by A. J. Cronin
‘I have, indeed,’ answered Nessie pathetically, looking down at her own unsubstantial form. ‘I can’t eat anything. We’ve had such bad food lately. It was all because of that – that –’ She threatened to break down again.
‘Hush, pettie, hush – don’t cry again,’ whispered Mary. ‘Tell me some other time.’
‘I can’t wait to tell you,’ cried Nessie hysterically, her words coming in a rush. ‘My letter told you nothing. We’ve had a terrible woman in the house and she’s run away with Matt to America. Father was nearly out of his head and he does nothing but drink from mornin’ till night and oh! Mary! he’s driving me on to study so much that it’s just killing me. Don’t let him do it, Mary – will you? You’ll save me, won’t you, Mary?’ and she held her hands out beseechingly towards her sister.
Mary stood quite still; the torrent of the other’s speech had overwhelmed her. Then she said slowly: ‘Is father changed, Nessie? Is he not good to you now?’
‘Changed!’ whimpered Nesie. ‘ He’s so changed you wouldn’t know him. It frightens me to see him sometimes. When he’s not had whisky he’s like a man walkin’ in a dream. You wouldn’t believe the change in everything’ – she continued, with a rising voice, and, seizing her sister’s arm, she began to draw her towards the kitchen – ‘you wouldn’t believe it unless you saw it. Look here! Come and see the sight of this room,’ and she flung open the door widely as though to demonstrate visibly the extent of the alteration in the circumstances of her life.
Mary stood dumbly envisaging the frowsy room, then she looked at Nessie and said, wonderingly:
‘Does father put up with this?’
‘Put up with it!’ cried the other, ‘he doesn’t even notice it, and he looks worse even than this room, with his clothes hanging off him, and his eyes sunk away, down in his head. If I try to lay a finger on the place to clear it up he roars my head off and keeps shouting at me to get on with my work and threatens me in all manner of ways, simply scares me out of my wits.’
‘Is it as bad as that, then?’ murmured Mary, almost to herself.
‘It’s worse,’ cried Nessie, mournfully, looking up at her sister with wide eyes. ‘Grandma does the best she can, but she’s near helpless now. Nobody can manage him. You and me better go away somewhere quick before anything happens to us.’ Her attitude seemed to entreat her sister to fly instantly with her from the ruins of their home. But Mary shook her head, and speaking firmly, cheerfully, said:
‘We can’t run away, dear. We’ll do the best we can together. I’ll soon have the place different for you,’ and, advancing to the window she threw it up and let a gust of the cool, sharp wind come rushing in the room. ‘There, now; we’ll let the breeze in for a little, while we have a walk in the back, then I’ll come in and straighten things out.’ She took off her hat and coat and, laying them on the sofa, turned again to Nessie, put her arm round the other’s thin waist, and drew her out of the back door into the outer air.
‘Oh, Mary!’ cried Nessie ecstatically, pressing her side close against her sister as the two began to walk slowly up and down, ‘ it’s wonderful to have you back. You’re so strong. I’ve an awful faith in you. Surely things will go right now.’ Then she added inconsequently: ‘ What’s been happening to you? What have you been doing all this time?’
Mary held out her free hand for a moment.
‘Just using these,’ she said lightly; ‘and hard work never killed anybody, so here I am.’
The younger girl looked with a shocked gaze at the rough calloused palm, seared by a deep white scar, and turning her eyes upwards remarked wonderingly:
‘What gave you that big mark? Was it a cut ye got?’
A quick expression of pain flitted across Mary’s face as she replied:
‘That was it, Nessie; but it’s all better now. I told you never to mind about your stupid old sister. It’s wee you we’re to think about’
Nessie laughed happily, then stopped short in amazement.
‘Would ye believe it!’ she exclaimed, in an awestruck tone; ‘ that was me laughin’ – a thing I haven’t done for months. Goodness! I could be downright happy if it wasn’t for the thought of all the work for that old Bursary exam.’ She shivered exaggeratedly. ‘That’s the worse thing of any.’
‘Will you not get it?’ asked Mary solicitously.
‘Of course I will!’ exclaimed the other with a toss of her head. ‘I mean to get it all right, just to show them all – the way some of them have behaved to me at school is a disgrace. But it’s father. He goes on about it and worries me to death. I wish he would only leave me alone.’ She shook her head and added, in an old-fashioned tone that might have been her mother’s voice: ‘My head’s like to split the way he raves at me sometimes. He’s got me away to a shadow.’
Mary looked commiseratingly at the fragile form and thin precocious face beside her and, squeezing her sister’s puny arm reassuringly, she said:
‘I’ll soon get you all right, my girl. I know exactly what to do, and I’ve a few tricks up my sleeve that might surprise you.’
Nessie turned, and using a favourite catchword of their childhood, remarked, with an assumption of great simplicity:
‘Is it honky-tonky tricks you’ve got up there, Mary?’
The sisters gazed at each other, while the years fell away from them, then suddenly they smiled into each other’s eyes, and laughed aloud together, with a sound which echoed strangely in that desolate back garden.
‘Oh! Mary,’ sighed Nessie rapturously, ‘this is better than I expected. I could hug you, and hug you. You’ve lovely. I’ve got my bonnie, big sister back. Was it not brave of me to write and ask you to come back? If he had found me out he would have taken my head off. You’ll not let on it was me though, will you?’
‘No, indeed,’ cried Mary fondly, ‘I’ll not say a word.’
‘He’ll be in soon,’ said Nessie slowly, her face falling again at the thought of her father’s imminent return. ‘You know all about – about his comin’ to work in the Yard, I suppose.’
A faint colour suffused Mary’s cheeks as she answered:
‘Yes! I heard about it, just after Mamma’s death.’
‘Such a come down!’ said Nessie in a precocious tone. ‘ Poor Mamma was well out of it. It would have finished her if the other hadn’t.’ She paused, and sighed, adding with a sort of sorrowful comfort: ‘I would like us to go up and put some flowers on her grave some day soon. There’s not a thing on it – not even an artificial wreath.’
A silence now came between the sisters whilst each followed her own thoughts, then Mary started, and said: ‘I must go in and see to things, dear. I want to get everything ready. You wait here in the air, for I think it’ll do you good. Wait and see how nice I’ll have everything for you.’
Nessie gazed at her sister doubtfully.
‘You’re not going to run away and leave me?’ she demanded, as though she feared to allow Mary out of her sight. ‘I’ll come in and help you.’
‘Nonsense! I’m used to this work,’ replied Mary. ‘Your business is to stay here and get an appetite for tea.’
Nessie loosed her sister’s hand, and as she watched her go through the back door cried, warningly:
‘I’ll keep my eye on you through the window to see you don’t go away.’
Inside the house, Mary set to work to restore cleanliness and some degree of order to the kitchen and, having, assumed an apron which she discovered in the scullery, and directing her activities with the precision of experience, she quickly burnished and blackened the grate, lit the fire and swept the hearth, scrubbed the floor, dusted the furniture, and rubbed the window panes to some degree of brightness. Then, searching for the whitest table cover she could find, she spread this upon the table and commenced to prepare as appetising a tea as the scanty contents of the larder would permit. Standing there by the stove, flushed and a little breathless from the rapidity of her exertions, she seemed to have sloughed off
the intervening years and – as though she had never suffered the bitter experiences of her life – to be again a girl engaged in getting ready the evening meal of the household. While she remained thus, she heard a slow shuffling tread in the lobby followed by the creak of the kitchen door as it swung open, and turning, she observed the bowed and decrepit figure of old Grandma Brodie come hobbling into the room, diffidently, uncertainly, like a spectre moving among the ruins of its past glory. Mary left the stove, advanced, and called: ‘Grandma!’
The old woman looked slowly up, presenting her yellow, cracked, visage with its sunken cheeks and puckered lips, and, staring incredulously, as though she too observed a phantom, she muttered at length: ‘Mary! it canna surely be Mary.’ Then she shook her head, dismissing the evidence of her aged eyes as unthinkable, removed her gaze from Mary, and with an indeterminate step moved towards the scullery, whispering to herself:
‘I maun get some tea thegither for him. James’ tea maun be got ready.’
‘I’m getting the tea, Grandma,’ exclaimed Mary; ‘there’s no need for you to worry about it. Come and sit in your chair,’ and taking the other’s arm she led her, tottering but unresisting, to her old seat by the fire, into which the crone subsided with a vacant and unheeding stare. As Mary began, however, to journey to and fro from the scullery to the kitchen and the table assumed gradually an appearance such as it had not borne for months, the old woman’s eyes became more lucid and looking from a plate of hot pancakes, steaming and real, to Mary’s face, she passed her blue-lined transparent hand tremulously over her brows and muttered: ‘Does he know you’re back?’
‘Yes, Grandma! I wrote and said I was coming,’ replied Mary.
‘Is he goin’ to let you bide here?’ croaked the other. ‘Maybe, he’ll put ye out again. When was that? Was it before Marg’et deed? I canna think. Your hair looks unco’ bonnie that way.’ Her gaze then faded and she seemed to lose interest murmuring disconsolately as she turned towards the fire: ‘ I canna eat so weel without my teeth.’
‘Would you like a hot pancake and butter?’ asked Mary in a coaxing tone.
‘Would I no’!’ replied the other instantly. ‘Where is’t?’ Mary gave the old woman her pancake, saw her seize it avidly and, crouching over the fire, begin eagerly to suck it to its destruction. Suddenly she was aroused from her contemplation by a whisper in her ear:
‘Please, I would like one too, Mary dear!’ Nessie had come in and was now presenting a flatly suppliant palm, waiting to have it covered by the warm solace of a new-made pancake.
‘You’ll not have one, you’ll have two,’ cried Mary recklessly. ‘Yes! as many as you like. I’ve made plenty.’
‘They’re good,’ exclaimed Nessie appreciatively. ‘ Good as good! You’ve made them so quick too, and my word what a change you’ve made in the room! It’s like old times again! as light as a feather! That’s the way my mother used to make them, and these are just as good, ay, better than we used to get. Yum – yum – they’re lovely!’
As Mary listened whilst Nessie talked on in this fashion and watched her quick, nervous gestures as she ate, she began to study her more intently than she had hitherto done, and slowly an impression of vague but deep uneasiness stole in upon her. The facile, running speech of her sister, the jerky and slightly uncontrolled movements perceptible now on her closer observation, seemed to betoken a state of unconscious nervous tension which alarmed her, and as she traced the thin contours of the other’s growing body and noted her faintly hollowed cheeks and temples she said, involuntarily:
‘Nessie, dear, are you sure you’re feeling all right?’
Nessie stuffed the last of the pancake in her mouth before she replied, expressively:
‘I’m getting better and better – especially since I’ve had that. Mary’s pancakes are good but Mary herself is better.’ She chewed for a moment then solemnly added: ‘I’ve felt real bad once or twice, but I’m right as the mail now.’
Her sudden idea was, of course, mere nonsense, thought Mary, but nevertheless she determined to use every effort in her power to obtain for Nessie some respite from the studies which seemed, at least, to be overtaxing the inadequate strength of her immature frame. A strong feeling, partly from love of her sister, but chiefly from a strong maternal impulse towards the other’s weakness, gripped her, and she laid her arm protectingly round Nessie’s narrow shoulders, drew her close and murmured, warmly: ‘I’ll do my best for you, dear. I really will. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to see you look happy and well.’
Whilst the sisters stood together thus the old woman raised her head from the fire and, as she considered them, a sudden, penetrating insight seemed to flash through the obscurity of her senile mind, for she remarked sharply:
‘Don’t let him see ye like that. Don’t hing thegither and show you’re so fond o’ one another in front of him. Na! Na! he’ll have no interference wi’ Nessie. Let her be, let her be.’ The edge in her voice was blunted as she uttered these last words, her gaze again became opaque and, with a slow, unconcealed yawn she turned away, muttering: ‘I’m wantin’ my tea. Is it not tea time yet? Is’t not time for James to be in?’
Mary looked interrogatively at her sister and the shadow fell again on Nessie’s brow as she remarked, moodily:
‘You can infuse the tea. He’ll be in any minute now. Then you’ll see for yourself – the minute I’ve finished a cup it’ll be the signal for me to be shoved off into the parlour. I’m tired to death of it.’
Mary did not reply but went into the scullery to infuse the tea, and filled now by a sudden, private fear at the immediate prospect of meeting her father, the unselfish consideration of her sister slipped for the moment from her mind and she began to anticipate, tremblingly, the manner of his greeting. Her eyes, that were fixed unseeingly upon the steamy clouds issuing from the boiling kettle, flinched as she recollected how he had kicked her brutally as she lay in the hall, how that blow had been in part responsible for the pneumonia which had nearly killed her, and she wondered vaguely if he had ever regretted that single action, if he had, indeed, even thought of it during the four years of her absence. As for herself, the memory of that blow had lived with her for months, the pain of it had lasted during the long delirium of her illness, when she had suffered a thousand savage kicks from him with each stabbing respiration; the indignity had remained until long afterwards, when she would lie awake at night turning in her mind the outrage upon her body of the inhuman impact of his heavy boot.
She thought again of these thick-soled boots which she had so often brushed for him, which she would, in her voluntary servitude, brush for him again, and as she remembered, too, the heavy tread which had habitually announced his entry, she started, listened, and once again heard his foot in the hall, slower, even sluggish, less firm, almost dragging but still her father’s step. The moment which she had foreseen, had visualised a thousand times, which, though she dreaded it, was of her own seeking, was upon her and, though she shook in all her limbs, she turned and advanced bravely, but with a fluttering heart, to meet him.
They came face to face in the kitchen, where the man who had come in looked at her silently, swept the room, the table, the brightly burning hearth with his dark eye, then returned his glance to her. Only when he spoke did she know actually that it was her father, when his old bitter sneer distorted his furrowed visage and he said:
‘You’ve come back then, have ye?’ and walked without further speech to his chair. The devastating change in him, such a change that she had failed almost to recognise him, shocked her so profoundly that she was unable to speak. Could this be her father, this old, shrunken man with his unkempt hair, his stained, untidy clothing, his morose unshaven face, his wild, wretched, malignant eye. Nessie had been right! She could not have believed the magnitude of this change until she had seen it, and even now she could scarcely credit the evidence of her eyes. In a dazed manner she moved herself forward and began to pour out and hand round the tea
and, when she had accomplished this, she did not sit down with the others, but remained standing, waiting to serve them, still filled with an incredulous dismay at her father’s dreadful appearance. He, on his part, continued to ignore her and to partake of his meal silently, with a careless, almost slovenly manner of eating, apparently regardless of what he consumed or the fashion in which he consumed it. His glance was distrait, oblique, and when it assumed a cognisance of his surroundings, it fell not upon her, but always upon Nessie, as though some rooted conception of his brain was centred upon her, making her the focus of his conscious attention. The others, too, ate without speaking and, although she had not yet had the opportunity to address her father, to break that period of silence now four years long, she passed quietly out of the kitchen into the scullery where she remained intent, listening, and perturbed, When she had determined to sacrifice herself for Nessie’s sake and return home she had envisaged herself in combat with, an oppression of a different nature, loud, hectoring, even savage, but never with such a strange inhuman preoccupation as this which she now felt to have possessed her father. His strong and virile character seemed, like his flesh, to have crumbled from him, leaving a warped structure of a man engrossed with something, she knew not what; which had mastered him and now controlled each thought, each action of his body.
She had been in the scullery only a few minutes, considering him thus, when to her straining ears came the harsh, different sound of his voice, saying:
‘You’ve finished, Nessie! You can get into the parlour and begin your work now!’ Immediately she steeled herself and reentered the kitchen, and, observing Nessie rising in a sad, dejected manner with a cowed look in her eyes to obey his command, at the submission of the child she felt a sudden rush of courage within her and in a quiet voice she addressed her father.
‘Father, could Nessie not come for a walk with me before she begins her work?’
But he might have been deaf to her words, and utterly oblivious of her presence, for any evidence which he manifested of having heard or seen her, and continuing to look at Nessie, he resumed, in a harder tone:
