by A. J. Cronin
She did not await his answer, but returned immediately to the kitchen, whither, after a moment of acute suspense, he followed her. He came in slowly, with his hands in his pockets, his lip heavy and, for all his years and size, his face expressive of an almost dismal discomfiture. Sitting down at the table, he began his tea in silence. Her hand, as she passed his cup, was deliberate and steady.
‘Some toast,’ she said distinctly, pushing forward the plate.
A long silence.
‘Thanks, mother.’ he said, with an effort masticating the hot buttered toast as though it were wood.
A deep and powerful emotion swept over her, mingled by an immense relief – a torrential rush of feeling under her outward calm. Her eyes fell upon his lowered head compassionately. She had lost her temper. She had not meant to subdue him like this; her victory was like a pain to her. But it had been for his good. Only for his good, and perhaps for hers. Yes – for their ultimate united good.
Chapter Twenty-Five
She felt that she had re-established their relationship, and, attempting, as it were, to vindicate her attitude, she increased her efforts to prove her worth to him. He was now working for his final professional examination, and she set herself in her own fashion to a final passionate endeavour. It was difficult. During that summer, whilst he was studying, her economic position grew steadily worse. Lately, prices of foodstuffs had risen; but her wages had not risen. The advance in values was not much; merely, as Miss Tweedy had once indicated, a halfpenny here and a halfpenny there; yet for Lucy those paltry halfpence were the jealous tokens of existence which must be fought for, guarded with a painful intensity. She ought by this time to have bettered her position. It was with this optimism that she had entered the office of Henderson & Shaw; but for a long time now she had accepted her own limitations. She was not clever – indeed, the adjective ‘stupid’ had more than once been levelled against her – and she perceived that never, now least of all, could she ameliorate her present humiliating occupation. It must serve its purpose; then she would cast it from her. And, if she was not brilliant, she was dogged, with a proved unyielding doggedness: a spirit which, increasing with increased adversity, grew within her grimly.
To see her coming along Flowers Street of an evening – a sultry summer evening when the air hung listlessly between the tired buildings – was to observe a spirit transcending the confines of its jaded flesh. Slowly she would come, her costume – worn to utter dinginess – clinging to her from the heat, her hat – battered now and of a greenish tint – evenly upon her brow, her figure erect, but with one shoulder drooping, weighted by the satchel holding her day’s purchases of food. Her lips were pale, her eyes remote and large, her face colourless, with a fine-drawn gauntness which made her cheekbones high and almost harsh. And about her hung that singular quality of isolation.
She gave no heed to her surroundings, avoiding the playing children quietly, careless of the staring women who stopped their close-mouth gossip to follow her with their eyes. They had their own name for her now, these women; but she was oblivious of that name, totally indifferent to their opinion of her conduct.
Though she was conscious of no martyrdom, she was, indeed, like a woman persecuted – persecuted by herself, marching to some tortured purpose of love and sacrifice. Yet whilst obsessed by this purpose, she was not insensible of the suffering it caused her. She did suffer; and she realised, too, despite her assumption of invincibility, that she was fast reaching the end of her endurance. Often, in the middle of the night, she would wake up in the closeness of her room dripping with the cold sweat of a frightful nightmare. Peter had failed in his examination; he had broken down in health; or, with unspeakable anguish and a hand clenched on nothing, she had lost her purse. Supreme bathos. Yet she was haunted by this last fear – the dread of her defeat through some monetary disaster. No matter that her budget was balanced in pence, her sleeping brain would laboriously reckon, reckon over and over again painfully, explore a better way of expending her paltry wage. She awoke sometimes exhausted, as if her body had been beaten by a pitiless hail of coins.
The essence of her life was this: she denied herself everything for the purpose of her ultimate supreme gratification. No sacrifice was too great in this, the culmination of her endeavour. Dress, holidays, she forgot about them all – she tried, too, to forget about her food. Her diet became fixed, unalterable as her own will. It was a meagre diet; not her favourite chicken and asparagus, but it was enough to live on – she had the evidence of White Street – and this momentarily was all that she demanded. Nor did she suffer great physical disability, beyond certain transient attacks of giddiness, from this too farinaceous diet. But it had begun, though she failed to recognise the cause, seriously to affect the condition of her teeth. Once her teeth had been firm and even, white – as Frank had often declared – as new milk. At first in Flowers Street she had continued to take great care of those teeth, brushing them night and morning with camphorated chalk; but toothbrushes – especially the cheaper ones – became so quickly denuded of their bristles that in time she had stopped buying them: begun, instead, to use a scrap of folded linen. Then, with her eye fixed always on economy – Peter always purchased his own tooth-paste – she had abandoned the camphorated chalk in favour of salt – that coarse salt she knew to be an excellent cleanser.
Now, as a result of these limitations, her teeth were decaying rapidly. Lately, indeed, she had suffered excruciating attacks of toothache, arising from two hollow molars – now mere shells of teeth – on either side of her lower jaw. She did not know what to do about these teeth. Determinedly, she made up her mind not to trouble Peter with the mention of the matter; deep in his final preparations for the examination, he had his own worries.
Nevertheless, this ceaseless nagging exasperated her, the more because she was absorbed, and desired to be absorbed, by the final stages of his study. It irked her, that pain, when, with her whole soul, she wished to fling herself into this last effort. She was trying to do everything. By day she raced through her own work, hurrying home to suit his convenience; his meals appeared upon the table as if by magic; for fear of disturbing him, she sat for hours perfectly motionless, in her favourite rocker; she took her knitting to the next room, lest the click of the needles should distract him; adventuring downstairs with rare fortitude, she prevailed upon Mrs Maitland to determine for the present her daughter’s Lydian measures. She thought of everything, and omitted nothing; she rose, indeed, despite her difficulties, to heights which surely were sublime.
But this toothache, yes, this ridiculous intervention in the face of the sublime – what was she to do about it? Just when she wanted to be at her best, to make the last spurt during his examination, it paralysed her with its pain.
On the eve of the examination, hurrying on her weekly round of White Street, as she stood for a moment with Mrs Collins, she was taken in the middle of a sentence by a dreadful twinge. Immediately her hand flew to her cheek, her face stiffened.
‘The face-ache, is it?’ ventured Martha sympathetically. She was nursing, affectionately, the offspring of her erring son – temporarily surrendered to her care by ‘the baggage’, who, immured for the moment in Rotten Row, was engrossed by a further demonstration of her fecundity.
‘Yes, it’s toothache,’ said Lucy slowly, when the edge of the pang was blunted.
‘Why don’t you pluck up your heart and have it out?’ returned Mrs Collins, clapping the infant’s bare bottom soothingly, and dangling seductively a china dog before its dubious eye. ‘My Benny had one out at the Dental Hospital last year, and never knew a thing about it. After spending good money on a gill of whisky to kill the pain, he went up and had it out for nothing.’
‘Did he?’ returned Lucy slowly, struck by an idea. The Dental Hospital – she could attend this free!
It was, in effect, not the pain, but the price of the extraction, which she dreaded. Yet somehow her pride recoiled from the thought of degrading
herself by attending at a free institution; she – Lucy Moore – to do that. It was unthinkable.
But the toothache got no better, and, after five o’clock upon the same day, as she went along Young Street, she paused at the shop surgery of an American dentist – a cheap establishment which in passing she had often observed. She hesitated, then abruptly she went in. Her intention was merely that of enquiry, but the dentist – title of courtesy, for he was quite unqualified – had a bustling way with him. A big square-shouldered man he was, with a blue serge suit and a brilliantly gilded smile, and he had her in the red plush chair before she could protest.
‘Wouldn’t be a bad idea to clear the mouth and have artificial,’ he suggested cheerfully, playing with the forceps.
‘No – no. I only want rid of my toothache,’ she returned.
‘We’ll take four out, then, to start with’; and he lifted his syringe. ‘You’ll never feel them, with alvatunder. It’s easy as shelling peas.’
She put her hand on his sleeve.
‘But the price?’ she protested. ‘ That’s what I want to know.’
‘Five shillings the lot.’
Her look became troubled.
‘I couldn’t –’ she began.
‘Say four shillings, then.’
She shook her head, and made as though to rise from the chair.
‘Say three and six then,’ he exclaimed, restraining her. ‘That’s rock-bottom – hardly pays me for the anaesthetic.’
Three shillings and sixpence! It was still an impossible sum. She thought for a moment, then, looking at him, she said slowly:
‘How much without – without anything?’
He stared back at her, sensing at last something of utter indigence.
‘Oh, that,’ he returned. ‘I’ll take them out for a couple of shillings.’
Again she became thoughtful.
‘Very well,’ she said at length.
She lay back in the chair, gripped its arm tightly, dosed her eyes, and opened her mouth.
The torture was exquisite, like tongues of fire lancinating her jaw, searing into her very brain. She had never dreamed that anything could be so agonising – the crunching of the forceps on the last tooth ran through the marrow of her bones. But she made no sound.
At last it was done. She sat up, washed the blood from her mouth with the water he gave her, then, with a pallid face, she rose and, opening her worn purse, handed him the two shillings. It was a small price to pay for the conservation of her pride.
On the way home she felt weak, overcome by a vague nervelessness.
‘Good Lord, mother,’ said Peter, looking up as she came in. ‘what on earth’s the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ she answered. ‘ It may be the heat. But you – how have you been getting on?’ And she began as usual to make his tea.
Next day the examination began: the final test.
Her mouth was slow of healing, but, free from the persistent pain, she was a woman refreshed. During the succeeding days she gave no sign of strain. She was calm, reassuring him with her unspoken confidence. For the space of a week she saw him come and go: speeding him with fortitude, meeting him with an unshaken composure. Then it was over. Then, also, a quick reaction took her. She felt limp, languid as from a lavish spending of her forces, liable to strange fits of agitation.
When the day drew near for the announcement of the results, this agitation, long concealed, broke through, and almost betrayed her. Success meant everything to her. She felt, with a sort of fatality, that if he failed now she could never repeat this supreme effort. In it, she knew, she had touched the pinnacle of her powers.
Another week passed slowly, but this thought did not pass: it was indeed, still in her mind as she went into the office on the morning of the appointed day.
Chapter Twenty-Six
‘You’re a mass of nerves, my woman,’ said Miss Tinto, treating her with a magisterial dignity which held a hint of reproof. ‘As if your worrying would make the slightest difference.’
‘Is this how you feel?’ broke in Adam Dandie from the far corner of the room, and, affecting to tremble violently, he shook his crescentic limbs in palsied agitation.
‘Not exactly,’ said Lucy, with forced smile.
‘Ah!’ said Dandie, ceasing to shiver and returning to his normal acidity. ‘What’s the good of upsetting yourself? He’ll get through all right. They let anybody through nowadays. It’s too easy for words.’
‘Easy! It’s desperately difficult,’ she answered sharply, and paused. ‘Not that Peter won’t manage it.’
‘Why worry then?’ said Dandie cunningly. He had the stupendous faculty of diverting the issue to get the better of an argument.
‘Oh, I’m not worrying,’ said Lucy, with a jerk of her head.
‘That’s right,’ said Dandie, grinning maliciously.
Miss Tinto vented a refined snort.
‘You’ll know all in good time,’ said she with a conclusive air of wisdom, ‘and the world won’t stop going round if –’
Suddenly the phone rang. She paused, lifted the receiver, and listened. Then, with a curious expression, she turned to Lucy.
‘You,’ she said. ‘You’re wanted.’
They both looked at her as she went over to the desk.
It was Peter’s voice which came over the wire as clearly as though he stood beside her.
‘Is that you, mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well –’ he paused. ‘ I thought I’d ring you up, you know –’
‘What is it?’ she exclaimed urgently. ‘It’s not – nothing’s –’
‘Oh, no. Nothing’s wrong.’
‘What, then?’ A sudden weakness took her. It was unprecedented for him to ring her up, and now his hesitation convinced her of some impending disaster.
‘Well – it occurred to me you might like to know –’
‘Yes,’ she broke in quickly.
His laugh came teasingly over the wire.
‘Don’t get excited, Madam Lucy.’
She said nothing; she was trembling; sick with her suspense.
‘Anyway,’ his voice continued jocularly, ‘I thought you might care to know that it’s Dr Moore that’s speaking to you.’
For a second she did not understand; then she gasped:
‘Peter – it’s not true!’
‘Yes, it’s a fact,’ he assured her lightly. ‘I’ve just been up and seen the lists. It’s positive.’
She could not articulate; her eyes blinded suddenly with tears; a tremendous ecstatic sweep of joy surged over her.
‘You knew all along I’d pull it off, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, yes,’ she stammered; her tongue felt stiff; her emotion was choking her.
There was a silence; he seemed to be waiting for her to congratulate him; but she was still too overcome to speak. Then again his voice came back.
‘I’ll not be in for lunch today – I’ll be with some of the others here – a little celebration.’
‘Of course,’ she agreed quickly.
‘That’s right then, mother.’
‘Peter –’ She found at last some expression of her happiness. But he had gone. She stood facing the telephone, dazzled by an inward light; then she hung up the receiver slowly. A supreme, a sublime beatitude possessed her; her face was strangely illuminated. She had struggled, but the struggle was over. She had fought, but the fight was ended. And she had won; yes, victory was hers. She had vindicated herself! Between them they had won that frightful unequal conflict. From nothing, and with nothing, she had elevated her son to a noble and exalted profession. He might have been a pettifogging clerk, a shop assistant, an artisan, a common worker in a shipyard. But no – she had said otherwise; she had stood alone to say it; and with what determination had she consummated her decree. Suddenly her heart soared. She wanted to call out in the ecstasy of her happiness. She looked round the room exultantly. Victory! Victory! It was hers!
; ‘He’s through!’ she cried, with an excusable emotion. ‘My boy’s through!’
They gazed at her for a moment in silence.
‘What did I tell you?’ exclaimed Dandie. ‘Didn’t I say it was easy?’
‘Good!’ said Miss Tinto, with a mild approving nod. ‘Good! Did he get honours – or anything?’
‘I don’t know – I don’t care,’ returned Lucy excitedly. Their lack of enthusiasm astounded her. This new wonder of the universe caused them neither to marvel nor to admire. Politely they made a lukewarm murmur of congratulation. They were pleased; but they were not enraptured.
‘You’re the proud mother now,’ said Dandie, not without a shade of sarcasm.
‘You’re out of pain, anyway,’ said Miss Tinto succinctly, ‘ and that’s a mercy.’
‘She’ll be too big for her boots now,’ said Dandie sagely, addressing the ceiling. ‘ She’ll be leaving us for her estate.’
‘I should think so,’ returned Lucy gaily. ‘I’ve had about enough of this work.’ And she smiled at them.
She went out of the office in this same warm glow of happiness. In the streets the life of the city seemed suddenly transfigured: the colours of the trams seemed cut from rainbows; men rushing past her to their work had a gay impetuosity; shop windows seduced her; the sun had a high brilliance; even the air was rare, and had the sparkle of a bubbling wine.
All day as she did her work, in which there was, strangely, no labour, the thought of her triumph – for her son’s triumph had become hers – was constantly before her mind. At intervals she made little exclamations to herself of wonder and delight. Her face, relieved for once of its habitual fixity, was animated as a young girl’s; her lips, no longer drooping, had that upward contented curl of her youth. Her foot regained its spring, her back its suppleness.
Ten words upon the telephone and ten years slipped miraculously from her shoulders. She did not view the matter as she might have done. A woman of no consequence, a woman employed in a low and almost menial capacity, a woman who spent her entire days working amongst the squalid sights and odours of the slums – this woman had pinched and scraped and starved herself to allow her undistinguished son to complete the curriculum of a provincial college and to emerge, finally, in company with one hundred others equally ill-fledged and inexperienced, who, mouthing with false measure the dog Latin of the Hippocratic oath, would shortly be loosed upon an unsuspecting universe. No wonder, then, that Dandie had with difficulty suppressed his yawn, that Miss Tinto’s tone had sounded tamely tepid. But for Lucy it was not like this. No! A million times no! To her the battle had been homeric; the prize supreme; and now the victory – so hardly won – was ecstasy inexpressible.
