The Stars Look Down

by A. J. Cronin

  And they fought finally, Jenny and he, about their families. It worried David terribly, the estrangement his marriage had brought about between his own family and himself. There was of course a certain coming and going between Inkerman Terrace and the house in Lamb Lane. But it was not what David wanted. Jenny was stiff, Martha cold, Robert silent, Sammy and Hugh uncomfortable. It was queer that when David saw Jenny, in all her patronising gentility, with his own family he could have beaten her and the moment they went out he felt himself loving her again. His marriage had been a shock, he realised, to Martha and Robert. Martha naturally received the blow with an air of bitter justification: Jenny wasn’t nearly good enough, she had always known harm would come of David’s coming out of the pit, and now this silly early marriage clearly proved her right.

  Robert’s attitude was different. He retired into his silence. To Jenny he was always kind he went out of his way to be kind, but though he tried so hard to be encouraging there was a sadness about it all. He had been ambitious for David, he had built so much on all that he would do he had in a sense put his whole life into David’s future. And David at twenty-one had married a silly shop-girl—that, in his secret heart, was how Robert viewed it.

  David felt his father’s sadness. It hurt him horribly. He lay awake at nights thinking about it. His father resented his marriage. His father resented his having applied to Barras for a job. His father resented his coaching of Arthur Barras at the Law. Yet his father had written and asked him to go fishing up the Wansbeck.

  With a start David came back to himself. Rather guiltily he silenced his noisy class. Quickly, he wrote a short reply to his father’s note for Harry to take back. Then he flung himself into the work of the day.

  All that week he looked forward to Saturday. He had always been, in the local phrase, “a great one for the fishing,” though his opportunities to fish had lately been so few. Spring was again in the air; he knew the Wansbeck valley would be lovely now; he suddenly longed to go there with all his soul.

  Saturday came, a good fishing day, warm, with blinks of sun amongst the clouds and a soft westerly wind. He rose early, gave Jenny her morning cup of tea, prepared some jam sandwiches; then he had a look at the little greenheart rod his father had given him on his tenth birthday—how well he remembered going to Marriot’s in West Street to buy it. He tried the rod, it was still whippy and useful as ever. He put on his boots, whistling softly. Jenny was still in bed when he left the house.

  He climbed the Terraces, along Inkerman—it gave him a queer feeling, this soft spring morning—into his own home. Sammy and Hughie were both working their shift, but his mother stood at the table tying up Robert’s picnic lunch with thin twine and greased paper. Martha saved twine and greased paper as though they were both fine gold. At the sight of him though she nodded her lips drew down ominously, he saw she had not forgiven him yet.

  “Ye don’t look well,” she said, penetrating him with her bleak eyes.

  “I feel perfectly well, mother.” It was not true; off and on he had been feeling seedy these last few months.

  “Ye have a face white as a clout.”

  He answered shortly:

  “I can’t help my face. I tell you I feel all right.”

  “I’m thinkin’ ye felt better when ye stopped in this house and worked decently in the pit.”

  He felt his temper rise in him. But he said:

  “Where’s my dad?”

  “Gone out to get some grubs. He’ll be back presently. Are ye in such a hurry ye can’t sit down for a second and speak a word to your own mother?”

  He sat down, watching her as she carefully tied the last tight bow—there were no knots in the string, for Martha wanted it back. She had aged little: her big solid body was still active, her movements sure, her deep-set eyes shrewd and masterful as ever in her gaunt healthy vigorous face. She turned:

  “Where’s your lunch?”

  “In my pocket.”

  “Show me.”

  He pretended not to hear.

  She held out her hand; repeated:

  “Show me.”

  “I will not show you, mother. My lunch is in my pocket. It’s my lunch. I’m going to eat it. So that’s an end of it.”

  She still kept out her hand, grimly, her expression unrelaxed. She said:

  “So ye want to disobey me to my face now… like ye’ve done behind my back.”

  “Oh, hang it, mother, I don’t want to disobey you. It’s just…” Angrily he lugged the paper bag out of his pocket.

  She received it coldly and as coldly opened it, exposing the three jammy hunks of stale bread he had prepared himself. Her face did not change, she expressed no disdain, she simply laid the bag aside. She said:

  “It’ll go in my bread pudding.” And in return she handed him her own solid package, not commending it, remarking simply: “There’s more than enough for the two of you there.”

  There was injustice in her attitude but there was justice too. And it was the justice which struck him like a blow. He said hotly:

  “Mother, I do wish you’d give Jenny a chance. You’ve always had a down on her. It’s not fair. You don’t try to get things straight between you. You haven’t been to see her half a dozen times in these last three months.”

  “Does she want me to come and see her, David?”

  “You don’t give her a chance to want you, mother. You ought to be nicer to her. She’s lonely in this place. You ought to cheer her up.”

  Grimmer than ever, Martha sneered:

  “So she needs to be cheered up, then?” She paused. Cold anger filled her, stifled her. She showed nothing outwardly but from the depth of her anger she fell unconsciously into the broad dialect of her youth. “An’ she’s lonely, is she? What cause hev she to be lonely wi’ her mon and her house te tend te. Aw’m not lonely. Aw niver hev time to be lonely. But she’s aalways gaddin’ aboot the place, meykin’ up te foaks above hersel’. She’ll niver meyk friends that wey, not the reet kind ov friends. An’ if aw were ye aw’d tell her not te order so mony bottles ov port at Murchison’s.”

  “Mother!” David jumped up, red flaming into his pale face. “How dare you say a thing like that…”

  As they faced each other, he burning… she pale, cold… Robert came in through the open door. He took in the situation at a glance.

  “Well,” he said mildly. “I’m all ready, Davey. Come on the now, ye’ll be seein’ your mother when ye come back.”

  A long sigh came from the very bottom of David’s breast. He lowered his eyes to cover up the hurt in them.

  “All right, dad.”

  They went out together.

  On the way down Cowpen Street Robert talked more than usual. He made quite a bit of conversation about the fishing; he had got some beautiful grubs out on the bone-works on the Spit, he said, and a few nice brandlings from Middlerig. The wind was in the right quarter too, they ought to do well. And he had arranged for them to get a lift in Teasdale’s van. The ordinary van man was ill and Dan Teasdale, off duty from the pit, was doing the Saturday delivery to help his father out. He would take them as far as Avory’s Farm… a couple of miles from Morpeth. Decent of him it was… a decent chap Dan Teasdale.

  David listened, tried to listen, but he saw through Robert’s flow of conversation. He stood a little apart outside Teas dale’s shop while Dan and Robert talked. What hurt was not that his mother should have said these things; it was the tiny germ of truth behind her words which rankled and gnawed at him and would not let him alone.

  When the van was ready Dan Teasdale clambered up. Robert followed, putting his foot first upon the brass hub, getting up slowly, with an effort, then David—there was not much room. They drove off.

  Immediately they had cleared the outskirts of the town Dan began to talk in his friendly style: he would take them straight to Avory’s, he said, do his deliveries on the way back. He wished he was going with them, he went on cheerily; he was fond of the fishing, but ne
ver got much chance. Altogether he was fond of the country, and loved the country life; really he had always wanted to be a farmer, to use his limbs in the open air, not down the mucky old pit. But you know how things went… here Dan laughed, rather ashamed of having revealed himself.

  They drove on, striking away from the flat drab land with its grim pit chimneys and head stocks, into a countryside that was like a new world clothed with new green leaves and new green grass. It was as if God had just made that bit of world and dropped it down the night before and men had not yet found and dirtied it. There were the most beautiful fields of yellow dandelions, thousands of dandelions, and without a doubt they did look fine.

  Even David cheered up under the influence of these fields and fields of lovely dandelions. He roused himself:

  “Fine!” he said to Dan.

  Dan nodded and said:

  “Fine. They make the milk good.” Silence for a minute, then Dan looked furtively at David. Then he said: “How do you like it, going to the Law?”

  David said:

  “Not so bad, Dan. Not so bad.”

  For no earthly reason that David could determine a sort of shame imposed itself on Dan’s fresh-coloured face. He gave a short laugh, fixing his candid blue eyes on David.

  “You know them all, eh? You’re bound to know them all by now. You’ve met Grace, haven’t you?”

  When Dan came to Grace’s name something like reverence fell on him; he swallowed as though he were taking a sacrament. David did not notice. He shook his head.

  “I haven’t seen Grace. She’s away at present, isn’t she? In Harrogate?”

  “Yes,” Dan agreed, contemplating the jogging ears of the horse. “She’s in Harrogate.”

  Pause; heavy pause; then Dan Teasdale sighed:

  “She’s an awful nice girl is Grace!”

  He sighed again, an honest sigh and quite a heavy one too, a sigh which epitomised the longing, the impossible longing which had lain hidden in his heart for nearly eight years.

  By this time they were approaching Avory’s Farm, and at the head of the road Dan stopped the van. Robert and David got down. They thanked Dan again, set off across the fields to the Wansbeck.

  They reached the stream: there was plenty of water and a good colour. Not looking at his son, Robert said:

  “I’ll go beyond the bridge, Davey; you start here… this is the best place. Fish up to me and we’ll have our snap when we meet.” He nodded and strode off along the bank.

  David put up his rod, slowly; not caring much, he threaded the line; then he chose his flies: greenwell, march brown and blue spider. As he tried the cast a faint thrill went through him: it was like old times again. Rod in hand, he came over to the water edge, balanced on a hot dry boulder. A trout rose almost silently in mid stream. That faint sucking plop went straight to the marrow of David’s bones. It affected him like the sound of a cork leaving a bottle might affect a toper who has not seen wine for years. He began to fish.

  He fished up stream, covering all the water he could, the likely places. The sun came out from behind the clouds, steeped him in a warm brightness. The sound of running water sank into his ears, the soft eternal sound of running water.

  He caught five fish, the biggest a pound at least, but when he rejoined his father by the bridge, he found that Robert had beaten him. A dozen trout lay in a row upon the grass and Robert lay on his elbow smoking, beside them. He had given over an hour ago when he had made his dozen.

  It was three o’clock, and David was hungry. They ate their snap together: cold bacon sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, a thick cut of veal pie and one of Martha’s raspberry jam sponges; there was even a bottle of milk which Robert had put to cool in a shallow channel of the stream.

  Robert, unlike most people with chronic phthisis, had, as a rule, a poor appetite and to-day, although the food was tempting, he took very little. He was soon back at his pipe.

  David noticed. He studied his father a while, concerned, thinking that his figure seemed sparer… a little shrunken. People went to Switzerland and Florida and Arizona with consumption. They went to beautiful expensive sanatoria; got tapped all over by expensive doctors, spat in expensive rubber-capped flasks. Robert went down the pit, got tapped by nobody, and spat in Tit-Bits. All the old feeling came over David. He said:

  “You’ve eaten nothing, dad. You don’t half take care of yourself.”

  “I’m fine,” Robert said quite sincerely. He had the optimism of his disease. Consumptives usually think they will recover but it was not only that with Robert, he had had the thing so long; the cough, the sweats, the sputum, everything, it was all part of him, he did not regard it with hostility. Indeed he never thought of it except to think that he would get better of it. Now he smiled at David and tapped his chest with the stem of his pipe. “Don’t you fret. This… this’ll never kill me.”

  David lit his pipe now. They both lay smoking, looking at the sky and the white clouds that raced each other across the sky. The air smelled of grass and primroses and tobacco smoke and the brandlings still left in Robert’s worm-bag. It was a good smell. Fields and meadows and trees all round about them, not a house in sight. Lambing time was on, they could hear the thin bleating of it everywhere, restful and quiet. Everything seemed quiet, the only moving things were the white clouds and the little white lambs that skipped about and butted under the bellies of their mothers, who stood chewing, waiting, their black hind legs planted wide apart. The little white lambs butted hard, and tugged and butted again but they did not stay long. They were away, skipping again, getting ready to butt harder, harder.

  Robert wondered if David were happy… he wondered that very much. Happy on the surface, perhaps, not really happy underneath. But he couldn’t ask David, he couldn’t set his teeth like Martha and tear into the heart of David’s relations with Jenny. He felt the spring in the air and he thought: a primrose, a bird singing and it’s done; the only birds, he thought again, that ought to be allowed to sing in the spring are the cuckoos. If only David had just taken her, she looked the kind for that, he would not be lying here now with that strained look on him. But no, he was too young to know, it all had to be dressed up in a wedding. And now he was hacking away in the elementary school, coaching young Barras for money, the B.A. and all the glorious plans they used to talk about laid aside, perhaps forgotten. He hoped to God that David would pull himself out of it soon, go ahead and make a name for himself, do something real; he had it in him to do something big. Oh, he hoped to God he would. At that Robert left it alone, for he had other things upon his mind.

  Suddenly David roused himself.

  “You’re very quiet, dad. There’s something bothering you.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Davey. It’s pretty good up here!” He paused. “Better than down the Scupper Flats.”

  Understanding broke on David; he said slowly:

  “So that’s where you’re cutting now?”

  “It is. We’re in the Scupper Flats at last. We started to strip the Dyke three months since.”

  “You did.”

  “We did.”

  “Is it wet?”

  “It is!” Robert puffed quietly. “Near up to the ear holes in my stall. It’s that put me badly last week.”

  The placidity in his father’s voice made David suddenly sad. He said:

  “You fought pretty hard to keep out Scupper Flats, dad.”

  “Maybe I did. We got beat though, diddent we? We’d ’a gone back in the Scupper right away if Barras hadn’t lost his contract. Well, he’s gotten another contract now, so here we are again, right where we begun. Life’s just like a wheel, man, round it comes if you wait long enough.”

  A short silence came; then Robert went on:

  “Mind ye, as I said afore, I don’t mind the wet. All my time I’ve worked in wet places and worse and worse places as my time had gone on. It’s the water in the waste that bothers me. You see, Davey, it’s like this.” He paused and placed his hand e
dgeways upon the ground. “Here’s the Dyke, the Universal Dyke, that’s the barrier, a down throw fault that runs due north and south. On the one side of the Dyke you’ve got all the old workings, the waste of all the old Neptune sinkings that run down from the Snook. All the low levels of the waste are full of water, they’re bound to be, bung full of water. Well, man, on the other side of the Dyke, the west side, is Scupper Flats where we’re working now. And what are we doing? We’re stripping coal off the Dyke, we’re weakening the barrier.”

  He began to smoke again.

  David said:

  “I’ve always heard that the Dyke would stop anything, it’s a natural barrier in itself.”

  “Maybe,” Robert said, “but I just can’t help thinking what would happen if we stripped too near the old waterlogged workings. Their natural barrier might look pretty thin then.”

  Robert spoke reasonably, almost musingly; he seemed to have lost his old bitterness completely.

  “But, dad, they know what they’re doing, they’re bound to know if they’re near the old workings, they’re bound to have the plans.”

  Robert shook his head:

  “They have no plans of the Old Neptune workings.”

  “They must have plans. You ought to go to the inspector, you ought to go to Jennings.”

  “What’s the use?” Robert said quietly. “He can’t do nothing. He can’t enforce a law that doesn’t exist. There’s no law about mines abandoned afore 1872, and these old Neptune workings was abandoned long afore that. They wasn’t made to keep a record of the plans then. So the plans have just got lost. That water might be right on the other side of the Dyke for all they know or it might be half a mile away.” He yawned suddenly as though tired of the subject, then he smiled at David. He added: “I hope it’s the half mile.”