Hatter's Castle

by A. J. Cronin

  The four people in the room seated themselves at table, Grandma Brodie being, as usual, first. They sat waiting, while Mrs Brodie’s hand poised itself nervously upon the tea-cosy; then into the silence of their expectation came the deep note of the grandfather’s clock in the hall as it struck the half-hour and at the same moment the front door clicked open and was firmly shut. A stick rattled into the stand; heavy footfalls measured themselves along the passage; the kitchen door opened and James Brodie came into the room. He strode to his waiting chair, sat down, stretched forward his hand to receive his own special large cup, brimming with hot tea, received from the oven a large plateful of ham and eggs, accepted the white bread especially cut and buttered for him, had hardly seated himself before be had begun to eat. This, then, was the reason of their punctual attendance, the explanation of their bated expectancy, for the ritual of immediate service for the master of the house, at mealtimes as in everything, was amongst the unwritten laws governing the conduct of this household.

  Brodie ate hungrily and with obvious enjoyment. He was an enormous man, over six feet in height and with the shoulders and neck of a bull. His head was massive, his grey eyes small and deep set, his jaw hard and so resolutely muscular that as he chewed, large firm knobs rose up and subsided rhythmically under the smooth brown jowl. The face itself was broad and strong and would have been noble but for the insufficient depth of the forehead and the narrow spacing of the eyes. A heavy brown moustache covered his upper lip, partly hiding the mouth; but beneath this glossy mask his lower lip protruded with a full and sullen arrogance.

  His hands were huge, and upon the backs of these and also of the thick spatulate fingers dark hairs grew profusely. The knife and fork gripped in that stupendous grasp seemed, in comparison, foolishly toyish and inept.

  Now that Brodie had commenced to eat it was permissible for the others to begin, although for them, of course, there was only a plain tea; and Grandma Brodie led the way by fastening avidly upon her soft toast. Sometimes when her son was in a particularly amiable humour he would boisterously help her to small titbits from his plate, but tonight she knew from his demeanour that this rare treat would not come her way, and she resignedly abandoned herself to such limited savour as the food at her disposal provided. The others began to partake of the meal in their own fashion. Nessie ate the simple food heartily, Mary absentmindedly, while Mrs Brodie, who had privately consumed a small collation an hour before, trifled with the burnt bread upon her plate with the air of one who is too frail, too obsessed by the consideration of others, to eat.

  An absolute silence maintained, broken only by the sucking sound which accompanied the application of the moustache cup to the paternal lips, the clanking of Grandma’s antiquated dentures as she sought to extract the fullest enjoyment and nutriment from the meal, and an occasional sniff from Mamma’s refractory nose. The members of this strange family tea-party manifested neither surprise, amusement, embarrassment, nor regret at the absence of conversation, but masticated, drank, swallowed without speech, whilst the minatory eye of Brodie dominated the board. When he chose to be silent then no word might be spoken, and tonight he was in a particularly sullen mood, lowering around the table and between mouthfuls casting a black glower upon his mother who, her eagerness rendering her unconscious of his displeasure, was sopping her crusts in her teacup.

  At last he spoke, addressing her.

  ‘Are ye a sow to eat like that, woman?’

  Startled, she looked up, blinking at him. ‘Eh, wha’ James? What for, what way?’

  ‘What way a sow would eat, slushing and soaking its meat in the trough. Have ye not got the sense to know when you’re eatin’ like a greedy pig? Put your big feet in the trough as well, and then you’ll be happy and comfortable. Go on! get down to it and make a beast o’ yersel’. Have ye no pride or decency left in the dried-up marrow of your bones?’

  ‘I forgot. I clean forgot. I’ll no’ do it again. Ay, ay, I’ll remember.’ In her agitation she belched wind loudly.

  ‘That’s right,’ sneered Brodie. ‘Remember your pretty manners, you old faggot.’ His face darkened. ‘ It’s a fine thing that a man like me should have to put up with this in his own house.’ He thumped his chest with his huge fist, making it sound like a drum.

  ‘Me,’ he shouted, ‘me!’ Suddenly he stopped short, glared around from under his lowered bushy eyebrows and resumed his meal.

  Although his words had been angry, nevertheless he had spoken, and by the code of unwritten laws the ban of silence was now lifted.

  ‘Pass your father’s cup, Nessie, and I’ll give him some fresh tea. I think its nearly out,’ inserted Mrs Brodie propitiatingly.

  ‘Very well, Mamma.’

  ‘Mary dear, sit up straight and don’t worry your father. I’m sure he’s had a hard day.’

  ‘Yes, Mamma,’ said Mary, who was sitting up straight and worrying nobody.

  ‘Pass the preserves to your father then.’

  The smoothing down of the ruffled lion had commenced, and was to be continued, for after waiting a minute Mamma began again on what was usually a safe lead.

  ‘Well, Nessie dear, and how did you get on at the school to-day?’

  Nessie started timidly.

  ‘Quite well, Mamma.’

  Brodie arrested the cup he was raising to his lips.

  ‘Quite well? You’re still top of the class, aren’t ye?’

  Nessie’s eyes fell. ‘Not to-day, father! only second!’

  ‘What! you let somebody beat you! Who was it? Who went above ye?’

  ‘John Grierson.’

  ‘Grierson! That sneakin’ com hawker’s brat! That low-down bran masher! He’ll crow about it for days. What in God’s name came over you? Don’t you realise what your education is going to mean to you?’

  The small child burst into tears.

  ‘She’s been top for nearly six weeks, father,’ put in Mary bravely, ‘and the others are a bit older than her.’

  Brodie withered her with a look.

  ‘You hold your tongue and speak when you’re spoken to,’ he thundered. ‘I’ll have something to say to you presently; then you’ll have plenty of chance to wag your long tongue, my bonnie woman.’

  ‘It’s that French,’ sobbed Nessie. ‘I can’t get those genders into my head. I’m all right with my sums and history and geography but I can’t do that other. I feel as if I’ll never get it right.’

  ‘Not get it right! I should think you will get it right – you’re going to be educated, my girl. Although you’re young, they tell me you’ve got the brains – my brains that have come down to you, for your mother’s but a half-witted-kind of creature at the best o’ times – and I’ll see that you use them. You’ll do double home-work to-night.’

  ‘Oh! yes, father, anything you like,’ sighed Nessie, choking convulsively over a final sob.

  ‘That’s right.’ A transient unexpected gleam of feeling, which was partly affection, but to a far greater extent pride, lit up Brodie’s harsh features like a sudden quiver of light upon a bleak rock.

  ‘We’ll show Levenford what my clever lass can do. I’m looking ahead and I can see it. When we’ve made ye the head scholar of the Academy, then you’ll see what your father means to do wi’ you. But ye must stick in to your lessons, stick in hard.’ He raised his eyes from her to the distance, as though contemplating the future, and murmured, ‘We’ll show them.’ Then he lowered his eyes, patted Nessie’s bowed, straw-coloured head, and added: ‘You’re my own lass, right enough! Ye’ll be a credit to the name of Brodie!’

  Then as he turned his head, his gaze lit upon his other daughter, and immediately his face altered, his eye darkened.

  ‘Mary!’

  ‘Yes, father.’

  ‘A word with you that’s so ready with your jabbering tongue!’

  In his sardonic irony he became smooth, leaning back in his chair and weighing his words with a cold, judicial calm.

  ‘It’s a p
leasant thing for a man to get news o’ his family from outsiders. Ay, it’s a roundabout way no doubt, and doesna reflect much credit on the head o’ the house – but that’s more or less a detail, and it was fair stimulatin’ for me to get news o’ ye the day that nearly made me spew.’ As he continued his tone chilled progressively. ‘But in conversation with a member of the Borough Council to-day I was informed that you had been in Church Street in conversation with a young gentleman, a very pretty young gentleman.’ He showed his teeth at her and continued cuttingly: ‘Who I believe is a low, suspicious character, a worthless scamp.’

  In a voice that was almost a wail, Mrs Brodie feebly interposed:

  ‘No! no! Mary! It wasn’t you, a respectable girl like you. Tell your father it wasn’t you.’

  Nessie, relieved to be removed from the centre of attention, exclaimed unthinkingly:

  ‘Oh! Mary, was it Denis Foyle?’

  Mary sat motionless, her glance fixed upon her plate, a curious pallor around her lips; then, as a lump rose in her throat, she swallowed hard, and an unconscious force drove her to say in a low, firm voice:

  ‘He’s not a worthless scamp.’

  ‘What!’ roared Brodie. ‘You’re speaking back to your own father next and for a low-down Irish blackguard! A blackthorn boy! No! let these paddies come over from their bogs to dig our potatoes for us but let it end at that. Don’t let them get uppish. Old Foyle may be the smartest publican in Darroch, but that doesn’t make his son a gentleman.’

  Mary felt her limbs shake even as she sat. Her lips were stiff and dry, nevertheless she felt compelled to say, although she had never before dared argue with her father:

  ‘Denis has got his own business, father. He won’t have anything to do with the spirit trade. He’s with Findlay & Co. of Glasgow. They’re big tea importers and have nothing at all to do with – with the other business.’

  ‘Indeed now,’ he sneered at her, leading her on. ‘That’s grand news. Have ye anything more ye would like to say to testify to the noble character of the gentleman. He doesna sell whisky now. It’s tea apparently. Whatna godly occupation for the son of a publican! Well, what next?’

  She knew that he was taunting her, yet was constrained to say, appeasingly:

  ‘He’s not just an ordinary clerk, father. He’s well thought of by the firm. He goes round the country on business for them every now and then. He – he hoped he might get on – might even buy a partnership later.’

  ‘Ye don’t say,’ he snarled at her. ‘Is that the sort of nonsense he’s been filling up your silly head wi’ – not an ordinary clerk – just a common commercial traveller – is that it? Has he not told ye he’ll be Lord Mayor o’ London next? It’s just about as likely? The young pup!’

  With tears streaming down her cheeks Mary again interposed, despite a wail of protest from Mamma.

  ‘He’s well liked, father! Indeed he is! Mr Findlay takes an interest in him. I know that.’

  ‘Pah! ye don’t expect me to believe what he tells ye. It’s a pack of lies, a pack of lies,’ he shouted again, raising his voice at her. ‘He’s a low-down scum. What can ye expect from that kind of stock? Just rottenness. It’s an outrage on me that ye ever spoke to him. But ye’ve spoken to him for the last time.’ He glared at her compellingly, as he repeated fiercely: ‘No! Ye’ll never speak to him again. I forbid it.’

  ‘But, father,’ she sobbed, ‘oh! father, I – I –’

  ‘Mary, Mary, don’t dare answer your father back! It’s dreadful to hear you speak up to him like that,’ came Mamma’s voice from the other end of the table. But although its purpose was to propitiate, her interjection was on this occasion a tactical error, and served only to direct momentarily the tyranny of Brodie’s wrath upon her own bowed head, and with a jerk of his eyes he flared at her.

  ‘What are you yammerin’ about? Are you talkin’ or am I? If ye’ve something to say then we’ll all stop and listen to the wonder o’ it, but if ye’ve nothing to say then keep your mouth shut and don’t interrupt. You’re as bad as she is. It’s your place to watch the company she keeps.’ He snorted and, after his habit, paused forcibly, making the stillness oppressive, until the old grandmother, who had not followed the trend of the talk or grasped the significance of the intermission, but who sensed that Mary was in disgrace, allowed the culmination of her own feelings to overcome her, and punctuated the silence by suddenly calling out, in a rancorous senile tone:

  ‘She forgot her message the day, James. Mary forgot my cheese, the heedless thing she is’; then, her ridiculous spleen vented, she immediately subsided, muttering, her head shaking as with a palsy.

  He disregarded the interruption entirely and returning his eyes to Mary, slowly repeated:

  ‘I have spoken. If you dare to disobey me, God help you! And one more point. This is the first night of Levenford Fair. I saw the start o’ the stinking geggies on my way home. Remember! No child of mine goes within a hundred yards of that show ground. Let the rest of the town go; let the riff-raff of the countryside go; let all the Foyles and their friends go; but not one of James Brodie’s family will so demean themselves. I forbid it.’

  His last words were heavy with menace as he pushed back his chair, heaved up his huge bulk and stood for an instant upright, dominating the small feeble group beneath him. Then he strode to his armchair in the corner and sat down, swept his adjacent pipe-rack with the automatic action of established habit, selected a pipe by sense of touch alone, withdrew it and, taking a square leather tobacco pouch from his deep side pocket, opened the clasp and slowly filled the charred bowl; then he lifted a paper spill from the heap below the rack, bent heavily forward, ignited the spill at the fire and lit his pipe. Having accomplished the sequence of actions without once having removed his threatening eyes from the silent group at table, he smoked slowly, with a wet, protruding underlip, still watching the others, but now more contemplatively, more with that air of calm, judicial supremacy. Although they were accustomed to it his family inevitably became depressed under the tyranny of this cold stare, and now they conversed in low tones; Mamma’s colour was still high; Mary’s lips still trembled as she spoke; Nessie fiddled with her teaspoon, dropped it, then blushed shamefully as though discovered in a wicked act; the old woman alone sat impassive, pervaded by the comfortable sense of her repletion.

  At this moment there were sounds of someone entering the house, and presently a young man came into the room. He was a slender youth of twenty-four, pale-faced and with a regrettable tendency towards acne, his look slightly hangdog and indirect, his dress as foppish as his purse and his fear of his father would allow, his hands, particularly noticeable, being large, soft, dead white in colour, with the nails cut short to the quick, leaving smooth round pads of flesh at the finger ends. He sidled into a chair without appearing to regard anyone in the room, accepted silently a cup of tea which Mamma handed him, and began to eat. This, the last member of the household, was Matthew, sole son and, therefore, heir to James Brodie. He was permissibly late for this meal because, being employed as a clerk in the ship stores department in Latta’s Shipyard, his hours of work did not cease until six o’clock.

  ‘Is your tea right, Matt?’ asked his mother solicitously, in a low voice.

  Matthew permitted himself to nod silently.

  ‘Have some of that apple-jelly, dear. It’s real nice,’ begged Mamma in an undertone. ‘You’re lookin’ a bit tired the night. Have ye had a lot to do in the office to-day?’

  He jerked his head non-committally whilst his pale, bloodless hands moved continuously, cutting his bread into small accurate squares, stirring the tea, drumming upon the tablecloth; he never allowed them to be still, moving them amongst the equipage of the table like an acolyte performing some hasty sacramental rite upon an altar. The downcast look, the bolted mouthfuls, this uneasy inquietude of his hands were the reactions upon his unstable nerves of that morose paternal eye brooding behind his back.

  ‘More tea, son?’
whispered his mother, stretching out her hand for his cup. ‘ Try these water-biscuits too, they’re new in to-day’; then adding, as a sudden thought struck her: ‘Has your indigestion bothered you to-day?’

  ‘Not too bad,’ at last he murmured in reply, without looking up.

  ‘Eat your tea slowly then, Matt,’ cautioned Mamma confidentially. ‘I sometimes think ye don’t chew your food enough. Don’t hurry!’

  ‘Got to see Agnes to-night, though, Mamma,’ he whispered reprovingly, as though justifying his haste.

  She moved her head in a slow, acquiescent comprehension.

  Presently the old grandmother arose, sucking her teeth and brushing the crumbs from her lap, wondering, as she took her chair, if her son would talk to her to-night. When in the humour he would regale her with the choicer gossip of the town, shouting to her of how he had got the better of Waddel and taken him down a peg, how Provost Gordon had slapped him heartily upon the back at the Cross, how Paxton’s business was going down the hill. No one was ever praised in these conversations, but they were delicious to her in their disparaging piquancy, toothsome in their sarcastic aspersion, and she enjoyed them immensely, fastening upon each morsel of personal information and devouring it greedily, savouring always the superiority of her son over the victim of the discussion.

  But to-night Brodie kept silent, occupied by his reflections which, mellowed by the solace of his pipe, flowed into a less rancorous channel than that which they had followed at table. He would, he considered, have to tame Mary, who, somehow, did not seem like his child; who had never bowed down to him as lowly as he desired, from whom he had never received the full homage accorded him by the others. She was getting a handsome lassie though, despite her unsubdued nature – took the looks from him – but he felt he must, for his own satisfaction and her good, subdue that independent spirit. As for her acquaintance with that Denis Foyle, he was glad that the noise of it had reached his ears, that he had crushed the affair at the outset.

  He had been astounded at her temerity in answering him as she had done to-night and could find no reason for it, but now that he had marked that tendency towards insubordination he would watch her more carefully in the future and eradicate it utterly should it again occur.