Childish Things

by Robin Jenkins

  As for Kate, she, good sport, herself out of the game, would cheer me on. Hadn’t she, on her death-bed in the hospital, too weak to wink, whispered that I was not to grieve too long but was to try and enjoy what little was left of my life?

  Some may think me a monster, one minute talking of retreating to an ashram, and the next dreaming of a dalliance with a foul-tongued elderly millionairess. But that is how human beings are. No one is surprised to learn that the keeper of the gas chambers was a loving husband and indulgent father.

  3

  When they were all gone I wandered about the house, touching things that Kate had touched and looking at photographs with her in them. There was one when she was young, smiling fondly. Who is she so fond of? Whose arm is she holding? It is a young soldier, in the kilted uniform of the Argylls, with the ribbon of the MM on his chest. It’s me, more than 40 years ago: the moustache is black. I look upwards, as if I had high ambitions. Yet, when the war was over, I returned to being a primary schoolteacher. It was a safe, worth-while job, and I had two small children, but it fell far short of what I thought my talents deserved. True, I rose to be headmaster of a large school, I became influential in educational circles, in spite of being a member for a while of the ILP, and I always did well in the Scottish Amateur Golf Championship, once reaching the quarter-finals. Latterly, Susan Cramond, who was a friend of the Lord Lieutenant of the county, had suggested putting my name forward for an OBE for services to education.

  There was an apron of Kate’s hanging on its usual hook in the kitchen. Madge and Jean must have overlooked it when getting rid of their mother’s clothes. I pressed it against my face.

  Despair crept near, but was I capable of genuine despair?

  Suddenly it came to me that there was one person I had never taken in. I had last seen her at least ten years ago. We had parted in anger. I had called her a slovenly bitch, she had called me a fraud. She might be dead, for she had had a tendency to become fat and was a heavy smoker, but I felt a desire, a passionate need, to go and find out.

  Her name was Chrissie Carruthers. She lived in Gantock, 15 miles along the Firth. I could hardly call her my ex-mistress for I had never spent any money on her and had been to bed with her once only. It hadn’t been a success. She had laughed and quoted Plato, and her feet hadn’t been clean. A common interest in literature and politics had brought us together. We were both members of the ILP. In spite of painful feet, she had gone on marches against the Bomb and other abominations of our time, while I had stayed away, using the argument that such demonstrations were never effectual, but really, as Chrissie had pointed out, because I thought them vulgar, with their silly banners and idealistic optimism. If she was alive, was she still politically active? Did she still have the portrait of Rosa Luxemburg on her mantelpiece?

  I would go and find out. I might look in on Hector too.

  It was dark as I drove alongside the Firth. The amber lights of Dunoon twinkled across the water and, every five seconds, there was a flash from the Toward Lighthouse. If any of my Lunderston acquaintances recognised my Mercedes, they would think I had come out for a drive, being unable to settle in the empty house. If they had ever heard of Chrissie, it would have been as Miss Carruthers, eccentric teacher of English in Gantock High School.

  The west end of Gantock is a district of wide tree-lined avenues and big stone villas built in Victorian times, when there were no motor cars. Most, therefore, had no garages, so that cars had to be left out in the street. I parked mine, not in Chrissie’s avenue, but in the one next to it. There was no need to be apprehensive about leaving it unattended. Police cars frequently patrolled that area of high ratepayers.

  As I walked to Chrissie’s, I met no one. I saw a cat. Perhaps it was one of Hector’s on the prowl. He lived close by.

  Most of the villas being too big for single families to maintain, they had been divided into flats. Chrissie’s was on the ground floor. Furtive as Troilus sneaking past the Greek sentries, I went through the gate and up the short flight of steps. Careless as ever, Chrissie had left the outer door open. The inner door of frosted glass showed a light in the hall. I rang the bell.

  She still lived there. On a small brass plate was the name C. Carruthers.

  She came shuffling to the door – so her feet were still sore – and opened it without hesitation. Her spectacles were pushed up onto her hair, which was almost as white as mine but as unkempt as ever. She reached forward to peer at me. There was a cigarette in her mouth and a smell of whisky off her breath. She was wearing a long green skirt and a red woolly jumper, fastened at the neck by a large safety pin. Her colour hadn’t improved and the shadows under her eyes were almost black.

  She took the cigarette out of her mouth. ‘Why, Gregor, it’s you,’ she said, as if unsurprised.

  ‘What’s left of me, Chrissie. How are you?’

  ‘Fatter, as you can see, and my feet are still killing me. You’re looking grand.’

  She must have meant the blue blazer with the gold buttons, and the white cravat. Surely she wasn’t too myopic to see the grief on my face.

  ‘Come in, Gregor.’

  ‘Thank you, Chrissie.’

  As I followed her, I saw that her bottom had got bigger and more shapeless. ‘It never bothers me, Gregor,’ she had said. ‘I just sit on it.’

  In the living-room, on a table in front of the gas fire, were exercise books, a glass with whisky in it, a box of cigarettes, and an ash-tray. When I was headmaster, I had objected to members of my staff marking, drinking, and smoking at the same time. That I had done it myself before my elevation had been beside the point.

  ‘Make yourself at home,’ she said.

  She took my hat and threw it at a sofa. It landed on the carpet among books and newspapers.

  ‘Would you like a cigarette?’ she asked.

  ‘No, thank you, Chrissie. I gave it up years ago.’

  ‘Is that why you’re looking so spry? What about a dram then?’

  ‘A small one, please. I’m driving.’

  Glasses in hand, we stared at each other.

  Tears came into my eyes. This was unwise, in that company, this was the woman who had called me a fraud, but I could not help it. They were as genuine as my nature allowed.

  ‘So your wife’s dead,’ she said. ‘I saw the notice in the Herald.’

  ‘Kate was buried this afternoon.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Gregor. Cancer, was it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Her brother told me.’

  ‘Hector?’

  ‘I go into his shop now and then to buy a book.’

  ‘You must be the only one who does.’

  ‘Yes, he’s not very busy. I met her just the once. I liked her. She had a merry laugh.’

  ‘Yes, she had.’

  ‘I hope she didn’t suffer.’

  ‘She did, a bit, at the end, but she bore it bravely.’ My voice trembled.

  ‘Poor soul.’

  Then we sat in silence for a minute or so.

  ‘You’ve lost no time in coming to ask me to take her place, Gregor. I’m afraid I can’t accept but I appreciate it just the same.’

  This was Chrissie’s not very subtle irony.

  ‘I’ll never marry again, Chrissie,’ I said. ‘No one could take Kate’s place.’

  ‘If anyone does, she’ll be younger, bonnier, tidier, thinner, and richer than me.’

  She had often poked fun, with a tinge of contempt, at my ambition to be rich. After all, I was supposed to be an egalitarian. But she was not to know, for I would never tell her, that what I really wanted was to be in a position one day to exorcise memories of childhood, when I had been so often, so bitterly, degraded by poverty.

  Not even Kate had known about that.

  I said, ‘My daughter Madge and her husband want me to go and live with them in San Diego.’

  ‘Why don’t you? Best climate in the world, they say.’

  ‘And sunshine is kind to old bo
nes.’

  ‘Lots of rich old widows.’

  ‘Why not? Look what money can buy.’

  ‘Swanky cars. Swish blazers.’

  ‘And books. And theatre tickets. And travel to exotic places. And immunity from the insolence of inferior men.’

  She laughed. ‘Who ever dared to be insolent to you, Gregor.’

  ‘There was a time, Chrissie.’

  ‘You’re not going to tell me about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, would you like us to read something suitable? Adonais? Urn Burial? Ecclesiastes?’

  ‘You’ve got those essays to correct.’

  ‘I’ll finish them later. It’s a waste of time anyway. They pay absolutely no heed to my corrections and suggestions.’

  As a teacher, I had had similar doubts about the value of homework but, as a headmaster, I had had to insist that every class got plenty of it.

  There was no sign of the portrait of Rosa Luxemburg, the German pacifist and socialist, murdered by evil men. Chrissie’s ambition had been to write a book about her.

  What had happened? I did not ask. If her dreams of a juster world had faded, it was not for me to crow.

  ‘Are you going to pay Hector a visit while you’re here?’ she asked. ‘He’s not well.’

  ‘He looked very ill at the funeral.’

  ‘He was fond of his sister.’

  ‘He didn’t visit her very often. I suppose that was because of me. Yet I never did him any harm.’

  ‘He thought you weren’t fair to your wife.’

  An opinion, it seemed, shared by many. If they were right, it was too late to make amends. I felt desolate.

  ‘Were you unfair to her, Gregor?’

  ‘You’d have given me six-and-a-half out of ten, Chrissie.’

  ‘What would she have given you?’

  I heard Kate’s voice. It’s no business of hers, Gregor. Tell her ten.

  It was the kind of question typical of Chrissie. Even at 60 or so, she still put truth, as she saw it, before compassion.

  ‘What are we heathens to do, Chrissie, if we feel we deserve divine punishment but there’s no God to inflict it?’

  ‘If I was God, I’d punish no one.’

  ‘Not even the exploiters of the poor? The supporters of the Bomb?’

  ‘You should go to California, Gregor. You’d be in your element there.’

  ‘Because I’m a determined individualist?’

  ‘Because you’re a fraud. But then, we all are, aren’t we? You do it with more style than the rest of us.’

  ‘I loved Kate.’

  ‘I’m sure you did, Gregor, in your own way. But who am I to talk? I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone in my life.’

  ‘That’s a terrible thing to say, Chrissie.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘You’ve spent your life loving the poor.’

  ‘Being sorry for them. I can’t claim to have loved them.’

  ‘Have you given up politics then?’

  ‘I don’t go to meetings, if that’s what you mean.’

  I stood up. I picked my hat off the floor. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

  ‘No. I’ll see you out. It might be the last time.’

  In the hall, she gripped my arm. ‘I’m sorry, Gregor, if I’ve hurt your feelings again.’

  I patted her hand. ‘I think I came to have my feelings hurt. Good for me, Chrissie.’

  At the door she said, ‘Good luck,’ and added, ‘with the rich old widows.’

  ‘Good luck to you, Chrissie.’ Perhaps, before she died, she would find someone to love.

  I wanted to be at my most dignified as I went out but I missed a step and stumbled.

  ‘What do you wash your steps with, Chrissie?’ I asked.

  ‘I can’t remember when I last washed them.’

  ‘They should be washed regularly. Wet moss can be slippery.’

  Like human relationships, I almost added.

  4

  Hector’s house was in darkness. Though it wasn’t yet nine o’clock, he would be in bed. God knew what dreams he had. It had been his and Kate’s family home and had been left to them jointly. A large stone villa with an extensive garden, it was worth a great deal of money. Kate’s share would now be mine.

  Their father had been a popular philanthropic doctor, with most of his patients among the poor in the east end.

  I kept my finger on the bell-button, though I wouldn’t have been surprised to know that it didn’t work. The whole house was decrepit, the garden was a jungle for cats. Kate had refused to put pressure on her brother.

  A more brilliant scholar than ever I was, with a first-class degree in Classics, Hector after the war had, perversely, continued to work as a farm labourer until his strength ran out. He had then bought the bookshop. He had once cast up that the war had been good to me. Millions had been slaughtered so that I could win a medal and use it to rise in my profession, while he weeded turnips.

  At last noises were heard behind the door.

  ‘Who’s there?’ It was Hector’s sullen defeated voice.

  ‘It’s me, Gregor.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To talk to you, about Kate.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you. Go away.’

  I couldn’t resist being sarcastic. ‘I thought, Hector, your sympathies were with poor suffering humanity.’

  ‘When did you ever suffer?’

  ‘I’m suffering now. I loved Kate.’

  ‘You’ve never loved anyone but yourself.’

  This was a man I had tried to be friendly with, whose stand as a conscientious objector I had defended. But I kept my temper. A winner of the Military Medal ought not to let himself be provoked by a querulous failed peace-monger. Besides, at the graveside he had wept.

  ‘For Kate’s sake, Hector, open the door.’

  Under my breath I sang a snatch of Burns’s poignant song: ‘Oh open the door, some pity to show.’ I had sung it at Burns suppers. On the other side of the door was a man who had never been at a Burns supper in his life.

  His opening of the door was a lengthy business. Two keys had to be turned, a bolt withdrawn, and a chain removed. Hector, when revealed, was carrying an ebony baton.

  This was a man supposed to trust in the goodwill of neighbours and nations.

  Even as a boy, according to Kate, he had never taken part in children’s games. In the greatest game of the century he had refused to participate and so had missed the immeasurable joy of sharing a noble and dangerous cause with many comrades.

  The hall stank of cats’ piss. A big ginger Tom was on top of a small white female, clutching her with his claws. On his face was an expression of single-minded dedication that no human lover could ever have achieved.

  ‘What do you do with all the kittens?’ I asked.

  ‘I give them to children.’

  ‘What about those you can’t give away? Do you drown them?’

  He didn’t answer.

  The living-room was even smellier. Every chair was occupied by a cat. I threw one off and sat down. I held my hat on my lap. This was to keep cats off. Two were already nudging against my legs.

  Hector was wearing an old dirty dressing-gown over his pyjamas. He seemed reluctant to put down his cudgel. I kept on the alert. This stench might have a murderous effect, like a drug.

  ‘You knew Kate a lot longer than I did, Hector. You were both born in this house.’

  He had a face like a medieval martyr, with sunken cheeks, morbid eyes, and invisible thorns on his brow. He had taken it all, life and death, too seriously. He had never hurt a fly and yet he still agonised in his conscience more than men who had bombed cities. He was proof that no one could be at home in the 20th century who wasn’t prepared to kill his fellow men, let alone drown kittens.

  As far as I knew, he had never had a girl-friend. That was another game he had kept aloof from. It was a wonder he hadn’t had all his cats neutered.

&nb
sp; I was already regretting that I had come. The room was poorly lit. Was that a photograph on the sideboard? Yes, it was. She was smiling. Where are you, Kate, my love? My eyes were wet.

  ‘Madge said you might be going to live with her in California,’ he said, craftily.

  ‘They’ve invited me. I haven’t decided.’

  ‘Oh, you will go. You will be in your element there.’

  Chrissie had said that too. They must have been discussing me in his forlorn shop among the unsaleable books.

  ‘You will do what suits you,’ he said. ‘You always have.’

  ‘Don’t we all?’ But it was useless trying to joke with him.

  ‘You more than most,’ he said.

  That accusation of selfishness was hard to take from a man who had put his own piddling little conscience before the saving of civilisation.

  ‘Even your own daughters distrust you.’

  Though I was sure it was a lie, I was hurt and angered.

  Of course, they had always preferred their mother to me, but they hadn’t given her all their love and trust. There had been some left for me.

  ‘When they were children, they had to go without so that you could swagger about in expensive clothes.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Kate told me.’

  If he had driven a dagger into me, I couldn’t have been more wounded. I didn’t believe him, but the very insinuation that Kate had denigrated me behind my back was unbearable.

  There had been a time, after the war, when we had found my teacher’s salary insufficient, but Kate had seen to it that the girls had not suffered.