Hatter's Castle

by A. J. Cronin

  ‘But, Mamma!’ persisted Nessie, ‘ Jenny Paxton said it was all through the Yard that our Matt had got the sack for not attendin’ to his work.’

  ‘She told a wicked untruth then. Your brother resigned his position like a gentleman.’

  ‘When will he be back, Mamma? Will he bring me anything, do you think? Will he bring me a monkey and a parrot? I would like a parrot better than a monkey. A monkey would scratch me but a parrot would talk to me and say, “Pretty Polly,” and that’s more than a canary can do, isn’t it?’ She paused meditatively, then resumed, ‘No; I’ll not have that, I would have to clean its cage. I think I would like a pair of honky-tonky, morocco slippers or – or a bonnie, wee string o’ coral beads. Will ye tell him, Mamma?’

  ‘Be quiet, girl! How can I write to him when he’s on his way home? Besides, Matt has more to think of than beads for you. You’ll see him soon enough.’

  ‘Will he be here soon, then?’

  ‘You’ll know all in good time, Nessie.’ Then, voicing her own hopes, she added: ‘ It might be in about ten days, if he left soon after his letter.’

  ‘Ten days! that’s fine,’ Nessie chanted, and began to skip about with a more lively air. ‘I’ll maybe have some fun when Matt comes back, forbye the wee string o’ beads. It’s been terrible since—’ She stopped abruptly against the blank, forbidding wall of a subject absolutely interdicted, looked timidly at her mother, paused for a moment in confusion, then, as she saw that she was not to be reprimanded, began again, by a childish association of ideas: ‘What does it mean to be in deep water, Mamma?’

  ‘What are ye talkin’ about now, Nessie. Ye run on like a spoutin’ waterfall. Can ye not let me get my work done.’

  ‘One of the girls in the class asked if my father could swim, because she heard her father sayin’ that James Brodie was gettin’ into deep water.’

  ‘Will you stop tormentin’ me with your silly nonsense, Nessie,’ cried Mamma. ‘ Your father can look after himself without your help. It’s an impertinence for his name to be lifted like that.’ Nevertheless, the childish question touched her with a sharp, sudden misgiving, and, as she picked up a duster and went out of the kitchen, she wondered vaguely if there was any intrinsic reason for the exacerbation of Brodie’s meanness with her, for the whittling and paring of her housekeeping allowance which had for months past made it impossible for her to make ends meet.

  ‘Oh! it’s not me, Mamma,’ replied Nessie, narrowing her small mouth virtuously, and following her mother into the parlour. ‘ It’s what the other girls in the class say. You would think there was something funny about us the way they go on. I’m better than them, amn’t I, Mamma? My father could beat all theirs tied together.’

  ‘Your father’s a man in a million.’ It cost Mrs Brodie an effort to say these words, but she uttered them heroically, unconscious of the ambiguous nature of her phrase, striving only to maintain the best traditions of the house. ‘Ye must never listen to a thing against him. Folks say bitter things when they’re jealous o’ a man.’

  ‘They’re just a lot of cheeky, big things. I’m going to tell the teacher if they say another word about us,’ concluded Nessie, pressing her nose against the window like a small blob of putty. ‘It’s still raining, coming down heavy as heavy – hang it!’

  ‘Nessie! Don’t say hang it. It’s not right. You’re not to use bad words,’ reprimanded Mamma, interrupting her polishing of the brass candlesticks on the burr walnut front of the piano. She would take no chances with Nessie! The first sign of error must be corrected! ‘Remember, now, or I’ll tell your father,’ she threatened, addressing her heated face again towards the piano which, open for the nonce, smiled at her in fatuous agreement, its exposed keys grinning towards her like an enormous set of false teeth.

  ‘I wanted to go and play – that was all,’ came the plaint from the window, ‘but there’s puddles everywhere, even if it does go off. I’ve got to work so hard at these old lessons through the week, it’s a shame if a girl can’t get a little bit of playtime on a Saturday.’ Disconsolately, she continued to view the dismal prospect of the wet December landscape, the wet roadway, the rain-drenched fields, the still, dripping branches of the birches opposite, the melancholy lack of movement save for the steady downward fall of water. But her facile prattle did not cease for long and, despite the depressing scene, in a moment she had recommenced: ‘There’s a sparrow sittin’ on our cannon. Oh! there’s another – there’s two wee sparrows cowriein’ down in the rain on our brass cannon. What do we keep a cannon like that for? It doesn’t shoot and it always needs cleanin’. I’ve never noticed how funny it looked till the now, Mamma!’ she pestered, insistently, ‘ what is it there for? Tell me.’

  ‘A kind of ornament to set off the house, I suppose that was your father’s idea,’ came the harassed voice from the back of the piano.

  ‘It would have been better to have had a plot of pansies, or a wee monkey-puzzle tree like Jenny Paxton has in front o’ her house,’ replied Nessie; then, continuing slowly, voicing her facile thoughts aloud, she chattered on: ‘There’s not a breath in these trees across the fields. They’re standin’ like statues in the rain. “Rain rain go to Spain! Never more come back again!” That’ll not put it away though. That’s only a story like Santa Claus. He’s got a white beard. What is a Spaniard like I wonder. Has he a black face? The capital of Spain is Madrid. Correct. Up to the top of the class, Nessie Brodie. Good for you! That’ll please father. What a day for a Saturday holiday. Here am I doin’ geography on it. Not a body on the street. No! I’m wrong, I believe there’s a man. He’s comin’ up the road. It’s not a man, it’s a telegraph boy!’ It was a rich and unusual discovery in the dull, uninteresting prospect, and she fastened upon it delightedly. ‘Mamma! Mamma! somebody’s going to get a telegram. I see the boy in the road. He’s comin’ right up here. Oh! look, look,’ she called out in a rapturous effervescence of expectation and excitement, ‘he’s comin’ into our house!’

  Mrs Brodie dropped her duster and flew to the window, through which she saw the boy coming up the steps, and immediately she heard the door-bell peal with such violence that it sounded in her startled ears like a sound of alarm. She stood quite still. She feared telegrams with a dreadful intensity as the harbingers of swift, unexpected calamity; they spoke not to her of happy births or joyous weddings but of the sudden, unconceived disaster of death. As she stood motionless a second, ominous ring of the bell fell upon her ears, and, as though the powerful pull tugged at the cords of her memory, reminded her of that previous solitary occasion in her life when she had received a telegram, the message which had announced the death of her mother. Without looking at Nessie she said, hoarsely: ‘Go to the door and see what it is.’

  Yet when Nessie, bubbling with anticipation, had run out of the room, she sought to calm herself; she reflected that perhaps the messenger had come only to collect information regarding an unknown name or an undecipherable address, as, living in the last house in the road, such enquiries were not infrequently addressed to them. She strained her hearing to the utmost, essaying to catch some hopeful sounds that might indicate a colloquy at the door, but vainly, for immediately Nessie was back, waving an orange slip with all the triumph of her own personal discovery.

  ‘It’s for you, Mamma,’ she announced breathlessly; ‘ and is there an answer?’

  Mamma took the telegram into her hand as though she touched a poisonous viper and, turning it over fearfully, inspected it with the profound horror with which she might have viewed this dangerous reptile. ‘I can’t see without my glasses,’ she murmured, afraid to open the telegram, and trying feebly to gain time.

  In a flash Nessie had gone and in a flash returned, bearing the steel-rimmed spectacles. ‘Here you are, Mamma! Now you’ll manage to read it. Open it’

  Mrs Brodie slowly put on her glasses, again looked timorously at the dreadful thing in her hand and, turning to Nessie in a panic of indecision and fear, faltered: />
  ‘Perhaps I better leave it to your father. It mightna be my place to open a thing like this. It’s a job for your father, is’t not, dear?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Mamma, open it,’ urged Nessie impatiently. ‘ It’s addressed to you and the boy’s waiting for the answer.’

  Mrs Brodie opened the envelope with stiff, ungainly fingers, tremblingly extracted the inner slip, unfolded it, and looked at it. For a long time she looked at it, as though it had contained, not nine words, but a message so lengthy and complicated that it passed her comprehension. As she gazed, gradually her face became dead, like grey ashes, and seemed to shrink into a smaller and more scanty compass; her features became pinched and drawn, as though some suddenly icy blast had extinguished the feeble glow which animated them and frozen them into a strange, unnatural immobility.

  ‘What is it, Mamma?’ asked Nessie, on her tiptoes with curiosity.

  ‘Nothing,’ repeated Mrs Brodie in a dull, mechanical voice. She sat down limply upon the sofa with the rustling slip of paper fluttering between her shaking fingers.

  Outside in the porch, the waiting boy, who had for some moments been moving impatiently, now began to whistle restlessly and to kick his toes noisily against the step, thus informing them in his own fashion, that it was no part of his duty to wait upon this doorstep for the duration of an entire day.

  ‘Do you want the boy to wait for an answer?’ continued Nessie curiously, observing, but not fully comprehending, her mother’s strained immobility.

  ‘No answer,’ automatically replied Mamma.

  At Nessie’s injunction the telegraph boy departed, still whistling loudly and unconcernedly, recognising his importance as the instrument of destiny, yet totally unmoved by the ravages of his missive of destruction.

  Nessie came back to the parlour and, regarding her mother, thought her appearance ever more strange, seemed with a more prolonged scrutiny hardly to recognise her.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Mamma? You look so white.’ She touched her mother’s cheek lightly, felt it, under her warm fingers, to be cold and stiff as clay; then, with an uncanny intuition, she continued:

  ‘Was it something about Matt in the telegram?’

  At the name of her son Mrs Brodie returned from her frigid rigidity into the conscious world. Had she been alone she would have melted into an abandoned flood of tears, but in Nessie’s presence her weak spirit made a powerful effort to check the sobs rising in her throat and, struggling for control, she endeavoured to think with all the forces of her benumbed intellect. Urged by the strongest motive in nature to an effort of mind and will which would nominally have been far beyond her, she turned with a sudden movement to the child.

  ‘Nessie,’ she breathed, ‘ go up and see what Grandma’s doing. Don’t mention this wire, but try and find out if she heard the bell. You’ll do that for Mamma, won’t you, dear?’

  With the quick perception that was the basis of her smartness Nessie understood exactly what her mother required of her, and embracing gleefully the task, which was that kind of confidential mission she adored to perform, she nodded her head twice slowly, understandingly, and strolled casually out of the room.

  When her daughter had gone, Mrs Brodie unrolled the ball into which the telegram had been crumpled within her contracted fingers, and although the message had seared itself upon her memory, unconsciously she gazed at it again, whilst her quivering lips slowly framed each individual word – ‘Wire my forty pounds Post Restante Marseilles immediately. Matt.’

  He wanted his money! He wanted the savings that he had sent home to her, the forty pounds that she had invested for him in the Building Society! She saw immediately that he was exiled in Marseilles, in trouble, in some desperate strait, and that the money was a vital and immediate necessity to remove him from the meshes of a dreadful and dangerous entanglement. Someone had stolen his purse, he had been sandbagged and robbed, the vessel had sailed and left him stranded, without any of his belongings, in Marseilles. Marseilles – the very name – unknown, foreign, sinister, chilled her blood and suggested to her every possible evil that might befall her beloved son, for, on the sole evidence of this cryptic and appalling demand, she conceived him to be, definitely, the innocent victim of deplorable and harrowing circumstances. Sifting the available facts to the uttermost she observed that the wire had been handed in at Marseilles that morning – how soon had travelled the unhappy tidings! – which indicated to her that he had been in a fit state to dispatch the message, that he should be, at least, in no immediate physical danger. He had recovered, perhaps, from the effects of the vicious assault upon him, and now merely a waited patiently and anxiously the arrival of his own money. As her thoughts ran through these innumerable winding channels of her supposition they converged inevitably, despite a dozen deviations in their courses, to the one, common, relentless termination, to the conclusion that she must send this money. A pitiful shudder shook her at the very thought. She could not send it; she could send nothing. She had spent every penny of his forty pounds.

  During the past nine months her financial struggles had been desperate. Brodie had progressively cut her allowance until he had at length reduced it by half, yet he expected the same, excellent food supplied, where he was concerned, in the same excessive quantities; and did she manifest the slightest indication of economy upon the table she became the object of a fierce sarcastic tirade, in which he vituperated her as an incompetent bungler who lacked the ability even to manage adequately the petty exchequer of the home. He taunted her with the superior ability of his old mother, producing specious evidence of the old woman’s housewifely efficiency, relating in detail the delicious, inexpensive meals she had prepared for him before his marriage, threatening, despite his mother’s age, to transfer the management of the house into her more competent hands. It had been useless for Mamma to protest weakly that he gave her insufficient money, that food prices were rising, that the growing Nessie required more clothes, new boots, more expensive school books, that Grandma Brodie would not relinquish one single item of the comforts and luxuries to which custom had habituated her. It would have been equally ineffective, had she attempted it, to convince him that she spent not one farthing upon her own personal expenses, that she had not bought herself a new garment for three years, that in consequence she was the epitome of bedraggled inelegance, exposing herself, by the very unselfishness of this economy, to his gibes and sneers. Seeing her thus, despite a few feeble, ineffective initial protests, accept the reduced amount and apparently manage with it, he concluded that he had been too lavish in the past and, as money was so tight with him that he exulted in the opportunity to economise at her expense, he had tightened his purse strings to the limit and ground her further under the pressure of his heel.

  Although she struggled to make one shilling do the work of two by buying in the cheapest markets, by bargaining and wheedling until she had achieved a reputation for mean shrewishness, it could not continue. Bills had become overdue, tradesmen had become impatient and finally, in despair, she had chosen, the path of least resistance and drawn upon Matthew’s money. Immediately, matters became easier. Brodie’s growls about the food became less frequent, the old woman’s whining, senile recriminations abated, Nessie had a new coat, the school fees were paid, and the long-suffering butcher and grocer were appeased. She herself obtained nothing, no clothing, no trivial trinket, no indulgence of her fancy, nothing but a transient immunity from the reproaches of her husband and the worries of her debts. She had consoled herself for her action by telling herself that Matt had really meant the money for her, that he loved her so that he would desire her to take it; again, she had reasoned that she had not spent it upon herself, that she would undoubtedly save and collect it for him in better times and fairer financial weather.

  Forty pounds! It was a ruinous sum! Although she had expended it so easily the thought of obtaining it again was incredible. Under her former circumstances, and by the most penurious thrift,
she might achieve this amount in, perhaps, the long term of a year, but the sum was required immediately. Her lips quivered as her heart quailed within her, but immediately she rallied herself, bracing herself to be brave for Matt’s sake. She set her mouth firmly and looked up as Nessie returned to the room.

  ‘Grandma was tidying up her drawer,’ whispered Nessie to her mother, with the air of a conspirator. ‘She didn’t hear the bell and she doesn’t know a thing about it. I found out ever so carefully!’

  ‘That’s a good, clever girl,’ said Mamma. ‘Nobody’s to know about that telegram, Nessie. You’re not to open your mouth yourself, about it. That was for me and nobody else. I trust you now! And I’ll give ye something nice if ye don’t tell.’ Then she concluded vaguely, feeling that some form of explanation was expected of her: ‘It was just from an old friend in the country – an old friend of Mamma’s who is in some slight distress.’

  Nessie placed her left forefinger on her closed lips, delighted to share in a confidence of her mother’s, implying by this precocious gesture that she was worthy to be trusted with the most private and mysterious secrets of the universe.

  ‘That’s right, now. Don’t forget that you’ve given your word. Your father need know nothing a bout it,’ said Mrs Brodie, as she got up. She desired to remain passively considering the situation, but it was nearly noon, and she had the dinner to prepare. No matter what anxiety affected her, the work of the house must go on, meals must appear upon the table with an inexorable punctuality, the master must be propitiated, fed adequately and succulently. As she began to peel a large potful of potatoes she tried to reach some decision as to what she should do.

  At the outset she realised that she would obtain no help from her husband. She would have steeled herself to anything for Matt’s sake, but it was an impossibility for her to face her husband and demand a sum of the absurd magnitude of forty pounds, realising with certainty, as she did, beforehand, that he would infallibly refuse to send the money. To bring the matter uselessly, in this manner, to his knowledge would be to reveal to him her own culpability, arouse his prodigious wrath, and yet obtain no tangible result. Even as she reasoned thus she could visualise him sneering: ‘He’s in Marseilles, is he? Well! let him walk or swim back. It’ll do the poor dear a heap o’ good.’