could afford to smile at these delusions, yet for some time after that event she had been nervous, and easily disturbed. Coming upon the dress suit hanging in inoffensive limpness within the wardrobe, she had said irritably:
‘When is that thing going out the house? It doesn’t belong to you, does it?’
He had smiled at her, and replied:
‘No hurry, mother. It won’t bite you. Time enough when Ward asks for it.’
His very mildness had been like a reproach. Now, as they turned into a busier street, the recollection of these ridiculous suspicions was far from her mind. She was content to enjoy the sunshine, his society, and her emancipation from the slums, where, by reason of a scarlatina epidemic, her work was at present unusually trying. She enjoyed, also, an occasional glance at the shop windows as she passed along this, the most fashionable thoroughfare in the city. Strangely, when alone she shunned this street, with its large, expensive stores and throngs of modish women; or at least she hurried swiftly through; it gave her, by contrast with the pavements she usually trod, and by reason of her undistinguished dress, a feeling of inferiority and discontent Now, however, with Peter by her side, she absorbed a pleasant sense of his elegant escort; and she maintained a leisured way, drawing in with satisfaction the occasional glances directed towards them by the passers-by.
Jabots were being worn, she noted, and pale pink – which she had always suited – seemed to be the prevailing shade. Although she had not bought a dress in the last four years, it was almost a pleasure to discover that her interest in the fashions had not abated; she reflected that she was really fond of clothes – she had always liked to be well dressed – and when Peter was through she would, she told herself, have her fling. The sight of the windows intensified her good humour.
‘It’s a lovely day really,’ she said, withdrawing her gaze from the windows and smiling up at him. ‘Don’t you smell the spring in the air?’
‘Plenty of scent about here, anyway,’ he returned rather constrainedly. He had been taciturn during the expedition, and now held his head aloofly from the crowds and from her.
‘Lavender water used to be my favourite,’ she replied. ‘You’ll need to give me an enormous bottle some day.’
She had hardly uttered the words before her open expression suddenly narrowed; she paled to the lips and let her gaze run in front of her towards infinity. Coming out of Ray’s – the most exclusive costumier in the street – she had observed the smartly turned out figure of a woman. It was her sister-in-law, Eva – Richard’s wife.
It was not the first time she had seen Eva, who was an indefatigable shopper in this district and in the city generally; yes, she had often seen Eva, but the truth was that Eva had never seen her. Perhaps on Lucy’s part consciousness of inferiority in dress and occupation, perhaps her recollection of their last encounter at Ralston, favoured this mutual slipping past of glances; but she had nevertheless the bitter conviction that Eva, from motives of unconcealed snobbery, avoided the recognition.
With this in mind, she had begun unconsciously to hasten her step when all at once she heard Eva’s refined and rather affected voice addressing her. She started; rescued her glance from oblivion.
‘It isn’t you, Lucy, surely,’ Eva was saying with her familiar lisp. ‘Imagine meeting you here!’
‘Yes,’ returned Lucy with conscious irony, ‘it’s strange.’ The blood had rushed back to her face, and she felt, angrily, that she was blushing. She was not afraid of Eva, nor was she afraid to show that she detested her. But Eva smiled: she was cool and pleasant and socially at ease. With a slight tightening of her lips Lucy observed the smartness of the other’s tailor-made grey costume, her pink hat, her lace jabot – they were being worn – the long umbrella slanting coquettishly along her crooked arm; no item of the costly outfit was missed.
‘I’m often in town, but I’m so shortsighted I hardly recognise people in the streets these days,’ continued Eva – and in this artless excuse Lucy read a confirmation of her suspicion.
‘My work takes me to another part of the town,’ she returned meaningly, and with unmistakable curtness.
Eva emitted a sympathetic sound – which came easily on her lisp – then her smile swept on to Peter, encompassing his well-groomed appearance appreciatively.
‘This isn’t your boy, surely?’ she exclaimed. ‘Why – he’s positively a man now!’
‘Oh, not quite,’ said Lucy definitely; but she thought: So that’s why you stopped – because you wanted to find out about my son; and she added: ‘ We’re just hurrying to get our tram.’
But Eva made no motion to go; she remarked instead to Peter:
‘I’d hardly have known you – and you my nephew. Isn’t it ridiculous? Why haven’t we seen something of you all this time?’
‘I don’t know, Aunt Eva,’ Peter replied; his aloofness was gone, wafted from him by her air of modish friendliness; he was smiling, rather effusive. ‘We don’t go out much really.’
With a mild resignation he made his seclusion an anchorite’s.
‘That wicked mother of yours – keeping you to her apronstrings,’ chided Aunt Eva, turning to Lucy and wagging a smooth-gloved digit reprovingly. ‘Why – we want to see you out at Le Nid.’
‘Peter’s got his work to do
,’ exclaimed Lucy sharply, ‘and I’ve got mine.’
‘Oh, mother –’ said Peter indignantly.
Eva gave her little laugh – like a bird – in contribution to the conversation: with her sharply angled nose thrown back, she gaily pecked the air.
‘We haven’t much time for running about,’ threw out Lucy. She knew she was being outrageous, but something antagonistic rising under the other’s suave and well-dressed elegance forced her to add: ‘We’ve got to work hard.’
‘Really, mother,’ said Peter again. He seemed frankly ashamed of her lack of courtesy, and looked across at his aunt apologetically.
‘I only wanted you to come out on some Saturday,’ said Eva brightly. ‘It’s absurd, our hardly knowing each other.’
Absurd! Yes, thought Lucy grimly, but the absurdity was not of my seeking.
‘I’d love to come out,’ Peter was saying. ‘ It’s very pleasant out Ralston way.’
‘We have tennis-parties occasionally,’ said Eva. ‘Quite informal.’
Informal! Whoever heard of a formal tennis-party, thought Lucy bitterly.
‘Tennis!’ he echoed. ‘Lovely!’
‘You do play, don’t you?’ she cajoled.
‘Well’ – he hesitated – ‘I suppose I could. I’ve often wanted to.’ Certainly the vision of his adolescent fancy had often arrayed him in spotless flannels of an immaculate cut and thrust the accessory of a racquet into his receptive hand.
‘Well, I insist that you come,’ lisped Eva. ‘And bring your mother too – of course. I’ll write you for certain.’
‘I’m afraid Peter has no racquet,’ said Lucy in a strained voice. ‘He won’t be able to go.’ She was, she realised, placing herself in a false position. She loved Peter, yet she was deliberately alienating him; she was aware that she wished him to play tennis to his heart’s contentment: nevertheless, something rose up tightly in her throat and constrained her to oppose his acceptance of this invitation. She did not like Eva; she felt jealously that the other woman had no shadow of right to interfere with Peter; neither Richard nor she, the wife of Richard, had acted fairly by her or by her son. Eva’s well-dressed air of superiority stung her; Eva’s presence poisoned indeed the balmy air, darkened for her the brilliance of the day.
