A Pocketful of Rye

by A. J. Cronin

  As I sat down and sipped my drink, I felt the bulge in my side pocket. Dingwall’s book: Collected Poems of Francis Thompson. I vaguely remembered it: a nice volume, in a green leather binding, the pages slightly fogged from age, the typical prize they dish out to seminarians. I glanced at my watch. Almost an hour to wait and, in an effort to ease my mind, I looked for the poem Machiavelli had marked for me. That is how I thought of him now, beating the suicide class, because the end justified the means. I found it with the help of the holy picture he used as a bookmark – the Simone Martini favourite of my early years, he must have chosen it specially – and the title, which I had forgotten, was: The Hound of Heaven.

  I took a quick look at the first few lines.

  I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

  I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

  I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

  Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

  I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

  Up vistaed hopes I sped;

  and shot, precipitated,

  Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,

  From those strong Feet that followed, followed

  after.

  I stopped abruptly as it all came back to me: the empty church after Frank’s ordination where I sat and read the poem through. The incident had passed completely from my mind and now I took up the book and began to read again more slowly. The more I went into it, the more I tried to stop. This was not my line in literature and not, especially, at the present time. If I had been low before, now I was sinking deeper. But I had to go on, and when I had finished it I sat there, absolutely still, stricken and bound by its beauty and mystery.

  Now it was clear to me, the genesis of that phobia, my intermittent torment, that mysterious unremitting pursuit from which there was no escape. In the empty church the day of the ordination, in a highly receptive state, I had run through the poem simply to kill time, barely conscious of its meaning, and without obvious effect. My mind was filled with other problems but my subconscious had seized it, buried deeply the theme of the sinner endlessly pursued through the labyrinthine ways of life by the Man. The symbol of the Hound had stuck too, to become the signal of release. Yes, I could rationalize it all. Somehow, that did not help. It did not seem fully to be the answer, since I, too, now felt myself defenceless utterly, grimed with smears, standing amid the dust of years, my mangled youth dead beneath the heap.

  I had left my drink half finished. Mixed hurriedly, it had done nothing for me. You can never improve a bad cocktail by adding gin. I needed another, fresh and strong. I got up slowly, passed through the bedroom to the bathroom and emptied the glass. As I came back, wholly absorbed, still feeling myself of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot, my eye caught the fly end of necktie showing over the edge of a shut drawer in Lotte’s neat little Swedish chest. Absently, I fancied it must be mine. One of the pair I had bought not so long ago at Grieder’s. I pulled the drawer.

  It was not my tie. Despite my aspirations towards the higher life, I cannot afford Countess Mara ties and both ties now visible were thus handsomely marked with the distinctive coronet and the initials C.M. Also in the drawer were two superfine silk shirts, with fresh laundry bows, very chic and hand made, with the embroidered monogram C. deV. and the neat little tab back of the collar: Brioni. Roma. I stood examining these de luxe accessories like a kleptomaniac in a department store. Maybe that ‘de’ intrigued me. Of course I had occasionally been a trifle suspicious of Lotte, yet at the same time always flattered myself I was the only current bed-fellow. I closed the drawer and took a step towards the built-in wardrobe. It was full of her lovely clothes, possibly, I now reflected, from C.deV., and also her lovely smell. However, one hanger at the end provided a svelte if jarring note: a grey pinstripe suit of the finest quality. Vulgar curiosity made me hurt myself more. I looked at the tab in the inside pocket: D. Caraceni. Via Boncompagni, 21. Roma: the best tailor in Italy, probably in Europe. C.deV. must be a prince, or some dirty profiteer. I had always promised myself that if ever I had real money and went to Rome to call on the Pope I would have Caraceni make a suit. Now I saw the exact suit. Alas, it was not mine.

  I pushed the door to and went back to the living-room. Now I made myself a real hard drink, merely breathing the martini across the gin, and put it straight away down the hatch. When I had mixed another of the same I took it with me and sat down. I had taken no more than a sip when I heard the turn of a key in the Yale lock. How many keys has she, I asked myself, as Lotte breezed in?

  ‘Well, that is pretty.’ She stopped short, displeased. ‘ The guest is drinking before the hostess arrives.’

  ‘You’re not a hostess now. You’re a V.I.P. receptionist.’

  ‘Don’t be so smart or I shall be more cross with you. Then you will be less easily forgiven.’

  ‘Forgiven for what?’

  ‘You will hear.’ She came forward, threw her shoulder bag and uniform kepi on the couch, and sat down showing, as usual, that beautiful extent of beautiful leg. But tonight it did not bother me. ‘Now give me a quick one before I bathe and change.’

  I poured her the slightly watery remains in the glass mixer.

  ‘Yes.’ She sipped and made a face. ‘I must know about your woman Davigan. Although I cannot believe it, you were sleeping with her.’

  ‘Why can’t you believe it?’ I didn’t want to know, only to irritate her.

  ‘Because, although it is clear she is badly in love with you, she is so unattractive. Such a little bag of woman.’

  ‘She’s not in love with anyone. And she’s not a bag.’

  ‘You are wrong. She is gone upon you. As for looks, she is quite worn down. Don’t you notice these lines under the eyes?’

  ‘That poor woman has had a rough life.’ Illogically, but for some unaccountable reason, I was beginning to get angry at this denigration of Davigan. ‘Especially lately. Yet it may interest you to know that at your age she was a damn sight better fitted out than you are.’

  ‘Thank you for the compliment, my Scottish gentleman.’ Her face and neck reddened deeply. That’s the worst of these total blondes, when they flush they look coarse, like the butcher’s daughter with the peroxide hair. ‘But let us keep to the point. Did you let me down with that woman?’

  ‘Are you jealous?’ It gave me a morbid satisfaction to lead her on.

  ‘If you wish to understand me.’ She compressed her lips and faced me directly. ‘While I would not be so common as to have jealousy, I am fond of you and would painfully resent you making love outside the privilege of my bed.’

  ‘So you value me there … in that sanctuary?’

  ‘Should I not?’ She was losing control now or she would not have spoken so openly. ‘It is something you are very good at, the best I ever knew. Then, when you are not as you are tonight, you are nice really, and amusing with all these lies I can laugh at. Now, however, I wish the truth. Why did you sleep with Mrs Davigan?’

  I looked her in the eye.

  ‘Why did you sleep with C. deV.?’

  All the colour seeped out of her skin. Now she was no longer a blonde. An albino. A long pause followed. She moistened her lips.

  ‘Who spoke of him, Schwartz?’

  I shook my head.

  She tried again, bitterly.

  ‘Someone else of my good friends at the airport?’ As I made no answer she went on. ‘He is simply a friend. A very distinguished, elderly, quite old in fact, Italian gentleman.’

  ‘Not so old he changes his shirts in your bedroom?’

  ‘So? You are a mean, low spy.’

  ‘Yes, I’m low. And tonight I’m not pretending to be anything else.’

  She made an effort to be calm.

  ‘Come, let’s forget it, Laurence. You did wrong. I did wrong. So two wrongs make a right.’

  ‘Only in Sweden,’ I said and stood up. ‘I’m going now, and I’ll not be back.’

&nbs
p; ‘Don’t … I’ll make a little supper … we’ll be together, just as always.’ She put out her arm. Trying to smile, she was offering herself. ‘What is the matter with you? Always you tell me you have two of everything for me.’

  ‘Well now I’ve one of nothing.’ I knew I was cutting my own throat, that I would regret it, but it had to come out.

  She was silent with anger and, I think, shame. As I went through the door she said:

  ‘Don’t dare ever come back.’

  I skipped the lift and barged down the stairs, just in time to pick up a taxi that was discharging its passenger – I would have liked him to be C.deV., but he was not. I flung myself into the back and said: ‘Zürich Bahnhof.’ I was as mad at myself as she was with me, fully conscious that I had botched everything during the day, and was now swinging wild punches from the floor, yet somehow trying to compensate, to get the whole mess out of my system, and above all, dying for another desperately needful drink.

  Chapter Twenty

  At the station I paid off the taxi and went direct to the Auskunft board. I had a vague idea that a Coire train was due to leave around seven. Hurriedly, I checked the red figures of the rapides, only to find that this particular evening express ran only on Saturdays. But, in the black Abfahrt column of slow, secondary trains, a departure was scheduled for 7.15. A glance at the clock showed 7.13. Support of some kind was essential, and I knew what would give me the lift I needed. I had barely two minutes to spring to the buffet, buy a bottle of vodka and beat the gate on Quai 9 before it slammed shut.

  The train, strictly non de luxe, was an omnibus, the cheapest and slowest form of Swiss travel, with, of course, no possibility of a Speisewagen. It was practically empty. Who wanted to go to Coire at this season of the year and this time of night? As we crawled through the outskirts of Zürich, snow began to fall, the large drifting flakes jaundiced by the neon lights of dirty, deserted streets. With a shiver, I shot down the blinds in the bare compartment and, without hope and strictly against regulations, turned the heating switch a couple of notches. It did not click. This would be a long, sad, chilly journey, yet with commendable Carroll foresight I had the means to anaesthetize myself against the sick, despondent sense of botchery, failure and personal disgust let loose in me this afternoon. I settled in a corner of the hard wooden bench, pulled up the collar of my overcoat, and examined the bottle.

  The label was in German.

  Superior Slovene Vodka.

  Specially for Export.

  This pure vodka is made by the original Slovene recipe entirely

  from rye and green rye malt and not, as with inferior brands,

  from potatoes and maize.

  Trust the Swiss to import the best. But a couple of peasants were passing me on the way to the forward coach; I shoved the bottle back into my overcoat pocket. So now, Carroll, I thought sourly, you have a pocketful of rye, it follows naturally, after your juvenile maunderings, and I hope it nourishes you. It was time to try, for now I was quite alone.

  As a temperate, or at least a cautious drinker, I was more or less unaccustomed to excess. This is the alibi I create, like Davigan’s miracle wind, to exonerate myself from the subsequent events of this inconceivable Walpurgis night. I took out my pocketful of rye. I had no glass, it was necessary to drink from the bottle, a difficult technique, with the short squat neck and one which, badly accomplished, made me choke and cough. Nevertheless, I managed a good slug that warmed my insides, but for the moment afforded me no alleviation of my misery which, rather, was intensified by the discovery that the Slovenes had really gone to town not on purity alone, but on strength. This stuff must be two hundred over proof and would probably rot my liver.

  Yet, did I not deserve to suffer? What an S.O.B. I had been, what a Gadarene swine, what a putrefying bastard. And what a B.F. I had been to top it off by reading that bloody, beautiful poem. All Dingwall’s doing of course, he had probably made a Novena to have the action delayed, so it would score a bull’s eye on me at the psychological moment, when I was most vulnerable.

  I felt like throwing a healthy curse at the old schemer, but no, that I could never do, particularly since, after a second slug, I had begun to feel more hopeful. Carroll, I told myself, do not despair, it is always darkest before the dawn.

  Thus encouraged, I took a third slug, more skilfully accomplished and with more positive results – this vodka might be unhealthy, but it had an Iron Curtain kick. The old Carroll morale began to assert itself, the blood began to pulse, the spirits rose. Yes, I could bring myself, decently, to forget it, wipe out the entire complex mess, and get myself set for the future. Life was full of mistakes, everyone made them, why should I be the exception to the rule? We were all sinners, humanity was frail. Why mourn, why shed crocodile tears? No use crying over spilled milk, the only reasonable attitude was to wipe the slate clean and start afresh.

  As the train jogged through the snowy darkness, leaving the valley behind, climbing higher towards the mountains, halting at interminable wayside stations, I continued my application to the rye, achieving not personal exoneration alone, but a state of physical and mental euphoria in which all my faculties, while somewhat blurred, seemed fired up to a point of abnormal activity. In this expansive mood my present situation in the empty coach offered neither scope nor opportunity. Conversation with the conductor, who gave me a strange look and my ticket a quick punch, proved unproductive. Song, in the circumstances, would have been an infringement of good taste. Instead, with shut eyes, rolling slightly with the movement of the train, I created a series of brilliant situations justifying my position, the most diverting set in a court specially convened at my request at the Vatican wherein, with the Pontiff’s blessing, I successfully brought charges of malfeasance against Dingwall, who appeared, much to the amusement of His Holiness, in a full dress kilt. What, I asked myself, with a grin, is malfeasance? Anyway, I really loved that old Highlander.

  Two hours later, when I tumbled out on the deserted platform of Schlewald Dorf, leaving the empty bottle on the hat rack as a testimonial to its country of origin, I was virtually airborne, yet with a calculating and elevated perception of myself, my surroundings and my condition. This last convinced me, after a careful study of the station clock which on closer examination showed nineteen minutes past eleven, that it would be unwise to present myself to the good Matron immediately. A cooling off period was indicated and, indeed, the Arctic blast loaded with icy flakes that tore down the deserted platform caused me a preliminary shiver. In my absence a blizzard had apparently taken over. Where should I find sustenance and shelter? As I floated off through the village, a sensation to which the deep wet snow contributed, thinking in terms of coffee, I had to admit that Edelmann’s was closed. Yes, confound it, everything must now be shut and, in the wise Swiss fashion, shuttered, except the Pfeffermühle. This was an establishment that, unofficially, never closed. But there I should indubitably drink more and, rather disconcerting, be flailed with recollections of the chess match. That match, the young participant therein and his maternal relative were henceforth to be eradicated from the tablets of my memory.

  I would have to chance the possibility of Hulda staying up to wait for me. Even so, everything would be arranged to her entire satisfaction. With this in mind I set off up the hill towards the main street of the town.

  It was a steep hill, ankle deep in soggy slush and where the snow, earlier, had drifted, an unwary step frequently took me in up to the knees. The wind, too, was hitting me in the teeth in an effort to knock them down my throat. Altogether, to my immense surprise, when I reached an intermediate level, I found myself gasping for breath and actually hanging on to a convenient railing. That the railing belonged to the church was ridiculous enough, but not more so than the realization that this very edifice would provide me with the respite I must have before taking off again on the higher slope to the Maybelle. As usual, it was open and received me in darkness and silence when I staggered in, animated by t
he feeling that I was participating in the joke of the century.

  Naturally I treated myself to the front pew, sat down, and shook the wet snow off myself. Not that I minded the wet, it gave me a soft, steamy feeling, as good as a sauna – that further tickled my fancy, having a steam bath in this dark, crummy church. Yet it was not all dark, for suddenly I saw a little red light flickering like an eye. They kept it at the side underneath the bas-relief on the wall. No more than a rushlight in a red glass holding oil, it still diffused a glow and I knew that, as usual, He was watching me. But tonight nothing could worry me, I had the answer to that idiotic phobia, in fact I had the answers to everything, and the situation suddenly

  seemed to me so amusing I broke into a loud laugh and exclaimed:

  ‘You didn’t expect to see me in here, did You?’

  Naturally, there was no reply, and that put my back up. So I

  threw my voice over and answered for Him.

  ‘Certainly I did not expect you, Dr Carroll.’ It came back perfectly

  with a slight echo from the hard, granite wall. ‘As you are now

  aware, I’ve been following you around without much success for