by A. J. Cronin
Lucy’s eyes leaped – now only one person would write to her – and she smiled back at Miss Tweedy. A letter from Peter: good news of his post: it was an exciting thought.
‘Fine!’ she exclaimed, with such a word as Peter himself might have used. ‘It’s the one I’m expecting.’ And she moved quickly into her room.
The letter, as Miss Tweedy had indicated, was on the mantelpiece. And it was from Peter. She would, in her own phrase, have known his neat hand anywhere; and as she balanced the letter on her palm, tantalising herself, she had a swift memory of those letters he used to send her from his school. Lovely letters, ingenuous, violet-inked, breathing of his affection for her, his enduring loyalty.
And here was another letter testifying to that same loyalty.
She was glad: she admitted now that faint uneasiness which she had felt at his silence during the past fortnight.
Her eyes sparkled; there was in her face an eagerness, something of a sublime tenderness, as she opened the envelope and took out the written sheet. Smiling, she began to read.
Then suddenly the light was extinguished from her face, which stiffened, stricken to a strange distortion. The blood drained from her skin, leaving it, not white, but grey – a sickly greyish tinge. A word in that letter, leaping towards her, not one word, but a string of words, not words but understanding. It came like a flash, the searing knowledge – in one frightful devastating gleam, a flash swifter, more illuminating, than any lightning stroke.
No cry escaped her – she was petrified to silence – but the hand which held the paper clenched, then shook as with the onset of a palsy.
Rose’s name was in that letter, repeated and repeated amidst those words of weak conciliation which danced before her frantic eyes. Rose’s name.
He had gone off with Rose. He had accepted the partnership which Rose’s father had bought for him in London.
He had deserted her – his mother.
A dreadful coldness assailed her, like a pang of dissolution, and the fearful blackness of despair closed over her like death. Motionless she stood, then all at once she shivered. Her body felt dead; but her mind was not dead; it was alive, seething with the anguish of her thoughts – a ferment of feverish thoughts in which everything was revealed. She had been away – conveniently out of the way. They had connived deliberately behind her back; she had been set aside, humiliated, abased. But the humiliation was nothing. The abasement was nothing. He was gone – her son – married. After her years of toil, her abject self-denial, after her struggle, her pinching, her fierce and bitter sacrifices for him, after everything that she had suffered and endured, he had abandoned her. He had used her, deceived her, and cast her aside. She had surmounted obstacles of almost inconceivable difficulty in order to deliver him into the arms of another woman. It was torture – torture unbearable.
Dazed by the anguish of her soul, she sank weakly into a chair.
The letter fluttered out of her hand.
Book Three
Chapter One
Nine months later Lucy sat in the kitchen of her house in Flowers Street. The room was little changed, drab and unfurnished as before, the curtains dingier perhaps, the grimy windows in greater need of cleaning, the patch of damp upon the ceiling furred with a darker spreading mildew. Had she at any time foreseen herself within a room like this? Never! Yet what did they matter now – such trivialities of dust and disarray? Not one whit did they disturb her. Lately she had not troubled about the flat, so fixedly absorbed was she by matters of a far, far greater consequence. That dreadful day at Doune: then she had felt her life was over – ruined, shattered, destroyed. What a fool she had been, what a blind, incredible fool! She could smile now at these puny writhings of her obscured and so misguided mind. A woman with her head lowered to the earth seeking bright pebbles on a shore of infinite illusion, stooping madly for happiness amongst the wrack spewed up from a cold sea of bitterness – that was what she had been. Not even bright pebbles had she discovered, but ashes, only ashes, which wildly she had cast upon her hair; even the taste of those ashes had been in her mouth, with all the soft and mawkish savour of unfulfilment.
Yet in a sense those futile wanderings had been, perhaps, part of the divine pattern – the means to bring her at last to this: a lingering smile played over her introspective face as she considered her present happiness. She did not deserve it, yet miraculously she had achieved it – it was hers – unbelievably hers.
For some moments she sat reflectively at her table: she had just finished her lunch, for, free of the necessity of racing home at one, she had reverted to that later meal at four o’clock. Then absently, without recollection, apparently, of that frightful missive which had struck her down at Doune, she picked up a letter that lay beside her plate and scanned it in a manner quite remote. Yet this, too, was from her son, dated the previous day and stamped with an address in Maida Vale, London.
‘MY DEAREST MOTHER,’ it smoothly ran, – ‘I was indeed pleased to have your note and to know that all is well with you. We ourselves are both very fit and happy. Everything is going satisfactorily with the partnership. You will be delighted to hear that I have collected a new patient in the person of a titled lady – think of that! You may have heard of her: Lady Macarthy is the name. Half-guinea fees she pays us – could you believe it! So you see that your son is not doing so badly. Some day you’ll find him in Harley Street. Yes, I’m determined – and that at not too remote a date. Believe me, it will not be for want of trying if I’m not famous one day. In the meantime we must be patient (no pun intended, my dear). I am still longing to have you down near to us, but actually it is difficult at the moment. Of course, I hate to think of you still working, but every penny I can make goes into the practice, and you will agree that it is essential for us to consolidate our position. Rosie’s dad has been ever so good – he was down again last week – bless the man, he can’t keep away from us. Really he is exceptionally kind, but of course we can’t expect him to do everything. Still, the day is not far off when you’ll be down here too and we’ll be near each other. It can’t come too quickly for me – then I’ll be able to settle something really handsome on you to make you independent for life. That’s what you’d like, I know.
‘Rosie sends her fondest love, and so too do I.
‘Your devoted son ‘P ETER .’
She read it through quite calmly. It was typical of his letters to her now – a fair example of those epistles that reached her on an average once a week, and to which she could reply soberly, with an equal regularity. Yes, a loving, devoted letter; full of glowing promises. Those promises! Doubtless he believed them – but did she? Was she unjust? She did not know: yet dimly she conceived that in another ten years’ time he might perhaps be making these identical pledges. And it was strange that her thought caused her no bitterness. Strange, indeed, was this new tolerance – she had never been a tolerant woman.
Again her thoughts flew back. Nine months ago, could she have surveyed so calmly and dispassionately these primly written words? Let her now recognise her past travail as the puny writhings of a misguided mind, but still they had a wincing memory: that return from Doune – she could never forget it – never! Nor would she forget the anguish, the bitterness, and the turmoil of her mind. Coming back to her house, so empty, so utterly deserted – even now a shiver ran through her at the thought – she had been like a woman distracted. Downstairs, the Maitlands had friends – a party with boisterous music thumped from the piano, singing of choruses, and a wild dancing of reels. She knew these hilarious parties of old, but then, as she paced restlessly about, the din rising to her ears had driven her frantic. So, too, had the utter loneliness of her house. Alone, deserted, forsaken so smugly after those years of supreme oblation, caged by bare walls, reminded at every fierce turn of her pacings of the struggle made, the offering rejected – she could not stand it. Desperately she had rushed out, striving to sink the turmoil of her mind in the rushing turmoil of the
streets. Saturday night in Young Street – was it life or was it madness? Lights flaring, the pavements seething, garish with sound and colour; beshawled women arm in arm, roistering, laughing; a press of people surging forward like a babbling army pursuing pleasure; whores standing at street corners, alert, waiting, offering themselves to men; pallid children, deformed and uncouth, begging, playing, fighting; the trams racketing along, the public-houses wide open, more laughter, shouts, singing, the brawling of drunken men: all had swum before her like a mazy dream, a whirling nightmare of which she was the central rooted figure.
Rooted or wandering, it was the same; she was not of that careless army; she was lost, a woman with a lost faith. Bitterly she had regretted everything in her life. She had regretted even her virtue. Why hadn’t she torn some happiness from life? She had a body – a better and more vital body than these cheap strumpets parading their doubtful charms; she had feeling. But she had stifled it all, pent up everything. Why had she bound herself within the narrow limits of respectability, scraping, pinching, denying herself everything – and all for nothing? It was her own doing. By the manner of her life she had mocked herself. Violently she wanted to escape, to hurl herself into some mad distraction, or into an eternal forgetfulness. What compensations were hers for those long years of sacrifice? Her eyes filled with burning tears at the memory of all that she had done. And now she was abandoned like a discarded mistress, useless, in circumstances of unalterable wretchedness: never could she see herself in a position of dependence in her son’s house, accepting, as it were, the scraps of his affection. No! The star to which she had pinned her loyalty was quenched; the idol that she had raised lay shattered at her feet. Everything had been sacrificed; and sacrified to folly and fatuity.
So she had roamed the crazy streets, returning late at night to her house, back into a quiet which startled her. Yet, for all that quiet, she could not sleep; she had tossed the whole night through. Next day – Sunday – she lay in bed exhausted, staring at nothing, without even a thought of church, hearing the heavy seconds pass.
On Monday she had dragged herself to the office. She would go; it was her livelihood; she would be dependent on nobody – entering the room numb, indifferent, yet dreading the inevitable scene: the covert glances, the sympathy which she did not desire, and under that sympathy the latent air: ‘I told you so’; ‘You were warned and you gave no heed.’ That had been a dagger in her side, keen anguish to her pride – she who had boasted so valiantly of what she would do when her son was through.
Then, the situation confronted with a set face, off to the slums. Back to that round of detestable and degrading work, and now no loyalty to enkindle her. On and on, that senseless drudgery, the slavery of life. It had begun all over again.
Those postcards, too, which showered upon her from the honeymoon pair on their tour of Brittany. How they loved Brittany, with its quaintness – that was Rose’s phrase – and its wonderful cooking – that was her son’s. Already they made mention of a second visit. The cards kept coming every day, peace-offerings, tokens of devotion – bright colours, women in caps and sabots, smacks in the glow of sunset – ‘Isn’t this a nice scene, mother?’ – pretty pictures; but, to her, lancinating reminders of her loss: abroad, enjoying themselves, these two, and she here, left like a piece of refuse, yes, like the paper and orange-peel which littered Flowers Street. A crushing depression settled upon her, a cloud upon her brow which darkened and seemed steadily to deepen.
She ought no doubt to have accepted the situation in the traditional manner: a sweet impulse of forgiveness, a moving letter to the happy pair, the gentle suggestion of a tiny weekly stipend, wistful memories mingled with a sentimental vision of herself as she might like to be in future years, white-haired, in a corner seat, dandling an infant on her knee. But that was not in Lucy. At the thought; a cold pricking of revulsion flowed through her. Grimly she felt that she had been cheated, defrauded of her right; and no palliative, no weak anticipation of a miserable and neglected retirement could wipe out the stinging injustice or the bitterness of her defeat. Her life seemed worthless and empty – empty, moreover, of all hope.
The days dragged on, and as the week drew in she too drew within herself the more. Saturday came, then again Sunday, with a reminder of its duty. Indifferently, wearily, moved only by habit, she had set out for church, but not, inevitably, for St Patrick’s. There she was known, and, shrinking instinctively from the rain of questions which, unreasonably in this new sensitiveness, she feared might fall upon her, she went instead to a distant parish, to the Church of St Mary’s, a small church set in a silent square that lay curiously remote amongst a welter of busy streets. Vaguely she had heard of it: the church or its priest – one or the other, she was not sure, nor did she care. It was to escape recognition that she went. But her motives were of little consequence, the manner of her going as naught beside the manner of her return. She had gone – that alone mattered. Bowed beneath her insufferable burden, racked by the pain within her, moved by that indefinite and intolerable craving – a force that was almost spent – she had entered the church.
There it was that the miracle had happened; for surely it was a miracle. She at least could entertain no doubts. Even now, as she sat at her disordered table, her face lit up at the memory. Yes, the hand which guided her life had guided her towards this. She knew it. She was utterly convinced.
She remained seated for some moments, a faint smile transcending her pale face, then she rose, put her son’s letter with the others – a dusty pile upon the mantelpiece – and, gathering together her things, went quietly out of the house.
She reached the office at half-past four, went to her table, sat down, and began to check her bag. Then she made up her book. Finally she turned to Miss Tinto.
‘Is Mr Rattray in his room?’ she demanded calmly.
Miss Tinto paused in her writing and looked reflectively along her nose towards the ledger. It was an odd remark – the orbits of Lucy and of Mr Rattray did not usually intersect.
‘Yes, he’s upstairs,’ she answered at length, without turning her head. ‘ I heard him go up before you came in.’
‘Thank you,’ answered Lucy. She rose and went out of the room.
Now Miss Tinto’s head did turn; she surveyed the closed door with eyes popping with astonishment.
In five minutes Lucy came back, slowly, and immediately Miss Tinto spoke.
‘Was he in?’ she enquired discreetly; but it was an indirect demand for more positive information.
‘Yes.’ Lucy paused, then added without alteration of her tranquilly indifferent tone: ‘I’ve just given in my notice.’
Miss Tinto gasped; she turned her whole person and confronted the other with a majestic interest.
‘You’re going down – to London?’ she exclaimed, ‘ That’s fine! You’re going down to your boy at last.’
Lucy looked at her for a moment.
‘No, I’m not doing that,’ she said at length. ‘But I’m leaving here in a month’s time.’ She moved to her table, stacked her books, then moved again to the door. ‘I think I’ll go now,’ she added. ‘ I’ve finished everything.’
‘But what will you do?’ exclaimed Miss Tinto; and only a frightful curiosity straining within her proper bosom induced that wholly importunate enquiry.
‘I’ve got other plans,’ said Lucy vaguely. Then she nodded, said good night, and left the office.
Other plans! Again Miss Tinto stared; mentally she was still staring when Dandie – delayed by a failure of the tram service – entered the room.
He was in an indifferent humour, and, impaling his hat cussedly upon a peg, he exclaimed disgustedly:
‘The worst tram-cars in Europe; whenever you’re in a hurry they break down on you for spite. Then it’s push, push, push, when you try to get on to them. The women are worse than the men – shoppers they call themselves. Perfect gadabouts. And me that didn’t sleep well. A piano going all night next door. Thump, th
ump, thump: Stops all of a sudden, then goes on again. I’ll buy a firework and stick it under their window. Where’s your Government?’
But Miss Tinto gave no heed to his tirade; her news, simmering within her, could not be retained.
‘She’s leaving,’ she remarked, with an imposing movement of her head towards the vacant table. ‘Given in her notice tonight.’
Dandie lifted his head sharply, and after a pause slewed round.
‘You don’t say!’ He curled his bandy legs round his chair inquisitively – each a living symbol of interrogation. Then, his spleen not yet evaporated, he added: ‘Going to that marvellous son of hers?’
‘No!’ A wealth of innuendo was behind the syllable.
‘Then what – what’s she after?’
‘God knows,’ answered Miss Tinto slowly. She did not often invoke the deity, but now there was a terrific portent in her manner; and in the same fashion she added: ‘And God knows what will happen to her. She’s her own worst enemy, poor thing. I’m heart sorry for her.’
‘Sorry for her? She’s not sorry for herself. She’s walking on air these days.’
‘On air?’
‘You know – up in the douds.’
‘There’s a look on her face sometimes – what’s the reason of it all?’
There was a silence. Dandie scratched his head with the butt of his pen and remarked dispassionately, dropping each word slowly, with a supreme knowingness:
‘You know she’s got religion now, don’t you?’
Miss Tinto slightly inclined her head.
‘Well –’ guardedly, she said.
‘It is religion she’s got,’ persisted Dandie. ‘ I’ve seen it before. There was a woman at a tent meeting I was once at. I went in for the fun of the thing, but fun! Cor! You should have seen how it took her. And a man I once knew – Gilmour was his name – ay, that was it – Gilmour. A heavy boozer he was in his day. But when he got converted – a Salvation Army meeting at the Gorbals did for him – do you know, he went about smashing every bottle of whisky he saw. He would walk into a pub and lay about the bar with his stick. They jailed him for it at last – and, crivens, high time and all it was too.’ He paused. ‘But the women get it the worst. And I’m telling you that’s what she has got. You can tell the signs a mile away. Ay, Catholic or no Catholic. They can get it like anybody else. So it would seem, anyway.’
