by A. J. Cronin
When he came to himself, after what might have been aeons of oblivion, he became aware that he was in bed, undressed, with a warm stone jar at his feet. And gradually, as his eyes resumed the power to focus, there took shape before him the forms of Jenny Baines and an old man in a striped shirt and braces, with a celluloid dickey about his neck.
‘He’s coming round.’ The traditional remark, uttered in an undertone, gave Stephen a sickening sense of embarrassment. Oh God, he thought, what a damned fool I’ve made of myself, what an insupportable infliction I’ve landed on this poor woman, and his gaze turned to Jenny in apology.
‘I felt rather dizzy … I think I must have fainted.’
‘I should think you did, sir.’ The tremor in her tone showed relief at his recovery. ‘ If I hadn’t had Mr Tapley by me, I don’t know how I should have got you to bed.’
‘Sorry to have been such a nuisance,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll be up and around tomorrow.’
‘We’ll see about that, sir.’ Jenny spoke with a warning tilt of her head. ‘It’s well seen you’ve had a nasty shake. I’m just wondering if you shouldn’t have the doctor.’
‘No, no. I’ll be perfectly all right.’
‘What do you think, Cap’n Tapley?’
‘I think we can ’andle him. His colour’s coming back. Have you ’ad these spells before, my lad?’
‘No … not really,’ Stephen lied. ‘ I’ve been overdoing it lately, that’s all.’
‘Then a mite of rest won’t hurt you. And a mite of summat in your stomach.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ agreed Jenny eagerly. ‘I shan’t offer you the cutlet now, sir … lucky I didn’t have it on. But you only have to tell me what you fancy.’
‘Could I have some milk, please? Cold.’
‘That you can, sir. And I’ll start some beef tea for you straight away.’
At that, they both left him. But in three minutes Jenny was back with a small japanned tray, on which stood a tumbler and a flowered jug covered by a glass-beaded lace doyley. Placing the tray at his bedside, she poured him a glass of milk, watched him while he slowly sipped it. Then she went out with the glass, returned with it washed and dried, set it on the tray beside him.
‘Shall I leave the light?’
‘No. Turn it off, please.’ His head was beginning to throb but the cold milk had made him fell less dead. He added, untruthfully: ‘I think I’ll sleep.’
‘Sure you’ll be all right?’
‘Quite, sure.’
‘Good night, sir.’
‘Good night, Jenny.’
The light was off, the room in darkness, but he still sensed her presence. Then, in a low voice, she said hurriedly, respectfully, losing something of her grammar in her determination to speak her mind:
‘You ain’t no trouble, Mr Desmonde. Don’t even think it for a minute. You was very good to me, at Clinker Street. I haven’t never forgot it. And I’m more nor glad to have the chance to pay you back.’
The door closed behind her. He lay there, flat on his back in the strange little room, his breathing shallow and uneasy, and though he held all his depleted body rigid in a frantic effort to stifle feeling, two meagre tears welled from his shut eyelids and rolled slowly down his cheeks.
Chapter Thirteen
Despite his anxiety to be up and about, under the pressure of his own weakness and the insistence brought to bear upon him, almost a week passed before Stephen was able to leave his room. Through the apathy which bound him, he again blessed the chance that had brought him to this obscure Dockland house. How often in the past had he known the bondage of miserable lodgings – the dirt and discomfort of ill-kept apartments, the lack of privacy, of linen and hot water, the abominable food, the greasy breakfast tray left outside the door, and all the pinchings and meannesses of mercenary landladies for whom he existed merely to be despoiled and endured. But here, the place shone with cleanliness. And Jenny herself had always the untroubled face and active limbs of one quite untouched by moods, depressions, or the dreadful state of the world, whose nature, though fiercely independent, seemed perpetually content, and who, ignoring his embarrassed protestations, was bent on doing everything within her power to serve him.
Every afternoon Joe Tapley came in to visit him and, as far as his deafness and taciturn disposition permitted, passed the time of day. Old Joe had worked most of his life on the Thames, for many years as part owner of a coal-barge, then as skipper of a canal boat making a weekly run to Hampton, on the Cut. Now he had retired, invested his savings in a small wharf where he let out moorings, maintained an odd skiff for hire, and in general kept in touch with the waterfront. The river was, indeed, the core of his existence, and every morning after breakfast he would depart for his jetty, where, ensconced by the stove in the wooden shanty at the pier-end, he would absorb slowly, word for word, the arrival and departure columns in the Greenwich Meridian, looking up, every now and then, to observe, over steel-rimmed spectacles, the passage of craft, both foreign and familiar, and to answer, more by instinct than audition, the hail of a friendly skipper.
On Stephen’s first day downstairs – he had tried his legs with a short and rather uncertain afternoon walk the length of Cable Street – the Captain had returned from his maritime avocations. Companionably, his door stood open, and as his fellow lodger went slowly upstairs, he called him to his room, where, seated by the window darning a sock, was Jenny.
‘Well,’ Joe said, ‘how does it feel when you’re out?’
‘Pretty well, thank you. A trifle shaky.’
‘You’ve had a shake all right. Take a chair.’
Stephen sat down, glanced from the one to the other, sensing an unusual, even a disturbing air of complicity.
And indeed, after a prolonged pause, Jenny, still too obviously darning, broke the silence.
‘I have to go to my sister-in-law for a couple of weeks, Mr Desmonde – Florrie Baines, you know, my poor Alf was her brother. I always do this time of year while she’s setting up her stall. And Mr Tapley thinks you didn’t ought to stop here.’ She hurried on, as if in explanation. ‘He always fends for himself when I’m away. But it’s different with you … being ill like … you’d never manage.’
‘I see.’ Stephen, with a sudden weariness, now saw what had been arranged. He did not blame them for wanting to be rid of him.
‘So,’ Jenny resumed, in the same breath, before he could speak, ‘Mr Tapley thinks you ought to come along. There’s no place like Margate to pick a person up. The sea air is wonderful.’
‘Dr Margate,’ the Captain confirmed with a sententious nod. ‘He’ll put you on your pins in no time.’
A sudden warmth replaced the chill around Stephen’s heart. But he was still oppressed and melancholy, borne down by hours of bitter brooding – in no mood for such a project. He shook his head.
‘I couldn’t think of troubling you. I’ve abused your kindness enough.’
‘It’s no trouble, sir. Florrie’ll be glad to have you.’ Suspecting a reason for his hesitation: ‘You can pay her for your board … just what you pay me.’
In his weak and pliant state, there was no withstanding their joint persuasions, so well-meant, so bent on getting him back to health. And indeed, his brief, erratic sortie into the raw Stepney afternoon had rudely qualified his hope of starting work at once – if, for that matter, he could ever work again. He realised he could do nothing till he was stronger, he must take this friendly advice.
That evening a letter was written to Florrie Baines, and on the following Monday, after lunch, Stephen and his landlady took train from Charing Cross for Margate. Jenny, who did not have many treats, was in a gay holiday mood and unusually talkative as they rolled through Dartford and Chatham, across the salt marshes of the estuary into the flatlands of Kent. Her chapped cheeks had a more than ordinary scrubbed look, they glowed, and her eyes held a vivacious sparkle. She had on a dark green velvet coat, its pile rather worn at the seams, but becoming, with a brai
ded cape collar. On her feet she wore neat black button boots, and her small work-roughened hands were encased in freshly laundered white cotton gloves. Her hat, however, was a tragedy of shiny satin and incredible plumage which sat on the top of her head like some fabulous bird upon its nest. Stephen could not keep his eyes from it, indeed, so fascinated was his stare that Jenny smiled, gazing at him half confidentially.
‘I see you like my toque. Such a bargain – the January sales. Red always was my colour.’
‘It’s a really remarkable hat, Jenny. But do take it off. A cinder flying through the window might ruin it.’
Obediently she complied, her newly washed hair was revealed, with its crinkling fringe, and she was herself again, natural and vivid, a small woman, stoutish, in a white cotton blouse, yet somehow little different, he thought, from the trim young girl who had swept his room and sewed on his buttons at the Settlement. Covertly, he watched her as, presenting in profile her short upper lip and tilted nose, holding in her lap for politeness, but unread, the woman’s magazine he had bought her at the bookstall, she gazed with thrilled interest at the swift succession of windmills, oast-houses, and mellow brick barns flashing past.
‘Look, Mr Desmonde,’ she exclaimed, ‘these rows and rows of poles. They’re for the hops.’
‘Are you interested in hops, Jenny?’
‘I do occasionally fancy a glass of mild and bitter. That I will say,’ she answered seriously, then threw him a glance and laughed. ‘Nothing stronger, though.’
In her cheerful Cockney accent, she kept the conversation going. Presently she got up, and taking her string bag from the luggage rack, unwrapped, quite unmindful of the two other occupants of the compartment, a packet of ham-and-tongue sandwiches.
‘Come now, sir. You’ve no call to be shy,’ she insisted. ‘I promised the Captain I’d make you eat. Florrie will anyhow. One thing I will say of her, she keeps a good table. I hope you like fish.’
‘I do, Jenny,’ he answered, through a sandwich. ‘ On that subject I have no anxiety. What does rather worry me, however is whether the fishmonger, I mean Florrie, will like me.’
‘Florrie’s all right. Got her head screwed on properly. Independent too. Manages everything, with a boy – Ernie Wood, her nephew. ’Ad a bit of sadness in her past. Suffers terrible from the cold. Her feet and all. You’ll get along.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Of course, you mustn’t expect too much … it’s a small house.’
‘I hope I shan’t strain the accommodation.’
‘Oh no, sir,’ she answered innocently. ‘I’ll bunk in with Florrie. You shall have my bed.’
As she gazed at him, her remark seemed to strike her oddly – a sudden violent blush overcame her. She averted her head and gazed out of the window in constrained silence.
But they were almost there. They drew into Margate at three in the afternoon, and immediately Stephen stepped on to the open platform he felt, like an electric shock, the tang and tingle of that magnificent air which, blending the rich ethers of river and ocean, of sand, shells, ripe seaweeds and healthy mud, provides for the humble visitors from London’s East End an ozone, plebeian, doubtless, yet unsurpassable in all of England. As Jenny had hoped, Ernie, a small but smart-looking boy of fifteen, was at the station to meet them with the pony-cart. The baggage was bestowed between two empty haddock boxes and, mounted three abreast in front, they drove off to the old town.
Florrie’s place was directly on the harbour, in the Row, a broken sweep of ancient and rather tumbledown buildings which smelled of tar and brine and faced, across the cobblestones, a confused vista of masts, rigging, cordage, barrels, boxes, and tidal silt, with the long stretch of the pier and the tumbling grey of the North Sea beyond. The shop, Number 49, though low and slanting, was painted bright blue, with a marble slab behind the pulled-up window, and a gilt sign which read FLORENCE BAINES: WET FISH: SHRIMPS AND COCKLES A SPECIALITY, while above, approached by a side stone staircase, were the living quarters of the establishment.
The visitors were shown by Ernie to the front parlour, snugly furnished with a moquette suite, and already set for a formal high tea, but containing no living occupant but a fine yellow cat. Ernie, however, immediately dashed below to relieve his aunt, who soon appeared, a spare and angular woman of forty, rolling down the sleeves of her cardigan over her bare, chilled arms. When she had kissed Jenny affectionately on the check, she examined Stephen across her prominent nose, offered a hand limp and cool as a fillet of sole.
‘I expect you’re ready for tea. Sit in and I’ll infuse.’
Moving actively, she brought from the back regions a large tray holding toast, teapot, and a sizzling platter of fried fish, then, seated erect at the table, began to serve her guests with a composure which plainly indicated that she, at least, had all her wits about her.
‘And how are things, Florrie?’ Jenny asked, having tasted her tea with a sigh of appreciation.
‘Mustn’t grumble. The stall is a worry.’
‘Always is, Florrie.’
‘Always.’
‘The silly old Town Council, I suppose?’
‘And their permits. Think they can do anything with a woman.’
‘Still, you shall have it fixed in a couple of weeks.’
‘Nearer three, dear.’
‘Never mind. It’s worth it, Florrie.’
‘Sometimes I wonder.’
Florrie shook her head, despondent over her conflicts with officialdom, deploring the unjust domination of man, seeming, indeed, to brood darkly over all the misfortunes of her sex suffered and endured since the fall of Eve.
Jenny smiled at Stephen, bent in bringing him into the conversation.
‘The summer trade is wonderful. And Florrie rents a pitch near the promenade. She’s famous for her shrimps and cockles.’
‘I did think I had a name for flounder.’ Florrie looked hurt at the omission.
‘Of course you have, dear.’
‘This we are having is most delicious,’ Stephen said, politely.
‘Plaice,’ Florrie corrected gloomily. ‘Help yourself. Plenty more in the sea.’
The meal was rich and ample, the room comfortable, the coal fire crackled cheerfully, yet it was apparent to Stephen that he was, and had been from the first, the object of his hostess’s sharp suspicion. This caused him slight concern, yet for Jenny’s sake, rather than his own, he felt he must try to dispel it. Mere politeness would, he guessed, never do this – rather the contrary in fact. But he had observed Florrie’s fondness for the yellow cat, which as it sat on the arm of her chair she fed from time to time with morsels from her plate, and taking his sketch-book and a crayon from his pocket, he began, while the two women continued their terse yet intimate exchanges, to sketch the tawny animal.
Ten minutes and the thing was done. He removed the sheet, handed it in silence to Florrie.
‘Well … I declare …’ Surprise, indecision, fear of being taken in, doubt, incredulity, all these shades of feeling were reflected in her keen features until finally she yielded to her satisfaction. ‘It’s as like Ginger as two peas. So you are an artist, after all.’
‘If it pleases you I hope you’ll accept it.’
‘You’ll never make a living if you give your things away.’
Although reproving him with slight acidity, she was plainly pleased. Indeed, after tea, when he said he would go out for a brief walk alone, she called after him:
‘Be careful of the wind. Margate looks straight out to the North Pole.’
This geographic fact was accurate, but unlike Florrie, Stephen enjoyed the cold – it had always suited him. And now, on the seafront promenade which, since the season had not begun, was deserted of trippers, he felt, through the lassitude of convalescence, the springs of vigour stir within him. The tonic air, stinging as iced champagne, filled his lungs without effort, brought a faint blood to his cheeks, braced and stimulated him. In his first flicker of optimism since th
e trial, he decided to attempt no work during the next two weeks – he would not even sketch or make colour notes, as he had intended, but would concentrate on clearing up once and for all this absurd bronchial condition which had plagued him at intervals during these past years, On the darkening promenade, alone in that universal greyness of sky and surf, with the wind humming and sighing in his ears like a great sea shell, the loose sand swirling and eddying about him, his pulse quickened, and raising his head he thought, brokenly:
‘Perhaps … I’ll still prove … that I am not beaten … after all.’
Chapter Fourteen
In the days which followed, Stephen’s spirits lifted further. How happy he was with these simple people whom the members of his own class would doubtless have looked down upon as ‘common’. He, on the contrary, was at home with them, felt indeed that he was one of them. The salty life around the harbour, the comings and goings of the smacks, the unloading of the catch – all this interested him, diverted his mind from the bitterness of reflection. Early in the morning he accompanied Florrie to the fish market, noting the sharp success with which she made her bids by merely catching the eye of the auctioneer, whose hoarse voice fought a perpetual battle with the chatter of winches. He increased the length of his walks along the cliffs, slept with his window wide open to the breeze. Best of all was the bathing. Although this early in the year the water still reflected those polar influences to which Florrie had scathingly referred, Stephen was not deterred. Every forenoon he went in from the pier, joining those hardy natives who had formed an All the Year Round Club and who, one friendly member informed him, even took their swim when the snow lay on the beach. It was the brusque tonic of these briny immersions which, more than anything, accelerated Stephen’s recovery, restored in him not the desire to paint alone but, most glorious of all, the surging knowledge and conviction of his own creative powers.
