by A. J. Cronin
Grandpa took the “Common way,” which afforded us a view of the pond, and at the end of half an hour brought us, by an unexpected twist, to Drumbuck village—which Mama and I had skirted the day before—just as the noon hooter sounded musically from the now distant Works.
It was a pretty place, set beneath a slow rise of woods and traversed by a brook which ran beneath two stone bridges. We passed a little sweetshop filled with “lucky bags” and “ bouncers” and liquorice straps, with the sign TIBBIE MINNS, LICENSED TO SELL TOBACCO above; then the open door of a cottage where a weaver sat working his loom. Across the road I could see the blacksmith shoeing a white horse, bent, with the hoof in his leather apron, a glow of red in the dark forge behind, a delicious smell of singeing horn wafting over.
Grandpa seemed to know everyone, even the hawker selling finnan haddies from a barrow and the woman who cried: “Rhubarb, jeelie rhubarb! Twa bawbees the quairter stane!” In his passage of the village street he gave and received most cordial salutations—I felt him to be a really great person.
“How do, Saddler!”
“How’s yourself, Dandie?”
The stout red-faced man standing in his shirt sleeves on the step of the Drumbuck Arms was so especially friendly in his greeting that Grandpa stopped, pushed back his hat and wiped his brow with an air of pleasurable anticipation.
“We mustn’t forget your lemonade, boy.”
While he entered the Arms I sat on the warm stone step of the open side door, watching some white chickens pecking at spilled corn in the dusty yard with the greedy haste of intruders, conscious of the drowsy noontime peace of the village, and of Miss Minns, guardian of the sweetshop, peering across at me from behind her sea-green window, her dark shape dim and a little distorted by the blown glass so that she looked like a small marine monster swimming in a tank.
Presently Grandpa brought me a tumbler of lemonade which fizzed over my tongue, thickening my saliva deliciously. I watched him as he returned to his place amongst the midday gathering in the cool dim interior, first emptying a small thick glass with a single expert tilt, then, while he talked very prosily and importantly with the others, drinking from a big foamy tankard, in slow draughts, washing in and consolidating that first superior golden liquid.
At this point I was distracted by the cries and evolutions of two little girls who were bowling their hoops upon the village green across from the inn. As I was lonely, as Grandpa looked settled for a very long time, I rose, and in a gradual and indirect manner approached the edge of the green. I might not care much for strange boys but most of Miss Barty’s pupils had been girls and I was almost at ease with them.
While her companion continued to strike her hoop furiously in the distance, the younger of the little girls had paused in her exertions and seated herself on a bench. She was about my own age, wore a tartan skirt with shoulder straps and was singing, singing to herself. While she sang I placed myself, unobtrusively, upon the extreme edge of the bench, and began to examine a scratch on my knee. When she had finished, there was a silence; then, as I had hoped, she turned to me in a friendly and inquiring fashion.
“Can you sing any songs?”
I shook my head sadly. I could not sing a note, indeed the only song I knew was one my father had tried to teach me about a beautiful lady who had died in disgrace. Still, I liked this little girl with brown eyes and curly dark hair pressed back from her white forehead by a semicircular comb. I was anxious not to let the conversation die.
“Is your hoop made of iron?”
“Oh, of course. But why do you say ‘hoop’? We call it a ‘gird.’ And this stick we guide it with is a ‘cleek.’”
Ashamed of my ignorance, which had revealed me so quickly as a stranger, I glanced at her companion, now attacking her gird to drive it towards us.
“Is that your sister?”
She smiled, but quietly, and with kindness. “Louisa is my cousin, visiting me from Ardfillan. My name is Alison Keith. I live with my mother over there.” She indicated an imposing roof, embowered by trees, on the far side of the village.
Humbled by my fresh mistake and the sense of her superior dwelling, I greeted the bouncing arrival of Louisa with a defensive smile.
“Hullo!” Arresting her gird with great skill, Louisa, rather short o breath, looked at me askance. “Where did you spring from?”
She was about twelve, with long flaxen hair, which she tossed about with a bossy importance, which made me long to shine before her, for my own and Alison’s sake.
“I came from Dublin yesterday.”
“Dublin. Good gracious!” She interpolated in a singsong voice: “Dublin is the capital of Ireland.” Then paused. “Were you born there?”
I nodded my head, warmly aware of the interest in her gaze.
“Then you must be Irish?”
“I’m Irish and Scottish,” I answered rather boastfully.
Far from impressed, Louisa considered me with a patronizing air.
“You can’t be two things, that’s quite impossible. It all sounds most peculiar.” A sudden thought seemed to strike her, she grew rigid, gazing at me with the sharp suspicion of an inquisitor.
“What church do you go to?”
I smiled loftily—as if I did not know. “ To St. Dominic’s,” I was about to answer, when suddenly the gleam, the burning, in her eye awoke in me primeval instincts of defence.
“Just an ordinary church. It has a big steeple. Quite near us in Phœnix Crescent too.” Flustered, I tried to dismiss the topic by jumping up and beginning to “burl the wilkies”—my sole physical accomplishment, which consisted in turning head over heels three times.
When I got up, red-faced, Louisa’s disconcerting stare remained upon me and her tone held an artlessness more cruel than any accusation.
“I was beginning to be afraid you were a Catholic.” She smiled. Redder than ever, I faltered: “What ever put that idea in your head?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s lucky you’re not.”
Overcome, I gazed at my shoes, more painfully embarrassed by the fact that Alison’s eyes were reflecting something of my own distress. Still smiling, Louisa tossed her long hair back.
“Are you going to stay here?”
“Yes, I am.” I spoke from between stiff, unwilling lips. “ I’m going to the Academy in three weeks if you want to know.”
“The Academy! That’s your school, Alison. Oh, my goodness, it’s lucky you’re not what I thought. Why, I shouldn’t think there’s a single one in the whole Academy. Is there, Alison?”
Alison shook her head, with her eyes on the ground. I felt my eyelids smart; then, with a plunging movement, Louisa laughed gaily, finally.
“We must go for lunch now.” She took up her gird primly, crushing me with her bright compassion. “Don’t look so miserable.
You’ll be quite all right if what you’ve said is true. Come along, Alison.”
As they departed, Alison winged to me, over her shoulder, a look filled with sorrowful sympathy. But it did little to lift me, so overwhelmed was I by this terrible and unforseen catastrophe. Frozen with mortification, I stood watching their dwindling figures in a kind of daze until I became aware of Grandpa calling me from the other side of the street.
He was smiling broadly when I went over, his eyes bright, his hat cocked at a jaunty angle. As we started off in the direction of Lomond View he clapped me approvingly upon the back.
“You seem very successful with the ladies, Robie. That was the little Keith girl was it not?”
“Yes, Grandpa,” I mumbled.
“Nice people.” Grandpa spoke complacently, with unsuspected snobbishness. “ Her father was captain of the P. and O. Rawalpindi … before he died. The mother is a fine woman, though not overstrong. She plays the piano something beautiful … and the little girl sings like a lintie. What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing, Grandpa. Nothing at all.”
He shook his head over me, and
to my acute embarrassment started to whistle. He was a beautiful whistler, clear and melodious, but quite careless of his own loudness. Approaching the house, he fell into a sort of hum:
“Oh, my luve is like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June …”
He put a clove in his mouth, murmuring to me, with a confidential air:
“You needn’t mention our little refreshment to Mama. She’s an awful one to fash.”
Chapter Four
I think it was Mama’s strategy, at this early stage, to keep me out of the way of the other members of the household. Often I did not see Papa until the evening, for, when he had a “smoke test” or a “ milk prosecution” on hand, he did not return for lunch. His devotion to his work was exemplary; even at night he seldom relaxed, seating himself in his corner chair with an official report on plumbing or adulterated foods. He went out only on Thursday evenings to attend the weekly business meeting of the Levenford Building Society.
Murdoch was away most of the day at college. When he came in he lingered as long as possible over his supper; then, although he often seemed to want to talk to me, he spread his books all over the table and placed himself, with an air of heavy resignation, before them.
Kate reappeared from her teaching for the midday meal, but she was oddly uncommunicative and in the evenings she rarely joined the family circle. If she did not go out to visit her friend Bessie Ewing, she retired to her room to correct exercise books or to read, banging the door behind her, those queer bumps on her forehead standing out plainly as evidence of her inward turmoil.
It was not surprising that, while awaiting my beginning at the Academy, I fell more and more into Grandpa’s hands. Apart from his copying he had little to do, and although he pretended to regard me as a nuisance he did not altogether disdain my awed companionship. Most afternoons when it was fine he took me to Drumbuck Green to watch him win at “the marleys,” a game of china bowls which he played majestically with two friends: Saddler Boag, a stout short-tempered gentleman who had kept the village harness shop for thirty years, and Peter Dickie, a small and sparrowy ex-postman who told me that in his time he had walked a distance equal to halfway round the world, and who was now deeply interested in Halley’s Comet—which, he feared, might strike the earth at any moment. Grandpa’s bowls were pale pink checked with brown. How wonderful to see him raise his last bowl to his eye with a calm ironic smile and “scatter the white” when Mr. Boag, who hated to lose, was “lying three”!
On other days Grandpa took me to inspect the Public Reading Room, to view a practice of the Levenford Fire Brigade—of which he was severely critical— and once, when Mr. Parkin, who hired out the boats, was away, for a lovely free row on the Common pond.
Sunday, which in any case gave me a peculiarly hollow feeling in my stomach, brought a different programme. On that day Mama always rose earlier than usual and when she had brought Papa a cup of tea in bed, she put the roast in the oven, and laid out his striped trousers and tail coat. Then began the general scurry and confusion of getting dressed, Kate running up and down stairs in her slipbody, Mama trying to get her fingers into gloves which had washed too tight, Murdoch at the last minute, in shirt and braces, putting his tousled head over the banisters and calling, “ Mama, where did you put my clean socks?”—while Papa, his stiff collar hurting his neck, champed, watch in hand, in the lobby, repeating: “The bells will start any minute now.”
More than ever conscious of myself as an acute embarrassment to these good people, I kept out of the way in Grandpa’s room, until the distant bells began caressing the still morning air, those sweet importunate bells which always increased my loneliness. Grandpa never went to church. He seemed to have no desire to go; besides his clothes were not good enough. When the others had set out for the Established Church on Knoxhill, where the Provost and the baillies of the town attended service, he gave me a kind of privileged sigh with his eyelid that permitted me to accompany him while he “slipped across” to pay a forenoon visit to his friend Mrs. Bosomley, the lady who owned the house next door.
Mrs. Bosomley was the widow of a pork-butcher and had once been a leading member of a touring dramatic company, her most notable performance being that of Josephine in “ The Emperor’s Bride.” She was about fifty, quite stout, her brown hair frizzed by tongs, with a broad face, small good-natured eyes which vanished when she laughed and tiny red veins on her cheeks. Often, peering through the privet hedge, I would see her pacing up and down her little garden, followed by her yellow cat, Mikado, and stopping to strike an attitude and recite something out loud. Once I distinctly heard her say: “ Strike for the green graves of your sires! Strike for your native soil!”
Levenford was not her native soil; her origin and early life were obscure, and later on boys at school hinted to me that she had not really been on the stage but had travelled with a circus and was tattooed upon her stomach. I shall speak of Mrs. Bosomley again; now it is enough to say that her hospitality made a sharp contrast to the Spartan economy next door. In her front room she gave me milk and sandwiches while Grandpa and she drank coffee; and she startled me dreadfully by smoking a cigarette—the first time I had seen a lady do such a thing—that to this day the name of the brand upon the flat green packet remains printed on my memory. It was “ Wild Geranium.”
On Sunday afternoon while Papa, with his collar and tie unloosed, took a nap on the sofa in the cool depths of the parlour and Murdoch departed with Kate to teach in Sunday school, Grandpa again gave me his sign and sauntered off with me in the direction of the village, now steeped in digestive torpor. Turning up the lane beyond the Green he paused, with a detached and purposeful air, outside the hawthorn hedge of Dalrymple’s market garden.
This was a beautiful garden, with the sun-blistered sign A. DALRYMPLE. NURSERYMAN spanning the gate, kale and cabbages and carrots sprouting in rows, the orchard still heavy with pears and apples. Grandpa, having first surveyed the deserted lane, peered carefully over the hedge; then, with his tongue, made a clicking sound of regret.
“What a pity! The dear man’s not here.” He turned, took off his hat and handed it to me with an urbane smile. “ Just nip through the hedge, Robert; it’ll save you a walk to the gate. Take the honey pears, they’re the best. And keep your head down.”
Following his whispered instructions I crept through, and filled the hat with ripe yellow pears, while he stood in the middle of the lane carefully scrutinizing the landscape and humming.
When I rejoined him and we began to eat, the juice running down our chins, he remarked gravely:
“Dalrymple would give me his last gooseberry. He’s just devoted to me, the dear man.”
Although I was a melancholy child I will not deny that I found great, if temporary, comfort in Grandpa’s society. There was, unhappily, one odd detraction from the pleasure of our expeditions which shocked and baffled me. Grandpa, cordially saluted, everywhere acclaimed, was greeted by a certain juvenile section of the community with shouts of unbelievable derision.
Our tormentors were not the Academy boys, like Gavin Blair, whom Grandpa had pointed out to me across the street, causing me to redden furiously, but the small village boys who gathered at the bridge to catch minnows with their caps in the stream. As we went by, these boys stared at us rudely and jeered:
“Cadger Gow! There he goes!
Where did he get that terrible nose?”
I turned pale with shame, while Grandpa stalked on, his head in the air, pursued by the awful chant. In the beginning I pretended not to hear. But at last, my curiosity conquered my dismay. I besought him with wide eyes:
“Where did you get that nose, Grandpa?”
A silence. He glanced at me sideways, aloof and very dignified.
“Boy, I got it in the Zulu War.”
“Oh, Grandpa!” My shame melted in a quick flood of pride, of anger against these ignorant little boys. “Tell me about it, Grandpa, please.”
He gav
e me a guarded look. Although reluctant, he seemed flattered by my interest.
“Well, boy,” he said, “I am not one to brag …”
While I trotted spellbound beside him, a great troopship glided out amidst the weeping of beautiful women, and made stealthy landfall of an arid shore bearing a gentleman cornet in that exclusive brigade, Colonel Dougal Macdougall’s Scottish White Horse. Swiftly promoted, through a daring sortie against the Matabele, Grandpa soon had risen to be the Colonel’s righthand man and was picked to carry dispatches from the beleaguered garrison, when the White Horse were cut off. I scarcely breathed as, in the darkness of night, a revolver in each hand, a knife between his teeth, he crawled over the rocky veldt. He was almost through the enemy lines when the moon—oh, perfidious moon!—sailed out of the clouds. Instantly the savage horde was upon him. Pim! Pam! Pim! His smoking revolvers were empty. Planted on a boulder, he slashed away with his knife. Bloody black writhing forms lay all around him, he whistled musically, and out of the night bounded his favourite white charger. Oh, the stark suspense of that midnight ride. After him came the fleet-footed Zulus. Flights of assagais darken the air. Whish! Whish! But at last, faint and bleeding, clinging to his horse’s neck, he reached the cantonment. The flag was saved.
I drew a long breath. Excitement and admiration gave me starry eyes;
“Were you badly wounded, Grandpa?”
“Yes, boy, I’m afraid I was.”
“Was it then that you got … your nose, Grandpa?”
He nodded solemnly, caressing the organ with reminiscent tenderness. “It was, boy … an assagai … poisoned … direct hit.” Tilting his hat over his eyes against the sun, he concluded reminiscently: “The Queen herself expressed regret when she decorated me at Balmoral.”