by A. J. Cronin
‘No!’ she repeated. ‘He won’t be able to go!’
‘Well,’ said Eva, smiling, after a moment, ‘ I must run along’; but her air said confidentially to Peter: ‘ I’m much too much of a lady to press the matter, but we shall see if this nice young man will not come to Le Nid.’ She shook hands – at a high altitude – with them both and minced herself away.
Lucy and her son boarded their tram in silence. Her lips were compressed, her head stiffly erect. And he – he was in a huff: his aloofness settled once more upon him with a loftier and more domelike dignity. Nevertheless, after a long pause, it was he who spoke first.
‘Why, may I ask, were you so rude to her?’ and in his tone lay a forced judicial calmness.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Peter,’ she sighed, and looked up at him apologetically. ‘ I suppose it was stupid of me. I just don’t like her. I don’t think she’s sincere.’ This, indeed, epitomised, with telling frankness, her accurate opinion of Eva’s character.
‘Well, I think she’s charming,’ he joined quickly; ‘ and it was good of her to ask me out.’
‘How can you possibly go?’ she retorted sharply. ‘You know your final is coming on. You’ve neither the time nor the clothes for that sort of thing. Do you want to get your flannels from China next?’ She twisted her lip sardonically, yet she regretted this allusion to the borrowed dress suit the moment she had uttered it.
‘Aunt Eva seems both delightful and kind,’ he threw back haughtily.
‘Kind!’ she echoed, not without bitterness. What did he know about Eva – whether it was milk or vinegar that circled under her smoothly cold-creamed skin.
He observed her pause and, eyeing her intently, exclaimed loftily:
‘I hope you’re not jealous of her because she happens to be well dressed and better off than you are?’ His aspersion was so near the mark, divided from truth by so thin a pellicle, that she blushed with an indignant colour which flooded even her neck.
‘Don’t say that to me,’ she snapped.
‘No?’ he interrogated tauntingly.
‘And remember that I’m your mother,’ she shot out fiercely. ‘Richard and all his have done nothing for us.’
‘Oh, well –’ Under her tone he wilted; but even as he subsided he added sulkily: ‘You would think people ought to run after us and spoon feed us. You can’t be unreasonable these days. Everybody’s got their own affairs to worry about. And if you do want friends you’ve got to go out for them, and not hide yourself away in a back street.’ As his remarks tailed off, her lips compressed themselves tightly over her indignant answer, and she gazed fixedly in front of her. She saw the futility of furthering the quarrel. Living together as intimately as they did, the quarrels which they had were, she realised, inevitable, but they left her always with such a physical sense of disturbance and desolation that she made every effort to avoid them. Nevertheless, he was still nursing his displeasure as they got off the tram; he did not speak much, and when they reached the flat their estranged relationship continued. She set about making the tea while he began to steam his face with hot cloths. Lately he had been affected, to his concern, by an outcrop of comedones – he had corrected her use of the term blackhead – and now, placed before the mirror, he appeared to do penance by exorcising these painfully from his steaming skin.
Dispassionately considered, the affair became less ominous, and she admitted that she saw his point of view. He was young; upon the threshold of his life; until such time as they could remove to a congenial background his natural instincts towards enjoyment – and indeed her own – were being thwarted; the philosophic detachment with which she steeled herself to wait could never be achieved by his impetuous youth; she became in the end compassionate towards his petulant impatience.
Out of this train of thought the idea grew that his relaxation was too sadly restricted; she had the persistent desire to sponsor some suitable enjoyment which would encompass them both. For several days she considered the question unsuccessfully feeling that to keep him closely to her she must lend herself more sympathetically to his pleasures; then, unexpectedly, fortune played into her hands. Miss Tinto offered her two tickets for the Empire.
Inconceivable that the stately and even puritanical bosom of Miss Tinto could harbour an inclination to frequent this edifice of pleasure. But such was indeed the case; Miss Tinto’s bosom was virginal, but it was not pinched; nor was the bosom of Miss Tinto’s elder and more majestic sister. Miss Tinto and her sister often ‘took a jaunt’ to the Empire, booking their seats long beforehand – for noteworthy coming events – in the best position of the house with a meticulous exactitude and foresight. And now Miss Tinto’s sister was ill; the sisters were attached – they came, as Lucy had often heard with a sad reminder of her own different lot, of a ‘very united family’; there was no possible question of Miss Tinto adventuring selfishly and alone to the gilded portals of the Empire while her sister lay racked with lumbago upon a bed of suffering. The tickets were offered graciously and surrendered without a murmur to Lucy, who accepted them gratefully, yet with proper protestations of regret.
She was, in fact, deeply gratified. These tickets had cost three shillings each – a sum she could not possibly afford – and they were just where she desired. That night, as she went home, her step held a brisk alacrity, and when Peter came in she exclaimed, quite excitedly:
‘What do you think? I’ve got two tickets for the Empire tomorrow.’
He lifted his eyebrows, and, after an expressive pause, declared:
‘Not paper money, I hope, mother!’; then, observing her blank look, he added knowingly: ‘Free list – tickets for nothing – rotten show.’
‘Oh, no, Peter,’ she protested. ‘Miss Tinto would never do a thing like that!’
‘What’s on, then?’
‘Well – I’m sure – I hardly know.’ Under his eye her crest drooped slightly.
‘Let me see –’ Stroking his chin, he affected to consider, as one more versed in such matters than she. ‘Let me see – yes – it is – I believe it’s Marie Lloyd that’s top of the bill.’
‘Marie Lloyd!’ she exclaimed, perking up again. ‘Oh, she’s splendid, isn’t she? I’d love to see her. Quite a London favourite! I knew Miss Tinto couldn’t possibly –’ Under his quizzical stare she broke off smiling, drawing gratefully from Miss Lloyd’s fortunate appearance a vindication of Miss Tinto’s honesty and an asseveration of her own good taste.
‘She’s getting long enough in the tooth now, I imagine,’ he remarked. ‘Still, it might be amusing.’
‘Of course it will,’ she assented warmly. ‘We’ll have a splendid time.’
Certainly, upon the following evening, she felt as though she must enjoy herself. She smiled to herself as she thought of Marie. Yes; she had inspected the poster outside the Empire, and she expected to get a good laugh – just what she was needing – from Miss Lloyd. What was that song of hers they were all humming? ‘I’m the ruin that Cromwell knocked about a bit.’ Yes, that was it: too funny for words! She began to hum it herself.
Peter was not in: detained at a late clinic, he had arranged to meet her at Charing Cross: and so, with a final reassurance that she had the tickets safely – what a calamity to forget them! – she locked the house and went out.
Outside, the air was cool and vibrant, even in the centre of that dull grey city, with the promise of spring; a carthorse passing wore a bright ribbon twisted coquettishly through its mane; some sparrows fluttering in the dust, made pretence at an evening bath. She was reminded vividly of those days, so pleasant and seemingly so near, when, arm in arm with Peter, she had walked along the front at Doune, drawn by Val Pinkerton and his attendant galaxy.
At Charing Cross she was early. She strolled up and down at Paltock’s Corner, enjoying the evening air and her own anticipation of the evening’s pleasure. People were waiting – it was a favourite meeting-place; the scene had a pleasant vivacity. Then all at once she was startl
ed by a tap upon her elbow – a peremptory and pleasantly possessive tap.
‘Move on, please,’ said a voice close in her ear. She jumped and turned swiftly. It was Peter, smiling, raising his hat and replacing it at that astute angle befitting an evening of sophisticated entertainment.
‘What a turn you gave me,’ she said slowly; but her eyes were bright with the sudden sight of him.
‘Shakes up the liver,’ he answered her, with a grave imitation of Uncle Edward’s manner, as, taking her arm, he began to escort her along the darkening street.
She concealed her smile, which became a secret smile, evoked not so much by his ridiculous words as by the swift realisation of a sudden happiness.
‘Have we the tickets, madam?’ he enquired with extravagant raillery as they reached the gilded portals of the Empire. ‘Or have we left them on the bunker of the palace?’
They were in her hand even as he spoke, and, with a nod indicative of her own competence, she passed them over to him.
They sailed past an admiral of a commissionaire and entered the theatre at the exact moment when the orchestra, risen from its secret catacomb, burst triumphantly into Blake’s ‘Grand March’. Her cheeks flushed a little at the prominence of their entry; but his aplomb was magnificent: surrendering the penny for the programme with an air, finding their seats with ease, he surveyed the audience with nonchalance before flinging himself down beside her.
‘Plenty of swing, hasn’t it?’ she declared at the end of the overture. ‘Lovely seats we’ve got too.’ Looking around, she felt that she did not disgrace him; she had removed her hat and jacket and was agreeably conscious of her freshly ironed blouse and neatly arranged hair. She was conscious also of the delightful knowledge that she was going to enjoy herself. Actually it was five years since she had been inside a theatre.
‘Athleto and Angelo,’ she murmured, reading from her programme, ‘weight lifters.’ And as she spoke the curtain parted upon a scene of sylvan loveliness, where against a background adorned with arborescent forms which wound like limbs of octopi, bowing, stood Athleto and Angelo. Stout, massive of foot, and impassive of mien they were, with long, well-waxed moustaches and whitish tights clasped firmly to them by shining plaques of steel.
‘The Babes in the Wood,’ he insinuated gently into her ear. She laughed; so escaped as to find in his atrocious pleasantry the scintillant shafts of wit.
‘The little one is like Mr Andrews,’ she whispered reminiscently; ‘it’s the moustache, I think.’ They watched in silence whilst Athleto and Angelo raised with bursting eyeballs dumbbells of prodigious and progressive weight. ‘Quite good,’ she averred critically as the curtain fell to a thin rattle of applause strengthened by an orchestral blare.
‘That’s only the first turn,’ he returned indulgently. ‘Never worth much.’
But even as he spoke the curtain rose on the second turn, and hurriedly Lucy slanted her programme towards the lighted stage.
‘P. Elmer Harrison,’ she announced to Peter, ‘ coloured vocalist.’ Then eagerly she looked up.
Elmer was coloured: he was black. But, no matter the quality of his hide, he had a voice of resounding richness. And he had a lovely smile: a ravishing, red-lipped smile wherein blubber and ivory mingled entrancingly between his enormous ears. He sang the Toreador number from Carmen, and ‘When the Ebbtide Flows’.
With the ebbtide he was masterly, descending gradually to unknown caverns of the chromatic scale, his last notes so hollow and abysmal he was loudly encored from the gallery. Rebounding instantly from the depths to a pinnacle of sublimity, Elmer replied with ‘Home, Sweet Home’. It was very slow, very sweet, very sad; and it was fervent: there could be no possible question of the enduring affection of P. Elmer Harrison for his first aboriginal abode.
They agreed that Elmer was good – ‘passable’ was Peter’s word – but there was more than passable to follow. It was a ‘splendid programme’, as might have been inferred from Miss Tinto’s persipacity; and Lucy felt the full enjoyment of it course through her being like wine.
The Cascarellas came after Mr Harrison, in a triple bar turn. And, when they had revolved giddily at unbelievable heights, Otto and Olga walked sedately on to soothe the excited nerves with song, rendering: ‘Now I have to call him father’ and ‘ Have you got another girl at home like Mary?’ with delightful and ubiquitous harmony. Then came Primavesi – ‘ a dexterous juggler’, as was said of him in the Evening News, ‘of no mean order’; Ebenezer Edwards, immaculate in pink, ‘the ventriloquial huntsman’; Elle Tortamada, the boneless wonder, a contortionist of almost repellent subtlety.
But, of course, the breathless anticipation of the evening was centred on Marie, who came – whetting the appetite – late after the interval. And Marie was sublime. Actually there was no adjective sufficiently superlative for Marie: Marie was in tights and terrific form. She sang first, with her own provocative archness, ‘I’m afraid to go home in the dark’. And oh, how every male in that audience yearned to make Marie less afraid. Then she sang a song about a French lady affected in some mysterious manner by that insidious blight, embonpoint. ‘Um – bon – pom,’ sang Marie, and every time she sang it, which was often, she winked an eye, wagged her tights, and added the knowing affirmative, ‘wee-wee.’ ‘ Um – bon – pom’ – pom-pom – ‘wee-wee.’
It was devastating. Marie rolled about the stage. She strutted, she postured. With expert hands she made undulating movements suggestive of adiposity around her calves, around her bosom, around regions more intimate than her bosom. And always with a roll of drums would come that shattering, side-splitting, sempiternal cry, ‘Um – bon – pom’ and its echo, with cymbals, ‘ Wee-wee.’
The house rocked. Outside, in the city, trams clanged wearily along, policemen stood moodily at street corners, husbands were beating their wives, children – yes, even children were being born. But within – ah, within, Marie was the centre of the universe; the beloved of every male within the audience; the sister – under the skin – of Lucy.
The tears rolled down Lucy’s cheeks; ecstatically she clasped Peter’s hand.
‘Oh, Peter,’ she gasped, ‘she’s – she’s marvellous.’
Limp with laughter, he muttered weakly: ‘Wee-wee.’
Helpless, she made signs that she was expiring.
‘I’m – I’m –’ she panted. ‘I’m –’ But she could not say it.
‘Um – bon – pom,’ sang Marie for the last and hundredth time. And the whole house hurled the glorious reply: ‘Wee-wee.’
But that was not the climax, for, having reduced her audience to impotence, Marie proceeded metaphorically to stamp upon them with her genius. Bursting back upon them as one dishevelled by a drunken frenzy, she sang finally, ‘I’m the ruin that Cromwell knocked about a bit’. The ruin – Marie, dainty Marie, the ruin; and Cromwell, you know, Oliver Cromwell – oh, it was too much!
It was more than flesh and blood could stand. Strong men wept with mirth. Peter had the hiccough, and Lucy – Lucy lay back in her seat and let the tears of helpless joy run down her cheeks.
So, overcome, she saw Marie’s ultimate exit through a glorious ecstatic haze. So overwhelmed were they both they hardly saw the concluding item of the bioscope entitled: ‘The Cabin-boy’s Sister’. They could scarcely stand erect for ‘God Save the King’. Oh, rare, delicious, and enchanting treat! How she had loved it. Life with Peter by her side was glorious after all.
They came out of the steaming theatre into the cool street, where already a queue had formed for the second house.
‘To think they’ve got to go through it all again,’ she said more soberly, with a sympathetic memory of Athleto and Angelo. ‘But oh, Peter, it was marvellous!’
‘They’re paid to do it. Money. That’s what makes the wheels go round.’
He stopped to buy a paper from a yelling newsboy, then at the corner held up his hand imperiously to a yellow tram. The tram obeyed with a protesting screech.
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sp; ‘Up top?’ he enquired, looking over his shoulder as they boarded it.
She nodded her head. On the way home he read his paper industriously. She sat very close to him, glancing occasionally at him from under her hat, thinking how charming he had been to her; even to this last request as to which seat she preferred upon the tramcar. How she had enjoyed herself! She was happy, as happy as ever she had been with Frank. A feeling of extraordinary felicity stole over her; half closing her eyes, feeling his shoulder against her, she willed the tram to go swinging on and on like this. Always – always – always!
Then all at once he exclaimed:
‘I say – here’s news for you.’ She opened her eyes and looked at him. ‘Listen to this – they’ve made Uncle Edward a Canon.’ In an excited voice he read out a short paragraph relating the elevation of the Rev. Edward Moore to the dignity of Canon by virtue of his seniority and long service in the diocese. ‘That’s splendid for the old boy, isn’t it?’ he declared.
‘Splendid,’ she agreed; she was not enraptured by the news, but in her present mood she felt it mildly agreeable.
‘I must write and congratulate him,’ he said meditatively, after a moment.
‘That’s right,’ she assented.
He looked at her curiously, and later, as they went slowly along Flowers Street, he remarked suddenly: ‘Why aren’t you always like this, mother?’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked quickly.
‘Oh, you know what I mean.’ He was perfectly serious. ‘Natural – not so touchy and stiff.’
She made no answer.
When they got home, a letter lay on the floor of the hall.
‘From Uncle Edward,’ he exclaimed. ‘But it’s fiddler’s news now.’ But the letter, which bore a large gilt monogram upon the envelope, was not from the new Canon. It was from Eva, asking him to play tennis on the following Saturday, and with a postscript which said: ‘Bring your mother with you if she cares to come.’ He gazed at her as though to say, ‘Now you know what I mean. What have you to say about this?’