Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

“Don’t look at me like that, oh, don’t be cross with me, David dear. I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t really. He was running about, the poor little mite, and I was at work, and I never thought to get the doctor, and then his sweet little face all seemed to shrink and he didn’t know me, and then — oh, David, how I suffered when the angels took him, oh dear, oh dear…”

Sobbing pitifully, she expatiated on the misery she had endured, unconsciously disclosing the details of the death of her unwanted child. He listened, with a set face, in silence. Then, with a little rush, she cried:

“My heart would really be broken if you wasn’t back, David. Oh, it’s so wonderful. You don’t know how — oh dear, oh dear — all these months — say you understand, David, please, please, it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t bear it, I’ve suffered so much.” A big gulp. “But everything’s all right now that you’re back, my big brave man back from the war. Oh, I haven’t been able to sleep or eat—”

He soothed her as best he could. Then, while she sobbed on the sofa, detailing her sufferings, her agonies at the loss of Robert, her pitiful waiting for his return, a cushion slid to the floor, disclosing a large box of chocolates, half finished, and a snappy magazine. Still trying to quieten her he silently replaced the cushion.

She lifted her head at last, a smile breaking through her tears.

“You are glad to be back to me? Say you are, David?”

“Yes, it’s glorious to be back, Jenny.” He paused. “The war’s over and we’re going to start straight away and get down to a new beginning.”

“Oh, we will, David,” she agreed, with a little quaver in her voice. “I want to. Oh, you’re the best husband that ever was! You’re going to take your B.A. and be a headmaster in no time.”

“No, Jenny,” he said queerly. “No more teaching. That’s a blind alley. Finished. I should have chucked it long ago.”

“What then, David?” she asked almost tearfully. There were new lines round David’s eyes and a new hardness about his face which almost startled Jenny.

“Harry Nugent has given me a letter to Heddon at the Federation Offices in Tynecastle. It’s pretty well a certainty my getting a job there, Jenny. It won’t be much, to be sure; clerical work for a start, but it will be a start. It’s the beginning, Jenny.” A passionate eagerness crept into the flatness of his voice. “This is going to be the real thing at last.”

“But, David…”

“Oh, I know the money will be small,” he interposed. “Two pounds a week if I’m lucky. But it’ll be enough for us to get along on. You’ll start out for Sleescale to-morrow, Jenny dear, and open up the house while I go over and fix things with Heddon.”

“But, David,” she gasped again in dismay. “Two pounds a week and I’ve… I’ve been earning four.”

He gazed at her fixedly.

“The money doesn’t matter a hang, Jenny. I’m not out for money. There’s no compromise this time.”

“But couldn’t I—” she pleaded, twiddling in the old way with the lapel of his tunic. “Couldn’t I just go on with my job a little longer, David; it’s such good money?”

His lips drew together firmly and his brows drew down:

“Jenny darling,” he said quietly, “we must understand each other once and for all—”

“Oh, but we do understand each other, David,” she gulped with sudden meekness, once again pressing her head into his coat. “And oh, you know I do love you!”

“And I love you, Jenny,” he said slowly. “So we pack up and leave for Sleescale and our own home to-morrow.”

“Yes, David.”

He stared straight ahead as though into the future.

“I’ve got real work to do this time. Harry Nugent’s my friend. I start in with the Federation and I stand for the Town Council, see! If I make good…”

“Oh yes, David… the Town Council , that would be wonderful, David”—lifting moist, admiring eyes.

Already, she saw herself a town-councillor’s wife. A pleased look came into her face and instinctively she smoothed her dress. She really was tastefully, quite beautifully dressed: a heavy silk jumper, smart skirt tight to the hips, a couple of rather pretty rings. Her attractiveness was beyond doubt. Perhaps she had been working a little too hard lately. Under the faint layer of powder on her cheeks he saw just the finest little threading of reddish veins. It was like a bloom, a queer exotic bloom under the powder, almost pretty.

She looked up at him, head on one side, her full lips parted, conscious of her charm.

“Well?” she inquired. “Do you still like me?” She gave a little suggestive smile. “Pa and ma have gone down to Whitley Bay. Sally got them tickets for the entertainers there. They won’t be in till late.”

Abruptly, he got up and moved towards the window, where he stood staring out into the yard. He did not answer.

Jenny’s lip drooped. She had to admit to herself that David had changed in some subtle way; he was harder, more resistant and sure, his old boyish stubbornness turned to a firm determination.

Later, when Alfred and Ada came in she saw the change in David more plainly. David was perfectly pleasant about it, yet he established the fact beyond doubt, in the face of Ada’s aggrieved air, that Jenny and he were leaving for their own home in Lamb Lane on the following day.

And Jenny, if she had hoped to do so, could not shake him from his resolution. Next morning she departed for Sleescale by the nine forty-five train while David set out to have his interview with Heddon.

The local offices of the Federation were in Rudd Street quite near to Central Station: two simple rooms, an outer office where a grey-haired man with the blue pitted face and hands of the old miner was standing filing cards at a big cabinet, and a small inner room marked Private. There was no linoleum or carpet, merely the bare and very dusty boards; nothing on the walls but a couple of charts and a map of the district, and a notice Don’t spit on the floor . When Tom Heddon came out of his inner office he took a short pipe from his mouth and, though his intention was towards the empty fireplace, he disobeyed the notice immediately.

“So you’re Fenwick,” he said. “I remember you before the war at the Inquiry. I knew your father too.” He shook hands with a quick grip and waved away David’s letter of introduction. “Harry Nugent wrote me himself,” he added sourly. “Don’t show me that unless there money in it.”

He gave David a dour smile. He was a dour man, Tom Heddon, a short black fiery man with a shock of thick black hair and thick black eyebrows and a sallow dirty skin. He had a tremendous vitality. He sweated, spat and swore. He had a ferocious capacity for food, drink, work and profanity. His favourite was “bloddy.” He was a grand stump speaker, full of clichés and a terrific gift of repartee. He had very little brain, a trifling defect which had kept him, a disappointed man, at the local branch in Sleescale for fifteen years. He would never go further and he knew it. He did not wash very often. He looked as though he slept in his underwear. In fact, he did.

“So you’ve been out with Harry in the bloddy war?” Heddon inquired sarcastically. “Don’t tell me how you liked it. Come back and crook your hough.”

They went back into the little office. They talked. It was true that Heddon had lost his clerk in the war — combed out by the bloddy Derby Scheme and shot through the bloddy head at Sampreux Wood. He would give David a try out to oblige Harry Nugent. It all depended on David — he would have to step lively to deal with Claims, Benefit and Correspondence at one and the same time. Moreover, David had overestimated the salary, which would be a bare thirty-five shillings a week.