Chapter Two
Downstairs, Mr. Leckie, Kate and Murdoch had come in and, with Mama, were awaiting me in the kitchen, their sudden silence, which immobilized the room, indicating that I had been the subject of their conversation. Like most solitary children I had a painful shyness, exaggerated in my present state, and, with a confused understanding of the deep estrangement which had existed between my mother and Papa, I shrank into a kind of daze when, after a pause, he limped forward, took my hand, held it, then after a moment bent down and kissed me on the brow.
“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Robert. No one regrets more than I that we haven’t met before.”
His voice was not angry, as I had vaguely feared, but subdued and depressed. I told myself I must not cry, yet it was hard not to, when Kate also bent down and kissed me, awkwardly, but with generous intention.
“Let’s sit in then.” Mama, showing me to my place, again put on her veneer of brightness. “ Nearly half-past six. You must be famished, son.”
When we were seated, Papa, at the head of the table, lowered his eyes and said grace: a long, strange grace which I had never heard before, and he did not bless himself either. He began to slice the steaming corned beef in the oval ashet before him, while Mama served the potatoes and cabbage, at the other end.
“There!” Papa said, with the air of giving me a nice piece, his movements precise and correct. He was a small, rather insignificant man of forty-seven, with a narrow face, pale features and small eyes. His dark moustache was waxed out straight and his hair streaked over his scalp to conceal his baldness. His expression was marked by that faint touch of resignation seen on the faces of people who know they are conscientious and industrious yet have not been recognized or, in their own opinion, adequately rewarded by life. He wore a low starched collar, a made black tie, and an interesting, if unexpected, double-breasted suit of blue serge with brass buttons. A uniform cap, with a glazed peak, not unlike a naval officer’s, lay on the chest of drawers behind him.
“Eat your cabbage with the meat, Robert.” He leant forward and patted me on the shoulder. “It’s very nourishing.”
Under all these eyes I was finding it difficult to manage the strange bone-handled knife and fork, much longer than my own, and very slippery. Also, I did not like cabbage; and my small slice of beef was terribly salt and stringy. My father, in his gay style, had insisted that “ nothing but the best” should appear on our table at Phœnix Crescent and he often came home from the office with some extra delicacy like guava jelly or Whitstable oysters—indeed, I was a thoroughly spoiled child, my appetite so pampered and capricious that often in the past six months my mother had bribed me with sixpence and a kiss to eat a slice of chicken. Yet I felt I could not displease Papa; I choked down some of the watery vegetable.
With my attention apparently diverted, Papa looked down the table at Mama, reverting, guardedly, yet in a worried fashion, to their interrupted conversation.
“Mrs. Chapman didn’t ask anything?”
“No, indeed.” Mama answered in a lowered tone. “Though she must have been out of pocket over the fares and what not. She seemed a good, sensible woman.”
Papa exhaled a little breath. “It’s a relief to find some decency left in the world. Did you have to take a cab?”
“No … there was nothing much to bring. He has grown out of most of his things. And it seems the men took everything.”
An inward spasm seemed to grip Papa, he stared at a painful vision in the air, murmuring: “One extravagance after another. Small wonder there was nothing left.”
“Oh, Papa, there was such a lot of illness.”
“But not much common sense. Why didn’t they insure? A good sound policy would have taken care of everything.” His hollow eye fell upon me as, with growing languor, I tried hard to clear my plate. “That’s a good boy, Robert. We waste nothing in this house.”
Kate, who sat across the table moodily viewing the twilight through the window as though the conversation were devoid of interest, gave me an odd sustaining kind of smile. Though she was twenty-one, only three years younger than my mother, I was surprised how little she resembled her. Where my mother had been pretty she was plain, with pale eyes, high cheekbones, and a dry, chapped, florid skin. Her hair was colourless, as if caught in a neutral state between the Gow red and the Leckie black.
“You’ve been to school, I suppose?”
“Yes.” I flushed, simply from being spoken to; speaking was a great effort, “To Miss Barty’s in the Crescent.”
Kate nodded understandingly. “Was it nice?”
“Oh, very nice. If you made a good answer, at Catechism or General Intelligence, Miss Barty gave you a sugar dragee out of the bottle in the cupboard.”
“We have a fine school in Levenford. I think you’ll like it.”
Papa cleared his throat. “ I thought the John Street Elementary … with you, Kate … would be very suitable.”
Kate removed her eyes from the window and gazed directly at Papa—resistant, almost sullen. “ You know John Street is a wretched little school. He must go to the Academy, where we all went. In your position you can’t do otherwise.”
“Well…” Papa’s eyes fell. “ Maybe … but not till the half term.… That’s October fourteenth, isn’t it? Give him some questions and see what standard he’s fit for.”
Kate shook her head shortly.
“At this moment he’d dead with tiredness and ought to be in bed. Who is he sleeping with?”
Startled out of my growing drowsiness, I blinked at Mama while she meditated, as though her perplexities had prevented her from considering the matter before.
“He’s too big a boy for you, Kate … and your bed is very narrow, Murdoch … besides you’re so often up late, studying. Why don’t we put him in Grandma’s room, Papa? While she’s away, I mean.”
Papa dismissed the suggestion with a shake of his head. “She pays good money for her room. We can’t disturb it without consulting her. And she’ll be coming back soon.”
So far Murdoch had been silent, eating stolidly, scrutinizing his food closely, inspecting each slice of bread like a detective, and from time to time picking up a textbook that lay beside his plate, holding it so close to his face he almost seemed to smell it. Now, he glanced up with a practical air.
“He must go in with Grandpa. It’s the obvious solution.”
Papa made a sign of agreement, though his face clouded at the mention of Grandpa’s name.
It was settled. Half asleep though I was, my heart sank at the awfulness of this new prospect, this fresh link in the chain of my miseries, binding me to that strange and intimidating personality upstairs. But I was afraid to protest, too weary even to hold up my lids as Kate pushed back her chair.
“Come then, dear. Is the water hot, Mama?”
“I think so. But there’s the dishes. Don’t run off too much.”
In the cramped bathroom Kate helped me to take off my clothes, her face flushing queerly as I reached a state of nakedness. There were only six inches of tepid water in the boxed-in bath which was yellowish at the waste and rough from re-enamelling. She stooped to wash me with the cloth and the block of gritty yellow soap. My head was nodding; my eyes were too heavy to exude further tears. I submitted as she dried me and again put on my day shirt. The bolt on the bathroom door clicked. We were going upstairs. And there, on the landing, looming out of the haze, the waves, the ship’s vibration, the roar of tunnels, holding out his hand, to take me, was Grandpa.
Chapter Three
Grandpa was a difficult sleeper, snoring loudly, tossing on the lumpy flock mattress, squeezing me flat against the wall. In spite of this, I slept heavily, but as dawn came I had a bad dream. I saw my father in a long white nightshirt, breathing in and out of his green tea inhaler, that little brass tank with red rubber tubes which one of his business friends had recommended to him when the other medicines did no good. From time to time he paused, his brown
eyes full of fun, to laugh and joke with my mother, who stood watching him with her hands clasped feverishly together. Then the doctor entered, an elderly man with a grey unsmiling face. A moment later there came a clap of thunder, a great black horse with nodding black plumes charged into the room, and I hid my face in grief and terror as my mother and father mounted upon its back and galloped off.
I opened my eyes, perspiring, my heart quivering in my throat, to find the morning sun streaming into the room. Standing at the window, almost dressed, Grandpa was rolling up the creaky blind.
“Did I wake you?” He turned. “It’s a grand day, and high time you were up.”
As I rose and began to pull on my clothes he explained that Kate had already set off for her teaching and Murdoch was on his way to get his train for Sherry’s College in Winton—where he was preparing for a position in the post office branch of the Civil Service. Whenever Papa departed for his work the coast would be clear for us to go down. It came to me as a mild shock when Grandpa told me that Papa, despite his fine uniform, was only the district Sanitary Inspector. Papa’s great ambition was to be Superintendent of the Waterworks, but his present duties—Grandpa smiled indescribably—were to see that everybody kept their garbage cans and water closets in good order.
Almost immediately, we heard the slam of the front door; Mama came to the foot of the stairs and called us.
“How did you two get on?” She greeted us with a faint confederate’s smile on her troubled face, as though we were schoolboys, up to all sorts of tricks.
“Nicely, Hannah, thank you.” Grandpa answered courteously, seating himself in Papa’s chair, with the wooden arms, at the head of the table. This morning meal, I soon learned, was the only one he took outside the confines of his room and he set much store by it. The kitchen was cozy from the range fire; there were crumbs and stains at Murdoch’s place; a sense of intimacy bound the three of us as Mama spooned out cocoa into three cups from the Van Houten’s tin and poured in boiling water from the big black-leaded kettle.
“I was wondering, Father,” she said, “ if you’d take Robert with you this morning?”
“Certainly, Hannah.” Grandpa answered politely, but with reserve.
“I know you’ll help all you can.” She seemed to speak for his ear alone. “ Things may be a little difficult at first.”
“Tuts!” Grandpa raised his cup with both hands. “ There’s no need to meet trouble halfway, my lass.”
Mama continued to gaze at him with that sad, half-hidden smile, a particular expression which, equally with that half-shake of her head, I saw to be the mark of her fondness for him. As we finished our breakfast she went out for a moment, returning with his stick and hard square hat, and the documents which I had seen him copying the day before. She carefully brushed the hat, which was old and faded, then retied more securely the thin red tape which bound the papers.
“A man of your parts shouldn’t be doing this, Father. But you know it helps.”
Grandpa smiled inscrutably, got up from the table and put on his hat with an air. Mama then saw us to the door. Here she came very close to Grandpa and gazed deeply, meaningly, with all her anxious heart, into his blue eyes. In a low voice she said:
“Now you promise me, Father.”
“Tch, Hannah! What a woman you are to fash!” He smiled at her indulgently and, taking my hand in his, set off down the road.
Soon we reached the tramway terminus, where a red tram stood waiting, the conductor swinging the trolley-pole, making contact with the overhead wire amidst a crackle of blue sparks—still quite a novelty in that year. Grandpa led me to the front seat on the open upper deck. I held his hand more tightly and he gave me a side glance of communicative ardour as we slid off with gathering momentum down the slight incline from the Toll, making swift and bounding progress through the morning air towards Levenford.
“Tickets, please. All tickets, please.” I heard the ping of the conductor’s punch approaching, the rattling of the coins in his bag, but Grandpa, staring ahead, with his chin on his stick and his hair flying in the wind, had fallen into a kind of trance from which my appealing look, and the official’s demand, entirely failed to rouse him. Such was his absorption, so statuesque his attitude, that the conductor paused doubtfully beside us, whereupon Grandpa, without a movement of his position, infused into his immobile countenance such a protestation of good-fellowship and secret understanding, topped off by a wink so full of complicity and promise, that the man broke into a kind of sheepish grin.
“It’s you, Dandie,” he said, and, after a moment’s hesitation, brushed past us.
I was overcome by this example of my grandpa’s prestige, but presently I recognized that we were in the High Street, opposite the Municipal offices. Here Grandpa descended, with dignity, and led the way towards a low building with a short outside flight of steps and a big brass plate, the name almost polished away: DUNCAN MCKELLAR, SOLICITOR. The windows on either side of the door were half screened by a kind of gauze, the one bearing, in faded gilt letters, the title LEVENFORD BUILDING SOCIETY, the other ROCK ASSURANCE COMPANY. As Grandpa entered this office much of his swagger was replaced by a sort of limpid humility, which, however, did not prevent him from throwing me a comical grimace when an unprepossessing woman with glossy cuffs put her head through a hatch and told us severely that Mr. McKellar was engaged with Provost Blair and that we must wait. I was soon to learn that sour women always disagreed with Grandpa and made him pull this face.
After about five minutes the inner door opened and a prosperous, dark-bearded man came through the waiting room, putting on his hat. His attentive glance confused me; and suddenly, with a disapproving frown at Grandpa, he drew up before us.
“So this is the boy?”
“It is, Provost,” Grandpa answered.
Provost Blair stared me through and through, like a man who knew my history better than I did myself, so manifestly reviewing in his mind events connected with me, incidents of such a terrible and discreditable nature, that I felt my legs shaking beneath me from shame.
“You won’t have had time to make friends with boys of your own age?” He spoke with reassuring mildness.
“No, sir.”
“My boy, Gavin, would play with you. He’s not much older than you. Come over to the house one day soon. It’s quite near, in Drumbuck Road.”
I hung my head. I could not tell him I had no desire to play with this unknown Gavin. He stood for a moment rather indecisively stroking his chin, then, with another nod, he went out.
Mr. McKellar was now free to give us his attention. His inner office, although old-fashioned, was very handsome indeed with a mahogany desk, a red-patterned carpet into which my feet sank, several silver cups on the mantelpiece and, on the dull green walls, framed photographs of important-looking men. Seated in his swivel chair, Mr. McKellar spoke without looking up.
“They’ve kept you cooling your heels, Dandie. Have you the work done? Or is some poor lass suing you …” Raising his head he noticed me and broke off as if I had spoiled his joke. He was a solid red-faced man of about fifty, clean-shaven, close-cropped, and sober in his dress. His eyes, beneath sandy tufted brows, were dry and penetrating but there was the hint of good nature behind them. His red underlip, naturally full, protruded judicially as he took the papers which Grandpa handed him and cast a glance over them.
“God help us, Dandie, but you’re a bonny writer. Fair copperplate. I wish ye’d made as good a job of yourself as ye have of this deed of transfer.”
Grandpa’s laugh sounded a trifle forced. “Man proposes and God disposes, lawyer. I’m grateful for the work you give me.”
“Then keep away from the demon.” Mr. McKellar made a note on the book before him. “ I’ll credit this with the rest. Our friend Leckie,” his tongue went into his cheek, “ will get the cheque the end of the month. I see you have the new arrival.”
He sat back, his eyes resting on me perhaps more shrewdly than the Prov
ost’s. Then, as though admitting a fact against his better judgment, as if implying, indeed, that he had expected some fearful and distressing freak to stand before him as the result of that horrible chain of circumstances which had passed before his vision, he murmured: “It’s a nice enough boy. He’ll not have his troubles to seek, or I’m much mistaken.”
With due deliberation he selected a shilling from the loose change in his pocket and handed it across the desk to Grandpa.
“Buy the little son of Belial a lemonade, Dandle. And away with you. Miss Glennie will give you another deed. I’m rushed to death.”
Grandpa left the office in excellent humour, inflating his chest as though savouring the breeze. As we came down the steps, he directed my attention to the other side of the street. Two tinker-women were making the rounds with baskets and wickerwork. One, the younger, stalwart and brown-faced, with that flaming orange hair so often seen amongst the roving Scottish gypsies, was carrying her burden on her head, swaying a little as she walked, her upstretched arms making firmer her strong bosom.
“There, boy,” Grandpa exclaimed, almost with reverence. “Is that not a pleasant sight on a fine fresh autumn day?”
I could not follow his meaning—indeed, the two beshawled gypsies seemed to me quite beneath our notice. But I was very much cast down by certain obscure implications of the scene in the lawyer’s office and, feeling myself more of a mystery than ever, I did not press the matter, but wrinkled my forehead in thought as we began our leisurely return. Why was I such a curiosity to all these people? What made them shake their heads over me?
The truth, though I could not guess it, was simple. In this small, prejudiced Scots town it was accepted history that my mother, a pretty and popular girl “who might have set her cap at anyone,” had thoroughly disgraced herself by marrying my father, Owen Shannon, a stranger whom she had met while on vacation, a Dubliner, in fact, who had no family connections, held only an unimportant post in a firm of tea importers and had nothing to recommend him but his high spirits and good looks—if indeed such attributes could be considered a recommendation. No account was taken of the years of happiness which ensued. His death, followed so sensationally by hers, was regarded as a just retribution; and my appearance on the Leckie doorstep, without means of support, as certain evidence of the judgment of Providence.