The Grim Smile of the Five Towns

by Arnold Bennett

  ‘We don’t like clothes, do we?’ said his mother. ‘We want to tumble back into our tub. We aren’t much for clothes anyway. We’se a little Hottentot, aren’t we?’

  And she gradually covered him with one garment or another until there was nothing left of him but his head and his hands and feet. And she sat him up on her knees, so as to fasten his things behind. And then it might have been observed that he was no longer breathing hard, but giving vent to a sound between a laugh and a cry, while sucking his thumb and gazing round the room.

  ‘That’s our little affected cry that we start for our milk, isn’t it?’ his mother explained to him.

  And he agreed that it was.

  And before Emmie could fly across the room for the bottle, all ready and waiting, his mouth, in the shape of a perfect rectangle, had monopolized five-sixths of his face, and he was scarlet and bellowing with impatience.

  He took the bottle like a tiger his prey, and seized his mother’s hand that held the bottle, and he furiously pumped the milk into that insatiable gulf of a stomach. But he found time to gaze about the room too. A tear stood in each roving eye, caused by the effort of feeding.

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ said his mother. ‘Now look round and see what’s happening. Curiosity! Well, if you WILL bob your head, I can’t help it.’

  ‘Of course you can!’ the nurse didn’t say.

  Then he put his finger into his mouth side by side with the bottle, and gagged himself, and choked, and gave a terrible—excuse the word—hiccough. After which he seemed to lose interest in the milk, and the pumping operations slackened and then ceased.

  ‘Goosey!’ whispered his mother, ‘getting seepy? Is the sandman throwing sand in your eyes? Old Sandman at it? Sh—’ … He had gone.

  Emmie took him. The women spoke in whispers. And Mrs Blackshaw, after a day spent in being a mother, reconstituted herself a wife, and began to beautify herself for her husband.

  II

  Yes, there was a Mr Blackshaw, and with Mr Blackshaw the tragedy of the bath commences. Mr Blackshaw was a very important young man. Indeed, it is within the mark to say that, next to his son, he was the most important young man in Bursley. For Mr Blackshaw was the manager of the newly opened Municipal Electricity Works. And the Municipal Electricity had created more excitement and interest than anything since the 1887 Jubilee, when an ox was roasted whole in the market-place and turned bad in the process. Had Bursley been a Swiss village, or a French country town, or a hamlet in Arizona, it would have had its electricity fifteen years ago, but being only a progressive English Borough, with an annual value of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, it struggled on with gas till well into the twentieth century. Its great neighbour Hanbridge had become acquainted with electricity in the nineteenth century.

  All the principal streets and squares, and every decent shop that Hanbridge competition had left standing, and many private houses, now lighted themselves by electricity, and the result was splendid and glaring and coldly yellow. Mr. Blackshaw developed into the hero of the hour. People looked at him in the street as though he had been the discoverer and original maker of electricity. And if the manager of the gasworks had not already committed murder, it was because the manager of the gasworks had a right sense of what was due to his position as vicar’s churchwarden at St Peter’s Church.

  But greatness has its penalties. And the chief penalty of Mr Blackshaw’s greatness was that he could not see Roger have his nightly bath. It was impossible for Mr Blackshaw to quit his arduous and responsible post before seven o’clock in the evening. Later on, when things were going more smoothly, he might be able to get away; but then, later on, his son’s bath would not be so amusing and agreeable as it then, by all reports, was. The baby was, of course, bathed on Saturday nights, but Sunday afternoon and evening Mr Blackshaw was obliged to spend with his invalid mother at Longshaw. It was on the sole condition of his weekly presence thus in her house that she had consented not to live with the married pair. And so Mr Blackshaw could not witness Roger’s bath. He adored Roger. He understood Roger. He weighed, nursed, and fed Roger. He was ‘up’ in all the newest theories of infant rearing. In short, Roger was his passion, and he knew everything of Roger except Roger’s bath. And when his wife met him at the front door of a night at seven-thirty and launched instantly into a description of the wonders, delights, and excitations of Roger’s latest bath, Mr Blackshaw was ready to tear his hair with disappointment and frustration.

  ‘I suppose you couldn’t put it off for a couple of hours one night, May?’ he suggested at supper on the evening of the particular bath described above.

  ‘Sidney!’ protested Mrs Blackshaw, pained.

  Mr Blackshaw felt that he had gone too far, and there was a silence.

  ‘Well!’ said Mr Blackshaw at length, ‘I have just made up my mind. I’m going to see that Kid’s bath, and, what’s more, I’m going to see it tomorrow. I don’t care what happens.’

  ‘But how shall you manage to get away, darling?’

  ‘You will telephone me about a quarter of an hour before you’re ready to begin, and I’ll pretend it’s something very urgent, and scoot off.’

  ‘Well, that will be lovely, darling!’ said Mrs Blackshaw. ‘I WOULD like you to see him in the bath, just once! He looks so—’

  And so on.

  The next day, Mr Blackshaw, that fearsome autocrat of the Municipal Electricity Works, was saying to himself all day that at five o’clock he was going to assist at the spectacle of his wonderful son’s bath. The prospect inspired him. So much so that every hand on the place was doing its utmost in fear and trembling, and the whole affair was running with the precision and smoothness of a watch.

  From four o’clock onwards, Mr Blackshaw, in the solemn, illuminated privacy of the managerial office, safe behind glass partitions, could no more contain his excitement. He hovered in front of the telephone, waiting for it to ring. Then, at a quarter to five, just when he felt he couldn’t stand it any longer, and was about to ring up his wife instead of waiting for her to ring him up, he saw a burly shadow behind the glass door, and gave a desolate sigh. That shadow could only be thrown by one person, and that person was his Worship the Mayor of Bursley. His Worship entered the private office with mayoral assurance, pulling in his wake a stout old lady whom he introduced as his aunt from Wolverhampton. And he calmly proposed that Mr Blackshaw should show the mayoral aunt over the new Electricity Works!

  Mr Blackshaw was sick of showing people over the Works. Moreover, he naturally despised the Mayor. All permanent officials of municipalities thoroughly despise their mayors (up their sleeves). A mayor is here today and gone tomorrow, whereas a permanent official is permanent. A mayor knows nothing about anything except his chain and the rules of debate, and he is, further, a tedious and meddlesome person—in the opinion of permanent officials.

  So Mr Blackshaw’s fury at the inept appearance of the Mayor and the mayoral aunt at this critical juncture may be imagined. The worst of it was, he didn’t know how to refuse the Mayor.

  Then the telephone-bell rang.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Mr Blackshaw, with admirably simulated politeness, going to the instrument. ‘Are you there? Who is it?’

  ‘It’s me, darling,’ came the thin voice of his wife far away at Bleakridge. ‘The water’s just getting hot. We’re nearly ready. Can you come now?’

  ‘By Jove! Wait a moment!’ exclaimed Mr Blackshaw, and then turning to his visitors, ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘No,’ said the Mayor.

  ‘All those three new dynamos that they’ve got at the Hanbridge Electricity Works have just broken down. I knew they would. I told them they would!’

  ‘Dear, dear!’ said the Mayor of Bursley, secretly delighted by this disaster to a disdainful rival. ‘Why! They’ll have the town in darkness. What are they going to do?’

  ‘They want me to go over at once. But, of course, I can’t. At least, I must give myself the pleasure of showing you
and this lady over our Works, first.’

  ‘Nothing of the kind, Mr Blackshaw!’ said the Mayor. ‘Go at once. Go at once. If Bursley can be of any assistance to Hanbridge in such a crisis, I shall be only too pleased. We will come tomorrow, won’t we, auntie?’

  Mr Blackshaw addressed the telephone.

  ‘The Mayor is here, with a lady, and I was just about to show them over the Works, but his Worship insists that I come at once.’

  ‘Certainly,’ the Mayor put in pompously.

  ‘Wonders will never cease,’ came the thin voice of Mrs Blackshaw through the telephone. ‘It’s very nice of the old thing! What’s his lady friend like?’

  ‘Not like anything. Unique!’ replied Mr Blackshaw.

  ‘Young?’ came the voice.

  ‘Dates from the thirties,’ said Mr Blackshaw. ‘I’m coming.’ And rang off.

  ‘I didn’t know there was any electric machinery as old as that,’ said the mayoral aunt.

  ‘We’ll just look about us a bit,’ the Mayor remarked. ‘Don’t lose a moment, Mr Blackshaw.’

  And Mr Blackshaw hurried off, wondering vaguely how he should explain the lie when it was found out, but not caring much. After all, he could easily ascribe the episode to the trick of some practical joker.

  III

  He arrived at his commodious and electrically lit residence in the very nick of time, and full to overflowing with innocent paternal glee. Was he not about to see Roger’s tub? Roger was just ready to be carried upstairs as Mr Blackshaw’s latchkey turned in the door.

  ‘Wait a sec!’ cried Mr Blackshaw to his wife, who had the child in her arms, ‘I’ll carry him up.’

  And he threw away his hat, stick, and overcoat and grabbed ecstatically at the infant. And he had got perhaps halfway up the stairs, when lo! the electric light went out. Every electric light in the house went out.

  ‘Great Scott!’ breathed Mr Blackshaw, aghast.

  He pulled aside the blind of the window at the turn of the stairs, and peered forth. The street was as black as your hat, or nearly so.

  ‘Great Scott!’ he repeated. ‘May, get candles.’

  Something had evidently gone wrong at the Works. Just his luck! He had quitted the Works for a quarter of an hour, and the current had failed!

  Of course, the entire house was instantly in an uproar, turned upside down, startled out of its life. But a few candles soon calmed its transports. And at length Mr Blackshaw gained the bedroom in safety, with the offspring of his desires comfortable in a shawl.

  ‘Give him to me,’ said May shortly. ‘I suppose you’ll have to go back to the Works at once?’

  Mr Blackshaw paused, and then nerved himself; but while he was pausing, May, glancing at the two feeble candles, remarked: ‘It’s very tiresome. I’m sure I shan’t be able to see properly.’

  ‘No!’ almost shouted Mr Blackshaw. ‘I’ll watch this kid have his bath or I’ll die for it! I don’t care if all the Five Towns are in darkness. I don’t care if the Mayor’s aunt has got caught in a dynamo and is suffering horrible tortures. I’ve come to see this bath business, and dashed if I don’t see it!’

  ‘Well, don’t stand between the bath and the fire, dearest,’ said May coldly.

  Meanwhile, Emmie, having pretty nearly filled the bath with a combination of hot and cold waters, dropped the floating thermometer into it, and then added more waters until the thermometer indicated the precise temperature proper for a baby’s bath. But you are not to imagine that Mrs Blackshaw trusted a thermometer—

  She did not, however, thrust her bared arm into the water this time. No! Roger, who never cried before his bath, was crying, was indubitably crying. And he cried louder and louder.

  ‘Stand where he can’t see you, dearest. He isn’t used to you at bath-time,’ said Mrs Blackshaw still coldly. ‘Are you, my pet? There! There!’

  Mr Blackshaw effaced himself, feeling a fool. But Roger continued to cry. He cried himself purple. He cried till the veins stood out on his forehead and his mouth was like a map of Australia. He cried himself into a monster of ugliness. Neither mother nor nurse could do anything with him at all.

  ‘I think you’ve upset him, dearest,’ said Mrs Blackshaw even more coldly. ‘Hadn’t you better go?’

  ‘Well—’ protested the father.

  ‘I think you had better go,’ said Mrs Blackshaw, adding no term of endearment, and visibly controlling herself with difficulty.

  And Mr Blackshaw went. He had to go. He went out into the unelectric night. He headed for the Works, not because he cared twopence, at that moment, about the accident at the Works, whatever it was; but simply because the Works was the only place to go to. And even outside in the dark street he could hear the rousing accents of his progeny.

  People were talking to each other as they groped about in the road, and either making jokes at the expense of the new Electricity Department, or frankly cursing it with true Five Towns directness of speech. And as Mr Blackshaw went down the hill into the town his heart was as black as the street itself with rage and disappointment. He had made his child cry!

  Someone stopped him.

  ‘Eh, Mester Blackshaw!’ said a voice, and under the voice a hand struck a match to light a pipe. ‘What’s th’ maning o’ this eclipse as you’m treating us to?’

  Mr Blackshaw looked right through the inquirer—a way he had when his brain was working hard. And he suddenly smiled by the light of the match.

  ‘That child wasn’t crying because I was there,’ said Mr Blackshaw with solemn relief. ‘Not at all! He was crying because he didn’t understand the candles. He isn’t used to candles, and they frightened him.’

  And he began to hurry towards the Works.

  At the same instant the electric light returned to Bursley. The current was resumed.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Mr Blackshaw, sighing.

  THE SILENT BROTHERS

  I

  John and Robert Hessian, brothers, bachelors, and dressed in mourning, sat together after supper in the parlour of their house at the bottom of Oldcastle Street, Bursley. Maggie, the middle-aged servant, was clearing the table.

  ‘Leave the cloth and the coffee,’ said John, the elder, ‘Mr Liversage is coming in.’

  ‘Yes, Mr John,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Slate, Maggie,’ Robert ordered laconically, with a gesture towards the mantelpiece behind him.

  ‘Yes, Mr Robert,’ said Maggie.

  She gave him a slate with slate-pencil attached, which hung on a nail near the mantlepiece.

  Robert took the slate and wrote on it: ‘What is Liversage coming about?’

  And he pushed the slate across the table to John.

  Whereupon John wrote on the slate: ‘Don’t know. He telephoned me he wanted to see us tonight.’

  And he pushed back the slate to Robert.

  This singular procedure was not in the least attributable to deafness on the part of the brothers; they were in the prime of life, aged forty-two and thirty-nine respectively, and in complete possession of all their faculties. It was due simply to the fact that they had quarrelled, and would not speak to each other. The history of their quarrel would be incredible were it not full of that ridiculous pathetic quality known as human nature, and did not similar things happen frequently in the manufacturing Midlands, where the general temperament is a fearful and strange compound of pride, obstinacy, unconquerableness, romance, and stupidity. Yes, stupidity.

  No single word had passed between the brothers in that house for ten years. On the morning after the historical quarrel Robert had not replied when John spoke to him. ‘Well,’ said John’s secret heart—and John’s secret heart ought to have known better, as it was older than its brother heart—’I’ll teach him a lesson. I won’t speak until he does.’ And Robert’s secret heart had somehow divined this idiotic resolution, and had said: ‘We shall see.’ Maggie had been the first to notice the stubborn silence. Then their friends noticed it, especially Mr Liversage, th
e solicitor, their most intimate friend. But you are not to suppose that anybody protested very strongly. For John and Robert were not the kind of men with whom liberties may be taken; and, moreover, Bursley was slightly amused—at the beginning. It assumed the attitude of a disinterested spectator at a fight. It wondered who would win. Of course, it called both the brothers fools, yet in a tone somewhat sympathetic, because such a thing as had occurred to the Hessians might well occur to any man gifted with the true Bursley spirit. There is this to be said for a Bursley man: Having made his bed, he will lie on it, and he will not complain.

  The Hessians suffered severely by their self-imposed dumbness, but they suffered like Stoics. Maggie also suffered, and Maggie would not stand it. Maggie it was who had invented the slate. Indeed, they had heard some plain truths from that stout, bustling woman. They had not yielded, but they had accepted the slate in order to minimize the inconvenience to Maggie, and afterwards they deigned to make use of it for their own purposes. As for friends—friends accustomed themselves to the status quo. There came a time when the spectacle of two men chattering to everybody else in a company, and not saying a word to each other, no longer appealed to Bursley’s sense of humour. The silent scenes at which Maggie assisted every day did not, either, appeal to Maggie’s sense of humour, because she had none. So the famous feud grew into a sort of elemental fact of Nature. It was tolerated as the weather is tolerated. The brothers acquired pride in it; even Bursley regarded it as an interesting municipal curiosity. The sole imperfection in a lovely and otherwise perfect quarrel was that John and Robert, being both employed at Roycroft’s Majolica Manufactory, the one as works manager and the other as commercial traveller, were obliged to speak to each other occasionally in the way of business. Artistically, this was a pity, though they did speak very sternly and distantly. The partial truce necessitated by Roycroft’s was confined strictly to Roycroft’s. And when Robert was not on his journeys, these two tall, strong, dark, bearded men might often be seen of a night walking separately and doggedly down Oldcastle Street from the works, within five yards of each other.