A Song of Sixpence

by A. J. Cronin

  ‘You know Mr Lesly, of course. Our vicar at St Jude’s.’

  ‘Why, certainly, Miss Greville. I often see him in the street. And you remember he stopped and spoke to us that first day we were coming back from Glen Fruin. The day we found the morio.’

  ‘Of course. You liked him?’

  ‘He seemed an awfully nice young man.’

  ‘Not nice, Carroll. Not that deplorable word. Charming, if you wish, intelligent, sympathetic, handsome. And not so young. He is coming to tea next Saturday. I want your mother to meet him.’

  A considerable silence ensued. When I finished rolling my napkin and hopefully putting it in its silver ring for possible future use, she was gazing at me benignantly.

  ‘What age are you, Carroll?’

  ‘Thirteen, Miss Greville.’

  ‘As I was saying, you have improved. I regard you, in a manner of speaking, as my own creation. And I wish you to understand this. Whatever changes may be effected in the immediate future I mean to do something for you.’

  All at once my heart came into my mouth. Did I interpret her meaning correctly or was I merely carried away by my own expectations? Surely asking how old I was had been significant. She had often said that fourteen was the proper age to … I did not dare ask, yet the longing in my soul made me falter out the words:

  ‘In the way, perhaps, of sending me to a decent school. Miss Greville?’

  She made a spirited gesture of acquiescence.

  ‘What else, Carroll? A very good school,’ Then quickly, seeing an idiotic wildness in my eye: ‘ No, not there, Carroll. You would not, I fear, be altogether comfortable in that establishment. You must go to one of your own persuasion.’

  ‘Rockcliff … perhaps … Miss Greville?’

  ‘Why should we send you to Ireland? If you insist on the Jesuits, you’ll do better in Yorkshire at Amplehurst, which is not a bad little institution in its own way.’

  Amplehurst! Beyond question the best Catholic public school. Stricken dumb, I gazed at her with glistening eyes.

  That afternoon I could not be still, could not think of returning to imprison my bounding spirits in my malodorous Clay Street classroom. I simply played truant, put on an old pair of shorts and a jersey and went out for a long run in the rain. I liked to run and believed, with some justification, that I could run fast. Miss Greville had encouraged me to take these cross-country chases and, like the morning cold bath which I shiveringly endured, they had become not the expression of my devotion alone, but of the authority she exerted upon me in forming a régime, quite foreign to my nature, that I had now come to enjoy. As I flashed along the sodden by-ways, leaping the puddles as though each were a Beecher’s Brook, I wished, though vainly, that I might encounter Scott-Hamilton to convey to him in that brief moment of transit the brilliant changes in my fortunes.

  Mother was annoyed with me when I got back. She had returned by an earlier train and was at the stove making our supper.

  ‘Oh, Mother, not beans again!’ I protested.

  She looked at me coldly.

  ‘Where on earth have you been? And soaking wet, too.’

  ‘Don’t be cross,’ I told her expansively. ‘I’ll go and change. Then, Mother dear, I have some rather interesting news for you.’

  A few minutes later, when we were seated at our narrow table in the alcove, I related, with impressment, my conversation with Miss Greville. Mother, gazing over her cup, from time to time taking sips of tea, heard me in silence. But when, finally, or perhaps as a kind of postscript, I conveyed Miss Greville’s invitation to her for Saturday, she gave a short disturbed exclamation.

  ‘Mr Lesly is to be there?’

  ‘Of course. Why are you so surprised? Don’t you know that Miss Greville and he are great friends? Why, every day at lunch they smile at each other through the window.’

  Mother made to speak, but checked herself and was silent. But her expression remained decidedly odd. This, and the manner in which she had received my announcement, offended me. I did not offer to wash the dishes and instead went into my own room.

  What could be wrong between Miss Greville and Mr Lesly? It was painfully evident that Mother was upset by the idea of this invitation and had no wish to accept it. Naturally, I was not blind to Miss Greville’s oddities. These, especially in the early stages of our relationship, had fascinated me. Her unusual personality awed and stimulated me so that I had come to regard her as a brilliant eccentric, and for this reason was prepared to accept her unconventional behaviour. But having her vicar to tea was not unconventional. Why, then, all this fuss? I should not have been at all surprised if she had asked someone like Buffalo Bill, or Harry Lauder, rather than the estimable Mr Lesly, the more so since, despite my pretence of ignorance, I had sensed that she valued him.

  Nevertheless, when Saturday came a vague uneasiness creeping over my skin made me want to be out of the way that afternoon. It was fine, a good day for another run, I told myself, especially since the Harriers were out in a paper chase to Stair Head. These Harriers, made up of young men who were clerks, apprentices, shop assistants and the like, were now, more properly, my friends, and in the previous autumn I had established myself amongst them by winning the Junior Steeplechase open to boys under fourteen. After Mother had made me a scrambled egg on toast I slipped out of the house in my shorts and jersey. I was late. The meet had started at the edge of the Darvie Woods and soon I was amongst the pines following the paper trail that had been laid down. The excitement of picking up the track, losing it, then striking it again soon absorbed me. A thrill of pride shot through me as I overtook some of the club stragglers, and with my chin up and elbows pressed in, ignoring the stitch in my side, left them floundering behind. Yet the very merit of my speed proved my undoing. When, still trotting and spotted with mud, as the afternoon drew to a close, I swung into Prince Albert Terrace, I saw that I had misjudged my time. The door of No. 7 was open, revealing Miss Greville and my mother with Mr Lesly in the very act of leaving. He was a handsome, measured kind of man with an exact middle parting of his hair, who looked rather like an actor. But now he appeared flushed and terribly uncomfortable as he hurriedly shook hands, and he almost stumbled as he came down the porch steps. Contrary to his usual civil habit, he did not recognize me. Perhaps he did not see me. If ever a man seemed anxious to expedite his departure it was the Vicar of St Jude’s.

  I went into the house. Mother and Miss Greville were in the hall and, as I slipped past hurriedly, for somehow the situation appeared to have got out of control, Mother, in a low tone of remonstration, said something which I did not hear but to which Miss Greville replied, with a burst of joyful animation:

  ‘It’s not what was said, dearest Grace. Did you not see how he looked at me!’

  Mother was a long time coming upstairs. When she came she sat down heavily at the table and put a hand to her brow. She alarmed me. I had been sweating and now I began to shiver.

  ‘Mother, what’s wrong?’

  She raised her head slowly and looked at me.

  ‘It will never end for us, Laurie. Never, never. Miss Greville is going out of her mind.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  How strange were the months that followed, for me so unreal as to maintain me in a perpetual daze, and for my mother so charged with an ever-growing anxiety, the extent of which I did not realize till later, that her nerves were worn to shreds, causing her to start and turn pale whenever some unusual sound would reach us from the main part of the house. Even now I can scarcely bring myself to re-create the pitiful disintegration of a mind that I had always regarded as cultured and superior, the more so since that mental dissolution shaped itself ostensibly in the pattern of farce, the spinster’s infatuation for the young clergyman, subject for the music-hall stage, for vulgar laughter provoked by a cheap comedian with baggy trousers and a red nose. For us, it was far from funny but a reality with which we lived and suffered. That Miss Greville, of all people, should be the central f
igure, the victim, of such a spectacle—I could not believe it.

  Yet, although of course I could not know this, Miss Greville’s condition was one now well recognized in psychiatric medicine and not at all uncommon in women of her age and condition who have slight paranoid tendencies. In such subjects at the involutional period a flood of libidinal impulses, hitherto repressed, or sublimated, or dealt with by other mechanisms of defence, is released with specific imbalance of hormones and resultant delusions which are frequently centred upon a favourite physician or clergyman. This absolute and utter certainty that they are beloved and to be married is explained by the most cryptic indications, yet in a supremely reasonable way.

  This to me was the most perplexing feature of Miss Greville’s behaviour, the rational manner in which she gave effect to her delusion. Her preparations for marriage were proper and well considered. The additions she made to her wardrobe, no longer exuberant, exhibited a severity which, as she informed my mother, befitted the clerical status of her future husband. The plans she outlined for doing up the vicarage could not have been bettered, and the materials she had already bought for new curtains were all in quiet good taste. Her activities in all directions were endless, she seemed always on the move, going to and coming from the town, and when she found time to sit down she would take up sewing, or start cutting out and shaping patterns, with commendable industry.

  Most baffling of all was the manner in which she received every attempt to dissuade her. At first my mother had been diffident, tactful and discreet in her approach, but as time went on and all her efforts failed she had come to speak in the strongest terms and to use outright and forceful arguments which no one could reject. Miss Greville rejected them. With her calm and confident smile she would listen, amused almost by Mother’s intensity, then, with a shake of her head, would dismiss the most irrefutable logic: ‘You don’t understand, Grace. There are reasons for everything. I know.’

  These two final words, absolute conviction of inner knowledge, were unassailable to reason. Mother was at her wits’ end. From whom could she seek advice? Those acquaintances at St Anne’s, familiar with Miss Greville’s previous foibles, were disinclined to take Mother seriously and advised against action on the grounds that this new manifestation would pass. In any case, from their position with the school, it was apparent that they had no wish to be drawn into the affair. Campbell, with whom Mother tried to take council, was not helpful. This deaf, taciturn woman had from the beginning resented our presence in the house. She considered that she had prior rights on her employer and was not prepared to divulge the address of Miss Greville’s brother in Kenya when Mother proposed writing to him. The difficulty presented by any course of action seemed insuperable, since the first sign of interference on our part would undoubtedly precipitate a scandal in the town. There was nothing to be done but wait. And so there ensued a period of suspense during which Mother often exclaimed, in a tone of gathering foreboding: ‘ How will it end!’

  I must confess that the bizarre aspect of the situation with its suggestion of further awfulness had a morbid excitement for me, stimulated by the changes developing in Miss Greville’s personality and physical appearance. Phrases of unprecedented frankness startled and embarrassed me. Her bust and hips were fuller and she had a new way of standing with her legs apart, and what I took to be her stomach but was undoubtedly her pelvis, thrust forward. The fascination of these transformations was, however, dulled by persistent intrusions of a most depressing thought. If Miss Greville did not resume her normal state, if she continued to deteriorate, how could she fulfil her promise to send me to school? What of my giddy aspirations then? They would never be realized. Never. My heart sank at the dismal prospect. I would be lost.

  It may be imagined then how anxiously I studied Miss Greville on the occasions when we were together. These were diminishing, since in the evenings Mother kept me closely by her side. Nevertheless, lack of opportunity did not debar me from hoping and fearing, nor my spirits from rising and falling, like a barometer. In the main, I was optimistic. This can’t go on, I told myself, it must pass. Nothing will come of it. And if we can last it out for another six months all will be well. Alas, I was deluding myself. Other factors were already operating, contingencies I had not even contemplated. All my thoughts and efforts had been concentrated on Miss Greville. I had forgotten about Mr Lesly.

  It was a wet Saturday afternoon and Mother was reading the Ardfillan Herald which always appeared at the week-end. Suddenly I heard her exclaim, in a startled voice:

  ‘Merciful heavens!’

  She had changed colour, yet she did not put down the Herald, but went on reading almost desperately. Then she let the newspaper slip from her hands and lay back in her chair staring unseeingly at me. This could only mean disaster. Already my scalp was beginning to creep as I put that too familiar question.

  ‘What’s wrong, Mother?’

  She did not answer, did not apparently discover me within the remote field of her vision. Her lips were moving not, experience told me, in prayer but because, silently, she was talking to herself. I was about to repeat my question more pressingly when, as though breaking through the sound barrier, these words escaped her.

  ‘She’s bound to see it … or to hear of it.’

  ‘Mother.’ I had to shake her arm. ‘What has happened?’

  She had to find me before she answered.

  ‘Mr Lesly is going to be married.’ She paused. ‘On the fifteenth of next month.’

  As though unable to continue, she handed me the paper. A paragraph in the Social and Personal column was headed: Popular Vicar to Wed. And beneath in smaller type: Nuptials announced of Mr H. A. Lesly and Miss Georgina Douglas. Reading on, I was not long in discovering that Miss Georgina was none other than the sister of the spin bowler, my late cricketing acquaintance in whose conversation that twin-funnelled steam yacht had largely testified to parental wealth. Hurriedly I skimmed through the rest of the paragraph: a long-standing attachment … sudden decision on the part of the happy couple … welcomed by their numerous friends and wellwishers.

  ‘But this is wonderful,’ I cried. ‘It settles everything.’

  Mother eyed me silently.

  ‘Don’t you see, Mother, when Miss Greville sees he’s going to marry someone else she’ll know he can’t marry her.’

  ‘That will be a great help to her, poor creature.’

  Mother’s pale, sad smile disconcerted me.

  ‘You mean, she won’t …’

  ‘I don’t mean anything,’ Mother said firmly, with an air of terminating the conversation. ‘ But I don’t want you to go down to her for a bit. Not till we see how things work out.’

  All that evening Mother and I kept very quiet. The house was quiet too. On the following morning we went out to the ten o’clock Mass. Occasionally on Sunday we had an invitation from Miss Greville to have midday dinner with her. Today, when we returned from church, there was no invitation, and Miss Greville had not gone to St Jude’s.

  The house was still quiet. I forgot what Mother made for our lunch because, for once, I certainly did not notice what I was eating. Afterwards Mother lay down for an hour, while I did my week-end homework. At four o’clock I made the tea. We were now so under the spell of this perpetual stillness that we were talking almost in whispers. I took the tea things to the sink, glancing at Mother while I washed and dried them. I could see that she was terribly on edge, she kept walking up and down our little corridor, but softly, in her indoor slippers, listening all the time with her head to one side.

  It was getting dark now and it had begun to rain again. Suddenly, as I was about to light the gas, there came a knock at our door.

  Visibly, Mother started. I looked at her, with questioning alarm.

  ‘Shall I open it?’

  She shook her head and, moving to the door, threw it open.

  Campbell stood there, a sudden apparition, her thin, black, angular figure ominous in the dusk.
But her expression was as withdrawn, as impassive as ever. Her hands were folded in front of her starched apron.

  ‘Madam would like to see you,’ she said formally.

  ‘Yes,’ Mother said slowly. ‘I’ll come.’

  ‘Madam: wishes, to see you both,’ Campbell said, in the same manner as before.

  There was a pause.

  ‘I don’t think—’ Mother began, turning towards me.

  ‘It’s all right, Mother,’ I interrupted. ‘I’ll go with you.’

  Nothing heroic prompted this declaration. My heart was beating fast and my knees were uncertain, but I did not wish to be left out of this. I felt indeed that Miss Greville, facing a crisis in her life, might well be impelled to a vital declaration upon my future.

  Mother hesitated. I sensed that she wanted to question Campbell, to glean some information as to the present state of affairs. But Campbell was not one to be questioned. Already she had begun to move off. We followed her. Outside Miss Greville’s bedroom she paused and, always correct, opened the door for us.

  It was a large room with a double window opening on to the front terrace, but now the lined silk curtains were drawn and the gas lamps lit. I had never been in this room before and would have been curious to examine its furnishings had not my attention been immediately riveted to Miss Greville. She was sitting at a long sofa table, not fully dressed, but wrapped in a fringed bathrobe, and writing so industriously that as we entered she did not look up. Four letters had apparently been written—instinctively I counted the stamped envelopes that lay on the table—and now she was busy on a fifth. She seemed calm, indeed perfectly composed, and although her hair was in some disorder, the normality of her appearance gave me a quick glow of reassurance.

  ‘There!’ she exclaimed at last, putting down her pen. ‘Do forgive me for keeping you.’

  She folded the letter, tucked it in an envelope which she then sealed, addressed and stamped. Gathering all the letters together she made a neat pile in front of her and sat up, erect and competent.