by A. J. Cronin
They walked to the Central, Arthur bathed in a warm, unusual glow of self-approval, like an actor who had given a brilliant performance in a leading part. Yes, he had done well. He understood that Hetty wanted him to be like this: not stammering and sheepish but full of confidence, assured.
They entered the station and walked up the platform together, a little early, for the train was not in and Barras had not yet arrived. Suddenly Hetty stopped.
“By the way, Arthur,” she exclaimed, “I’ve just been wondering. Why did your father come to see mine to-day?”
He drew up, facing her, completely taken aback by the unexpectedness of her remark.
“It’s rather odd,” she smiled, “now I come to think of it. Dad can’t bear seeing any one when he’s seedy and yet he got on the telephone to Sleescale three times this morning. Why was it, Arthur?”
“I don’t know,” he hesitated, still staring at her. “As a matter of fact I was wondering why myself.” He paused. “I’ll ask father.”
She laughed and pressed his arm.
“Of course not, silly. Don’t look so serious, what in all the world does it matter?”
SEVENTEEN
At half-past four that afternoon David emerged from Bethel Street School and crossed the hard concrete playground towards the street. The school, already known as New Bethel Street to distinguish it from the old shut-down school, was a building of shiny, purplish bricks erected on a high piece of waste land at the top of Bethel Street. The opening of New Bethel Street six months ago had caused a general shuffle around amongst the county educational staff and a vacancy for one new junior teacher. It was this appointment that David had received.
New Bethel Street School was not pretty. It was semidetached severely into halves. Upon one half, in grey stone inset, was carved the word BOYS; upon the other, in equally huge letters, GIRLS. For each sex, separated by a menacing spiked fence, there was a vaulted entrance. A great many white tiles had got into the construction of the school and a smell of disinfectant somehow managed to permeate the corridors. Taken altogether the school succeeded in resembling a large public convenience.
David’s dark figure moved rapidly under the lowering and wind-swept sky and seemed to indicate that he was eager to leave the school. It was a cold night and as he had no coat he turned up the collar of his jacket and fairly spurted down the windy street. Suddenly he recognised and was inclined to smile at his own eagerness. He was still unused to the idea of himself as a married man and a master at New Bethel Street. He must, as Strother said, begin to cultivate decorum.
He had been married six months and was settled with Jenny in a small house behind the Dunes. A most tremendous business it had been finding the house—the right house, as Jenny put it. Naturally the Terraces were impossible: Jenny wouldn’t have looked at a miners’ row “for love nor money”; and David felt it wise in the meantime to be at the other end of the town from his parents. Their reaction to his marriage had made things difficult.
High and low they had searched. Rooms furnished or unfurnished Jenny would not have. But at last they had pitched on a small plaster-fronted detached house in Lamb Lane, the straggling continuation of Lamb Street. The house belonged to Wept’s wife, who had one or two “bits” of property in her own name in Sleescale, and who let them have the house for ten shillings a week because it had stood unlet for the previous two quarters and now showed signs of damp. Even so, the rent was more than David could afford on a salary of £70 a year. Still he had not wished to disappoint Jenny, who had from the first taken quite a fancy to the house, since it did not stand vulgarly in a row and had actually a patch of front garden. Jenny insisted that the garden would afford them a most refined seclusion and hinted romantically at the wonders she would work in the way of cultivating it.
Nor had he cared to stint her over the house’s furnishing: Jenny was so bright and intrepid, so set on having “the exact thing” that she would tirelessly ransack a dozen shops rather than confess defeat—how, in the face of such enthusiasm, could he freeze her warm housewifely spirit! Yet he had eventually been obliged to take a stand and in the end they had compromised. Three rooms of the house were furnished on credit: kitchen, parlour, bedroom—the last with a noble suite of stained walnut, the pride of Jenny’s heart. For the rest she had taken it out in chintzes, muslin curtains and a superb selection of lace doyleys.
David was happy… very happy in this house behind the Dunes—these last six months had been far and away the happiest of his life. And before that there had been the honeymoon. Never, never would David forget the joy of that week… those seven blessed days at Cullercoats. Naturally he had thought a honeymoon out of the question. But Jenny, tenacious as ever where romantic tradition was involved, had fiercely insisted; and Jenny, revealing unsuspected treasure, had produced fifteen pounds, her six years’ money from the Slattery savings fund, and handed it firmly to him. She had, moreover, in the face of all his protests, argued him into buying himself a new ready-made suit out of the money to replace the shabby grey he wore. Her way of putting it involved no humiliation. Jenny, at least, was never mean; where money was concerned Jenny never thought twice. He had bought the suit; they had spent the honeymoon on Jenny’s money. He would never in all his life forget Jenny for that.
The wedding ceremony had been a failure—though he had been prepared for worse—a chilly affair in the Plummer Street church with Jenny unnatural and stiff, a pretentious breakfast at Scottswood Road, a horrible rigidity between the opposing factions of Sunleys and Fenwicks. But the week at Cullercoats had blown it all away. Jenny had been wonderful to him, revealing an ardour—startling yet beautiful. He had expected her to be timid; the depth of her passion had overwhelmed him. She loved him… she loved him… she really loved him.
He had discovered, of course, that she had been unfortunate, there was no escape from the stark physiology of this fact. Sobbing in his arms that first bitter-sweet night she had told him the whole story; though he had not wished to hear and had begged her, unhappily, to stop. But she would, she must explain, it had happened, she wept, when she was just, oh, just a girl, a well-to-do commercial traveller, in the millinery line, of course, a perfect brute, a beast of a man, had taken advantage of her. He was drunk and forty, she not yet sixteen. He was bald, too, she remembered, with a little mole on his chin, and his name, oh, his name was Harris. She had not been untrue to herself; she had struggled, fought, but her resistance had been useless; terrified, she had been afraid to tell her mother. It had happened only once and never, never, never again with any one in all the world.
Tears filled David’s eyes as he held her in his arms, compassion added to his love, his ardour leavened by a sublime pity. Poor Jenny, poor, darling little Jenny!
After the honeymoon they had come direct to Sleescale where his work at New Bethel Street had immediately begun. Here, alas, the run of his good luck was checked.
He was not happy at the school. He had always recognised that teaching would never be his trade, he was too impulsive, too eager for results. He wanted to reform the world. And now, in charge of Standard IIIA, a class full of little boys and girls of nine, inky, untidy, apathetic, he was conscious of the irony of this beginning. He chafed at the creaking system, controlled by bell and whistle and cane, loathed equally the Grand March as thumped on the piano by Miss Mimms, his opposite number in III?, and her acidulous “now children” heard through the thin partition fifty times a day. As in his period of pupil-teaching, he wanted to change the whole curriculum, cut the idiotic non-essentials on which visiting inspectors set such store, ignore the Battle of Hastings, the latitude of Cape Town, the sing-song recitation of capitals and dates, substitute Hans Andersen for the prim Crown Reader, awaken the children, fan their flickering interest, stimulate the mind rather than the memory. Of course all his attempts, his suggestions towards this end had met with the chilliest reception. Every hour of every day he felt that he did not belong to this environment. In the
Staff Room it was the same, he felt himself alien, treated distantly by his colleagues, frozen by the virgin Mimms. Nor could he disguise from himself the fact that Strother, the head master, disliked him. Strother was a square, official man, an M.A. of Durham with a ponderous manner and a fussy, pedantic mind. He wore black suits, had a heavy black moustache, was something of a martinet. He had been second master at the old school, knew all about David, his family and origin; despised him for having worked in the pit; for not having taken the B.A.; felt that he had been foisted upon him; went out of his way to be difficult, contemptuous and severe. If only Mr. Carmichael had been head, everything would have been different; but Carmichael, though applying for the post, had not even reached the short leet. He had no influence. In disgust he had accepted a village school at Wallington. He had written a long letter to David asking David to visit him soon, to come for a week-end occasionally. The letter was full of the pessimism of a discouraged man.
But David was not discouraged: he was young, enthusiastic, determined to make his way. And as he swung round the corner of Lamb Street, braced by the keen wind, he swore to himself that he would get on, out of New Bethel Street, away from Strother’s paltriness, into something finer. The chance would come. And, by heaven, he would take it.
Half-way down Lamb Street he saw a figure advancing on the same side of the road: it was Ramage, James Ramage, the butcher, vice-chairman of the school board, mayor in prospect for the town. David prepared to nod civilly. He did nod. But Ramage passed without the slightest recognition; his lowering gaze dwelt blankly upon David as though he looked through him.
David coloured, set his jaw hard. There, he thought, is an enemy of mine. Coming at the end of a trying day this last snub cut him pretty deeply. But as he let himself into his house he tried to banish it, calling out cheerily to Jenny as soon as he came inside the door.
She appeared in a fetching pink blouse which he had never seen before, her hair newly shampooed and smartly arranged.
“Why, Jenny, you like like the queen.”
She held him off, posing nicely, coquettishly:
“Now, don’t crush my new blouse, Mister Man.” Lately she had taken to calling him Mister Man: it jarred abominably, he must tell her to stop. Not now, of course… she might stop of her own accord. With his arm round her trim hips he steered her to the kitchen where, through the open door, he saw a comforting fire. But she protested:
“No, not there, David. I won’t have us in the kitchen.”
“But, Jenny… I’m used to kitchens… and it’s so lovely and warm there.”
“No, I won’t have it, bad Mister Man. You know what we said. No falling off. We got to use the front room. It’s terribly common to sit in the kitchen.”
She led the way to the parlour where a green fire smoked unpromisingly.
“Now you sit there till I fetch the tea.”
“But hang it all, Jenny…”
She settled him with a pretty little gesture, bustled out. In five minutes she brought in tea: a tray first, then a tall nickel-plated cake stand—a recent purchase, such a bargain, bought on the near prospect of people calling—and finally two little Japanese paper serviettes.
“Now you be quiet, Mister Man.” Again she stilled his bewildered protest almost before he uttered it. She poured him a cup of not very hot tea, politely handed him a serviette, placed the cake stand at his elbow. She was like a small girl playing with a doll’s tea-set. He could stand it no longer.
“My heavens, Jenny,” in humourous exasperation, “what in the name of thunder does this mean? I’m hungry. I want a good high tea, a kipper or eggs, or a couple of Wept’s prepare to meet thy Gods.”
“Now, David, don’t swear. You know I wasn’t brought up to it. And don’t be impatient. Just wait and see. A cup in your hand is very nice once in a while. And I’ll be having visitors soon enough. I want to try things out. Have some of that seed-cake. I bought it in Murchison’s.”
He swallowed hard, choking down his resentment with an effort. In silence he made the best of “a cup in his hand,” Murchison’s damp seed-cake, stringy shop bread streaked with bought jam. For a split second he couldn’t help thinking of the tea his mother used to set before him when he was working, earning a wage not half what he earned now: a home-baked crusty loaf to hack at will, a big pot of butter, cheese and home-made blueberry jam—bought jam, like bought pastry, was never in Martha’s home. But the very disloyalty of that swift vision brought him swiftly back to Jenny. He smiled tenderly at her.
“In your own inimitable words, Jenny, you’re a scream.”
“Oh, I am, am I? You’re coming round, I see, Mister Man. Well, what’s been happening at the school to-day?”
“Nothing much, Jenny, darling.”
“It’s always nothing much!”
“Well, Jenny…”
“Well, what?”
“Oh, nothing, dear.”
He filled his pipe slowly. How could he tell her the dull tale of his struggle and rebuffs. Some might like that, but not Jenny. She expected some glittering story of success, of how the head master had commended him, of a dazzling stroke which would bring him quick promotion. He didn’t want to upset her. And he couldn’t lie to her.
A short silence followed, then, lightly she switched to another perilous topic.
“Tell me, then. Have you made up your mind about Arthur Barras?”
“Well… I’m not eager to take him on.”
“But it’s such a chance,” she protested. “To think you were asked by Mr. Barras himself.”
He answered shortly:
“I think I’ve had too much to do with Barras. I don’t like him. I’m sorry in a way I ever wrote to him. It’s hateful to feel that I’m indebted to him for my job.”
“You’re so stupid, David. He’s got such influence. I think it’s splendid he should have an interest in you, asking you to tutor his son.”
“I don’t take it as an interest. He’s a man I’ve no time for, Jenny. It’s merely an attempt to make his benevolence convincing.”
“And who should he want to convince?”
Quite sharply he answered:
“Himself!”
Pause. She had no idea what he meant. The fact was that Barras, meeting David in Cowpen Street on the previous Saturday, had stopped him with an air of patronage, questioned him with an aloof interest and finally asked him to come to the Law three nights a week to brush up Arthur’s mathematics. Arthur was weak in mathematics, and would need tuition before he could sit the final examination for his certificate.
Jenny tossed her head.
“I don’t think,” she informed him, “that you know what you’re talking about.” She looked for a minute as if she might add something. But she said no more, and in a huff gathered together the tea things, carried them out of the room.
Silence in the little room with the new wood fire and the new wood furniture. Then David got up, laid his books out upon the table, stirred up the fire with the poker. He made an effort. Deliberately he closed his mind to the Barras affair and sat down to work.
He was behind the schedule he had mapped out for himself and it worried him. Somehow he did not find the opportunities for study he had expected. Teaching was hard, much harder than he had imagined. He was often tired when he came home; he was tired to-night; and distractions had a way of cropping up. He gritted his teeth, propped his head up with both hands, fastened his attention firmly upon Jusserand. He must, he simply must work for this confounded B.A.: it was the only way to get on; to lift up Jenny and himself.
For half an hour he worked splendidly, undisturbed. Then Jenny slipped in and perched herself upon the arm of his chair. She was repentant for her petulance, kittenish, coy.
“David, dear,” she slipped her arm round his shoulder. “I’m sorry I was cross, really I am. I’ve had such a dull day, p’raps that’s why I’ve been looking forward to to-night ever and ever so much.”
He half-smiled,
pressed his cheek against her round young breast, his eyes still firmly upon the book.
“You weren’t cross and it is dull for you.”
She stroked the back of his head, coaxing.
“It has really been dull, David. I’ve hardly spoken to a soul but old Mr. Murchison in the stores and the woman where I priced some silk, oh, and one or two people who came to the door. I… I was thinking we might go out to-night to cheer ourselves up.”
“But I’ve got to work, Jenny. You know that as well as I do.” Eyes still fastened upon the book.
“Oh… you haven’t always got to bury yourself in these stupid old books, David. You can take to-night off… you can work some other time.”
“No, honestly, Jenny, it’s important.”
“Oh, you could, David, you could if you wanted to.”
Astounded, perplexed, he lifted his eyes at last and studied her for a moment.
“But where on earth can you want to go to? It’s cold and wet outside. Home’s the best place.”
She had it all ready, arranged, carefully planned. She brought it out with a rush.
“We could take the train to Tynecastle; the six-ten. There’s a popular concert in the Eldon Hall, something really nice. I looked up the paper and some of the Whitley Bay entertainers are to be there; that’s what they do in the winter, you know. There’s Colin Loveday, for instance, he’s got such a lovely tenor. The tickets only cost one and three, so the money’s nothing. Oh, do let’s go, David, we’ll have a lovely time. I’ve been so down, I do want a bit of a fling. Don’t be an old stick-in-the-mud.”