Hatter's Castle

by A. J. Cronin

  But with a lordly assumption of indolence he refused to continue, pocketed his winnings, and flung his cue into the rack; now that he had made his reputation he was afraid to mar it They surrounded him, clapping him on the back, pushing and shoving each other, trying to shake hands with him, whilst he gloried in his popularity, laughing, talking, gesticulating with the rest. His opponent, having been with difficulty convinced that the game was over, manifested no regrets, but flung his arm tipsily round Matthew’s shoulder.

  ‘Did you see that shot of mine, cocky?’ he kept repeating, ‘it was worth a pound – worth five pounds. It was a – a regular nor’ easter – a pickled ripsnorter. I’m true blue I am,’ and he glared defiantly round, seeking for anyone who might dispute it.

  They all went back to the bar where the whole assembly had beer at Matthew’s expense. He was their hero; they toasted him, then dispersed into small groups throughout the room discussing, stroke by stroke, the memorable achievement of the victor.

  Matt swaggered about the room, lording it over them. He had no false reticence, no mock modesty, but visited each group, saying to this one: ‘Did you see that cannon of mine off the cushion? Pretty neat, wasn’t it? Judged to a hair’s breadth!’ to another: ‘ Dash it all, I’ve made a break of two hundred on my day – more than two hundred!’ and to a third: ‘The poor barnacle, what chance had he against the likes of me? I could have beat him with my walking-stick.’ He lauded himself to the skies and the more he drank the more his silly vanity ballooned itself, until the room seemed to him to become filled with a babble of voices all lifted up to him in honeyed, fulsome flattery. His own tongue joined in the paean, the light gleamed about him like a thousand candles lighted in his honour, his heart swelled with gratification and delight. He had never had a triumph like this before; he considered himself the finest billiards player in Levenford, in Scotland, in the Kingdom; it was something to be able to make a break of fifty like that; why did they want to degrade him by shoving him into an office when he could play billiards in such a marvellous fashion?

  Suddenly, at the height of his jubilation, the fickle favour of the crowd waned; a heated argument had developed between two new-comers – an Irish navvy and a bricklayer – and the general attention left him and fixed itself upon the protagonists, whilst the mob goaded on each in turn in the hopes of provoking a fight. After all, he had only bought them beer – the price of popularity was higher than that – and almost at once he found himself alone, in a corner, friendless and forgotten. He almost blubbered with dismay at the sudden change in his condition, reflecting that it was always the same, that he could never maintain the centre of the stage for a sufficient length of time but was shoved, before he wished it, into the background. He wanted to run after them and recapture their errant favour, to shout: ‘ Look! I’m the man that made the break of fifty! Don’t forget about me. I’m the great billiards player. Gather round me again! You’ll not see a player like me every day!’ His vexation deepened, merged insensibly into resentment, and in his disgust he swallowed two large whiskies, then, with a last indignant look which swept scowlingly over them all, he went out of the bar. No one noticed him go.

  Outside, the pavements tilted slightly as he walked, moving like the deck of a liner in a mild swell; yet, cunningly, he adapted his balance to this gentle regular roll so that his body swayed slightly from side to side – but nevertheless maintained its upright poise. The exhilaration of the movement charmed him and soothed his wounded conceit. As he traversed the High Street he became aware that, in manoeuvring so skilfully amongst the intricate difficulties of this perpetually alternating plane, he was accomplishing a noted feat, one ranking equally, perhaps, with his remarkable achievement at billiards.

  He felt that it was not late, and with great difficulty he attempted to make out the time from the lighted dial of the Town clock; with his legs wide apart and his head thrown back he struggled with the abstruse dimensions of time and space. The steeple oscillated gently and wavered in harmony with the earth, the hands were indistinct, but he thought that it was just ten o’clock and his satisfaction at his cleverness was unbounded when, a moment later, the clock struck ten. He counted the chiming notes with sage, explanatory beats of his arm as though he himself were tolling the bell.

  Even for a dead and alive town like Levenford it was too early for him to go home. A man like Matthew Brodie to return home at the childish hour of ten o’clock? Impossible! He rammed his hand into his trousers pocket and feeling the reassuring crackle of a pound note and the clinking touch of silver coins, he thrust his hat more firmly on his head and once more set off down the street. Disappointingly few people were about. In a real city he would have known what to do; it was the easiest thing in the world to fling himself into a cab and, with a knowing wink, tell the driver to take him to the bona robas; he had only to lie back, luxuriously, and smoke his cigar whilst the spavined horseflesh dragged him happily to his destination. But here there were no cabs, no excitement, no women. The one girl whom he discovered and addressed gallantly ran from him panic-stricken, as though he had struck her, and he damned the town for its latant, bourgeois piety, cursed the female population in its entirety for the reputable habit of retiring early, for the unhappy integrity of its virtue. He was like a hunter after game who, the more it evaded him, became the more desperate in his pursuit and he swayed up the High Street and down again, fruitlessly essaying to find some means of combating the melancholy of drunken despondency which began slowly to settle upon him. At last, when he felt that he must enter another tavern to drown the sorrow of his failure all at once he remembered! He paused abruptly, slapped his thigh extravagantly at his unaccountable lapse of memory, and allowed a small smile to expand his features as he recollected that house in College Street which, in his youth, he had always hurried past with averted eyes and bated breath. Rumours regarding this tall, dark, narrow house, sandwiched between the Clyde Dress Agency and the mean pawnshop at the foot of the Vennel, had spread from time to time like tiny ripples on the flat, impeccable surface of Levenford’s respectability, giving the house a mysterious but tacitly acknowledged reputation amongst the knowing youth of the town. Its curtains were always drawn and no one entered by day, but at night lights discreetly appeared, footsteps came and went, sometimes music was heard. Such an iniquity, however veiled, must long ago have been expunged from so ancient and reputable a Borough, but a controlling hand of protection seemed to lie over the house, not perhaps sanctioning but rather concealing its inoffensively, immoral existence; it was even hinted by malicious individuals that certain baillies and prominent citizens found a not infrequent occasion upon which to make use of this rendezvous, in, of course, an eminently sedate and genteel manner.

  ‘That’s the hidey-hole for you, Matt. You’ll see if ye were right or wrong. You’ve often wondered what’s inside and now you’re going to find out,’ he muttered to himself, delightedly, as he lurched towards College Street, bent upon investigating the horrors at which his immature experience had shuddered. It struck him suddenly as the most ludicrous jest imaginable that he should be on his way to a bawdy house in Levenford, and he burst into peals of laughter so that he was obliged to stop, and roll helplessly against the side of a wall, whilst inane guffaws shook him and tears of mirth coursed down his face. When he was able to proceed, his despondency of a few short moments ago was gone, and he felt with a delicious, inward appreciation that he was enjoying himself infinitely more than he had expected. The alcohol he had absorbed had not yet reached the zenith of its stimulation and with every floundering step he took, he became more stupidly heedless and more sublimely hilarious.

  He entered the Vennel. The narrow street seemed more full of life than all the wide main streets of the town together; it teemed with an unseen activity. From the pens and closes and from behind even the thin walls of the houses came an endless variety of sounds – voices, laughter, the howl of a dog, the music of a melodeon, singing. He perceived that th
ey did not retire early here, felt that he was in his element, and outside a lighted window, from which emerged a roistering chorus, he stood rooted, then suddenly, like a provoked dog, he threw back his head and lifted his loud, inebriate voice in unison with the harmony within. The music ceased immediately and, after a pause, the window was thrown up and a stream of slops descended in a curving arch towards him. It missed him, however, by a foot, merely splashing slightly about his legs, and he retired down the street gaily, with the full honours of the encounter.

  Half-way down, his nostrils dilated to the succulent odour of frying ham arising from the cooking of some belated supper in a house which he was passing, and reaching him through the night in a spicy, savoury vapour. Immediately he felt hungry and, looking around, discerned over the way a small shop still open, a nondescript eating house devoted to the sale of such delicacies as pies, puddings, potted head, and tripe and onions. Moved by a sudden impulse, he strode across the street and muttering to himself drunkenly: ‘Ladies can wait. Matt needs little nourishment Must keep strength up, m’boy,’ he entered the place magnificently. Inside, however, his whisky-hunger overcame his style and he shouted: ‘ Throw us a meat pie quick, and swill in plenty of gravy.’

  ‘Penny or twopenny?’ queried the greasy youth behind the counter.

  ‘Sixpenny! you soor,’ replied Matthew, amiably. ‘Do you think I want any of your small trash? you bobachee. Pick me the biggest in the bunch and push it over here, jilde!’ He slapped the coin down, took up the newspaper-wrapped package offered in return and, disdaining to consume the pie upon the premises, walked out. Down the street he went, tearing off the paper wrapping and stuffing handfuls of the delicacy into his mouth, eating voraciously, leaving behind him a track which became at once the joy and contention of all the starveling cats of the alley.

  When he had finished, he breathed a sigh of content and, recollecting his manners, sucked his fingers and wiped them fastidiously upon his handkerchief. Then he hurried more urgently forward, full of meat and drink, ready now for the subtler and more piquant enchantments of the dessert. He came eventually to the house, found it, indeed, without difficulty, for it was not easy to forget one’s way in Levenford, and for a moment he stood outside, contemplating the narrow veiled illumination of the windows. As he remained there, momentarily a faint return of his adolescent awe touched him strangely, made him hesitate, but urged by the wild thought of the pleasure that lay therein for him, he seized the knocker and hammered loudly at the door. The clangour thundered up and down the street with a rude insistence, and, when he desisted, echoed to and fro across the narrow canyon of the lane, leaving, after the final reverberation had ceased, a startled silence which seemed to fall upon the outside, to grip even the inside of the house. There was a long pause during which he stood swaying upon the doorstep and, when he had almost made up his mind to knock again, the door was opened slowly, and for a small way only. Still, he was not dismayed by the inhospitable meagreness of this narrow aperture but, wise in his experience, immediately thrust his foot into the opening.

  ‘Good evening, dear lady,’ he simpered. ‘Are you at home?’

  ‘What do you want?’ said a hard, low-toned, female voice from the interior darkness.

  ‘The sight of your pretty face, my dear,’ he replied, in his best manner. ‘Come along now. Don’t be so cruel and heartless. Give me a look at your bright eyes or your neat ankles.’

  ‘Who are you?’ repeated the other harshly. ‘Who told you to come here?’

  ‘I’m an old inhabitant, sweet creature, lately returned from abroad and not without the wherewithal.’ He jingled the money in his pocket enticingly, and laughed with a short, empty laugh.

  There was a pause, then the voice said firmly:

  ‘Go away! You’ve made a mistake. This is a respectable house. We’ll have nothing to do with you whatever,’ and she made as though to close the door in his face. In the ordinary way he would have been deterred by this rebuff and would undoubtedly have slunk off, but now his foot prevented the door from closing and he replied, with some show of bluster:

  ‘Not so fast, ma’am. Don’t be so high and mighty! You’re dealing with a tough customer here. Let me in or I’ll make such a hullabaloo you’ll have the whole street at your door. Yes, I’ll bring the town down about your ears.’

  ‘Go away at once or I’ll get the police on you,’ said the other in a less firm tone, after a momentary silence that seemed fraught with indecision.

  He winked triumphantly at the darkness, feeling that he was winning, realising proudly that he could always bluff the women.

  ‘No you won’t,’ he replied craftily, ‘you don’t want any police down here. I know that better than you do. I’m the gentleman you want to-night – just wait till you see.’

  She made no answer and, her silence encouraging him, her reticence serving to excite his lust, he muttered:

  ‘I’ll come and take a peep at you, Dolly,’ and, pressing his shoulder into the slight open space of the doorway, he forcibly insinuated himself into the hall. There he blinked for a moment in the light of the lamp which she held in her hand and which was now thrust forward into his face, then his jaw dropped and he stared boorishly, incredulously at her. Across the thrawn, forbidding face of the woman a gross purple naevus lay like a livid weal, stretching like a living pappy fungus which had eaten into and destroyed her cheek and neck. It fascinated him morbidly with the attraction of a repulsive curiosity.

  ‘What do you want?’ she repeated in a rasping voice. He was disconcerted; with an effort, he removed his eyes from her face, but as he gazed round the wide, high-vaulted hall his confidence returned at the thought that there were other rooms in the house, rooms sealed with an alluring mystery. She herself was only the bawd; there must be plenty of fun waiting for him behind one of these doors in the house. He looked at her again and immediately her disfigurement obtruded itself upon him, so forcibly that he could not release his attention from it and, despite himself, muttered stupidly:

  ‘Woman, that’s an awful mark on your face. How did ye come to get it?’

  ‘Who are you?’ she repeated, harshly. ‘For the last time I ask you, before I have you thrown out.’

  He was off his guard.

  ‘My name’s Brodie – Matthew Brodie,’ he mumbled in an absent, sottish voice. ‘Where are the young wenches? It’s them I want to see! You’ll not do!’

  As he spoke she, in her turn, stared at him and, in the flickering light of the lamp, it seemed as if amazement and agitation in turn swept across her grim features. At length, she said, slowly:

  ‘I told you that you had mistaken the kind of house that this is! You’ll not find much to amuse you here. Nobody lives in this house but me. That’s the plain truth. I advise you to leave at once.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ he cried sullenly, and, his anger growing, he set up a great hubbub, shouting: ‘You’re a liar, I tell you. Do you think I’m a fool to be put off with a yarn like that? I’ll see you further before I go away. Do you think I’ll let myself be put off by a thing like you? – me that’s travelled to the other end of the world. No! I’ll break into every room in this damned house sooner than be beat.’

  At the uproar which he created a voice called out from upstairs and immediately she thrust her hand over his face.

  ‘Shut your mouth, will you,’ she cried fiercely. ‘You’ll have the whole place about my ears. What the devil are you to come in and disturb an honest woman like this? Here! wait in this room till you’re sober. Then I’ll have it out with you. Wait until I come back or it’ll be the worse for you.’ She seized him by the arm and, opening a door in the lobby, pushed him roughly into a small sitting-room. ‘Wait here, I tell you, or you’ll regret it all your born days,’ she shot at him, with a forbidding look, as she shut the door and enclosed him within the cold, uninviting chamber. She was gone before his fuddled brain had realised it and now he looked round the small cold parlour into which h
e had been thrust with a mixture of disgust and annoyance. Luscious memories recurred to him of other houses where he had moved in a whirl of mad music and wild, gay laughter, where bright lights had danced above the rich warmth of red plush and eager, undressed women had vied with each other for the richness of his favours. He had not been three minutes in the room before his drunken senses collected themselves and, as his mind realised the absurdity of having permitted himself – a man of such experience – to be shut up out of the way in this small cupboard, his will shaped itself towards a fiery resolution. They would not close him up in this box of a place with fine sport going on under his very nose! He moved forward and, with a crass affection of caution, opened the door and tiptoed once more into the wide lobby, where a faint murmur of voices came to him from upstairs. Surreptitiously he looked round. There were three other doors opening out of the hall and he surveyed them with a mixture of expectation and indecision, until, choosing the one immediately opposite, and advancing carefully, he turned the handle and looked in. He was rewarded only by the cold darkness of a musty, unoccupied room. Closing the door, he turned to the one which adjoined it, but again he was disappointed, for he discovered here only the empty kitchen of the house; and swinging round with a snort of disgust, he plunged heedlessly into the last room.

  Immediately he stood stock still, whilst the thrill of a delicious discovery ran through him Before his eyes, seated reading a newspaper beside the comfortable fire, was a girl. Like a frantic searcher who has at last discovered treasure he uttered deep in his throat a low exultant cry and remained motionless, filling himself with her beauty, fascinated by the warm reflection of the firelight upon the soft curve of her pale cheek, noting her slender body, the shapely curve of her ankles, as, still unconscious of him, she held her feet to the fire. She was attractive and, seen through the haze of his distorted, craving senses, she became to him at once supremely beautiful and desirable. Slowly he advanced towards her. At the sound of his step she looked up, her face at once became disturbed, and she dropped her paper, saying quickly: ‘ This room is private, reserved.’