L.A.G. Strong
Deliverance
To
Alan White
friend, colleague, publisher
in threefold gratitude
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Note on the Author
Chapter 1
The Matron turned in her chair.
“Well, Bagshawe,” she began officially, then, smiling down at him, she added, “Georgie. Are you ready?”
She always gave an orphan his surname first of all, and afterwards—if he were well-behaved—his first name, to establish him one of the family. Georgie, well-behaved and washed, looked up at her.
“Yes, Matron.”
“Got your clean handkerchief?” She leaned forward as she spoke, and gave his woollen scarf a practised tweak.
“Yes, Matron.”
“Your hair isn’t very tidy. Look at this bit sticking up.” She turned to Mr Entiknapp, the Warden, who was sipping his tea at the other side of the table. Mr Entiknapp shook his head and said, “Tck tck.”
“I couldn’t get it to stay down, Matron. I brushed it ever so hard.”
“Tck tck,” commiserated Mr Entiknapp.
Since the tuft was obviously determined to stick up, the Matron compromised by pulling Georgie towards her and making further adjustments to his scarf. His coat was too big for him, and made of a stiff reefer serge; it stood up around his neck, giving him the effect of being tucked in.
“We can’t have your Aunt saying we let you go out untidy.”
“No, indeed,” Mr Entiknapp assented. Georgie did not say anything. He looked steadfastly at Matron with the directness of a child who is utterly in the hands of those around him.
“There,” Matron said. “That’s better. Now: are you sure you know your way?”
“Yes, Matron.”
Georgie gave a great nod to support his answer. Here he was quite confident. He had done the journey many times, and though of course it had its anxious moments, there was no difficulty about the way.
“Got your money for the tram?”
The three-halfpence clutched in a moist palm inside his coat pocket, Georgie nodded again.
“And for coming back?”
Georgie gave a deep sigh. It was responsible work, keeping so many important things clear in his mind.
“I expect Uncle Ed—Mr Penberthy—will drive me back.”
He looked anxiously from one to the other, to see if they would pounce on his slip of the tongue, but they gave no sign. Matron merely nodded.
“But I’ve got another threepence, just in case,” he told her.
“That’s right, then. Off you go. And remember, back by half-past six.”
“Yes, Matron.”
Georgie turned to the Warden, in case he too had any instructions to give, but Mr Entiknapp, who was buttering himself another piece of toast, just smiled and nodded.
Outside the door, Georgie sighed again. It was very confusing, all this business of people’s names and titles. He knew of course that Mr Penberthy wasn’t his real uncle, in the way that his Aunt Butters was his real aunt: but, when you always called a person Uncle Ed, or Uncle Eddie, it was very hard to remember that it was a private saying and not to be used when you mentioned him to other people. At the foot of the dark stone stairs Georgie stopped again, and gave an even deeper sigh, this time of relief. Ah well: that problem was over. He must now address all his powers to the journey.
His Aunt Butters kept a little shop on the far side of the straggling West Country town. Georgie was allowed to visit her roughly once a month, for tea on a Sunday. In the summer, when now and then there was a whole holiday, he would spend part of the day with Uncle Eddie Penberthy, who divided his time between a market garden and a small herbalist’s business, and delivered his wares in a van. An enterprising and modern-minded man, Uncle Ed had been one of the first tradesmen in the town to go in for one of these new-fangled motor vans. What was more, he made it go. The happiest hours Georgie could remember had been those he spent sitting beside the driver’s seat in this ancient rickety van, perched upon a cushion which Mr Penberthy declared to be sacred to his use alone, and to be produced on no other pretext or occasion.
The first stage of Georgie’s journey was a walk of perhaps three hundred yards to the corner of Fore Street, where he must catch the tram which would take him the mile and a half across from the suburb where the Orphanage was to the suburb which supported Aunt Butters’ shop. This walk was easy, calling for care at one crossing only, but it was long enough to allow a good deal of worry. The three-halfpence in his hand was safe enough, but he reached down more than once with his other hand to make sure that the threepence which constituted his reserve, his insurance against mishap, had not mysteriously spirited itself away. No. No. There were the reassuring hard edges of the pennies, safe in his pocket. The dreadful memory was still vivid of an afternoon when they had slipped down through a hole in the lining, and his exploring fingers met nothing at all. He hadn’t been able to believe it: he had stood still, waiting for the nightmare to pass, then put his fingers in again. Waves of cold and heat had flowed over him. Aunt Butters finally found the pennies, right down in a corner of his jacket; but the memory remained, as one of the many instances of the way in which the world could suddenly turn on one. There was, as Georgie saw things, a very small margin between safety and all sorts of unknown terrors.
But the pennies were there all right this time, and after touching them twice, and making sure that there was no hole in the lining, Georgie felt reasonably safe and confident. He gave another of those sudden sighs which were his unconscious comment upon life, and went on to the place where the tram stopped. A white notice on a standard proclaimed that cars stopped by request. Georgie had given up wondering why the notice said cars when it meant trams. Nobody’s explanation was satisfactory, and Uncle Eddie Penberthy’s, that the tramway people did not know any better, far from being a comfort, frightened him. If important official people didn’t get things right, how were ordinary puzzled folk to go about their business?
The tram had to come up a steep hill, swing round a right-angle turn, and run a bare hundred yards to the stop. Georgie was lucky. There was not long to wait. The overhead wire began to sing with excitement and Georgie fixed his eyes expectantly on the corner. Soon there sounded a distant clanking and docketing, which suddenly became loud as the blunt bow of the tram thrust itself up like the snout of some great, blundering animal, then dipped as the whole length of it reached level ground. With a sideways shake and a shudder, and a grinding of metal it edged its way round the sharp curve, then bore down on Georgie, its enormous glass eyes opening wider as it came. It was an act of faith always for Georgie to stick out his hand and ask the huge rushing structure to stop and pick him up. He felt a little less apologetic this time, as there was a lady waiting too.
The tram pulled up, without looking at them. Georgie stood back, and smiled respectfully at the lady. She mounted the step, with a great rustling of skirts, and a waft of scent reached Georgie as he climbed on after her. He hardly noticed it in his care to grasp the rail and put his feet firmly on the step.
The seats ran lengthwise along the inside of the tram, so that the passengers sat facing each other. On top, they were separate, with adjustable backs, so that you could face the way the tram was going. Georgie went inside, because it was still chilly and he had been having a cold. The lady had gone further up the same side. He couldn’t see her without leaning forward. He sat up straight, his feet dangling. If he stretched, his toes could just touch the floor
board. He sighed again, wishing the conductor would come. He couldn’t feel really at ease until he had paid and been given his ticket. Georgie was always anxious until everything had been done which was needed to regularize the situation. Sit in a tram without a ticket, and you were a sort of outlaw; you had no right to be there. Anything might happen to you.
After a minute or two the conductor came, relieved Georgie of the moist three-halfpence, and gave him ticket Number SG2041 in exchange. Georgie held it thoughtfully, and leaned back against the seat. Now he could afford to relax and look around him. Van Houten’s Cocoa: Monkey Brand: Pears’ Soap: a whole series of interesting and mysterious articles were commended to the passengers’ attention in small panels let into the tops of the window-panes, some of them reinforced by pictures: a dear old Granny person in spectacles with a little girl at her side, a dirty old tramp writing a letter—what blots and thumb marks he must be making on the paper!—and a lady leaning over a pool dressed as an angel, but with tiny, gauzy wings which had worried Georgie ever since he first saw her. He could not believe that they would be long or strong enough to carry her, especially when compared to the wings of real angels in holy pictures and the stained-glass windows of the only church Georgie had seen.
Suddenly he became aware that someone was smiling at him, and saw a nice jovial-looking workman sitting almost opposite, who, as soon as he caught Georgie’s eye, gave him a friendly wink. Had Georgie known it, he had been the target of several sympathetic glances. The Orphanage did not have a definite uniform, but everyone knew the serge coats and the queer little navy-blue peaked cap with a button on top.
The workman had a most friendly smile. Georgie felt his face crease in return.
The workman leaned forward. “Got the afternoon orf?”
“Yes.” It was little above a whisper. Georgie didn’t like the sound of his own voice in public.
“Not runnin’ away?”
The smile, and another wink, showed that the question was a joke, but Georgie hastened to make things clear.
“Oh no! I’m going to tea to my Auntie.”
“That’s right,” the workman said. “She’ll have nice things for you, I’ll lay.”
Georgie smiled. His mind had at once gone ahead to a view of Aunt Butters’ little table, with the things on it that she always had when he came.
“Wot’ll she give ee? Sossidges? Cream buns? Bread ‘n drippin’?”
Georgie shook his head. These expectations of the workman disturbed him. Not only were they quite unlike Aunt Butters’ notion of a special tea, but they demanded consideration on different grounds. Georgie didn’t know whether he would like them, and he wondered why the workman should think them suitable for him. This opened a door to new perplexities, a world in which a special tea should be different, and probably other things different too, calling therefore for different behaviour in response to them; behaviour about which he knew nothing.
All this passed very quickly across Georgie’s mind, while he continued to smile mechanically at the workman. The workman, he saw, would have liked him to tell the various good things he was going to have, and it was unkind not to tell: but he couldn’t get a word out, for the life of him. The workman went on smiling, but some of the light went out of his face. He sat back, and Georgie saw he was disappointed. Oh dear. How difficult life was. Everyone always seemed to be expecting things of you, and, however hard you tried, you were bound to fall short.
Georgie looked out of the window, and tried to fix his interest on the shops they were passing, but he had a feeling of guilt which kept drawing his mind back to the workman and making him give quick surreptitious glances, afraid to be caught and shown up in some new failure. The workman bore no malice, though, for when a few stops later he rose to get out, he winked goodbye and beamed as broadly as ever. And Georgie, his pleasure and gratitude revived now that the man was getting out and taking the problem with him, Georgie smiled back with his whole soul at the genial man who had been interested and had spoken to him.
“So long, my son. Have a nice time.”
Oh, how good the world was, and how kind the people in it! Warmth glowed in Georgie’s heart, and his feelings rose, almost suffocating him, pricking the backs of his eyes. Then the tide ebbed, leaving him chastened, subdued, happy, ready to receive life.
When in after years he looked back into his childhood, as down a narrowing corridor, Georgie saw always the same person, smaller in the long perspective, but with feelings as sharp and heart as big, perhaps bigger; for while the stature dwindled the heart grew larger in proportion, and the feelings had less to distract them. It was the immediacy of a feeling that united so many episodes in his life: and the earliest was no less painful than those of adult years. And this peculiar sensation of being left empty and receptive after the ebb of a tide of strong feeling was the one that recurred most often and most recognizably. Yet this frequency, this familiarity, did not mean that he lost particular instances; so that he was always to remember this afternoon and the workman, never seen again, who smiled at him from across the inside of the old lumbering tram.
So peaceful was the mood, and so still, that under its spell Georgie forgot his anxieties and was suddenly jolted to hear the conductor call out Endsleigh Lane, and realize that the tram was grinding and swaying to his stop. He jumped up, and held on to the upright post for support, knowing from experience how, just before it stopped, the tram gave a long lateral shudder which had been known to upset the balance of ladies with shopping baskets and cause them to stagger against their seated fellow travellers, occasioning apologies and confusion. There had been a regrettable time when Aunt Butters had collapsed sideways upon the lap of a jocose man with a red face and a smell of beer, who affected to take a flirtatious view of the incident and replied to her flustered apologies that it was a pleasure; adding to the public at large that he didn’t mind how many handsome ladies came and sat in his lap. All of it most unsuitable to Aunt Butters: Georgie’s cheeks had burned for weeks afterwards whenever he recalled the mishap. She had been quite upset, and had hardly spoken for the next hour, answering his attempts at conversation absently from the depths of some gentle but outraged trance.
The tram slowed, shuddered wildly, sending thrills up the post and along Georgie’s arm, and stopped, rocking two or three times from end to end from the suddenness of its halt.
“Here you are, my son.”
The conductor’s big, rather dirty hand helped Georgie down. He said “Thank you,” stood on the cobbles, looked left and right, and quickly hopped across the perilous gap between the track and the pavement. Safely there, he turned, and watched the driver twirl his handles in answer to the bell the conductor had stamped on as soon as Georgie was safely off. The great vehicle jerked into motion, and went on its way, rocking once more from end to end, its trolley singing on the wire overhead. Strange, that it made such music up above, and such a set of clanking clonking metal noises down below. Still, they were all parts of its wonder and of the privilege of being a tram.
Aunt Butters still liked horse trams. Well, it was different, Georgie supposed, when you had been brought up to a thing. Or was it perhaps because of the jolts which led to such embarrassing incidents? He hadn’t liked to ask if the horse trams jolted too, for fear of reminding her of the jovial beery man. Georgie was glad that he at any rate had never known anything but these grand electric trams, which must, he felt sure, be far more wonderful and splendid.
He was in the suburbs now, quite far out, in a district that was still quietly residential, and had hardly any shops. Aunt Butters’ was two-thirds of the way up Endsleigh Lane, past Henderson’s the nurseryman on the corner. There were trees, tall ones, quite close to it. An old house, it had been one of the lodges on an estate. When the owner of the big house died, and the estate was sold for development, this little house had been left. Others presently grew up around it, till now it was one of a series of numbers; Number Three, Summer Hill, Endsleigh Lane. Yet i
t kept its unique character, being obviously of a different age and class from the others, and having the air of an elderly and good-looking retired housekeeper, or a nanny from some distinguished family, a little shabby perhaps, but neat in clothes of excellent material. The conversion of its large front room into a shop had been made without violence to its design, and the window was hardly any bigger than of old.
Georgie had not yet got to thinking of it in relation to the other houses or to anything else. It was just the home of his Aunt Butters.
The old house door was still in its place, though it was only visible on Sundays and the afternoon of half-days. All the rest of the time it stood open, inwards, half hidden in the little dark hallway, so that people could get into the shop. The knocker was high up. It gave Georgie the one way of measuring his growth which made any impression on him. The twice yearly measurement at the Orphanage, in terms of feet and inches, meant very little to him. Only a year ago he had not been able to reach the knocker properly, but had to stretch up on tiptoe, even to give a little jump, and flip it upward from below, so that it fell back upon the door with a single limp flop. A great ambition had risen in him, to be able one day to give a brisk rap-rap, like the postman. He wasn’t quite ready for that yet: there was still too long a stretch up to give him any real purchase on the knocker. Still, he could now take hold of it with his finger-tips, and give a gentle, rather ingratiating double knock. It was an improvement on the old loose single thump, but it was not yet good enough.
There was never long to wait. His Aunt Butters was always ready, lurking in the little cosy room at the back. If nothing was passing in the road he could hear the stiff whisper of her skirt and the soft clicking of the long bead necklace which hung in three heavy strands over her large sloping bosom. He heard them now, before the whispering sound. Then came the stiff click of unlocking the door, the musical clink as the chain slid out of its runnel—and the door fell open sideways, away from him, with its funny sucking noise like a loud indrawn breath, and revealed Aunt Butters blinking at the daylight.
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