Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

He went out of the waiting-room and through the ward and into Jenny’s room. Jenny lay flat on her back with the end of the bed raised high on blocks. Sister Clegg was giving Jenny an injection into her arm. The room was in confusion, basins everywhere and ice and towels. The pieces of a smashed hand mirror were lying on the floor.

Jenny’s face was the colour of clay. She breathed in little shallow gasps. Her eyes were upon the ceiling. They were terrified, the eyes; they seemed to cling to the ceiling as though afraid to let the ceiling go.

His heart melted and flooded through him. He fell on his knees beside the bed.

“Jenny,” he said. “Oh, Jenny, Jenny.”

The eyes removed themselves from the ceiling and wavered towards him. Excusingly, the white lips whispered:

“I wanted to be nice for you.”

Tears ran down his face. He took her bloodless hand and held it.

“Jenny,” he said. “Oh, Jenny, Jenny, my dear.”

She whispered, as though it were a lesson:

“I wanted to be nice for you.”

Tears choked him; he could not speak. He pressed the white hand against his cheek.

“I’m thirsty,” she gasped feebly. “Can I have a drink?”

He took the drinking cup — funny, like a little tea-pot! — and held it to her white lips. She raised her hand weakly and took the drinking-cup. Then a faint shiver went through her body. The liquid in the drinking-cup spilled all over her nightgown.

Everything had turned out for the best for Jenny in the end. The little finger of her hand which still held the drinking-cup was politely curved. That would have pleased Jenny if she had known. Jenny had died polite.

At half-past eight on the morning after Jenny’s funeral David stepped on to the platform of Sleescale Station and was met by Peter Wilson. The whole of the previous day, October 15th, had been a swift unreality of sadness, completing the last pitiful arrangements, following all that remained of Jenny to the cemetery, placing a wreath of flowers upon her grave. He had travelled from London by the night train and he had not slept much. Yet he did not feel tired; the keen wind blowing from the sea struck along the platform and braced him with a tense energy. He had a curious sense of physical resistance as he put down his suit-case and shook hands with Wilson.

“Here you are,” Wilson said, “and not before time.” Wilson’s slow, good-natured smile was absent. His little pointed beard made those restless jerks which always indicated some disturbance in his mind. “It’s a great pity you missed your meeting yesterday, the Committee was extremely put about. You can’t know what we’re up against.”

“I imagine it’s going to be a hard fight,” David answered quietly.

“Perhaps harder,” Wilson declared. “Have you heard who they’re putting up against you?” He paused, searching David’s eyes with a perturbed inquiry; then he threw out violently: “It’s Gowlan.”

David’s heart seemed to stand still, his body to contract, ice-like, at the sound of the name.

“Joe Gowlan!” he repeated, tonelessly.

There was a strained silence. Wilson smiled grimly.

“It only came out last night. He’s at the Law now — living in style. Since he’s opened the Neptune he’s become the local swell. He’s got Ramage in tow, and Connolly and Low. He’s got most of the Conservative Executive eating out of his hand. There’s been a big push from Tynecastle, too. Yes, he’s been nominated; it’s all arranged and settled.”

A heavy bewilderment mingled with a kind of terror came over David — he could not believe it, no, the thing was too wildly, too madly impossible. He asked mechanically:

“Are you serious?”

“I was never more serious in my life.”

Another silence. It was true, then, this staggering and brutal news. With a set face, David picked up the suit-case and started off with Wilson. They came out of the station and down Cowpen Street without exchanging a word. Joe, Joe Gowlan, turning over and over, relentlessly, in David’s brain. There was no doubt about Joe’s qualifications — he had money, success, influence. He was like Lennard, for instance, who, with a fortune made from gimcrack furniture, had nonchalantly bought Clipton at the last election — Lennard, who had never made a speech in his life, who spent his rare visits to the House standing treat in the bar and doing cross-word puzzles in the smoke-room. One of the nation’s legislators. And yet, thought David bitterly, the easy-going Lennard was hardly the exemplar. Joe would use the House for more than cross-word puzzles. There was no knowing to what diverse and interesting uses Joe might turn his position if he won the seat.

Abruptly David turned away from his bitterness. That was no help. The only answer to the situation was that Joe must not get in. O God, he thought, walking into the keen sea wind, O God, if I only do one thing more let me beat Joe Gowlan at this election.

Filled more than ever with the sense of his obligations, he had breakfast with Wilson at Wilson’s house and they went over the position intensively. Wilson did not spare his facts. David’s unforeseen delay in returning to Sleescale had created an unfavourable feeling. Moreover, as David already knew, the executive of the Labour Party had not favoured his re-nomination; ever since his speech on the Mines Bill he had been marked down as a rebel, treated with hostility and suspicion. But the party, indebted to the Miners’ Federation for affiliation fees, had been unwilling to block the Federation nominee. Yet this had not prevented them sending an agent from Transport House in an effort to influence the miners towards another candidate.

“He came up like a confounded spy,” Wilson growled in conclusion. “But he didn’t get any change out of us. The Lodge wanted you. They pressed the matter with the Divisional Executive. And that was the end of it.”

After that, Wilson insisted that David go home to get some sleep before the committee meeting at three. David felt no need of sleep, but he went home; he wanted to think things out by himself.

Martha was expecting him — he had wired her the night before — and her eyes flew to his black tie. Her eyes revealed nothing as they took in that black tie and she asked no question.

“You’re late, surely,” she said. “Your breakfast’s been waiting this hour past.”

He sat down by the table.

“I’ve had breakfast with Wilson, mother.”

She did not like that, she persisted:

“Will you not even have a cup of tea?”

He nodded.

“Very well.”

He watched her as she infused fresh tea, first pouring hot water in the brown teapot, then measuring the tea exactly from the brass canister that had been her mother’s, he watched her sure and firm movements and he thought with a kind of wonder how little she had changed. Not far off seventy now, still vigorous and dark and unyielding, she was indomitable. He said suddenly:

“Jenny died three days ago.”

Her features remained impenetrable, slightly formidable.

“I thought that must be the way of it,” she said, putting the tea before him.

A silence fell. Was that all she could say? It struck him as insufferably cruel that she could hear of Jenny’s death without speaking one word of regret. But while he despaired of her vindictiveness, she declared, almost brusquely:

“I’m sorry it has grieved ye, David.” The words seemed wrung from her. Then, following something like embarrassment, she looked at him covertly. “And what’s like going to happen with you now?”

“Another election… another start.”

“Ye’re not tired of it, yet?”

“No, mother.”

When he had drunk his tea, he went upstairs to lie down for a few hours. He closed his eyes, but for a long time sleep eluded him. The thought remained hammering in his head, insistent, and agitating, like a prayer — O God, let me keep Joe Gowlan out, let me keep him out. Everything he had battled against all his life was concentrated in this man who now opposed him. He must win. He must. Willing that with all his strength, a drowsiness came over him, he fell asleep at last.