by A. J. Cronin
Papa and Mama had not yet returned. From postcards which Mama sent to Grandpa we judged the London visit a success. Mama hinted proudly that Papa had “put money into Adam’s house,” and, on the strength of this investment, which seemed almost to have gone to Papa’s head, they were breaking their journey on the way home to spend an extra week with Grandma’s cousins at Kilmarnock. They would return, with Grandma, in about ten days. Grandpa and I calculated, looking at the calendar, that I might just be up before they got back, a stroke of good fortune which pleased us both.
Grandpa made a pretty fair nurse. During my early delirium I was aware of him, as through a veil, moving about my room in his slippers, at all hours of the night, bending to give me my medicine, to swab my throat. I heard Mrs. Bosomley’s voice, too, beyond the carbolic sheet which hung outside my door, as she handed in a jelly or a blancmange “ shape” she had made. I did not feel like a destroying angel towards her.
Although I lay in isolation I was not without visitors. Dr. Galbraith, dry, uncommunicative and a little rough, arrived every day—if he recognized me as a spectator of that strange episode at the Antonellis’ he did not once refer to it. Kate came several times to the front door, but not beyond, for fear of carrying the infection to her child. Murdoch had less reason to take precautions; even so, the frequency of his visits pleased and flattered me; I began to look forward to his lumbering step, his manufactured conversation, filled with heavy pauses, his ponderous jokes (which I knew by heart), his bulletins upon the progress of the new carnation. Gavin, of course, was eager to visit me, and Grandpa nearly broke my heart by refusing to admit him. However, I was mending fast, I should see him soon.
Now there approaches a day which cannot much longer be held back—the twentieth of July, a day which is unforgettable. At times I have had nothing to relate, except lagging trivialities, the absurdities committed by a boy in the painful process of growing up. But this day—this twentieth of July … It lives in the memory and must again be referred to, years later—a terrible day.
It was Wednesday, and the forenoon passed, completely uneventful, except that I was out of my room, dressed, and had actually taken a few paces in the garden. After lunch, since the afternoon was so fine, Grandpa rigged up a camp chair for me on the back green, where I sat with a board under my feet and a rug on my knees, enjoying the goodness of the warm sun. In convalescence one’s heart is sometimes lifted by the forgotten brightness of the outside world, lifted as by that sudden burst of bird song which comes when the sky clears after rain. Grandpa was in the house removing the evidence of my illness, which could only upset Papa and which, since Mr. Reid had made himself responsible for the doctor’s fees, need not concern him.
Presently I heard a step on the pebble path: Jason’s vigorous crunching step. He came round the corner of the house, smiled, and sat down on the grass.
“Felling better?”
“Oh, I’m perfectly all right now.”
“Good.” He nodded, plucked a blade of grass and threw it away.
There was a silence. Then Reid meditated, his gaze moving, here and there, in a peculiar way.
“You’ve taken things remarkably well, Shannon. Better than I did. I must admit, that day you got sick, I could have wept tears of blood. But we must get over our disappointments, it’s one of the arts of living. By the way, have you read Candide?”
“No, sir.”
“I must lend it to you. Then you’ll find out how, thanks to merciful Providence, everything happens for the best.”
I stared at him, unable to penetrate his mood, yet aroused, rather flustered by this apt mention of providential intervention. Suddenly he said:
“The results of the Marshall won’t be out for another week yet.” He paused, then went on steadily. “ But I’ve just seen Professor Grant. He told me the marks.”
My heart, though supported by Dr. Galbraith’s strychnine medicine, took a fluttering leap, I was conscious of the clenching of my hands, the start forward, the dry choking in my throat. And, as though understanding this, Reid spoke quickly, dropping his unsuspected bitterness, fixing his large oxlike eyes, almost pathetically, on mine.
“McEwan.”
The prodigy had won. These boys always win Bursaries, though occasionally it takes an attack of diphtheria to enable them to do so.
Pierced through and through, I stared at Reid as he went on, plucking more grass and throwing it away. “ He only scored nine hundred and twenty marks.”
I saw, dimly, that Grandpa had come through the kitchen door and joined us on the back green, saw also that he knew. Reid had told him on the way in. I lowered my head in sudden blinding pain. With pale lips I asked:
“Who was second?”
A pause. “ You … twenty-five marks behind … even without the physics paper. I tried, I nearly went down on my knees to persuade them to give you an average. I offered to show them your class marks. I told them you’d have made not twenty-five but ninety-five.” His voice fell into a twisted bitterness. “ No use. They couldn’t, or they wouldn’t, break the rule.”
Again silence. Even yet I could not fully apprehend the certainty of my failure. Some further revelation was surely in store for me. As though wishing to ease the agonizing tumbling of my heart Jason added:
“Blair is third, one mark behind you.”
Two boys in a boat on the moonlit Loch: “One of us, one of us must win.” Momentarily, I forgot my own misery and confusion in a sudden rush of grief for Gavin.
“Does he know?”
Reid shook his head. “Not yet.”
Suddenly Grandpa spoke, in a troubled voice, not the voice of a cheap gossip, but the voice of a man who has himself known misfortune, a voice which tells, unwillingly, something sad that must sooner or later be told. Grandpa could never bring himself to offer me sympathy direct. I think he wanted, at this moment, to distract me from the crushing agony of my own defeat.
“Provost Blair has come an awful smash.”
I gazed at him numbly. “ What do you mean?”
“He’s failed, gone bankrupt in his business at last.”
I sat paralysed, wrung with an added dismay. Gavin’s father a bankrupt, ruined and disgraced … For Gavin to lose the Marshall was nothing; nothing to this. I suddenly saw, white and proud, the face of this boy who worshipped his father, like a god upon Olympus. I knew I must go to him at once.
I had enough presence of mind not to mention my intention. No one seemed to have anything more to say. I waited until Grandpa and Jason went into the house; then, without asking permission, slipped round the side path to the road. I scarcely noticed how weak and shaky my legs were; I wanted to find Gavin.
He was not at home. There seemed nobody about the Provost’s grand house; no maid, or gardener; behind the official lamp-posts an air of upheaval and confusion. After I had knocked three times Miss Julia opened the door a little way, as though afraid of what fresh disaster this might reveal. She told me in a broken voice that Gavin had been for some days with friends in Ardfillan; she had telephoned him; he was returning on the four o’clock train.
I knew he would leave the train at Dalreoch. The sky was white with heat. Men were walking in their shirt sleeves, carrying their jackets, fanning themselves with their hats. I dragged myself along, fighting the weakness in my legs, reached the gate of the station yard as the Ardfillan train came in. I waited there, in my usual place, straining my eyes across the hot dust intersected by shimmering rails.
He was there. I saw him jump from the footboard of the stationary train and begin to cross the yard. He did not see me. His face was whiter than the white sky, his eyes stared straight ahead. He knew.
The guard blew his whistle, waved his bright green flag. A goods engine was shunting waggons slowly in the yard. From a stationary waggon, very leisurely, they were rolling barrels of potatoes on to a horse van. The picture is with me still, burned into memory.
As the passenger train pulled out, Gavin, cr
ossing the net of rail-lines, withdrawn into himself, living in his own pain, appeared unconscious of the slowly shunting train on the other track. He wasn’t looking where he was going. He was walking directly in the way of the approaching engine. I started and let out a wild shout of warning. He heard me. He saw the engine. But oh God! He had stopped. His foot seemed caught between the points, he was bending, twisting and tugging with all his strength.
“Gavin! Gavin!” I shouted and ran forward.
His eyes, dark in his white face, met mine across the shimmering yard. He tried frantically to move from the rails and could not. Then the engine was upon him. Before I could cry out again his own cry came and a red haze fell upon me.
When I came to myself the yard was crowded, full of voices and confusion. The engine driver, twisting waste in his agitated hands, was explaining to a police officer that he was not to blame. People were saying in shocked voices: “What a tragedy! His father …” They were trying to make out that Gavin had killed himself.
I crept home, clinging to the wall, shutting my teeth upon a deathly sickness, longing for the darkness. But when night came I did not sleep. Beneath my anguish a dark resentment began to work in me. How simple, how gullible I had been. My tortured thoughts were not yet clear but, swept by a sullen revulsion of feeling, I was conscious that I had reached a crisis in my life.
Next day Papa and Mama returned with Grandma, and as I remained alone, locked in my bedroom, I heard the stir of their arrival. Grandma was calling for me. But I gave no answer.
Avoiding them, I go out, slowly down the road, past the three chestnut trees, outlined against the sky, to the house where the blinds are drawn as if against the too persistent beauty of the world.
As I walk in staring weariness, hands plunged in my pockets, my fingers encounter a little medal, a “ miraculous” medal which has been given me when I sat, a trusting child who believed in fairy tales, beside the convent syringa bush. A great sob swells up in me, thrusting upwards from my breast, into my throat. I take the holy trinket and fling it tremblingly away. So much for this God who destroys children, murders them and breaks their hearts. There is no God, no justice upon earth. All hope has gone. Nothing remains but a blind defiance of the sky.
Gavin lies on his bed, in his own room, fast asleep—in a dream from which he will not awaken. He is wrapped in his dream, his eyelids closed, his face untouched, untroubled. Still proud and resolute, he is remote, far from everything.
Julia Blair, her eyes red with weeping, shows me in silence Gavin’s shoe, the strong heel of which he had almost wrenched away in his effort to free his foot, trapped in the point switch of the rail. No, he did not surrender. In his dream that brave heart still lies, undefeated.
Book Three
Chapter One
As I came through the Works gates one February evening, the ground hard under my nailed boots and the street lamps wearing frosty haloes, I caught sight of Kate’s little boy, Luke, waiting on his father and wearing his new blue Academy cap with all the pride of a boy who has just gone to school. This sudden evidence of time took me by surprise: almost like a blow. Heavens, I am getting old, I am seventeen!
“Give us a penny, Robie.” He ran up to me, sturdy and red-cheeked, bright-eyed with his own importance.
I felt through my soiled dungarees with insensitive fingers and found a coin. “You should say, ‘ Please.’”
“Please.”
“Do you know who used to give me pennies when I was about your age?”
I was speaking like a patriarch and, with eyes on the penny, he was not in the least interested. Never mind. It was one of the consolations of my life, this life already heavy with years, loaded with afflictions, in fact practically over, to give him pennies, to take him on Saturday afternoons to the football match where, forgetting my sombre dignity, I cheered just as madly as he.
“Your father will be out in five minutes,” I told him over my shoulder as I moved off. “ He let me away early to-night.”
“To go to the concert?” he called after me.
My nod was lost in the darkness. But my heart treasured the thought as I trudged less wearily across the wintry Common: the prospect of this evening banished even my overpowering and inevitable fatigue. To-night I should not fall asleep at the table the moment I had eaten my supper. Absorbed, I passed the dark bulk of the Church of the Holy Angels without my usual gesture of defiance—a fist clenched, theatrically, in the darkness.
Soon after Gavin’s death, when I was on the point of leaving the Academy, Canon Roche had summoned me to the presbytery. He received me in his room with great friendliness and, after pacing up and down with his hands in the pockets of his soutane, turned to me.
“My dear Shannon.” His dark eyes burned sympathetically. “All this may be God’s way of proving you, of showing you the road you must go.”
I looked down.
“You are thinking of going into the Works?”
“Yes,” I said. “ It’s about the only thing left for me to do.”
“There aren’t many opportunities in a small town like Levenford.” He reflected. “Robert … have you ever thought of the priesthood?”
I flushed darkly, my eyes still fixed on the carpet.
“Yes, I have.”
“It’s a wonderful life, my dear boy. A great joy and privilege to serve God as one of His chosen disciples.” His gaze was bent warmly upon me. “I’m not offering you empty promises. There is a diocesan fund devoted to the splendid task of educating poor boys for the priesthood. It isn’t a large fund. And naturally the candidates selected are few. But, in your case—I have written about you to the Bishop—if you wish, you will be elected immediately, you can leave for the Seminary next week.”
I sat silent and ashamed. I saw that Canon Roche expected me to jump at his offer. Six weeks ago I might have done so. But now everything had changed: all my gushing fervour was replaced by arid bitterness.
“Well …” The Canon smiled. “What have you to say?”
“I’m sorry.” I choked out the words. “I’d rather not.”
An expression of surprise appeared on his face. He said quickly: “But don’t you want to be ordained?”
“I did once,” I said. “But I don’t now.”
There was a silence. He seemed for the first time to realize my state of mind. But he was too wise to remonstrate. Instead he concealed his disappointment and in a thoughtful, persuasive voice began to describe the happiness of a life devoted to the service of God. He opened up broad spiritual horizons, spoke of the culture and learning freely dispensed by Holy Mother Church. He fell into a pleasant reverie, touching upon his own student days at the Scots College in Valladolid—where, of course, if I wished, I too could go. He painted a picture of the Seminary buildings, of the Spanish landscape, and wound up, with a disarming smile, by recalling a special vine under which he used to take his siesta, refreshing himself, at the same time, with the delicious sweet grapes which almost dropped into his mouth.
I felt myself carried away. I liked and admired Canon Roche. In my emotional state, his winning kindness was irresistible. But something within me refused to surrender. My lips turned pale and stiff.
“I can’t,” I said desperately. “ I don’t want to go.”
A much longer silence followed, then Canon Roche spoke in a different voice.
“I have no wish to influence you. You must decide for yourself. But I might point out that such a spiritual and material favour won’t come your way every day. And of course we cannot hold it open indefinitely. Pray to Almighty God for guidance, and come and see me again on Saturday.”
I went out into the grey afternoon. At the end of the week I did not return to the presbytery. My boldness in defying Canon Roche amazed me. But the seeds of rebellion were growing rapidly in my breast. If God would not permit me to be a scientist I saw no reason why I should yield to Him and become a priest. Anything seemed better than that—indeed, under the circu
mstances, the prospect of entering the Works actually assumed a special attraction. Frustrated and full of bitterness, seething with new and terrible ideas, I wanted, recklessly, to submit to the worst that Fate could do to me. And above all, I wanted to show that I did not care.
To-night, after eighteen months, much of these forces had expended themselves. I still dramatized my situation. Yet underneath I was growing restless and less heroic. Should I never grasp the rich and glowing future for which I yearned, and which seemed always to elude me?
Preoccupied by these thoughts, I was in no mood for interruption, yet as I turned into Drumbuck Road, a figure, a too familiar figure, detached itself from the dim shelter of the wall at the corner and, with a measured greeting, shuffled into step beside me.
My burden, which I have inherited from poor Mama: Grandpa.
“A trifle snell to-night, Robert.”
I answered him under my breath, asking myself what he was up to now. The week before I had found him outside the Fitters’ Bar addressing a crowd of apprentices on Woman’s Suffrage.
“I was wondering, my boy, if you would care to make me a small advance. A mere nothing. Sixpence. For a postal order.”
I trudged on in disapproving silence. These competitions, upon which he spends half his day, are part of what he calls his “ New Era.” To exact the full resources of his declining years he wants to become rich—a mere bagatelle for a man of his potentialities. In the reading room of the public library he cuts out guilelessly, under the very nose of the prim lady librarian, every advertisement which promises him wealth—and the diversity of these cuttings must be seen to be believed. In his room he initiates a voluminous correspondence, supplies missing words, rhyming phrases, the last lines of limericks, a whole vocabulary manufactured from the six letters of the alphabet thoughtfully supplied by the editor of Home Weekly. I cannot even pass him on the stairs without his accosting me and, with a confidential air, producing from his pocket a crumpled paper.