Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

But Arthur remained in Sleescale — through April, May, June. It was in June that the postcards began to arrive — anonymous postcards which were childishly defamatory, even scurrilous. Every day one came, written in a sprawling, unformed hand, which Arthur thought at first to be disguised. At the outset he ignored them, but gradually they came to cause him pain. Who could pursue him with such malice? He could not guess. And then towards the end of the month, the culprit stood revealed, caught in the act of handing a freshly scribbled card to one of the message-boys who came about the Law. It was Barras.

But the old man’s ceaseless scrutiny was even worse to bear, watching, watching Arthur all the time, noting his comings and goings, gloating at his dejection, rejoicing in the manifest evidence of trouble. It fell on Arthur like a scourge, that peering, bloodshot, senile orb, sapping away his energy, depleting him.

On July 1st an exhaustion like that of death brought the struggle to an end. The men were beaten, humiliated, crushed. But Arthur had not won. The loss on his defaulted contract was a heavy one. Yet as he saw the men stream slowly and silently across the pit yard once more and saw the wheels revolve again above the headgear, he shook his discouragement away. Reverses must occur. This, through no fault of his own, was one of them. He would not let himself go under. Now, from this minute, he would begin again.

A summer Sunday of 1925 and David, returning from his afternoon stroll along the Dunes, met Annie and little Sammy at the east end of Lamb Street. At the sight of David, Sammy ran forward with a triumphant shout — he was “a great one” for David, Sammy was, and he chanted:

“Aw’ve got my holidays Saturday. Isn’t that gud?”

“It’s grand, Sammy, man.” David smiled at Sammy, reflecting behind his smile that Sammy, outgrowing his strength, looked as if he needed a holiday. Sammy was eight years old now with a pale face and a nobby forehead and cheerful blue eyes that disappeared every time he laughed, like his father’s had done before him. He was dressed very neat and clean for his Sunday walk with his mother in a suit which Annie had made for him out of a grey serge remnant bought at Bates’. He was shooting up fast, and his boots, bought less for beauty than to keep out the wet, looked enormous at the end of his thin growing shanks.

“You’ll have your hands full, Annie.” David turned to Sammy’s mother who had come quietly up beside them. “I know these holidays!”

“I’m cross with Sammy,” Annie said in a voice that was not cross. “He would climb the gate at Sluice Dene and he’s cracked his new celluloid collar.”

“Ah, it was to get some oak nuts,” Sammy declared earnestly. “Aw wanted th’ oak nuts, Davey.”

“ Uncle David,” protested Annie reproachfully. “How can you, Sammy!”

“Never mind, Annie, lass,” said David. “We’re old friends together. Aren’t we, Sammy?”

“Ay!” Sammy grinned; and David smiled again. But as he looked at Annie he stopped smiling. Annie really seemed quite done up with the heat; she had a dark line under her eyes and she was quite as pale as Sammy who, as his dad had been, was naturally pale. She held her hand against the side of the wall, supporting herself a little as she stood there. He knew that Annie was continually hard put to it, with old man Macer now completely crippled by rheumatism and Pug not working steady at the Neptune, and Sammy to look after. Annie had been doing washing, he knew, and going out days cleaning to keep things going. He had offered to help Annie a dozen times, but Annie would not look at money, she was very independent. On an impulse he asked:

“Come to think of it, when did you last have a holiday yourself, Annie?”

Her calm eyes widened slightly in surprise.

“Well, I had my holidays when I was at the school,” she said. “Like Sammy has the now.”

That was Annie’s idea of a holiday — she had no other, no notion of change of scene and air, of white esplanades, gay beaches, music mingling with the waves. The unintentioned pathos of her answer caught David by the throat. He took a quick and most unexpected decision. He said casually:

“How about you and Sammy coming for a week to Whitley Bay?”

She stood very still with her eyes on the hot pavement. Sammy let out a whoop, then fell into a kind of awe.

“Whitley Bay,” he echoed. “By gosh, aw’d like te go te Whitley Bay.”

David kept his gaze on Annie.

“Harry Nugent has written and asked me to meet him there on the 26th.” Then he lied: “I’d made up my mind to take a week there beforehand.”

She still remained motionless with her eyes on the hot pavement, and she was paler than before.

“Oh no, David,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

“Ah, mother ,” Sammy cried appealingly.

“You could do with a change, Annie, and Sammy too.”

“It has been sort of hot to-day,” she agreed. The thought of a week at Whitley Bay for Sammy and herself was dazzling, but her head was full of the difficulties, oh, half a hundred obstacles; she had no clothes, she would “show up” David, she had the house and her father to look after, Pug might go on the drink if she left him to himself. Then a brilliant idea struck her. She exclaimed: “Take Sammy!”

He said grimly:

“Sammy doesn’t go an inch without his mother.”

“Now, mother ,” Sammy cried again, his little white face filled with a warning desperation.

There was a silence, then she lifted her eyes and smiled her quiet smile at him.

“Very well, David,” she said. “If you’re so good as to take us.”

It was settled. All at once David felt glad, immensely and surprisingly glad. It was like a sudden glow within him. He watched Annie and Sammy go down the road towards Quay Street with Sammy capering about his mother, big boots and broken collar and all, capering and talking about Whitley Bay. Then he walked home along Lamb Lane to his house. Now there was no chickweed on the path, the little garden was trim and neat at last, and bright yellow nasturtiums grew up white strings on the wall where Martha had trained them. The doorstep was very whitely pipe-clayed and scalloped by Martha, and the window-blinds had a full twelve inches of wonderful crochet-edging worked as only Martha’s hands could work it. All the best colliers’ houses had crochet-edged blinds — the sign of a tidy collier! — but none in Sleescale were finer than these.

He hung up his hat in the hall and went into the kitchen where Martha was on her feet preparing some watercress for his tea. Martha was always busy in his service, a perfect demi-urge of house-proud service beat beneath her sober bodice. The kitchen was so clean he could have taken his tea off the floor — as they say in these parts. The woodwork of the furniture shone, the china on the dresser gleamed. The fine marble clock, won by Martha’s father for pot-stour bowling, and brought down from Inkerman Terrace when she gave up her home, ticked solemnly, a sacred heirloom, on the high mantelpiece. The high clear stillness of Sunday was in the house.

He studied Martha. He said:

“Why don’t you come to Whitley Bay for a week, mother? I’m going there on the 19th.”

She did not look round but went on scrupulously examining the watercress: she could not bear a speck upon lettuce or watercress. When he began to feel she had not heard him, she said:

“What would I do with Whitley Bay?”

“I thought you might like it, mother. Annie and the boy are coming,” he made his tone coaxing. “You better come too!”

Her back was towards him and she did not speak for a minute. But finally, in a bleached voice, she answered: