by A. J. Cronin
But I no longer marvel, I am habituated to Papa’s thrift, this consuming passion which seems daily to gain greater ascendancy over him, sets spinning in his brain schemes for further economizing, gives him an ascetic look of perpetual renunciation, forces Mama to endless household and culinary expedients. Mama would like to shop in the “ good” stores like Donaldson’s, or Bruce’s, whose big plate-glass windows are a perpetual invitation to her. Given “the stuff,” she is an excellent cook—her drop pancakes (on the rare occasions when there are eggs to spare) are wonderful. She would enjoy composing nice dishes for us. But instead, with a glance at her black purse, she falls back on barley-bree and sends me to Durgan’s in the Vennel for a penny napbone (“And ask him to leave some meat on it, dear”), then on to Logan’s, also in that poor quarter, for a halfpennyworth “ between” carrot and turnip—in plain English, a farthing’s worth of each. Poor Mama! … Last Monday when you broke the new incandescent mantle you were fitting on the hall “gasolier” (always a delicate operation) you actually gave way to tears.
To-night I am tired, ready to sleep. As I drift into unconsciousness, I think that to-morrow I shall probably go with Grandpa to visit the Antonellis.
During the weeks that Gavin was away, I had played a good deal with little Angelo Antonelli. It was nice to have something to do in such a jaded season; and Angelo was always so touchingly glad to see me. He was like a little girl, vivacious and tender, with his lovely swimming eyes and fetching ways. He held my hand as we ran about his yard, and always cried when it was time for me to go home.
Naturally, he was a very spoiled child, there were twelve years between Clara and him. He perpetually demanded from his fat, gentle, and adoring father—and perpetually received—toys, sweets, fruits, everything. He had the complete run of the Saloon, and would rifle a tin of chocolate biscuits or break open a can of preserved pears with less compunction that I would take a glass of water at Lomond View. His childish treble troubled the air all day long: “ Mama, I want a slisa melon”; “Dada, I want a limonade.” Once he told me, with a little smirk, that he had made his mother get up in the middle of the night to cook him ham and eggs. Yet he never finished what was on his plate—and was always being sick.
Sometimes, when I thought of the absent Gavin’s austere, cold fire, of his determined silences, his contempt for the soft and the paltry, I had an inward qualm. But despite his pampering, Angelo had a sweet side; then there was the monkey, a tremendous attraction, for we played with him continuously. Also Angelo’s mother encouraged my visits.
Now that her husband, whom she ruled, had made money, Mrs. Antonelli had turned ambitious for her family, which in its poor beginnings had been scorned in Levenford. The luscious Clara was making a good match with Thaddeus Gerrity, whose father operated a successful furniture-removal company. I am sure she smiled on me—a nice little Academy boy, yet a Catholic—and fêted Grandpa with wine and cake, when he regularly visited her in the afternoon, because we represented the genteel Drumbuck Road district, and town officialdom—always important to the alien mind.
I must confess that, now and again, when I heard Grandpa “spreading himself,” over the Frascati, to the eagerly attentive Clara and Mrs. Antonelli, I experienced a mild anxiety. Mrs. Antonelli, caught unawares, had a hard look; and her darkness was such I suspected, despite my innocence, that she had resort, regularly, to the razor. Yet nothing seemed to worry Grandpa; he proceeded, smooth and steady, never in difficulty, like a stately barque before a tranquil breeze.
Reassured, I would run out with Angelo to hear the band play on the Common, to take a rowboat on the pond, or to walk to Benediction at the Holy Angels with Uncle Vita: that strange, humble, simple Vita, who was barely tolerated by the family, who spent half his day in tending his beloved monkey and the other half in prayer.
The month drew to its close. One evening when, at Mama’s request, I was turning down the gas in the lobby to the required “peep,” Kate came in, rather late.
“Is that you, Robie?” She seemed embarrassed by even the glimmer in the hall, but her voice was warm with friendliness.
“Yes, Kate.”
As I got down from the chair on which I had been standing to reach the overhead gasolier, she slipped her hand under my arm.
“Dear boy.”
I flushed with pleasure: for a long time now Kate had been especially nice to me.
“Listen, Robie.” Kate stopped, laughed, then suddenly went on again. “It’s perfectly ridiculous … Jamie Nigg wants to take me to the Ardfillan Fair.” She laughed again, at the preposterous notion. “Of course I can’t go with him alone, it would be most unladylike. He admits that himself. So … he … that is we … would be glad to take you with us if you’d like to come.”
Like to come! Had I not heard of, dreamed of, the Elysian delights of the Ardfillan Fair—where every kind of show, entertainment, and amusement was congregated once a year for the diversion of the countryside?
“Oh, Kate!” I whispered.
“Then it’s settled.” She pressed my arm again and as she began to climb the stairs she turned kindly, a sort of afterthought. “ Your friend Gavin is home. I just saw him coming from the station.”
Gavin home! At last. Two days before his time. So that I would see him to-morrow for certain. The thought surged within me, joined with the thought of the Ardfillan Fair. I breathed quickly. Alive with anticipation, I half-opened the front door and gazed out into the darkness. There were no stars, the sky was blotted out, but the soft cool breeze was filled with promise. Oh, life could be wonderful, simply wonderful.
Chapter Fourteen
The next morning I was out early. I had promised to return to Angelo a bundle of magazines which he had loaned me and I wished to be free, as soon as possible. But as I ran down the Cemetery Road, I met Gavin advancing in the direction of Lomond View.
“Gavin!”
He did not speak, but gave my hand the terrible clasp, still trying to master his eager smile, which he must despise as a sign of weakness. He had not grown much but was very brown and wirier than ever. The sight of him, the feel of his grey eyes searching mine, warmed me through and through. I wanted to tell him, impetuously, how much I had missed him. But this was forbidden. It was necessary to be calm and strong, sparing of all but the most essential speech.
“I was coming up to get you.” Explaining his appearance at this early hour, he gazed into the distance, towards our Winton Hills. “I thought we might go up Windy Crag. There’s an eagle there. The keeper told Father. We’ll get on to the crags before the sun’s properly up and watch for him. I have our lunch.”
I saw he had his knapsack on his back. An eagle; and Gavin; all day on the hills … My heart jumped. “ Simply grand! But first of all I must take these magazines to Angelo.”
“Angelo?” he repeated, uncomprehendingly.
“Angelo Antonelli,” I explained hastily. “ You know, that little Italian boy. I’ve seen quite a bit of him while you were away. Of course he’s very young …”
I broke off, confounded by the incredulity, the hurt look in his eyes.
“The only Italians I know of in Levenford are those ice-cream peddlers. One of them actually used to tote a barrel organ and a monkey round the town, cadging for coppers.”
My ears were burning now, at this condemnation of Uncle Vita, of Nicolo and my friends. Gavin added: “You don’t mean to say you’ve got mixed up with one of their brats?”
“Angelo has been very decent to me,” I said in a queer voice.
“Angelo!” More deeply wounded, he smiled scornfully at the name. “Come on. Let’s get on the crags. We can talk about all we’ve been doing when we’re up there.”
I hung my head, eyes obstinately on the pavement.
“I promised to take these back. The Sphere, Graphic, and Illustrated London News.” With dry lips, I defended the magazines, hoping thus to vindicate the Antonellis. “ They’ve some wonderful photographs of the deve
lopment of the death’s-head moth from a chrysalis, this week. Every Saturday Mrs. Antonelli sends them to relatives in Italy. They’ve got to catch the mail. It’s kind of Angelo to let me see them first.”
Gavin had turned white. His voice was strained and jealous.
“Of course, if you prefer your tally-wally friends to me … that’s entirely your affair. It just happens that I’m going up the Longcrags now. If you want to, you can come. If you don’t I’ll leave you to your Angelo.”
He waited for a moment, not looking at me, with quivering lip and proud cold brow. My breast was torn asunder, I wanted to cry out how mistaken he was, to beg him to understand. But a sense of his injustice made me as palely stubborn as he. I remained silent. The next instant he was striding towards the Longcrags.
Sick with dismay, still stunned by the suddenness of the quarrel, I continued towards the town. I resolved simply to leave the magazines and come away. But when I reached the Levenford Select Saloon I found Angelo devastated by a grief perhaps greater than my own.
“Nicolo is sick. Very sick.”
Between his sobs, he told me how it had occurred. Clara, wicked Clara, was to blame. Uncle Vita, who went in the evenings to pray at the Holy Angels, often for hours at a time, had the habit of putting Nicolo in the courtyard during his absence to enjoy the cool air during these stifling nights. But always he left his window open, so that if the weather turned bad, Nicolo, for whom the drainpipe was an easy ladder, could immediately regain his room. Two nights ago a heavy thunderstorm had broken and Clara, thinking only to protect the curtains, had hastily shut every window in the house. Uncle Vita was at church, the Saloon closed; poor Nicolo was caught for an hour in the drenching downpour; when Vita returned at half-past ten he found the monkey soaked to the skin, huddled in a corner of the yard.
I followed Angelo upstairs. The house was stricken, deranged. In the kitchen Mrs. Antonelli, with a distraught expression, was wringing out cloths in hot water. Clara lay flat on her face, on the front-room sofa. In Uncle Vita’s bedroom Mr. Antonelli stood with a pained expression in his big eyes while Vita, in his shirt sleeves, worked over Nicolo like a man aroused.
The monkey was in bed—not his own basket, but Uncle Vita’s big white bed, exactly in the centre, propped up on pillows. He wore his best woolly vest and a soft Neapolitan cap with a woollen tassel. His little worried face, isolated on the vast expanse of bed, looked more worried than ever. From time to time his teeth chattered and he shivered violently, gazing at us anxiously, in turn. Uncle Vita, with some kind of pungent oil, was rubbing his chest. While he worked on the invalid, Vita talked all the time, to himself, to the monkey, but mostly, in a voice of recrimination, to Mr. Antonelli. I glanced at Angelo, who like myself was subdued by the grandeur of the spectacle and had ceased to cry. He translated, in a whisper: “Uncle Vita says it is a judgment upon us for forgetting the good God … a visitation upon Father for thinking too much of business, Mother of society, and Clara of men. He says he and Nicolo have laid the foundations of our fortune, working for pennies when we were without bread. He says if Nicolo dies … That was when he was crying. We will all never, never have any luck again.”
Mrs. Antonelli hurried in with a bowl of steaming cloths, holding them subserviently by the bedside. Clara, drifting like a wraith to the doorway, watched with red eyes while Uncle Vita applied the cloths.
They seemed to do Nicolo little good. And suddenly Vita, the saintly, the humble, threw up his hands and came out with a torrent of words. Angelo hissed in my ear. “ He says Nicolo must have a doctor, the best doctor in town. That Clara, the wicked and sinful Clara, must fetch him at once.”
Clara began to protest.
“She says no doctor will come to a monkey. She will try to get a veterinarian.”
I saw at once from the wildness in Vita’s face that a veterinarian would not do. “Yes.” Angelo gave me a nod. “It is to be nothing but a doctor. We must pay anything, all the gold we have. The best doctor in town.”
Clara put on her hat, weeping, but submissive, and departed with a big handful of money from Mr. Antonelli. We all sat round in chairs, watching the monkey, waiting for the doctor; all but Vita, who, beads in hand, and lips moving, was kneeling by the bed.
In half an hour Clara returned, alone. Vita jumped up and, after an interrogation which again reduced Clara to tears, he gave a terrible cry, seized his hat and rushed out.
“Clara went to four doctors and none would come. Uncle Vita has gone himself.”
For nearly an hour we waited in the sickroom, then started, every one of us, as the outer door opened. It was Uncle Vita—a sigh of relief went up as we heard someone accompanying him.
The doctor entered. He was Dr. Galbraith, an elderly dried-up man with a small goatee beard, a physician recognized as skilful in the town, but rather unpopular because of his abrupt manner. What subtle persuasions the deaf, unlettered Vita had brought to bear upon this choleric practitioner remained a mystery; and the wonder of it was, he had not come for money.
For a moment he looked as if he would order us all out of the room. But he abandoned the idea, and turned his attention to the monkey. He took Nicolo’s temperature and pulse; felt him all over; looked down his throat; then, for a long time, using a short wooden stethoscope, listened to his chest. The monkey’s behaviour was perfect, he kept his wide frightened eyes trustingly upon the doctor, even permitted his mouth to be opened without a spoon.
Tugging at his goatee, Dr. Galbraith stared at his patient with a queer interest and approval, completely forgetful of the roomful of people who, impressed by his thoroughness, hung upon his every movement—Angelo had whispered to me: “Uncle Vita thinks he is a wonderful doctor.” Then, recollecting himself, the doctor wrote out two prescriptions, a dry twist to his lips as he inscribed them: Mr. Nick Antonelli. He packed up his little black bag. He then said: “The medicine every four hours. Keep him warm in bed, linseed poultices night and morning, nourishing liquid diet only. He’s a nice specimen of the North African rhesus, macaque. Unfortunately, as a species, they are weak in the chest. This one has double pneumonia. Good night.”
He went out. Though Uncle Vita followed him all the way down the street he would not accept a single penny of a fee. I then perceived his interest to be purely scientific: that strange, beautiful, and wholly disinterested emotion which had already stirred me as I sat at my microscope and which in later years was to afford me some of the rarest joys of my life. At this instant, moved by a kinship of race and ideas, I could not repress a thrill of pride in this taciturn Scots doctor. How perfect had been his behaviour amongst these excitable Southerners!
A sense of optimism succeeded his visit; there were instructions to be carried out. I was sent running to the chemist for the medicine; Mrs. Antonelli and Clara began to mix the poultices; Vita himself set a chicken to simmer, for broth. The monkey consented to swallow some milk. He seemed sleepy after his medicine. We tiptoed from the room.
Already versed, to my sorrow, in the dangers of lung disorders, I felt sure the implications of double pneumonia were not fully understood. And, indeed, next morning Nicolo was less well. Restless and burning with fever, he uttered plaintive cries, tossing about the big bed, at which Uncle Vita knelt. All day he barely touched his chicken broth and that evening his breathing was short and rough.
All that week he grew steadily worse and a distracted hush fell upon the household, broken only by sudden hysterics from the women and by wild determined outbursts from Uncle Vita. Cast off by Gavin, and still on holiday, I threw in my lot with the Antonellis. I became a sort of page boy to the stricken monkey. Every afternoon, at three o’clock, Grandpa called, very dignified and serious, on a visit of condolence. He waited in the front room, hoping, I think, for some sympathetic conversation with Clara and, if necessary, Mrs. Antonelli, perhaps a glass of Frascati wine to restore, to cheer the spirits. But the first faint breath of the mistral was in the air. It was Mr. Antonelli who, with a lo
ng face, accepted Grandpa’s sonorous commiseration. And there was no Frascati wine.
Worse, still worse. Poor Nicolo could now scarcely breathe, all the flesh had fallen from his little bones. The doctor, again approached, flatly stated that the monkey was doomed. Mr. Antonelli spoke palely of closing the Saloon, of straw spread in the street outside.
On Saturday Uncle Vita looked Mr. Antonelli fiercely in the eye. Angelo translated: “ He says only God can save Nicolo. Therefore we must pray, pray terribly for a miracle. Father must go to Canon Roche to have prayers and masses said for the monkey. The convent Sisters must make a novena, and come here, to the house, to pray for Nicolo. Oh, dear, Uncle Vita is saying most awful things to my father.”
Mr. Antonelli clearly did not like the commission. But Vita now dominated the household; and the monkey had, in some queer way, become a superstition, a formidable symbol whose life or death reprepresented the collapse or survival of the Antonelli fortunes. Mr. Antonelli took his hat and slowly went out.
The following morning, Sunday, Canon Roche announced from the Holy Angels pulpit that masses would be said for the intention of Mr. Vita Antonelli. A trifle disappointed that he did not mention Nicolo by name, I was reassured that same afternoon by the arrival of Mother Elizabeth Josephina and another Sister from the convent.
The Antonellis were generous contributors to the convent funds and the two nuns were graciously anxious to do all in their power to help. We all knelt down in the front room and in a low voice, so as not to disturb the dying monkey, repeated the Thirty Days’ Prayer, and the Memorare.
Next day, a wet and dismal Monday, Nicolo was at his last gasp—he had now been ill for exactly nine days. Uncle Vita would now allow no one in the sickroom but himself, he never for a moment left the monkey’s side. But at nine o’clock that morning, shortly after I arrived, he emerged; and, in the front room where we were gathered, pointed his finger, like a madman, at Clara.