A Song of Sixpence

by A. J. Cronin

  Here, in this remark, was another enigma to add to those others, still unsolved, that complicated and disturbed my early years and that, when I pressed Mother for an explanation, caused her merely to smile and to make some evasive answer. Meanwhile nothing could detract from this new joy. Father was not musical and although sympathetic did not really care for the piano; this indeed—for I had begun to know Father—may in some degree have delayed its delivery. His idea of music was a stirring melodic melange from a good brass band, and to this end he had provided himself with several pink Edison Bell phonograph cylinders of the famous Besses o’ the Barn. But to Mother, particularly in our apartheid state, the beautiful Bluthner was both consolation and refinement. Every afternoon when she was ‘ dressed’, after she had finished the day’s housework and satisfied herself that all was shining and in perfect order, she would ‘practise’, leaning forward from time to time, since she was naturally a little short-sighted, to study a difficult passage, then, before resuming, brushing aside her soft brown hair which, waved in the middle, fell across her brow. Often when I came home from school and always if the weather was wet, I would come silently into the front room and seat myself by the window to listen. I soon knew the names of the pieces I liked best: Chopin’s ‘Polonaise in E Flat’, Liszt’s ‘Hungarian Rhapsody’, followed by Schubert’s ‘Moments Musicaux’, and my greatest favourite, to which perhaps the name contributed, Beethoven’s ‘ Sonata in F Minor’, which beyond all the others induced in me a precocious sadness, fostering visions wherein under a shining moon I saw myself leading lost causes in distant lands and reaping the soul-satisfying reward of a hero’s lonely grave and from which, resurrecting myself, I would run into kitchen to put the kettle on the range and make hot buttered toast for our tea.

  That was a happy winter which nothing subsequently could destroy. Our little ship, sails set full to a favourable wind, rode the tide buoyantly on its safe though solitary course. Father was getting rich. At school I had been moved to a higher class and, although regretting Miss Grant, was agreeably surprised to find myself drawn to my new master. Pin, so unjustly condemned by Maggie—his outbursts were the result of a nervous affliction rather than ill-temper—might be a failure in the pulpit, but as a teacher he excelled. His education had naturally been superior to that of the average village dominie and he had that invaluable knack of putting things in an interesting way. Surprisingly, he seemed to become interested in me. A wry appreciation of our common inferior standing in the village may have appealed to him, or perhaps, though he never overtly made this evident, he had hopes of converting me in the manner of a brand plucked from the burning. Whether or not, I experienced more good than I deserved from this despised and rejected little man.

  How swiftly those months slipped past! I barely realized that spring was on the way till Father, who had what he referred to as a ‘bronchial tendency’, caught a heavy cold in March due to his sardonic Irish disregard of the old Scots aphorism: ‘Ne’er cast a clout till May goes out.’ But he threw it off as the smithy sycamore began to bud and suddenly we were in the green days of April. A soft west wind was blowing, hearing on its wings the news of our increased prosperity. Was this, perhaps, the cause of that rare event, a surreptitious visit from my cousin Terence, a boy of sixteen, who from his earliest years had been blessed with a nose keenly receptive of the lightest airs of affluency?

  Terence was a cool, long-legged, unusually good-looking fellow, endowed with more than his share of the Carroll charm. His home, which I had never seen, was in Lochbridge, only twelve miles away, where his father owned an establishment curiously named the Lomond Vaults. While I did not then comprehend the implications of that occult word ‘Vaults’ beyond its suggestion of subterranean depths, Terry’s great distinction, enviable in my eyes, was that, he attended the famous Rockcliff College in Dublin as a boarder. At present on his Easter holidays, he rolled up to the front gate on a shining new Rudge Whitworth bicycle. He was wearing well-creased grey flannel trousers, from which he negligently snapped off the clips, the blue Rockcliff blazer and a rakishly tilted straw hat banded with the school colours. An Olympian, straight from Parnassus—the Vaults?—he dazzled me.

  Mother, ardently hospitable and long starved of visitors, was delighted to see Terence, although put out at being caught unprepared.

  ‘My dear boy, if only you’d let me know you were coming, I’d have had such a nice lunch for you.’ She looked at the clock, which showed twenty minutes to three. ‘Tell me what I can get for you now.’

  ‘As a matter of fact I’ve had my lunch, Aunt Grace.’ I could see that the term of kinship pleased my mother. ‘Still, I could do with a snack.’

  ‘Just say what you’d like.’

  ‘Well, I’m rather partial to a hard-boiled fresh egg, if you have some in the house.’

  ‘Of course. How many would you like?’

  ‘Should we say half a dozen. Aunt Grace?’ Terence suggested carelessly.

  Fifteen minutes later he was seated at the table gracefully making contact with six hard-boiled eggs and several slices of thickly buttered cottage loaf, while at the same time recounting to us, in an offhand manner and an accent tinged with the intonation of upper-class Dublin, his notable triumph of the past term, a win in the hundred-yard sprint at the school sports. Impossible not to admire, and we did, although Mother seemed to wilt slightly as for the third time Terence repeated:

  ‘The way I left them in my final burst they might have been standing still.’

  Indeed, it was she who suggested later on that Terence take me for a short walk, pending the return of my father. As we set off, up the road to the village, I put my hand in his and rapturously burst forth:

  ‘Oh, Cousin Terry, how I would love to be at Rockcliff with you!’

  Terence looked at me fixedly, then, producing a quill toothpick, began absently to work on his teeth.

  ‘Don’t mention it to your mater, who’s a doat, but one of these eggs was a trifle off.’

  He burped slightly to emphasize his point.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Terry. But did you hear what I said about Rockcliff?’

  Terence shook his head indolently, but with a finality that chilled me.

  ‘My poor little caper, you’d never stand the ferrule. Rockcliff would kill you stone-dead. Good God, what’s that object over there?’

  I spun round. It was Maggie, on one of her slavish errands, with a big bundle of laundry flapping on her head, uncouth, unkempt, and waving to me, waving wildly in friendly recognition. My skin contracted. To acknowledge Maggie before Terence? No, no, it was unthinkable. Guilty of the first of the two great acts of apostasy of my childhood, I turned away.

  ‘God knows who it is,’ I mumbled, in a feeble imitation of my cousin’s manner, then walked on, leaving Maggie stricken, one arm frozen in mid-air.

  At the head of the road Terence paused outside the grocery store. In the window, on a glass stand, lay one of Grant’s special dessert apple tarts. Beyond, within the shop, bent over a book with her elbows on the counter and her back towards us, was Polly Grant. Her posture, which certainly presented us with a notably curvaceous view of the part usually sat upon, seemed to amuse Cousin Terence. He lounged in an athletic way against the window, his gaze wandering from the apple pastry to the unconscious Polly.

  ‘That’s not a bad-looking tart,’ he commented.

  ‘Oh, yes, Terry. Simply spiffing.’

  ‘Very well rounded?’

  ‘They’re always round, Terry.’

  To my surprise Terence laughed, and Polly, disturbed in her reading, stood up and swung towards us. Meeting my cousin’s eye, she reddened and closed her book with a bang.

  ‘We could do with something to sweeten our mouths, after the eggs,’ Terence resumed. ‘ I daresay you have an account here.’

  ‘Oh, we have. I often do messages for Mother and have them marked.’

  ‘Then suppose you nip in for the pastry and have it charged.’ He adde
d airily: ‘ I’ll square up for it later.’

  Enthusiastically, I obeyed. Polly seemed unnaturally disturbed. She even forgot to give me my usual butterscotch drop.

  ‘Who is that young fellow with you?’ she inquired, with still heightened colour.

  ‘My cousin Terence,’ I answered proudly.

  ‘Then tell him from me he has a pretty good cheek.’

  Naturally I could not think of conveying such a message to my cousin, who, surveying the prospect as I came out with the tart, suggested that we should stroll across to a shady corner of the village green, known locally as the Common.

  Here he settled himself comfortably with his back to a chestnut tree and undid the paper bag, releasing a delicious fragrance of crisp puff pastry.

  ‘It’s not so big when you see it close,’ he remarked, inspecting the tart, which to my eye seemed much larger at near view. It was at least nine inches in diameter, oozing lovely juice and snowy with sifted sugar.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Terence. ‘You wouldn’t have a knife?’

  ‘No, Terry. I’m not allowed one yet. For fear I should cut myself,’ I apologized.

  ‘Pity,’ said Terence thoughtfully. ‘We can’t go tearing this apart or we’ll have the innards all over us.’

  A pause, during which Terence, frowning, seemed to ponder more deeply, while anticipation of those rich inner flavours made my teeth water.

  ‘There’s only one thing for it, man,’ he declared at last, resolutely. ‘We’ll have to toss for it. You’re a sport, aren’t you?’

  ‘If you are, I am, Terry.’

  ‘Good man!’ He produced a penny gravely. ‘ Heads I win, tails you lose. I’ll give you all the benefit. You make the call.’

  ‘Tails, Terry,’ I ventured timidly.

  He uncovered the coin.

  ‘And tails it is, more’s the pity. Didn’t you hear me say tails you lose? Well, better luck next time.’

  In a way, although my eyes blinked, I was not too unhappy to have lost. Watching Terence eat the tart slowly and with every sign of relish, I enjoyed it vicariously, down to the last flaky crumb.

  ‘Was it good, Terry?’

  ‘Fair,’ he decided critically. ‘But too rich for your young blood.’

  Without disturbing his reclining position, he eased a gun-metal cigarette case from his pocket, extracted a gold-tipped cigarette and, while I watched reverently, lit up.

  ‘Wild Geranium,’ he explained.

  ‘Terry,’ I said. ‘ It’s so nice you being here. Why don’t you come more often? And why can’t I come to see you?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, bringing smoke down his nose. ‘Now you’re getting into a bit of family history.’

  I seized the opening eagerly.

  ‘Tell me about it, Terry.’

  He considered, half hesitated, as though about to consent, then made an airy gesture of negation.

  ‘You’re too young to be bothering about that sort of nonsense.’

  ‘But I do bother, Terry. There’s all sorts of things I don’t understand. Especially why we never see any of our relations.’

  He glanced at me sideways. Couldn’t he sense my anxiety for news of the unknown members of my tribe?

  ‘Don’t any of your mother’s folks come to see you either then?’

  ‘No, Terry. At least only one of Mother’s brothers. The one at the University, the youngest one, called Stephen. And then only once in a very long while.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Well, man,’ Terence said at last, pontifically. ‘There’s a certain situation, I will admit. And as you’re bound to be told one of these days, there’s no harm in giving you a slant on it now.’

  He lay back, puffing at his cigarette, while I waited intently, then he suddenly began.

  ‘First of all,’ he spoke impressively, almost accusingly, ‘if it hadn’t been for the Caledonian Railway Company you wouldn’t be sitting here today. In fact you would never have existed.’

  This unexpected statement staggered me. I gazed at him fearfully.

  ‘You see,’ he went on, ‘every evening when Uncle Con came back from his work in Winton he had to change trains at Levenford to take the Caley local to Lochbridge, where he was living at that time. But for that he’d never even have set eyes on vour mother.’

  This contingency seemed so incredible that my alarm deepened. Pleasantly conscious of my riveted attention, Terry resumed with easy nonchalance.

  ‘Usually Con would go into the waiting-room with the Winton Herald—for the Caley train was always late. But one of these evenings he found something, or rather someone, better to look at.’

  ‘Mother!’ I gasped.

  ‘Not yet, man. Don’t rush me. At the moment she’s just Grace Wallace and sweet seventeen.’ He frowned reprovingly. ‘She came regularly, carrying a music case, to meet her brother, a schoolboy, coming back on the Caley train from the Drinton Academy.’ He paused. ‘Now Conor, your father to be, always had, if you’ll excuse me, an eye for a pretty girl. Yet this was different. Although he wanted to speak he was afraid he’d offend her. But one evening he up and did. And at that moment, man,’ Terry exclaimed sensationally, ‘ as they looked into each other’s eyes, the damage was done!’

  ‘What damage, Terry?’ I whispered faintly.

  ‘Her parents were dyed-in-the-wool Presbyterians, true blue, couldn’t have been stricter, and she was the apple of her old man’s eye, who, to make it worse, had a Scotch pedigree that went right back to the original William Wallace, if you ever heard of him. So here was a lovely girl, well thought of in the town, helped her mother in the house, sang like an angel in the church choir, never put a foot wrong.’ Terry shook his head sorrowfully. ‘When they found out she was going steady with all upstart Irish R.C., blood-brother to a publican and, God help us, a priest, hell’s bells, man, did they raise the roof. Prayers and tears. For weeks there was the devil to pay while they tried every mortal thing to keep them apart. It couldn’t be done, man. In the end, with never a word, and although Con hadn’t a fiver to bless himself with, they just up and off to the registry office. She knew her folks would never speak to her again and Con knew he’d be the bad boy of his lot for not getting tied up in chapel, but never mind, they got spliced.’

  ‘Oh, I’m glad they did, Terry,’ I cried fervently, for I had followed his recital breathlessly.

  Terry burst out laughing.

  ‘At least they got you here on the right side of the blanket, caper.’

  For a moment he sat studying me, as though trying to read my face, in which there was now only blankness. Perhaps what he had related did not altogether surprise me, I must have vaguely sensed something of my parents’ situation. Yet suddenly an extraordinary depression fell upon me, intensified by the lively unconcern with which Terry treated a subject that affected me so deeply.

  ‘So now you know.’ He broke the silence. ‘ Only don’t let on I told you.’

  ‘I won’t, Terry,’ I said, numbly. I was less happy than I had hoped to be, and to cheer myself up I said:

  ‘So I actually have two uncles?’

  ‘It’s three you have, on our side. There’s my father, your Uncle Bernard in Lochbridge, and his reverence your Uncle Simon in Port Cregan, not to speak of your Uncle Leo in Winton, though nobody knows much about him.’ He rose to his feet and hauled me up. ‘Time we were getting back. I need a box of vestas, so I’ll stop at the shop. Come on and I’ll race you there.’

  He set off springily, bent on showing me his style. I was not in the mood for running, yet now I felt strangely combative towards my incomparable cousin. I ran as hard as I could, so hard that Terry, glancing over his shoulder, was obliged to drop his clean-cut air in an effort to increase his pace. Perhaps the apple pie and the hard-boiled eggs incommoded him, possibly the report he had given of his prowess at the Rockcliff sports was coloured by a native talent for drawing the longbow. When we reached Grant’s store he had not shaken me off, I was exactly at hi
s elbow. After we had regained our breath he looked at me for the first time with a shade of respect.

  ‘You’re fast, man. I couldn’t have believed it. Of course, you know I wasn’t going all out.’

  While I waited outside he went into the shop and spent a very long time selecting his matches. Polly, who served him, did not seem at all displeased by his reappearance, or by his fastidious taste in vestas. As I watched through the window Terry appeared to be making her laugh a great deal. It was a way he had, careless and carefree. Could Terry really love anyone … let alone a poor little caper like me? I felt my throat tighten unaccountably.

  My sadness persisted all the way home, deepened during the delicious chicken dinner Mother had prepared and which I could barely swallow. Father, in one of his best and most entertaining moods, showed a marked fondness for Terry, tipped him a sovereign, which Terry seemed to expect and which perhaps had been the purpose of his visit. Then, lighting his carbide bicycle lamp, my cousin swung himself on the machine and set off for Lochbridge.

  When he was out of sight I went into the kitchen.

  ‘Mother,’ I said, coming close to her. ‘I may not be much, but at least I am a sport.’

  ‘Are you?’ Mother said, without enthusiasm. ‘I don’t know that I want you to be a sport.’

  ‘But it’s a good kind of thing. Terry said I was one when we tossed for the apple pastry.’

  ‘The apple pastry?’ Mother turned in bewilderment, her hands covered with suds. ‘Was that why you ate no dinner.’

  ‘No, Mother. I didn’t eat any of the pastry. Terry ate it all.’

  ‘And where did this famous pastry come from?’ Mother was now inspecting me very strangely.

  ‘Why, Mother, it’s the one I bought and charged to our account.’

  ‘What! You charged it!’

  Mother was stupefied. But father, who had come back and had been listening, suddenly said:

  ‘How did Terry toss?’

  ‘He was quite fair, Father. He tossed heads I win, tails you lose.’

  Father burst into a fit of laughter, so prolonged it brought on his bronchial cough.