by A. J. Cronin
‘Ay, he’s an awfu’ man to make enemies. Speakin’ o’ the gutter, though, I maun tell you this one.’ Paxton took a few reflective draws at his pipe. ‘I was passin’ Brodie’s shop the other Saturday night when a kind o’ commotion stopped me.’ He puffed again twice. ‘There was a big, drucken streetworker in the shop, fu’ as a whelk, and fu’ o’ this week’s wages – in the mood to fling out the pound notes like a harrier’s trail – I saw the roll o’ notes in his hand – and he stood there swayin’ afore Brodie, ordering a couple o’ hats and a couple o’ bonnets, and this and that and goodness knows a’ what. He was in the mood to buy up the whole shop, ay and pay fort too. Brodie, and God knows he must have needed the money sorely, stood glarin’ at him out o’ his starin’ red eye.’ Reaching the climax of his story he sucked interminably at his pipe, before removing it, pointing it emphatically, and proceeding; ‘“If ye can’t say ‘please’ when ye address me,” Brodie was snarlin’, “then ye’ll get nothing here. Other places,” he sneered, “might stand that style o’ thing. Go there if ye choose, but if ye come to me ye’ll behave yourself or get out.” I didna hear what the other said in reply, but it must have outraged Brodie frightful, for he louped the counter and gripped the other’s neck, and before ye could say knife had flung him out o’ the shop right into the dirty gutter, where he lay, knocked stupid, at my feet.’
A pregnant pause succeeded the anecdote.
‘Ay,’ sighed the first draughts player at last, ‘he has an unco’ temper. His pride is fair terrifyin’ now. It’s his worst enemy. He used no’ to be so conspicuous in that respect, but of late years it’s fair run awa’ wi’ him. He’s as proud as Lucifer.’
‘And ’tis my belief he’ll have the same fall,’ inserted Grierson. ‘He’s bloated with his own vanity! It’s worked on him till it’s like a very mania.’
‘And the rideeclous cause o’t too!’ said Paxton, in a low cautious tone; ‘that claimin’ kinship wi’ the Wintons! I’ll swear he thinks he should be the Earl himself. ’Tis strange, too, the way he hides it, yet feasts on it.’
‘They wouldna own him. Brodie may have the name. He may look like the Wintons. But what’s in a name and what’s in a likeness?’ said the first draughts player. ‘He hasna a shadow o’ proof.’
‘I’m afeared what proof there was had a big, black bar through it,’ remarked Grierson judicially; ‘ for I’m gey and certain that anything that might have happened lang back took place the wrang side o’ the blanket. That’s why our friend willna blatter it out. That’s maybe the bonnie kinship.’
‘’Tis not only kinship that he claims,’ said Provost Gordon slowly. ‘Na! Na! the disease has swelled beyond that. I hardly like to come over it to ye and deed I’m hardly sure myself, but I’ll mention no names and ye mustna repeat it. I had it from a man who saw James Brodie when he was the worse o’ liquor, mad ravin’ drunk. There’s no many has seen that,’ he continued, ‘ for he’s a close man in they things. But this night his dour tongue was loosed and he talked and—’
‘Another time, Provost,’ cried Paxton suddenly.
‘Wheesht, man, wheesht.’
‘Talk o’ the deevil.’
‘About that new trap o’ yours now, Provost, will ye—’
Brodie had entered the room. He came in heavily, blinking at the sudden transition from the darkness to the lighted room, and frowning from the bitter suspicion that he had been at the moment of his entry the object of their back-biting tongues. His dour, hard face had to-night a pale grimness, as he looked round the company, nodding his head silently several times in salutation, more in the manner of a challenge than a greeting.
‘Come away in, come away in,’ remarked Grierson smoothly, ‘we were just wonderin’ if the rain that was threatenin’ had come on yet.’
‘It’s still dry,’ said Brodie gruffly. His voice was flat, had lost its old resonant timbre, was, like the brooding mask of his face, inexpressive of anything but stoic endurance. He took out his pipe and began to fill it. An old man, the messenger and factotum of the club, dignified as such by a green baize apron, put his head round the door in speechless enquiry, and to him Brodie shortly remarked: ‘ The usual.’
A momentary silence descended upon the group whilst the old man retreated, was absent, returned shamblingly with a large whisky for Brodie, then finally departed. The Provost felt it his duty to break the awkward stillness which had descended upon the group and, looking at Brodie, he said, in a kindly tone, moved in spite of himself by the other’s ghastly look:
‘Well, Brodie man, how are things with ye? How’s the world waggin’ now?’
‘Oh! fair, Provost! very fair,’ replied Brodie slowly. ‘Nothing to complain about.’ The grim assumption of indifference in his tone was almost tragic, and deceived none of the assembly, but Gordon, with an assumption of heartiness, retorted:
‘That’s fine! That’s the ticket! We’re expectin’ every day to see the Mungo Company wi’ the shutters up.’
Brodie accepted this polite fiction and the spurious murmur of assent from the group which followed it, not with the blatant satisfaction which it would have provoked six months ago but, in the face of his present position, with a blank indifference which the others did not fail to observe. They might discuss him freely in his absence, criticise, condemn, or even vilify him, but when he was in their midst their strongly expressed feelings weakened sensibly under the actual presence, and they were impelled, often against their wish, to make some flattering remark which they did not mean, and which they had not intended to utter.
He was a man whom they thought wiser to humour, better to keep on the right side of, safer to propitiate than to enrage, but now, as they noted his moody humour, and slyly watched his oppressed demeanour, they wondered if his iron control might be at last beginning to fail him.
A gentle, insinuating voice from the corner, addressing the company at large, broke into their general air of meditation.
‘If you’re thinkin’ o’ the Company’s shutters goin’ up you’ll have a’ to bide a wee – na, na, they’ll not be shuttin’ up shop – for a bit any way – not for a bittie,’ drawled Grierson.
‘How’s that?’ queried someone.
‘Oh! just a little private information,’ answered Grierson complacently, pursing his lips, placing his finger tips together and beaming on the company, especially upon Brodie, with an aspect of secret yet benevolent comprehension. Brodie looked up quickly from beneath his tufted eyebrows, not fearing the man but dreading, from his past experience, the sly, meek attitude which betokened in the other a deep and calculating venom.
‘What is it then, man?’ asked Paxton. ‘Out with it!’
But now that he had thoroughly aroused their curiosity, Grierson was in no haste to divulge his secret information and still smiled sleekly, keeping them on tenterhooks, tantalising them with the plum which would not drop from his lips until it was juicy with ripeness.
‘Odd! you wouldna be interested,’ he purred. ‘’ Tis just a leetle piece o’ local news I happened to get wind o’ privately.’
‘Do you know yourself, Brodie?’ asked Paxton, in an effort to terminate the irritating procrastination.
Brodie shook his head mutely, thinking bitterly how Grierson got his finger first into every pie, how he was always the last to remove it.
‘It’s just a wee, insignificant bit of information,’ Grierson said, with increased satisfaction.
‘Then out with it, ye sly deevil!’
‘Well, if you must know, the district manager o’ Mungo’s is goin’ away, now that they’re so firmly established. I’m told they’re doin’ uncommon weel.’ He smiled blandly at Brodie and continued: ‘Ay! they’ve made a clever move, too, in offering the vacant post – and a real fine post it is an’ all – to a Levenford man. He’s been offered it and he’s accepted it.’
‘Who is’t then?’ cried several voices.
‘Oh, he’s a real deservin’ chap, is the new local m
anager o’ the Mungo Company.’
‘What’s his name then?’
‘It’s our friend’s assistant, none other than young Peter Perry,’ drawled Grierson, with a triumphant wave of his hand towards Brodie.
Immediately a babble of comment broke out.
‘Man, ye don’t say so!’
‘The auld, weedowed mother will be unco’ pleased about that.’
‘What a step up for the young fellow!’
‘He would jump at it like a cock at a groset.’
Then, as the first flush of excitement at the unexpected titbit of local gossip subsided, and the real realisation of its meaning to Brodie dawned upon them, a silence fell, and all eyes were turned upon him. He sat perfectly still, stunned at the news, every muscle in his huge body rigid, his jaw set, his teeth gripping the stem of his pipe with the increasing pressure of a slowly closing vice. So Perry was leaving him, Perry upon whom of late he had come to depend utterly, realising at last that he had himself got out of the way of serving, that he was above it now, and was unable to lower himself to such lackey’s work had he even desired it. A sharp crack split the attentive silence, as, with the onset of a pang of sudden bitterness, his teeth compressed themselves with such a vicious, final force upon his pipe that the stem snapped through. As though in a trance, he looked at the riven pipe in his hand for a long second, then spat out the broken end coarsely upon the floor, looked again stupidly at the ruined meerschaum, and muttered to himself, unconscious that they heard him:
‘I liked that pipe – liked it weel. It was my favourite.’
Then he became aware of the ring of faces, regarding him as though he sat in an arena for their contemplation, became aware that he must show them how he met the bitter shock of the blow, or better, show them that it held no bitterness for him. He stretched out towards his glass, raised it to his lips with a hand as steady as a rock, looked steadily back at Grierson, whose gaze immediately slipped off that unwavering stare. He would at that moment have given his right hand for the power to utter some cutting, withering retort which would shrivel the other by its potency, but, despite a fury of endeavour, his brain was not sufficiently agile, his slow, ponderous wit refused to function, and all that he could do was to say, with an attempt at his habitual, sneering grimace:
‘It’s of no concern, not the slightest! Not the slightest concern to me!’
‘I hope he’ll not take any o’ your trade with him,’ said Paxton solicitously.
‘Now I come to think on’t’tis a downright dirty trick, Mr Brodie,’ came in a toadying tone from one of the draughts players. ‘He kens a’ your customers.’
‘Trust these Mungo bodies to move smartly. They’re a deevelish clever lot in my opeenion,’ said another voice.
‘Myself, I think it’s rather a poor spirit,’ drawled Grierson consideringly. ‘Somehow it gives me the impression that he’s just like a rat leavin’ the sinkin’ ship.’
There was a sudden hush whilst everyone sat aghast at the audacity of this remark, the most direct affront that had ever been offered to Brodie in that club room. They expected him to arise and rend the puny form of Grierson, tear him apart by the sudden exertion of his brute strength, but instead he remained inert, unheeding, as if he had not heard or understood the other’s remark. With his thoughts sunk in a gloomy abyss, he reflected that this was the most deadly blow he had suffered of any, although already they had smote him hip and thigh.
They had lavished their abundant capital in the struggle against him. In a dozen ways had exercised their ingenious cunning, but now in taking Perry they had snapped his last mainstay. Appropriately, he recollected his assistant’s strange suppressed manner that night, his half-intimated, half-exultant look, as if he had been glad yet regretful, as if he wished to speak and yet could not summon courage to do so. Strangely, he did not blame Perry, realising in justice that the other had merely accepted a better offer than he could have made, and instead any animosity that stirred within him turned against the Mungo Company itself. His feeling, however, was at this moment, not truly one of hatred, but rather of curious compassion for himself, a sad consideration that he, so noble, so worthy, should suffer at such treacherous hands, should in consequence be compelled continually to assume this false front of indifference, when hitherto his careless arrogance had, unwittingly, protected him like armour. Then, amongst his meditations, he became again aware of the circle of watching eyes and the imperative need for speech, and hardly knowing what he said, yet whipping himself to anger, he began:
‘I’ve always fought fair! I’ve always fought wi’ clean hands. I wouldna lower myself to the level o’ bribery and corruption, and if they’ve bribed that pimply little snipe to leave me then they’re gey and welcome to him. It’ll save me the bother o’ sackin’ him – ay, they can keep him while they last. I don’t give a tinker’s curse about the whole affair.’ Reassured by his own speech, carried away by the expression of a sentiment he had not felt, his words grew louder, more confident, his glance more defiant and assured. ‘No! not a tinker’s damn do I give,’ he cried. ‘ But I’ll not have him back again. Oh, dear, no! Let him draw his bribes while he can – and when he’s able – for when they’re burst and a’ to hell, and he comes whinin’ back for his auld job, then I’ll see him in hell as weel, before I lift a hand to help him. He’s unco’ quick to run away. I’ve no doubt he thinks his fortune’s made – the poor fool – but when he’s back in the sheuch I took him out o’, he’ll regret the day he ever left the house o’ James Brodie.’
He was transfigured, exalted by his speech, now believing utterly in this declamation which contrasted to absolutely with his sombre, sensible perception of a moment before, and, his spirit asserting itself more powerfully in the very recognition of its power he glared back at them with wide, excited pupils. He hugged within himself the reflection that he could still control, dominate, overawe them, and as at last an idea, delightful and appropriate, struck him he drew himself up and cried:
‘No! It’ll take more than that to upset James Brodie in spite o’ what our wee friend in the corner has had the nerve to suggest. When ye hear me complainin’ it’ll be enough to get out your crape, and it’ll be a lang, lang time before ye need mourain’ on that account. It’s a joke though’ – his eye flickered round them with a rampant facetiousness – ‘by gad! it’s a joke that’s worth a dram to us a’. Gentlemen,’ he cried, in a lordly voice, ‘shall we adjourn so that you may join me in a glass?’
They at once applauded him, delighted with his generous spirit, delighted at the thought of free refreshment, scenting ahead the chance of a carousal.
‘Good for you, Brodie!’
‘Scotland for ever! A man’s a man for a’ that.’
‘I’m wi’ ye, juist a wee deoch-an-dorris to keep out the cauld.’
‘There’s life in the auld horse yet!’
The Provost himself slapped him on the back. ‘Man, Brodie! you’re a caution. Ye’ve the pluck o’ a lion, the strength o’ a bull, ay and the pride o’ the deevil – there’s no beatin’ of ye. I believe ye wad dee before ye took a lickin’.’ At these words they stood up, concurring, and all but Grierson swarmed round him so that he stood amongst them, his fierce glance encompassing them, encouraging yet rebuking, sanctioning yet subduing, approving yet admonishing, like an emperor surrounded by his court. His blood, the blood that was noble like an emperor’s, coursed more imperially in his veins than did the thin, serous fluid that was in theirs. In his heavy brain he felt he had achieved a great and noble action, that his gesture, in the teeth of disaster, had been sublime.
‘Lay on, MacDuff,’ they cried, stirred by the unwonted laxity and magnanimity of his usually unapproachable nature, impatient to savour the rich, golden liquor he would provide for them. As he led them through the back door of the club into the outer air and they filed, eventually, into Phemie’s wee back parlour, he felt the danger was over, that he was again the master of them.
&nbs
p; Soon the drinks were flowing as they toasted him jubilantly, in McDonald’s finest Chieftain whisky, for his generosity, his discrimination, his strength. As he flung out a golden sovereign, birling it grandly on to the round, mahogany table, a faint glimmering of sense at the back of his mind whispered to him how little he could afford it now, but he thrust the thought back again, stamped it out fiercely with a loud: ‘Here’s to us – wha’s like us?’
‘It’s a beautiful dram, this,’ purred Grierson, smacking his lips appreciatively as he held his glass up to the light. ‘A beautiful dram, mild as mother’s milk and smooth as – weel smoth as the nap on one o’ our friend’s braw hats. The only pity is that it’s so dreshed more expensive that orner stuff.’ He tittered spitefully, knowingly towards Brodie.
‘Drink it up then, man!’ replied Brodie loudly. ‘Lap it up when ye get the chance. You’re no’ payin’ for’t. By God, if we were a’ as mean as you, the world would stop goin’ round.’
‘That’s one to put in your pipe, Grierson,’ laughed Paxton, hoarsely.
‘Speakin’ o’ stinginess – did ye hear one about our wee friend here?’ cried the Provost, with a nod towards Grierson, and a wink at Brodie.
‘No! what was it?’ they chorused. ‘Tell us, Provost.’
‘Weel,’ replied Gordon, with a knowing look, ‘it’s short and sweet. The other day a wheen bairns were playin’ about outside our friend’s grain store, beside a big sack o’ beans at the door, when up comes the son o’ the house. “ Get away, boys,” young Grierson cries, “and don’t touch these beans or my feyther’ll find out. He’s got every one o’ them counted!”’
A roar of appreciation arose from the assembly, through which Grierson murmured easily, blinking through the smoke:
