by A. J. Cronin
At the start of the second week, as I sat at the Speen pool, I decided I wouldn’t put up with it. I would not be cast off. Burning with indignation, I reeled in my neglected line, from which the worm had long ago been devoured, and set off for Ardshiel.
Mother was on the porch, but not as though expecting me.
‘Any luck?’ she exclaimed with specious brightness.
‘No.’
‘Never mind, dear. I’m sure you’ll catch something when you try again this afternoon.’
I didn’t answer. My mind was made up. I ate my lunch with apparent calm. Immediately the meal ended I excused myself, got up, and disappeared. I had not returned to the river. I was in the shrubbery at the edge of the garden.
They did not keep me waiting long. My heart gave a big, extra thump as they emerged, Sommen in his idiotic tartan get-up, Mother wearing her brown tweed costume and a new gay scarf which she certainly had not bought and which therefore he must have given her. Together, yet discreetly separated, they sauntered down the hill towards the town. Gazing from between the laurel branches I allowed them a fair start, then, with a casual air, though my pulse was throbbing like mad, I cut round the side of the garden and went after them.
The bitter excitement of the chase made me want to run, but I knew I must keep a safe distance behind them. Out of sight of the boarding-house, they had drawn closer to each other. They reached the town and turned the corner into the main street. Trying not to hurry, I followed. It was market day and the town was busy. For a minute I couldn’t pick them out, then I saw them on the opposite side of the street looking into the window of a shop that sold Gosse china and other tourist souvenirs. He was gabbing, as usual, and pointing in a persuasive manner, but Mother shook her head lightly and they moved off. A rush of traffic held me back, but when I crossed the street, out of the corner of my eye I saw them veer right into the Mealmarket, a narrow wynd leading to the old part of the town.
Now I increased my pace and swung into the Mealmarket. They were not in sight. With a catch of anxiety I pressed on, moving in and out of the stalls that crowded the narrow wynd, seeking everywhere, like a hound at fault. Minutes passed, five, ten. Not a sign of them. Had I lost them? And then, as I came out of the far end of the Mealmarket into the cobbled square that faced the open loch, my eye was caught by a rowboat moving easily on the sunlit water only a few hundred yards offshore.
I took a long breath. Now I had them, and I could wait. Slowly, without removing my gaze, I walked down to the stone jetty from which the boats were hired and took up my stand behind one of the bollards.
He was at the oars, alternatively sculling and drifting, while Mother sat facing him in the stern. When he leaned forward to make a stroke the intimacy of their positions stung me. I choked with jealous rage, invoking all the powers of light and darkness to work a miracle that would make this dandy, this bogus Clansman, this cigarette-maker, catch a crab and somersault backwards into the water, where, strangled by the strings of his balmoral and shouting vainly to me for aid, he would sink in all his finery to the bottom of the loch which I knew to be fabulously deep.
At last they came ashore. Instinctively I crouched low, hiding under the edge of the pier. Now, although I could not see, I could hear. I heard the bump of the boat against the jetty, his step ashore and then his voice as he assisted her to land.
‘Dear Grace, give me your hand.’
The words made me wince.
Now I heard footsteps on the stones above and judged it safe to raise my head. Mother had taken his arm and was smiling up at him as they moved off. I folded my arms and in that dramatic attitude, with the frozen immobility of the betrayed, watched them go.
When I returned to Ardshiel I revealed nothing of the treachery I had witnessed, merely maintaining an attitude of stoic coldness. All that evening I confronted Mother with my silence and hostility. She had now begun to look at me reproachfully, and after supper tried to induce me to come with her to the drawing-room on the pretext that there were to be parlour games. Games, indeed! I resisted, saying that I was tired, and went upstairs to bed where, as I lay awake, the misery of the afternoon was re-created by their intermingled voices ascending in another hateful duet. When she came up, quite late, I closed my eyes and pretended sleep.
Next morning came clear and sunny. Mother, eager for reconciliation and with the faintest hint of guilt in her manner, was all sweetness and light. After breakfast she came out to join me in the garden where already I had taken up a strategic position by the gate.
‘Darling,’ she smiled placatingly—ah, I thought, the Judas smile! ‘Mr Sommen has suggested taking us for a drive this afternoon. Along the coast to visit Onich Castle. But I daresay you can’t be bothered with sightseeing.’
‘Why not?’ I inquired.
‘Well … you’re such a fisherman I thought you’d surely want to go to your pool again.’
‘Considering that I’ve gone to my pool for the past week and caught nothing, doesn’t it occur to you that I might prefer to go sightseeing? Especially,’ I added, with a heavy emphasis, ‘ as there will probably be plenty to see.’
She flushed slightly and was silent.
‘Then you’d … you’d really like to come?’
‘Yes,’ I said, not looking at her. ‘ I definitely and positively would.’
The carriage arrived at two o’clock. The cigarette-maker who, while we waited in the porch, had been jocular with me in his best ‘old chap’ manner, through which I detected a strain of unease, now gave me a hand up beside the coachman before taking his place with Mother behind. We set off with a slow clip-clop of hooves. I could not observe the pair at my back but at least I was with them and I swore that this time they would not get away. Never again would Mother have the chance to be alone with all that charm.
Partially reassured, I almost enjoyed the drive. The sun shone, the sky was a duck-egg blue, the little waves lapped along the shore. It was good to be seated so high, and the coachman was friendly, pointing out places of interest with his whip. If only this interloper had not been with us. His intrusion was a profanation of our existence.
Too soon we arrived at the clachan of Onich and drew up at the little harbour where a few small blistered fishing-smacks lay moored against the pier. In the foreground, high up on a cliff, was the castle. As I climbed off my perch the cigarette-maker assisted Mother to alight.
‘I say,’ he suddenly exclaimed, looking down, ‘what a spiffing day for a cruise!’
Two fisher boys in rubber boots and blue jerseys were hoisting a lug sail.
‘Would you like it, young-fellow-me-lad?’ he said, turning to me. ‘Don’t you think it a good idea?’
I thought it an excellent idea. How better could I keep them under my eagle eye? I nodded stiffly.
‘Come on then,’ he cried gaily, leaping down and speaking to the boys. When I followed he helped me aboard solicitously, then, still on the pier, and before I knew what he was about or could collect my scattered wits, he had pushed the boat off, the sail caught the wind and I was put of the harbour and away while Mother, with a despicable pretence of affection, took out her handkerchief and waved to me from the shore.
I turned wildly to the bigger of the two boys.
‘Go back. Go back to the pier.’
He shook his head. The ‘ gentlemans’ had hired him ‘py the oor’. He let out more sail and the boat took an unbalancing heave. Weak with rage and distress I collapsed in the thwarts. Yesterday they had been in the boat and I on shore. Now, precisely, the positions were reversed. This was the final treachery. They had begun to walk arm-in-arm along the cliff towards the castle. Yes, I had always thought him a cad, and now I knew him to be a cheat as well. As for Mother’s … duplicity … oh, dear, the wind was making my eyes water.
For more than the specified time we tacked monotonously up and down outside the harbour. My captors had practically no English but they had the Gaelic and in this, to me, outlandish tong
ue they conversed continuously in low derisive voices, gazing from me to the castle, then back again to me. Although I could not understand a word of their ghastly lingo I sweated with shame, fully aware that they were discussing me, my correct attire, my pallid looks which, because of the movement of the boat, betrayed that I was on the verge of nausea, above all—and this was the hardest to bear—the obvious beastly reason why I had been shanghaied by the gentlemans.
At last there came a hail from the beach. The despicable couple had reappeared, and with a final sadistic tack into the wind to prolong my misery, I was returned to the harbour.
‘Have a good time, old chap?’
‘Yes, thank you.’ I met his ingratiating gaze with a prim unsmiling politeness I had resolved to assume.
Mother, who seemed flushed and agitated, was looking at me nervously yet with an earnestness that told me her one desire was to make up with me.
‘I don’t think you’d have liked the castle, dear.’
‘I don’t think I should.’
‘It was very old.’
‘It looks old.’
‘And damp.’
‘I thought it might be.’
‘You weren’t too cold on the water?’
‘Not at all, thank you.’
‘Were the boys nice?’
‘Delightful.’
There was an awkward pause before our unnatural dialogue could be resumed.
‘Well,’ exclaimed Sommen, with an effort at heartiness, ‘it’s about time we were off. I’ll go and dig the cabby out of the pub.’
On the way up from the pier Mother tried to take my arm but I pretended to stumble and kept away from her.
We got into the carriage and drove off. Up on the box again I decided that neither of them were quite themselves. Something undoubtedly had happened. Even now they were unusually silent. Was this an omen favourable to me? I longed to turn round but pride forbade me, though I kept my ears well cocked. And still they weren’t speaking, no, not a word. They’ve quarrelled, I thought, with a surge of joy. I could resist no longer. Cautiously moving my head I squinted over my shoulder. The cigarette-maker, leaning towards Mother, with an arm round her waist, was kissing her. Oh, God, my own mother spooning in the open, in full public view, with that cad … I nearly fell off the box.
When we got back to the boarding-house I removed myself in silence and went directly to my room. I was seated on the edge of my bed staring at the faded roses on the wallpaper when I heard the handle of the door turn and hesitantly, almost timidly, Mother came in. She sat down beside me and put an arm round my shoulders. From her manner, her apologetic caress, I thought for one wild moment that she had repented and was going to ask my forgiveness for the injury she had done, not to me alone, but to our love. Instead she said:
‘Laurence, dear. Charley … Mr Sommen has asked me to marry him.’
I did not answer for some time. Shock had silenced me. I felt a fearful burning in my heart that made me want to cry out, abjectly: ‘Don’t, Mother, I beg of you, for pity’s sake. You know we have always been together, how much we mean to one another. Don’t, please don’t let anyone come between us.’
But the vision of that hateful public embrace choked back the words. It hardened me.
‘And will you?’ I said coldly.
‘I think I should, dear.’
‘Why?’ My tone was slightly contemptuous. ‘Are you what’s called in love with him?’
‘I like him, dear. And I think he is in love with me. Of course, he’s a queer sort of chap, not altogether what you might call a … well, the sort of person you’re used to, but he’s generous and kind. He’s so gay too, and that’s good for me. He’s got a good heart. Besides, it would be so much better, for our future, yours as well as mine. It’s been hard for me, trying to keep things going, alone. This way, we wouldn’t have to separate, you needn’t go to Uncle Leo. We could be together, in London. Charley, Mr Sommen, says there are all sorts of good schools for you there. He likes you, dear.’
‘I don’t want him to like me. I hate him.’ I disengaged myself from her arm, and although my breast was torn with wounded love, I stared at her cruelly. ‘He’s an utter bounder, an absolute outsider, a common masher. What’s come over you, a woman of your refinement! Baillie Nicol says he’s nothing but a counter-jumping cockney. I suppose you know that the whole boarding-house is talking about the way you’re behaving, and how silly you are, running after a man younger than yourself, and all heated up about it.’
‘Laurence!’
‘And what do you really know about him beyond the fact that he’s got a cigarette factory and flings his money around like a would be lord? Two weeks ago you didn’t even know he existed. And what have you told him about us? Is he aware that we’re practically in the poorhouse?’
‘I won’t have you speak to me like that.’ She had drawn back to the end of the bed and was facing me with a look of pained anger. ‘Mr Sommen would never dream of asking me about our circumstances.’
‘Well, he as good as asked me,’ I sneered. ‘Not long after we came he tried to pump me about Father’s business. I bragged of course, and said Father had built up the finest yeast agency in Scotland. So he probably thinks the sweet, soft little widow is rolling. And that’s why he’s swarming all over you.’ My voice broke suddenly. ‘I saw him in the carriage, the vulgar cad.’
Provoked beyond endurance, Mother gave a little moan and struck me a ringing box on the ear that almost knocked me off the bed. We stared at each other in a terrible silence. I could not remember that she had ever hit me before.
‘You’re a wicked boy,’ she gasped. ‘A wicked, wicked boy. Trying to spoil the one little bit of happiness I’ve had since your father died. And in spite of all you say, and all the fibs you tell, I’ll do exactly as I please.’
I stood up. Through the singing in my head I shouted:
‘Go ahead and do it, then. I’m only warning you. You’ll be sorry.’
I walked straight out of the house, my ear burning and hurting like mad, and although I hated the place now, somehow I found myself at the pool. I sat down on a rock, and clamped my head between my fists. This woman, sole possessor of my heart, whom I had loved exclusively from the moment I first opened my infant eyes, or perhaps when first she offered me her breast, had betrayed me. My immediate impulse was to desert her, to inquire the road to Winton of the first amiable stranger and set out by forced marches for Uncle Leo who, after all, expected me. Yet there was a flaw in this course of action that held me back. I wanted justice, and more, I wanted revenge. Revenge on Mother and on this … this mountebank—the word consoled me slightly—who had supplanted me. If only there was someone to whom I could turn for help. I racked my brains, dismissing one after another the Carroll relations, all uninterested, inept. I even considered the possibilities of Baillie Nicol. And then I thought of Stephen—safe, sure, reliable, Stephen could always be depended on. And Stephen, now established at the Ministry of Labour, was in London.
The possibilities of my idea sent a shiver down my spine. I bounded to my feet. Hurrying back to Ardshiel I begged some notepaper from Miss Ailie, then locked myself in my room. Stretched out on the floor I took a pencil and dashed off a letter to Stephen. Within half an hour I had posted it in the town. I even remembered to send it express.
When all this had been accomplished, a sudden calm descended upon me, perhaps the realization that, whatever the outcome, I had displayed determination and resource. In the days that followed I maintained a steady reserve. Although I watched ‘them’ secretly at meal-times, I assumed indifference, and when they went off on their excursions I no longer shadowed them, I could afford to wait. On several occasions Mother attempted to reopen the matter, and to break down the barrier I had erected but always without success. I refused to allow myself to be cajoled.
Yet I was anxious, beneath these pretences, and as time drew on with no word or apparent sign of action from Stephen, my nervousness
increased. Ardshiel, being some distance from the centre of the town, was served by only one delivery of mail and every afternoon towards three o’clock I hung about the porch, waiting for the postman. At last, one wet afternoon, a letter was handed to me. Yes, it was stamped with the London postmark. Feverishly. I locked myself in the downstairs lavatory and tore it open.
Dear Laurence,
It was extremely awkward for me to take time off but, as I judged your letter important, I have done so.
The telephone directory revealed five Sommens, of whom one was listed as Tobacconist & Newsagent, at 1026a, The Mile End Road, E.C. I thereupon took a bus to that unsalubrious quarter—not quite a slum, but almost. The shop proved to be a small drab affair, newspapers, including racing sheets, on one side, cigarettes on the other. I entered and bought—guess what?—the News of the World! I was served by an elderly arthritic dame in a worn spencer, buttoned up to the neck. In the back shop a girl—dark, untidy hair, wearing a grubby overall—was rolling cigarettes on a small hand machine. Emerging, I entered the nearest pub—very near, three doors down, where information was readily forthcoming.
The father is dead, the business, negligible and declining, kept going, barely, by the widow. There are three daughters, one of whom is the cigarette maker. Father had some connections for this brand, now practically nil. Debts were mentioned. Mother, girls and son all live above the shop.
The son, your man, takes no part in the business, is described as a good sort, generous, would do anything for a pal, but flashy, a fancy dresser, and soft. Bit of a singer and performs at ‘smokers’. Likes to bet, which he does with occasional success, and when he pulls something off, takes a holiday in style. His job—he is a waiter at the Metropolitan Sporting Club in the West End.
I trust this information will quash the incipient romance. Give my love to your mother and tell her please not to be foolish.