Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

And finally, with a sense of relaxation, a fondling touch, he drew the third book towards him. There was the list of his pictures with the prices he had paid for each. He considered it tolerantly. It amused him to consider that he had spent twenty thousand pounds, a fortune, virtually, on pictures. Well, it was a sound investment too — they were on his walls, appreciating in value, growing rare and old like the Titians and Rembrandts… but he would buy no more. No, he had paid his homage to art. It was enough.

He looked at his watch. His lips made a little clicking sound that it should be so late. Carefully, he put his books away, relocked the top middle drawer and went up to his bedroom.

He took out his watch again and wound up his watch. He took a drink of water from the carafe beside his bed. Then he began to undress. The quiet movements of his powerful figure had a set inevitability. The movements were regular and systematic. The movements admitted no other movements. Each movement had a deliberate self-interest. The white strong hands spoke a dumb alphabet of their own. This way… like this… the best way to do it is this way… the best way for me… there may be other ways… but this way is the best way for me… for me. In the half light of the bedroom the symbolism of the hands was strangely menacing.

At last Barras was ready. He circled on his dark purple dressing-gown. He stood for a moment smoothing his jaw with his fingers. Then he went steadily along the corridor.

Hilda, sitting in the darkness of her own room, heard the heavy tread of her father as he entered her mother’s room next door. Her body contracted, she held herself quite rigid. Her face wore a tormented look. Desperately she tried to shut her ears but she could not shut her ears. She could never shut her ears. The tread advanced. Subdued voices. A heavy deliberate creak. Hilda’s whole body shuddered. In an agony of loathing she waited. The sounds began.

Joe lounged in the living-room at Scottswood Road paying not the slightest heed to Alf Sunley who sat by the table reading aloud the selections of Captain Sanglar for Gosforth Park Races. This afternoon Joe and Alf were going to the races, though Joe, from the sullen expression in his face and his contemptuous indifference to the Captain’s information, did not appear to exult unduly at the prospect. Replete with dinner, he lay back in his chair with his feet on the window-sill, indulging himself in surly meditation.

“Taking form for courses I confidently nap Lord Kell’s Nesfield for the Eldon Plate, making that well-tried filly my three-star selection for the day…”

As Alf’s voice droned on Joe’s eyes roved glumly round the room. God, what a sickening place! What a hole! And to think, to think actually that he had put up with it for over three years! Nearly four, in fact! Was he going to stick it much longer? He couldn’t believe it, the way time had slipped in, and left him still here, like a stranded whale. Where, curse it, was his ambition? Was he going to waste himself here all his life?

Soberly reviewed, the position impressed him as being not altogether lively. At Millington’s in these four years he had got on well enough. Yes, well enough… but well enough was not good enough, not nearly good enough for Joe Gowlan. He was puddling now, earning his regular three pounds a week; and that, at twenty-two, was something. He was popular — a faint complacent gleam broke through his present gloom — wonderfully popular. He was one of the lads! Mr. Millington appeared to take an interest in him, too, always stopped and spoke as he came through the works, but nothing definite ever seemed to come of it. Nothing, dammit, thought Joe, glooming.

What had he done for himself? He had three suits instead of one, three pairs of brown boots and a lot of fancy ties; he had a few quid in his pocket; he had improved his physique, even boxed at St. James’s Hall; he knew his way around the town; he knew some tricks. But what else? Nothing, dammit, nothing, thought Joe, again, glooming worse. He was still a workman living in lodgings, with no money to brag about, and he was still… still mixed up with Jenny.

Joe moved restlessly. Jenny represented the peak, the crisis, the goading thorn of his present discontent. Jenny was in love with him, clinging to him, mucking him up. Could anything be bloodier? At first, naturally, his vanity had been tickled, it had been a bit of all right having Jenny running after him, hanging on his elbow as, with his chest well out, and his derby well back, he brown-booted jauntily down the street.

But now he wasn’t so jaunty, by a half of a long chop. He was fed up with Jenny. Well, no, perhaps he wouldn’t put it so strong as that — she was still soft, still desirable in his arms, and their love-making, the fierce consummation of his desire, snatched secretly here in this room, in his own room, outside after dark, in doorways, round by the back of Elswick stables, in all sorts of queer and unexpected places, that , he had to admit, was still sweet. But it was… oh, it was too easy now. There was no difficulty, no resistance in Jenny; there was even a faint eagerness about her sometimes, and sometimes a sense of neglect when he left her alone too long. Oh, hell! He might just as well have been married to Jenny.

And he didn’t want to be married to Jenny, nor to any other Jenny. Not to be tied up for life, not him. He was too wise a bird for that sort of snare. He wanted to get on, make his way, pile up some money. He wanted to scrape some of the gilt, the real gilt off the gingerbread.

He frowned. She was too much in his life, changing it too much, she really was upsetting him. This very afternoon, for instance, hearing that he was going to Gosforth with her father and leaving her at home she had dissolved in sudden scalding tears, had been pacified only at the cost of promising to take her with them. She was upstairs, dressing, now.

Oh, blast! Joe took a sudden fierce kick at the stool in front of him, making Alf stop reading and look up in mild surprise.

“You’re not lissenin’, Joe,” Alf remonstrated. “What’s the good of me wastin’ my breath if you don’t lissen.”

Joe answered disagreeably:

“That fellow don’t know nowt. He gets his tips straight from the horses’ mouths. An’ the horses is all liars. I’m goin’ to get my information from Dick Jobey on the course. He’s a pal o’ mine and a man as knows what he’s talkin’ about.”

Alf gave a short expressive laugh.

“What’s like the matter with you, Joe? I’d stopped readin’ about the horses ten minutes ago. I was readin’ about the new aeroplane this fella Bleeryoh has got, you know, him that flew the Channel last year.”

Joe grunted:

“Aw’ll have a fleet o’ bloody aeroplanes myself one o’ these days. You watch.”

Alf squinted over the edge of the paper.

“I’ll watch,” he agreed with enormous sarcasm.

The door opened and Jenny came in. Joe looked up grumpily:

“You’re ready at last.”

“I’m ready,” she admitted brightly; all traces of her recent weeping had vanished and, as was often the case after a bout of tearful petulance, she was brisk, blithe as a lark. “Like my new hat?” she asked, tilting her head for him archly. “Pretty nice, mister?”

Through all his moodiness he had to grant that she did look nice. The new hat, which she wore so dashingly, set off her pale prettiness. Her figure was extraordinarily attractive, she had the most beautifully modelled legs and hips. Physically the loss of her virginity had improved her. She was riper, more assured, less anæmic; she had more go in her; she was near her point of perfection.