The Grim Smile of the Five Towns

by Arnold Bennett

  ‘I mean the son,’ said Mr Brindley.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she answered. ‘I knew young Mr Simon too.’ A slight hesitation, and then: ‘Of course!’ Another hesitation. ‘Why?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Mr Brindley. ‘Only he’s dead.’

  ‘You don’t mean to say he’s dead?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Day before yesterday, in Italy,’ said Mr Brindley ruthlessly.

  Miss Annie Brett’s manner certainly changed. It seemed almost to become natural and unecstatic.

  ‘I suppose it will be in the papers?’ she ventured.

  ‘It’s in the London paper.’

  ‘Well I never!’ she muttered.

  ‘A long time, I should think, since he was in this part of the world,’ said Mr Brindley. ‘When did YOU last see him?’

  He was exceedingly skilful, I considered.

  She put the back of her hand over her mouth, and bending her head slightly and lowering her eyelids, gazed reflectively at the counter.

  ‘It was once when a lot of us went to Ilam,’ she answered quietly. ‘The St Luke’s lot, YOU know.’

  ‘Oh!’ cried Mr Brindley, apparently startled. ‘The St Luke’s lot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How came he to go with you?’

  ‘He didn’t go with us. He was there—stopping there, I suppose.’

  ‘Why, I believe I remember hearing something about that,’ said Mr Brindley cunningly. ‘Didn’t he take you out in a boat?’

  A very faint dark crimson spread over the face of Miss Annie Brett. It could not be called a blush, but it was as like a blush as was possible to her. The phenomenon, as I could see from his eyes, gave Mr Brindley another shock.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Sally was there as well.’

  Then a silence, during which the commercial traveller could be heard reading from the newspaper.

  ‘When was that?’ gently asked Mr Brindley.

  ‘Don’t ask ME when it was, Mr Brindley,’ she answered nervously. ‘It’s ever so long ago. What did he die of?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  Miss Annie Brett opened her mouth to speak, and did not speak. There were tears in her reddened eyes. I felt very awkward, and I think that Mr Brindley also felt awkward. But I was glad. Those moist eyes caused me a thrill. There was after all some humanity in Miss Annie Brett. Yes, she had after all floated on the bosom of the lake with Simon Fuge. The least romantic of persons, she had yet felt romance. If she had touched Simon Fuge, Simon Fuge had touched her. She had memories. Once she had lived. I pictured her younger. I sought in her face the soft remains of youthfulness. I invented languishing poses for her in the boat. My imagination was equal to the task of seeing her as Simon Fuge saw her. I did so see her. I recalled Simon Fuge’s excited description of the long night in the boat, and I could reconstitute the night from end to end. And there the identical creature stood before me, the creature who had set fire to Simon Fuge, one of the ‘wonderful creatures’ of the Gazette, ageing, hardened, banal, but momentarily restored to the empire of romance by those unshed, glittering tears. As an experience it was worth having.

  She could not speak, and we did not. I heard the commercial traveller reading: ‘“The motion was therefore carried by twenty-five votes to nineteen, and the Countess of Chell promised that the whole question of the employment of barmaids should be raised at the next meeting of the B.W.T.S.” There! what do you think of that?’

  Miss Annie Brett moved quickly towards the commercial traveller.

  Til tell you what I think of it,’ she said, with ecstatic resentment. ‘I think it’s just shameful! Why should the Countess of Chell want to rob a lot of respectable young ladies of their living? I can tell you they’re just as respectable as the Countess of Chell is—yes, and perhaps more, by all accounts. I think people do well to call her “Interfering Iris”. When she’s robbed them of their living, what does she expect them to do? Is she going to keep them? Then what does she expect them to do?’

  The commercial traveller was inept enough to offer a jocular reply, and then he found himself involved in the morass of ‘the whole question’. He, and we also, were obliged to hear in immense detail Miss Annie Brett’s complete notions of the movement for the abolition of barmaids. The subject was heavy on her mind, and she lifted it off. Simon Fuge was relinquished; he dropped like a stone into the pool of forgetfulness. And yet, strange as it seems, she was assuredly not sincere in the expression of her views on the question of barmaids. She held no real views. She merely persuaded herself that she held them. When the commercial traveller, who was devoid of sense, pointed out that it was not proposed to rob anybody of a livelihood, and that existent barmaids would be permitted to continue to grace the counters of their adoption, she grew frostily vicious. The commercial traveller decided to retire and play billiards. Mr Brindley and I in our turn departed. I was extremely disappointed by this sequel.

  ‘Ah!’ breathed Mr Brindley when we were outside, in front of the Town Hall. ‘She was quite right about that clock.’

  After that we turned silently into a long illuminated street which rose gently. The boxes of light were flashing up and down it, but otherwise it seemed to be quite deserted. Mr Brindley filled a pipe and lit it as he walked. The way in which that man kept the match alight in a fresh breeze made me envious. I could conceive myself rivalling his exploits in cigarette-making, the purchase of rare books, the interpretation of music, even (for a wager) the drinking of beer, but I knew that I should never be able to keep a match alight in a breeze. He threw the match into the mud, and in the mud it continued miraculously to burn with a large flame, as though still under his magic dominion. There are some things that baffle the reasoning faculty. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘she must have been a pretty woman once.’

  ‘“Pretty,” by God!’ he replied, ‘she was beautiful. She was considered the finest piece in Hanbridge at one time. And let me tell you we’re supposed to have more than our share of good looks in the Five Towns.’

  ‘What—the women, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she never married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor—anything?’

  ‘Oh no,’ he said carelessly.

  ‘But you don’t mean to tell me she’s never—’ I was just going to exclaim, but I did not, I said: ‘And it’s her sister who is Mrs Colclough?’

  ‘Yes.’ He seemed to be either meditative or disinclined to talk. However, my friends have sometimes hinted to me that when my curiosity is really aroused, I am capable of indiscretions.

  ‘So one sister rattles about in an expensive motor-car, and the other serves behind a bar!’ I observed.

  He glanced at me.

  ‘I expect it’s a bit difficult for you to understand,’ he answered; ‘but you must remember you’re in a democratic district. You told me once you knew Exeter. Well, this isn’t a cathedral town. It’s about a century in front of any cathedral town in the world. Why, my good sir, there’s practically no such thing as class distinction here. Both my grandfathers were working potters. Colclough’s father was a joiner who finished up as a builder. If Colclough makes money and chooses to go to Paris and get the best motor-car he can, why in Hades shouldn’t his wife ride in it? If he is fond of music and can play like the devil, that isn’t his sister-in-law’s fault, is it? His wife was a dressmaker, at least she was a dressmaker’s assistant. If she suits him, what’s the matter?’

  ‘But I never suggested—’

  ‘Excuse me,’ he stopped me, speaking with careful and slightly exaggerated calmness, ‘I think you did. If the difference in the situations of the two sisters didn’t strike you as very extraordinary, what did you mean?’

  ‘And isn’t it extraordinary?’ I demanded.

  ‘It wouldn’t be considered so in any reasonable society,’ he insisted. ‘The fact is, my good sir, you haven’t yet quite got rid of Exeter. I do believe this place will do you good. Why, damn it! Colclough didn’t marr
y both sisters. You think he might keep the other sister? Well, he might. But suppose his wife had half-a-dozen sisters, should he keep them all! I can tell you we’re just like the rest of the world, we find no difficulty whatever in spending all the money we make. I dare say Colclough would be ready enough to keep his sister-in-law. I’ve never asked him. But I’m perfectly certain that his sister-in-law wouldn’t be kept. Not much! You don’t know these women down here, my good sir. She’s earned her living at one thing or another all her life, and I reckon she’ll keep on earning it till she drops. She is, without exception, the most exasperating female I ever came across, and that’s saying something; but I will give her THAT credit: she’s mighty independent.’

  ‘How exasperating?’ I asked, surprised to hear this from him.

  ‘I don’t know. But she is. If she was my wife I should kill her one night. Don’t you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes, I quite agree with you,’ I said. ‘But you seemed to be awfully good friends with her.’

  ‘No use being anything else. No woman that it ever pleased Providence to construct is going to frighten me away from the draught Burton that you can get at the Tiger. Besides, she can’t help it. She was born like that.’

  ‘She TALKS quite ordinarily,’ I remarked.

  ‘Oh! It isn’t what she says, particularly. It’s HER. Either you like her or you don’t like her. Now Colclough thinks she’s all right. In fact, he admires her.’

  ‘There’s one thing,’ I said, ‘she jolly nearly cried tonight.’

  ‘Purely mechanical!’ said Mr Brindley with cruel curtness.

  What seemed to me singular was that the relations which had existed between Miss Annie Brett and Simon Fuge appeared to have no interest whatever for Mr Brindley. He had not even referred to them.

  ‘You were just beginning to draw her out,’ I ventured.

  ‘No,’ he replied; ‘I thought I’d just see what she’d say. No one ever did draw that woman out.’

  I had completely lost my vision of her in the boat, but somehow that declaration of his, ‘no one ever did draw that woman out’, partially restored the vision to me. It seemed to invest her with agreeable mystery.

  ‘And the other sister—Mrs Colclough?’ I questioned.

  ‘I’m taking you to see her as fast as I can,’ he answered. His tone implied further: ‘I’ve just humoured one of your whims, now for the other.’

  ‘But tell me something about her.’

  ‘She’s the best bridge-player—woman, that is—in Bursley. But she will only play every other night for fear the habit should get hold of her. There you’ve got her.’

  ‘Younger than Miss Brett?’

  ‘Younger,’ said Mr Brindley. ‘She isn’t the same sort of person, is she?’

  ‘She is not,’ said Mr Brindley. And his tone implied: ‘Thank God for it!’

  Very soon afterwards, at the top of a hill, he drew me into the garden of a large house which stood back from the road.

  VII

  It was quite a different sort of house from Mr Brindley’s. One felt that immediately on entering the hall, which was extensive. There was far more money and considerably less taste at large in that house than in the other. I noticed carved furniture that must have been bought with a coarse and a generous hand; and on the walls a diptych by Marcus Stone portraying the course of true love clingingly draped. It was just like Exeter or Onslow Square. But the middle-aged servant who received us struck at once the same note as had sounded so agreeably at Mr Brindley’s. She seemed positively glad to see us; our arrival seemed to afford her a peculiar and violent pleasure, as though the hospitality which we were about to accept was in some degree hers too. She robbed us of our hats with ecstasy.

  Then Mr Colclough appeared.

  ‘Delighted you’ve come, Mr Loring!’ he said, shaking my hand again. He said it with fervour. He obviously was delighted. The exercise of hospitality was clearly the chief joy of his life; at least, if he had a greater it must have been something where keenness was excessive beyond the point of pleasure, as some joys are. ‘How do, Bob? Your missis has just come.’ He was still in his motoring clothes.

  Mr Brindley, observing my gaze transiently on the Marcus Stones, said: ‘I know what you’re looking for; you’re looking for “Saul’s Soul’s Awakening”. We don’t keep it in the window; you’ll see it inside.’

  ‘Bob’s always rotting me about my pictures,’ Mr Colclough smiled indulgently. He seemed big enough to eat his friend, and his rich, heavy voice rolled like thunder about the hall. ‘Come along in, will you?’

  ‘Half-a-second, Ol,’ Mr Brindley called in a conspiratorial tone, and, turning to me: Tell him THE Limerick. You know.’

  ‘The one about the hayrick?’

  Mr Brindley nodded.

  There were three heads close together for a space of twenty seconds or so, and then a fearful explosion happened—the unique, tremendous laughter of Mr Colclough, which went off like a charge of melinite and staggered the furniture.

  ‘Now, now!’ a feminine voice protested from an unseen interior.

  I was taken to the drawing-room, an immense apartment with an immense piano black as midnight in it. At the further end two women were seated close together in conversation, and I distinctly heard the name ‘Fuge’. One of them was Mrs Brindley, in a hat. The other, a very big and stout woman, in an elaborate crimson garment that resembled a teagown, rose and came to meet me with extended hand.

  ‘My wife—Mr Loring,’ said Mr Oliver Colclough.

  ‘So glad to meet you,’ she said, beaming on me with all her husband’s pleasure. ‘Come and sit between Mrs Brindley and me, near the window, and keep us in order. Don’t you find it very close? There are at least a hundred cats in the garden.’

  One instantly perceived that ceremonial stiffness could not exist in the same atmosphere with Mrs Oliver Colclough. During the whole time I spent in her house there was never the slightest pause in the conversation. Mrs Oliver Colclough prevented nobody from talking, but she would gladly use up every odd remnant of time that was not employed by others. No scrap was too small for her.

  ‘So this is the other one!’ I said to myself. ‘Well, give me this one!’

  Certainly there was a resemblance between the two, in the general formation of the face, and the shape of the shoulders; but it is astonishing that two sisters can differ as these did, with a profound and vital difference. In Mrs Colclough there was no coquetterie, no trace of that more-than-half-suspicious challenge to a man that one feels always in the type to which her sister belonged. The notorious battle of the sexes was assuredly carried on by her in a spirit of frank muscular gaiety—she could, I am sure, do her share of fighting. Put her in a boat on the bosom of the lake under starlight, and she would not by a gesture, a tone, a glance, convey mysterious nothings to you, a male. She would not be subtly changed by the sensuous influences of the situation; she would always be the same plump and earthly piece of candour. Even if she were in love with you, she would not convey mysterious nothings in such circumstances. If she were in love with you she would most clearly convey unmysterious and solid somethings. I was convinced that the contributing cause to the presence of the late Simon Fuge in the boat on Ilam Lake on the historic night was Annie the superior barmaid, and not Sally of the automobile. But Mrs Colclough, if not beautiful, was a very agreeable creation. Her amplitude gave at first sight an exaggerated impression of her age; but this departed after more careful inspection. She could not have been more than thirty. She was very dark, with plenteous and untidy black hair, thick eyebrows, and a slight moustache. Her eyes were very vivacious, and her gestures, despite that bulk, quick and graceful. She was happy; her ideals were satisfied; it was probably happiness that had made her stout. Her massiveness was apparently no grief to her; she had fallen into the carelessness which is too often the pitfall of women who, being stout, are content.

  ‘How do, missis?’ Mr Brindley greeted her, and to his wife, ‘
How do, missis? But, look here, bright star, this gadding about is all very well, but what about those precious kids of yours? None of ‘em dead yet, I hope.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Bob.’

  ‘I’ve been over to your house,’ Mrs Colclough put in. ‘Of course it isn’t mumps. The child’s as right as rain. So I brought Mary back with me.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Brindley, ‘for a woman who’s never had any children your knowledge of children beggars description. What you aren’t sure you know about them isn’t knowledge. However—’

  ‘Listen,’ Mrs Colclough replied, with a delightful throwingdown of the glove. ‘I’ll bet you a level sovereign that child hasn’t got the mumps. So there! And Oliver will guarantee to pay you.’

  ‘Aye!’ said Mr Colclough; ‘I’ll back my wife any day.’

  ‘Don’t bet, Bob,’ Mrs Brindley enjoined her husband excitedly in her high treble.

  ‘I won’t,’ said Mr Brindley.

  ‘Now let’s sit down.’ Mrs Colclough addressed me with particular, confidential grace.

  We three exactly filled the sofa. I have often sat between two women, but never with such calm, unreserved, unapprehensive comfortableness as I experienced between Mrs Colclough and Mrs Brindley. It was just as if I had known them for years.

  ‘You’ll make a mess of that, Ol,’ said Mr Brindley.

  The other two men were at some distance, in front of a table, on which were two champagne bottles and five glasses, and a plate of cakes. ‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘I’m not going to have any champagne, anyhow. Mercurey! Green Chartreuse! Irish whisky! And then champagne! And a morning’s hard work tomorrow! No!’

  Plop! A cork flew up and bounced against the ceiling.

  Mr Colclough carefully emptied the bottle into the glasses, of which Mr Brindley seized two and advanced with one in either hand for the women. It was the host who offered a glass to me.

  ‘No, thanks very much, I really can’t,’ I said in a very firm tone.