The Jalna Saga – Deluxe Edition: All Sixteen Books of the Enduring Classic Series & The Biography of Mazo de la Roche (267 page)

“Good music, eh? Piano playing?”

“Rather. You’ve heard Sinclair’s radio, haven’t you?

“Yes, but he always tunes in for jazz.”

“Why don’t you interest your family in them? One would be great fun for your grandmother and your aunt and uncles.”

“I’d never get near it. Besides, they wouldn’t spend the money on it. All the old ones are as close as bark to a tree.”

“What about Renny or Piers?”

“They detest them. Besides, money is awfully tight at home this winter. Gosh, you know I can’t get any money for anything but my fees and my railway ticket. What are you talking about?”

George leaned forward, his square, roguish face twinkling. “1 know how we can earn some money, Finch.”

Finch flung the core of the russet into the wastepaper basket. “How, then?” His tone was sceptical.

“By getting up an orchestra.”

“An orchestra! You’ve gone dotty, haven’t you?”

“Not by a long shot. Listen here. The other day my father was making a sick call in Stead, and I drove him there. These people have a greenhouse, and while I waited outside I strolled about looking through the windows at the plants. A fellow came out and we got to talking. He was a grandson and he’d just come out from town because of the sickness. I soon found out that he plays the mandolin. He’s got a friend who plays it, too, and another who plays the flute. They’ve been thinking for some time they’d like to get up an orchestra if they could find some fellows to play the banjo and piano. He was awfully excited when I told him we might go in for it.”

Finch was staggered. “But your father—what will he say?”

“He won’t know. You see, I didn’t tell this fellow I was Dad’s son. He thinks I’m just employed by him. I thought it was better because one’s people are so darned silly about who you go with. Of course, these other fellows are all right, but you know how unreasonable one’s family can be.” And he added softly: “One of the chaps is a tailor’s assistant—he’s the flautist—and the other works in the abattoir.”

“Gee!” exclaimed Finch. “Do you mean to say he
kills
things?”

“I didn’t ask him,” returned George testily. “The point is that he can play the mandolin.”

“So you’ve met them!”

“Yes. At the noon hour. They’re awfully decent chaps, and they’re quite old, too. The one I first met is twenty-three, and other looks about twenty-six or so. They’re awfully anxious to meet you.”

Finch began to shake with excitement. He took out a box in which were two cigarettes, and offered it to George. “Have a fag?”

They lighted up.

Finch was too excited to look at George. He fixed his eyes on the stovepipe-hole in the floor, through which sufficient heat was supposed to penetrate to warm George’s room. He began to wonder whether their voices could be heard in the kitchen below.

“What about the pipe-hole? Is the servant down there?”

“She couldn’t possibly hear. Besides, she’s got her steady with her.”

“’Who is he?”

“Jack Sims. From Vaughans’.”

Murmuring voices came from below. The boys moved softly near the pipe-hole and peered down. In the light from a feeble electric bulb they saw two arms lying along the dresser. The hands were clasped. One hand, projecting from a blue cotton sleeve, was plump, a rawish pink from much washing of clothes; the other, the hairy wrist of which protruded from coarse cloth, was the gnarled hand of a middle-aged farm labourer. The voices had ceased and the only sound was the ticking of the kitchen clock.

The two intertwined hands fascinated Finch. They became for him symbolic of the mystery, the reaching out, the groping for support of life. He felt the tenderness, the fire, that each hand drew from the other and gathered like herbs of comfort for the lonely heart…

George was whispering: “It’s a fact they never get any further than that.”

“You mean any
nearer,
don’t you?”

“I mean any
forwarder.”

They broke into suffocating giggles. They threw themselves on the lumpy couch, uttering explosive squeaks. But, though Finch giggled hysterically, his mind’s eye was still peering down the pipe-hole, his soul burning to know what were the thoughts of the two below

“Why didn’t you tell me about them before? We might often have taken a squint down at them.”

“There was nothing to it.” George’s face turned glum. “Now, look here, Finch, which are you most interested in, the orchestra or those two silly spoons in the kitchen?”

Finch returned, still grinning: “There’s no earthly use in talking about an orchestra to me. I wouldn’t be let go to town for practising or playing at places. There’d be a hell of a row if I proposed such a thing.”

“No need for you to mention it. I’ve got it all arranged. You don’t object to making five dollars every now and again, do you?”

Finch sat up and stared. “Would I get that much?”

“Certainly. Lilly, that’s the leader’s name, says we can easily get twenty-five dollars a night for playing at dances in restaurants. That’s five each. Not bad, eh, for strumming a few hours? Now don’t interrupt. It’ll be the simplest thing in the world for us to work the thing. By bolting a bit of lunch, we can get in an hour’s practice at noon. Sometimes we can do it after five o’clock by staying in town for the seven-thirty train. That’s easy. Now, for the dances. You remember my aunt, Mrs. St. John, has been widowed lately”

Finch nodded.

“She’s a favourite with your family, isn’t she?”

Again he nodded with deep solemnity.

“Very well. My aunt was saying only yesterday that she would like me to spend a night with her once a week for company. She would be pleased if I were to bring you along, and, seeing that she’s a favourite of your darned old family, I don’t suppose they’d object to your spending a night in her house, when she’s widowed and all that, and I guess Renny thinks you’re more likely to study when you’re with me than with that Leigh chap.” George, in his quiet way, thoroughly disliked Leigh.

“But your aunt, won’t she be suspicious?”

George smiled gently. “It all fits in beautifully. Auntie is ordered to bed by her doctor at eight every night. She’ll see us get our books out—the library’s downstairs—and then toddle off to her bedroom and go bye-bye. The dances begin at nine. We’ll see life in those restaurants, too, mind you. And five bucks apiece…”

They whispered, planning together, till it was time for Finch to go home. There he sat, wrapped in a quilt, studying, to make up for lost time. But between him and the page returned again and again the vision of the two clasped hands lying on the kitchen dresser, then Ada’s face with mouth tremulously smiling, quivering from the kisses he had given her. With an effort he would put these pictures away and drag his mind back to its task.

Difficult, unlikely as it had seemed, the orchestra came into being. It flourished. Lunches were bolted and the noonday period was spent in practice in the parlour above the tailor’s shop, into which penetrated the pungent smell of hot iron pressing damp cloth. The tailor’s assistant was cousin to the tailor, and he and his girl-wife and puny infant lived also
above the shop. He was the oldest member of the orchestra, being twenty-six. His name was Meech. Finch soon became well acquainted with all the family, and, as they were kind to him and admired his playing, his affection rushed out to them. Often, when the practice was over, he would stay awhile, making himself late for school, to play Chopin or Schubert before the friendly circle. Then the thin girl-wife of the young tailor would crouch at the end of the piano watching his hands as he played. She was so close to him that she was in his way, but he would not ask her to move. Sitting so, with her eyes on him, music springing up beneath his hands, he felt firm and strong, free as air.

“Come along.” George would urge, his banjo under his arm, “we shall be late.”

“Don’t wait for me.” Finch would say over his shoulder, and would be happier when the banjo, the first and second mandolins, were gone and he was left alone with the flute and his family.

Finch now saw a new kind of life, the life of shopgirls and their beaux seeking pleasure at night in cheap restaurants. On the mornings when the orchestra had an engagement to play that evening, he awoke with a start, excited in all his being. The way had always been paved the night before with his family. Poor Mrs. St. John wanted George to spend the night at her house and would like to have Finch also. There was never any difficulty. Finch found it was the easiest thing in the world to lead a double life. Aunt Augusta would send a box of little cakes or a pot of marmalade to Mrs. St. John. His aunt, though she looked at him coldly, her head drawn back with her air of offence, had a tender spot in her heart for the boy. To his amazement, he had won the prize canary in the raffle, and had smuggled the cage to her room, swathed
in paper, a present for her on her seventy-sixth birthday. It had come as an inspiration to him that the day on which he had received it was her birthday. She had told him that his winning the lottery was a good omen for his future. The two were drawn together. He often visited her room to see the canary, and they gloated over the prize together. She soon grew to love it extravagantly. Now she must always keep the door of her room shut tightly for fear old Mrs. Whiteoak should hear it sing. Grandmother would never have tolerated any other bird in the house with Boney. Then there was the feat of Sasha, Ernest’s yellow Persian cat, who had taken to making her toilette on Augusta’s doormat. Ernest also grew fond of the canary. He too would go to his sister’s room to hear it sing, and they would gaze enraptured at the little throbbing body while it dipped its yellow head from side to side, warbling first to one long-faced listener, then to the other.

These days Finch lived in a kind of haze. He felt life changing all around him. New forces were drawing him this way and that. At times he felt an aching in his breast that was almost a pain, a yearning for what he knew not. Not for religion. Not for love—he had not attempted to make love to Ada again—but for something of which religion and love were only a part. His eyes were troubled, he grew thinner. Yet he was always hungry. On the days when there was no practice of the orchestra, he would go, after the school luncheon, to a large shop much frequented by the boys when they were in funds. There he would wander up and down past the glittering glass cases of tempting foods displayed; platters of ham and tongue; fiery red lobsters, and little pink shrimps; he would droop over the case of cheeses, fascinated. The cream cheese, Swiss cheese, Camembert, Roquefort, Oka, the
dear little cheeses made by the Trappist monks in Quebec. He thought he should like to be a monk working in the cool rooms of the monastery, and he would buy this particular cheese, though he did not much like it, because of the thought it brought. And at the other side of the shop would be George, giving his money for cakes and chocolates, and bottled fruit from California.

They would go off with their spoil, and at recess they and their friends would devour it in haste, or a feast would be arranged after school, when they could eat at leisure. They contrived, however, to put by a respectable sum for the radio, and toward a camping trip in the summer. Finch would have liked to buy presents for the family from the wealth that poured in so fast, but where would they think he had got the money? But he could not resist a necktie for Renny’s birthday, which fell in March. He spent a long time in the haberdasher’s choosing it—two shades of blue in a gorgeous stripe. Renny’s eyebrows flew up in surprise when it was presented. He was touched. But when he appeared at Sunday tea wearing it, the vivid blue blazing against the highly coloured flesh of his face, his red hair, a storm of protest arose from the family. Renny’s beauty—which, they declared, required dark colours to set it off—was ruined by the tie. Now it would have become Piers, with his blue eyes and fair skin. And the next time Finch saw the tie Piers was wearing it.

He had better luck with the box of watercolours he bought for Wakefield. To avoid suspicion, for it was a very good box of colours, he said that it was a present from Leigh. Wake, who was condemned to his bed that week, was delighted. He painted pictures day in and day out. Renny, finding his bed littered with them, thought, with a moment’s
heaviness: “By God, this poor youngster’s going to be a genius, too!”

Engagements for the orchestra came thick and fast. The young musicians played with such untiring gaiety; they were so obliging. Finch conscientiously slaved at his books, and, between practising and studying and loss of sleep, grew so thin that even Piers was moved to concern.

“Try to eat more.” he advised. “You’re growing, and you need plenty of good grub.”

“Eat!” cried Finch, his nerves on edge. “I’m always eating. If I’m thin, it’s my own business. Please leave me alone.”

“But,” persisted Piers, feeling Finch’s arm, “you’re getting thinner. You’re soft, too. Now, just feel my muscle.”

“I don’t want to feel your muscle. If you’d used your muscle less on me, it mightn’t be so hard and I mightn’t be so thin.”

One day in March, George announced an engagement in a restaurant in which they had played several times. The members of some athletic club were having a dance. The two boys had just spent two weekends with Mrs. St. John and the orchestra had worked very hard learning new dance music. They had played at four dances, so Finch had twenty dollars to add to the hoard hidden on the top shelf of his clothes cupboard in an old fishing basket. When he stayed at home he studied late into every night, apprehensive of again failing in his examinations.

On the night of the dance he was very tired. There had been trouble over spending the night in town, and only a passionate appeal to Aunt Augusta to intervene for him had made it possible. The rector, too, was beginning to think that his sister should be able to get on without George, and even Mrs. St. John herself had become a little less yearning toward
her two young visitors. Finch felt that he could stand the strain no longer, that for a while the orchestra should take no new engagements or that someone else must be found to play the piano. Yet he loved it. It was life—making music, watching the dancing, the lovemaking, being in the streets late at night, the freshly earned money in his pocket.