by A. J. Cronin
“Yours.” He insisted palely.
“Yours,” I cried.
“Yours,” he mumbled.
“Yours,” I almost wept.
We bandied the word desperately until at last, in a frenzy of surrender, I blurted out the naked truth. “Gavin! Will you believe me? It’s a lovely egg. But I don’t want it. I’ve hardly any collection and you have. The things I’m really smitten on are frogs and tadpoles and dragonflies and that! If you don’t take the egg I swear I’ll … I’ll … I’ll throw it away.”
Convinced at last by this awful threat, he turned and faced me, delight flooding his grey eyes. His voice quivered. “ I’ll take it then, Robie. Not for nothing, that wouldn’t be fair. I’ll trade you something in exchange for it … something I have that I know you like.” He wrapped the precious egg in cotton wool in his collecting tin and smiled at me, that shy and somewhat sombre smile which came from beneath his half-lowered lashes and filled my heart with joy.
The same evening I carried away from his room a singular article which I had coveted ever since, under Gavin’s direction, I had learned to manipulate it. It was an old brass compound microscope, once the possession of his sister Julia who as a girl had taken a course in natural sciences at Winton College. In type it was simple, but it had two eye pieces and two object glasses and the lens, though fixed, was actually a Smith and Beck—even in the little things Provost Blair must have the best. Accompanying the instrument were a few elementary slides and a mildewed book with yellowish pages, the first chapter headed: “What You May See in a Drop of Water”; the second, “Structure of a Fly’s Wing.”
I set the tube up on the table of Grandpa’s room and, while he watched me covertly, began assiduously to examine the slides. Since my friendship with Gavin he had been slightly cold towards me. No one could “ take the huff” more readily than Grandpa. I think in his heart he approved of my moorland roamings, but since he was not a party to them he affected an attitude of disdainful reproof. Now, however, his curiosity got the better of him.
“What newfangled nonsense have ye there, Robert?” The use of my formal given name indicated that he was not on the best of terms with me. I explained eagerly and soon he was at my elbow, one eye screwed into the mysterious tube, blundering with the adjustment, yet pretending to a consummate knowledge of the machine. I could see that it fascinated him and when I looked in after supper he was still glued to the tube, with a rapt expression on his face. “By all the powers!” he cried. “ Do you see these beasties in the cheese?”
Thus began, for Grandpa and myself, an era of glorious adventure as we beat our wings into the unknown. Soon we exhausted the faded primer of Miss Julia Blair; then Grandpa, marching like a new Huxley to the public library, produced more solid works: Brooke’s Elementary Biology, Steed’s Living Water Weeds, and, noblest of all, Grant’s Pond Life with Thirty Coloured Plates. During the daytime, while I was at school, he foraged amongst the neighbourhood’s stagnant pools and at night, when I had finished my homework, we sat down to compare the creatures which strayed across our magic lens with the illustrations in our books. Consider our excitement when we identified a slow amoeba and were dazzled by the whirling of a rotifer. Remember, I was not yet nine, I had not fully mastered the multiplication table.
Oh, I am drunk with the wonder of new life. The nests are full of fledglings, craning their necks for food; a foal stands in the field beyond the chestnut trees; lambs bleat beside the ewes in the pastures of Snoddie’s Farm. There is a word in my books I only vaguely understand: it is “ reproduction”—certain of my little creatures multiply by simple division, others by a more complex process of joining together. Confusedly, I feel myself upon the threshold of a great discovery. Who will reveal to me this unknown secret? Perhaps, of all persons, Bertie Jamieson. Gavin, has gone to Luss for a week, calmly removed by his omnipotent father to profit by the run of spring salmon up the Loch. I walk home every night with Jamieson and his allies but at his house, near Drumbuck Toll, they leave me, with the remark that I am “ too young” to accompany them, and disappear into the washhouse, where they lock the door and shutter the window. Standing outside, disconsolate, I hear sounds and sniggering, in what must be a tenebrous interior. When they emerge, sheepishly, Bertie tells me that, as a great favour, I may come in the following night.
I am overjoyed. I mention it to Grandpa as we sit together at our slides.
“What!” He jumps up, upsetting the precious microscope, banging the table with his fist.
“You will not go into that washhouse. Over my dead body. Never. Never.”
The following evening as I emerge from the Academy he is waiting outside. He takes me by the hand and as Jamieson runs past catches the wretched boy a buffet which almost fells him to the ground. As he drags me off angrily I cannot but reflect how strange and incredible are the manifestations of spring.
Chapter Nine
And still the spring continues.
Giving off Drumbuck Road to a blind ending was a short unobtrusive street of smaller cottages which bore the disappointing name of “Banks Lane” and which impaired slightly the starched gentility of its parent thoroughfare inhabited by the notables and officials of the Borough, ranging from the Provost, through the Stationmaster and the Head of the Fire Department, to Health Administrator Leckie himself. In Banks Lane dwelt several men, fitters and engineers, who cast a mild blemish on the surroundings by “working dirty” in the Boilerworks. They were not seen, fortunately, at five o’clock in the morning, when the Works hooter sounded them from their beds; but at the dinner hour, and again in the evening, their hobnail boots resounded inappropriately on the clean pavements, their soiled dungarees and grimy hands and faces seemed sadly out of place beside, for instance, the white uniform cap and shining brass buttons of Mr. Leckie.
They were a quiet lot, for their work was hard, and they succeeded, perhaps because their wages were vexatiously large, in enjoying themselves in their own inoffensive ways. Every Saturday afternoon their bright checked caps could be seen joining the stream which flowed in keen anticipation to Boghead Park, home of the local football team. Spruced and in their best clothes, they frequently took train to the city of Winton for a meat pie tea and an evening at the Palace of Varieties. On fine Sunday evenings they would stroll sedately in little bands along the country roads while one of their number improvised with great skill on a concertina or mouth harmonica—often as I lay in bed, during my early days at Lomond View, burdened with the darkness and my grandma’s heavy breathing, a whiff of cigarette smoke, the waft of a gay and teasing tune, would lift me up and make me smile, unseen, reassured that all was still well with the world.
Amongst these Boilermakers, one named Jamie Nigg had begun to show me signs of his regard. He was a shortish man of about thirty, heavy about the shoulders, with big, dangling hands and large, melancholy eyes. With uncanny prescience I divined that he was sad because of his legs, which were exceedingly bandy; they formed a perfect oval through which clear daylight was visible, and although, in his method of walking, he did all he could to conceal it, the deformity was enough to damp the stoutest heart. As I ran back to school at the dinner hour this bow-legged boilermaker often stopped me, viewing me with his inquiring spaniel’s eyes, slowly rubbing his jaw with his calloused palm; though he shaved every day the strength of his growth kept his chin and cheeks in saturnine blue shadow.
“How are ye?”
“I’m fine, thank you, Jamie.”
“All well at home?”
“Yes, thank you, Jamie.”
“Mr. Leckie and the family?”
“Yes. Jamie.”
“Murdoch’ll be sitting his examination, soon?”
“That’s right, Jamie.”
“Your grandma’s still away?”
“Oh, yes, Jamie.”
“I saw your old grandpa on the green last Sunday.”
“Did you, Jamie?”
“He looks well.”
&nbs
p; “Yes, Jamie.”
“It’s a bonny day.”
“It is that, Jamie.”
The conversation broke down at this point. A pause; then, reaching into his pocket, Jamie produced a penny and, scarcely smiling, delivered it to me with one of Levenford’s oldest and funniest jokes: “Don’t spend it all in the one shop.” As I hopped, stepped and jumped away, clutching the coin, he called after me, standing bandy and motionless. “My best respects to all at home.”
In a remote fashion, I attributed Jamie’s good will to the fact that, like the Provost and Miss Julia Blair, and others in the town who had shown kindness to me, he had known my mother—this phrase, indeed, “ I knew your mother,” like a recurrent phrase in a piece of music, minor, yet strangely heart-warming, cropped up often during my childhood, and brought with it always a sense of reassurance, of confidence in the inherent goodness of people and of life.
But usually I was too busy darting towards the shop of Tibbie Minns, and her green glass bottles of pink-striped sweeties, to debate the causes of Jamie’s interest. My experiences with Adam’s half-sovereign had left me vaguely distrustful: if I did not spend my penny someone was sure to discover it, or it would fall out of my breeches as I took them off at night and roll out of the alcove, along the shiny linoleum, to Papa who would stoop and pick it up, with the righteous intention of “ saving it” for me. Besides, my body, that of a young, poorly nourished animal, was crying out for sugar. Beasts of the field and forest will die amidst apparent plenty if they are deprived of certain simple and apparently unimportant substances. When I recollect the half-stilled gnawings, the after-dinner unrest of my childhood, I feel that I too might have perished but for the permeating peace afforded me by Miss Minn’s sugar balls.
On the last Saturday in May, I encountered Jamie not by chance: he was actually awaiting me at the corner of Banks Lane, and “dressed,” too, wearing his navy-blue suit, light brown boots, flat red-and-black-diced cap.
“Do ye want to come to the football match?”
My heart turned a quick somersault, at this sudden invasion of joy into an afternoon rendered empty and listless by the continued absence of Gavin, with his father, at Luss. The football match! The big grown-up game which I had never seen, and never hoped to see!
“Come on then,” Jamie Nigg said, advancing the brown boots circuitously.
With my stomach pressed against the rope which surrounded the Bohgead arena I stood beside Jamie and Jamie’s gang of friends, and cheered myself hoarse as the coloured jerseys raced and mingled on the green turf. Levenford was playing its most hated rival, the neighbouring club of Ardfillan. Were there ever such tricksters, such brutes and murderers, as these men of Ardfillan, known derisively as the “Jelly Eaters” because of their contemptible custom of permitting small boys to enter their enclosure on the presentation, not of real money, but of empty jam jars which the club redeemed later, for cash, at the local rag-and-bone yard? Thank God that justice prevailed! Levenford was the victor!
After the match Jamie and I walked home in splendid comradeship; then, as we approached the deviation of our ways, our blood still surging in a rich afterglow, Jamie produced a package which had encumbered him all afternoon. His face was quite red and he had suddenly grown husky.
“Give this to your Kate,” he said. “ From me.”
I stared at him in complete bewilderment. Kate! “Our” Kate! What had she to do with us, and our beautiful new friendship?
“That’s right.” He was redder than ever. “Just put it in her room.”
He turned and left me standing with the package in my arms.
At Lomond View Kate was not visible—only Murdoch sat muttering and groaning at his books in the kitchen—so, obeying Jamie’s instructions, I took the large wrapped oblong package to her bedroom and placed it on her chest of drawers. I had never been in Kate’s room except at her express invitation, and now, with curiosity, and a sense of privilege conferred by my special mission, I dallied, studying the few bottles of lotion and the jar of face cream beside her mirror. There were a number of paper-covered booklets too. I picked them up. Facial Beauty without Disfiguring Operations. Madame Bolsover’s Method, or How to Improve the Bust in Twelve Lessons. Another, with the mysterious, yet intriguing title: Girls! Why Be a Wallflower?—I was about to probe deeper when the door opened and Kate came in.
Her chapped skin reddened with anger. Her bumps gathered instantaneously. And I only saved myself by exclaiming swiftly and adroitly:
“Oh, Kate. I have something for you, a regular surprise.”
She halted, her ears crimson, eyes still angry.
“What is it?” she asked suspiciously.
“A present, Kate!” And I indicated the package on the chest of drawers.
She gazed incredulously; then, pausing only to utter a half-hearted rebuke—” Remember, Robert, you must never, never, enter a lady’s bedroom unannounced”—she approached the package, took it up, sat down with it on the bed, and, while I watched, removed the wrappings, revealing a beautiful beribboned box filled with three pounds of expensive chocolates. I was convinced Kate had never had such a lovely present in her life. I congratulated her, bending over the box with an air of complicity.
“Aren’t they wonderful, Kate? They’re from Jamie. He took me to the match this afternoon. You know, Jamie Nigg.”
Kate’s face was a study—strange mixture of pleasure, amazement, and disappointment. She said, rather haughtily: “Him, indeed! I’ll have to return them.”
“Oh, no, Kate. That would hurt Jamie’s feelings. Besides …” I swallowed a bead of saliva.
Kate smiled, in spite of herself; and when she smiled, even this short dry smile, she was surprisingly agreeable. “All right, then. You may have one. But I couldn’t touch them myself.”
I did not delay in availing myself of this permission and at once bit into a succulent orange cream which immediately discharged its delicious flavour upon my tongue.
“Are they good?” Kate asked, swallowing, strangely, in her turn.
I made inarticulate noises.
“If only it had been anybody but Jamie Nigg!” Kate exclaimed.
“Why?” I argued loyally. “ Jamie’s the finest fellow you could meet. You ought to have seen him with all his friends at the match. And he knows the Levenford centre-forward.”
“Oh, he’s low—only a boilermaker. He works dirty. And besides, they say he takes a wee half.”
Recognizing this as the idiom for a little whisky, I quoted Grandpa on the subject, staunchly: “He’s none the worse of that, Kate.”
“Well, then …” Kate reddened again, confusedly. “His legs.”
“Never mind about his legs, Kate,” I pressed earnestly.
“Legs are too important not to mind. Especially when you are ‘walking out.’”
I paused, dismayed. “ Do you like anyone else, Kate?”
“Well … yes …” Kate’s gaze slipped dreamily over the pamphlet Why Be a Wallflower? into the romantic distance, and I took advantage of her abstraction to select another chocolate.
“Of course I’ve had lots of proposals, at least several, anyhow a few, I wouldn’t boast. But now I’m speaking more or less of my ideal. A man of some maturity, dark, well-bred, eloquent … like the Reverend Mr. Sproule, for example.”
I stared at Kate with amazement: the Reverend was a middle-aged gentleman with a paunch, poetic locks, a booming voice and four children.
“Oh, Kate, I’d sooner have Jamie any day.…” I broke off, blushing hotly, conscious that I, of all people, had no right to criticize her minister.
“Never mind,” Kate said with queenly understanding. “Have another chocolate. Go on, don’t mind me, I wouldn’t defile my lips with them. As a matter of fact, love disgusts me. Yes, disgusts me. The woman always pays. Was that a hard or a soft centre?”
“Hard, Kate,” I replied earnestly. “A kind of lovely nougat the like of which you never, tasted in your life
. Look, there’s another exactly the same. Let me get it for you, please, please.”
“No, no, I wouldn’t dream of it.” While Kate protested, she accepted in an absent-minded manner and as a kind of afterthought placed in her mouth the nougat I pressed upon her.
“Aren’t they simply delicious, Kate?” I asked eagerly.
“No man can buy me, Robert. But I must say they are awfully nice.”
“Have another, Kate.”
“Well, I know it’ll turn my stomach. Still, if you insist. Find me one of the orange kind you ate first.”
Sitting on her bed, in the next half hour, we ate the entire top tray between us.
“What am I to tell Jamie, then?” I sighed at last.
Neatly tying up the box with its pink ribbon Kate suddenly began to laugh. It was the oddest experience in the world, hearing this strange, gloomy, and bad-tempered girl give way to natural laughter.
“What a pair of hypocrites we are, Robie. At least, I am. Eating the poor lad’s sweeties that must have cost a fortune, and sitting in judgment on him. Just tell him the truth. Tell him we enjoyed his chocolates very much. Thank him kindly for them. And let that be the end of it.”
I went down the stairs three at a time, determined that Jamie should have, at least, the first part of Kate’s message.
Chapter Ten
July came, with the prospect of the summer holidays and hot winds which swayed the yellowing corn. I ran barefooted with Gavin after the watering cart in the warm, wetted dust of the Drumbuck village roads. I climbed with him to the highest point of Garshake Hill to gather the blue “bilberries” which grew there and which Mama received gratefully and made into jam much nicer than our usual rhubarb preserve. I bathed with him in the milldam and swam my first strokes, threshing the cool water with my arms, across a corner of the deep end, then ducked my head beneath the little waterfall while the stream cascaded into my mouth, my nose, and shoals of darting minnows, rising from the sand, tickled my legs. Transported, I heard my shrill, ecstatic laughter rise. Could water be so wonderful? It seemed to wash the last stains of sorrow from my soul. When we came out we leaped and danced, finally flung ourselves flat on the grass, staring at the bright sky with a kind of burning ecstasy. Joy! Oh, the pure, mild warm air, the light, the green of the trees, and in me those forces which awakened, the joy of breathing, the supreme joy of living!