A Song of Sixpence (39 page)

‘The examiner! Oh, heavens, that was the Professor of Divinity himself.'

‘Well, I don't care. It was the truth.'

‘Laurence, are you ill?'

‘I don't think so. It's just that my head aches. I feel not myself any more.'

‘Oh, dear, what have you been doing to yourself? Where did you sleep last night?'

‘I remember now. In gaol.'

‘Good God, boy!'

‘Oh, they let me go this morning. Said there was nothing against me. The sergeant even gave me breakfast. But it was all hateful while it lasted. They had thought I was the cause of it all … and of Nora. That I was … I was … I was …'

He began to weave more and more, growing larger and larger, like some queer aquatic monster, and finally faded away altogether in the wave of universal darkness that swept down and absorbed me in its black, rushing tide.

It was past four o'clock in the afternoon some six weeks later. I had been lying down but now I was up and moving about the still unfamiliar fiat my mother had rented. At last I was beginning to feel better, dimly to realize myself again, to know that I was making the journey back, out of that dark and spectral country in which my breakdown had so long confined me. It was not easy to forget the fear and horror of that shadowy period wherein my mind, narrowed to a single minute focus, was fixed in tormented apathy. The paths of my return had been tortuous and difficult, yet this morning the doctor had said to me: ‘You're out of the woods now, my boy, and soon you'll be clear of the undergrowth.' The most joyful symptom of my escape was my ability to look outwards, away from my imprisoned brooding self, and to see things with an eye in which a spark of interest had begun to glint.

Thus, again, I examined the flat. It was small and very empty, made up of no more than a kitchen and a single front room with a tiny bathroom between, but it pleased me. The front room, which I occupied, was furnished with nothing but an iron bedstead, one chair, and a rickety folding bureau, but the wallpaper was new, in colour a warm rich red, and when the evening sun came in, as it did now, the room glowed with a rosy flush that flooded and filled its emptiness. The kitchen, into which I wandered now, had the usual fittings, sink, built-in cupboard and dresser and, in the curtained alcove, the unique Scottish feature, a concealed box-bed.

But the main attraction of the flat was its height. Situated on the top storey of a working-class tenement recently erected by the Winton Corporation on Clarkhill, it afforded a sweeping open view of the rooftops and even, on clear days, of the Ochil Hills away to the west. Later I was to learn that in securing it my mother had been specially favoured by virtue of her new appointment with the city.

The nickel alarm clock on the mantelpiece told me it was not far off the hour of her return and, in the new lightness of my mood, I asked myself if I might not attempt to prepare our evening meal. Although the woolwork tasks I had been set had improved my sense of co-ordination, this had not been fully restored. I was afraid that I might drop things, and our store of crockery was not large. However, I succeeded in nerving myself to begin. Slowly and carefully I filled the kettle and, surprised by its weight, put it on the stove. I then spread the table-doth and began to set out the tea cups. I found the loaf in the cupboard and the bread knife in the drawer. There was no disguising the fact, however painful the admission, that this big serrated knife frightened me. No one who has not experienced a breakdown can remotely realize the agonizing phobias it may induce. Earlier in my illness, I had been mortally afraid … and of what?—the small wooden bureau in my room. Invested with every sinister attribute, it had terrified me. I could not bring myself to look at it. Here, surely, was an indication of what I had gone through, and the abysmal state to which I had been reduced. But now, shame and the will to prove that I was well again forced me to grip the knife and cut some slices of bread. But my heart was still racing as I set them under the gas-ring to toast. All that remained was to cook the sausages, a rare treat in store for us tonight, and the gift of my faithful visitor. Annie Tobin did not bring flowers, she had a practical mind and knew my fondness of ‘Annakers'. She brought also news which, while surprising, touched me not at all. Nora and Donohue, constrained perhaps by the ecclesiastical powers, were to be married. It meant nothing to me now.

A sense of accomplishment pervaded me when I had finished grilling the sausages. I felt that Mother would be encouraged by this evidence of my recovery. It was not that I particularly wanted to please her, although in our earlier days together this would certainly have been my motive. Our relationship was not the same. No longer did I feel for her that intimate, all-suffusing, all encompassing jealous love. The cord was severed. I respected and trusted her, I was fond of her, but whatever the inflictions I had suffered, these had killed the passionate complex of my childhood.

Perhaps my mother's altered attitude, still affectionate, yet restrained, had contributed to the ending of those transports. Although this change had begun, insidiously, after Father's death, her sojourn in the convent had markedly altered her. She had become more serious in manner and disposition, and in a striking way, altogether more religious. In our early days at Ardencaple she would go to church on Sundays uncaringly, with a sort of lighthearted complaisance, and solely to please my father. Now, every morning she rose at six o'clock and before going to work went out to Mass at seven, taking daily Communion with every evidence of sincere devotion. No doubt conventual discipline had imposed its pattern upon her. Yet the change in her nature was deeper and more fundamental in its origin. Estranged from her own family, and with our Carroll associations now irrevocably severed, she must have felt herself a solitary figure, compelled by unhappy circumstances to stand against the world alone. Still, the moods of sadness that later afflicted her, and which eventually settled into a permanent melancholia, had not yet asserted themselves. She knew how fortunate she had been in receiving the Corporation appointment and was especially happy in her new work, which had to do mainly with the inspection and rehabilitation of rickety slum children. In Winton the numbers of undernourished, verminous, deformed children suffering from this disease had become a national scandal.

Although she gave no apparent sign of this, I could not fail to realize that Mother's main anxiety was centred upon me. What on earth was to become of me? Through my mad efforts at the Ellison I had thrown away my one slight chance of attending the University. At the age of sixteen a return to board school seemed equally out of the question and if it were not, how could I expect my mother to support me for another two years with no assured prospects at the end of them? What a mess I had made of my life! My future seemed dim indeed.

A step sounded on the outside staircase and I heard a key turn in the door. Mother came into the kitchen wearing the navy-blue coat and skirt and the neat turned-up blue chip hat with the Winton Corporation badge, all of which made up her new uniform. She smiled and exclaimed:

‘Why, Laurence, you've made the supper.'

‘The sausages seem all right. But I've very cleverly burned the toast.'

My reply seemed to please her.

‘That's how I like it.'

She went into the bathroom and I heard her shaking herself in the empty bath, an essential routine procedure to rid her garments of the fleas she invariably acquired in her daily pilgrimage amongst her unfortunate children.

While she was changing I went into the front room to straighten my bed. As I folded the coverlet at the window I saw that Pin, who not infrequently came at this hour in an effort to console me, was stumping towards the common entrance to the flats. He had completed his ‘Annals of Ardencaple', but alas, no publisher seemed to want the book, and soon he would go back to the village to finish his days on his meagre pension. When I finished folding the bedcover the sharp staccato of Pin's peg on the pavement was still ascending to me and I saw that he was pacing to and fro in a manner manifestly indecisive and disturbed. It puzzled me. Then all at once I understood the reason of his reluctance to come up. This was no surprise at all and caused me no distress. It was part of my recovery that I could feel sorry for Pin in his disappointment with me. I went into the kitchen.

‘Mr Rankin is outside. Shall I call him up?'

‘Do, Laurence … but first put on more toast.'

I went and put two slices of bread on the stove. When I returned to the window Pin had gone. Apparently he had decided to depart. I just caught sight of him as he turned the corner of the street. And yet, mysteriously, some ten minutes later, when we had begun our meal, the bell of the flat door rang and there, when I answered it, was Pin.

‘Laurence,' he said at once, ‘I've been waiting for your mother, outside, and at the tram stop, but she seems to be unusually late.'

‘She's here,' I said. ‘She came back early.'

He appeared somewhat disconcerted by this information. Indeed, when he came into the clearer light of the kitchen, I saw that his general air was disturbed. He seemed obliged to find an excuse for his condition by remarking:

‘I'm not so good at the stairs as I was.'

‘Be seated then,' Mother said. ‘You'll have a bite with us.'

‘No, thank you, no.'

‘Then let me give you a cup of tea.'

‘No, no … well, as you're so kind.'

He sat down and accepted the cup that Mother handed him. His hand was slightly unsteady, so that some of the tea spilled into the saucer, but he was becoming more assured. He gave me a sidelong solicitous look.

‘How are you today, Laurence?'

‘Much better, sir.' I almost added: And quite prepared for your bad news.

‘Good … good,' he said.

His habit of repeating the word suddenly annoyed me. I knew exactly what he wanted to say and I wished to heaven he would get it out. I said:

‘If there's anything on your mind I'm quite able to hear it.'

He gave a sigh of relief.

‘In that case I'll go ahead. I did think of speaking first to your mother. To see if it might set you back. But now I may as well admit that I've just come from the University and as you've guessed, the results of the Ellison are out.' He took a slow drink of tea and went on, in a flat voice, not looking at me: ‘You remember the nature of the question, an apologia for Queen Mary, and I can assure you that most of the candidates fell over themselves to gild the lily. They didn't see the catch in the question, in the the words “as best you can”, and by heaven I didn't see it myself. They fell into the trap and practically beatified her, and with a panel of judges made up of two Presbyterian ministers and a Divinity professor by the name of Knox, they were dead from the word go.' His voice was rising and becoming so hoarse, he had to gulp down tea. ‘By some chance, however, some turn of the unpredictable, there was one candidate who, unable to sustain any favourable evidence, found himself forced to condemn, in the strongest terms. I understand that his essay was an immense satisfaction to the judges, a vindication of their own belief, and the subject of the highest praise. They've given him the Ellison, unanimously.'

I began to feel queer all over. There was a strange, strained expression on Mother's face as Pin went on:

‘Laurence, there's supposed to be someone up above who looks after fools, especially if they're young fools with some sort of ability.'

He could contain himself no longer. Jumping up suddenly, knocking over his cup, he flung his arms about my neck, hopping with me in a kind of one-legged dance. Half stifled, I scarcely heard his shout of victory. But I knew that by an amazing fluke, a freak of circumstance over which I had no control, I should go to the University after all.

At that exultant moment everything seemed settled. Our future was assured at last. The thought of the long and wearing struggle that must lie ahead never entered my mind. Yet for the next five years we were to fight a battle with circumstances that wore us to the bone. While my mother's position with the Corporation was assured, her weekly wage was pitifully slender, scarcely enough to provide us with the bare essentials of life. Yet somehow by a miracle of economy and self-denial she managed, and all without assistance, except from Simon who himself had so little, yet who sent an occasional small contribution from Spain. From the other relations nothing was asked or given. Bernard continued to muddle along in great comfort in the condemned Lomond Vaults, somehow evading all orders for their demolition, while Leo silently and implacably went on to amass a stupendous fortune. In that laudable process his meanness and parsimony increased to such a degree that Annie finally left him and sailed from Greenock to join her son in Canada. It was a sad moment for me when I saw her off on the
City of Montreal.
On the rare occasions when I passed Leo in the street he pretended not to see me. Even then I was struck by his look of emaciation, and when he died, years later, completely alone in a miserable room in the Gorbielaw—Templar's Hall having been sold for some fantastic sum—there was more than a suggestion that death was due, at least, in part, to starvation. In his holograph will, from which health-food societies were the main beneficiaries, there was a clause specifically dispossessing his nephews and niece from any inheritance whatsoever.

The only one to suffer from this manifestation of family feeling was Nora. By that time my own medical practice was flourishing and Terence, shelving Miss Gilhooley in favour of the proprietress of an old-established Dublin hotel, was then extremely well off. But Nora's marriage, arranged in an atmosphere of reparation—a futile idea on both sides of straightening things out—was a disaster. Donohue could never be anything but Donohue, he was seldom at home, and when he finally disappeared Nora was left stranded in Liverpool with three young children to support.