by A. J. Cronin
The chimney led to profound and exciting talk of steeplejacks and how wonderful it must be to stand on the top of a chimney “that high” with nothing between you and the earth two hundred feet below.
“Perhaps you’d like to be a steeple-jack when you grow up, Sammy?” David said, smiling at Annie.
Sammy shook his head.
“No,” he said with a certain reticence. “I’m going to be like my father.”
“A miner?” David asked.
“Ay! That’s what I’m going to be,” Sammy said sturdily. Sammy’s air was so solemn that David had to laugh.
“You’ve plenty of time to change your mind,” he said.
It was a pleasant journey, though not a long one, and quite soon they were at Whitley Bay. David had taken rooms in Tarrant Street, a small quiet street leading off the promenade near the Waverley Hotel. The rooms had been recommended to him by Dickie, his clerk at the Institute, who said that Mrs. Leslie the landlady often took Federation delegates when the district conferences were on. Mrs. Leslie was the widow of a doctor who had lost his life in a colliery accident at Hedlington about twenty years before. A timberman had been pinned by a fall of roof and it had been impossible to free his forearm which was caught and mangled between two masses of whinstone. Dr. Leslie had gone down to amputate the timberman’s forearm and get him out. He had almost got through the amputation which he had heroically performed on the equally heroic timberman without an anæsthetic, lying on his belly in coal muck, squeezed under the fall, in a sweat of blood and dirt, when quietly and suddenly the whole roof caved in on them, and the doctor and the timberman were both crushed to death. Everyone had forgotten about the incident now, but it was because of that fall of roof that Mrs. Leslie kept lodgings in the downtrodden little road with its row of red-brick houses each having four square yards of front garden, Nottingham lace curtains, glass overmantels and a much-abused piano.
Mrs. Leslie was a tall, dark, reserved woman; she was neither comic nor ill-tempered: she presented none of those features which are traditionally associated with the seaside landlady. She made David and Annie and Sammy quietly welcome and showed them to their rooms. But here Mrs. Leslie made an unexpectedly awkward mistake. She turned to Annie and said:
“I thought you and your husband could have this nice front room and the little boy would take the small room at the back.”
Annie did not blush; if anything she paled; and without the slightest trace of awkwardness she answered:
“This is my brother-in-law, Mrs. Leslie. My husband was killed in the war.”
It was Mrs. Leslie who blushed, the difficult blush of a reserved woman; she coloured to the roots of her hair.
“That was very stupid of me. I ought to have understood from the letter.” So Annie and Sammy had the front room and David the small room at the back. But Mrs. Leslie felt in some odd way that she had wounded Annie and she took a deal of trouble to be nice to Annie. In no time at all Mrs. Leslie and Annie became friends.
The holiday went well. Sammy galvanised the holiday; he was like an electric needle pricking David on, though David did not need pricking—he was having just as lovely a time with Sammy as Sammy was with him. The weather was warm, but the fresh breeze which always blows at Whitley Bay prevented the warmth from being oppressive. They bathed every morning and played French cricket on the sands. They ate unbelievably of ice-cream and fruit and went for walks to Cullercoats to the queer old-fashioned crab-parlour kept by the old woman in Brown’s Buildings. David had inward remorse that the crab was not exactly good for Sammy’s stomach, but Sammy loved it and with a guilty air they would sneak into the little front parlour in the two-roomed house that smelled of tar and nets and sit down on the horse-hair sofa and eat the fresh crab out of the rough shell while the old woman of the establishment watched them and called Sammy “hinny” and sucked at her clay pipe. The crab tasted marvellous; indeed, it tasted so good David felt it could not possibly do Sammy any harm. On the way back from Cullercoats, Sammy would take David’s hand as they walked home along the promenade. That was question-time. David allowed Sammy to ask him any question under the sun and Sammy, trotting alongside, simply bombarded him with questions. David answered correctly when he could and when he couldn’t he invented. But Sammy always knew when he was inventing. He would look up at David with those twinkling, disappearing eyes and laugh.
“Eh, yor coddin’ now, Uncle Davey?” But Sammy liked the codding even better than the answers.
David and Sammy had many such wonderful excursions together. Annie seemed to feel that they enjoyed being together and kept herself a good deal in the background. She was naturally self-effacing and she usually had something to do when David and Sammy wanted her to come out—the shopping, or some darning, or she had promised to take a cup of tea with Mrs. Leslie! Annie in collaboration with Mrs. Leslie was always devising some fresh turn on the menu and trying to find out what David liked. Annie’s gratitude was enormous, but her fear of obtruding herself on David was more enormous still, and at last David had it out with her. On the Thursday afternoon he came in out of the sunshine and found Annie going upstairs with his grey flannel trousers folded over her arm—she had been pressing them in the kitchen with an iron borrowed from Mrs. Leslie. He saw this and a sudden exasperation took hold of him.
“Good Lord, Annie,” he cried. “What do you want to do ironing for! Stopping indoors a fine day like this. Why aren’t you down on the beach with Sammy and me?”
Her eyes dropped; she was furious with herself for letting herself be caught. She said, as in excuse:
“I’ll be down later, David.”
“Later!” he raged. “It’s always later, or in a minute, or when I’ve had a word with Mrs. Leslie. Good heavens, woman, don’t you want to get any good of your holiday; what do you think I brought you for?”
“Well,” she said, “I thought to look after you and Sammy.”
“What nonsense! I want you to have a good time, to come out and enjoy yourself, to give us your company, Annie.”
“Well,” smiling again faintly, “if I’ll not be a nuisance to you, but I thought you wouldn’t want to be bothered.”
She put on her hat and came down to the beach with him and they sat with Sammy on the soft sand and were happy. From time to time he glanced at her as she leaned back, her head with her eyes closed towards the bright sun. She puzzled him. She was a great girl, Annie, had always been a great girl—plucky, competent, quiet, modest. There was no flaunting of sex with Annie. Yet she was a fine strapping figure of a woman, with fine limbs and fine firm breasts and a fine smooth curve to her throat. Her calm face now upturned to the sun had a regular, composed, slightly sad beauty. Yes, though she took no care of herself whatever she had an almost classic beauty of which any woman might have been proud. And yet Annie had no pride, that was the queer thing, she had a sturdy independence, but neither vanity nor conceit. She had so little conceit of herself she was afraid of being a nuisance to him, of being in the way, a “bother.” What infernally exalted notion had Annie got hold of now, he wondered; she used not to be like that at all. But now, if only from the increasing respect of Mrs. Leslie—that plain reflection of Annie’s awe—he, could almost feel that Annie was afraid of him. And suddenly, as he lay on his elbow on the sand—Sammy was playing with his bucket at the water’s edge—he said:
“What’s come between you and me, lately, Annie? We used to be the best of friends.”
Still keeping her eyes closed towards the sun she answered:
“You are the best friend I have, David.”
He frowned at her, streaming soft sand between his fingers.
“I’d like to know what’s going on inside that head of yours. I’d like to shake you, Annie. I’d like to knock a real opinion out of you. You’ve become a kind of Mona Lisa, Annie. Heavens alive, I believe I’d like to beat you.”
“I wouldn’t try that if I were you,” she said, with her faint smile. “I’m pret
ty strong.”
“Listen,” he answered after a minute. “I know what I’m going to do with you!” He looked at her shut eyes with a comic grimness. “When Sammy’s in bed to-night I’m going to take you to the Fun Fair. I’m going to push you into every mad, wild, atrocious side-show that exists. I’m going to jam you on to the cake-walk, the electric motors and the scenic railway. And when you’re whirling through the air at eighty miles an hour I’m going to take a good close look at you and find out if the old Annie is still there.”
“I’d like to go on the scenic railway,” she said with that smiling, that baffling imperturbability. “But it’s pretty expensive, isn’t it?”
He lay back and roared with laughter.
“Annie, Annie, you’re unbeatable. We’ll go on that scenic railway if it costs a million and kills us both!”
They went. After the unsuspecting Sammy had been decoyed with peppermint rock and put early to bed, David and Annie strolled over to the Fun Fair at Tynemouth. The wind had fallen and it was a calm, sweet evening. For no reason he could explain David was reminded suddenly and vividly of the evenings he had spent here with Jenny on their honeymoon at Cullercoats. And as they strolled past Cullercoats he was induced to speak of Jenny. He remarked to Annie:
“You knew I came here once with Jenny?”
“Well, yes, I did know,” Annie said, giving him a queer, involuntary glance.
“It seems a long time ago.”
“It’s not so very long.”
There was a pause, then immersed in his own thoughts, overtaken by a sudden tenderness towards Jenny, David continued:
“I miss Jenny a lot, Annie. Sometimes I miss her terribly. I haven’t stopped hoping she’ll come back to me.”
There was another silence, quite a long silence, then Annie said:
“I hope so, too, David. I’ve always known you were set on her.”
They walked on without speaking after that, and when they entered the Fun Fair it looked almost as if the Fun Fair was not going to be a success, for Annie was not only silent but strangely subdued as well. But David was determined to shake Annie out of her perfectly causeless melancholy. Throwing off his own mood, he really exerted himself. He took Annie everywhere, beginning in the Hall of Mirrors, then passing on to the Helter Skelter. As they came tearing down the Helter Skelter on the same mat, Annie gave a palpitating smile.
“That’s better,” he said approvingly and dragged her to the Scenic Railway.
The Scenic Railway was better still. They switchbacked and bored through Stygian tunnels on the Scenic Railway and Annie simply could not get her breath. But the Giant Racer was the best of any. They found the Giant Racer about nine o’clock and they swooped and soared and dived from giddy heights on the Giant Racer until the whole glittering Fun Fair spun around them in one glorious daze. There was nothing like the Giant Racer, nothing in heaven, hell, limbo, purgatory or all the dimensions of this present universe. Upon the Giant Racer you climbed to an impossible altitude while all the panorama of the fair-ground lights lay beautiful and glittering and remote beneath. You climbed slowly with a wickedly deceptive slowness, enjoying the cool tranquillity, securely admiring the view. You crawled, simply, to the top. And then, while you still sedately admired the view, the car poised itself upon the brink and without warning hurled into the depths below. Down, down, down you fell into an unknown, shrieking darkness. Your stomach left you, your being dissolved, you died and were reborn again in that terrible ecstatic flight. But one flight was nothing; the car leaped to another summit and fell with you again, down, down, down; you had to die and be reborn all over again.
David helped Annie from the car. She stood uncertainly, holding his arm, with her cheeks flushed and her hat awry and a look in her eyes as if she was glad to be holding his arm.
“Oh, Davey,” she gasped, “never take me on that thing again.” Then she began to laugh. She laughed and laughed very quietly into herself. And again she gasped: “But it was wonderful.”
He looked down at her, smiling.
“It did make you laugh,” he said. “And that’s what I wanted.”
They sauntered about the Fair Ground, companionably interested in everything they saw. The music cascaded, the cheap-jacks shouted, the lights flared, the crowds went round and round. All the people were common and hilarious and poor. Coalies from Tyneside, riveters from Shiphead, moulders and puddlers from Yarrow, hewers from Seghill and Hedlington and Edgeley. Caps on back of the head, mufflers streaming, fag behind the ear. Their women folk were with them, red-faced and happy and eating out of paper bags. When the bags were empty they blew up the bags and burst them. They had teasers too, which blew out and hit you as you passed. It was a saturnalia of the humble and the unknown and the obscure. And suddenly David said to Annie:
“This is where I belong, Annie. These are my people. I’m happy among them.”
But she would not admit it. She shook her head vehemently.
“You’re going to the top, Davey,” she declared, in her slow, straightforward way. “Everybody says it. You’re going into Parliament at the next election.”
“Who says that?”
“All the lads say it at the Neptune. Pug was telling me. They say you’re the one what’ll do things for them.”
“If I could,” he said, and took a long deep breath.
As they walked home to Tarrant Street along the front a great moon came out of the water and looked at them. The noise and glitter of the Fun Fair died away behind. And he told Annie of what he wanted to do. He was hardly conscious of her stepping steadily beside him, she said so little and listened so well, but all the aspirations of his soul were laid before her. He had no ambition for himself. None.
He wanted justice for the miner, his own people, a class long and bitterly oppressed.
“Justice and safety, Annie,” he concluded in a low voice. “Mining isn’t like any other industry. It demands Nationalisation. The lives of the men depend on it. So long as you have private enterprise looking for a big profit you’ll find the safety factor cut. Once in a while. And then the thing happens. That’s the way it was at the Neptune.”
Silence came between them as they went up Tarrant Street. With a change of tone he asked:
“Aren’t you sick of listening to all my tub-thumping?”
“No,” she said. “It isn’t tub-thumping… it’s too real for that.”
“I want you to meet Harry Nugent when he comes tomorrow,” he said. “Harry’s the man who really can be convincing. You’ll like him, Annie.”
She shook her head quickly.
“Oh no! I’d rather not meet him.”
“But why?” he asked, surprised.
“I just don’t want to,” she said firmly, and with unexpected finality.
Unaccountably, he felt hurt; her incomprehensible withdrawal, coming on top of his friendliness, his effort to take her out of herself, wounded him. He dropped the subject completely and withdrew into himself. When they entered the house, refusing her offer to get him some supper, he said good night at once, and went straight to his room.
Harry Nugent arrived next day. Nugent was fond of Whitley Bay; he swore there was no air in the world like Whitley air; whenever he could snatch a week-end he came to get a lungful of the wonderful air. He put up at the Waverley and David met him there at three o’clock.
Although it was so early in the afternoon, they had tea in the lounge without delay. Nugent was responsible; he was a great tea drinker, he drank endless cups of tea, he would make anything an excuse for a cup of tea. It didn’t suit him either, aggravating the dyspepsia from which he habitually suffered. Nugent was physically a delicate man: his bony, ungainly figure and sallow, emaciated face bespoke a constitution ill-adapted to a life of strain. He suffered greatly and often from minor, unromantic maladies—once, for instance, he had endured six months’ agony from fistula. But he never complained, never coddled himself, never gave up. He was so absurdly and humanly
grateful, too, for the lesser joys of life—a cigarette, a cup of tea, a week-end at Whitley Bay or an afternoon at Kennington Oval. Nugent was above everything a human man; his smile expressed it, quietly forming on his ugly face, a smile which always seemed boyish because of the slight gap between his front teeth. He smiled now, at David, over this third cup.
“Well, I suppose I may as well go straight to the point.”
“You usually do,” David said.
Nugent lit a cigarette, and held it between his nicotine-stained fingers, tapping in the loose tobacco with a sudden seriousness.
“You did know, David, that Chris Stapleton was ill,” he said at length. “Ay, and he turns out to be worse, poor fellow, than any of us thought. He went under an operation at the Freemasons’ Hospital last week, internal trouble—you can guess what that means. I saw him yesterday. He’s unconscious and sinking fast.” He contemplated the glowing end of his cigarette. There was a long silence, then Nugent added: “There’ll be a bye-election at Sleescale next month.”
A sudden wild emotion rose in David’s breast and leaped, like a pang of fear, into his eyes. There was another silence.
Nugent gazed across at him and nodded.
“That’s right, David,” he said. “I’ve been in touch with the local executive. There’s no question as to who they want. You’ll be nominated in the usual way.”
David could not believe it. He stared back at Nugent, inarticulate, overcome. Then his eyes clouded suddenly and he could not see Nugent any more.
NINE
The first person David met on his return to Sleescale was James Ramage. That Monday morning he had come up from Whitley Bay to Tynecastle with Annie and Sammy and seen them on the train for home. Then he had hurried to Edgeley to put in a full day’s work at the Institute. It was seven o’clock in the evening when he came out of Sleescale Station and almost collided with Ramage, who was walking towards the news-stall for a late edition.