The Wax Fruit Trilogy

by Guy McCrone

  David stood up in alarm. Lucy had burst into a fit of sobbing, and was standing beside him shaking, her face in her hands.

  “Lucy! Lucy! What can I say to make you believe me?”

  “Believe what?” She was standing looking up at him with brimming eyes. He could feel her willing him to take her into his arms. He caught her up, and kissed her with such a kiss as he had never given before. It was his turn to tremble now, in the tempest of his feelings. Here there was no room for calculated thought, for solemn promises to himself of honourable behaviour—room for nothing but his staggering senses.

  At last she disengaged herself. “David, what are we doing?”

  She could have done now what she would with him, and this knowledge staunched, in part, her wounded pride. But a common liaison with David Moorhouse was not her purpose.

  “You haven’t given me a reply, Lucy.”

  The tone of his voice touched her. She must thrust this untimely, passionate anger from her, search her feelings, and make her decision with as much coolness as she could. “David, dear—no. Sit down again. Have patience with me. Let me think for a moment.”

  “Then you will consider what I’m asking?”

  “Hush!” She took up again her former attitude by the mantelpiece. No. She must make David jump through every one of the hoops of his own conventionality, in order to come to her. Her pride would allow nothing else.

  “David,” she said at length, “so long as you’re engaged to Miss Dermott, I can’t possibly discuss this matter with you. I was wrong to let you kiss me just now. Now please go, before there’s any more foolishness.”

  “Lucy, you’re not angry?”

  “No, David. I’m not angry.”

  “Can I write to you?”

  “If you have anything to write about.” She turned, gave him a card bearing her address in London, then held out her hand. “Goodbye, David. And God bless you.”

  He took her hand, repeated “God bless you”, picked up his hat and went.

  III

  David made his way down Hill Street without knowing what he did. Last night, Grace. Now tonight, Lucy. And yet he had always considered himself rather more than usually self-possessed. What had happened? He must be mad. Instinct would have taken him back to Bel, but a moment of thought showed him that this way was barred.

  And yet, if Bel could have come on David as he stood now, aimlessly at the corner of Cambridge Street, looked into his heart, and glimpsed the depths of his trouble, she would, loving him as she did, have been torn for him as she would have been torn for one of her own sons.

  David stood dazed, looking about him in the foggy, ill-lit darkness. Then, as no tramcar appeared, he turned and, thrusting his hands deep into his greatcoat pockets, made his way towards the lights of Sauchiehall Street. Presently he became aware that an arm was being pushed through his own. He stopped to look round. It was his friend Stephen Hayburn.

  “Stephen!”

  Stephen smiled. “I’ve been watching you for quite a long time. I even spoke to you, but you didn’t notice me. Anything wrong, David?”

  David stood still, merely giving Stephen a nod of recognition. “Many things are wrong with me tonight,” he said at length, “but I can’t talk about them.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “Yes. Take me somewhere.”

  “Have you had something to eat, David?”

  “No.”

  Stephen went with David, wondering. Had he broken with Grace Dermott? Was he in debt? Had he got himself into some doubtful tangle? He had known David for the better part of ten years, and he knew that such happenings were much more likely to befall himself than anyone so respectable as a Moorhouse. They had both been frivolous in their early twenties together, but for years now David had been the mirror of propriety.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Anywhere you like, Stephen.”

  Presently David and Stephen found themselves in a little foreign eating-house at the City end of Sauchiehall Street. It was steamy and warm, and smelt pleasantly of Mediterranean cooking. A dark-eyed waiter, with a white apron round his waist, welcomed Stephen as a friend, and led the young men across the sawdust floor. They settled themselves and looked about them. The little restaurant, with its coarse table-cloths, wooden pepper-mills and toothpicks, was busy with Glasgow’s Bohemia. A couple of heavy-bearded German fiddlers were, each of them, wolfing plates of macaroni, and drinking the pale beer of their own country from high glasses: players, probably, from some orchestra. Argentine Spaniards from shipping-offices chattered noisily over their specially cooked tortilla and their raw, Iberian wine. A bedizened lady with saffron curls, talking bad French, was being entertained by a swarthy but fashionable southern Italian, who was managing his macaroni with an elegance that should have put the Germans to shame. The place was ridiculous, cosmopolitan and gay.

  Stephen sat back preparing to enjoy himself. But his companion, he saw, was preoccupied and listless. When their friend the waiter returned with his thumbed little menu card, Stephen sent him at once to fetch a flagon of wine.

  “There. Put that down,” he said, pouring David a full glass from the round, straw-covered bottle.

  As he had intended, food and much wine began to have their effect. David was beginning to look like himself. Presently he was even commenting with some amusement on the people about him.

  “Well, David, feeling better?”

  “Yes. Glad I met you.”

  “You wouldn’t like to tell me what was troubling you?”

  David shook his head. “I can’t,” was all he said.

  Stephen tried to read his flushed face, but could discover nothing. “Well, never mind,” he said.

  Stephen Hayburn’s thoughts went back some months to the time when the Hayburn fortunes had gone in the Glasgow City Bank disaster—a happening which had killed his mother. David had been kind then. He would try to help him now.

  IV

  They were finishing their meal.

  “What should we do? I don’t want to go home,” David said rather surprisingly. No, he was looking almost cheerful.

  “You’re not drunk, are you?”

  “No. But I feel better than I did.”

  Stephen looked at his watch and considered. “It’s after eight. I say—we haven’t been to Brown’s music-hall together for years.”

  “We’ll still get in. It’s Monday night. I forget who’s performing, but anyway we’ll be in time for the nine o’clock ballet.”

  The two young men made their way down the hill and across George’s Square to Dunlop Street. As Stephen had predicted, there was no difficulty in getting into Brown’s, even at this hour. Monday evening was slack. The little music-hall was gay enough, although there was less tobacco smoke and noise than David seemed to remember. He wondered what the family would think of him. In the early days he had received more than one lecture from Arthur for coming here. Places like Brown’s were not approved of.

  A massive lady in a dress of black sequins, white, elbow-length kid-gloves, and a white rose in her piled-up, ginger hair, was singing sentimentally in a loud contralto, as Stephen and David made their way to the bar at the back, and stood waiting for her turn to finish, that they might order their drink and find a seat. When at length they came down towards the front, the chairman spied Stephen and waved to him with his wooden mallet. Presently David found himself sitting in the chairman’s half-circle in front of the grand piano and the little orchestra.

  Now the chairman was knocking for silence. He was announcing the next item. This was fantastic, unreal. David was in possession of his wits, but his senses were misted. This circle of boisterous men. Those busy musicians. The curtain with its tinsel fringe reflecting the flickerings of the footlights. And now this ridiculous little street scene, with a jaunty Cockney telling them in his song that he was in love with a lady called “Clementina Angelina Margarita Green”, who had unaccountable ways of fainting in situation
s which became more and more compromising as verse succeeded verse. Fantastic, unreal. But he was laughing with the others. Inside, he was bruised, perhaps, but it didn’t matter.

  The song came to its first ending in a storm of laughter and applause, and the jaunty comedian, having run out and in to the roll of the drum, at length let himself be persuaded to stay and sing the naughtiest verse of all. Now that, too, was over, and after more clapping the curtain closed and the lights went up once more.

  “Have another drink, David?”

  David declined. His Moorhouse caution had decided that for the moment he had had enough. Stephen went off to get a drink for himself. Before he could get back the ballet had begun. Six young ladies in black-and-yellow-striped tights and wearing gauze wings representing, presumably, bees, set themselves prettily to pursue six more, who were even more colourful, and represented butterflies. When this dance came to an end, and the Queen Bee and the King of the Butterflies, also a lady, were falling into postures ready to begin their part of the revels, Stephen, who had slipped back into his seat, turned to David:

  “There’s a lady friend of yours here tonight.”

  “Here? Who?” David was puzzled. He was not the kind of young man to have lady friends in the half-world of Glasgow. And the women of his family and their like would rather die than be seen in a place like this.

  “Tell you after.” Stephen was giving his whole attention now to the gyrations of the Queen Bee and the Butterfly King.

  The ballet ended at last, and the voluptuously curved ladies minced back more than once to receive the applause that was their due. Again David pressed his question.

  For reply, Stephen rose, took his arm and said, “Come on, it’s time you had another drink. Whether you want it or not. You’ll probably meet her.”

  And so it came about that David, carrying a full glass in the promenade of the little theatre, came, once more, face to face with Lucy Rennie. At a later time he could not tell why the encounter gave him this sense of shock. Tonight he had left Hill Street, his mind torn with indecision, self-hatred and amazement. Amazement that his senses had driven him to make the offer he had made. By his meeting with Stephen, he had managed to lay his stunned distress aside for a time.

  Now, here was the ground in front of him burst open, and the same Lucy, provocative and very much mistress of the situation, smiling up at him. There was nothing extraordinary about her except that she was here, in this place which all Moorhouses regarded as a resort of libertines and scarlet women. Here, taking everything complacently for granted. Her arm was linked through the arm of the man who had accompanied her singing in Bel’s drawing-room.

  “Well, David? I didn’t expect to find you here in this frivolous place.” There was sympathy and, somehow, an echo of the intimacy of their meeting earlier in the evening. But no sense of embarrassment.

  “This is my friend Stephen Hayburn, Lucy. He brought me. I haven’t been here for years.”

  There were introductions and easy laughter. Lucy explained how she had felt so dull that when her friend had called to say goodbye, she had asked him to take her somewhere gay.

  David did not know what to make of it. Had his conventionality seen Lucy as quite another person? Had it allowed him no understanding? Could the standards of his life offer his feelings no yardstick, that Lucy’s presence here so much disturbed him? Or was he just a prig? A fool?

  The music had struck up again. The curtain had parted, and a juggler and his lady were getting ready to perform wonders. Stephen and Lucy’s cavalier had moved ahead.

  Lucy turned to David. “There’s lots of room tonight. We can all sit together.”

  They found places to one side, and sat watching the remainder of the performance. David was glad when it came to an end. He felt unhappy and ridiculous. Why did he so ardently hope that no one who mattered should see him here? What was this unexplained sense of shame? Why did it displease him that Lucy seemed so much at her ease?

  At the entrance she gave him her hand, telling him that her friend, who lived near her, would see her to her lodgings. Confused, bewildered and heartsick, David bade Stephen goodnight, and took his way home.

  There were two short notes waiting for him on his sitting-room table. One was from Bel saying she had called, and regretting she had missed him. The other was from Grace, delivered by the hand of a servant. They both contained the same message. Robert Dermott’s condition had become very serious. David was to go to Grace and her mother at once.

  Chapter Twenty

  IT was curious that it did not occur to David that he should not now go to Aucheneame; that, with his visit to Lucy, this evening, and with what had happened, he must have given up the right to enter Robert Dermott’s house as the promised husband of Robert Dermott’s daughter. He sat down heavily in his armchair by the dying fire, crushing the two pieces of paper in his hand. His quick sympathy could feel Grace’s present distress, and he was sharply aware of how much she must need him. It was too late to go tonight, but tomorrow morning he would take an early train. His head had become clear, but it had cleared merely to show him his own perplexities. On the one hand he felt as though Grace’s eyes were fixed upon him, accusing him of frivolity, and worse, while her father’s life was in danger; and, on the other, it was as though he could see Lucy’s smile of mockery, that he, a man of thirty-one, could not take himself and his emotions in hand and behave before the world with courage and honesty. Lucy had been right, of course, to refuse to give him an answer so long as he was promised to Grace. Yet Grace’s father was ill, and, as Bel insisted, he must not be so cruel as to break with her now. But yet again, he had felt he must speak to Lucy before she disappeared from Glasgow. Now he could well see that it must have looked to her as though he had wanted to make sure of her before he had finally broken with Grace. He could see how despicable he must have seemed.

  But was it not more than a seeming? Was it not, indeed, true? Still in his overcoat in the cold sitting-room, David sat forward staring before him. Had his cautious Moorhouse instincts been at work? Or was it that somewhere at the bottom of his heart he had no real intention of giving up Grace Dermott? Yet what had driven him to Lucy’s room this evening? And had something changed in himself since he had seen this other Lucy in Brown’s, later tonight? A new Lucy, familiar, easy and undisturbed among the light-headed, none too well-behaved men, in a place where even his independent and unconventional sister Phœbe would never have gone. Was he beginning to realise that Lucy Rennie lived by a different code from his own?

  It was in the small hours of the morning that David stirred himself from his chair to go to bed. He would lie down, even if he did not sleep. Tomorrow, events must be his counsellors. He would go, at least, and help these two women in their distress. He was, he knew, the only man they had to turn to.

  He was actually asleep when his landlady roused him early to a foggy, wet morning. His body was numb and weary and consciousness, as it returned to him, brought with it all the confusion and dilemma of the night. But now, however weary he might feel, he must face what lay before him. Robert Dermott’s wife and daughter would already be wondering, indeed, why he was not with them.

  He got up hurriedly, shivering, as he poured the hot shaving-water from the polished metal can into his wash-basin. The air, even in his bedroom, was raw with a penetrating January dampness. His landlady, a homely creature with an affection for him, scolded him as she brought him his overcoat. He appeared to have eaten so little breakfast. The notes of last night, she told him, had been left, one by a man in livery, the other by a lady who had asked permission to come in and write; who had said she was Mr. David Moorhouse’s sister-in-law. The lady had seemed disturbed. Nothing, the good woman hoped, was wrong. Miss Dermott’s father was ill, David told her, as he hurried away.

  It was not the first time, David reflected, looking out upon the sodden, misty country from his railway carriage, that he had gone down to Aucheneame in a state of emotional tension
. His mind went back to the day of his engagement to Grace, and from that his thoughts went on to review everything that followed. At Aucheneame he had found much happiness, and much contentment; a conventionality that suited him very well, and peace of mind. Grace had spoken his own language, and he had fallen into a well-bred fondness for her, which had promised nothing but good in the closer intimacy of marriage. If only his heart had not been astonished into this folly with Lucy Rennie. In the passionless grey of the winter morning, David sighed and called himself a fool.

  The train halted at a half-way station down the river. David became aware that a watery sun had broken through. Wet roofs and roadways were gleaming in a chill January light. His one companion in the carriage, a businessman who had sat throughout reading the morning news, jumped up, asked the name of the station, hurriedly threw down his paper and got out. The train started once more on its way.

  David’s thoughts had been far from newspapers, but now, seeking perhaps to escape his troubles for an instant, he picked up this one left in the seat, and ran his eyes down its front page.

  Thus it was that he learnt that Robert Dermott was dead.

  II

  In some minutes more the train had reached its destination. David found himself, the only passenger to alight, standing on the country platform. For an instant he stood stupidly looking about him. The stationmaster blew his whistle, waved his flag and the train puffed off on its leisurely morning journey down the riverside. The tide was low. A light western breeze was coming up from the Firth, smelling of mud-flats, sand and sea-wrack. Above his head a seagull wheeled and cried querulously in the pale sunshine.

  “Your ticket, sir?”

  “Oh yes. Of course.”

  “Many thanks.” The stationmaster, knowing David now by sight, touched his cap to the young man who was to marry Robert Dermott’s daughter.