A Song of Sixpence (29 page)

‘No, Terry.'

‘Well, she is, and doing famously for herself.'

‘In what way?'

‘She's junior assistant to Miss Donohue, the buyer in Earle's. The Donohues are good friends of ours, old Donohue and my old man were pretty close at one time, so it was all fixed up nicely for Nora to train under her. You know what a buyer is, don't you?'

I did, more or less. And as Earle's was the leading establishment in Winton for women's fashions I knew also that Miss Donohue's position must be a good one.

‘Nora's always asking about you,' Terence went on. ‘Why don't you look her up? She lives with Miss D. I'll give you the address. It's in Park Crescent.'

He took a gold-cased pencil from his waistcoat pocket and wrote it down.

I could not thank him enough. Indeed, when he had shown me out by the back door, I went on my way rejoicing in the fortunate chance that had reintroduced me to my own people. I had been so long without proper human companionship that the prospect of friendship with Terence and Nora excited me. And more: the subject of Rockcliff had been raised. What might Terry, or Terry's friends, do for me? The name Gilhooley, linked to that splendid car, to say nothing of the dashing daughter to whom Terence was affianced and soon would probably marry, suggested possibilities which, while as yet undetermined, seemed almost unlimited.

For several days I waited hopefully in the expectation that Nora would get in touch with me. I was reluctant to take the initiative and Terence must surely have spoken to her of our meeting. But as no word came from her, on the following Saturday when I was free I wandered in a desultory fashion towards Park Crescent. The afternoon, I remember clearly, was mild, still, and sunny, full of a delicious promise of spring.

Park Crescent was situated in a favoured residential district on the west side of the city. It stood high, a quarter circle of tall Georgian houses, now converted to flats, overlooking Kelvingrove Park. Already discouraged by the superior atmosphere of this locality, which contrasted markedly with the crudities of Argyle Street and Templar's Hall, I barely paused outside No. 9 and did not arrest my self-conscious transit until I was fifty yards further down the Crescent. Here, with the air of a disinterested observer, I leaned over the railings and surveyed the Park beneath me. Should I or should I not advance boldly and ring the bell? The spears were breaking on the chestnut trees, yellow forsythia was already in bloom, perambulators were circling on the broad path where I took my evening run. Nora could not possibly wish to see me. Yet I had liked her when we last met and now I wanted her as a friend. Half-turning, I perceived that the street maintained a total emptiness. At least I should be unobserved if I were rejected and thrown out. Bracing myself, I turned back, mounted the portico steps of No. 9 and went into the long entrance hall. From a variety of doors, peering in the semi-darkness, I selected one on which was tacked a visiting card with the name: Miss Fidelma Donohue. I straightened my tie and, reminding myself that I was fairly presentable in my soberly dyed brown suit, pressed the bell.

The door was smartly opened by a short, tight, bustling little woman dressed for the street in a stylish hat and coat who, in a well-corseted attitude, her head thrown back, appraised me with a hard, bright, competent eye and inquired:

‘Well, young man?'

‘Is Miss Nora Carroll in?' I murmured. ‘ I'm her cousin, Laurence Carroll.'

She relaxed immediately, her expression altered, she smiled a welcome. At ease, she had a full, rather humorous mouth, richly embellished with a gleaming set of false teeth.

‘Come in. Why haven't we seen you before? And why didn't you give us word you were coming?'

As I entered she put a hand on my shoulder and continued to look me up and down.

‘Yes, you're a regular Carroll. I knew your father well, poor lad. So now you're making your fortune with your Uncle Leo.' Without giving me time to deny this suggestion she went on, impelling me towards a half-open door. ‘Nora's in there. Hurry in now and get acquainted, for as bad luck would have it, we've both got to go out. But don't forget to come again.'

I saw that, like a fool, I had come at the wrong time and was prepared to apologize and retire. But, under her propulsion, I entered the room she indicated, a small feminine bedroom, done up with flowered chintz curtains and chair covers of the same material.

My cousin was seated before the looking-glass of her dressing-table. She turned, and we gazed at each other. Although I knew she must be my cousin I scarcely recognized in this alarmingly attractive girl the skinny child who had butted me at my father's funeral. For there was no doubt about it—Nora was a beauty. Not only so, but untouchably smart, wearing an embroidered silk blouse, dark green pleated skirt, and a necklace of speckled green beads, exactly the kind of girl for whom, with a lowered glance, I hurriedly stepped off pavements, lest my contaminating presence should offend her. Yet she was smiling to me, and her dark eyes, with their thick fringe of long curling lashes that seemed darker against her fresh delicate complexion, sparked with pleasure and mischief.

‘Oh, Laurence, what a fine tall boy you've grown into! But oh, dear, I can't help thinking how I treated you in the hen house. Do you remember the egg?'

‘Of course, Nora.'

‘Anyhow, it's done wonders for your hair. You've lots of it, and such a nice chestnut shade. But oh, dear, I did bang you against that wall.'

She came forward, put her arms round me and gave me a full long kiss.

‘There!' she said. ‘That makes up for it. After all, aren't we cousins?'

At that soft warm pressure I felt a kind of shock as though something within me had given way.

‘Oh, Nora,' I said faintly, ‘it's a treat to see you again. I've wanted to.'

‘Then why didn't you before now, you silly fellow? No, no, it's really my fault. We're an awful family, the way we don't keep up with one another. Of course Simon's in Spain, and Leo is impossible, but we shouldn't have lost touch with you. Well have to make up for it now. Stuck all those months with Leo can't have been any fun.'

‘No, not much, Nora. But then I'm not much of a one for fun.'

‘We'll have to go into that. And into all that's been happening to you.' She had taken up her hat from the dressing-table. It was a little chip straw with a single rose on the brim. ‘But not now, dear Laurence. It's a great shame, but Miss Donohue and I have an engagement that just can't be put off.'

‘I'll clear out at once,' I said hurriedly.

‘Oh, dear, aren't we touchy!' She finished putting on the hat at the mirror and swung round. ‘Now tell me, is that becoming? Be careful, it's a model borrowed from the showroom,' She burst out laughing. ‘Oh, Laurie, you are a funny chap, but if I‘m any judge, a nice one. Now listen, we're all going, Miss D., Terence and I, and some others, to the second house of the Alhambra on Saturday night, and you're coming with us unless,' she looked at me mockingly, ‘it will make you even more miserable!'

‘Oh, no, it won't, Nora.'

‘Then meet us at the stalls entrance at nine o'clock. We'll have the tickets.'

I left the house walking on air in a trance of happiness which, as I turned instinctively into the Park, was succeeded by a surge of restless exaltation. How kindly Nora had received me, how naturally and affectionately I had been accepted, invited to another meeting, made to feel that I was wanted. No one had ever kissed me like that … never, never in my life. The soft warmth of those lips pulsed and persisted in my guileless blood, and in a slow, delicious expansion I felt my heart go out towards my cousin. Sudden recollection of my absurd fancy for Ada, with whom I had not even been privileged to exchange a word, made me blush. That had been mere childish play. This was the real thing. I was grown up now. I understood life. And as I hacked along at a pace that made me sweat, I began to picture a future in which Nora and I would constantly be together. I no longer felt alone and Winton had ceased to be a wilderness.

Suddenly, as I came along the river walk, sharply intruding upon this blissful reverie, a static object, peculiar yet strangely evocative, caught my downward abstracted eye. Surely, in the remote past, I had been familiar with that short ebon stump, terminating in the angle iron that affixed it to the thick-soled surgical boot. I stopped instinctively and raised my head. Seated alone, on the park bench, a little shrunken man in a black bobtail suit, celluloid dickey and string black tie was regarding me with a benevolent half smile.

‘Laurence Carroll,' he said.

That he should recognize me, in my present state and after an interval of seven years, struck me with such force I dropped out of my dream and responded involuntarily:

‘Pin Rankin!' And then, hurriedly apologizing: ‘ Oh, I'm sorry, sir. I was so surprised you knew me it just slipped out.'

‘I'd have known you anywhere, Laurence,' he said amiably, making a sign that I should sit beside him. ‘As a matter of fact, despite your elongation, you haven't really changed one iota.'

Dubious as to whether this was complimentary or disparaging, I accepted his invitation and sat down. He continued to inspect me.

‘Were you walking for pleasure or for profit?'

I had a wild and frantic desire to reveal myself, to tell him about Nora and of the splendour that had gloriously changed my life. Fortunately I was now sufficiently sane to restrain the impulse.

‘Actually for neither reason, sir. I was on my way back to Argyle Street.'

‘Why Argyle Street, of all places?'

‘That's where I work.'

‘Work? In what capacity?'

‘Well, sir, I'm a sort of apprentice in a wholesale warehouse.'

‘You mean that you have left school?' When I nodded he looked at me quizzically and murmured: ‘Then we are in the same boat.'

‘Have you retired, sir?' I asked tactfully.

‘In a manner of speaking,' he said. ‘I have, in fact, been pensioned off. But I am still active, thank God, in a personal and particularly interesting way. I am compiling the Annals of Ardencaple parish, Laurence. I have access to all the records in the University Library, and as I now occupy a quiet, decent room in Hillside Street quite near, I have every facility for what one might well term a labour of love.'

He was still the same mild, prosy little man, characteristically making the best of his present situation, which did not strike me as particularly entrancing, and with my mind too over charged to allow me to appreciate our meeting properly, I had begun to seek some means of escape when he said:

‘Now tell me about yourself.'

With some reluctance I set off on a bare outline of the events since my father's death, of which he had heard. But he would not permit this brevity and kept drawing me out, pressing for more information, interspersing my answers with barely suppressed exclamations of interest and regret, until he had squeezed me dry of my entire history.

When I had done, having eventually warmed to my subject, I looked for some expression of sympathy by way of reward. Instead, with his head cocked at a sharp angle, he began to tug at his little pointed grey beard. Finally, in an absent manner, he said:

‘And your poor mother was such a douce, happy little body.' Then, before I could recover from the shock of this remark which, from Pin, seemed almost indecent, he glanced at me then away again in a manner which made me feel he was bringing himself to say something unpleasant. ‘I'm bitterly disappointed in you, Laurence. I thought you were a bright boy. I never imagined I'd find you clerking in a city warehouse.'

‘But how could I help myself?' I protested.

‘In a dozen different ways. Most of all by showing some gumption. You want to go up there, don't you?' He cocked the little beard upwards, not of course suggesting that heaven was my destination, but in the more immediate direction of the University which, from our position by the river, towered on the hill above us.

‘I've wanted to go in for science, or even medicine, for long enough,' I answered shortly. ‘I've wanted a lot of things I never got.'

‘Then why don't you try a little harder? There are scores of University bursaries, especially in classics, open to clever boys. You are clever, aren't you?'

‘I don't know. I hope I am.'

‘Then let's see, right away, how we stand.' He spoke with enthusiasm and, while I gazed wonderingly, fumbled in the inside pocket of his braided jacket and produed a thin, black, worn morocco booklet, rather like my prayer book.

‘This is my New Testament, Laurence,' he said briskly. ‘Just open it at random and construe.'

I opened at random then, after a blank pause, attempted a feeble joke.

‘This is Greek to me, sir. I don't know a word of it.'

‘What, no Greek? Oh, dear, that's a blow!' He paused, frowning at me. ‘ Then how are you in Latin?'

‘I've gone through
Selections from Ovid
, and all of a book called
Pro Patria
, and, well, I sort of started a bit of Virgil.'

‘Started a bit of Virgil,' he repeated, making a clicking noise with his dentures which appeared to express the ultimate in dissatisfaction.

Again there was a silence. Then he said:

‘Define the fifth proposition of the third book of Euclid.'

Hot with embarrassment, I faltered: ‘Afraid I haven't been taken beyond the second book.'

Even then he did not give up. There, on that park bench, while the perambulators rolled past and a park attendant watched suspiciously as though we were conspiring to pillage his flowerbeds, Pin put me through a comprehensive examination and when it was over he gave out a kind of hollow groan.

‘Who has been teaching you? Or ruining you?' He tugged at the straggle of beard as though trying to uproot it. ‘You are utterly and completely uneducated.'