by A. J. Cronin
She at last allowed herself to smile.
‘Well, I’m glad you haven’t lost yours. Have some more soup.’
In these adventures, I should have been happy all through the long school holidays but for the change, that suddenly became apparent to me, in my mother. Because I loved and trusted her best in the world, I had always taken her for granted, and I had imagined that she had ‘got over’ Father’s death. Nor could I guess what deprivation she endured beyond the loss of Father’s companionship and support. Absorbed in my own pursuits, I had barely noticed her lost look when she returned from Winton in the evening, or how at times she would sit, her gaze detached, a finger pressed against her cheek, her lips moving slightly, as though she were talking to herself.
‘Come, Grace,’ Miss Greville would remonstrate, making a sudden appearance upstairs. ‘This melancholy moping won’t do at all. You must come down to me. Miss Gilbraith and Alice Charteris have called and we’re going to have music.’
‘I’m rather tired,’ Mother would say, ‘and don’t really feel like it. You’ll manage very well without me.’
‘Nonsense, dear Grace. We all want you. And it will do you a world of good.’
These friends of Miss Greville’s were mistresses at St Anne’s, desirable in every way, and when she yielded to persuasion, these musical evenings did take Mother out of herself.
Yet there were responsibilities of which I realized nothing, that could not be relieved by a Haydn quartet. To me it seemed simple and natural that Mother should have taken over Father’s business. Everything was settled, going well, and would continue as before. Not a breath of financial stress was in the air.
One evening the post brought a letter for Mother, an event unusual enough for me to wait expectantly while she opened and read it. Suddenly I heard her gasp, saw her press a hand to her forehead.
‘Oh, dear,’ she exclaimed, in a pained voice. ‘This is too bad.’
‘What is, Mother?’
Overcome, she sat down, holding the letter.
‘Your Uncle Bernard has sent me the bill.’ Mother was almost incoherent, but I saw that she must speak to me. ‘Before your father died he told me he wanted, yes, insisted on a simple burial. But Uncle Bernard would not have it. He took all the responsibility. So we had all these unnecessary, hateful, expensive trappings. And now the unpaid bill, that I thought was settled long ago, has come to me, with the threat of a summons.’
‘Is it much?’
‘Terribly much.’
I felt myself go hot all over with indignation.
‘He must pay it. He promised he would. I heard him say so.’
Mother was reading the letter again.
‘He says he can’t. That they’ve condemned his property, that he owes other people, that he’s very hard pressed.’
‘What a beastly thing to do. Mother, he must be a … a perfect cad.’ This was a word I had learned from Miss Greville, and was in this case entirely misapplied. My Uncle Bernard was a soft, muddled, impracticable, self-indulgent man, always in debt and skirting the edge of disaster yet somehow managing to live well and to do well for his children. Moreover, like others of his sort, he was full of good intentions. His fulsome promises and extravagant ideas of doing good were genuine. Not only did he believe at the time that he would fulfil them but often, by a sort of hallucination, became firmly convinced that he had done so. Perhaps Mother felt this, for she sighed.
‘He meant well, I suppose, and I daresay he hasn’t the money. He says he may have to go bankrupt. His affairs are in a bad way.’
‘He always seems to be going bankrupt, Mother.’ I was still unforgiving. ‘And doing very nicely out of it, with lots of good food and fine clothes, and all sorts of comforts, like we saw at the funeral.’
‘Some people live like that, dear. Anyway, it is my responsibility, I’ll settle it at once.’ Mother spoke slowly, and she added, to herself: ‘My poor Conor, there will be no mean squabble over your grave.’
Bernard’s letter must have made Mother feel very much alone. Uncle Simon was cloistered in Spain. We never by any chance heard a word from Leo. It was natural for her to seek encouragement elsewhere. Although she never once wrote to her home, she could get in touch with Stephen, her youngest brother, at the Winton University Union. Such a letter was sent: I posted it for Mother.
Stephen came on a Saturday afternoon and was exactly as I remembered him on his rare visits to Ardencaple—a pale, quiet and thoughtful young man, with well-cut, regular features and a fine intellectual forehead inclined to furrow in a studious frown, not saying much, but so glad to see Mother, holding her hand for a long time and looking questioningly into her eyes. Only to see them like this was to be made aware of the affection that existed between them.
A good high tea with cold ham and potato salad had been prepared, and when we had finished Mother gave me money and said I might go to the town for a box of Eman’s toffee. I knew they wanted to talk so I did not hurry, but when I got back they were still talking, with their heads bent over a pile of papers on the table.
‘You really mustn’t worry, Grace,’ Stephen was saying. ‘Things are going quite well.’ He had a pencil in one hand and with the other was ruffling his black hair, sending little sprays of dandruff on to his jacket collar. ‘When everything is paid off, including the defaulted bill, you’ll still have one hundred and fifty pounds in the bank.’
‘It’s little enough. With Laurence’s education to think of.’
‘But you have your job. Hagemann’s been very fair in guaranteeing deliveries on the same terms as before. The business, as I see it, is extremely easy to run. And your orders have more or less kept up.’
‘They only give them because they’re sorry for me. And because they liked Conor so well.’
‘They’ll like you too.’
Mother shook her head, yet not so despondently as before.
‘I can’t go in and be hail-fellow-well-met with them over a bottle of beer, like poor Con.’
The idea of Mother with a bottle of beer was so comic I gave a shout of laughter which made them both look up, and in a moment Mother smiled back at me. She gathered up the papers.
‘Did you know that your clever young uncle has taken his degree with honours and won another special research bursary at the University? You’ll do that too, won’t you, dear?’
I had no doubt that I would do it.
Stephen stood up, looked at his watch, a plain five-shilling Ingersoll like mine, and said it was time for his train. Then with a guarded look at me he said, in an undertone, to Mother:
‘I don’t want to press you again, Grace. But won’t you reconsider Father’s offer?’
‘What’s the use?’ Mother said. ‘Am I to go back and pretend that I’m sorry, that I made a terrible mistake, but now I’ll be good and make up for it?’
‘I think I could promise you’d be welcome. You’d have a comfortable home again, your own folks around you.’
‘But on their terms? I couldn’t bring myself to accept them.’
‘Is that one point as important to you as all that.’
Mother, looking down, seemed to be debating some question with herself.
‘Oddly enough it is. And certainly it is for … you know whom. What in all the world would he think of a mother who suddenly recanted and said, now you’ve got to forget all you’ve been brought up to and knuckle under and become something else? Besides being cruel, it would be an act of horrible disloyalty to … to the dead.’ Mother shook her head. ‘What’s done is done. I don’t regret it. And there’s no going back on it.’
There was a longish silence. Then Stephen said:
‘I believe you’re right, Grace. I respect you for it.’
This conversation which I did not understand had nevertheless made me feel extremely uncomfortable. I was glad when Stephen asked me to walk with him to the train.
On our way to the station he encouraged me to stick in at my lessons. He h
ad heard that I was clever and for any boy who hadn’t a father behind him hard work was the road to success. He told me he was going to have a shot at the Indian Civil Service, not necessarily to go to India, for if he got a high enough place in the examination he would be kept at home. But he was modestly pessimistic about his chances.
Finally, just before the train pulled away, he said to me, in his cautious way:
‘Don’t worry your mother, Laurence, for things you don’t actually need. She has enough to look after at present. And she’s making quite a few sacrifices for you.’
I promised faithfully to be considerate, prudent and vigilant. Yes, in all possible ways, to cherish Mother. Did I not love her with all my heart? Alas, my promises were easily made, and soon I was careless of them. Now that the weather had finally broken and winter was drawing near, a new passion had begun to absorb me.
Chapter Fifteen
Miss Greville had an extensive library, inherited from her father, to which I had free access. It was, I imagine, a typical English country-house library of the period, well bound, full of things both good and bad, and with a sporting flavour. During that cold, wet and sleety winter—climatic conditions normally found at that season in such latitudes—I read with ever-increasing voracity.
In the recollections of those who, like myself, have ventured into descriptions of their early years, nothing has bored me more than those long, tedious, and particularized listings of the books the author has read and which led, in the end, to the, formation of a literary taste that was demonstrably excellent. For this reason I refrain from presenting a catalogue and state simply that I read everything.
But the manner of my reading may be worthy of note if only because it was so bad. Lying flat on my face in a secluded and therefore dark corner of the room with my nose pressed close to the volume, I read at a great pace, a technique of speed that increased with habit. Not only did I skip mercilessly, I acquired the unholy knack of getting the sense of a page by the almost express absorption, through my flickering vision, of certain key words and phrases. I vividly remember racing through The Scarlet Letter in the space of a short forenoon, getting Hester Prynne with child—by obscure processes entirely beyond me—and burying her, all between breakfast and lunch, a performance of malassimilation that even the most expert professional critic might envy.
Whatever the mental results of these endeavours, and my imagination seethed with hectic visions amidst which I strayed as in a trance, the physical effects were soon apparent. My eyes stung and reddened, I had headaches, developed a permanent crick in my neck and tossed my bed into disorder when asleep. Yet I persisted, would not, or rather could not give up, so firmly was I in the grip of the drug.
One Saturday in March when the first pale fingers of spring sunshine were feeling their way into the room, I looked up mistily from my prone position on the floor. Miss Greville was observing me with distaste.
‘This won’t do, Carroll.’
‘What won’t do, Miss Greville?’
‘This bookworm business. Don’t you see that the sun is out? Where is my Spartan youth?’
‘Yes, but this is so awfully good, Miss Greville. Mr Jorrocks has just taken a terrible toss in the bog.’
She relented slightly.
‘Yes, Jorrocks is good, isn’t he? And James Pigg. Still, there’s a limit, Carroll.’
She went out. Relieved, I rejoined Mr Jorrocks in his chase for his horse.
However, in the afternoon, just as I was again nicely settled, she returned.
‘You still have that ball I gave you?’
‘Yes.’ I had in fact never used it. ‘In a drawer in my room.’
‘Get it,’ she commanded.
With great unwillingness I obeyed, submitted while she led me to the garden.
Three cricket stumps had been pitched at the far end of the lawn while a fourth, against which a bat reclined, stood at the house end. Advancing, Miss Greville picked up the bat and flourished it.
‘This is now yours, Carroll. See you keep it well oiled. Mind now, only pure linseed oil.’
When I had accepted the bat she removed her long cardigan and with a businesslike air rolled back the sleeves of her blouse, unexpectedly revealing arms as muscular as her calves. She then silently extended her palm, upon which I placed the ball, an action that afterwards supported my claim to have begun my cricketing career with a ball used at Lord’s in the Eton and Harrow match.
Meanwhile, however, I had been motioned to my stance at the batsman’s wicket. Although my knowledge of the game was rudimentary, I knew I had a good eye, and the bat felt extremely comfortable in my hands. As Miss Greville’s grand manner had put my back up and I had resented being taken from Surtees, I resolved to hit her out of the garden and, if possible, since she would be responsible, through a window.
‘Play,’ she called, and with a short, fierce run, bowling under-hand, launched the ball towards me.
I took a vicious swing, missed, and found my wicket in ruins.
‘That was a sneak,’ I protested.
‘A yorker, ass.’
My humiliations during the next fifteen minutes were acute. She had been brought up on cricket, had played with her brothers as a girl, had attempted even to introduce the game at St Anne’s, an unapproved act that may in part have contributed to her resignation from that prim establishment. She bowled leg breaks, off breaks, lobs, more yorkers at which, enraged, I swiped crookedly and in vain. Only when, in this manner, she had convinced me of the necessity of a straight bat did my instruction begin and with such effect as to enable me after a further quarter of an hour to experience the delight of striking the ball sweetly with the bulge of the bat and driving it hard beyond her to the back-door steps.
One of the qualities of this remarkable and, alas, unfortunate woman was her ability to communicate her enthusiasms to me. I fell madly in love with the game of cricket and played endless games with Miss Greville, a willing victim, throughout that mild dry spring. She had introduced me to the Captain magazine wherein, with envious rapture, I studied photographs of public-school elevens, exclusive, immaculate, olympian groups in white flannels, gay blazers and striped or quartered cricketing caps. Gone now were my expeditions to the moors, my ambition to excel in natural history. I wanted to be a famous cricketer, like George Gunn of Notts, whose name was on my bat and whose scores I followed with a passionate interest in Miss Greville’s Winton Herald, sharing his triumph whenever he scored a century, bitterly downcast when he made a duck.
One afternoon in early June, after I had made a particularly handsome square cut that buried the ball in the currant bushes, Miss Greville looked reflective and, although she made no remark, I observed her that evening in conversation with my mother, who seemed pleased. Afterwards Mother said to me:
‘Hurry back after school tomorrow, Miss Greville wants you.’
Next day, in expectation of our usual game on the lawn, I got home in good time. Miss Greville was waiting on me, but she was dressed, though sportingly, for the street, and her bicycle; with my bat strapped on the carrier, stood at the gate.
‘Hop on the back step when I get going,’ she told me.
Miss Greville’s bicycle was a Dursley-Petersen, a first-class and expensive machine but one with its unusually high seat and unorthodox frame so distinctly original in design as to compel attention on the road. With Miss Greville aloft, in her Tyrolean hat, pedalling hard and myself hanging on by the back step, we were soon afforded evidence of presenting a unique combination to the public gaze. But these amused stares were easily ignored when at the west, superior end of the town I discovered that she was taking me to Willow Park, the ground of the Ardfillan Cricket Club.
Miss Greville swung through the open gate into the select, immaculately mown enclosure. We dismounted at the neat white pavilion. With appalling disrespect Miss Greville leaned the Dursley-Petersen against the flagstaff. In the middle of the green oval a man in yellowish-white flannels and
an old sweater was slowly pushing a roller. Cupping her hands to her mouth Miss Greville shouted:
‘Heston!’
He came over, hastening and touching his peaked blue cap when he recognized my companion.
‘How are you, Heston?’ She held out her hand.
‘Pretty spry, thank you, m’am. Haven’t seen much of you lately. Not since you had me over to St Anne’s.’
He was a brown, thick-set, close-cropped, tight-lipped little man, just short of middle age, whose skin seemed made of tough leather. He combined, as I well knew, the duties of professional and groundsman to the Ardfillan Club.
‘You’re still doing a bit of coaching, Heston?’
‘Oh yes,’ he admitted. ‘Quite a few of the Beechfield boys come round. Especially in the holidays.’
‘I want you to take on this boy. Give him three or four nets a week and send the bill to me.’
He looked at me, and under his doubting eyes I felt my chin quiver.
‘He’s small, Miss Greville.’
‘You are not so large, yourself, Heston.’
He gave a faint, dry, self-contained, rather sad smile which as I afterwards discovered was his nearest approach to a laugh. No, never once did I see Heston laugh.
‘All right,’ he said, in an off-hand manner. ‘We’ll have a look at him. Now, if you like.’
We went into the pavilion, where he tossed me a pair of boy’s pads. On the inside, printed in ink, I saw the name Scott-Hamilton and beneath, Beechfield School.
‘Put these on. Or one of them. No, the right leg.’
I buckled a pad on my left leg, so nervous I could scarcely fasten the straps. The pad was too big for me, it felt difficult and flapped as I walked to the practice ground. Miss Greville was already there, behind the net.
Heston began by tossing me some ridiculously easy balls, clearly indicating his opinion of my ability. The first was a soft full pitch. I attempted feebly to block it, missed completely and it hit the off stump.