by A. J. Cronin
Again that agony of jealousy. Her limbs trembled as she sat, and, despite her control, she burst out:
‘What has she done for you to deserve that?’
He faced her: the reaction from his recent humiliation goaded him to face her.
‘She’s done nothing,’ he cried. ‘I don’t want her to do anything. I happen to love her – and she happens to love me – that’s all,’
‘Love!’ she exclaimed violently. ‘What does she know about love – that soft, pink and white creature? Would she work her fingers to the bone for you? Would she fight for you and slave for you and starve for you?’
‘I don’t want her to do any of those things,’ he said, flushing. ‘There are other things in life besides that.’
‘How long have you known her?’ she persisted, in that fiercely concentrated tone. ‘A few months – and because she’s got a doll’s face, because you think she’s pretty, you forget about me.’ Her breath came hoarsely, as though she choked. ‘It’s shameful of you to behave like this. Have you no gratitude, no sense of decency in you?’
‘What do you expect me to be?’ he retorted angrily. ‘Do you expect me never to get married, never to get on in life? Do you think you can always tie me to your apron-strings?’
‘You, not twenty-three yet,’ she cried, outraged, ‘to talk like that. How dare you? To think that you speak so glibly of marriage – at that first sight of some silly smirking face!’
‘Don’t go on like that,’ he answered sullenly. ‘I don’t like it.’
‘I will go on,’ she panted, her hand to her throat. ‘And I’ll settle this once and for all. You’re all that I’ve got – and to see you behave like this – at your age – it’s maddening!’ With a painful effort she controlled herself; a cold perspiration was upon her skin. Her face was stern as she said distinctly: ‘What exactly do you propose to do about this Rose Tully?’ She bit out the name with a grim determination.
Her words startled him; his composure began to give way; he glanced at her uneasily, and muttered:
‘What are you going on about – upsetting yourself – making a fuss about nothing? It’s foolish.’
‘You won’t make a fool of me,’ she persisted harshly. ‘ Not at this stage.’
‘No, no,’ he said restlessly. ‘How could I do that? Don’t be absurd. Everything’s all right between us.’
‘Then answer my question,’ she said fiercely. ‘ What are you going to do about this – this doll that Eva has flung at your head?’
‘Don’t, mother,’ he broke in uncomfortably. ‘Don’t make such a fuss.’
His lofty manner was gone: again he looked at her, muttering under his breath.
But she was not to be put off. She was resolved to terminate the issue once for all, to seize this infatuation, to crush it, annihilate it, before it could flourish and destroy her.
‘For the last time will you tell me,’ she exclaimed grimly, ‘are you going to give her up?’
He was cornered; yes, he was completely cornered. She was so unreasonable, unamenable to compromise; it was hopeless to attempt to explain Rose’s love for him, Mr. Tully’s generous interest in him, amounting actually to an offer to finance him in a practice – all the glorious prospects for his future. How could she be made to understand this? He could foresee so clearly her conduct should he reveal his plans; she was so queer she would make a scene, a disturbance, an outrage of some sort.
Suddenly he raised his eyes, which had fixed glumly on the carpet, and he looked at her – that old ingenuous expression of his boyhood.
‘There’s some sense in what you say, mother,’ he declared slowly. ‘I suppose I am rather young to think of these things. Perhaps in a year or two –’ He broke off, still smiling at her diffidently.
There was a pause. For a long time she gazed at him with secret intensity.
‘You’ll stop all this nonsense?’ she demanded slowly. ‘Give her up – let nobody come between us?’
He affected to hesitate, then all at once he said frankly:
‘All right, mother. Have it your way.’
There was another silence during which she fathomed once more the depths of his dark brown eyes. Then she sighed; her set lips relaxed. He was Peter, her son, her own flesh and blood. He could not lie to her. She had won.
‘You’ve given me your word, Peter,’ she said quietly. ‘And, after all, it’s only your duty and my right.’
‘Yes, mother,’ he said.
She laid her hand on his arm.
‘You’ve got to promise me another thing before I go out of this room,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s only just that you should do so.’
He gave her a doubtful wavering smile; then, still looking at him fixedly, she drew a deep breath.
‘I want you to apply for that post in North Staffordshire. We’ve got to make our start some time, and the sooner it’s made the better.’
There was another pause, electric with the almost breathless silence. Then his eyes fell.
‘Of course I will!’ he said at length, picking at the arm of his chair. ‘As if you couldn’t trust me.’
‘You’ve given me your word on these two points,’ she said in a low voice.
His eyes moved restlessly, evading the intensity of her look.
‘That’s right,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ve promised.’
He might have been a boy, called suddenly to her knee for some transgression. And now, indeed, he was as suddenly forgiven. Her impassive face broke, her emotion welling through that mask of ice; a slow tear welled into her eye and ran down her pale cheek.
‘I knew you would do the right thing by me, Peter,’ she said in a moving tone, stung by a pang for having doubted his loyalty to her. ‘ I knew it, my son.’
Before she left he had written his application for the Staffordshire post. She had a premonition about that application – the strange certainty that it would be successful. She posted it, indeed, with her own hand, on her way back to Flowers Street.
Chapter Thirty
She went upon her holiday with a feeling of hard-won victory. In a sense she did not wish to go: she was too busy looking ahead, her mind too active managing in advance their new establishment. But her arrangements had been made, both at the office and with Miss Tweedy; she had, too, a sort of reactionary elation from her success; she submitted, therefore, with a preordained acquiescence to the circumstances which took her back to Doune.
Though nothing had been heard from Stafford, she had nevertheless that definite intuition – optimistic perhaps, yet understandable in her present mood: and, even if he did not get that post, there were others – yes, he was certain of obtaining an assistantship when he terminated his appointment at the end of April. And so she went off cheerfully from St Enoch’s Station. Actually, too, Peter had come to see her off. He it was, indeed, who had encouraged her to go; and now, as the train rushed through the same cuttings which she had traversed five years previously, she saw again that last look upon his face: constrained, almost apologetic. It soothed her to recall that look. He had so clearly come back to her. He was a good boy, her Peter, amenable to reason; and she had made him see the folly of his recent attitude. At twenty-three, indeed, to contemplate an attachment like that! Yes, he had come back to her. Of that she had no doubt. None. Once she had doubted Frank. Ah; if she had but taken his word. If only through that bitter lesson, she would never question the word and loyalty of her son.
Doune, she noted when she arrived, was greatly changed – rows of new bungalow houses ranged around the station – but Miss Tweedy was not changed. It gave her quite a rush of feeling to see the slight, still drooping figure after all these years. And Miss Tweedy was, in her own particular fashion, equally delighted to see Lucy.
‘You know,’ said she, laying down a plate of the memorable buns and placing her bony white hand upon the sharp angle of her hip. ‘I can’t help but admit that it’s agreeable to see you again. It’s not often I take to a visito
r like I did to yourself. But take to you I did. And I’ve never forgotten you. Many’s the time I’ve wondered about you – yes, wondered if any harm had come over you.’ Lucy, in the easy chair, her hands clasped round her knees, looked up at Miss Tweedy and smiled.
‘I don’t look as if much had gone wrong with me.’
Miss Tweedy shook her head slowly and laid a spoon gently upon its saucer.
‘You’re a changed woman,’ she said sympathetically. ‘Ah, yes, you’ve altered sadly. You’ve had your struggle, my woman, thinks I to myself when I opened the door to you this very day – and a hard struggle too, or I’m far cheated.’ And Miss Tweedy pulled down the corner of her mouth and shook her head again, as though on this point at least there was no deceiving her.
‘It’s all over now, anyway,’ returned Lucy.
‘Yes – you’re older,’ said Miss Tweedy in her weak voice, ‘ and thinner about the face – much thinner.’
‘You’re not very stout yourself, Miss Tweedy,’ said Lucy mildly.
‘Me,’ rejoined Miss Tweedy, with a short sniff. ‘I’m away to a shadow. I don’t eat enough to keep a sparrow alive. I can’t do it. I’ve been delicate from my birth. That boy of yours,’ she resumed. ‘He didn’t look a very strong young man neithers, from what I mind of him. Faddy on his food, wasn’t he?’
‘He’s all right now. Look for yourself. I’ve just put his photograph out in my bedroom.’
‘I did take a look at him,’ said Miss Tweedy, with calm omniscience. ‘Bit of a masher, I can see. You’ve done a lot for that young man. I hope you don’t get your thanks all in the one box.’ She paused – moved to the door. ‘I’ll bring in your tea now. You’ll be needing it after your journey. Tiring things, trains! Yes, quite so.’
She departed gently, came back in a few moments with the teapot and, placing this upon the table, she nodded significantly to Lucy, remarked: ‘The best tea!’ Then she slipped her fragile form from the room.
That night Lucy went to bed early and slept soundly. Next morning she awoke refreshed, and went out immediately after breakfast. It had rained heavily during the night, but now a fresh breeze blew from the sea, briskening her steps as it swept along the main street of the town. She stopped at the post-office and sent off a card to Peter – no coloured atrocity, but a quiet view of the front, worded discreetly. ‘Any news from S.?’ she wrote thereon – a card which could appear without discredit upon his breakfast-table. Then, appeased, forcing her mind outside the circle of her contemplation, she sent off another card – mildly humorous, this one – to Miss Tinto. This terminated the full extent of her correspondence.
Turning, she went down the street, now battling pleasantly against the wind which, despite Miss Tweedy’s assertion, made her feel vigorous and almost youthful. Outside a fruiterer’s shop, the vivid red of a basket of apples caught her eye. She paused – she had always liked apples immensely; it was a long time since she had tasted them. On an impulse, she went into the shop and bought some of the ripe fruit.
At the front, fresh and blustery, to escape the gale’s full force she entered a small wooden shelter which, since her last visit, had been built opposite the rocks where she had been accustomed to sit. She was alone, protected yet in the open, facing the lashing, restless water which at intervals threw up high clouds of spray that fell in a glistening froth almost at her feet. She ate one apple meditatively, enjoying the treat. Presently she ate the other, placed the husks in the empty bag, crushed this into a ball, then looked out again towards the sea.
And now – what had she to do? She was, ostensibly, upon a holiday – which inferred in some sense the pursuit of pleasure. She ought to have had resources to enable her to overcome the disagreeable influence of the weather; but she had no such resources. The avenues of enjoyment open to her were limited. For a moment she considered the possibilities of a walk, then reflected that, from the very nature of her occupation, she was tired of walking. Besides, she had not much desire to take a walk alone in this high wind. She might have bought herself a magazine or a paper. But she had little inclination to read and no curiosity towards the affairs of the world. What did it concern her whether Consols rose or fell a fraction, or a new president had been established in Peru? She admitted her apathy to be peculiar, yet could not overcome it. That was how she had become. The years of endeavour had shaped her to this end.
Her mood altered. She became aware of herself suddenly as a solitary, middle-aged woman sitting in a windy shelter upon a deserted beach, a woman with few friends, a woman looked upon askance by those who knew her. A woman with a pale face, a thickening figure, and hands coarsened by the housework they had known. Inevitably her thoughts swung back to the holiday which she had spent here with Peter five years ago, and ardently she recaptured its happy memories as she gazed out at the rough grey water of the bathing-pool. She saw him, in her mind’s eye, diving from the spring-board in the sunshine. She smiled to herself at the recollection of his eagerness for her praise: how, when he emerged, dripping, he had demanded always her verdict upon the straightness of his plunge. Her face brightened with a distant gleam as she traced their progress through these pleasant days, giving free rein to her thoughts, indulging her reverie without stint.
At last she recollected herself with a start which was almost a shiver. She felt cold. She sighed, got up, and, moving her stiff limbs, went back to her lodgings. That evening, pursuing her illusion, she walked along to the entertainers. Here, with a start almost comical, she perceived that the elegant Val Pinkerton no longer held sway upon that narrow wooden platform. Yes; he was gone – his refined, dress-coated troupe supplanted by a younger and more brazen band, who wore the unashamed garb of pierrots and rattled their wooden collecting-boxes with relentless urgency.
She stared at them for a moment with a face as wooden as their boxes. A girl with a short skirt, her dunce-like cap tilted to a provocative angle, shook her tassels and a waggish forefinger as she sang saucily of ‘Molly O’Morgan! Molly O’Morgan with her little organ – the Irish-Italian girl’. Vulgar nonsense. The swift and heedless flight of the modern age! The memory of Val Pinkerton, ‘vocalist’, tall, red-sashed, hand over heart, ravished by the tenderness of his own rendering, rose up before Lucy with a contrasting dignity; she saw herself with Peter, seated within the enclosure, faces upturned, hanging delightedly upon the song. What was it again? ‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.’
Abruptly she turned. She was making a fool of herself, a maudlin, sentimental, fool. No one took any notice of her. Children frisked about the grass whilst their elders stood sedately listening or strolled up and down in pairs. She was in the crowd, but somehow not of it. The wind had quietened with the fall of the evening, and as she walked the music faded to a whisper on the breeze and was lost finally in the endless murmur of the waves. She returned in the gathering dusk. She passed the frontage of the Grand Hotel with hardly a glance: she had not yet achieved the entry of this resplendent establishment, nor, indeed, did she now desire this; all she demanded was that neat house with the brass nameplate – anywhere, so long, as she was with her son.
When she got back, Miss Tweedy was in the passage: she had the landlady’s adept facility for instantaneous appearance, seeming, indeed, upon such occasions to issue mysteriously from the ground; and, looking at Lucy, she said:
‘You’re pale tonight, Mrs Moore.’
‘I’m tired, I think,’ returned Lucy.
‘It’s the air,’ said Miss Tweedy wisely; ‘takes it out of you the first day.’
‘Yes – it must be the air.’
‘Turned chilly, too, it has.’
‘Yes, it has.’
They looked at each other across the passage; an expression that admitted Lucy to equality of state, both in condition and degree, flickered over Miss Tweedy’s face.
‘The hot bottle’s in your bed, anyway,’ said she oracularly. ‘So it’s ready for you when you’re ready for it.’
So Lucy
went to bed.
The next few days passed in a quiet fashion. Yet, stirred by this holiday so long protracted, her spirits returned; there flowed through her an unusual sense of well-being. She read and walked a little, but mostly she liked to sit in the shelter by the rocks. The weather continued broken: nevertheless, the air was tonic, briny, and infused in her unconsciously something of its keenness and its strength.
She had no word from Peter, but this was not unexpected; he was at the best a poor correspondent; still, when a week had passed she began to count the days remaining before her return. Her eagerness intensified; schemes for the future turned continually in her mind; happily she realised that now, indeed, the real reward of her achievement was at hand.
Upon the second last day of her visit she left her lodgings, after breakfast, and submitted herself to the bluster of the persistent wind with a feeling of persistent elation.
With reawakened zest she felt it good to be alive, felt the invigorating stimulation of life reopening after her cramped endeavour of the past five years. She relished the walk through the pleasant town, fresh with scrubbed doorsteps and dripping windows, bustling with the high activity of the morning, enjoyed the sending of her daily postcard, intimating on this occasion, and in case he should find time to meet her, the hour of her return upon the following day.
She did not set out for her favourite seat beneath the rocks, but, swinging back into the breeze, she tramped briskly along the front. Her mood demanded movement. And the reason of her, mood, her briskness, her elation – it was clear, quite clear. She did not deny it. She was returning to her son.
She walked so far that she made herself late for lunch, and, hurrying, her cheeks whipped by the wind, she came up the steps smartly into Miss Tweedy’s house. In the hall she took breath, hung up her coat, placed her umbrella in the stand, then, as she turned, Miss Tweedy emerged from another room. The landlady smiled over her tray.
‘You look better,’ she said critically, ‘much better.’ Then, pausing, she added: ‘There’s a letter for you on the mantelpiece – a fine fat one by the feel of it.’
