Hatter's Castle

by A. J. Cronin

  He was turning to go into his shop when he was again accosted. A little man, with all the restless timidity of a rabbit, had bolted out from next door to speak with him. It was Dron. Contempt marked Brodie’s drawn features as he gazed at the jerky agitation of the other,, and his self-assurance, restored always by an appreciation of the terror he could inspire in others, returned, whilst he surmised disdainfully the object of the little man’s visit. Would he be going to tell him about the arrival of his brat? he wondered, as he noted the peculiar, suppressed look that marked him.

  Dron’s aspect was certainly remarkable, as, trembling with a repressed excitement, rubbing his hands rapidly together with a rustling sound, his pale eyelashes blinking ceaselessly, his legs shaking as though with tetanus, he essayed, stammeringly, to speak.

  ‘Out with it, then,’ sneered Brodie, ‘and don’t keep me on my own door-step any longer. What species o’ animal is it ye’ve been blessed wi’ this time?’

  ‘It’s no’ exactly that,’ said Dron hurriedly, with a fresh spasms of fidgets. Then he added slowly, like one who has rehearsed it carefully: ‘I was just wonderin’ if you were quite sure you didna want these premises o’ mine I offered you last back end.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the empty shop. ‘ You may have forgotten that you threw me out on the pavement that day, but I havena! I havena forgotten that ye flung me out on the broad o’ my back.’ His voice rose in a shrill crescendo at the last words.

  ‘Ye fell down, my little mannie, that was all. If ye chose to sit on your backside outside my place o’ business I canna blame ye; but if it’s no’ as pleasant a position as ye might find, then talk to your wife about it. It’s no affair o’ mine,’ said Brodie, calmly. Yet the other’s eye fascinated him, pervaded as it was by two antagonistic emotions warring for supremacy, filled by such a look as might occupy the half-terrified, half-exultant eye of a rabbit that views an enemy caught in its own snare.

  ‘I was askin’ye if ye were sure,’ Dron palpitated, without heeding the interruption; then he hurried on:

  ‘I say are ye quite sure ye dinna want these premises o’ mine? Because if ye did want the shop, ye canna have it I havena let it! I havena let it! I’ve sold it! I’ve sold it to the Mungo Hat & Hosiery Company.’ He shouted out the last words in triumph, then he rushed on. ‘I’ve gotten more, than my price – for they have unlimited capital they’re going to fit up a grand, big emporium with everything, and a special window and a special department for hats and caps. I knew ye would like to hear the news, so I couldna wait. The minute I had signed the contract I came round.’ His voice rose gloatingly, almost to hysteria. ‘Put that in your pipe and smoke it, you gurly, big bully!’ he yelled. ‘Smoke it till it sickens ye. That’ll learn ye to mishandle folks weaker than yoursel’.’ Then, as if in fear that Brodie would attack him, he whirled round and scuttled off to his burrow.

  Brodie stood perfectly still. Dron’s pusillanimous ebullition disturbed him not at all, but his news was catastrophic. Would misfortune never desert him? The Mungo company, originating in, and at first confined solely to, Glasgow, had for some time past been reaching out tentacles into the adjacent countryside; like pioneers, realising the advantage of the principle of multiple shops, they had invaded most of the townships in Lanarkshire and now they were stretching slowly down the Clyde. This incursion, Brodie knew, had meant disaster for many a local shopkeeper, for, not only did the Company indulge in such flashing pyrotechnics as bargain sales and glittering window displays, wherein their articles were marked, not in plain honest shillings, but in deceptive figures ending cunningly in 11¾d, and were actually adorned by trumpery cards which tempted the fancy seductively under such terms as: ‘The Thing for the Bairns,’ or ‘Real Value,’ or even ‘ Exquisite,’ but they cut prices ruthlessly in the face of competition. They were in Darroch and Ardfillan, that he knew, but, although they were not exclusively hatters, he had often flattered himself into thinking that they would leave Levenford alone because of his old-established, deeply rooted business. He had told himself disdainfully that they wouldn’t sell a hat in a year. And now they were coming! He was aware that it would be a fight, and he would make it a bitter fight, in which he would let them try what they could do to James Brodie, then take the consequences. A sudden realisation took him of the proximity they would occupy to him, and a bitter surge of black resentment made him shake a menacing fist at the empty shop as he turned and went into his own.

  To Perry, meekly ubiquitous as always, he threw out: ‘ What are ye glumping at there, you dough-faced sheep? Do some work for a change. That empty look of yours fair scunners me.’

  ‘What would you like me to do, sir? I’m not serving.’

  ‘I can see you’re not serving. Do you mean to infer that I have no customers, me that’s got the best and most solid business in the town. It’s the snow that’s keeping folks away, you fool. Clear up the place a bit, or take a bar of soap and go out and wash your feet,’ shouted Brodie as he banged into his office.

  He sat down. Now that he was alone, and his bold front to the world slightly lowered, the almost imperceptible change in him became faintly discernible in the tincture of hollowness which touched the smooth, firm line of his cheek, in the tenuous line of bitterness than ran downwards from the angle of his mouth. On his desk the Herald lay unopened – he had not looked at a paper for months, an omission supremely significant – and now, with a gesture of negligent distaste, he slashed it off his desk and on to the floor with a fierce swap of his open palm. Immediately his hand sought his pocket, and he drew out, with a familiar unconsciousness, his pipe and tobacco pouch, looked at them suddenly as if he wondered how they had come into his hands, then laid them on the desk before him, with a grimace of aversion. He did not wish to smoke on this morning which had been so consistently miserable for him. Although there was a bright coal fire in the room and, despite his vaunted indifference to the inclemency of the weather, he suddenly felt chilly: whilst a shiver ran through him he reflected on what Grierson had said. ‘ There’s nothing to keep out the cold, or cheer a man up, like a wee droppie.’ A wee droppie! what an expression for a grown man to use, thought Brodie; but it was like Grierson to talk like that, with his soft, pussy voice and his creeping, sneaking ways. The obvious construction of the remark which rose to his mind was that, at the Cross, they had him a drunkard already, he who hadn’t touched drink for months.

  He jerked out of his seat impatiently, and looked through the frosted window at the snow which was everywhere, on the ground, on the frozen Leven, on the house tops, in the air, falling relentlessly, as though it would never cease to fall. The drifting flakes appeared to Brodie each like an oppression in itself supportable, but becoming insufferable by weight of numbers. As he cogitated, a dormant molecule of thought began to swell within his mind. He felt in his dull brain the blind injustice of the veiled accusation that he was consoling himself with drink. ‘That’s it,’ he muttered. ‘I’m gettin’ the blame, and none of the comfort.’ The desolation of the scene again struck frigidly upon him. He shivered once more and continued to talk to himself. This propensity of articulate self-communion was entirely new, but now, as he spoke thus, the process of his ideas became more lucid and less entangled. ‘They say I’m takin’ a dram, do they; it’s the sort of thing the measly swine would say, without rhyme nor reason; but by God! I will take them at their word. It’s what I’m needin’ anyway, to take the taste o’ that braxy out o’ my mouth – the poor, knock-kneed cratur’ that he is, wi’ his “wee droppies.” Him and his sleekit “beg your pardons” and “by your leaves,” and his scrapin’ and bowin’ down in the dirt. Some day I’ll kick him and keep him down in it. Ay, I maun have something to clean my mouth after this mornin’s wark.’ His face grimaced dourly as he added ironically, still addressing the empty room: ‘but thank you all the same, Mister Grierson – thank you for your verra acceptable suggestion.’

  Then his features changed; suddenly he experienced a
wild and reckless desire to drink. His body felt strong, so brutally powerful that he wanted to crush iron bars; as eagerly alive, with such vast potentiality for enjoyment, that he felt he could empty huge reservoirs of liquor. ‘What good does it do me to live like a blasted stickit minister – they talk about me just the same. I’ll give them something to babble about, blast them!’ he cried, as he pulled his hat down over his eyes and strode darkly out of the shop.

  A few doors off stood a small, quiet inn, ‘The Winton Arms,’ owned by an elderly, respectable matron named Phemie Douglas, famed for her liquor, her virtue, and her snug sitting-room – known as ‘ Phemie’s wee back parlour’ to the choicer spirits amongst the better class of the townspeople, for whom it was a favourite howff. Brodie, however, on entering the tavern, avoided this social centre, as he now had no time for words; he wanted to drink, and the longer he waited the more he desired it. He entered the public bar, which was empty, and demanded from the barmaid a large whisky toddy. ‘Hurry up and bring it,’ he said, in a voice dry from the violence of his craving. Now that he had ordained that he would drink, nothing could stop him, nothing arrest the swelling urge which made his throat dry, caused his hands to clench and unclench restlessly, made his feet stamp chafingly upon the sawdust floor of the bar whilst he awaited the hot whisky. When she brought it he drank the scalding liquid in one, long breath.

  ‘Another,’ he said impatiently.

  Altogether he had four, large whiskies, hot and potent as flame, which he consumed as rapidly as he obtained them, and which now worked within him like the activation of some fiery ferment. As he glowed, he began to feel lighter; the shadows of the last three months were lifting; they still swirled like smoke clouds about his brain, but nevertheless they lifted. A sardonic leer played about his mouth as a sense of his superiority, and of his invulnerable personality, impressed him, but this was the sole expression of the thoughts which rushed within him. His body remained quiet, his actions grew cautious, more restrained; he remained absolutely within himself, whilst his bruised pride healed itself in the roseate thoughts which coursed swiftly through his mind. The barmaid was young, attractive, and quite desirous of being talked to by this strange, huge man, but Brodie ignored her, did not even observe her, as, wrapped in the splendid emancipation from his hateful despondency, and engrossed in the incoherent but dazzling consideration of his future plans and triumphs, he remained silent, staring blankly in front of him. Finally he asked for a bottle of whisky, paid for it, and went out.

  Back in his office he continued to drink. His brain clarified with each glass, grew more dominant, more compelling; his body responded more quickly and more perfectly to his movements; he now sanctioned with an intense approval all his recent actions.

  The empty bottle stood on the table before him, bearing on the label the words: ‘Mountain Dew,’ which struck his bemused fancy as notably appropriate; for now he felt as powerful as a mountain and as sparkling as dew.

  ‘Yes,’ he muttered, addressing himself to the bottle, ‘you mark my words; they can’t down me. I’m more than a match for them. I can master them. Everything I did was right. I wouldna draw back a step o’ the road I took wi’ her. Just you wait and see how I’ll go ahead now. Everything will be forgotten and nothing will stop me! I’ll get the whip hand o’ them.’

  Actually he did not know whom he was indicting, but he included largely and indeterminately in that category, all who he imagined had opposed him, slighted him, or failed to recognise him as the man he was. He did not now think of the threatened opposition to his business, which became, in the swollen magnitude of his disdainful pride, too petty, too ridiculously ineffectual to affect him adversely. The opposition which he recognised was universal, intangible, yet crystallised in the feeling that any man’s hand might be raised against his sacrosanct dignity: and now this obsession, always latent within him, strengthened and became more corrosive in his mind. And yet conversely, whilst the danger to his position loomed the more largely before him, his faith in his ability to conquer such a menace was augmented and exalted in such a manner as to render him almost omnipotent.

  At last he started, took out his watch and looked at it. The hands, which appeared larger and blacker than usual, showed ten minutes to one.

  ‘Time for dinner,’ he told himself agreeably. ‘Time to see that braw, tidy wife o’ mine. It’s a grand thing for a man to have such a bonnie wife to draw him hame.’ He got up impressively, but with a slight, almost imperceptible sway, and walked solidly out of his office, disregarding the awestruck, cringing Perry absolutely. He stalked through the shop and into the street, gained the middle of the street, and held it like a lord. Along the crown of the causeway he swaggered, head erect, shoulders thrown back, planting his feet in front of him with a magnificent sense of his own importance. The few people who were abroad gazed at him in amazement, and as, from the corner of his eye, he saw them glance, their astonishment fed his vanity, his intoxicated assurance battened on their wonder. ‘Take a good look,’ his attitude seemed to say. ‘It’s Brodie you’re lookin’ at— James Brodie, and, by God, he’s a man!’ He walked through the snow the whole way home as though he headed a triumphal procession, keeping so exactly in the centre of the road, and holding so undeviatingly to his course, that such traffic as traversed the streets had perforce to go round him, leaving him the undisputed king of the causeway.

  Outside his house he paused. The white envelope of snow vested it with an unreal and delusive dignity, softening the harsh lines, relieving the squat and rigid contours, blending the incongruous elements with its clinging touch so that, before his fuddled eyes, it reared itself in massive grandeur, looming against the opaque, slate-coloured sky with an illusion of infinite dimensions. He had never liked it so well or admired it so much, and a sense of elation that he should possess it held him as he marched to the front door and entered his home.

  In the hall he removed his hat and, with wide extravagant gestures, scattered in all directions thick snow that had caked upon it, amusedly watching the mushy gobbets go slushing against the roof, the walls, the pictures, the chandelier; then, wildly, he stamped his heavy boots upon the floor, dislodging hard, pressed lumps of ice and snow. It would give that handless slut of his something to do to clean up his mess, he thought, as he walked into the kitchen with the air of a conqueror.

  Immediately, he sat down and delved into the huge, steaming bowl of broth, sweet with the essence of beef and bones, and stiff with the agglutination of barley, that stood on the table anticipating his arrival, the ignored reminder of his wife’s devotion and forethought. Just the thing for a cold day, he thought, as he supped greedily with the zest of a ravenous animal, lifting huge, heaped spoonfuls rapidly to his mouth and working his jaws incessantly. The meat and small fragments of bone that floated through the pottage he rent and crushed between his hard teeth, revelling in the fact that for weeks his appetite had not been so keen or the taste of food so satisfying upon his tongue.

  ‘That was grand,’ he admitted to Mrs Brodie, smacked his lips coarsely at her, ‘and a good thing for you. If ye had singed my broth on a day like this I would have flung it about your lugs.’ Then, as she paused at the unusual praise, he bellowed at her: ‘What are ye gawkin’ at; is this all I’ve to get for my dinner?’

  At once she retreated, but, as she hastily brought in the boiled beef and an ashet of potatoes and cabbage, she wondered fearfully what had drawn him from out his perpetual grim taciturnity to this roaring, devilish humour. He hacked off a lump of the fat beef and thrust it upon his plate, which he then loaded with potatoes and cabbage, began to eat, and with his mouth full, regarded her derisively.

  ‘My, but you are the fine figure of a woman, my dear,’ he sneered, between champing mouthfuls. ‘ You’re about as straight as that lovely nose o’ yours. No, don’t run away.’ He raised his knife, with a broad, minatory gesture, to arrest her movement, whilst he finished masticating a chunk of beef. Then he went on, with a
fine show of concern: ‘I must admit ye havena got bonnier lately; all this worry has raddled ye; in fact, you’re more like an old cab-horse than ever now. I see you are still wearin’ that dish clout of a wrapper.’ He picked his teeth reflectively with a prong of his fork. ‘It suits you right well.’

  Mamma stood there like a wilted reed, unable to sustain his derisive stare, keeping her eyes directed out of the window, as though this abstracted gaze enabled her better to endure his taunts. Her face was grey with an ill, vitreous translucency, her eyelids retracted with a dull, fixed despondency; her thin, work-ugly hands played nervously with a loose tape at her waist.

  Suddenly a thought struck Brodie. He looked at the clock. ‘Where’s Nessie?’ he shouted.

  ‘I gave her some lunch to school, to save her coming back in the snow.’

  He grunted. ‘And my mother,’ he demanded.

  ‘She wouldna get up to-day for fear of the cold,’ she whispered.

  A guffaw shook him. ‘That’s the spirit you should have had, you fushionless creature. If ye’d had that kind o’ gumption ye would have stood up better, and no’ run done so quick.’ Then, after a pause, he continued: ‘So it’s just you and me together. That’s very touchin’, is’t not? Well! I’ve grand news for ye! A rich surprise!’