Adventures of a Black Bag

by A. J. Cronin

  “I’m not complaining, Ned,” she said hurriedly.

  “Then away and get the embrocation, and give us a rub.”

  She brought the embrocation, and while he lay back, thrusting out a muscular leg, she began the customary rubbing.

  “Harder! Harder!” he urged. “Use yourself a bit. Get it below the skin.”

  It cost her a frightful effort to complete the massage. Long before she had finished a sweat of weakness broke over her whole body. But at last he grunted:

  “That’ll do, that’ll do. Though little good it’s done me. Now bring in my shaving water, and see that it’s boiling.”

  He got up, shaved, dressed carefully. A ring came to the door bell.

  “It’s Bailie Paxton,” she announced. “ Come with his gig to drive you to the match.”

  A slow smile of appreciation stole over Ned’s face.

  “All right,” he said. “Tell him I’ll be down.”

  As he took his cap from the peg she watched him, supporting herself against the mantel-piece of the room. Sadness was in her face, and a queer wistfulness.

  “I hope ye play well, Ned,” she murmured. How many times had she said these words, and in how many places? But never, never as she said them now!

  He nodded briefly and went out.

  The match began at half-past two, and long before the hour the park was packed to suffocation. Hundreds were refused admission, and hundreds more broke through the barrier and sat upon the touch-line.

  The town band blared in the centre of the pitch, the flag snapped merrily in the breeze, the crowd was seething with suppressed excitement.

  Then the Rovers took the field, very natty in their bright blue jerseys.

  A roar went up, for two train loads of supporters had followed them from Glasgow. But nothing to the roar that split the air when Ned led his men from the pavilion. It was heard, they said, at Overton, a good two miles away.

  The coin was spun; Ned won the toss.

  Another roar; then dead silence as the Rovers kicked off. It was on at last – the great, the glorious game.

  Right from the start the Rovers attacked.

  They were clever, clever, playing a class of football which chilled the home supporters’ hearts. They were fast, they worked the ball, they swung it with deadly accuracy from wing to wing.

  And, as that were not enough, Levenford were nervous and scrappy, playing far below their best, shoving the ball anywhere in a flurry. All but Ned!

  Oh, Ned was superb! His position was centre-half, but today he was everywhere, the mainstay, the very backbone of the team.

  Ned was not fast, he never had been fast, but his anticipation quite made up for that – and more.

  Time after time he saved the situation, relieving the pressure on the Levenford goal by some astute movement, a side step, a short pass, or a hefty kick over the halfway line.

  Ned was the best man on the field, a grand, a born footballer. He towered – this bald-headed gladiator in shorts – over the other twenty-one.

  It had to come, of course – one man alone could not stem that devilish attack.

  Before the half-time whistle blew, the Rovers scored. Not Ned’s fault. A slip by the Levenford right-back, and quick as thought the Rovers’ outside-left pounced on the spinning ball and steered it into the net.

  Gloom fell upon the Levenford supporters. Had the score-sheet remained blank their team might have entered on the second half with some much-needed confidence. But now, alas, a goal down, and the wind against them – even the optimists admitted the outlook to be poor.

  There was only one chance, one hope – Ned – and the memory of his emphatic words: “ If the Rovers win it’ll be over my dead body.”

  The second half began; and with it the precious moments started to run out. Levenford were more together, they gained two corners in quick succession; when attacked they rallied, and rushed the ball forward in the teeth of the wind. But the Rovers held them tight.

  True, they lost a little of their aggression. Playing on a small pitch away from home, they faded somewhat as the game went on, and it almost seemed as if they were content to hold their one-goal lead.

  Quick to sense this attitude of defence, the crowd roared encouragement to their favourites.

  A fine frenzy filled the air, and spread from the spectators to the Levenford players. They hurled themselves into the game. They pressed furiously, swarming round the Rovers’ goal. But still they could not score.

  Another corner, and Ned, taking the ball beautifully, headed against the crossbar. A groan went up of mingled ecstasy and despair.

  The light was fading now, the time going fast, twenty, ten, only five minutes to go.

  Upon the yelling crowd a bitter misery was hovering, settling slowly. Defeat was in the air, the hopeless wretchedness of defeat.

  And then, on the halfway line, Ned Sutherland got the ball. He held it, made ground, weaving his way with indescribable dexterity through a mass of players.

  “Pass, Ned, pass!” shouted the crowd, hoping to see him make an opening for the wings.

  But Ned did not pass. With the ball at his feet and his head down, he bored on, like a charging bull.

  Then the crowd really roared – they saw that Ned was going in on his own.

  The Rovers’ left-back saw it too. With Ned inside the penalty area and ready to shoot, he flung himself at Ned in a flying tackle. Down went Ned with a sickening thud, and from ten thousand throats rose the frantic yell:

  “Penalty! Penalty! Penalty!”

  Without hesitation the referee pointed to the spot.

  Despite the protestations of the Rovers’ player, he was giving it – he was giving Levenford a penalty!

  Ned got up. He was not hurt. That perfect simulation of frightful injury was part and parcel of his art. And now he was going to take the penalty himself.

  A deathly stillness fell upon the multitude as Ned placed the ball upon the spot. He did it coolly, impersonally, as though he knew nothing of the agony of suspense around him. Not a person breathed as he tapped the toe of his boot against the ground, took a long look at the goal, and ran three quick steps forward.

  Then bang! The ball was in the net.

  “Goal!” shouted the crowd in ecstasy, and at the same instant the whistle blew for time.

  Levenford had drawn. Ned had saved the match.

  Pandemonium broke loose. Hats, sticks, umbrellas were tossed wildly into the air. Yelling, roaring, shrieking deliriously, the crowd rushed upon the field.

  Ned was swept from his feet, lifted shoulder high and borne in triumph to the pavilion.

  At that moment Mrs. Sutherland was sitting in the kitchen of the silent house. She had wanted badly to go to the park for Ned; but the mere effort of putting on her coat had shown how useless it was for her to try.

  With her cheek on her hand, she stared away into the distance. Surely Ned would come straight home today, surely he must have seen something of the mortal sadness in her face.

  She longed desperately to ease the burden in her breast by telling him. She had sworn to herself not to tell him until after the match. But she must tell him now.

  It was a thing too terrible to bear alone!

  She knew she was dying; even the few days that had passed since her visit to Finlay had produced a rapid failure in her strength – her side hurt her, and her sight was worse.

  An hour passed, and there was no sign of Ned. She stirred herself, got up, and put the two youngest children to bed. She sat down again. Still he did not come. The other children came in from playing, and from them she learned the result of the match.

  Eight o’clock came and nine. Now even the eldest boy was in bed. She felt terribly ill; she thought, in fact, that she was dying.

  The supper which she had prepared for him was wasted, the fire was out for lack of coal. In desperation she got up and dragged herself to bed.

  It was nearly twelve when he came in.

  S
he was not asleep – the pain in her side was too bad for that – and she heard the slow, erratic steps, followed by the loud bang of the door.

  He was drunk, as usual; no, it was worse than usual, for tonight, treated to the limit, he had reached a point far beyond his usual intoxication.

  He came into the bedroom and turned up the gas.

  Flushed with whisky, praise, triumph, and the sense of his own ineffable skill, he gazed at her as she lay upon the bed; then, still watching her, he leant against the wall, took off his boots, and flung them upon the floor.

  He wanted to tell her how wonderful he was, how marvellous was the goal he had scored.

  He wanted to repeat the noble, the historic phrase he had coined – that the Rovers would only win over his dead body.

  He tried sottishly to articulate the words. But of course, he got it mixed. What he said was:

  “I’m going – I’m going – to win – over your dead body.”

  Then he laughed hilariously.

  5. The Resolution that Went Wrong

  Though poets have assured us that man is the master of his fate, and novelists presented us with heroes who, having once set their teeth, grimly pursue their purpose to the bitter end – in reality things don’t happen that way.

  Life makes sport even of those gentlemen who so splendidly clench their molars; and, in spite of the poet’s assertion to the contrary, the bloody head is almost always bowed.

  It would be pleasant to exhibit Finlay in the best Victorian tradition – a strong and silent youth whose glittering pledges were never unfulfilled. But Finlay was human. Finlay had as much to put up with as you or I. And, often as not, circumstances played spillikins with his most fervent resolutions.

  One afternoon, some months after he had come to Levenford, he was sitting in the surgery doing nothing. He was, in fact, quite glad to be doing nothing, for his morning round had been arduous, his lunch heavy and late.

  With his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out, he reclined in his chair feeling the soporific quality of Janet’s suet dumplings steal pleasantly upon his senses.

  His eyes had just closed, his head nodded twice, when the surgery bell jangled violently and Charlie Bell barged into the room. Standing on no ceremony, Charlie exclaimed:

  “I’m wanting my mother’s bottle!”

  Charlie didn’t say it like that; what he did say was, in the roughest dialect of Levenford, was – “Am wan’in ma mither’s bo-all.”

  But Charlie’s phonetics defy polite comprehension and must, with infinite regret, be sacrificed to more normal speech.

  Finlay started in annoyance, partly at being disturbed, partly because he felt sure he had bolted the side door of the surgery, but most of all because of the rudeness of Charlie Bell.

  He answered curtly:

  “The surgery’s shut at this hour.”

  “Then, what way do you leave the door open?” Charlie retorted irritatingly.

  “Never mind about the door. I’m telling you the surgery’s closed. Call back again this evening.”

  “Call back! Me!” Charlie jibed contemptuously. “ I’ll call back twice for nobody.”

  Finlay glared at Charlie – a thickset, burly youth of about twenty-five, with terrific shoulders, a pale, hard face, small, derisive eyes, and a close-cropped, brick-red head.

  Well back on this bullet sailed a cap – known locally as a hooker – which he had not troubled to remove, and round his short neck a flamboyant red muffler was knotted carelessly.

  Charlie’s air was altogether careless; from his earliest days he had never given a damn – not for anyone, had Charlie. As a boy he had played truant, been flogged, and played truant cheerfully once again.

  He had rung bells, broken windows, and led a juvenile gang, had frequently been drowned – almost – by bathing out of his depth in the River Leven.

  If ever a stranger appeared in the High Street of Levenford, you may be sure Charlie’s voice was the first to raise the ribald yell – “Haw! Luk at his hat!” – or his boots, or his face – as the case might be.

  He excelled at every game from football, played with a tin can in the gutter, to fighting – oh! fighting best of all.

  Expulsion from school, when it inevitably arrived, was sheer delight. Then Charlie became a rivet-boy in the yard, where he heated rivets and tossed them to the holders-on aloft, not forgetting occasionally to drop one into the jacket of a colleague – a blazing pocket made glorious sport!

  That was years ago, of course. Now Charlie was a riveter himself, acknowledged leader of the crowd who hung about Quay Corner, the owner of a whippet bitch called Nellie, a regular lad, known to his intimates as Cha, tougher, harder than the rivets that he battered into the iron hulls of ships.

  And now, warming under Finlay’s stare, Cha thrust his head forward pugnaciously.

  “Luk at me! Go on and luk at me! But do ye hear what I’m saying? I’m askin’ ye to make up my mother’s bottle.”

  “It’s made up,” said Finlay in a hard voice, and made a movement over his shoulder towards the shelf. “But you can’t have it now. It’s against our rules. You must call at the proper time.”

  “Is that a fact?” declared Cha, breathing hard.

  “Yes,” said Finlay heatedly. “It’s a fact. And when you do come again, perhaps you’d mend your manners just a trifle. You might remove your cap, for example –”

  “Holy gee!” Cha laughed insolently. “An’ supposin’ I don’t?”

  Finlay got up slowly. He was flaming.

  Taking his time, he approached Cha.

  “In that case we might teach you to do it,” he answered in a voice that trembled with anger.

  “Aw. Shut yer face,” Cha answered flatly.

  He stopped laughing to arrange his blunt features in a belligerent sneer.

  “Do ye think you could teach me anything?”

  “Yes,” shouted Finlay.

  Clenching his fists he rushed in at Cha.

  By all the ethics of fiction there should have been a great fight – a magnificent combat in which Finlay, the hero, finally knocked Cha, the villain, for a boundary and six runs.

  What actually happened was quite different. One blow was struck – one sad, solitary punch.

  Then, two minutes later, Finlay woke up in a sitting position with his back against the wall, dazed and slightly sick, with blood trickling stupidly from the corner of his mouth.

  By this time Cha, with his mother’s medicine in his pocket, and his cap more insolently atilt on his ginger head, was striding down the middle of Church Street, whistling a lively air.

  Finlay sat where he was for a long time; then, with his head ringing dizzily, he picked himself up. Inside him everything was black and bitter as gall.

  He burned at the memory of Cha’s insolence, raged at his own hopeless inadequacy. He was young, strong, thirsting to batter Cha’s ugly face, and yet – he groaned in a perfect agony of humiliation.

  As he went to the sink and bathed his face, he set himself doggedly to puzzle the matter out. Cha could box, so much was obvious, while he couldn’t box at all. He had never thought about it even, never come up against a situation like this. And then, like a lamb, he had walked straight into that devilish punch of Cha’s.

  Cha! How he hated him – the insolent swine! Something had to be done about it – something must be done about it. He couldn’t lie down under an insult like that.

  To this effect he swore a tremendous oath – after which he felt better.

  Then he finished drying his face and, knitting his brows, he sat down at the desk to think.

  The result of that profound self-communion was to bring together Finlay and Sergeant A. P. Galt.

  Archie Galt was “at the barracks.” Indeed, the worthy sergeant had been at the barracks, without appearing to grow one hour older, as long as most folks could remember.

  A tall ramrod of man with a dried-up face, waxed moustache, tight trousers, and th
e chest of a prize pigeon, Archie Galt combined the duties of recruiting sergeant and Drill Instructor to the Volunteers.

  Fitness was his fetish; he had muscles all over his body, muscles which stood out like billiard balls in the most unexpected places at the word of command.

  And he had medals – medals for wrestling, for fencing, for boxing; indeed, rumour had it that in his day Archie had been runner-up in the army heavies.

  Whether or not rumour lied is no matter; the fact remained that Archie certainly could box.

  That first afternoon in the big, draughty drill hall he hit Finlay hard and plenty – not, mind you, as Cha had hit him, but calm, judicial blows which jolted and rattled and shook and searched everywhere, beautifully tempered blows, any one of which – had the worthy sergeant chosen to let go – would have stretched out Finlay in undignified oblivion.

  And at the end of it, Galt pulled off his enormous gloves sadly.

  “It’s nae guid, sir,” he observed broadly – for Africa, India, and the whole Sudan had not conquered Archie’s doric. “Ye’d better stick to your doctoring. Ye havena the first idea about handlin’ yerself.”

  “I can learn,” panted Finlay. The sweat streamed down his face; the last punch but one had taken him in the breadbasket and left him gasping. “I must learn. I’ve got a reason –”

  “Umph!” returned Archie, doubtfully twirling the waxed moustache.

  “It’s my first lesson,” Finlay doggedly persisted, gulping in the air. “I’ll stick in. I’ll try hard. I’ll come every day.”

  The shadow of a grin broke over Archie’s impassive face, and vanished instantly.

  “Ye’re no’ feared,” he said noncommittally. “And that’s aye something.”

  So the campaign began.

  Finlay stopped the stroll he usually took of an evening to the Lea Brae. Instead, he came to the Drill Hall, entering quietly by the back way after dark and slipping quickly into a sweater and shorts.

  Then he set to with the sergeant, learning the mysteries of the straight left, the cross, the counter, the hook, learning to feint, to use his feet, his head – learning everything the sergeant could teach him.