Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

His face was so happy, so rapt, suffused with such ardour, intensity and love that it took her all of a heap. She giggled suddenly. She giggled and giggled; it was so funny she could not stop. She had a perfect paroxysm of almost hysterical enjoyment.

David laughed too, out of sheer sympathy.

“What’s the matter, Jenny?” he kept asking. “Do tell me what’s the joke!”

“I don’t know,” she gasped, going into a fresh spasm of mirth. “That’s just it. I don’t know… I don’t know what I’m laughing at.”

At last she dried her streaming eyes on her small lace-edged hanky — an extra nice hanky, a lady had left in the toilet at Slattery’s.

“Oh dear,” she sighed. “That was a scream, wasn’t it?” This was a favourite phrase of Jenny’s: all events of unusual significance, when they lay beyond Jenny’s comprehension, were classed sympathetically as screams .

She felt quite restored, however, rather fond of him now; she allowed him to take her arm and be very close to her as they climbed the steep hill of the Dene towards the tram. But she cut the afternoon shorter than it might have been, pleaded tiredness, refused to let him see her to her home.

She went along Scottswood Road in a restless, excitable mood, nursing the idea which had come to her as she sat beside David in the tram. The street teemed with life. It was Saturday, about six o’clock; people were starting to stroll about, to enjoy themselves; it was a time that Jenny loved, the time when she most commonly set out with Joe.

She let herself into the house quietly and, by a stroke of luck which made her heart leap, she met Joe in the passage coming out.

“Hello, Joe,” she said brightly, forgetting that for a week she had cut him dead.

“Hello!” he said, not looking at her.

“I’ve had such a scream of an afternoon, Joe,” she went on gaily, coquettishly. “You’d have died, honestly you’d have died. I’ve seen every kind of swallow but a real one.”

He darted a quick suspicious glance at her as she stood in the dim passage blocking his way. She saw the look and came a little closer, making herself seductive, asking him with her face, her eyes, her body.

“Couldn’t you and I go out to-night, Joe?” she murmured seductively. “Honest, I’ve had a sickening afternoon. I’ve missed you a lot lately. I want to go out with you. I want to. Here I am ready, all dressed up…”

“Ah, what—”

She pressed against him, began to smooth his coat lapel, to slip her white finger into his buttonhole, with a childish yet suggestive appeal.

“I’m just dying to have a fling. Let’s go to the Percy Grill, Joe, and have a rare old time. You know, Joe… you know what…”

He shook his head rudely.

“No,” he said in a surly voice. “I’m busy, I’m worried, I’ve got things on my mind.” He brushed past her, banged through the door and was gone.

She lay back against the wall of the passage, her mouth a little open, her eyes upon the street door. She had asked him, lowered herself to ask him. She had held herself wide open, wide open, longing for him, and he had chucked a surly refusal in her face. Humiliation rushed over her; never, in all her life, had she been so wounded, so humiliated. Pale with temper, she bit her lips fiercely. She lay there for a moment mad, simply, with fury. Then she gathered herself, flung her head in the air, went into the back room as if nothing had happened.

Tossing her hat and gloves upon the sofa, she began to make herself a cup of tea. Ada, reclining in the rocker, lowered her magazine and watched her with displeasure.

“Where you been?” Ada asked laconically, very coldly.

“Out.”

“H’umph… out with that young Fenwick fella, eh?”

“Certainly,” Jenny agreed with a calm tranquillity. “Out with David Fenwick. And a most lovely afternoon I’ve had. Simply perfect. Such wonderful flowers and birds we’ve seen. He’s a nice fellow, oh, he really is nice .”

Ada’s indolent bosom heaved ominously.

“So he’s nice, is he?”

“Yes, indeed.” Jenny paused in her unruffled measuring of the tea to nod graciously. “He’s the nicest and best fellow I’ve ever met. I’m quite carried away by him.” And very airily she began to hum.

Ada could stand it no longer.

“Don’t hum at me,” she quivered with indignation. “I won’t have it. And let me tell you this, madam, I think you’re behaving shocking. You’re not treating Joe right. For four years now he’s run after you, taken you out and all, as good as your intended. And the minute this other young man comes along you turn Joe down and go cohorting all over the place with him …. It’s not fair on Joe.”

Jenny paused and sipped her tea with ladylike restraint.

“I think nothing of Joe Gowlan, ma. I could have Joe just by the raising of my little finger. But I haven’t raised it. Not just yet.”

“So that’s it, my lady! Joe isn’t good enough for you now… not grand enough now this school teacher has come on the carpet. You’re a fine customer, right enough. I should think so. Let me tell you, my lady, that I didn’t go about it that way with your dad. I treated him proper and human. And if you don’t treat Joe the same you’ll lose him as sure as your name’s Jenny Sunley.”

“A lot I care, ma.” Jenny smiled pityingly. “Even if I never did set eyes on Joe Gowlan again.”

Mrs. Sunley exploded.

“You might not then. Joe’s upset. Joe’s terrible upset. He’s just been in here talking to me now. There was tears in his eyes, poor fella, when he was speaking to me about you. He don’t know what to do. And he’s got trouble on him, too, trouble at the foundry. You’re treating him shameful, but mark my words, no man’ll put up with that kind of thing for long. So just look out. You’re a bad heartless girl. I’ve had a good mind to tell your dad.” Ada delivered the final threat and sealed off the conversation by raising her magazine with a jerk. She had said her say, done her duty, and Jenny could like it or lump it!

Jenny’s smile was still superior as she finished her tea. Still condescending and even more superior as she picked up her hat and gloves, swept from the room and mounted the stairs.

In her own bedroom, however, something went wrong with Jenny’s smile. She stood alone, in the middle of the cold worn linoleum like a wretched, forsaken, spoiled child. She let her hat and gloves slip from her. Then with a great gulp she flung herself upon the bed. She lay flat upon the bed as though embracing it. Her skirt, caught above one knee, exposed a tender patch of white skin above her black stocking. Her abandon was unutterable. She sobbed and sobbed as if her heart would break.

Joe, strutting down Bigg Market to see Dick Jobey, with whom he had private and important business, was telling himself gleefully:

“It’s working, lad! By gum, it’s working.”

Ten days later, early in the forenoon, Joe presented himself at the foundry offices and asked to see Mr. Stanley.

“Well, Joe, what is it?” Stanley Millington asked, looking up from his desk, set in the centre of the old-fashioned high-windowed room, full of papers, books and blue prints, with maroon walls covered by photographs of employee groups, officials of the firm, outings of the Social Club and big castings dangling precariously from cranes.

Joe said respectfully:

“I’ve just worked my week’s notice, Mr. Millington. I didn’t want to go without saying good-bye.”

Our Mr. Stanley sat up in his chair.

“Heavens, man, you don’t mean to say you’re leaving us. Why, that’s too bad. You’re one of the bright lights of the shop. And the Social Club too. What’s the trouble? Anything I can put right?”