by A. J. Cronin
“After all I’ve done for her, to walk out without a word of warning. It’s past understanding.”
“We’ll get somebody else, sooner or later,” Papa remarked softly. “After all she was very wasteful … and a big eater.”
“I can’t do it all myself,” Grandma protested.
“Robie and I will make things easy for you.” Papa gave a dreadful, playful kind of smirk. “I don’t mind making my own bed. As a matter of fact, I’m very fond of housework.”
I saw that he was secretly overjoyed to be free of the expense of the maid and that he would do his utmost to delay the engagement of another.
When I had finished my meal, to oblige the old woman I took up Grandpa’s bread and cheese and cocoa, on my way up to my room. As I turned the handle of his door, and carried in the tray, he was seated by a small fire, with his coat over his shoulders.
“Thank you, Robert.” He spoke in a mild and reasonable tone. “Where’s Sophie?”
“Gone.” I put down the tray in front of him. “ Left without notice.”
“Well, well!” He looked up with a surprised, slightly injured expression. “ You amaze me. You never know where you are with people these days.”
“It’s a little awkward.”
“It is indeed,” he agreed. “I must say I liked the girl. Very obliging and young.”
It was a relief to find Grandpa in a restrained mood, one of these blessed intermissions which filled him with his old contemplative quiet. I thought he looked frail, to-night, a trifle under the weather; and I stood a moment while he dipped his bread in his cocoa and slowly ate it.
“How’s the leg?” I asked. Lately he had begun to drag his left foot as he walked.
“Fine, fine. It’s only a sprain. I have a grand constitution, Robert.”
Next morning, at the Works, I was conscious of Galt, Sophie’s father, watching me with a peculiar air. We were working on a new generator and he kept hanging about in my vicinity, coming over now and then to borrow a wrench or a file. Selecting a moment when Jamie was at the other end of the shed he said:
“I want to see you when we knock off.”
I gazed with distaste at his colourless, unshaven face, barely lit by a lustreless eye.
“What for?”
“I’ll tell you later. Meet me in the Fitters’ Bar.”
Before I could refuse Jamie appeared and Galt moved off. I felt puzzled and upset. What on earth did he want with me? I told myself I would not go. Yet, at five minutes past six, driven by an uneasy curiosity, I went into the Bar, immediately opposite the Works Gates, and found Galt already seated at a small table in the corner of the long sawdust-strewn saloon, which was almost empty, not yet lit up for the evening.
He greeted me with an earthy smile. “ What’ll you have?”
I shook my head stiffly. “ I’m in a hurry. What’s all this about?”
“I’ll have a half first.” He called for the drink and when it was brought he said: “It’s about my Sophie.”
I flushed indignantly.
“That has nothing to do with me.”
“Maybe not.” He drank his whisky in reflective fashion, his eyes wandering all round me. “But it’ll be a proper scandal if it comes out.”
It was as if he had dashed a bucket of water in my face. Bewildered and confused, there was no denying the thrill of intimidation which icily traversed my spine.
He gave a nod towards the other chair at the table.
“Sit down and don’t be so high and mighty. You can stand me another half, too.” He paused, again searching me with his small mean eye. “You’ve no objection?”
“Have one if you want,” I muttered.
“Good health,” he said when the second drink came.
Half an hour later I went along Drumbuck Road, white-faced and stiff, burning with rage and misery. The leaves were opening on the sappy chestnut trees, but now I did not see them. When I reached the house I climbed the stairs to Grandpa’s room, shut the door behind me, and faced him. At my entrance he had risen with a letter in his hand.
“Look, Robie!” He sounded eager and pleased. “A consolation prize in the last competition. A coloured pencil case and a bound volume of Good Works.”
“You and your Good Works!” In my bitterness I hustled him back, upsetting his books and papers.
He gazed at me, crestfallen.
“What’s the matter?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know.” My wretchedness, rather than my rage, made my voice low and concentrated. “When I think of it, after all your promises … when I’m surrounded by my own troubles … Oh, God, it’s the last straw.”
“I don’t understand.” His head was beginning to shake.
“Then think.” I bent over and shook him. “ Think why Sophie left.”
He repeated the words, his eyes wearing a look of blankness. Then a light seemed to break over him. He stopped shaking and confronted me with a new expression, no longer wondering but almost apostolic, raising his right hand like Moses about to bring a fountain from the rock.
“Robert, I swear to you we were always the best of friends. No more than that. Nothing.”
“Indeed!” Bitterness was choking me. “You expect me to believe that … with your record!” He looked guilty. “You’ve landed yourself in a hopeless mess. And I wash my hands of you.”
I turned away and went out of the room, leaving him quite frightened, on the hearthrug. While I ate my supper I struggled with the implications of this new worry—one minute it seemed trivial, the next full of limitless disaster. Moodily, I wondered if I had done wrong to conciliate Galt … to bribe him, in fact, by paying for his drinks. Surely that in itself was an admission of guilt. Yet, if I had taken a firmer stand, there was no knowing what he might have done. Oh, misery of miseries! While I dreamed of love as something warm and glowing, this thing came, sordid and disreputable, to mock at me.
An hour later as I went up to my room I found the old man waiting for me on the landing, a sheet of notepaper in his hand. He held this out to me, with dignity and a hint of triumph.
“I’ve settled everything, Robert.” He placated me with a half-smile. “An open letter to the people of the town. Read it.”
Wearily, I let my eyes run through the long epistle, addressed “To the Editor of the Levenford Herald.” “Sir … an unwarranted aspersion has been cast against me … I appeal to my fellow citizens … nothing to conceal … a life without blemish … pure as the lily … respecter of true womanhood …”
“Goes to the point.” Grandpa watched my face eagerly. “It’ll just be in time for next week’s issue.”
“Yes.” I met his gaze. “I’ll take care of it for you.”
“Good, good!” He patted me tremulously on the shoulder. “I didn’t mean to offend you, Robie. The last thing in the world. A friend in need is a friend indeed.”
I forced a smile which seemed to comfort him, at least he shook me gratefully by the hand.
As he turned to his room dragging his foot after him, suddenly, as a kind of afterthought, he put his head round the door.
“Robie,” he said gravely. “ My poor wife was a wonderful woman.”
Oh, God, what next? I had not heard him mention her name in ten years. I went to my own room. I began to tear into small pieces his open letter to his fellow citizens.
On the following day Galt approached me as we knocked off work. I had expected this and had braced myself to meet a recriminating attitude. To my surprise his manner was quite affable.
“You’re in no hurry to-night. Come on in the Bar with me. If you’re not too proud.”
I hesitated. Then I realized that it would relieve my mind if some sort of understanding were reached between us. We went into the Bar.
There, with his feet in the sawdust, Galt kept the conversation on his favourite topic, “the rights of man.” He was a pertinacious speaker —at the Union meetings it was admitted that he had the “gift of the gab
”—with a few high-sounding phrases which he brought out with a triumphant air. He believed that the workers were everywhere exploited and preyed upon, “ bled white” by their employers. He wanted the men to rise and take the reins of government in their own hands. “Up with the masses, down with the classes!” was his slogan. He was beginning to use the new word “Comrade” and he spoke with unction of “the dawn of liberty.”
“Well, I suppose we’ll have to get down to brass tacks.” He shook his head regretfully. “ My worst enemy couldn’t call me anything but a fair man. But I will have my rights. There’s no getting over the fact that Sophie has got to be compensated.”
I felt a fluttering in my inside. Long afterwards, when I discovered, in a curious way, that Grandpa had no more than put his arm around the wretched Sophie’s waist—last feeble prance of the decrepit stallion—I cursed myself heartily for being such an easy victim. Now I gazed at Galt glassily.
“I’m glad you don’t deny it.” He approved my silence. “ It shows you have the right stuff in you. Now to make no bones about it. I want five pounds. Five pounds and we wash the slate clean, everything forgiven and forgotten. These are my terms. And I can’t say fairer.”
I stared at him in dismay.
“I couldn’t get such an amount to save my life.”
“There’s money in that house,” Galt said accusingly. “If you don’t get it, I’ll go to Leckie myself. He’s an old skinflint but he’ll pay up sooner than have this plastered over the town.”
What on earth was I to do? I saw clearly enough that he had picked me as the easiest and least resistant line of approach. Yet it seemed equally clear that if I failed to get the money he would take the matter to Papa, who had lately been grumbling horribly against Grandpa, threatening again to send him to the Institution at Glenwoodie.
“Will you give me time?” I asked at last.
Galt answered magnanimously. “ I’ll give you a week, Comrade. That’s reasonable.”
I stood up. As I went out he pressed my arm with a peculiar archness.
“You’re the one that somebody likes.”
I walked home, shamed and outraged, my head in a whirl. In looking for a guiding principle I had turned to the shining idea of the brotherhood of man, attending meetings, studying the pamphlets, thinking feelingly in terms of “ suffering humanity.” We working men were allies, marching forward under the hostile sky. No one could have been more vehement than Galt in protesting the noble virtues of the downtrodden poor. Yet his own poverty was the result of indolence and shiftlessness. And now he had been given his chance to prove his nobility, he was using it to tread all over me.
During the next few days. I racked my brains for ways and means of finding the money. There was only one person whom I could possibly approach. In the fitting shop, for the rest of that week, while Galt kept looking at me, I kept looking at Jamie. Recently our relations had returned to a happier footing, he seemed to feel that I was making a greater effort to “ get on with the job.” Several times I almost brought myself to the point of speaking to him, then my courage failed me. But on Saturday forenoon, conscious of a growing importunity in Galt’s manner, I went up to the head of the assembly shed.
“Jamie.” I spoke breathlessly. “Could you lend me some money?”
“I thought something was on your mind.” He threw away his cigarette end and smiled at me, at the same time reaching in his pocket for a handful of cash. “ How much?”
“It’s more than you think.” I swallowed hard. “But I promise I’ll pay you back.”
“How much?” he repeated, still smiling but a trifle dubious.
“Five pounds.”
He stopped smiling, looked at me incredulously.
“In the name of God. Have you gone balmy? I thought you meant a couple of bob.”
“I swear I’ll make it up to you out of my pay.”
“What do you want it for?”
“I can’t say. But it’s important.”
He was looking at me curiously. He let the handful of change fall back into his pocket. His expression was cold, disapproving, and disappointed. He shook his head.
“I thought you were beginning to get your feet on the ground. I’m not the Bank of Scotland. I’ve a hard enough job to make ends meet.”
I retreated, horribly humiliated by this sharp rebuff: I could wear any number of hair shirts without a murmur, but a single disparaging word would reduce me to the depths. For the rest of the shift I kept my head down, avoiding Galt’s persistent stare. When the hooter blew I dodged him, bolted for the gate and ran half the way home.
During Sunday I managed to lie low, but all the next week Galt nagged me mercilessly. My first hesitation over, I had assumed, identified myself with this obligation. I had an agonizing desire to discharge it. I was a perfectionist, all my early undertakings were infused with a do-or-die intensity, and this was no exception. I wanted the final feverish satisfaction of “ paying Galt off.” I actually felt that I, myself, owed this money, that it was a just debt which I must at all costs repay. Galt fostered this illusion. He hinted at police court proceedings. He warned me that I was now mixed up in the affair. Remembrance of thoughts and stirrings which had troubled me when Sophie did my room added to this sense of guilt. Was I not just as bad as the old man?
When Saturday came round I was at my wit’s end. I tried to elude my persecutor but Galt was waiting for me at the gates. He delivered his ultimatum. He told me in a surly voice, suggestive of the truth, that he had contracted obligations with the local bookmaker.
“If you don’t bring it to-night,” he said, “ the fat will be in the fire with a vengeance.”
As I walked away my mood turned bitter and wounded. I told myself that I was sick to death of carrying other people’s burdens on my shoulders. I had done enough. I could do no more.
When I got home Grandma was coming downstairs with an air of quiet complacency, and her “Good Book” in her hands.
“He’s been asking for you.” She made a movement of her head back and upwards. “He had a queer turn this morning. I stopped with him a bit and read him a chapter.” Lately she had adopted this worthy practice—in the face of his manifest decline a new protective attitude had replaced her old enmity towards Grandpa.
I stood, undecided, in the lobby, then against my will I went up, turned the handle of the door. He was dressed but resting on his bed, extremely subdued, and looking quite poorly. I had to say something.
“What’s wrong with you?”
He smiled. “Too much spiritual reading maybe. I could do with a bit of Hajji Baba.” He gazed at me speculatively. “You’ll be going to the football match this afternoon?”
“There’s no match.”
He did not say anything more. He expected nothing. Yet I went down to have my dinner, resentful of his desire for my company. I had said that I would have nothing more to do with him. I meant to keep my word.
After lunch it began to rain. I hung about with my hands in my pockets staring out of the window. Then, I climbed the stairs moodily.
I made up his fire until it burned brightly. We settled ourselves and played three games of draughts, also several hands of “ nap,” a card game in which our stakes were matches, and to which Grandpa was much addicted. We scarcely talked at all. But afterwards, while he reclined in his chair, I read him the adventure of Hajji in the Sultan’s palace, which always caused him to chuckle. At four o’clock I made tea and some hot toast and dripping. Afterwards he lit his pipe and sat back with his eyes half-closed.
“This is like old times, Robie.”
I felt like breaking out and slanging him. When he was calm, relaxed, like this, the lapses which had marked his whole life seemed all the more wickedly unnecessary. I was furious with him. Yet while he sat drowsing I could not free myself from memories of his kindness to me when I was a child. Of course it was not all kindness, but in part a manifestation of his temperament. He was always something of an ex
hibitionist, a great character actor, and the role of benefactor was very near his heart. Still, allowing for all this, how could I resign him to his fate at this late hour? He could never endure Glenwoodie: I had seen the place when we went out to visit Peter Dickie. And to such a man as Grandpa it would be the end.
I sighed and got up. As I left the room it annoyed me horribly to see that he was fast asleep in his chair.
That night I took my microscope, which Gavin had given me—my only possession of any value, in fact a really sacred possession which I had sworn never, never to part with, not even if I were ruined and a beggar in the streets. I pawned it in the town. I got a fair price, five pounds ten shillings—slightly more than I had expected. Then I came along the Vennel and crossed the court to the chipped, chalk-scrawled, brownstone building where Galt lived. He was leaning against his doorway in his shirt sleeves.
“I’ve brought you the money,” I said.
His fingers closed over the notes. He looked up at me. His face broke into a sheepish grin.
“That’s us clear then. Come on inside a minute.” He indicated an interior which was littered and untidy, the spotted wallpaper covered with his “Brotherhood” certificates, pinned cutouts of footballers and boxers.
I shook my head and began to walk away, my spirits suddenly rising by leaps and bounds. Halfway across the Common I realized that, in my nervous excitement, I had given Galt all the money I had received for the microscope, ten shillings more than he had asked. What did it matter? I was clear of him, clear and free. If I had not been so conscious of my maturity, I would have run and jumped. As it was, I went into the shop at the end of the Common and with the small change in my pocket bought myself a round puff-apple pie. I ate it slowly, going up Drumbuck Road, in the still clear evening savouring every morsel, licking the crumbs from my fingers. How good it was! How pleasant that the evenings were drawing out! The light was limpid and tender. A thrush was singing in the chestnut branches. As I drew near I suddenly apostrophized the inoffensive bird.
“One day I’ll show you! Hah! You just wait and see!”