A Song of Sixpence

by A. J. Cronin

  ‘Are you wondering about our wee porker?’ Miss Ailie was smiling to me. ‘You see, we like everyone to be served properly while the meals are hot. And that means punctuality. So the rule is that if one comes late one must put a penny in the pig. Naturally, it’s all for a good cause— our cottage hospital.’

  I looked across the table at a vacant chair.

  ‘That person will have to pay up?’

  ‘Oh no,’ she laughed. ‘That’s Mr Sommen’s place. He’s gone off to Ballater for the day. To the Highland Games.’

  ‘I never knew anyone so taken on with the Highlands as Mr Sommen.’ A stout lady opposite took up the conversation. ‘For an Englishman, I mean. He fair dotes on the tartan.’

  ‘I hope it’s fine for him at Ballater,’ rejoined Miss Ailie, glancing out at the weather. ‘He was so looking forward to the step-dancing and the reels.’

  ‘Had he the wee plaid on him when he left this morning?’

  ‘He had indeed. And very braw he looked in it.’ Miss Ailie sighed. ‘Such a nice gentleman. What manners!’

  ‘Aye, you don’t often see the like. And forbye, the life and soul of our little party.’

  At this point my Baillie neighbour cleared his throat noisily, as though something had gone the wrong way, and changed the conversation. Doubtless he had seen me coveting his Jock Scott, for he turned abruptly and asked me if I liked to fish. He told me he came every year to spin for salmon in the Spean, and when he promised to show me a pool where I might catch brown trout, my spirits improved further. I nodded to Mother, indicating that after all Fort William was not a bad sort of place. She and I would certainly go together to the pool and she could knit and watch me while I fished. I gave no thought to the absent Mr Sommen, or if I did it was in the vague yet optimistic expectation that he too, being the man he was, would contribute further to the satisfactions of our holiday.

  At five o’clock that evening, while the others were finishing tea, I had gone to the front door to unravel a gut cast my new fishing friend had given me and which I had already succeeded in tangling, when an open carriage rolled up to the porch and a man sprang out briskly, paid the coachman with an added, ‘That’s for yourself, chappie,’ then bounded up the steps towards me. He was of a neat medium figure with a pale, glossy skin, large dark eyes, and a narrow black moustache that curved thinly and stylishly, like an extra eyebrow, across his upper lip. He had on a sporty check suit, a rakish balmoral with the ribbons sweeping across one shoulder, and over the other a short tartan plaid pinned by a silver dagger studded with a large cairngorm.

  ‘Well, well, well, young fellow-me-lad.’ He greeted me genially. ‘You a new arrival?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘With your parents?’

  ‘My mother, sir.’

  ‘Pater still turning the wheels of industry?’

  ‘My father’s dead, sir.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, old chap.’ He was immediately contrite. ‘Fearfully sorry I dropped a brick. No idea. Not the foggiest. Come and have some tea.’

  I told him I’d already had my tea.

  ‘Then come and have another go of cake. Can do? Good. Fill the aching void.’ With an arm companionably round my shoulders he steered me into the drawing-room where, sweeping off his balmoral, he bowed elegantly from the waist.

  ‘Am I too late for the cup that cheers but not inebriates, ladies? If so, just say the word and I’ll apologize, depart, put sixpence in the pig, abscond, in other words buzz off, anything to make amends.’

  When several voices reassured him he advanced, accepted a cup from Miss Ailie and having implemented his promise, with a wink, by back-handing me a thick slice of cake from the tray, took his stand by the fireplace.

  ‘Well, ladies, I suppose yours truly was never missed, that absence did not make the heart grow fonder, and you haven’t the slightest interest in his adventures at the Games, even though he did brush shoulders with none other than Royalty?’

  ‘But we have, Mr Sommen. Do tell us.’

  As I ate my cherry cake I gazed at him in wide-eyed admiration. He was so much at ease, so fluent, never at a loss, so amusingly at home with everyone and above all so dashingly good-looking, with his pale skin, small neat features, stylish little moustache and dark engaging eyes. When he concluded his racy description of his doings during the day I was especially struck by his manner when, taking advantage of the pause, Miss Ailie introduced him to Mother. All the jocularity vanished from his expression, he was immediately serious, correct, respectful. He bowed again, talked with her for a few moments and, with a companionable glance that lightly comprehended me, wished her a top-hole stay at Ardshiel. Then, as a kind of afterthought, he added:

  ‘After supper we have little musical evenings here, just by way of entertaining ourselves, if you care for that sort of thing?’

  Mother admitted that she was fond of music.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he ventured, ‘perhaps you play a little … or sing, yourself?’

  To my chagrin, Mother said that she would really prefer to listen. So acute was my disappointment I forgot my shyness and exclaimed:

  ‘Oh no, sir, Mother plays the piano awfully well. She played once at a concert before hundreds of people. And she sings too.’

  He looked at me with such pleased approval that I reddened with gratification. Removing his gaze in a well-bred manner from Mother, who had blushed too, he said quietly:

  ‘Well spoken, old chap. Perhaps between us we may be able to persuade your mater to oblige the company. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I must be off for my tub. Nothing like a tub after a day in the open. Au revoir then, till we meet again.’

  Mother was cross with me as we went upstairs.

  ‘I hope your tartan friend isn’t going to be a nuisance, with his little musical evenings. He is rather a gusher, isn’t he?’

  Nevertheless, I noticed that she put on her best dress, red with a lace collar, which she had sponged and pressed before we left Ardfilan, and extremely nice she looked in it.

  When the gong boomed us down for supper Mr Sommen was already in the dining-room standing rather absently in a welcoming position with his hands behind his back, wearing a snowy-white shirt set off by a black bow tie, well-creased black trousers and a poplin tartan jacket. I thought he looked terribly smart, and so did the others. The jacket, which was apparently new, evoked murmurs of approval. Assiduously placing chairs for the ladies, he modestly admitted he had bought it at Ballater after the Games.

  Only one of our company seemed openly at odds with this general adulation and when we had begun on some excellent tomato soup, with the kind of lentils in it that I liked, Baillie Nicol, after darting several caustic glances from beneath his bushy eyebrows at the new garment, suddenly remarked:

  ‘Ye know, of course, sir, that the tartan ye have on is the Mackenzie.’

  ‘Is it, by gosh? Delighted to hear it.’

  ‘And the plaid ye wear is the Macgregor. While that strip on your balmoral is the Royal Stuart. It looks as though before you’ve done ye’ll be a regular one-man “ Gathering o’ the Clans”.’

  ‘Well, good luck to them,’ Sommen said airily. ‘I like gatherings and from what I saw of these Highland lasses at their eightsome reels I jolly well like the clans.’

  ‘But apart from the fact that it’s almost illegal to sport a tartan ye’re not entitled to, what’s your object, man?’

  ‘When in Rome do as the jolly old Romans.’ Sommen laughed with perfect good nature, not a bit discomfited. ‘That’s my motto when I travel. Last summer I took in Switzerland. When I stepped off the last mountain you couldn’t have told me from William Tell. Not bad that, eh? Told, tell!’

  The Baillie persisted, inquisitively.

  ‘Ye must have a grand business to be able to get away so much.’

  Sommen inclined his head, answered with a sudden note of gravity.

  ‘Yes, sir, my family are perhaps the oldest tobacco merchants in the city of London. We a
re cigarette manufacturers, sir. May I show you our product?’ He took out a morocco-leather cigarette-case and pressed it open, revealing a row of long, flat, elegant-looking cigarettes. As it was passed from hand to hand I saw stamped in blue on each, ‘C. R. Sommen. Special No. 1.’

  ‘May I offer you one, sir?’

  ‘Thank you, no,’ the Baillie growled, thoroughly put out by this demonstration of solid worth. ‘I have my pipe.’

  After these exchanges in which the cigarette-maker had clearly had the better of it, supper proceeded with renewed amiability. When Miss Kincaid formerly gave the signal to rise we went into the drawing-room, or as Miss Ailie named it, the ‘best parlour’. Here the curtains had been drawn against the evening chill and a cosy fire of peat was glowing on the hearth, emitting its aromatic moorland scent. While coffee and shortbread biscuits were handed round, Sommen advanced to the piano and, standing over the keyboard, played ‘ Chopsticks’ with one finger.

  ‘Excuse my humble overture, ladies and gentlemen. We are now exceedingly fortunate to have a real genuine top-notch pianist in our midst and with her kind permission I’m going to ask her to start the ball rolling.’

  He came forward and crooking his arm in invitation, exclaimed amidst appreciative laughter:

  ‘Madam, may I have the honour of escorting you to the instrument?’

  Now I must confess that by this time I was beginning to be considerably bored by our new friend. His attentions to Mother at supper had been rather too marked and now this cheap gallantry seemed to confirm her own worst fears. I glanced at her sympathetically but, to my surprise, she did not snub him. Instead she rose, yielding without protest, indeed rather gracefully, to this unwelcome foolery.

  She played a Chopin prelude then dashed into ‘Danse d’Echarpes’ with great brio and finished to sustained applause. I saw that for once Sommen was quite taken aback, as though, unexpectedly, he found himself in an element totally foreign to him.

  ‘I say,’ he said, almost with deference, ‘ that ’ad real class.’ Then, recovering himself from that fearful missing aspirate: ‘Absolutely topping. Good enough for the Albert Hall.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Mother laughed, and went on rather as if poking fun at him. ‘Now it’s your turn. Let’s hear you sing. If you can? I’ll play your accompaniment.’

  After much turning over of music, the song ‘The Mermaid’ was selected. To my disappointment, he had not a bad voice, a light tenor, and he put great dramatic feeling into the words:

  And down he went like a streak of light,

  So quickly down went he,

  Until he came to a mermaid

  At the bottom of the deep blue sea.

  The effect of this double display of talent upon the company was so pronounced that, to my annoyance, there arose a general demand for a duet. Surely now Mother would refuse, draw the line, put her foot down firmly. But no, still in the same lively, challenging way, almost, one might have thought, with enjoyment, she had already selected ‘The Tarpaulin Jacket’, the first line of which, ‘A tall stalwart Lancer lay dying’, gave me such a thrill of anticipation that I had come to regard the ballad as my own special property. They began. I wished I might have stopped up my ears. At least I kept my eyes on the ceiling and refrained from joining in the prolonged hand-clapping.

  By this time the singing, talking and laughter, the growing sense of camaraderie, above all the patter and too pressing urbanities of this bogus clansman had, in a manner I scarcely realized, made me extremely hot under my collar. I decided that it had gone far enough and should be terminated. Seizing a rare moment of silence I called out:

  ‘I think I’ll go upstairs now, Mother,’ imagining, naturally, that she would come with me.

  Instead, still bent over the music with Sommen, without even turning around, she replied:

  ‘Yes, do, dear. It’s past your bedtime. I’ll be up soon.’

  As I was already on my feet there was nothing for it but that I must go. And she did not come soon but late, much later than I had hoped. Still, the desire to express my conflicting emotions had served to keep me awake. I sat up in bed.

  ‘You were right after all, Mother. It was a nuisance, wasn’t it?’

  She smiled at me. Her eyes seemed bright and there was colour in her cheeks.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, dear. In a way it was really rather fun and goodness knows neither of us have had much of that lately.’

  ‘But Mother, it was all so … so cheap and nasty.’

  ‘Was it as bad as all that?’

  ‘He was, anyhow, the cigarette-maker.’

  ‘Well, perhaps he is rather officious, dear, but I think he means well, so we mustn’t be too critical. Let’s just remember we’re here for the one holiday we’ve had in four years and try to make the most of it.’

  This was not the kind of response I expected from my mother. Turning on my side I gave her a brusque good night.

  However, next morning my sense of injury had gone and after breakfast, carrying my fishing-rod and a picnic lunch, I set out with Baillie Nicol for the Spean. Mother, seeing us off from the porch, promised to join me in almost an hour. The pool the Baillie showed me was not far upriver, a deep brown tarn among pine trees, fed by a rushing waterfall and contained by ledges. Having seen me settled he went off upstream to his own beat, having finally averred with a pessimistic survey of the clear blue sky that it was not an anglers’ day.

  Certainly I did not look like having much luck. In the space of two hours I caught a three-inch parr, which of course I unhooked carefully and returned. As nothing seemed to be taking, I began more and more to look for the appearance of Mother. What on earth was keeping her? Could my Ingersoll be wrong? No, from the sun, directly overhead, it must now be noon. My neck was stiff from craning towards the path through the wood and the roar of the waterfall had made my head swim. I reeled in, retreated to the pines and ate my share of the lunch. Still no sign of her. Angrily, after only a moment’s hesitation, I ate her lunch as well. She would not deserve it when she did come.

  With nothing else to do, I resumed my fishing, but in so spiritless a manner I permitted an eel to take my hook unnoticed and to digest my bait so thoroughly that it had to be destroyed, in a slimy mess, before I could recover my tackle. After that, as the afternoon was well advanced, I decided to give up.

  I had trudged to the end of the wood and was on the road that led uphill from the river, when an approaching figure became visible against the skyline. It was she.

  Immediately I threw off my despondency, set my expression to an injured and resentful coldness. Ignoring her too cheerful greeting, I said accusingly:

  ‘You didn’t come.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, dear.’ She smiled, breathlessly. ‘Our plans somehow seemed to get upset.’

  Apparently, though I gave her no marks for that futile and belated effort, she’d been hurrying.

  ‘You see, there was such an interesting expedition arranged to Banavie. Somehow I was persuaded to go along.’

  ‘Who persuaded you?’

  ‘Why … Miss Baird.’

  Had she hesitated before answering me? Miss Baird was the stout woman who liked Sommen.

  ‘So you and she went off all by yourselves.’

  ‘Good gracious, no, dear.’ She made the idea seem ridiculous. ‘Two women, all alone! Your friend Mr Sommen went with us. In fact he organized the trip and took care of everything most handsomely.’

  That evening at supper I studied him, viewing him after the manner of Scott-Hamilton with a critical, appraising eye. What a clown he was, or rather, what a cad, monopolizing the conversation—keeping things going I suppose he would have called it—and showing off in every direction. Why, at this moment, as Miss Kincaid, having sliced the boiled ham, seemed to be having trouble carving one of the chickens, and with a reproachful glance at Miss Ailie, had murmured that the carver was not sharp, he had the colossal cheek to interfere. I could scarcely believe my eyes when this bounder
leaned over, with a ‘Permit me, madam’, and taking the knife from her hand began to carve the bird. I longed for him to make some horrible gaffe that would draw down on him the laughter and contempt of everyone. I hoped the chicken would squirt off the platter to the floor or, better still, bounce up and hit him in the eye. But no, with unsuspected skill and a dexterity I believed impossible, he had it sliced and sectioned perfectly. This was too much for me and apparently for Baillie Nicol too. He kept muttering under his breath and glowering at our enemy. I was glad to accept his invitation to a game of draughts in the smoking-room; I felt I would do anything to avoid the entertainment in the parlour.

  The Baillie was not of a talkative disposition, but as we set out our men on the chequered board, he fixed his gaze on me and said:

  ‘You seem a decent sort of boy, and your mother looks to me a sweet little woman. If I were you, I would just drop a word in her ear against the counter-jumper of a cockney. I may be wrong, but for my part, I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.’

  The warning alarmed me. And as the next few days passed, there was no longer the least possibility of doubt. This man, this Englishman, this tartaned Sommen, was—I sought a phrase that would not wound me too deeply—‘making up’ to my mother. Despite the deceptive mildness of these two words they sent a hot flush over me. And it deepened at the thought of Mother’s response. At first she had merely seemed flattered: a natural reaction which I had persuaded myself was pardonable in a woman whose life had lately been so dull and hard. But gradually she had warmed to these hateful attentions and now, in her glance, her gesture, in her whole being, she could not conceal from me, nor from others in the boarding-house whom I had heard whispering, the change that had come over her. She looked younger and prettier, with a strange attractiveness that exuded and bloomed upon her skin. She had a new liveliness, an unnatural vivacity, a sense of letting herself go that I had never known before. Worst of all was her change towards me: that excessive solicitude and open show of tenderness, which I felt to be propitiating, even insincere, since most of the time, to be free of my questioning eye, she kept avoiding me, or pushing me off to fish, so that she could go off with him.