Hatter's Castle

by A. J. Cronin

  ‘Tuts, woman, can ye not keep your mind off your meat? You would think you were starved to hear you,’ Brodie chided her.

  ‘No! No! James. I’m very grateful for all that you give me, and that’s plenty. But maybe to-day if you were to see a nice, wee bit Cheddar cheese, no’ too dear – there’s a wheen o’ bargains to be had at the end o’ the day – perhaps you might pick it up for me.’ She leered at him ingratiatingly.

  Brodie burst into loud laughter. ‘ Gad! you’ll be the death of me, woman. Your god’s in your belly. I expect to be seeing Sir John Latta to-day. Do you want me to be carry pokes and parcels when I meet him,’ he shouted at her as he strode uproariously out of the room.

  His mother hastened to the window of her room to see him swagger out of the house. She would sit there most of the day, straining her vision upon any passing stock, feasting her eyes upon the coloured cards – the red firsts, the blue seconds, the green thirds, and the indifferent yellows, which meant only highly commended – revelling in the press and bustle of the country throng, trying, but always unsuccessfully, to catch a glimpse of some old, familiar face amongst the passing crowd. There was always the chance too, ever present in her mind – its very improbability whetting her fancy provokingly – that her son might bring her back some small gift. She had asked for this, at any rate, and could do no more, she reflected complacently, as she settled herself eagerly in her chair to begin her pleasant vigil.

  Downstairs on his way out, Brodie turned to Mary: ‘You better go down to the business and remind that ass Perry I’ll not be in all day.’ The shop was known in the Brodie household only under the term of ‘the business’; the former term would have been considered paltry, even degrading. ‘He mightna remember that there’s no holiday for him to-day. He’s quite capable of forgetting his head, that one is. And run all the way, my lassie, it’ll take some of the beef off you.’

  To Mamma he said, ‘I’ll be back when you see me!’ This was his valediction on such rare occasions as he chose to bid his wife farewell, but it was, in reality, a mark of unusual magnanimity, and Mamma accepted it with an appropriate gratitude.

  ‘I hope you’ll enjoy yourself, James,’ she said timidly, suiting her reply to his mood and the memorable nature of the event. Only on such infrequent and remarkable occasions did she dare use his baptismal name, but when they arose she ventured it in her reply, feeling that it consolidated what small and unsubstantial position she held in his esteem.

  She did not dare to consider the attraction which the Show might offer to her; it was deemed sufficient gratification for her to admire the retreating, well set-up figure of her husband, as he went off by himself upon any excursion of pleasure, and the preposterous idea that she might accompany him never entered her head. She had no clothes, she was required at home, her strength was insufficient to support the hardships of a day in the fresh air – any one of these, or of a dozen further reasons, was, by her timid logic, sufficient to debar her from going. ‘I hope it’ll keep fine for him,’ she murmured as, well pleased, she went back to wash the breakfast dishes, whilst Nessie waved good-bye to her father’s back from the parlour window.

  When the door had closed behind the master of the house Mary went slowly upstairs to her room, sat down on the edge of her bed and looked out of the window. She did not, in the clear brightness of the morning, see the three tall birch trees, their smooth boles shining with a lustrous sheen, standing upright like silver masts; she did not hear the whispered rustle of the leaves, flickering dark and light as they turned in the faint breeze. Engrossed within, herself, she sat thinking of that remark which her father had made, turning it over in her mind uneasily, unhappily. ‘Mary, you’re getting as big as a house,’ he had sneered, meaning, she fully realised, that she was developing, filling out, as befitted her age and rapid growth. Nevertheless, that single utterance, like a sudden shaft of light darting in, then out, of the darkness of her ignorance, had suddenly originated in her mind a profound disquiet.

  Her mother, like a human ostrich, burying her head nervously at the slightest suggestion of the subject when it appeared on the domestic horizon, had not enlightened her on even the most elementary aspects of sex, and to any direct, ingenuous question which her daughter might address to her in this connection, Mamma would reply, in horror: ‘Hush at once, Mary! It’s not a nice thing to talk about. Good girls, don’t think of such things. That was a shameful thing to ask.’ Her acquaintance with other girls had been always so slight that she had never achieved information on this matter through the light, tittering remarks in which even the most simpering, pink and white maidens of the town occasionally indulged. Stray fragments of such conversations which she might have overheard fell upon uncomprehending ears, or were repudiated by the natural delicacy of her feeling, and she had lived in an unconscious simplicity, discrediting perhaps, if she ever considered this, the fable that babies were achieved through the assistance of the stork, but being sublimely unaware of the most rudimentary realities of procreation.

  Even now the fact that for three months the normal functions of her body had been disturbed had not ruffled the limpid pool of her virgin mind, but this morning her father’s coarse remark, twisted by some hidden convolution of her mind into a different sense, distorted into a different interpretation, had struck her with a crushing violence.

  Was she different now? Agitatedly she ran her hands over her limbs and body. It was her body, her own, belonging entirely to herself; how could it have altered? In a panic she jumped up, locked her bedroom door, and tore off her cashmere bodice and skirt, her petticoat, her clinging slip, undressed completely until she stood, bewildered, in a chaste nudity, touching her body with confused hands. Never before had she studied her figure with anything but a passing interest. She gazed stupidly at her creamy white skin, raised her arms above her head, lengthened her lithe, lovely figure into a taut, flawless beauty. The small mirror upon her table revealed in its inadequate depths no blemish or imperfection to confirm or allay her unformed fears, and, though she twisted her head this way and that, her frightened eyes could detect no branding disfigurement crying aloud of an inward ugliness. She could not tell whether she was different, whether her bosom was fuller, the shell pink of her nipples less delicate, the soft curve of her lips more profound.

  A fearful indecision took possession of her. Three months ago, when, she had lain in Denis’ arms in a state of unconscious surrender, her instincts had blindly guided her, and with closed eyes she had abandoned herself utterly to the powerful currents which permeated her being. Neither reason, had she wished it, nor knowledge, had she possessed it, intervened; in effect, while experiencing the rending emotions of a pain intolerably sweet, and a pleasure unbearably intoxicating, she had been so moved out of her own being that she had known nothing of what was actually taking place. Her feelings then had lifted her above consideration, but now she dimly wondered what mysterious chemistry had been inaugurated by the power of their embrace, if, perhaps, her lips against his, in some strange combination, had altered her irrevocably in some profound, incomprehensible manner.

  She felt powerless, lost in a perplexity of indecision, feeling that she must act to dispel immediately this sudden ferment in her mind, but unaware of how she should accomplish this. As she sombrely resumed the garments that lay scattered around her feet, she abandoned immediately the idea of approaching her mother, knowing well that Mamma’s timid soul would leap in terror at the very mention of the topic. Involuntary she turned towards the thought of Denis, her perpetual consolation, but instantly, and adding to her dismay, she was aware that she would not see him for at least a week, reflected, further, that she might see him on this next occasion for a moment only. Since that wonderful talk with him in Bertorelli’s their meetings had been short – although so sweet – and by agreement carefully guarded, and while such fleeting glimpses of Denis as she thus obtained constituted the only felicity of her life, she felt now conclusively that, in these ha
sty exchanges of encouragement and love, she would never muster courage to invoke, even indirectly, his advice; at the mere idea a shameful blush pervaded her.

  She was again dressed, and, unlocking the door, went downstairs, where Mamma, having finished what she called putting a face on things, had settled down luxuriously to an uninterrupted hour with her book. There were no problems like hers in such books, sadly reflected Mary, no indication in the vows, kissed finger tips, sweet speeches, and happy endings, of the elucidation of her difficulty.

  ‘I’ll go down to the business with father’s message. He asked me to go in the forenoon,’ she said, after a moment’s indecision, addressing her mother’s bowed, rapt figure.

  Mrs Brodie, sitting in the drawing-room of a Sussex manor, surrounded by the society of her election, and in earnest conversation with the evangelical vicar of the parish, did not reply, did not even hear her daughter’s voice. When immersed in a book she was, as her husband had put it, its slave.

  ‘You’re a perfect slave to that trash,’ he had once sneered at her when she had failed to respond to his question. ‘To see ye slaverin’ ower it is like a drunkard wi’ a bottle. Ye wad sit readin’ there if the house was burnin’ about our ears.’

  Observing, therefore, with a clouded eye that it was useless to disturb her mother, that under the present circumstances she could not obtain from her a coherent, still less a comforting word, Mary departed silently, and unnoticed, to execute her errand.

  On the way to the town she remained immersed in her sad, questioning thoughts, walking limply, her head drooping, with slow steps; but although her journey was thus protracted, she reached her destination before she had even glimpsed the solution of her enigma.

  In the shop Peter Perry was alone, lively, expanded, important, in the magnificence of sole responsibility, and he welcomed her with nervous effusion, his face lighting up with delight and his white cheeks becoming even more pale from the joyous shock of seeing her.

  ‘This is an unexpected pleasure indeed, Miss Mary. Not often we have the pleasure of seeing you down at the business! Dear me! A great pleasure! A great pleasure!’ he repeated agitatedly, rubbing his thin, transparent, tapering fingers together with quick, rustling movements; then he paused, completely at a loss. He was actually unnerved by the stroke of circumstances which had delivered Mary at the shop on the very day when, her father being absent, he might be permitted to talk to her, and, in his confusion, the scintillating conversations he had so frequently conducted in his imagination between himself and a bevy of queenly young ladies of the highest society and which he regarded as a form of rehearsal for an occasion such as that which now presented itself, fled from him on the four winds. He was silent, he who had longed for this opportune moment, saying: ‘If a fellow could get the chance he might cut a pretty good dash with Miss Mary,’ and tongue-tied, he who addressed his ironing-board, through the steam in the back shop, with fluent, contemptuous ease. A paralysing dumbness lay upon the man who, in his romantic leisure moments in bed on Sunday mornings, his eye fixed on his brass bed-knob as on a coronet, had charmed a duchess with his courtly speech. He felt his flesh wilt, his skin tingle damply, the perspiration exude clammily from his pores; he lost his head completely and, his professional manner taking the bit between its teeth, he blurted out: ‘ Pray be seated, madam, what can I do for you to-day?’

  He was horrified, and what blood lay in his veins rushed painfully to his head, making her image swim before him through a haze of embarrassment. He did not colour – that was an impossibility for him – but his head swam with giddiness; yet to his amazement and relief, Mary manifested neither indignation nor surprise. In plain truth her thoughts were still sadly distant, she had not quite recollected herself from the march of her dreary reverie, had not heard him, and instead of showing astonishment, she took quite gratefully the chair he had automatically proffered, and sank down upon it with a tired sigh.

  Then in a moment she looked up; as though seeing him for the first time.

  ‘Oh! Mr Perry,’ she exclaimed, ‘I – I must have been thinking. I had no idea you were there.’

  He was slightly dismayed. Looking at his emasculate figure, it seemed the last possibility in the world that he should cherish, in the traditional manner, a secret passion for his employer’s daughter, but such was indeed the case, and, in his highest, wildest, and most furtive flights, he visualised even a partnership for an exceedingly worthy young man, to be achieved through an alliance to the house of Brodie more binding than that of sordid trade. Mary, completely unaware of such optimistic visions, but vaguely pitying in her heart the timorous youth who lived in such manifest apprehension of her father, gazed at him mildly.

  ‘I have a message for you, Mr Perry,’ she said. ‘Mr Brodie will not be in to-day and asks that you will attend to the business in his absence.’

  ‘Oh! quite, Miss Brodie! I quite understood that your father would be at the Show to-day. In fact I have made all arrangements to be here all day! I shall lunch here. I know well that the chief is extremely fond of such functions.’ Had Brodie heard himself referred to in such terms he would have annihilated his assistant with a single glance, but Perry had now recovered himself, was prepared to do himself justice, and privately considered his last florid remark rather good. ‘But even in the chiefs absence his work will go on, Miss Brodie – and I hope – go on well,’ he continued euphoniously. ‘ You, personally, may rest assured I shall do my best, my very utmost to make things go smoothly.’ He was so earnest in his manner, his moist eye glistened so eloquently that, despite her apathy, Mary found herself thanking him, though for what reason she scarcely knew.

  Just then a customer came in, a shipwright who demanded a new cap and, though Mary would have gone at his entry, a langour of mind held her passive and relaxed, a lassitude of body bound her to the soothing comfort of the chair. She felt disinclined to begin her return home, and under her eye, although it followed his movements indifferently, Perry, seizing a delightful chance to exhibit his ability, served his client magniloquently, accomplishing feats of extreme nimbleness and dexterity with boxes and the short step ladder, and eventually with paper and string. When the purchaser had gone he returned with a conscious air and, leaning across the counter, remarked confidentially: ‘Your father has a wonderful business here, Miss Brodie – practically a monopoly.’ He was proud of that too, and although it came out of a book on Economics he was wrestling with at nights, he gave the term the flavour of his own deep and original deduction. ‘Not that – if I might venture to suggest it – it might not be increased by a few new ideas, a little novelty, perhaps, some new developments, even an extension of the business – it could be done,’ he added insinuatingly.

  She did not reply, which oppressed him with the feeling that somehow he did not seem to be holding her attention; the conversation appeared to him rather one-sided.

  ‘I hope you are well?’ he enquired, after a considerable pause.

  ‘Quite well,’ she echoed mechanically.

  ‘You look to me, if I may so, somewhat thinner in the face.’

  She raised her eyes.

  ‘You think I’m thinner.’

  ‘Decidedly!’ He seized the opportunity to regard her impassive, shadowed face with an expression of respectful solicitude and, as he leaned upon the counter, supported his small chin in his long fingers and posed his figure generally with an air of studied admiration.

  ‘In fact,’ he continued boldly, ‘although as beautiful as ever, if you will permit me to say so, you look slightly indisposed. I am afraid the heat of the day is trying you. Could I get you a glass of water?’

  Before she could refuse he had raised himself in a passion of service, was off like a shot, returned instantly with a brimming tumbler of sparkling water and had pressed the cold, clouded glass into her unresistant hand. ‘Drink it, Miss Mary,’ he insisted, ‘it will do you good.’ As she took a few sips so as not to hurt his feelings, a sudden anxious thoug
ht filled him with concern.

  ‘I trust you have not been ill. You are so pale. Have you seen your physician?’ he enquired in his best manner.

  At his affected words Mary stopped with the glass half raised to her lips as though a light had broken upon her with a sudden effulgence, showing her a pathway she must follow. She looked at Perry with the full force of her attention, then turned her gaze through the open doorway and beyond, whilst her mind filled with a sudden resolution that made her lips firm and straight.

  For a moment she remained still, then, with a quick impulse, she got up and murmured: ‘I must go now, Mr Perry. Thank you for your kindness’; and before he could collect himself, she moved quietly away and went out of the shop, leaving him gazing blankly at the tumbler, the vacant chair, the empty air. What a strange girl, he thought, to go like that when he was behaving so admirably to her; but then, to be sure, women were strange creatures, and on the whole he had, he considered, acquitted himself very creditably. Mr Perry began to whistle.

  When Mary walked into the street she turned, not to the right, which was the direction for home, but to the left which would take her, if she pursued the road to its termination, to the far, Knoxhill end of the Borough. Peter Perry’s chance remark had given her the solution she had been blindly seeking, and it was that which now impelled her in this contrary direction. She would go and see a doctor. Doctors were wise, trustworthy, kind; they healed, advised, comforted, yet respected one’s confidence. Immediately she thought of the only practitioner she knew, Dr Lawrie who, although he had not been in her home once in ten years, was nominally the family doctor, and she now remembered vividly the last time he had spoken to her, when he had placed his hand upon her small head and remarked with a pompous benignity: ‘Penny for a curl, young lady! Come along! Is it a bargain? You’ll never miss it.’ She had been ten then, and while he had not secured the ringlet she had received the penny. Although she had not met him since, she saw him frequently, driving in his dogcart, everywhere and at every hour, always in a hurry and, in her eyes, maintaining always the look her childish mind had memorised, of one learned, august, and apart. He lived at Knoxhill, in a large residence, old, mottled by lichen, but still imposing, breasting the ascent half-way up the hill, and as she made her way resolutely along the street she recollected having heard that his hour of consultation began at noon.