A Pocketful of Rye

by A. J. Cronin

  ‘Carroll, you’re a lad after my own heart. What’s your opinion of this damn business between my son and that Considine girl? It’s been going on since they were in their blasted hippins.’

  ‘Well, sir,’ I said carefully. ‘ I think they’re extremely fond of one another.’

  ‘You mean to tell me they’re in love? At their age?’

  ‘They certainly mean to get married when they’re a bit older.’

  ‘Heavens almighty! But what goes on the now, up in the woods, the two of them, thegither?’ He always lapsed into broad Scots when excited.

  ‘Nothing, sir. Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘My arse and Jeannie Deans!’ he exploded. ‘ They must do something.’

  ‘They pick flowers, sir.’

  ‘Almighty Heavens!’ He was silenced. Then: ‘ Listen, lad. That girl drips sex like one of McKay’s Ayrshire cows leaks milk. Do you mean to me tell that up in these Longcrags with not a soul to watch them, Frank isn’t … you know what?’

  ‘I swear to you he isn’t. I know Frank. He’s good. Absolutely good.’ With two pints of Tennant’s best inside me I felt noble, rising in defence of my best friend. ‘Why, his influence has even kept me good. He’s incapable of anything like that!’

  ‘Oh, Lord.’ He gave out a kind of groan. ‘You mean he’s not even trying for a tickle?’

  ‘Positively not, sir. I’d swear to it.’

  Again he was silent, then he murmured to himself:

  ‘But picking flowers. What a daisy.’

  We were approaching the lights of Levenford and had reached Craig Crescent before he spoke again.

  ‘Come ben the house and I’ll give you your half of the salmon.’

  ‘Oh I couldn’t, doctor …’

  Despite my protests he insisted, giving me the better tail half which sent my grandmother into such transports she didn’t even ask to smell my breath. I refrained from telling her the doctor’s final remark.

  ‘I daresay ye’ll get it served with Bannockburn sauce.’

  Before I went to bed I said some extra prayers, celebrating my deliverance from the curse of Adam. But all of that night I scarcely slept one hour.

  Chapter Three

  Dawn comes early in the Swiss uplands and on the morning of October 7th, although it went against the grain, I was up with the lark to make a quick round of the ward. We had only five cases, none of them serious: two simply retained for observation after pleurisy, a mesenteric adenitis and a synovitis of the knee, the so-called ‘ white swelling’, both certainly due to bovine T.B., and finally an early Pott’s curvature that I had already put in plaster. By half past eight I had finished and after breakfasting and checking with Matron, whom I had already skilfully briefed and who, to my surprise, seemed quite intrigued at the prospect of the new arrivals, I set out for Zürich in the Clinic’s Opel station wagon. Why so early, Carroll? Why such indecent haste? You are not duty bound to meet and greet the dear pilgrims until half past five. Could it be that there was purpose in that telephone call last night when the good matron had retired and that once again you are putting pleasure before business?

  At first the mountain road is steep, winding and narrow but beyond Jenaz it opens out into the Coire valley. At this hour, except for a few farm wagons, there was no delaying traffic. I made good time and was in Zürich, cruising along the Tielstrasse, looking for an unmetered parking place, just after eleven o’clock.

  Zürich has been decried as a city of underground bankers. I have nothing against bankers, since I never meet them, and I liked this fine, rich city, presiding over its broad river and the Züricher See with the dignity of an elder statesman, and never cluttered with gaping tourists, since most foreigners came quite simply to visit their money. A stroll down the Bahnofstrasse, where I stopped at Grieder’s to buy a couple of ties, brought me to the Baur-au-Lac just before noon. I went into the garden and ordered a dry martini. It came at once, substantial and really dry, with a thin curl of well-pared lemon peel, confirming my unbiassed award of five stars to this superb hotel. Naturally it is expensive, but now that I had some sort of income I enjoyed blowing it, moreover my visits were infrequent and as Lotte enjoyed everything de luxe it paid off to indulge her here.

  She arrived at that moment, bareheaded and smiling, very smartly turned out in a plain but attractive tan suit that exactly matched her corn straw hair. I should explain that Lotte is Swedish with the colouring of her race, not the conventional slinky fictional blonde, but a big, easygoing, solidly beautiful girl with the athletic body of a champion discus thrower and careless honey-coloured eyes that usually seem full of laughter. Of course she doesn’t throw the discus. She is an ex-air hostess promoted to receptionist at Zürich for a big Scandinavian Charter Line … the AKTIEBOLAGET SVENSKA ÖRNFLYG and, both being practised in the art, we had picked each other up in the airport bar about four months ago when I was dispatching a consignment of boys to Birmingham. I had become fond of Lotte since then and except for one thing I would have been mad about her. As it was, I warmed all over as she sat down and crossed her legs under her short skirt. But the waiter was already at my elbow.

  ‘I’m one ahead of you,’ I said in German. As part of her job she spoke five languages and, teaching it the best way, had brought my German to what might justly be termed top form – we often laughed together over the way I’d had on the Committee with my ‘Entschuldigen Sie, mein Herr, können Sie mir zeigen, wo der nächste Abort ist?’ ‘ Can you cope with a double?’

  ‘If you’ll have one.’

  I leaned forward when the waiter had gone.

  ‘You’re looking most unbearably attractive, darling.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Been meeting many V.I.P.’s lately?’

  ‘Lots and lots. Dark handsome men.’

  ‘Hmm. African or Burmese?’

  ‘No, no, one Italian, one French.’

  ‘Ah! A mixed Vermouth.’

  She laughed shortly, narrowing her cat’s eyes.

  ‘Really, I’m serious, Laurence. Two gorgeous men.’

  ‘Liar. Only don’t start sleeping with them or I’ll break your Swedish neck. Incidentally,’ I said, with a momentary anxiety, ‘you are free this afternoon? You weren’t quite sure last night when I called you.’

  ‘What about those medical researches?’

  ‘We’ll work on them together.’

  She kept me on edge for a moment then nodded, companionably.

  ‘Not on duty till five o’clock.’

  ‘That’s perfect. I have to be at the airport myself then.’ And I told her briefly I was meeting a patient and his mother.

  The waiter had brought two menu cards with the drinks. We studied them in silence, ordered, and half an hour later we went into the restaurant, a glassed addition built out into the garden with the river on one side.

  I remember so well that delicious luncheon, the last before my troubles began. We both had the iced canteloupe as a starter, so golden, so sweetly ripe, and dead ice cold. Lotte, who never seemed to look ahead, or perhaps had no need to supercharge her vitality, chose for her main course poached turbot with hollandaise sauce and little new potatoes vapeur. I had a thick filet mignon cooked au point with spinach and pommes pont neuf. We drank two of the best, yet relatively inexpensive, Swiss wines, she the light Dole Johannesburger, I the red Pinot Noir, and just enjoying the food and looking at each other, we didn’t talk much. Coffee was all we wanted afterwards, and we put it down suspiciously fast.

  Lotte’s apartment was in a new block in Kloten, quite near the airport. I drove there, parked the car at the rear of the building and was beside her as she turned the key in the door. I knew it all: living-room with small kitchen off, bedroom and nicely tiled bathroom, all furnished simply and functionally in modern Scandinavian style and excessively clean. Whenever we entered she drew the curtains in the bedroom, gave me her big warm smile and began with complete naturalness, keeping her eyes on me, to take off
her clothes. Soon she was stretched out flat on the bed.

  ‘Come quick, Laurence. It is too long since the last time … I want lots and lots of loving.’

  Stark naked, lit by the filtered daylight, she invited the physical act openly, naturally and with undisguised desire.

  Afterwards, she studied my face, so intense, it seemed to amuse her.

  ‘We must have a cigarette.’ She rolled over, like a big languid cream-fed yellow cat, reaching to the bedside table, speaking in English which she knew moderately well. ‘Then again we have much more fun-fun.’

  That, exactly, was the trouble with Lotte. Bliss when we made love, and afterwards nothing. No tenderness, no persistent sense of belonging, nothing of that yearning which springs not from the body but from the spirit. Of course, an excess of yearning could be dangerous: to my cost I had learned how difficult it could be getting rid of a yearner, particularly the soulful type. But surely, I told myself, there should be something, a communication of the heart rather than the adrenals, that endures after the intensity of such a union. Was I asking for the moon? In this case, perhaps. The Swedes, I reflected sadly, were known as prolific copulators, they took it all in their athletic stride. A hygienic exercise.

  Lotte drew on her cigarette, her mind already diverted to the mundane.

  ‘Who are these people you are meeting?’

  ‘I told you, darling. A small boy and his mother. It’s odd … years ago I fancied I was in love with her. Yet in a queer sort of way I almost hated her.’

  ‘See you go on hating. No more of the other thing.’

  ‘You can bet on that … But Lotte, you don’t really love me.’

  ‘So you want to be loved? Heart to heart. And pink roses round the door.’

  ‘Don’t jeer, Lotte. I mean something deeper … that you can hold on to when you need it … when you’re not on top of the world.’

  She burst out laughing.

  ‘When the dog barks at you in your dark street.’

  Once, misguidedly, I had tried to confide in her. I was silent. Perhaps she had sensed that she had hurt me. She said quickly:

  ‘Ah! Love, what is that but meeting trouble? I like you much. We give each other much satisfaction. And I’m not a gold brick.’

  ‘Gold digger,’ I corrected.

  She repeated the words, laughed, then put her arms round me.

  ‘Come. We forget love and enjoy each other.’

  It was a quarter to five when she got up and dressed.

  With my hands behind my head I watched her out of one eye. In the comedy of life nothing is nicer than a pretty girl stepping out of short, clean white pants – you can keep all your tiddy pastel shades. The reverse process, the stepping in, now being enacted, strikes a bourgeois note. Drawing the curtains, shutting up shop. But in her perfectly fitting saxe uniform, the cockaded bonnet not the common saucy touch but elegant, she looked distressingly smart. The afternoon, which had slightly tarnished me, had put a bloom on her.

  ‘We must hurry, or I’ll be late.’

  I sighed and heaved out of bed. My knees creaked. I was no longer young and healthy.

  ‘I do hate leaving you so soon, Lotte. After being so close to you … it’s a wrench.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You are a nice man, Laurence, of whom I am so fond. I never thought for an Englisher I could feel so much. Don’t spoil it all with such sentimism.’

  ‘Sentiment,’ I amended sadly. ‘And I’m Scottish.’

  I brought the car round to the front entrance and we drove to Kloten. You may accuse me of being oversold on Zürich when I commend Kloten Airport as the best in Europe – meticulously efficient, immaculately clean, with a first-class restaurant and a snack-bar serving the best coffee I ever drank. We each had a quick cup, standing up. Typically, there was no one at the B.E. A. counter, but from the long range of bustling Swiss desks on the other side Lotte came back with some bad news.

  ‘Your flight is seventy minutes late.’

  ‘Oh, blast.’

  She showed all her lovely teeth in an irritating smile. ‘You must sit and dream of me, liebling. With your so tender heart. And I tell you. When your friends arrive I bring them quickly through customs to you.’

  I went through to the lower bar, found a quiet corner and ordered a Kirsch. Suddenly I felt tired and unaccountably depressed. No, not unaccountably – it was the old post-copulative triste. The Augustine tag came to my mind: Post coitum omne animal triste est. How true, how everlastingly true! Usually I can ignore it but today I failed to shake it off. Her crack at my secret hallucination had upset me. And what a fool I was, wasting my time, and substance, in fact wasting my life with these frivolous fringe benefits. Lotte wasn’t a bad sort, but what did I really mean to her. A partner in fun-fun. And although she wasn’t promiscuous, I had a dismal notion that I was not the only one to share her suspiciously broad and springy bed. But this was the least of my sudden dejection. That mood was coming on, that familiar cursed mood, the epigastric syndrome, or if you prefer it, that psychological punch in the guts. For me there was no escape. Never. Even as a backslider I could not escape that sense of guilt. I had been brought up on sin, both varieties, venial and mortal, the latter, if unforgiven, a prelude to damnation. Ah, goodness, that comprehensive word, that ever elusive, state of good!

  Oh, cut it out, Carroll. Be your age. You gave up all that truck years ago. And nowadays who gives it a thought? And if you want to argue, hasn’t the recent Commission of Christian Churches practically sanctified all forms of premarital sex, throwing in a few self-service practices as extra jam, with three hearty Christian cheers for Lady Chatterley’s Lover!

  With an effort I turned my thoughts towards the approaching meeting, which disagreeable though it might be, was not without a certain mild expectation. Interesting, in a minor way, to see Cathy again and to know if anything of that juvenile regard for me remained. The probability stirred faint memories and, encouraged by another Kirsch and a sustaining club sandwich, I drifted back to Levenford, to that eventful day, and the events leading to it, when I had last seen Cathy Considine and Francis Ennis, the day of Frank’s ordination.

  Chapter Four

  The summer that year had been exceptionally fine, and on that late August morning as I set out from Winton station the sun beamed benignly in a cloudless sky.

  The train was a ‘local’ and as the slow journey wore on with stops at several stations, I had ample time to reflect on the event that was bringing me to Levenford. Actually it was an inconvenience for me to make the trip since, having graduated M.B. at the University during the month before, I had signed on as ship’s surgeon in the s.s. Tasman, a cargo-cum-passenger liner plying between Liverpool and Sydney, due to sail on the evening of the day after the ceremony. But I had promised Frank to be there on his big day, although since leaving Levenford to attend the University, my communication with him, to say nothing of my visits, had been infrequent. Frank’s sudden decision to enter the priesthood, so logical in one sense, had taken me by surprise. He had never spoken to me of a vocation although I had long suspected it. I had already surmised that a subconscious aversion to his father’s way of life, while never admitted, perhaps never recognized, had deterred him from continuing the Ennis general practice. But he had meant to be a teacher, and had set out to take his M.A. degree at Edinburgh. And beyond all other considerations his future had been centred on Cathy, their marriage was an understood thing, practically preordained. What could have upset the apple cart? A sudden call to give himself to God? Perhaps there had been pressure from the everlasting Dingwall. This I was inclined to doubt, recollecting an incident when the Canon, detaining me after one of our Friday sessions, had caught me by the collar and shaken me till my teeth rattled.

  ‘It’s you I want, with your good Protestant blood. What use would Frank be on the parish milk round? Put a rosary in one hand and a lily in the other and you’re done with him.’

  Had some deep
er psychological reason inclined him towards celibacy? There was the occasion when, during one of our conversations – I was then a three-year medical student – Frank suddenly exclaimed:

  ‘Isn’t it disgusting, Laurence, that the organ of procreation should be the very sewer through which half the impurities of the body are discharged?’ And how his expression had frozen when I laughed.

  ‘You’ll have to blame that one on the Creator, Frank.’

  ‘Not blame, Laurie,’ he said severely. ‘ It was meant. By omniscient design.’

  He was an interesting conundrum, still open to speculation! For reasons that were unrevealed, and remained inexplicable, Frank had suddenly slipped out of his commitment to Cathy and taken off for the seminary.

  The train was late in arriving and although I put on speed from the railway station to St Patrick’s, the service had already begun as I slid into an inconspicuous seat beside a pillar. From this retreat I had a clear view of the altar and of the two front rows, where I made out amongst a number of others, Mrs Ennis, Cathy, and what looked like the entire extensive range of the Davigan family.

  This ceremony is always impressive and I admit it gave me a bit of a turn. The sight of Frank, all in white, prostrate in an attitude of supreme subjection, made me feel a bit of a sickening character. Since I’d cut loose from Levenford I had not infrequently been in the same position for altogether different reasons.

  After the final blessing I waited outside, the emerging congregation, which was large, milling round me. Aware that I should not immediately see Frank, I hoped that Mrs Ennis or Cathy might give me some idea of his arrangements for the day. However, it was Dan Davigan who found me, pumping my hand and patting me on the back with the insufferable presumption of a lifelong boon companion.

  ‘Well met, man. I saw you, had my eye on you, as you slipped in. Why didn’t you come forward, proper like, to the place I’d reserved for you? I’m a St Pat’s sidesman now, y’understand, and I throw my weight around. Anyhow, here we are, and I’ve an invite for you. Celebration repast at the Ennis’s home for six o’clock. You’ll be there?’