An End to Autumn

by Iain Crichton Smith

  The two of them had told her that she could make her own light dinner if she wanted to as they wouldn’t be coming back for it, since it was more convenient for them to take their lunch in school. Thus for a good part of the day she was monarch of all she surveyed, and she found this both disquieting and liberating. She wondered too if she should approach them with regard to paying them some money. On Tuesdays she would have to go to the Post Office for her pension. She didn’t think that Tom would take any money from her but at least she wished to make the offer lest they should wonder why she hadn’t thought of it. The problems began to proliferate as she wandered about the house or sat in the living room. Throwing oneself on the mercy of others, surrendering one’s responsibility for oneself wasn’t so easy as one might at first think. In Edinburgh it had appeared simple enough, as if all she had to do was to take the train, enter their house and relax. But the reality was different. The reality was that the house was a certain distance from the town, not much, but not all that central: and that her freedom was very great indeed. She decided that she would go out, and this raised another problem, for what was she to do about a key? She agonised about this for a while and then resolved that as they had told her that there was no likelihood of the house being broken into she could probably afford to leave the door off the snib: she would get a key that night. The other possibility was to snib the door and stay down town till they returned from school which she assumed would be shortly after four o’clock. But on balance it seemed to her better to leave the door unlocked, since she didn’t think that she would be able to stay down town till four o’clock.

  She dressed not in her black coat but in her brown one and left the house walking briskly down the brae to the road in the cool air of the morning. She noticed that at the foot of the brae was a bus stop but decided not to wait for a bus, though she was glad that she had established that buses did run past the house: a bus would be useful on rainy days or when she felt tired. By the time she had reached the town she felt quite adventurous again and was delighted by its simple attractiveness. She walked to the pier and had a look at the boxes of fish, the fishing boats with their tangle of pointed masts, the seagulls in squabbling rings in the bay. Out in the distance she could see an island, long and green, with houses on it. The sun sparkled on the water, the smell of brine was in her nostrils, and the air was clear and clean and pure.

  After she had seen the pier she had a walk among the shops, buying nothing except a cake which she thought might be useful for the house. She found the atmosphere of the town relaxing as if people had all the time in the world, as if they were able to converse with each other without pressure or strain. A man who was cleaning the roads and piling withered leaves into a barrow said good morning to her. The quality of the light attracted her, it seemed softer and more restful than that of Edinburgh, and it appeared to make the houses soft yet clear. The air too was blander than the cold piercing air of Edinburgh.

  After she had walked about the town for a while she decided that she would do what Tom had suggested and sit on a bench in the railed garden in the square. She opened the gate and walked in and sat down. Beside her on the bench was a woman with a shopping bag: she was slightly bow-legged and had varicose veins. She hadn’t been sitting long when the woman spoke to her. It seemed to her that she had seen the woman before, perhaps in church: or it might be that she was confusing her with someone she had seen in Edinburgh, for she found, strangely enough that as she walked along the street she met people who reminded her of ones whom she had known or met in Edinburgh.

  “It’s a nice day,” said the woman. “And it’s a relief to have a seat.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs Mallow, “isn’t it?”

  The woman had small birdlike eyes and what might have been a slightly Irish accent. She was in fact the sort of woman that Mrs Mallow might well have met in the early days of her marriage when she was living in a tenement in Edinburgh and for this reason she was immediately attracted to her as if she recalled to her days when she had been thoughtlessly happy, and the world had been open and free, and also full of bustle and noise. She relaxed, almost visibly.

  “Do you come from here?” she asked.

  “I’ve been living here for forty years or so. You could say I belonged here. I stay on my own, though: that’s why I come down here so often. My husband’s dead and my sons are all away. What about yourself?”

  The woman had a brisk, direct manner of speaking which Mrs Mallow liked, and she was unusually talkative as she told her why she herself now lived in the town.

  “My sons have asked me to go and live with them too,” said the woman as if she and Mrs Mallow had suddenly become involved in a competition, “but I won’t go except for holidays. One of my sons is a manager of a shop in England, and I’ve got another son in the Army. I used to stay with the one in England for a while. As a matter of fact, I was down there last summer, but I don’t like the wife. She and I don’t get on.” She shut her lips like a purse and stared fiercely ahead of her. It seemed that she would have been quite willing to wring the necks of the tall, foreign-looking flowers.

  “Of course,” she said, “it may be something wrong with me too. I’ve got my own ways and she’s got hers and that’s the way it is. She wouldn’t make me porridge in the mornings and I like my porridge. She told me I could make it myself if I wanted to. She goes out to work and I don’t believe in that. She should stay at home and look after the children—they’ve got three lovely children. Give me the old-fashioned woman any time, but these ones nowadays are all skin and bones and all they want to do is go out to the pubs and drink gin or vodka. I never went out when my children were growing up.”

  “Well I’m quite happy,” Mrs Mallow insisted loyally. “I have my own room and I come and go when I please.”

  “They say that the day looks fine first thing in the morning,” said the woman mysteriously, and then, “What does your son do?” She said. “My name’s Mrs Murphy by the way. Pleased to meet you.”

  “My son is a teacher in the school,” said Mrs Mallow rather proudly, “and so is my daughter-in-law. You might know them.”

  “Oh, I don’t know their names now. In the old days when my sons were going to school I knew all their names and their nicknames too, and some queer ones they had. But I don’t know them now. I don’t know what they tell them in these schools now. The teachers are as young as the scholars, and the scholars won’t get off the pavement for you. They walk down there five at a time, shouting and screaming and they push you into the gutter. The girls are just as bad as the boys. Is it only one son you have then?”

  “Yes. My husband died when he was young.”

  “Well,” said Mrs Murphy shifting her buttocks on the seat, “my people are in Ireland but I haven’t seen them for thirty years. The last time I was in Ireland it was thirty years ago, come August. My husband came from Connemara. But I don’t know anyone there any more. Your sons leave you and they marry and they’re not the same, whatever anyone says. They may look the same,” and she nodded her small brisk head vigorously, “but they’re not the same. They change. My son who’s in the Army—he’s married too, to a woman from Germany—goes all over the world. He’s never brought me a matchstick though he’s been all over the world. He’s a Lance Corporal now.”

  A man who might have been the gardener passed with a rake in his hand and she shouted at him, “Great day for the flowers, Dan,” and he smiled and waved back. “That’s the gardener. He looks after all the gardens. Nice fellow. Tell you what,” she said, “would you like a cup of tea? I get tired sitting here all the time; I’ve got a restless nature, you see. If you would like to come to the house for a cup of tea you’d be welcome as the flowers in May. If it wouldn’t put you out of your road.”

  Mrs Mallow was surprised by the readiness with which she accepted the invitation, and as she walked beside the bow-legged little white-haired woman who nevertheless waddled briskly along like a sailor in rather a heav
y sea, she felt quite happy as if she were setting out on a little adventure. They didn’t have to walk very far for soon they came to a tenement and climbed a stair to the middle flat which had the name MURPHY on the door. Mrs Murphy took a key from a string around her neck and opened the door and Mrs Mallow found herself in a dark lobby and then in a small crowded room of the kind to which she had been used in Edinburgh. She was invited to sit down on an easy chair which had a white cloth over it, and which sat in front of a hearth empty except for newspaper and sticks.

  “I’ll put on the electric fire,” said Mrs Murphy, and did so. “And then I’ll make a cup of tea.”

  Left alone, Mrs Mallow looked round her. Apart from the easy chair in which she was sitting there was another one: there was also a sideboard with some photographs on it, one of a smiling young man in the uniform of a Scottish regiment, wearing a kilt and a diced cap with a badge, and the other of an older, more serious boy who looked solid and responsible, and was probably the manager, if manager he was. She also saw on the sideboard a doll-like structure which showed a crib, the Virgin Mary, a sleeping baby, and various crudely-carved animals which might have been donkeys, all painted in a garish green. And she realised that Mrs Murphy was a Catholic. It was funny that that hadn’t struck her before, for she hadn’t thought that there would be any Catholics in the town, apart perhaps from the Italians in the cafés: but the slightly Irish accent and the name Murphy should perhaps have warned her. She had very mixed feelings about Catholicism: on the one hand she had been brought up in a Protestant family, and on the other she had met many Catholics in the course of her life and she had liked them at least as much as she had liked the Protestants. In fact in the tenement in Edinburgh there had lived next door to her a Catholic woman from Derry who had been one of her best friends, and who every summer went over to Ireland with her asthmatic husband. One morning Mrs Mallow had pointed out to her a dirty stain on her forehead and was greatly embarrassed to learn that is was in fact meant to be there as the day was Ash Wednesday. Still, the cheap green crib was not very attractive and its vulgarity slightly upset her.

  Mrs Murphy came in with two cups of tea and biscuits on a tray and sat heavily in the chair opposite her.

  “I didn’t ask you if you’d like any biscuits. Would you like any biscuits?”

  “No, no thanks,” said Mrs Mallow. “I was looking at the photographs of your sons.”

  “Yes. They turned out all right though they were little buggers when they were growing up. They were always shouting at each other and talking of nothing but football. I used to get sick of football. Nothing but football morning, noon and night. But I miss them now. The house feels empty. You find that too?”

  “I used to,” said Mrs Mallow, who was finding the tea rather sweet. “You never go to Ireland now?”

  “No. I’ve got one or two relations there but I don’t go. And anyway we lived in the back of beyond. Connemara. I don’t suppose you’ll know it? Nothing but big stones. I got out of it as soon as I could. No, the nights are long if your boys are away and you’re without a man. I go to Mass in the mornings and most of the day in the good weather I sit on the benches, after I’ve done my shopping. And I’ve got a TV though there’s nothing on it but rubbish.”

  “You’re right there,” said Mrs Mallow. “I’ve got TV but I never watch it.”

  “I’ll tell you something,” said Mrs Murphy, leaning back in her chair, “there’s nothing for us when we grow old. We just have to get through the day and that’s it. But I don’t worry about it. Don’t give in, that’s what I always say. Don’t let the buggers grind you down. Keep going, as long as you have your two legs. The people in this town are very snobbish, you know.”

  “Oh?”

  “Very snobbish. There’s the people up the hill, you know,” (Mrs Mallow thought that she probably included her own son among them) “and then there’s the people like us. We don’t mix. They’ve got their Round Tables and their Rotary Clubs and the rest of it, and they wouldn’t speak to you in the street. My son now isn’t like that though he’s a manager. And he’s been abroad too. He was in Czechoslovakia and Russia and all these places and he stayed in the big hotels there. But he’s friendly with his customers. It’s not like that here.” And she nodded her head decisively. “Would you like more tea?”

  “That was fine,” said Mrs Mallow. “I’ve had enough.”

  “There’s plenty in the pot, you know. I always use teabags because they don’t clutter up the sink. As I was saying there’s them and us. Anyway, what’s the point talking about it? I used to clean the stairs, that’s what I did for a while. I used to go to their houses, the people up the hill, and you could hear some things there, I can tell you. You’d hear them shouting at each other, and their language was terrible. It was an education. But then they’d come to the door sweet as anything and ask you how you were. They were very mean with their money though. They never gave you anything at Christmas. Have you noticed that? It’s the rich people who never give you any money. If you want help, you get it from the poor people, that’s what I always say. I’ve noticed that all my life. They hoard it all up and then they leave thousands of pounds, and what good does it do them? They get six feet of earth in the end just like everybody else. Oh, I know them.”

  Mrs Mallow realised that that was true enough. The rich never did give anybody money, you were more likely to get help from the poor, that had been her own experience and most especially when her husband had died. It was the poorer neighbours who had come to sympathise with her, not the rich people, his superiors, who had worked on the railway. She hadn’t seen any of them.

  “You’re right,” she said, “I found that in Edinburgh. There was an Irishwoman who lived beside me in the tenement and she was a very nice woman. She was like a sister to me. A small woman with red cheeks and very blue eyes. She would bring me in scones that she had baked and whenever she went to Ireland she brought me back something. It might be a very small thing like a handkerchief but she always brought something back. Her husband suffered from asthma and he worked in a distillery. Sometimes he could hardly breathe.”

  Mrs Mallow now felt totally at ease and was talking more freely than she had done since first she came to the town. It was as if the small crowded room with its sagging chairs, its sagging sofa and its cluttered photographs had released in her a freedom which she had lost over the years, as if she breathed more relaxedly in that space signed so distinctly with the images of the past—even the Catholic ones—and as she sat there she remembered absolutely clearly her early days. She remembered the Irishman who fought every night with the Protestants outside the dirty noisy pub, and who returned with a black eye which he flaunted as if it were an honour brought back from an ancient unalterable war; she remembered the old coal cellar at the back and the padlock frosted on a winter morning: she remembered the children playing in front of the tenement in their dirty clothes: she remembered the bustle and movement, the drunken women shouting insults at each other, first taking the clothes’ pegs out of their mouths: she remembered it all so clearly it was like an ache in her body.

  “I was happy then,” she thought, “I was never so happy as I was then and I didn’t know it. I didn’t know it at all.” And the nostalgia flooded her so freshly that she almost cried with the pity of it. And Mrs Murphy too was part of that world, she recognised her as she might have recognised an old friend, she too might have walked up that stone stair to her room in that tenement, waddling and shouting, a brawling bow-legged Irishwoman. All those mornings so long ago, cold and clear, when one had been young, and busy. And now there was the becalmment …

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Mrs Murphy, “I didn’t hear you.”

  “I was only saying that anytime you want to visit just come. Just walk up the stair and press the bell. I’m not like the people who … Do you know that there are some people now and they have this little thing on their door like an eye and they look through it and if they don’
t want to let someone in they pretend they’re out. What’s the world coming to? Tell me that.”

  And so Mrs Mallow sat there for over an hour and they talked about this and that but mostly about the past, and their thoughts and prejudices fitted each other, for they were both in a similar position, and their complaints and griefs and joys were of the same kind, and so they got on very well together, so that when Mrs Mallow finally and reluctantly left she felt as if she had found a friend whom she could trust, whom she could talk to, whose life to a certain extent duplicated her own: and the fact that Mrs Murphy was a Catholic didn’t bother her at all, not in the slightest, though she wasn’t very happy about the vulgarity of the green crib with the distorted donkeys or whatever they were: they offended her susceptibilities.