Hatter's Castle

by A. J. Cronin

  She next considered the possibilities associated with Agnes Moir. There was no doubt but that Agnes, who, like Mamma, could refuse him nothing, would be instantly willing to send money to Matthew, despite the shameful coldness and neglect she had suffered from him during the last few months, but it was, unhappily, an equal certainty that she did not possess forty pounds. The Moirs, although respectable, were poor, privation lay very near to their door, and it was unthinkable, even if they wished Agnes to have the money, that they could suddenly produce a large sum like this. Additionally, there had been a strong hint of reproach in Miss Moir’s attitude to her lately which contained a justifiable suggestion of suffering and injured innocence. How could she then, in the face of such wounded purity of conscience, confess herself the thief of her own idolised son’s money. The impeccable Miss Moir would condemn her immediately, would perhaps repudiate her before the eyes of the entire town.

  She therefore abandoned Agnes, but, whilst she mechanically performed the actions of cooking the dinner, her mind continued to work furiously, racing against time. When Brodie came in she served the meal without once removing her fierce concentration from the problem that obsessed her, and with such unusual abstraction that she placed before Brodie, in mistake, Nessie’s small plate.

  ‘Are ye drunk, woman?’ he roared at her, gazing at the diminutive portion, ‘or am I expected to repeat the miracle o’ the loaves and fishes?’

  As she hastily changed the plates Mamma blushed guiltily at this outward manifestation of her secret cogitations; but how could she have said, in extenuation: ‘I was thinking of how I could raise forty pounds for Matt?’

  ‘She’ll have been takin’ a wee sook at the bottle to keep her strength up,’ tittered Grandma Brodie maliciously. ‘ That’s how she’ll have been passin’ the time this mornin’.’

  ‘So, that’s where the money for the house goes,’ sneered Brodie, taking up his mother’s lead; ‘ in tipple! well, we maun see what’s to be done about that.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what’s gie’n her that red neb and watery een, I’m thinkin’,’ replied the old woman.

  Nessie said nothing, but her too obvious side-glances of fealty and co-operation towards Mamma were so pregnant with meaning that they almost defeated their object. Still, the crisis was not precipitated and, after dinner, when Brodie had departed and the old woman retreated upstairs, Mamma breathed more freely, and turning to Nessie, said:

  ‘Will you clear up, dear? I’ve got to go out for a few messages. You’re a great help to Mamma to-day, and if you’ve got the dishes washed when I come back, I’ll bring you a pennyworth of sweeties.’ In her awful dilemma she was capable even of subtle strategy in a small matter like this and, although the rain had ceased, Nessie consented willingly, lured by the bait of sweetmeats, charmed to be recognised by her mother as so supremely grown up.

  Mrs Brodie put on a hat and coat, the latter the very paletot she had worn when she escorted Matt to Glasgow on his departure, and hurried out of the house. She quickly crossed the Common and took the road which ran behind the station, then, at the junction of Railway Road and College Street, she paused outside a small, low-browed shop which bore above the crooked lintel of its doorway the disreputable insignia of three brass balls. Upon the window was a notice which stated in dirty white letters, and, through the defection of certain letters and the broken condition of others, with some uncertainty: Gold, Silver, Old False Teeth Bought, Money Lent; whilst behind this, chalked on a small unprosperous looking slate, was the terser and less prepossessing phrase: Rags Bought. With a fearful misgiving Mrs Brodie contemplated this, the only pawnshop in the respectable Borough of Levenford. To enter these precincts was, she knew, the most abysmal humiliation to which a respectable person could descend; and the greater crime of being detected entering therein meant disgrace, dishonour, and social annihilation. She realised all this, realised further her inability to cope with the hidden horrors within, yet she compressed her lips and glided bravely into the shop as quickly and unsubstantially as a shadow. Only the loud revealing tinkle of the bell attached to the door marked her entry, and, surrounded by its mellifluous reiterations, she found herself facing a counter in a small boxlike compartment which appeared to be one of three. Here the number three had apparently a cabalistic significance both without and within, yet in the compartment she was more private than she could have hoped. Even in this debased society there were apparently instincts of delicacy! When the tinkle of the bell had ceased, her nostrils became gradually and oppressively aware of an odour, emerging permeatingly from some unseen point, of boiling fat tinctured with the aroma of onions. With a sudden faintness at the greasy, nauseating odour, she closed her eyes, and when she opened them a moment later, a short, squat man magically confronted her, having issued unseen, like a genie, from behind the heavy opaque cloud of vapour that infiltrated the inner shop. He had a long, square beard, iron grey and slightly curling, bushy eyebrows of the same colour and texture beneath which bright, beady eyes twinkled like a bird’s; his hands and shoulders moved deferentially, but these black pellets of eyes never left Mrs Brodie’s face. He was a Polish Jew whose settlement in Levenford could be adduced only to his racial proclivity for courting adversity and who, failing to eke out an existence by usury in the hard soil of the Borough, was reduced to merely subsisting – or so it seemed – by the buying and selling of rags. Being mild and inoffensive he did not resent the abusive epithets which greeted him as, shouting: ‘Anyrag anybone! anybottle today!’, he drove his donkey-cart upon his rounds, and he made no complaints except to bewail, to such as would hear him, the absence of a synagogue in the town.

  ‘Yeth?’ he now lisped to Mrs Brodie.

  ‘You lend money,’ she gasped.

  ‘Vot you vont to pawn?’ he thrust at her. Although his voice was gentle, she was startled at such crudity of expression.

  ‘I’ve nothing here now. I wanted to borrow forty pounds.’

  He glanced sideways at her, regarding her rusty, unfashionable clothing, her rough hands and broken nails, the tarnish on the thin, worn, gold band of her solitary ring, her ludicrous battered hat – missing, with his glittering eyes, no item of her sad and worthless attire. He thought she must be mad. Caressing his fleshy, curved nose between his finger and thumb he said, thoughtfully:

  ‘Zat es a lot of monesh. Ve must ave security. You must bring gold or jewels if you vish to raise zat amount.’

  She should, of course, have had jewels! In her novels these were the touchstone of a lady’s security, but, apart from her wedding ring, she had only her mother’s silver watch – which she might, with good fortune, have pledged for fifteen shillings – and realising something of the insufficiency of her position she faltered:

  ‘You would not lend it on my furniture or – or on note of hand. I saw – in the papers – some people do that, do they not?’

  He continued to rub his nose, considering, beneath his benignly tallow brow, that these Gentile women were all alike – scraggy and worn and stupid. Did she not realise that his business was conducted on the basis of shillings, not of pounds? and that, though he could produce the sum she required, he would require security and interest which he had realised at his initial survey to be utterly beyond her? He shook his head, gently but finally, and said, without ceasing to be conciliatory, using indeed to that end his deprecating hands:

  ‘Ve don’t do zat beesness. Try a bigger firm – say en ze ceety. Oh yes! Zey might do et. Zey have more monesh zan a poor man like me.’

  She regarded him with a palpitating heart in stunned, humiliated silence, having braved the danger and suffered the indignity of entering his wretched hovel without achieving her purpose. Yet she was obliged to accept his decision – she had no appeal – and she was out once more in the dirty street amongst the puddles, the littered tin cans and garbage in the gutter, without having procured even one of the forty pounds she required. She was utterly abased and humiliated yet, as she walked quickl
y away, she appreciated with a growing anxiety that, though she had achieved nothing, Matt would at this very moment be waiting in immediate anticipation of the arrival of the money. Lowering her umbrella over her face to avoid detection she hastened her steps feverishly towards home.

  Nessie awaited her in a small imitiation apron, triumphantly playing the housewife over her neat pile of clean crockery, preparing herself for her just reward of sweetmeats, but Mamma thrust her roughly aside.

  ‘Another time, Nessie,’ she cried. ‘Don’t bother me! I’ll get you them another time.’ She entered the scullery and plunged her hand into the box where old copies of newspapers and periodicals, brought home by Brodie, were kept for household purposes, chiefly the kindling of fires. Removing a pile of these she spread them out upon the stone floor and flung herself before them, on her knees, as though she grovelled before some false god. She hurriedly ran her eye over several of these sheets until, with an inarticulate cry of relief, she found what she sought. What had that wretched Jew said? ‘Try a bigger firm,’ he had told her, in his indecently garbled English, and, accordingly, she chose the largest advertisement in the column, which informed her with many glowing embellishments that Adam McSevitch – genuine Scotsman – lent £5 to £500, without security, on note of hand alone, that country clients would be attended promptly at their own homes, and, memorable feature, that the strictest and most inviolable secrecy would be preserved – nay, insisted upon – between the principal and his client.

  Mrs Brodie breathed more calmly as, without removing her hat or coat, she rose to her feet, hurried to the kitchen and sat down and composed a short, but carefully worded letter, asking Adam McSevitch to attend her at her home on Monday forenoon at eleven o’clock. She sealed the letter with the utmost precaution, then dragged her tired limbs out of the house and into the town once more. In her haste the constant pain in her side throbbed more intensely, but she did not allow it to interfere with her rate of motion and, by half-past three, she succeeded in reaching the general post office where she bought a stamp and carefully posted her letter. She then composed and dispatched a wire to ‘Brodie: Post Restante: Marseilles,’ saying, ‘Money arrives Monday sure. Love. Mamma.’ The cost of the message left her stricken, but though she might have reduced the cost by omitting the last two words, she could not force herself to do so. Matt must be made to understand, above everything, that it was she who, with her own hands, had sent the wire, and that she, his mother, loved him.

  A sense of comfort assuaged her on her way home; the feeling that she had accomplished something, and that on Monday she would assuredly obtain the money, reassured her, yet nevertheless, as the day dragged slowly to its end, she began to grow restless and impatient. The consolation obtained from her definite action gradually wore off and left her sad, inert, and helpless, obsessed by distressing doubts. She fluctuated between extremes of indecision and terror, felt that she would not obtain the money, then that she would be surely discovered; questioned her ability to carry through the undertaking; fled in her mind from the fact, as from an unreal and horrid nightmare, that she of all people should be attempting to deal with money-lenders.

  Sunday dragged past her in an endless succession of interminable minutes, during the passage of which she glanced at the clock a hundred times, as if she might thus hasten the laboured transit of time and so terminate her own anxiety and the painful expectancy of her son. During the slow hours of the tardily passing day, she formed and re-formed the simple plan she had made, trembled to think how she would address Mr McSevitch, was convinced that he would treat her as a lady, then felt certain that he would not, re-read his advertisement secretly, was cheered by his comforting offer to lend £500, then shocked by the amazing effrontery of it. When she retired eventually to rest, her head whirled with confusion, and she dreamed she was overwhelmed by an avalanche of golden pieces.

  On Monday morning she could hardly maintain her normal demeanour, she shook so palpably with apprehension, but, mercifully, her anxiety was not detected and she sighed with relief when first Nessie, and then Brodie, disappeared through the front door. She now had only Grandma Brodie to dispose of, for, from the moment she had written her letter she had fully appreciated the obvious danger of having the inquisitive, garrulous, and hostile old woman about the house at the time fixed for the interview. The danger that she might stumble upon the entire situation was too great to be risked, and Mamma, with unthought of cunning, prepared to attack her upon her weakest point. At half-past nine therefore, when she took up to the old woman, upon a tray, her usual breakfast of porridge and milk, she did not, as was her usual custom, immediately leave the room, but instead sat down upon the bed, and regarded its aged occupant with an assumed and exaggerated expression of concern.

  ‘Grandma,’ she began, ‘you never seem to get out of the house these days at all. You look real peaky to me the now. Why don’t you take a bit stroll this morning?’ The old dame poised the porridge spoon in her yellow claw, and cast a suspicious eye upon Mamma from under the white, frilled nightcap.

  ‘And where would I stroll to on a winter’s day?’ she asked, distrustfully. ‘Do ye want me to get inflammation of the lungs so as you can get rid o’ me?’

  Mamma forced a bright laugh, an exhibition of gaiety which it tortured her heart to perform.

  ‘It’s lovely day!’ she cried, ‘and do ye know what I’m going to do with ye? I’m just going to give you a florin, to go and get yourself some Deesides and some oddfellows.’

  Grandma looked at the other with a dubious misgiving, sensing immediaely a hidden motive, but tempted by the extreme richness of the enticement. In her senile greediness she loved particularly the crisp biscuits known as ‘ Deeside,’ she doted upon those large, flat, round sweets so inappropriately named oddfellows; in her own room she endeavoured, always, to maintain a stock of each of these delicacies in two separate tins inside her top drawer; but now, as Mamma was well a ware, her supplies were exhausted. It was a tempting offer!

  ‘Where’s the money?’ she demanded, craftily. Without speaking, Mamma revealed the shining florin in the middle of her palm.

  The crone blinked her bleared eyes at it, thinking with rapid, calculating glances, that there would be enough for the Deesides, the oddfellows, and maybe a wee dram over and above.

  ‘I micht as weel take a dauner, then,’ she muttered slowly, with the semblance of a yawn to indicate indifference.

  ‘That’s right, Grandma – I’ll help ye,’ encouraged Mamma as, trembling with an exultation she feared to display, realising that so far victory was hers, she assisted the other out of bed. Before the old woman could have time to change her mind, she happed her in her voluminous clothing, tied a multitude of tapes, drew on the elastic-sided boots, brought her the jet-spangled bonnet, held out and enveloped her in the black, beaded cape. Then she presented her with her false teeth upon the charger of a cracked saucer, handed her the two-shilling piece and, having thus finally supplied her with the weapons and the sinews of the war about to be waged on the Deesides, she led the old woman down the stairs, and saw her go tottering out along the road, before the clock showed half-past ten. Exercising the utmost dispatch, she now made all the beds, washed the dishes, tidied the house, made herself, in her own phrase, decent, and sat down breathlessly at the parlour window to await her visitor.

  As the hands of the marble timepiece on the parlour mantelpiece drew near to eleven, Mamma shook with trepidation, as though she expected a cab to dash up to the house and the front bell to ring, simultaneously with the first stroke of the hour. As the clock eventually struck eleven strokes, and was silent, she wondered if Mr McSevitch would bring the money in golden sovereigns in a bag, or present it to her in immaculate notes; then, as the hands indicated five minutes, ten minutes, then fifteen minutes past the appointed time and still no one came, she grew restless. If her visitor did not come at the hour she had specially indicated, all her carefully thought out arrangements would go for no
thing, and she shuddered to think what would happen if he arrived during the dinner hour, when her husband would be in the house.

  At twenty minutes to twelve she had almost abandoned hope when, suddenly, she observed two strange gentlemen appear opposite the house. They arrived on foot and carried no bag, but were dressed exactly alike, in a manner which Mrs Brodie felt might represent the peak of elegance, the most dashing summit of contemporary male fashion. Their Derby hats, that curled till brim met crown, were tilted rakishly above glossy side whiskers; their very short jackets were tight to the waist, with long rolling lapels, so that the chest of each had the appearance of swelling forward like that of a pouter pigeon, whilst the curve of the lower part of the back swept protrudingly, but equally enticingly, in an obverse direction; their check trousers, maintaining an agreeable looseness in the upper portions, clung more sympathetically to the figure as they descended, and terminated finally with the tightness of spats around small, inconspicuous, but none the less shining, shoes. Each wore a large, heavy watch chain high up across his spotted, fancy waistcoat whilst, even at such a distance as that from which she viewed them, she noted upon their fingers a coruscation of jewelled rings which sparkled and flashed with every fluent movement. No strangers of such composed address or brilliant plumage had, in the memory of Mrs Brodie, ever flitted down upon the town of Levenford and, with a beating heart and a fascinated eye, she realised instinctively – although her anticipation had visualised a patriarchal gentleman in an Inverness cloak with a bluff manner and a benevolent shaggy beard – that these men of the world were the emissaries of McSevitch – genuine Scotsman.